#but making new accounts to get around a block and then messaging me angrily about it? lmfao

[meraxes-of-new-albion]

Sigh. Love it when people on the internet feel entitled to your existence

[imjulia-andilikecats]

If Cal had Tik tok he would make thrist traps on there and post them💀

No? Yes? Maybe?

Warning: This will be very unnecessarily long.

Let me explain. Cal is a responsible dude that values professionalism and hard work.

If Cal ever uses Tik Tok, he would have downloaded it for the purpose of understanding a new strategy of getting a younger demographic interested in his family's mylti-million manufacturing company.

He would take note on the type of content and format that would get the most attention.

Cal doing some speedy research on successful video that are "short, exciting, and informative." Which Cal enterprited as making ads, but for viewers with a much shorter attention span.

So he started making tik tok shorts of reviewing tools, car maintenance advice and how to fix it car parts. With him earing a few views and comments that would ask about the video but some would ask if he wants to check their *p@rn website*.

But it didn't deter Cal since he also noticed that the more tiktok shorts he makes, his videos would pop up more on those designated tags.

When he started to get more views, with the comments asking him how he fix the engines. The video would get a good view of his arms and shoulders. (And y'all know how glorious those biceps are💪😘).

So he got messages and comments asking how he got those muscles. Cal thinking, "eh might as well and try to sneak some other products in the video".

Cal started to product gym videos. (But he keeps his face hidden, since his family is well known and he likes to keep his identity private.)

But his 🎇BUFFNESS🎇 was more than enough to get a ton of views and a sizable following of young men who want to build muscles and excersice. Which Cal happily shared (and shoved more product ads in).

Since he was slowly getting quiet famous, some of his workout videos started to gain female viewers (the middle age women that have A LOT of free time on their hands.) Sending thirsty messages amd comments which Cal either blocked or ignored.

Cal is too 👼PIOUS🧼 to share his body like that in a fast paced platform. Keep his content strictly educational, with the occassional dad puns.

Until he saw her....

Cal was done filming a "how to tell if your mechanic is overcharging you" video and was famish. When he arrived in his family's kitchen, he saw a petite girl with wavy brown hair rummaging through the cupboards.

He first that she was a thief, so he quick went up to her asking what on earth is she doing in his house.

The girl turned to him. Cal thought a strong with breezed whipped through him, as his skin prickled at how strikingly pretty this uninvited guest was.

Her dark brow raised and her full lips, slightly pouting at him with annoyance. Only answered, "I'm a guest." Lifting her arms full of snacks that his baby brother kept hidden in the kitchen cabinet.

Cal was left speechless and VERY smitten with Mavey's guest, who apparently was his classmate and they were working on a project that needs to be submitted tomorrow. His baby brother angrily explained, while pulling his guest back to his bedroom and glaring at him as they walked away.

He found it odd that Mavey, often thoughtful and soft spoken, openly looked annoyed with him, but his mind was far too occupied with warm brown eyes and soft, pouty lips.

A few days past, Cal was going quite mad at "how to attract a guest's attention", when he received a notification of someone liking his workout videos and a short comment, "Cool." Was all it said.

But Cal stared hard at the profile, the familiar face and the account name: "lightningmarequeen".

A quick search into her account showed mostly videos of her two older brothers goofing around and a blode guy, around her again, tagging along with their weird stunts.

At that moment, something clicked.

Looking at the video that earned her like and comment. Where he was doing one handed push ups. He finally found a way to get her attention.

Cal started posting more workout videos, each more tiring than the last, with him no longer wearing his usual long sleeves.

It was replaed with short sleeved gym wear and would occassionally change his shirt, and "accidentally" forgot to edit out that part of the video.

The account, lightningmarequeen, would like and comment 1 out of 5 of his videos. Leaving one to two worded comments like. "Cool. Nice. Cool video. Bruh (which Cal had to look up)."

After a month of his strategy, he worked up the courage to send her a private message, asking her if she wanted to meet up and get coffee.

She replied. "Sure, but show me your face first."

Cal inhaled, sending her a picture of him in a suit and tie.

His phone made a sound, and saw that she sent a message.

Cal opened it, excited to see an up close photo of her.

What he got instead was a picture of a very tall, very hairy man that appeared to be her older brother. With a note. "I like your videos dude but hands off my sister."

So, my answer is yes, for love and research.😘

P. S. SORRY FOR TAKING SO LONG IN ANSWERING THIS ASK. MY BRAIN WAS NOT BRAINING LATELY.

P. S. P. S. Mare sent the photo of Bree. Cause she is not into thirst traps and has no idea who he was. But worry not, Cal found an opportunity to ask her out (when he waited to make sure Maven was not around, watching her like a hawk).

[katsukikitten]

Part one. Master list for plus one can be found here.

Just a nice fic I decided to write for fun. Please enjoy!

Asshole!

He was nothing but a huge, giant fucking ASSHOLE for the entire two years the two of you were dating and he decides NOW is a good time to break up with you?

Two days before your cousin's wedding and over TEXT MESSAGE?!

That fucking asshole.

He knew how you felt. Exactly how you felt about going alone to your cousin's wedding after your family begged to meet your boyfriend and teased you for "probably making him up." Which hell, he may as well have been made up considering how absent he was in the relationship. Using work as an excuse to come home late but forgetting to turn off his snap location when he showed up at the bar.

So you did what any rational woman in her upper twenties would do.

You drowned your sorrows in booze, tonight red wine as it was the only thing around, and you scrolled through your socials in hopes of distracting yourself from your suffering.

Alas the devil that is Instagram only amplified your sadness and irritation. Showing couple after couple, your friends on hikes kissing on the mountain top, kissing in the flickering light of candles at a fancy dinner or, worst yet, getting proposed to. The video showing her in hysterics screaming, "YES I DO I DO!"

And it feels terrible to feel this way. Especially about your friends, the people you love and want to support, still it stings. You hadn't told anyone about the breakup, you weren't even sure your friends even remembered that asshole's name.

A teardrop lands on your screen, magnifying all the magical lights of the led beneath the glad. You wipe away the tear and with that the feed refreshes. A new post has come in at the top, Res Riot's official account.

Kirishima stands with a fat white cat in his arms. He dwarfs the animal with his large stature that looks larger as he still has his Red Riot gear on. The caption reads something along the lines of "missed my precious baby."

Red wine is a dangerous thing as your body acts on its own. You go to his page to hit the little arrow to DM him. Typing out and backspacing your message as you struggle from the booze, you decide to say fuck it and use the voice memo feature. Before you know it your sniffling voice is playing back to you after you've hit send.

"My ex broke up with me before this stupid wedding. It's in two days and my family is going to roast me big time when I show up alone. They think I made that asshole up. I don't know why I'm even in your dms. Your account is probably run by some dick head who can't even capture your kindness. I guess I'm here cause my first thought seeing you on my timeline was Red Riot has always been my hero…"

Ugh totally fucking cringe.

There is no surprise as you see the three normally ominous dots pop up, probably his social media manager about to ask you to stop your "advances" as Kirishima is too busy to date and he'd hate to block you or some other bullshit.

But there it is a surprise to see a little bubble with the play button and some vertical lines in various heights. It takes your sluggish brain a moment to realize you've been sent a voice memo. Odd. Your thumb smashes the screen faster than you can think and a deep voice rumbles through the speakers of your phone.

"Actually I run my official and personal socials. And I'm sorry to hear about your ex doll. He sounds like a real ass. I'll be your hero, I'll go with you to the wedding."

Your heart stutters, no way, no way in HELL this was Red Riot. You had read about the horror stories before or pervy account managers taking advantage of women who so desperately wanted to talk to their hero.

Hell, it's happened to Dynamight plenty of times.

You swallow quickly but the bile rushes up your throat. Not just from the anxiety of a possible con but from drinking an entire bottle of wine with nothing on your stomach after months of sobriety. Quickly you stumble to the bathroom, abandoning your phone on your bed. You barely make it in time to praise the porcelain Gods before you fall onto your back. Looking up at the light in your cramped bathroom, the orb doubles and spins as you feel the Earth turning on its axis. You curl into your side using your bathmat as a pillow as you drift off into sleep, totally forgetting about the voice memo on your phone.

As you sleep peacefully on your memory foam bath rug, Kirishima settles into his nightly routine. One giant hand grabbing strands of long dark red hair into a towel while another sits snugly around his Adonis belt and the thick, black happy trail that follows up the center of his abs before spreading out onto his chest. He tosses the towel over the open door of the bathroom before sitting in his favorite armchair with phone in hand. Diamond, his beautiful white cat he rescued a few years ago, jumps onto the arm of the chair, purring loudly when Kirishima's free hand scratches her ears absentmindedly.

He chuckles to himself as he realizes exactly what he's done. Acting on a feeling instead of logic all because he heard a "damsel in distress." Starting off his rare vacation with spontaneity starting with an impromptu date with a stranger. He really isn't sure what you look like and it's obvious your handle doesn't have your real name in it, just PrincessPeach with some random numbers at the end. He takes the time to scroll through your profile. Seeing pictures of food, of many sunsets, a friend's dog that guest appears often, your own cat and plenty of strays.

It takes him a while before he sees a photo of you. His heart stutters in his chest as he looks you over. Laughing with a friend, soft lighting from strings over head that blur like little fireflies. Your smile is wide, half hidden by your hands as your eyes seem to smile with you. Sparkling as if they held stars.

For a moment Kirishima forgets how to breathe, it isn't until Diamond jumps down from the armchair does he inhale. He smiles softly to himself before he drops his towel, puts his phone on charge and promptly falls asleep in his bed.

Kirishima rises before the sun even has a chance to filter through his blinds. He sighs softly, getting up to a sitting position disturbing a fluffy white ball that lays beside him.

"Mmrow." Moon stone eyes blink slowly as they look at the mountainous man hogging the bed.

"I didn't mean to wake you sweet baby." He says softly, going to pet the soft white fur only for her to get up stretch and give him her butt before plopping back down.

"I know, mean ol' daddy woke you up too early again." He says softly, his hand falling onto her back before he rises from the bed. Fishing for his running shorts, socks, headphones and shoes. He makes his protein shake, leaning on the counter as he drinks it, looking at how you read, or better yet, listened to his message but still no reply. It was late and there was a small slurring of your words, he figures you've passed out. He just hopes you're okay.

His run goes as usual, up before anyone else unless they were the normal avid runner. Passing by the usual array of people. An old man holding onto his youth by jogging through his daily five mile morning run, Kirishima knows he runs another five in the evening while the sun is setting. He hopes he can embody some of this man's commitment when he is older. Then he passes a middle aged woman, who gives him the biggest smile as she pases, jogging backward to send him a wink before plowing ahead. Occasionally he'll see a running group or a few teens training to be heroes, they always ask if they can run his route. "It's long." He always warns in a kind, warm voice. They assure him they will be fine so far only one other person could handle his 12 mile morning run. A young woman in her second year of hero courses at UA. Since then Kirishima put in a word with his boss and so every time internships roll around she's in the office.

By the time Kirishima is rounding back towards his high rise apartment, the city begins to stir. Slowly waking as men and women in business suits rush towards the train, parents flinging open the doors or curtains fussing at their children who cling to an extra few minutes of sleep before school.

This was always his favorite part of the run, not because it was almost over, oh no it was because he had a chance to glimpse at everyday life. Of nine to fives, of school hours and after school hangs outs at snack bars or the library.

What most would call the mundane but Kirishima would never call it that. It's why he worked so hard to protect it.

Diamond greets his sweaty form at the door. Glaring angrily with her moon stone eyes. Tail swishing before she goes to the kitchen by her bowl. Waiting impatiently.

"I'm not late, sweet cheeks." He coos, and she glares, "I know I know. You're hungry now."

He opens the fridge, gets out the highest quality food there is and places it on her dish, sure to keep it all in the middle or she'll claim her bowl was empty. He added a splash of water too since the weather was starting to get hot.

He sucks down a water or two, demolishes a protein bar and then heads to the apartment gym.

A few hours roll by and without hearing from you yet his worry over your well being begins to cloud the forefront of his mind. He pauses his music, picks up his phone and talks out a voice memo.

A loud DING echoes from your room and around your skull as you rise with a throbbing headache.

"Fuck." You hiss to yourself grabbing at your head as you shakily rise to your feet. Yanking the handle of the faucet to drink from the stream before looking at yourself in the mirror.

"Ugh." You grunt ignoring your swollen face and eyes, yanking the mirror door open to snatch at the bottle of aspirin. Swallowing THREE extra strength pills before slamming the door shut and turning off the faucet. You make your way towards your bedroom, more than ready to sleep the rest of your day away. Grabbing at your phone to charge it you see the push notification of an Instagram message from Red Riot.

The fucking Red Riot.

Internally you scream before it bubbles up your throat and escapes. You fumble to unlock your phone before looking that it's a voice memo.

Mortified you realize you sent one too. And first at that.

"Fuck MEEE!" You plop onto the bed. Nervous this second voice memo is probably about how you're a weirdo or something as you relive the memory of asking him to be your plus one.

Hesitantly your thumb hovers over the play button before you find the strength to press the cool glass. A soft thunderous voice plays out.

"Good morning sleepy head. I haven't heard from you yet, I hope you're okay. Be sure to drink some water and eat something greasy. Trust me, late nights with Denki and Bakugou taught me something. Since the wedding is tomorrow I'll need a picture of your dress for the color and style so I can match you Sweet pea. Contact me soon so I can know where to pick you up."

Did he… did he just call you SWEET PEA? Your heart pounds in your chest before it registers he's asked for your dress color and lowkey asked for your address. This couldn't be real. It sounded like Kirishima, his voice familiar from interviews you've watched but it very well could be a prank. Defeated you hit the small microphone and reply.

Kirishima hears a sharp DING in his headphones over his music as he finishes his set. He wipes the sweat from his face on his shirt giving the few people in the gym a lovely view of his sweaty and thick torso. One woman trips on the treadmill but it goes unnoticed by Kirishima. He pauses his music and hits play on the little memo. Your beautiful yet groggy voice comes in through his ear buds causing Kirishima to bite his lip. It causes such a flutter of butterflies in his stomach he has to listen a second time to actually hear what you said. Although he understand, he cannot help but feel hurt by your reply.

"How do I know you're not just some pervy guy using Kirishima's Godly looks to prey on unsuspecting people."

Your phone chirps at you from the bed stand and you growl reaching for it. You had hoped your message would have been clear. An unspoken of you know they're a fucking creep taking advantage of their PR job.

"What can I do to prove it to you, Sweet Pea?"

You hate how that cute nickname sends your heart into a somersault and your stomach in delightful knots. Still your doubt pulls a harsh tut from your lips before you reply.

Kirishima doesn't need his phone to alert him that you've messaged him, he's been looking at his screen for far to long without having to restart his set. He listens to your voice as if it were music.

"Fine, you wanna prove it to me so bad. Take a picture of yourself shirtless with the word 'Sweet pea' you love so much and send it to me. No photoshop I know what my favorite hero looks like!"

For over an hour you don't hear back and you figure you showed that perv.

But now you can't sleep so you nurse a water, door dash a "greasy" breakfast all before cranking your shower as high as it can go. Your phone dings and you try to ignore it. You really do but as the saying goes curiosity killed the cat. Opening the message you see a classic guy mirror selfie. Kirishima is clear as day in the photo, his large hand pointing to his bare, hairy chest where sweat pea is scrawled in his adorable handwriting. He winks at the camera as his kissable lips wear a dangerous, almost cocky eyes travel down his bulk following his happy trail that dives under a pair of black shorts, the best part of the view getting cut off by the vanity. At first you try to rationalize that this was fake but damning evidence was sitting on the vanity. A fluffy white cat in a diamond and ruby encrusted collar sits on the counter giving her owner an odd look.

His cat Diamond that everyone knows he loves and adores. Slick begins to collect between your thighs and especially so after you listen to the voice memo that comes through shortly after. His normally friendly and soft voice comes out a bit dark, husky as he says in a playfully annoyed tone.

"Now send me a picture of that dress, Sweet Pea."

[sortavibing]

saline solution I suna rintarou

yuhhh we coming back with a part two😩 part one linked here

One, two, three and four

suna stared at his phone, counting the days since he sent that message. he sighed, knowing that there was no chance that those stupid texts would ever make you forgive him. he slouched (even more) in his seat on the subway and put his head in his hands, muttering curses at how stupid he was.

why the fuck did i have to do that?

the ping of his phone woke him up from his angry trance. he slowly looked up and saw an Instagram notification from your account.

i'm surprised they haven't blocked me yet

he muttered, opening his phone to check your post. once he saw it, he audibly said "FUCK" attracting the attention of the other people on the subway. he didn't notice, too busy looking at your post, over and over and over again. you had a new boyfriend. you were smiling brighter than he had seen you smiling for 6 months, clinging onto a new person, who looked equally happy to be in your embrace. the deal was sealed. you were never coming back. the train stopped, and suna got out, almost in a trance, trying to process what he just saw, what he is feeling, and most importantly, how to fix things between you two. biting his lip, he decided to send you another text, praying that you would see it, and at least acknowledge his existence.

see you never

see you never

see you never

your last words to him, still repeating in his head, get louder and louder, until he wants to scream, to let out his anger at his actions, his reaction, and just his fucking personality.

i think i've lost my mind

he thought to himself, as he briskly kept on walking through the city, filled with people rushing around, too caught up in their own lives and problems to see the pure anger on suna's face. he wanted to do something, anything just to distract himself from you. after a few seconds, he turned around, and started walking towards an address that he knew way to well. after a few minutes, he was at the door of osamu's house. the place where he crashed after every drunken night, the place where he spent most of his freshman year of college days, laughing and reminiscing on highschool. it's been a while since he's been here, but it still feels like a second home. he unlocks the door with the key hidden in the plant at the doorstep, and walks in, shedding his jacket and walking to the kitchen, after hearing the sounds of cooking.

"hey."

suna says. osamu turns around, frying pan still in hand, as he stirs one of his newest dishes.

"hey! long time no see. you look like absolute shit. oh, i saw y/n's post. you really fucked up this time didn't you?"

suna fell into a chair at the island, groaning.

"no shit osamu. i fucked up really bad and i don't know what to fucking do. i'm blurring the fact and the fictions, while simultaneously fixing myself up with them. i haven't thought about anything else for 2 fucking weeks and every day just gets shitter and shitter."

"wow, angsty much? i saw how you treated them. there's no way you are getting them back."

"thanks for making me feel sooo much better. that really helps me out."

"hey, i'm just telling you the truth."

"whatever you asshat. coming here was a bad idea. go back to your fucking cooking you shitty friend."

"mhm whatever, i'm the shitty friend, believe what you want to believe suna, sit secluded in hatred, pretend you're the victim, but once you get your head out of your narcissistic bastard ass, come back and chat"

"go fuck yourself"

"same for you"

suna stormed out of osamu's house, and slammed the door. osaumu rolled his eyes, and went back to cooking. outside his door, suna was seething with so many emotions, none of them good. he wanted to break something, hurt someone, just do anything to get these boiling feelings out, threating to tip over the edge. he picked up his phone again, quickly opening it and calling you, not caring if you picked up or not. when the call went to voicemail he let loose, angrily saying everything that he wanted to say, spitting insults and hate, not thinking about the repercussions, not caring about the concerned passerby, not caring at all.

"you know what you stupid cunt?! fuck you. fuck you and your fucking boyfriend. your fucking smile, your fucking everything. you are going to blame me for our shitty relationship when you clearly moved on way too fast. i said i'm sorry ok! what else does your melodramatic fucking brain need to even acknowledge me?! i think you are just a crybaby bitch who is too afraid of forgiveness. just like you always were. thank you y/n. thank you for this. thank you for helping me fucking realize that i shouldn't be missing you and your petty fucking personality. you said goodbye first, but you always know i get the last word. fuck you. and in your words, see you never."

he ended the call, and just stood there, in the middle of the street, coming to terms to what he just said. it was officially over. and there was no chance of it ever going back to what it was. he sighed. turning off his phone as he started walking back to his apartment.

fuck

i hope you enjoyed!

[incarnateirony]

An anti dressed up as a shipper, an idiot, and a terf all walk into the same bar.

It’s the same picture person.

A lesson.

Warning: if the title doesn’t give it away, queerphobic content comes up in this from the other party being documented.

So, some of you may have watched a twitter exercise yesterday.

It started simple: concern trolling white knight “for the writers” comes in to angrily declare fans doing something tagged in support of them about Destiel was “out of line.” She claimed things like “Misha was gaslit into supporting Destiel”, and pulled all kinds of stunts.

She immediately got on a soap box yelling “I HAVE A LIT CRIT DEGREE, I KNOW AUTHOR INTENT” of course implying she knew better than EVERYONE around her how to read text. She then pulled, of all things, @chill-legilimens​​ ‘ article about the network gods gutting the show out of the internet, and somehow misread it SO FUCKING BADLY -- SO FUCKING BADLY -- she thought it aligned with HER. She argued that fans influenced the writers, essentially, and basically pulled the exact opposite of the very clearly delivered message there out. When it was pointed out we know this author and even sometimes help edit their pieces, and she was, flat out misreading it while bragging about how good she is at deciphering text, it turned into a SHITSHOW.

I had watched her give a large group of queer people 2 days of runaround, while they tried to be polite, and similarly tried to prove everything while she proved nothing. Just preached. After 2 days of them exhausting themselves on her, I came in doing my blunt & savage thing, because fuck civility culture when it’s used by oppressors. Of course, she immediately started tone policing, while herself being an arrogant shitbrick the whole way.

She continued to preach author intent and talk down about “headcanons.” You see, she knew the authors very well. Berens’ name was mentioned in passing, and she came back with. “Who’s Berens? Is that the author of the article?” after Deirdre’s name had been directly cited in associated with it about 15 times.

(credit: @judgehangman​ )

But it gets better. She started pulling the “authors have said Dean is straight.” line. Now, at this point, we had already sourced her at least four pieces of information (quite formally too: SPN Official DVD Collection Season 8 episode 13 creative commentary, Edlund and Sgriccia; Dissent Magazine The Attack Queers Bob Berens review; the books in the office with screenshots, and more.) So we issued one simple request: Okay. Source.

For the next-- I shit you not-- 10 hours she bricked the thread to death, finding any and EVERY rabbit hole she could try to venture down. For the first hour or two a few of us tried to actually debate her newly raised points, but still gave reminder that we were waiting for her source. Every tweet was an opportunity for her to drop a 15 tweet thread trying to derail onto a new topic, and often clarifying she had no idea about any of it (Edlund, Sgriccia, Berens, Dabb--who she couldn’t spell the name of--and Deirdre all became an amorpheous blob in her retelling that she swore she looked at sources and wasn’t convinced, while she crossed all the data and comments about the sources). She tried to challenge that anyone could know all the writers and episodes just because she proved she couldn’t, even when multiple people expressed it to her extremely rapidly with not just author and director listings, but cross references on when they overlapped and major elements (like the 15.20 shot 19 tree being the Kim Manners memorial tree). She randomly babbled about Kripke once. Lied her way through and claimed those sources were vague. Etc.

But at some point, I decided, we’re not playing this distraction game. You wanted a debate, you claim you have a lit crit degree, and thus know the entire art is Argumentation. A source, if you’re declaring knowing author intent. One source. Any time she dropped a distraction tweet, I replied to her thread with things like a list of our sources vs her lack of any and a reminder. I installed a counter ticker. How many times had she been asked to either recant her point or give a single source?

Someone made a list of the logical fallacies she used in the argument. It was two tweets long and still missed several obvious ones. That didn’t stop her. Neither did the dozens of requests for a source or a recant. Onwards, she marched, derailing time and again. She brought in a buddy to try to distract, but he fell out real quick when he realized “the burden of proof lies on the arguer” shot him and her both in the feet in record time and he ducked out. 

Other greatest hits came out like “Dubs (Dabb’s) fanfic books”, and calling the ability to list authors and episodes “headcanons.”

Over time, the dialogue shifted: see, she came in trying the snide “enjoy your headcanons” downtalk, but as time and time again she was pulverized on every point about the show, or the authors, or anything else while STILL never even giving a single source to even her FIRST POINT and running distractions, it became a reality-- she was told, “We’ll enjoy our canon and author intent. You can enjoy your headcanon of... Dabb’s fanfic books and Lord Barons and the writers being collective hallucinations and whatever else in your hot takes about the show content itself” and she FLIPPED SHIT. 

As the ticker for sources approached 100, she started becoming flustered. Before that, even, she started repetitively misgendering Ezra (no tumblr to link in), and Ezra screenshot their bio of they/them and asked them to adjust. Ignored. Ezra linked this request and asked it to be addressed again, and again, and again. 13 times. Ezra linked it 13 times. She even replied to several of them. No avail. No change. Not until literally any and every tweet in her vicinity either had “source?” or “address gender?” for her to reply to did she flee there, and write some giant write-around of “oh, I didn’t see this, sorry” but still refused to actually use it. Or “I’ll use the right one now.” No, just completely strickened pronouns from her vocabulary with Ezra moving forward, after not one mistake, not two, not five, but 13 answers.

At this point, I notice a trend: throughout the entire conversation, she had flip flopped on my pronouns, clearly confused as to what to call me. As I generally don’t care (honestly I prefer he but meh), it didn’t ping me as something to react to while she switched religiously between “he” and “she”. But I realized now, despite all of that confusion: she never once thought to use “they.” Also earlier we found tweets of hers that, while now declaring herself bisexual, she used troublesome wording in the past to blur the line on if she was an ally or, as she phrased it “maybe less than 100% straight in the bell curve” in other conversations.

I mutter about this on the side to Ezra and some friends, but continue on towards the 100 ticker that was the goal to show people in this digital terrarium how disingenuous most people you argue with are -- an exhibit for the class. They know they’re lying and have been caught, but will not cede to admit “oops, I guess I was wrong.” but rather stick, unironically, to their own headcanons about things. After all, they vaguely sorta apologized even if suddenly just refusing to use any pronouns at all on Ezra after that. And she’s so quick to disappear into 15 tweet bombs of distraction trying to play victim for being held accountable at this point, we just didn’t jump to a conclusion on that, alarming as it is.

So. You know. Source.

At this point, she RANDOMLY starts evoking the fact that like, How Dare, She Watched Gay Men Die To AIDS, She Is A Great Philanthropist How Dare How Dare. 

I’m sorry, did you just evoke the blood of our dead to run away from the most basic scrap of accountability in what is literally the first wave of a lit debate because for the last 10 hours you have refused to take the necessary steps to move on to the next point? Did you... just... evoke the ghosts of gay men that were genocided to, essentially, pull up a smokescreen and run away from being party to queer erasure? Or even just? Giving a source? or admitting you were wrong on one point in a debate? Wow, you really just did that. 

Naturally, people involved got pissed. Her Sources ticker hit 100, but at this point, all that haunted her was how completely fucking vile and inappropriate that was in this discussion. 

She got blocked. She then tried to glom onto anyone that hadn’t blocked or muted her and run the same argumentation points she had earlier been decimated in the argument with, while yelling “I ship Destiel too! I wanted them to have sex too! Why does this make me the bad guy?” around the block and hoping nobody actually read the thread. She tried to pitch the “headcanons” point of view again, hoping a new audience would lick her boots. She was, largely, ignored; given a few more comments about her leaving the conversation losing all points and only covered in the blood of our dead she was so proud of; blocked by a few more. (unsurprisingly, if you check her actual tweet history, she seems more invested in Megstiel but)

This is when CommaSameleon -- a professor with two lit degrees and a primary focus in teaching the art of Argumentation -- literally -- stepped in. She initially tried to engage the fact that, well, this woman not only can’t argue out of a paper sack but wasn’t even arguing, she was just running in circles and distracting from all the points and hadn’t addressed a single lit point directly while preaching down at people. But Sam, also, noticed something. This woman kept changing things like “queerphobia” to “homophobia.” Sam mentioned this kinda puts off TERF vibes (I think Sam picked up on the gendering thing herself too.)

Her response? Which she deleted since? But Discord’s embed helpfully saved?

Her inacted non-apologies remain weak, especially in any form of debate be it lit or now queer topics.

Oh I’m sorry, let’s recap her viewpoints: TERF is a slur. “They” is made up and should be avoided at all costs. The blood of dead gay men are a token to use in a lit debate you’re avoiding responsibility in. After this, “authors are headcanons” is suddenly not your worst take, but fascinating that you 13 times didn’t even read the blatant ass screenshot. And I mean, these weren’t subtle or easy to miss these 13 times.

100. She had 100 chances, literally, on a timer, to give a source or shut up with her platforming until she had one. Instead, she chose every rabbit hole she could manifest to disappear into, only to be met by another request for a source, and not moving on until we address the first points. We’ve given ours, now you give yours. Instead, you choose this. This is the hill you choose to die on, rather than admitting, “Sorry, I guess I was wrong” or “I guess I heard that somewhere, my bad.” 100 chances. 13 direct QT requests to address gender which she replied to but didn’t reply to until cornered (and still didn’t, truly, reply to), and “TERF is a slur.” Oh, and after waving around the dead men’s blood she also suddenly Can’t Be A Terf Because She Adopted Two Trans Kids. Lord help those children. Or, you know, the more realistic thing is she’s just manifesting all kinds of bullshit at this point to save face, which is probably why she deleted all the related tweets that show she’s a giant-ass TERF.

So anyway, this is very much a lesson on:

Paying attention to how people manipulate conversation to erase genuine discussion and debate.

Paying attention to WHY they do it. Motivation on methods and tactics will clear up a lot.

Figuring out HOW they try to sound woke about shit and when it’s entirely fucking vile and inappropriate to pull

And by all above points, figuring out that these people are among us, and how NOT to let them influence your conversations.

I don’t care if it’s about a discussion on a ship or show or anything else. People do this. A lot. Extremely dedicatedly, if the 100 asks doesn’t make that clear. 

Stop letting people railroad your conversations with disingenuous bullshit.

So anyway in honor of this I made everyone a gif

Use at will. It’s tagged anti-terf if you want to use the search feature on it.

UPDATE: 

Just went and checked. She went and deleted literally her entire side of the conversation, hundreds if not thousands of tweets. Luckily, Ezra mentioned repeatedly -- and I do trust them inherently -- that they were saving the entire conversation, so that zip file exists somewhere. How fascinating, after she accused us that we would want to delete tweets. Someone realized they had a bad look and giant failure all around.

Also, a related anon that links to an earlier part of this conversation I didn’t even document where she was crying about “cis erasure” [x] This shit went on so long I legit forgot about that.

[112aang]

Kataang Week 2021: Day 2- Home

Welcome to day 2 of Kataang Week, Home.

Words: 2,112

You can find my ff.net account here, where the whole of my Kataang Week submissions will be posted, as well as my other stories.

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

Growing up in the Southern Air Temple, Aang was always told that he wasn’t allowed any earthly attachments. The Air Nomads didn’t believe in tying themselves down with worldly possessions or people - they believed in freedom and spiritual enlightenment. So, for a while, he did too.

Until he met her: the Watertribe girl with deep, cerulean blue eyes and dark, chocolate colored hair. The airbender had never seen someone so beautiful, so captivating.

Aang knew what a physical home was, his being the Southern Air Temple; but something had always been missing for him, even at his young age.

His mentors had long since released their attachment to the world, achieving spiritual enlightenment. He had always been told to do the same, and until meeting Katara, had planned on doing so. Something about her, though -be it her caring nature, the way she spoke to him, or even just her smile- seemed to keep him grounded.

As they traveled the world together, his attachment to her appeared to grow- transforming from a simple crush into something more. Aang never told her, or anyone else for that matter; but he did speak to the stars.

The Air Nomads had been gone for one hundred years, but when Aang would sleep under the stars at night, he could feel them. It was as if they were always there, watching over him.

***

One night, when he couldn’t sleep, he looked up at the stars with glossy eyes, and spoke softly.

“I miss you all, more than anything in the world, and I will never truly forgive myself for leaving.”

He choked back his tears, knowing that if he started crying, he wouldn’t be able to stop.

“I just feel so lost, so alone. If I were at the Air Temple- if I were home… maybe I could stop feeling this way. But something, or someone, has been helping me to feel less alone recently.”

Aang smiled softly, looking in Katara’s direction, then turned his eyes back to the stars above.

“I think… I think I might love her- Katara. I know I’m not supposed to have any earthly attachments, but I just feel… connected to her. What should I do?”

Almost on cue, the wind began to pick up, swirling all around him. As he looked around, Aang smiled, watching as the leaves and loose flower petals danced in the wind. He knew it was a sign, a message from the Air Nomads, telling him what he should do.

As the wind died down, he set his gaze back upon the stars and smiled, bowing in respect.

“Thank you.”

***

After that night, Aang had decided to keep his feelings for Katara at bay, at least until he knew whether she felt the same. She had given him subtle hints, through kisses on the cheek, frequent hugs, and soft-spoken words. The waterbender had a rather tight grasp on her feelings, and often kept them bottled up inside. Although Aang wasn’t blind to the way she looked at him, or the stares they received from their friends, he didn’t try to push his luck with her, as he was scared of pushing her away.

It wasn’t until he met with Guru Pathik at the Eastern Air Temple that he knew the depth of his connection with Katara.

***

He had arrived at the Eastern Air Temple with Appa, in search of a Guru. This man had attached a note to Appa’s horn when he was lost, informing Aang that he had been awaiting him, ready to help him take the next step in his Avatar journey.

Nervous, but ready, Aang set his eyes upon the man and eventually began working through what needed to be done.

Guru Pathik had told him that in order to master the Avatar State, he would need to open all of his chakras. Aang agreed, and with the help of the older man, had opened the first three chakras rather easily.

However, when he made it to the fourth chakra, he made a realization.

“The fourth chakra is located in the heart,” Guru Pathik had told him. “It deals with love and is blocked by grief.”

Aang began to see a vision of the Air Nomads, lined up behind one another, appearing to be meditating. He felt his heart begin to swell at the sight of them and smiled, until they started vanishing, one by one.

He heard Guru Pathik’s voice, “you have indeed felt a great loss; But love is a form of energy, and it swirls all around us.”

Aang watched as the floating smoke that was once the Air Nomads began to swirl in the sky, transforming into something else. He was floating in the air, waiting for the smoke to settle.

He squinted, trying to focus on what the smoke had transformed into, when he saw her.

“The Air Nomads' love for you has not left this world. It is still inside of your heart, and is reborn in the form of new love.”

Aang listened and watched as the cloud of smoke formed a face- the face of Katara, the moment he first saw her after waking up in the South Pole.

He knew, in that moment, that he and the waterbender were connected, and that she meant more to him than he had ever known. The airbender began to shed tears, and gently wiped them away, opening the fourth chakra.

The fifth and sixth were simple and he was able to move through them quickly. But the last, and final chakra was the moment he had decided what his choice would be, forever.

They sat atop a platform under the stary, night sky. Guru Pathik informed Aang that opening the final chakra would grant him full power and access to the Avatar State, but once the process began, it must be completed.

Aang had agreed, until he knew what, or who, he had to let go of.

“The Thought Chakra is located at the crown of the head.” Guru Pathik explained, “It deals with pure cosmic energy, and is blocked by earthly attachment. Meditate on what attaches you to this world.”

Aang began to see visions and images of Katara, bringing a smile to his face, before the older man spoke again.

“Now, let all of those attachments go. Let them flow down the river, forgotten.”

The airbender’s eyes flew open, appalled. Angrily, he said, “What? Why would I let go of Katara? I... I love her!”

Guru Pathik shook his head, “Learn to let her go, or you cannot let the pure cosmic energy flow in from the universe.”

Throwing his hands in the air, Aang protested. “Why would I choose cosmic energy over Katara? How could it be a bad thing that I feel an attachment to her?”

He felt at a loss; just a month prior, he had received a sign from the Air Nomads, telling him that his connection with the waterbender was what he needed. But now, he was being told to let her go in order to master the Avatar State.

Conflicted, he weighed his options, eventually coming to the decision to let go of Katara, despite his connection with her. As he did so, he saw a giant figure of himself glowing purple, at the end of a long path. He followed the glowing trail, coming to a large orb and stepping inside. Before he could fully open the final chakra, a vision of Katara chained up clouded his sight, and he jumped from the orb, falling through the sky.

Despite Guru Pathik’s protests and admonitions, Aang left the Eastern Air Temple, choosing his attachment to Katara over the cosmic energy, locking the Avatar State.

***

That event had been some time ago, but had never left his mind. Before his battle with Ozai, the airbender had found himself in a strange place, and was at a loss of what to do.

Aang had decided to contact his past lives in hopes of receiving advice about whether to spare the firelord’s life. In the midst of doing so, he had met the Air Nomad Avatar before him: Avatar Yangchen.

After much talk of the Air Nomad ways, Avatar Yangchen had told Aang something that he hadn’t thought about in months, bringing him back to his choice at the Eastern Air Temple.

“Many great and wise Air Nomads have detached themselves and achieved spiritual enlightenment,” she said. “But the Avatar can never do it. Because your sole duty is to the world.”

Before having been through what he did with Guru Pathik, he wouldn’t have thought much about Avatar Yangchen’s words. But after choosing his attachment to the world, it became clear to him why he couldn’t let go of Katara.

To choose detachment and spiritual enlightenment would have kept Aang distant, separate from the world. As the Avatar, he needed something, or someone to keep him grounded- someone to keep him connected to the world. For him, it was Katara.

Aang kept this in his mind during his battle with Ozai, as he still was unable to reach the Avatar State. But during his lowest point, when he thought all was lost, he was able to reconnect with his Avatar Spirit, savoring his connection with Katara.

***

It had been almost 30 years since the end of the 100-year war, and Aang was celebrating his 43rd birthday alongside his friends and family. He stood on the balcony of the Jasmine Dragon, looking out into the sunset over the tops of buildings.

He had asked for a small get together with his closest friends and family, not wanting to make a large spectacle about it. He and Katara had been together for the majority of the 30 years, and had been married for 25 of them. He thanked the spirits every day for her, as she did for him.

They had three beautiful children: Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin.

He smiled, leaning his elbows on the railing. It felt just as it did all that time ago, where everything began.

Aang heard someone behind him and looked over his shoulder, not surprised as his wife made her way beside him.

She smiled at him, “feels familiar, doesn’t it?”

He chuckled softly, “yeah, it really does.”

They stood in silence for a few moments, watching the sunset with each other’s company. Aang was the first to break the silence. Turning towards Katara, he placed his hands on her waist and looked into her blue eyes.

“Did I ever tell you about my time with Guru Pathik at the Eastern Air Temple?”

She looked up in thought, “well, you told me that you chose attachment over cosmic energy, but nothing more.”

“Yes, well,” he nodded, and she placed her arms on his shoulders. “I chose my attachment to you over everything.”

She tilted her head slightly and raised a brow at him.

“Why would you have done that?”

Aang looked out into the sunset before turning his head to face her once more.

“Growing up as an Air Nomad,” he began. “We were always taught that earthly attachments would drag us down and keep us from spiritual enlightenment.”

She nodded, so he continued.

“Before I met you, I had every intention of detaching myself from the world, but that all changed the moment I opened my eyes and saw yours.”

Katara blushed and looked away momentarily before turning back to him.

“How did I change your mind?”

He pulled her closer and kissed her cheek softly.

“I’m afraid that’s a long story that I can explain another time.”

Katara started to speak, but Aang continued.

“The short of it is,” he smiled lovingly and placed his forehead on hers. “I felt a connection with you from the moment I laid my eyes on you, but it took me awhile to figure out exactly why.”

She returned his smile before placing a gentle his on his nose.

“And what did you figure out?”

Aang waited for a moment to answer, making Katara anxious.

“You’re my home, Katara. You always have been.”

Tears began to fill her eyes and she kissed him, pulling him closer. He returned the gesture in kind, wrapping his arms around her waist.

Katara pulled away after a few moments and smiled at him, love emanating from her eyes.

“I love you, Aang.”

He pulled her into another kiss, and she smiled before returning it.

The two benders remained on the balcony for what seemed like hours, reliving their first official kiss as a couple, in the arms of each other. In the arms of each other’s homes.

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

Next will be ‘Dance.’

Thank you to everyone who is reading, and I can’t wait until the next one!

[icequeenoriginal]

The Pain of Secrets

Author’s Note: This was supposed to be fluffy, that was my original intent. But then my brain decided to make it super angsty. So I apologize. Also, I am not transgender. I’m using the information I learned online as well as from what friends who are have told me. I hoped I portrayed a transgender person correctly. I meant to finish this before the end of pride month but writer’s block did not let that happen. Stay safe everyone.

Summary: Roman hates secrets and he hates keeping them, but he still has one. Is it worth keeping from Virgil?

Warning: Fear of Rejection, transphobia, self-hatred, internalized transphobia, keeping secrets, crying, running away, surgery mention, not taking care of yourself, anxiety, divorce mentioned, inappropriate touching, bad past relationship, hurt/comfort, roman angst, body image issues, bad binding practices, fear of breaking up (Let me know if I missed anything)

Pairing: Prinxiety 

~ Roman hated secrets. Even the word would cause him to have an icky feeling in his chest. To have secrets, you have to lie to the people you care about. Secrets were the reason his parents weren’t together. His mother kept her emotions and suspension secret while his father kept his intimate relationship with a young coworker a secret. 

At age 9, Roman swore to his grieving mother when he found her crying in the kitchen in the middle of the night when he could sleep. The smile on his mother’s face was enough to make him never want to break that promise. 

That only lasted a couple of months and it was all his stupid body’s fault. If he had just been born in the right body, it wouldn’t be an issue.

You see, Roman wasn’t born a boy. Everyone told him he was a girl because he looked like one, but he didn’t feel like it. He knew he wasn’t but he didn’t know why.

He learned about the word transgender when his uncle took to a very fun and colorful parade that summer after he made his promise. It would later be the first of many Prides he attended and where his uncle met his other future uncle.

It took a few days for him to muster up the courage to tell his mother but his drive to never have a secret was the final push he needed.

His mom accepted him, she got him on HRT and even bought him his first binder. Though, he did notice how there seemed to now be a distance between them. They did fewer things together, his mother slipped up with pronouns, and always seemed like she was herself back from saying something. 

But it was fine because at least there were no secrets between them. 

“Everything is fine.” Roman would say as he ignored how much that hurt him.

“This is fine,” Roman said to himself as he only applied to colleges out of state. He and his mom just needed some time apart.

“Everything is great,” He told his mom through tears caused by the stress of school and being on his own. 

“It’s okay,” said Roman when his first boyfriend told him he couldn’t be with a ‘fake man’ anymore after a couple of months of dating.

“It’s fine,” said Roman his second boyfriend angrily dumped him when he found out that Roman is trans. Roman didn’t blame him, he hadn’t told him right away as he did with his first boyfriend. This was his punishment for it.

It was really all fine. Roman didn’t mind being alone, he could handle it just fine. He was fine with always coming home to an empty apartment and an empty bed. A home without someone to hold him, kiss him, reassure him.

…

No, no he couldn’t. But he was a good actor and every good actor can lie to themselves.

He, at age 25, decided to put off dating until after he got his top and bottom surgery. It just seemed like the easiest option. His HRT did as much as it could but it couldn’t get rid of that feeling he had every time he looked into the mirror and touched his chest. It was one of the few things he had gotten straight from his mother.

After a late-night of research, he came up with a plan. To get both surgeries, he needs 20,000 dollars in total. Damn you America and your expensive medical costs! Well, there isn’t anything he can do other than every time he got paid, he saves all the extra money he had left after paying his bills and groceries. It wasn’t fun, there was time he wanted to buy that expensive tablet or go to that bar but he wouldn’t touch the money. Not until he had enough.

It was the perfect plan, in his opinion, but the universe was never on his side. He went to the library one day to borrow a book since that was a fun free thing to do, and he accidentally bumped into a young man. After a quick apology, Roman noticed the man was holding a large book of fairy tales. That led to a two-hour debate about the messages of fairy tales.

The man’s name is Virgil and Roman was sure at that moment he is his soulmate.

They spent more of their days texting one another whenever they could. Their first few dates would consist of free things like walking through the park or sitting together in the library. It was lovely. It’s why Roman figured he didn’t have to tell him that he was trans. It wasn’t like they were going to become more than friends. Roman figured this is how their relationship would stay, sweet and simple. That was perfectly fine with him.

Then Virgil invited to dinner to ask him to be his boyfriend. Virgil told him he had never asked anyone else out before but he felt such a strong connection with Roman. Everything about that moment was perfect, the restaurant, Virgil, the music, everything.

It wasn’t until he got home did Roman realize he still hadn’t told Virgil his secret. Roman cried himself to sleep that night. 

After that first date, Virgil seemed to only take him to movies or dinners. Places that cost money, money Roman did not have living paycheck to paycheck. Virgil had a high paying office job so he said he didn’t mind. Roman still, at least once a month, would use his grocery money to buy fancy ingredients to make Virgil dinner and eat ramen for the rest of the week. It was nice, Roman had almost forgotten what it was like to go out.

Roman loves Virgil, he told him on their 5th date. He loved him so much that every day he would want to tell him his secret but the fear of losing Virgil would take over and make him chicken out.

That led him to today, almost a year later, sitting in Virgil’s apartment where he was staring at Virgil as his past flashed in front of his eyes like he was Angelica Schuyler during Satisfied.

Why? Because Virgil was inviting him to go to the beach. A place where you wear a swimsuit. Pushing aside how much he hated how he looked in a bathing suit, that meant he had to take off his shirt.

He was so screwed.

A cold hand jolted him out his thoughts so quickly that a small yelp escapes Roman’s lips. Roman scared eyes lock with Virgil’s loving and concerned eyes. 

“Ro? What’s wrong? Do you not want to go?” Virgil asks softly, gently rubbing his knuckles

“No! I do! I do!” Roman replies quickly, a bit too quickly to alleviate Virgil’s concern.

“Ro, princey, you don’t have to agree just because I suggested it. We can do something else.”

Roman could have burst into tears at that moment. Virgil was just so good to him. He should take the way out, it would just make everything easier. He oh so wanted to but the nagging voice in the back of his head shouted at him that it was a trick, that Virgil was testing him, secretly questioning why Roman wouldn’t want to.

So, Roman shook his head, “I do want to Virgil, I-I just need to check when I can take off of work. You know how busy the restaurant business is during the summer.” Roman replies nervously.

Virgil sighs, “Alright, I believe you.” Virgil leans back against the couch, “You should quit that awful waiter job, they demand so many hours from you and barely pay you enough.”

Roman stares off into the distance before replying, “I wish I could quit too but I need the money and you know how hard it is to get a new job.” Especially if you’re trans.

Virgil nodded, knowing that he was very lucky to have the job that he did, all thanks to his friend Janus. Still, he hated how the light behind Roman’s eyes dim every day he is at that job and the physical strain it had on Roman’s gorgeous body. He wishes there was something he could do that wouldn’t seem like a handout. It would be too much of a blow to Roman’s pride.

Virgil smiles, he has a perfect idea. He turns to Roman and asks, “Roman, what would you think about--”

Roman whines in pain and Virgil’s eyes widen in fear. “Are you alright?!”

Roman nods and waves his hand dismissively. “Just chest--I mean stomach pains. I’ll be right back.” Roman runs off to the bathroom. As soon as he locks the door, Roman rips off his shirt and binder. He gasps, taking a deep breath of fresh air. 

He knows he shouldn’t be wearing his binder all day, he knows it is not healthy but he can’t help himself. He rather be what (he thinks) Virgil wants than be comfortable. 

Meanwhile, Virgil is frowning and whispers, “Hey Ro? Want to move in with me?”

Roman pants as he sits on the toilet. His chest was killing him but he could not care less. He took a painkiller from Virgil’s medicine cabinet. Swallowing it dry, he puts his binder and shirt back through the pain. He gets up and leans up against the wall to catch his breath.

“This is fine,” he mumbles to himself like he does every morning, “Everything is fine” ~

Two weeks had pasted and Roman still hadn’t given Virgil an answer. Virgil didn’t bring it up, he knew Roman would give him an answer when he was good and ready.

Roman was pacing, in a big shirt and boxers, with his phone in his hand, open on it was his bank account. 

Once he got home from Virgil’s apartment, he quickly checked how much money he had saved. He was surprised to see that he had $8,654 saved up. It had been a while since he last checked. He quickly called around to get top surgery that fit into his budget.

He had a new plan. He would get the surgery, he would go to the beach with Virgil about 3 weeks later, and Virgil would see his surgery scars. Then Roman tell him and they could figure it all out there. If Virgil broke up, 

No more avoiding it.

His phone began to vibrate and Roman vibrate and Roman quickly answers it, “Hello? Oh hi, Dr. Travis!”

This doctor had excellent reviews and she was to be trusted. One pleasant conversation later and Roman had an appointment set for a week later for $6,000 with insurance covering some of the cost. He also calls his job, who approves his two weeks of medical leave.

He squeals as soon as he hangs up, this was going to be wonderful. He had to celebrate.

So he calls Virgil, “Stormcloud?”

“Hey Ro, what’s up?” Roman smiles, “I have great news. Four weeks from Tuesday, I can spend the entire day at the beach with you.”

“Jeez, your job really won’t let you catch a break, can they?”

Roman chuckles, deciding it was best not to mention he was one of the last days off he had after the ones he is using for his appointments and recovery for this. “Well, in any case. I would like to see you before then. I’m working the early shift tomorrow so I’ll be done by 1.”

Roman could hear Virgil smiling on the other side of the line, “Well, you’re in luck Princey. I only have one big meeting after lunch tomorrow. How about we meet for lunch, I hide you in my office while I go to this meeting and then we can go back to my place at 5?” “That sounds perfectly wonderful.”

~

The lunch was nice. They went to a cheap sandwich shop that was close to Virgil’s work and had a small debate on whether or not putting mayo on Salami was a good or bad thing. 

Roman almost immediately regretted agreeing to sit in Virgil’s office. He sat silently, and almost immediately, chest started to ache. Even worse, Virgil’s office needed a key to get into, one that Virgil only had because it was his ID card. Something about security or whatever.

Roman sat in Virgil’s office chair for 3 hours, he kept time on his phone. The second Virgil opened the door, Roman practically threw himself into Virgil’s arms.

“Missed me?”

“Something like that.”

They took the subway home, and Virgil could almost immediately tell something was wrong. Roman seemed to keep fidgeting and had on a fake smile. Virgil contemplated saying something, but by the time his anxiety let him decide, the train had arrived at their stop.

Virgil figured Roman would tell him in due time. Right?

Once they arrive, Virgil sighs as he pulls off his tie. “I am going to take a shower, you can set up a movie or something.” Roman smiles and kisses Virgil, “Don’t be long.” “Excuse me princess, but you take over two hours in the showers, I will take all the time I want.” Roman laughs, “Touché, touché. Go on now. Hurry your cute butt back.” Roman gently pats Virgil’s butt to emphasize his point. Virgil sent him a playful glare and heads off to his bedroom. 

Roman smile drops and he immediately takes off his shirt and binder. He loudly gasps and rubs his chest to ease the pain in his chest. He sighs and stretches, Virgil usually takes 30 minutes in the shower, so he was going to give him a 30-minute break.

Or he was...until he turns and sees Virgil standing at the end of the living room where the hallway is attached. He, like Roman, did not have his shirt on. Neither his pants. 

Virgil opens and closes his mouth a few times before saying, “I forgot to mention, I-I-I have a bottle of wine.” He gestures vaguely to the kitchen,

Roman covers his chest with his arms, tears appearing quickly.

Virgil takes a step closer, “Ro...have you been...this whole time…?”

“I have to go,” Roman says as he runs to the door, shirt and binder in hand.

“Ro, wait--” Virgil makes a grab for Roman’s arm but misses as Roman runs out of the apartment. Virgil watches him go, knowing he shouldn’t run out in his boxers. He begins pacing, his nerves are on an all-time high, and he tries to steady his breathing so he can come up with a plan to talk to Roman.

Because they really, really, need to talk.

~ Roman didn’t stop running until he got home. Once he got in, thank goodness his keys were safely tucked into his pocket, he threw himself onto his bed and broken down. That had to be the most humiliating moment of his entire life. Virgil’s face had said it all, he was definitely breaking up with him. 

He sobs and sobs for what it seems like hours until he tires himself out. He walks up at 4 am to 10 miss calls and 30 texts from Virgil.

From: Stormcloud

Ro, please call me back.

Princey, let’s just talk, please.

Babe, please, let me know if you’re okay. 

I’m not mad. I just want to talk.

Roman. I’m not going to say what I have to say through text. Call me, please. 

Roman shuts off his phone. He can’t face Virgil right now. He can’t face anything right now. His only saving grace is that he has the night shift at work. He closes his eyes and had a restless sleep. 

His dreams were of Virgil walking farther and farther away from him. No matter how much Roman pleaded and begged for him to stay, Virgil just kept walking.

Once he walks up, he remembers reading somewhere that dreams tell the truth, and he knows his truth: Virgil does not want to be with him.

~

Roman ignores Virgil’s calls and texts between the Bad Day, as Roman dubbed it, and his surgery day. Though it started because Roman couldn’t face him, it then became just because of the surgery. 

Roman didn’t like his job, for the most part, but he did have a friend. His name is Patton and he is the nicest person Roman has ever known. Patton was one of the few people who knew Roman is trans and he is a bug supporter in Roman’s life. Patton let him cover all of his shifts so Roman wouldn’t lose money on his time off. He was exhausted from all the work, but the happiness of what is to come pushed him through it. He stopped checking his phone as often as he normally would, despite Patton pushing him to go talk to Virgil.

”It may bit be as bad as you think kiddo,” Patton would say, but Roman was not sure.

Anytime he wasn’t working, he was making trips to the grocery store for his treatment or moving everything off of high shelves since he is not allowed to stretch his arms.

His bottom drawers are filled with baby wipes, scar cream, and ice packs. He also bought big comfy sweaters and ice cream to keep himself comfy. 

Roman couldn’t sleep the day before the surgery. He felt every emotion attacking him at once. This was going to be one of the most important days of his life.

The surgery itself wasn’t as bad as he expected, though the anesthesia probably had something to do with it. He found out later he sang a love song to “a very lucky young man” through the 2 hours and 30 minutes. He was embarrassed, to say the least.

Finally came time to see the scars. He froze when the doctor told him. He was lucky to be facing away to the doctor. Could he do this? Would the scars look bad? Would this actually make him as happy as he hoping?

He let out a watery chuckle, he sounded like his boyfriend--his ex-boyfriend. Thinking of Virgil reminded him of all the breathing exercises he learned from Virgil.

He takes a deep breath for four seconds, holds it for seven seconds, and lets it out for eight seconds.

After doing it a few more times, he turns to the mirror. The tears are almost immediate. The scars were bright red but they were thin, as thin as his pointer finger. His chest was as flat as he hoped it would be. This is the happiest he has ever been.

He shakes Dr. Travis’s hand since he is unable to say words. Dr. Travis simply smiles at him and pats his back.

“Now sit down, I have to put the bandages on. Now, make sure to change them every day.” Dr. Travis says.

”Got it, thank you, doctor.” Roman says, managing to get his voice back.

”You’re welcome.” Dr. Travis replies as she gently wraps the bandages around his chest, ”Now, do you have someone coming to pick you up?”

”Yes, of course, as you told me to,” He wasn’t exactly lying, he was planning to call an Uber.

”Good, because all you have to worry about is recovering, okay?” she says with a smile.

Roman nods and soon after, Dr. Travis finishes putting on the bandages. He has to stay in the hospital for another hour to rest before he is properly discharged. He spends most of the hour taking a nap and only 15 minutes on the phone with Patton, which seems strange to him. Roman, once he is allowed to leave, puts on his red zip-up hoodie, ignoring the feeling of his heart pulling because he remembers Virgil buying it for him and heads out of the hospital. Dr. Travis gives him a treatment plan on the way out and Roman puts it into his pocket.

The Uber ride is pleasant enough, the driver lets him drift off in the backseat. He is woken up by the car jerking to a stop in front of his apartment building. He scrambles out of the car while apologizing to the driver. 

He runs up the stairs to his apartment, each step making him more tired and as each second passes, the painkiller wears off more and more.

He weakly smiles as his door, knowing that a few behind it is his bed that he can pass out in.

He opens the door and is so shocked to see Virgil behind it that he can’t bring himself to move. Virgil says nothing as he walks over to him. Virgil wraps his arms around Roman’s waist and moves him into the apartment.

Roman yelps and finds his legs walking up to move with Virgil, ”W-W-What are you doing here?”

Virgil whispers, ”We’ll talk later, you need to get to bed.”

Roman doesn’t argue as Virgil half drags him into his bedroom. Roman lays down and Virgil reaches for his hoodie zipper. Roman tries to push his hand away but Virgil is much faster than him. Roman let's out a small whine as Virgil unzips the hoodie. Virgil shushes him and gives him a painkiller and some water. Roman happily drinks it. 

As he is falling asleep, Roman says, ”I love you V…”

”I know, I love you too Ro.” is the last thing Roman hears before passing out.

~

Roman wakes up two hours later so feeling something cold touch his chest. He slowly opens his eyes to see Virgil putting an ice pack wrapped in a paper towel on his chest.

Virgil softly smiles at him, “Hey Sleeping Beauty, welcome back to the land of the living.” Virgil gently cups his face. “Stay still so that the ice can do its job. I’ll order food in a bit and put on a movie. What would you like to watch?”

Roman stares at him dumbfounded, but Virgil was not fazed. He fluffs Roman’s pillow without uttering a word. He then rubs Roman’s cheek and Roman shutters at the soft and intimate touch. 

“What? How? Why…?” Roman had so many questions he wants to ask. 

“When you weren’t answering your phone, I went to your job and I saw you working. That relaxed me enough to let you have some space. I still would walk by every day, hoping you’d see me, and maybe you would come. When I came by earlier today, your coworker came out and invited me in.” “Patton?” “Patton. He said he noticed me walking by and I told him about you. He spent his break talking to me about you. You have a good friend.” Virgil says with a smile.

“I know, Pat’s great.” Roman can’t help but smile back. “I’m guessing he told you about the surgery?” “Yup so I came here. Knowing you, you wouldn’t ask for help and try to take care of yourself.” Roman looks away and pouts, and Virgil kisses the pout away. The kiss makes Roman stare at him confused, but Virgil just continues, “So I asked your building’s maintenance guy to let me in to surprise you. I did not think that work, you should have seen me, I was so nervous, but he said he’s seen you let me in enough times and he said this was one time only so now I am here.”

Roman blinks at Virgil for a few seconds, trying to figure out what he says. Virgil sits there, so patient and understanding that it only manages to confuse “But why?”

“Why what?”

Roman began to cry, but he is too tired to care. “Why would you want to take care of me? I’ve been keeping a huge secret from you for over a year, I’ve been lying to you over a year. I haven’t been as intimate as I deserve to be and you probably desire to because I can’t be. I will never be a true man physically, no matter what I do. And the way you found out, not from me telling you. You should hate me, be mad, anything. I wouldn't hold it against you.”

Virgil sits on the bed and puts his arm around Roman, “Roman, I don’t know who told you otherwise, but when I tell someone I love them, I love all of them. Especially you, you are my boyfriend. You are everything I want and more. I love your body, I’ve loved it since we met. I wouldn’t care if we never had sex, if it met I could be with you. And don’t call yourself anything but a man, because I will fight you about it and have Patton help me.”

Roman laughs but stops, his insecurities taking over once more, “But the way you were looking at me that day…you looked so disgusted”

“I wasn’t, I will never disgusted with you. I was scared. I saw the binder and how red your chest was. I was scared that you were hurting yourself for me.” “Oh...I’m sorry.” Roam replies while lower his head. Virgil tilts it up, “Don’t apologize to me, you owe an apology to your body. I’ll make you do it too.” Roman pulls Virgil into a kiss and Virgil happily kisses back. They will be okay, actually better than okay. Virgil will take of Roman his whole recovery, taking his vacation time to do so. They would spend the time talking, finally no secrets between them. Virgil will ask him to move in as he drives him home from his checkup with Dr. Travis and Roman will happily say yes. Roman will finally let Virgil help me and Roman saves up the money for his bottom surgery and gets a better job with Virgil’s recommendation. Though he will miss working with Patton, they will hang out every weekend to make up for it. It will be a wonderful future.

But right now, they both just need to kiss and breathe because they are happy and together. 

~

Taglist

I do not have a general Sanders Sides but if you would like to be tagged in all things Sanders Sides I post, let me know.

[bluejaysfeathers]

There’s something that has been on my mind for a while and it’s still not letting me sleep so I want to talk about it a little, and that’s the reasons that Twitch Partner X33N decided to ban me from his community. There’s a few things I want to clarify from the beginning. First, he is not obligated to be my friend, because that’s not how friendship works. If he feels that what I said to his moderator was a betrayal then, well, that’s not what I intended, but I quite literally cannot stop him. Second, this is not about what Karacorvus said. X33N has made it very clear that he doesn’t think her words were transphobic, and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. And finally, this is not me accusing him of being transphobic. I fully believe that he has always had good intentions toward the trans/nb community and he has been very apologetic in the past about his difficulty with they/them pronouns. People can not find things transphobic without being transphobes themselves.

So. Depending on where you want to get into it, this story begins two years ago, or a year and a half ago, or last summer, or a month ago. Frankly, thinking about the good times we had and the advice he gave me about my mental health just hurts right now, so I’ll skip over the details, but suffice it to say that this man knew some extremely personal things about me and I trusted him implicitly. Last summer, given the state of the world with the pandemic as well as his perfectly understandable personal stress, his streams shifted away from the focus on the community and mental health as he, in his own words, began to rely on streaming with others to make up the energy. At the time, I tried to bring it up to him and was essentially told that he wasn’t forcing me to watch, and that the focus was shifting due to his energy levels. Before that I had been a dedicated viewer of every stream I could catch, but after that I started skipping a few of the more obviously non-community-focused streams. Which brings us to the last-summer portion of the beginning of this story. I’m starting here because he seems to include it in his reasoning, and because it seems to have colored his view of everything I did since then, including an incident that involved several friends of mine who were not him. Essentially, after a while of seeing that nothing was changing, I messaged a moderator (whose last message to me before this had been “I never reveal my sources”) something along the lines of ‘do you think X33N would even notice if we all didn’t show up one night bc that’s what’s going to happen if he keeps this up.’ (I’m not going back through long deleted dms to find exact wordings). This moderator took my message to X33N without my knowledge. He messaged me, ostensibly to “check in” which made me happier than I care to remember, because at the time I had been struggling as had everyone, and it was nice to think that someone had noticed and cared enough to check on me. But alas, it turned out to be a secret test as to whether I would tell him what I’d said, and when I didn’t do so he viewed that as a betrayal and dishonest. It took some time and communication for that one as it felt like all the honesty I had given him was being tossed aside, but we did talk it out, and as far as I could tell, went back to a slightly bruised but recovering friendship.

This should lead into the aforementioned situation involving people that were not him, but at least one of them would be genuinely endangered by that situation becoming public so I will summarize it as drama, which a mutual friend mentioned to X33N and then brought his reaction to me. His reaction had seemed upset with me, so I reached out to apologize and X33N reassured me that he hadn’t been upset and just wanted to point out to the mutual friend that he knew what was going on. Cut to the next day (or the day after? My sense of time last year was... well, about where everyone’s was) and X33N was asking other mutual friends whether I was leading a conspiracy to get him to add me back on snap (this conspiracy was news to me but whatever) and accusing me of fomenting drama because... honestly this is one of those times where I don’t care to speculate on his motives, he said a lot of things very fast while I was tilted about the snapchat conspiracy and I don’t think I correctly grasped why he was upset with me, but I distinctly remember him bringing up the previous ‘betrayal.’ This was also when I stopped joining in the community among us games, which seemed fine by everyone involved.

All this apparently came to a head about a month(?) ago, when he, karacorvus, and some others were trying a new game. Kara said to one of the other streamers, a man who had seemed perfectly happy with his character model, would he please change his character to a man, etc. There was some uncomfortable laughter, Kara doubled down on her comments, a friend messaged me to tell me they had been uncomfortable with it as well, and I took the problem to a friend of mine who X33N had modded and who I trusted to handle the situation. This mod told me that I had not been the only one uncomfortable, and, when I said that I had been surprised to hear such comments on X33N’s stream pass unchallenged, replied by pointing out that Kara had a big community. I replied with something along the lines of ‘well... there was a time when that wouldn’t have mattered more than his allyship but I guess a lot has fucking changed with his priorities’ and the discussion moved on, seemingly productively, and ended on a friendly “thanks for bringing this to me/no thank you for taking it seriously,” and I didn’t think much more of it, although I did resolve to ask X33N about the whole well she has a big community comment the next day if he seemed in a decent mood. Maybe if I’d talked to him that night things would’ve gone differently, maybe my fate was sealed as soon as I was given the no-win statement of ‘she has a big community’ and put in the position of arguing with a mod or agreeing that X33N would change his mind on his statements of his community being welcoming to all in pursuit of someone else’s community. I’ll never know, I guess, because as I was saying goodnight to my friend X33N messaged me to tell me he was banning me over my pattern of betraying him behind his back. He kicked me from his server and had me blocked before I had even shaken off my shock and confusion- remember, at the time I had no idea what would trigger this, his last words to me had been ‘we totally good yo’ and my conversation with his moderator had seemingly ended amicably. It’s only now, after some very dear friends didn’t buy in to what he said about me in his discord (that I had been sowing discontent among “community memberS” about him “not making a stink” over “comments bluejay felt were insensitive”) that I am able to know that it was that part of that conversation that he was upset by. According to those who spoke with him, it’s not clear that he even knew I said what I did in reaction to his moderator claiming he would let transphobia slide because karacorvus has a big community, and I’m not sure I’ll ever know because the moderator I spoke to also blocked me. Which means that I lost two friends that night, not even counting the multiple people who believed his side of things from his discord without hearing me out. I can’t say that I blame them, I would’ve struggled to believe it myself.

There’s a part of me that still hopes X33N will realize that what I said was the best I could do in response to the situation I was given and reach out, but I kind of doubt it. I messaged him from an alt account, admittedly rather angrily, to ask that he at the very least correct what he said about me in his discord, and he had my alt banned from the server we’d had in common and seemed very sure of his position. As I said, he doesn’t have to be my friend, but I wish that he hadn’t taken such steps to harm my friendships with others from his community, and the fact that he has no obligation doesn’t stop me from missing the parts of our friendship that were good- I know I haven’t really laid them out here, but I was genuinely thankful for whatever power led me to him, and we did have good times. Both the serious mental health kinds and the playful friendly competition in beatsaber kinds, and many in between. I miss him and I hope he one day sees that his friends can bring up issues from his streams with his mods without it being a personal attack on their friendships. But most of all, I hope that by writing all this down it will stop bouncing around in my head.

[lukatastrophe]

Welcome home.

This is my entry for the Inukag secret santa organized by @iyfss​. 

My gift is for @thenoammonster​, and the prompt I was given is Modern AU. I’m sorry it went last minute, but I really hope you’ll like it !

Also, I want to thank my dear dear friend @chattheblackcat​ for reading, correcting, and helped me through this story ! (Check out her inukag stories on her other account @redrobelover​, she’s doing some amazing work !)

Kagome was sitting on her bed, her mind was still contemplating about a certain guy. Again! They used to be friends, and would hang out together with their other best friends too. She remembered the way they started hanging out with the rest of their friends... It was many years ago, while on a school trip to a national park. They were there to study trees, rocks and wildlife. Once they arrived Kagome was trying to find her best friend, just like he was looking for his friend. Even though Kagome and him didn't get along, their friends were a couple. It was while everyone else in the school group attended the orientation exercise. That it became obvious to both him and Kagome that their friends were not there, and probably wandered off for alone time. Leaving Kagome with him… ‘How dare they leave me behind like this.’ She angrily said in her thoughts. ‘They know we don’t get along, he’s a rough, insulting and careless guy.’ It was onc  the orientation was over, Kagome decided to find their missing friends. Of course he was looking for his friend too. Kagome and him kept their distance from each other as they walked. It was when a small cave came in view that she heard him start to complain. He even made a stupid statement saying. “I bet they went in there to bang in the cave.” With a sign Kagome covered her face with her hand. She couldn't believe how much of an idiot he was. And to make matters worse when they went into the cave, he carelessly started yelling to find their friends. Talk about a big mouth, his yelling was so loud that rocks started shaking. There was the sound of falling rocks and soon a landslide that blocked the path they just took to get there. Now they were really stuck together. In the end it took 6 hours till they finally found their way back from the cave. During that time in each other's presence, they slowly started to talk and learned about each other. Her eyes wandered around her room, this had been her room since she was a small child. Her eyes than looked down at her phone. Kagome softly chuckled at those memories, and how he totally missed the signs that were planted around the road to that cave. And the crazy thing was she just followed him. ‘Maybe I should send him a message.’ She thought, still looking at the phone. But they hadn't talked in so long...No.. She could not just go back to him like nothing ever happened. Get up from the bed, Kagome turned around and left the room to take a walk. She remembered the last time they talked, it was three years ago. They hadn't talked in days and she had a feeling it was because he was mad at her. She remembered knocking on his door and feeling so nervous. Sure she wasn't his best friend, but they were definitely close. Weren't they? She heard his voice complaining from the other side of the door. "Miroku I swear if you dragged your drunk ass here again, I…” He stopped when his eyes locked with hers. He Looked a bit surprised. But not even slightly happy to see her. And it moved something in her. "Good evening Inuyasha." Kagome said, with little enthusiasm. Inuyasha brought his wristwatch in sight to check the time. 6pm."Yeah, Hi." He replied, staying in the doorway. “I.. I won't be long. And sorry if I’m bother you, but you haven't answered my texts in 3 days. And there was something I wanted to tell you myself." No answers came from him. Not that it was that weird from him. "My mother has to go back to Europe, and I-" "And you're leaving us to go there too, I know." Inuyasha's wristwatch was clicking much louder than a few seconds ago. Inuyasha sighed and ran a hand through his black hair. ‘His hair.’ Kagome thought, as she watched his movements. She had looked at his hair thousands of times. It was long for a boy, but wasn't long enough to touch his shoulders. There was also tension in the movement he just made that stabbed her heart slightly. "Yeah.. I’m leaving tomorrow." "Oh...Okay. Good trip then." She was astonished. How could he speak to her like that. She saw the door closing before her, and she put her foot between the frame and the door and pushed back the door open to come inside, frowning. This sudden move made him step back."Hey !" “Is that it ? 'Good trip' ?" She responded angrily. “What do you want me to say? I've known for days that you were leaving and you didn't even bother telling me, or Miroku face to face. Sango was the one who told us!" Kagome sighed. Sango learned about it, but not from her, she ran into her mother in town. Kagome looked at him, her frown relaxing. You could see a glimpse of pain in her eyes. She faked a little smile. "Okay than.. Sorry you had to learn about it this way. I'll be going now." And so she left. And they never talked again. She hesitated to delete his number and the few messages on her phone. As much as she wanted to get things straight between them, she still hesitated to call him. Kagome still lacked the courage to speak to him. As these memories slowly start coming back to her, she felt the sadness growing in her. Her mother walked up to her. "Are you done packing?" She asked softly. "Almost.." She answered absentmindedly. "Don't forget the box under your bed sweetheart." Kagome turned around to look at her mother as she winked to her. She completely forgot about it. She ran up to her room and slid her arm under her bed to grab a shoe box, which she had put some little things dear to her. Little objects friends and family gave her. There was a picture of her grandfather, a little pendant Sango and Miroku bought her for her birthday, and a few other things. But none of those mattered to her right now. She grabbed the little fabric bag and opened it. She turned it over to take the bracelet out of it. Inuyasha used to wear a necklace of black pearls and white teeth shaped pearls here and there. During the cave incident Kagome admitted it was a really nice necklace. Two years later, during her birthday. Kagome noticed he didn't have it anymore around his neck, instead she found out why when he handed her something. "I took it off and decided to make it into two separate bracelets. It's no big deal.." InuYasha told her, slightly looking away. Kagome smiled so much at this memory. The memory of the moment she realized how much he meant to her. He had these moments.. of pure kindness. They were never close enough for her to ever admit it was love or anything. But there was something there. Definitely, he was something else. She looked down at the bracelet as she put it on. Her eyes drifted to a bunch of photographs inside the box. She went through it. It was mostly Kagome and Sango. Some pictures included Miroku, or the whole gang. There was just this one picture that Sango gave her. They were once in a park, Kagome debang with Inuyasha over a trivial thing she couldn't even recall anymore. But Sango took a photo of it. Kagome was wearing a beige dress and a white transparent haori, her dark hair in a ponytail. And Inuyasha frowning, his black hair down, slightly touching his shoulders. Kagome always thought it was cute. He was wearing a red shirt on that day, holding his fist out between them. Her eyes lingered on that photograph for a few minutes. She smiled and put everything back in the box, than continued to finish packing. She was really going back to Japan. Kagome had grown up here in Europe, but due to her father's job Kagome's family moved to Japan during her highschool years. And never had she felt so at home while living in Japan.  After her highschool years, the family had to move out again. And it broke her heart having to leave Japan. 

While on her way to the airport, that would take her back to Japan. Kagome decided to send Sango a message, she couldn't stand it any longer.  The message to Sango was to set up a meeting at the airport. She was going home. Without her family. She had just finished college and now she was ready to start a life in her real home. This night however felt like the longest ever. She was so happy to come back. To be able to see Sango and Miroku. She was planning on going to Inuyasha's place to surprise and talk to him. Or.. something like that ? She had no idea yet. But she needed to talk to him. Maybe it would be easier face to face, maybe.

Her first steps in Japan were like taking a new breath of fresh air. She walked slowly to the luggage pick up. Her little pink suitcase carrying barely a few clothes, was instead full of memories. She knew her mother would send her everything she felt behind little by little. So she took along what really mattered to her. As soon as she got out in the arrival area, she looked around for Sango. And she saw her from afar. She looked pissed off, talking to a guy in front of her. Kagome looked at the stranger's back, he was wearing a red leather jacket, and a high white ponytail, falling to the bottom of his back. He was laying back against a set of bench. He was tall, and had broad shoulders, his hands were in his pockets. She heard a loud voice coming from them. A deep voice. "You could at least have come by yourself, why did I have to come with you ?!" "Because I don't have my license, dumbass!" Sango answered. Kagome smiled and called out to Sango who turned to her with a big smile. "Ah! There she is!" The guy got up and turned around, his stern face changing as he saw Kagome. Kagome stopped walking and looked at the guy. She knew this face but it took her a second to finally understand. She felt tears coming up in her eyes and she opened her mouth slightly. "I.. Inu.." Inuyasha mumbled to Sango."I thought.. I thought it was your cousin we came to pick up..." "Surprise.." Sango whispered before pushing his back a bit. Multiple emotions passed through his face. Confusion, a lot of tension too at some point, a bit of annoyance. But his face relaxed. "Screw it.." He took a few steps towards her, letting her to run to him, leaving her suitcase in place. She jumped into his arms, and without any hesitation. He caught her, wrapping his arms around her waist, holding her close to him.

Kagome never thought it would happen like this. But now that her arms were around his neck, she never wanted to let go. After an endless moment, he let her go down. Her body slowly running down his, until her feet touched the ground. Her face turned upward to him, her hands laying on his forearms. "I'm back.." She whispered.

"What took you so long, idiot.." He answered, his voice pitching between annoyance and ... relief? That made her chuckle. A few tears were running down her cheek. The only certainty she had at that moment, was that he was here, where she was too. And it's all she ever needed. He wiped her tears away with one hand, annoyed. His other laying under her forearm."Dammit wench, don't you cry on me!" She laughed again and wiped her last tears roughly with her hand. Inuyasha looked at her wrist and smiled. "I knew you would miss me!" He said proudly. She looked at her bracelet."Oh shut up !" She said, laughing a bit.. soon, a little detail as her hand moved to hold his. A bracelet. The twin of hers. She smiled as she saw it and Inuyasha brushed it off. "Hey guys... Can I give Kagome a hug too ?!" Sango's voice rang in their ears in a laughter. Kagome let go of InuYasha to run to her friends and hug her close, while the man she just left went to grab her suitcase. Finally she was home.

[calicobelmonte]

This Autumn Day

Tom Holland x Reader

Summary: You committed suicide a month ago, but Tom got a message from you today. 

Warnings: Mentions of suicide, lots and lots of that  t h i c c  angst, some fluff if you look at it with a microscope

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: This wasn’t originally going to be a suicide story, but as the idea progressed it made the most sense to have Y/N die that way. Please be careful of triggers, warnings are up there ^ My inbox and asks are always available if you need to talk about anything. Lots of love. 

Thirty-two days. Thirty-two days of grief-stricken tears and paralyzing sadness. Thirty-two days since she died. 

It had been only thirty two days, but it felt longer. 

Tom hadn’t stepped foot out of his apartment since her funeral, only allowing his family and Harrison to visit occasionally. Their company never helped ease the sadness in his chest though; it only made it worse, knowing they were worried for him. It made it worse because he couldn’t care enough to pull himself together. Not when she was gone. 

He was always alone, the curtains perpetually drawn to keep out the light and the air silent as he’d never known before. Tessa was gone, his parents having taken her to relieve him of the responsibility of caring for her. He was grateful, seeing as he couldn’t even take care of himself. 

He took a break from acting. No one blamed him, but he still felt slightly guilty for taking away Spider-Man from the world. It didn’t really matter though, when the world had taken her away from him. 

He spent his days trying to take the edge off his sorrow with countless bottles of beer, staying up late into the night and sleeping the day away. He hadn’t showered in two weeks or eaten a proper meal since her death. How could he, when she was longer here? 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Tom expected the day to be the same as the thirty-one days before it. Wake up around two in the afternoon, drink a bottle of beer for lunch, maybe some food if Haz or his mom visited and made him eat, then lay back down to stare numbly at the ceiling until it was dark. Down a couple more beers until he passed out, and wake up in the middle of the afternoon the next day. Repeat ad infinitum. 

It was all ruined when his phone chimed with a text at eight in the morning. 

Right after the news of her death got out, his phone had blown up with notifications from family, friends, and worried fans. It was exhausting and bothersome when he himself was shaken and broken to the core, and he'd blocked all of them and deleted his social media. 

Haz, his parents, his brothers, they all were given a free pass on the account they wouldn’t bother him. And they didn’t, too worried for his mental state to push him. So who was texting him so early in the morning? 

Tom blinked, his eyes sticky from sleep, and pressed his fingers against his temples with a groan. He had a killer migraine, and really didn’t appreciate getting woken up so early. 

His phone pinged again and he grumbled angrily before reaching to grab it, ready to block whoever had the nerve to bother him, when he saw it. 

It was her.

“Hey Hero, it’s Y/N…..” the notification read, right below the contact name he’d given her and didn’t have the heart to change after she’d died. My Beautiful Future Wife. 

But that was impossible. She was gone. 

Yet here she was, texting him like she’d never left. 

Tom was too shocked to respond properly, only automatically unlocking his phone to check his messages. 

And there it was, the first message he’d gotten since twenty-eight days before. 

He clicked it open and started reading, feeling his hands shake violently as he sat hunched over his phone. 

“Hey Hero, it’s Y/N. I know this is a shock to you, but if you’re getting this, I’m most definitely dead.” 

Tom let out a shaky breath. She was dead. She wasn’t alive, and he'd known it, but the crushing disappointment weighed down on him anyways. 

“Darling, please don’t beat yourself up over it. It isn’t your fault, or anyone’s, really. I’ve been planning it for a long time, but being with you let me live my last year happily. You made me happy, but I think that it’s time for me to go now. Knowing I’ll be leaving you is the worst part.

I’m sorry I couldn’t leave you a tangible letter, something you could hold on to like I’ve done for my family and friends. I’ve tried, but none of them really felt right. I decided that writing these texts is the best I could do, and I’ve been putting them away for a long time. But this first one I wrote right before my death. It’s the only one that feels perfect. I’m really not the best writer though, so I’m sorry I can’t tell you everything I want to, to express how much that I love you, so this will be the best you’ll get. I’m so so sorry. 

I’ll be honest, I sat with that plastic bag and canister of helium for a long time, wondering if what I’m going to do is what I really wanted. I started thinking, ‘Maybe I don’t have to die.’ You made me happier than I’ve felt in a long, long time, and for a few minutes I imagined just living another day. I would be alive to see you come home after your meeting, alive to see your face once again. But one more day would make it another week, then another month, and another year. And I would keep hurting. Today is the day; I have to be strong. But today was perfect as it was. I woke up next to you, and we made breakfast together listening to our favorite songs. That is enough for me. I was happy. Tom, thank you for that. You made the last year of my life the best one. 

The death won’t be painful. It’ll be like falling asleep. I’m not worried, and as I’m writing this, I just feel peaceful. It’ll all be over. 

I just hope you won’t be the one to find me. I don’t want you to see me like this, and instead remember me as the way I looked when you left the house a few hours ago. I’d put on my biggest smile for you, and I’d worn your favorite clothes on me. I made sure to tell you that I love you. I don’t regret anything. I’m happy, knowing you loved me and that I loved you, and that I’ll pass peacefully still loving and being loved by you.  

I’m not scared. I think it’ll be warm and bright. I’ll think about you as I take my final breaths.”

Tom could barely see the next message through the tears in his eyes, but he managed to read it silently, his chest tight and achy. 

Just three words: “I love you.”

He felt his lip tremble as his tears finally spilled over in thick streams down his cheeks and off his chin. He heard a low keening, an animal sound that cried of loss and utter pain and it was only after a few seconds that he realized that it was him. 

He couldn’t breath, couldn’t see, couldn’t move. He could only cry, and remember that last, bright smile she’d given him as she closed the door behind him. 

I love you. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

For exactly three-hundred-and-sixty-five days after that, he received messages from her everyday. Some were questions, others consolations. There were little inside jokes, affectionate teasing, and gentle encouragements. 

“My hero, how are you today? I hope you ate something and had a little time to just relax. I know how hard you work yourself. Visit that little cafe we love in town for me today, alright?”

“Tommy, have you ever wondered what rainbows look like to other animals? Even though they don’t see the same colors as us, I bet it’s just as beautiful.”

“I really do wish we could’ve gone stargazing in the desert like we’d planned. Why don’t you take Haz and your brothers instead? Think of me while you’re there.” 

“If you’re ever feeling down Honey Bee, just remember that time we went to the beach together and you taught me how to surf. It was super sunny and the water felt amazing, remember? I wiped out a dozen times but you always laughed and helped me back on my board. It was such a great day, I hope you experience many more like it.”

“Make sure to give yourself a little love today, okay Tommy? You deserve it, and so much more.”

“I think the best day we’ve ever had was when we went to that children’s hospital two months after we met, when you dressed up as Spider-Man to cheer up all the sick kids. They were overjoyed to see you, and you were so happy to make them happy. I think I fell in love with you that day.”

Little by little, with every message from her, Tom improved, taking baby steps back into the world since her death. 

He stopped drinking, and started eating again. He went to sleep a little earlier, and started waking up earlier too. He showered, he shaved, he started looking after himself properly.

On one overcast day, he cleaned himself up and stepped foot outside. He breathed in the crisp autumn air, so different from the closed, musty scent of his apartment, tugged his jacket closed, and trudged all the way to his parents’ house.

They were elated to see him and he let them hug him for the first time in two months. His brothers cried when they saw him, Tessa wouldn’t stop barking happily, and they spent the day together as a family. As dusk fell, they bought a cake and some candles, and Tom whispered “Happy Birthday, Y/N,” as he blew out the candles for her. 

When the first snowfall arrived, Tom drove to the cafe in town and bought himself his and her favorite drinks. He took them to the cemetery with a bouquet of red flowers, visiting her grave for the first time since the funeral. “Miss you tons,” he told her as he placed the drink and the flowers in front of her gravestone. “Thank you for your messages.” 

When spring arrived, he took Haz and his brothers to the United States, driving out to a desert in the middle of nowhere at night. They sat on the roof of their truck together, gazing up at the starry sky that spread out above them like a blanket. “Hey Y/N, just letting you know I’m thinking of you,” he said, feeling his brothers’ eyes on him. Haz slung his arm comfortingly around his shoulders and added, “We all are.”

As the days got hotter and spring gave way to summer, he went to the same beach he had gone with her two years ago and taught his family how to surf. He laughed every time one of them fell off their board and helped them back on. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the water felt cool against his skin. He’d brought a necklace of hers, and sealed it into a clear wine bottle with a cork before flinging it into the waves. “I hope this makes its way to you somehow. Knowing you, you’ll find a way to get it. Love you so much.”

The days got cooler and summer ushered in the melancholy breezes of autumn. Tom finally started acting again, cast in another movie as Spider-Man. One day, he took his suit and a few fellow actors to visit the children’s hospital. They were so so happy to see him, and seeing their smiles brought a smile to his own face. He visited her grave again later that day, still wearing the suit. “I’m hoping you’re still in love with me, but if you aren’t this better make you love me again,” he joked. 

The anniversary of her death finally arrived, and with it, her final message to him. Tom woke up with Tessa laying next to him, the curtains drawn to let in the watery sunlight of fall, and fifteen new notifications on his phone. 

Two messages were from his brothers, one was from Haz, and the next ten were from his other friends and co-workers from the studio. 

The last two, though, were the two he cared the most about. The ones from her. 

As he clicked the message open, he had a feeling that these were her last texts from her. Instead of feeling lost or broken as he might have before, though, he felt a deep, warm gratefulness spreading from his chest. He began reading. 

“Dearest Tommy, 

It was this day last year that I left the world. I hope that today, you can let me go too. You see, before I started actually thinking about dying, I always felt that everyone who’d loved me should always love me, even after I died. They shouldn’t move on, they shouldn’t feel better, because I was gone. It wouldn’t be fair, right?

But as I’m writing this, I’m watching you and Tessa run through the leaves at the dog park and I can hear your laugh and all I can think is, it wouldn’t be fair for the world to never hear that laugh again. 

I can’t bear to think that my death will leave you broken and unable to love again, that I’m the one to rob you of happiness. You deserve all the happiness in the world, darling. You are such an amazing, kind, generous, silly person and I can’t believe how lucky I am to have had you. 

I’ve been writing a bunch of texts to you since two years ago, but this one is one I’m writing now. I still haven’t written the first one you’ll see yet, but I’m sure it’ll come to me soon. 

I’m going to die next week, on the first of September. Until then, I’m going to spend all my time with you, with so much happiness. It’ll be a good way to go, I think. 

You’re calling me over now, but there’s one more thing I have to tell you. 

Do you remember that time, two years ago, when we went to Switzerland and visited that quaint little cafe in the small town in the mountains? We both drank a chai latte and had a sugar cookie, and for the whole day I could feel the warmth of the latte in my throat and the sweetness of the sugar cookie lingering on my tongue. And as we hiked around the mountains, hand in hand, I could smell the unique scent of autumn as we walked through patches of sunlight that looked like it was made out of pure gold as it filtered through the leaves. I felt such a strange, pure joy then, and sometimes I think of that day and feel a little ache in my chest that makes me smile to myself. 

I think that’s what heaven will be like. Just a constant autumn, a little sad, but a little happy too. I’ll walk the mountains by myself, thinking of you and our sweet three years together. I’ll miss you so much, but I hope that all that’ll be left of me is a faint warmth in your throat and a lingering sweetness on your tongue that’ll make you smile a little to yourself when you remember me. 

For the very last time, I love you Tommy.”

Tom got out of bed, stretched, and opened the windows. He inhaled the unique scent of autumn and smiled into the golden morning sunlight.

[itsmyusualphannie]

you had me at hydrangea

Chapter 1/6 - i hope thistle cheer you up

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

a phan flower shop/video editor au

(read on ao3) - beta’ed by zara! all remaining mistakes are mine.

next chapter

~~~

“Hello!” Phil said to the empty counter.

There was a thunk and a round of colourful swears. Wild curls came into view as the person behind the counter stood up, his eyes clenched shut with pain and rubbing the back of his head. “What the fuck,” he said, not opening his eyes but greeting Phil with a rather backward spew of words. “I mean. How can I help you? How many flowers do you want? Welcome.”

“Hi, Dan,” said Phil, unbearably fond.

“Oh!” Dan’s eyes flew open. His dimples appeared. “Oh. Hi, Phil! Flowers.”

Phil wondered if the bump had affected Dan more seriously than it had seemed. “Hi,” he said again, not knowing what else to say.

Dan was grinning sheepishly. “Er, sorry. I was trying to - I mean, I’d dropped the tape on the floor, so. I was kind of just sitting down there for a moment.”

“Oh.” Phil could understand that. The floor had to be more comfortable than the single narrow stool behind the counter that Dan was afforded. “That’s fine. It’s just me.”

Dan ducked his head. The silver hoop in his ear caught the light from the wide windows by the door, and Phil was suddenly, hopelessly endeared by the pink splotch of embarrassment that crept onto Dan’s cheek. “Yeah,” Dan said. “Can I...what can I get for you?”

Phil wished he had the courage to say ‘your number.’ Instead, he gestured to the stout table in the corner of the little shop, surrounded by long-leafed potted plants. “I just wanted to let you know I was here. I’ll get some flowers later, but you said you didn’t mind if I sit here and work?”

“No, no, not at all,” Dan assured him, hastily. “That’s what the table’s there for.”

Phil asked almost every time he came in to work on his computer at the table, but Dan consistently said it wasn’t a problem. It helped Phil feel much less awkward. “Thanks,” Phil said. “It just makes me feel more, like, productive if I’m -”

“- surrounded by plants, yes,” Dan finished for him, a smile tugging at his lips. “Yes, you’ve mentioned. Go ahead.”

Phil noticed that he was beaming back at Dan, an unhesitant reaction to the dimples that caved in Dan’s cheeks. Dan should have looked ridiculous in this tiny flower shop, with his perpetually dark clothing, incredibly long legs, and slumped shoulders, but instead, the bright colours only made him look more at place amongst them. It was as if he’d drained the colours from himself and given them to the flowers surrounding him, making them all the more vibrant for it.

Phil also noticed that he hadn’t said anything for a very long moment and Dan’s smile was starting to slip.

“Door!” said Phil, panicking. He gestured widely at it. “You should get a bell.” He felt like maybe he’d been the one who’d hit his head when he came in.

“Oh,” said Dan.

“To tell you when customers arrive,” Phil clarified.

“Oh!” said Dan again. “Yes. I mean, I’ve asked Louise, but she said the loud sounds would bother the plants.” His face twisted. “Whatever that means.”

“No, I get it,” Phil assured him. He thought that maybe he did. The tiny cactus on his bedstand did seem to perk up whenever he played soft music near it. “My plant Susan likes nice sounds. She always looks greener after I’ve played classical music.”

Dan’s expression was warm. “You should work here, not me,” he said. “I don’t actually know anything about flowers. Or plants.”

“Neither do I,” Phil admitted. “Most of mine end up dying. That’s why I’m in here so often. I’m hoping to absorb some knowledge from the leaves, like...photosynthesis.”

“That’s for light,” said Dan, his mouth wide in a silent laugh.

“See!” said Phil. “You do know things about plants.”

“If you say so.” Dan was still laughing at him, a quiet, insubstantial thing.

“Hush,” Phil ordered, but he didn’t mean it, and his unhesitant smile betrayed it. He wondered briefly what it would be like to press his thumbs into Dan’s dimples, the deep, shadowed ones that only appeared when Dan was beaming at him like this. He wondered how Dan would react if he did that.

“Go work,” Dan told him, swallowing his laughter with visible effort. “That’s what you came here to do.”

Phil was so very tempted to tell Dan that he actually came here for him, but he didn’t have the heart to do it, and so he just stuck out his tongue in a completely mature reply and readjusted his bag over his shoulder to trudge to the table. He was just fighting with getting his laptop charger into the stubborn wall outlet when Dan’s voice drifted to him.

“What are you working on today?”

Phil wrestled with the outlet and barely managed to fit his plug into it. “Er,” he said absent-mindedly, “a project.” The outlet’s obstinacy has been passed onto the charger and now it didn’t want to attach to his computer. He tried to fit the metal into the opening in his laptop, twisting it this way and that as if it might make a difference. The difficulty in his task might be because hadn’t gotten a new laptop in three years, but Phil preferred to believe that it just hated him.

“Oh, a project?” said Dan, sounding amused.

“Yes.” Phil finally got his laptop fully plugged in and he opened it, typing in his password with slow fingers. He finally glanced over at Dan. “I’ve got this commercial for a game that I have two more weeks to finish. It’s going very slowly.”

“What game?” Dan asked.

Phil was disappointed that he couldn’t tell him. He felt like Dan might actually be interested in the answer. “I can’t say,” he confessed. “Client confidentiality and whatever. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine, I get it.”

Phil remembered that about three weeks ago in a brief discussion about the news, Dan had admitted that he had once been to law school. He could recall with vivid detail the embarrassed flush on Dan’s cheeks when he mentioned it, as if it was something he was ashamed of doing, and Phil had gotten the feeling that he didn’t want to talk about it. Phil thought that Dan had probably dropped out but wasn’t going to admit it, but Phil certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. It didn’t matter. But Dan would doubtlessly understand client confidentiality.

“How much do you have left to do?” Dan asked.

Phil opened the project and winced at the chunks of unedited files. “A lot,” he said reluctantly. “I’ve been procrastinating. It’s a little harder when I have to set my own schedule.”

“I definitely get that,” Dan said.

Phil grinned at him. “You seem to do fine here.”

Dan was balancing on the rickety stool by the till. Phil couldn’t see his legs from this angle, but he imagined they were wrapped awkwardly around the stool. He was leaning on the counter at an almost dangerous angle. “Sure,” Dan faux-agreed with Phil, 

A thought occurred to Phil, something he had read a few days ago. He snorted a laugh and turned to Dan. “Hey, what’s a cactus’ favourite song?”

Dan frowned warily, and he had every right to do so. Phil enjoyed terrible puns and didn’t hesitate to wield them like a weapon of mass destruction. “What?”

Phil grinned. “‘Can’t Touch This.’”

“Oh god.” But he was clearly trying to fight a smile. “I’m in physical pain. Why are you like this?”

Phil just laughed.

Dan groaned and leaned on his elbows. His phone buzzed and he glanced down at it, then his eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

Dan dropped his face into his hands in exasperation swaying treacherously on his seat. “I have an order I’m supposed to be working on. I completely forgot about it.”

Phil glanced past drooping ferns at the door. He could see the sidewalk through the glass, decorated with potted plants, but devoid of any passersby. “I can watch the door for you if you want to go ahead and do it,” he suggested.

Dan’s head came up, hopeful. “You don’t mind?”

“No, of course not,” Phil reassured him. “You let me sit here for hours, so I might as well help out a little, right?”

“I’m going to take you up on that,” Dan said. He jumped to his feet and the stool creaked angrily at the mistreatment. “Just yell at me if anyone comes in?”

Phil nodded and Dan was gone in an instant, vanishing between the racks of flowers behind the counter and into the back room. Phil could hear faint cursing and he surmised from the words that Dan had a fairly large order of bouquets to prepare. It would probably take him a little while, then.

His computer beeped at him, offended at his lack of attention, and Phil turned back to it instead of listening to Dan slam things around in the back. He had no idea how Dan could bang flowers together, but apparently it was a talent. Phil opened the notification that had appeared on his laptop screen. It was an email from his supervisor, so he decided it probably wasn’t the best idea to ignore it as he did with most of his messages.

It was a politely stern reminder that he had to turn in part of his work by tomorrow night. Phil sighed heavily, typing out a quick reply. Sometimes he wished he’d gone with a stable, nine-to-five job that didn’t involve a paranoid boss constantly checking up on him. Other times, he remembered that the freedom of having his own schedule and being able to do what he actually liked was well worth the irritation. The paycheck, when he finally finished his work, wasn’t too bad either. He definitely would need his payment for this project soon, too. His diet of pizza and half-hearted scrambled eggs was draining his bank account, not to mention the flowers he bought every few days for usually no reason other than coming in to see Dan.

“Shit fuck mother duckling,” Dan swore creatively as he dropped something in the back,  easily audible with the passion of his curses, and Phil had to remind himself that he had work to do and that laughing loudly would not help Dan at all.

His cell rang at that very moment, which helpfully stifled his chuckles. He tugged it out of his pocket to see the caller ID, which was only the picture of his manic-looking best friend. Phil answered it immediately, lifting it to one ear and listening distractedly for any more sounds from Dan with the other. “Hey, PJ.”

“Hey!” came a cheerful voice, tinny through the speaker. “What are you doing right now?”

Phil glanced down at the still-open email. He felt very judged all of a sudden, the blunt words staring back at him, and so he closed the tab. “Working, kind of.”

“Cool, so not important,” PJ said breezily. Phil felt rather offended, but PJ barrelled on without pause, “So you’re going to be here tomorrow night, right? Seven o’clock.”

“Yes, I’ll be there,” Phil promised. “You’ve only reminded me every day for the past two weeks.”

“I’m just excited!” said PJ. “It’s my first official day living with Sophie! And I have good reason to be worried that you’re not going to show up. You’ve forgotten my birthday. Twice.”

Phil winced. PJ would never let him forget that.

“Be there or be square!” PJ bellowed. Phil had been expecting it and pulled his phone away from his ear just in time, otherwise, he’d be nursing a throbbing eardrum right about now. “Bring a date!” PJ added.

Phil sighed. “I wish.”

PJ laughed at him. “You’re an idiot. Ask that flower boy out; you’ve been pining over him for, what, three months now?”

Phil glanced around, suddenly afraid that Dan could somehow overhear his conversation. “Shh!” he hissed. “It’s not like that.”

“You’re there at the shop right now, aren’t you?” PJ sounded delighted, and Phil’s silence only proved his guess. “I knew it! Come on, Phil. You’re both wimps. Just ask him out.”

“I can’t,” Phil protested, still in a desperately low voice. “He...he already has a girlfriend.”

PJ howled with laughter. “You’re fucking with me! I’ve stopped in there and believe me, that boy does not have a girlfriend.”

“First of all,” said Phil, feeling the urgent need to defend Dan, “assuming someone’s sexuality based off their appearance or actions or whatever is not okay. Second, yes he does. She owns the shop. I’ve seen her. They’re definitely together.”

“You’re an idiot,” PJ said fondly, but at least he’d stopped laughing. “A delusional idiot.”

Phil felt rather like he wanted to punch PJ. Or maybe just stare at him very harshly. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do either through the phone, so he settled for sighing very weightily and hoping that got his point across.

It did. Having a ten-year friendship had some perks, after all. But PJ just sighed back at him. His tone was gentler when he spoke next. “Take your time figuring that out, then. No date tomorrow. But still, show up.” He then added pointedly, “If you’re at the shop anyway, Sophie has an empty vase.”

“What’s her favourite flower?” Phil asked, grateful for the change of subject.

PJ paused. Silence stretched for a few long moments.

Phil pulled the phone away from his ear and regarded it with disbelief as if PJ could sense the emotion through the phone. He probably could, knowing him. He returned it to his ear. “You don’t know what her favourite flower is?”

“She never told me!” PJ said defensively. “Anyways, do you know your flower boy’s favourite flower?”

Phil scoffed. “That’s entirely different. You’ve been dating Sophie for a year now. I’ve barely known him for three months.”

“Yeah,” said PJ. “But he works in a flower shop.”

“I’m not moving in with him tomorrow,” Phil pointed out. “You have no excuse.”

PJ sounded pitiful when he asked, “Well, how do I ask her now? She’ll just think I’m a twat for not knowing.”

“Not my problem,” said Phil cheerily.

PJ whined at him.

“Nope,” said Phil. He felt much better being able to get back at PJ for the constant comments about Dan. “Bye! Have to work. See you tomorrow!”

“You’re mean,” said PJ. “Fine. Bye.”

As Phil hung up, he was already reluctantly making plans in the back of his mind to help PJ figure out his newest crisis. It shouldn’t be that hard. He figured that tomorrow evening if he brought flowers to their flat, he would casually inquire if he’d gotten her favourites - or actually, what was her favourite?

A shrill tone rang out in the quiet shop, and Phil thought for a startled moment that PJ was calling him back. But no, his ringtone didn’t sound like that. It was coming from the counter.

“Dan!” he called, his voice almost drowned out by the loud tones. The moment he’d said it, he felt ridiculous. Dan could definitely hear it himself.

“Coming!” Dan yelled back at him. The ringtone stopped for a moment, then screamed demandingly again, and Dan came stumbling through the open doorway. His hair was dusted with pollen, and he looked out-of-breath from the brief sprint. “Hello?” he said desperately as he answered it. Phil watched his expression shift from tense, furrowed lines to a softer, gentle look as he recognized whoever’s voice it was. “Hi,” he said. It had to be his girlfriend.

Phil felt despairingly awful for wanting Dan to look at only him like that.

Dan had turned away from Phil, the phone balanced between his shoulder and ear as he wandered back into the room he’d just sprinted from. “Yeah, I’ve just started it, don’t worry,” he was saying, and then his voice faded away and Phil was left in the room with perky, bright flowers lining the walls and a chair that creaked heavily under him when he shifted his weight.

The fern that was tucked between his chair and the window leaned over him as he sighed, a frond brushing against his cheek. He batted it away and regarded it with a frown. “Stop pitying me,” he told it.

It, obviously, did not respond, but Phil imagined that if it could, it would tell him to stop being worthy of pity.

“You’re worthy of pity,” he retorted and then felt abruptly absurd for talking to a plant, no matter how sassy the fern looked. Fortunately, there was no one human in the room to judge him.

“I have work to do,” he reminded himself. He returned to his computer, ignoring the quiet ache that nudged at him every time he heard Dan’s murmurs in the back room.

He didn’t like Dan like that, anyway.

next chapter

[fluffy-marshmallow-heart]

Secret Studies ch.18 -Hanging By a Thread

The Elementalist AU

Beckett x MC (Oriana)

Words: 1824

Master List

First they hid their relationship, Now they have to fight for it.

There won't be too much more to this series. Just a few more chapters probably.

Beckett stared at Griffin. “Get out. Now.”

“No, Beckett, listen, I had no idea that she was…”

“I said GET OUT!!!!” Beckett yelled, flinging Oriana’s bedroom door open and shoving Griffin back out into the common room, where Zeph and Shreya jumped up in surprise.

Griffin stood there awkwardly, glancing from one person to another, before turning back to Beckett. “I swear I had no idea what she was really doing, you have to believe me!”

“Believe what?” Shreya asked

  Beckett folded his arms across his chest. “Griffin knows who’s been attacking Oriana. And he’s been helping her do it.”

“No! I didn’t…”

“Is that true?” Zeph cut in.

Griffin slumped back down on the couch, placing his head in his hands. “Can you just listen to me, please.”

Shreya sat down next to him. “I’ll listen. Tell me.”

He took a shuddery breath. “It all started at a Thief game. I’d had my eyes on Oriana, but…she had been watching someone else.” He looked at Beckett. “She kept looking at you.”

“Which game.” Beckett asked flatly.

“The first one.” Griffin said quietly.

“So, right before Oriana and I had detention together.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know you had it too, I just knew that she did. She didn’t mention you.”

“Why does that matter?” Shreya asked, confused.

“That’s when the first attack was.” Beckett responded.

“I was in so much trouble when she found out you were there too. She never thought that you would ever have detention. She was furious.”

“Why would someone care if Beckett had detention?”

“There’s only one person that would.” Beckett told them glumly. He squeezed his eyes shut as he faced the awful truth. “My mother.”

Shreya and Zeph both gasped.

Griffin nodded sadly. “She approached me after that game. Said she couldn’t help but notice the way I was looking at the new sun attuned, and how she thought we’d make a great couple. She also saw the way Beckett and Oriana were looking at each other.”

“Like they hated each other?” Zeph asked, trying to piece things together.

“She saw a threat.” Griffin explained. “She knew that Oriana had the power to distract him from everything else. Academics, family obligations, everything. She said she couldn’t have that happen, and said she was sure Oriana would lean on me and not Beckett. She said she was just…scaring her away. Making sure Oriana knew that she would never be number one here, and she would transfer. Then she’d ensure my transfer as well, so I could go with her. So, she asked me to watch her. Find out her schedule, when she’s alone, where she goes, who she’s usually with. I just thought…I don’t know what I thought. But never in a million years did I think she’d be trying to kill her! It doesn’t even make sense!”

“Doesn’t it though?” Beckett challenged. “The first time, she didn’t know I was there. Every other time, I have been nowhere near her. She wanted Oriana alone so that I wouldn’t get hurt.”

“But I didn’t know what she was doing. I thought…I mean, you guys never said…”

“This is not our fault!” Beckett fumed. “You should have told me. Told Ori. Told someone. Anyone.”

“Oh, right, because we were just such good friends.” Griffin spat sarcastically.

“Wait, so, if you followed her, how did you never see her get attacked?” Shreya questioned.

“Because Mrs. Harrington knew I was following her at that time, getting information on where she goes and if she meets up with someone. Specifically, her son. From what Beckett has said…the only time she was attacked was when I text her that Oriana was alone for sure. Sometimes she would ask me to follow, sometimes she wouldn’t. I didn’t even think to question why she wouldn’t ask me to at certain times. I was just…relieved. I hated it, I hated who I was becoming.”

The room went completely silent as everyone took the information in. Then….

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!!” Beckett lunged for Griffin, tackling him to the floor, getting one good punch in before Zephyr and Shreya dragged him off.

“THIS IS YOUR FAULT! YOU LET MY MOTHER MANIPULATE YOU, LET HER TRY TO KILL MY FIANCE!!!!”

“You’re…what?” Griffin was pale again.

“I asked her to marry me and she said yes.”  Beckett glowered at him. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that, considering this happened soon after!”

“I…I’m so sorry. There’s something else.” Griffin lifted the back of his shirt, revealing deep scars. “First she punished me because you were with Oriana at the first attack. Which I didn’t know was an attack!” He added quickly. “When I kissed Oriana and she slapped me, I told your mother that I didn’t want to do this anymore. That she doesn’t want me. She never did. That the plan was futile. She got so angry, and I was just in so much pain, I couldn’t stand it. I had to do it, don’t you see?”

Griffin looked around the room pleadingly. “I couldn’t get out of it. I didn’t know her real plan. I really thought she was just…trying to keep the two of you separated. It always felt off but…She wouldn’t let me go. I had to keep feeding her information, and if I didn’t…” He swallowed. “If I didn’t she’d do far worse than scar me.”

“Griffin…You should have told us, especially when she first hurt you.” Shreya said lightly.

“I know! Okay? I know! I was surprised and shocked and it just hurt like nothing else. I just ran home and tried to forget. But I could never forget. I knew something was off, otherwise why would she do what she did to me?”

“And to Ori” Beckett interrupted angrily.

“And to Oriana.” Griffin agreed.

Zeph went over to Beckett. “Beckett…how are you feeling? I mean…this is a lot to take in. Your mom…”

“Yes, my mother!” Beckett snapped. “Of course, it was her. It all makes sense, looking back. My protection spell…of course it didn’t work. She saw it firsthand. And she fucking figured it out and blocked it. Oriana was attacked the night I went to dinner. My mother had locked me in, so I couldn’t get out. But my protection spell worked because she didn’t know anything about it. She didn’t think I’d ever get to her that night. Knew I was nowhere near campus. All she did was tear Oriana down, again.”

He ran his hand through his hair numbly. “My God. How could she do this? How did she hate her so much without knowing anything about her?”

He grabbed a nearby glass and threw it against the wall, smashing it to pieces. Then used his magic to put it back together. He smashed it again, then put it back together. Again and again he did this until the glass had been broken so many times, it could no longer be made whole. He turned to go back into Oriana’s room.

“Wait, Beckett!” Zeph called.

He turned back around. “What?”

“We have to do something. She has to be held accountable for her actions. She can’t get away with this or keep doing it. Maybe the next time…we won’t be able to save her. Or anyone else who tries to intervene. We need a plan.”

“I can help.” Griffin jumped in.

“Certainly you don’t think we’ll ever trust you again” Beckett snarled.

“You mother trusts me. She knows I’m afraid to go against her. I can help. Please, it’s…I can help. I want to help. She trusts me to do her bidding. She’ll never see it coming.”

Beckett stared at him a moment, weighing his options. “I don’t know. I just…don’t know right now. What are you all thinking?”

A bit later, after much deliberation, Beckett was back in Oriana’s bed. Zeph and Griffin had left, and Shreya was also in bed. It was quiet. Very quiet. He couldn’t believe everything he heard that night. He was feeling completely broken. His mother was behind everything, and he hadn’t seen it. How could he not? Did he ever know her at all?

He tossed and turned, unable to get any sleep. As the morning sun peeked through the curtains, he felt something stir next to him.

“Ori?” He whispered, watching her carefully

Her eyes blinked open and Beckett let out a huge breath of relief. “Oh my god, Ori, I’m so sorry, I’m so glad you’re okay!!”

He held her tightly against him, as tears trickled down his face again.

“Of course, I’m okay.” She said slowly. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

He met her confused eyes. “You…you don’t remember what happened?”

She frowned in concentration. “I remember it was game night, and you asked me to help you bring stuff in.”

“After that. What happened?” He asked nervously

She shook her head, her frown deepening. “I…I…” She sighed. “Why can’t I remember? Did I drink a lot? Why are you crying? Why do I feel so…weak?”

“We almost lost you.” He whispered. “You were tricked. I never sent you a message. It wasn’t me.”

“What do you mean?” She asked.

Beckett took a deep breath and began telling her everything that happened the previous night. She remained silent the entire time, until he finally finished.

“Your mother. It was your mother. This whole time.”

Beckett nodded sadly. “I’m so sorry.”

“And Griffin knew?”

“He didn’t completely know what she was doing. I’m not defending him by any means, but he was put in an impossible situation.”

“Where is he” She gritted out.

“Gone.” Beckett replied. “Listen…we all came up with something that might be able to bring my mother to justice. But unfortunately, we need Griffin to do it. And you. But if you aren’t up for it, I completely understand, personally I hate this plan, there’s so much that can go wrong and…”

“Beckett. First you need to tell me what it is.” She attempted to chuckle, but it was hollow.

As he told her what everyone was thinking, he noticed the determination growing on her face.

“I’m in.” She said, immediately after he stopped.

“Ori, I don’t think you…”

“I said I’m in. I need to know why this happened. Why she hates me. Why she wants me away from you. I have to do this, don’t you see?”

Beckett hung his head. “It’s all my fault. I should have seen it. I’m so so sorry, Oriana.”

She kissed him gently. “It’s not your fault, so quit blaming yourself.”

“My protection spell didn’t work because she witnessed it.”

“It’s not your fault. And you figured out how to find me.”

“Ori…”

“Shhhhhh” She kissed him deeply, and for the next few hours, they held each other tightly, as though clinging together for dear life. They had a fight looming on the horizon, but for this one moment, all they can do is hold on.

  @annekebbphotography @gardeningourmet @zigortega4life @eileendannie @thequeenofcronuts @drakewalkerfantasy @friedherringclodthing @alesana45

@marianagmt @divergentofhogwarts @flyawayboo @kate-omalleys @syltti78 @coldcollectornight08 @emerald-bijou @herdecisions @nerdynstoned @owleyes374 @thatcatlady0716 @damienswhore @imaginemulti @hypno-bear-tini @askdana @noisysoulthing @bieberismysoulmate@meiyoko-trash @coffeebeandragon @pbmychoices @timmagicktoad @brightpinkpeppercorn @kendrasgue @paisleylovergirl @sweetest-marbear

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[eternal-love-song]

Sunshine Trigger

Kaminari, Bakugo, and Shinso are college roommates. Things get complicated when Kaminari starts pursuing his crush on Uraraka and the three have to deal with their feelings for each other and this girl newly pulled into their lives.

[Kaminari/Shinso/Bakugo/Ochako] [Kaminari/Shinso/Bakugo, Kaminari/Ochako, Bakugo/Ochako, Kaminari/Shinso, Bakugo/Shinso, Shinso/Ochako]

[OT4, Alternate Universe, No Quirks, College AU, Roommates, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationships, Domestic Fluff]

Words: 10,746  Strap in, this is a long one.

"You're blocking my light," Kaminari said as he stared at his plate through the filter on his phone. He was flipping through different filters, though he was fairly certain that he wouldn't be using any of them, a bored expression on his face. The dessert that was on his plate was cute. It was a cake drizzled with strawberry syrup and with graham cracker arranged like a flower bursting from the top of the treat.

"Are you fucking serious?" Bakugo asked as he leaned back in his chair. "Why do you always do this shit?"

"Do you know how disappointed my followers would be if I didn't?" he replied. Usually he would play up his reaction a little more, but he wasn't really feeling it today.

"What he means to say," Shinso added, "Is shut up and let him get paid."

Kaminari looked up from his phone to grin at Shinso. "See, he gets it." He looked back down and took five different pictures of his food, two with filters, and three from different angles, before pushing his plate across the table to Shinso.

"Really? You're not even gonna fucking eat it?" Bakugo groaned.

"Not hungry," Kaminari answered as he looked at the pictures.

"Why did you even come here if you weren't going to eat?" Bakugo growled. "I had better things to do."

"You didn't have to come," Shinso pointed out before shoving the spoon into his mouth. "No one made you."

Bakugo folded his arms and leaned back in his seat, opting to ignore them as he grumbled angrily under his breath.

Kaminari went back to his phone, posting the best pictures on a few social media sites with appropriate emojis and tags. He checked one site in particular, refreshing the page five different times and scouring the new post before he looked up and around again. His eyes scanned the faces around him slowly as he tried to look as unobtrusively as possible.

"Seriously, what the fuck are we doing here?" Bakugo asked.

"Well, I happen to be enjoying this dessert right now," Shinso answered, smirking when his response earned a growl from Bakugo. "Kaminari, on the other hand, is busy trying to stalk his new crush."

"Hey!" Kaminari objected, sitting forward. "It's not stalking!"

"You're waiting for a girl that you've never talked to that doesn't know you exist," Shinso said. He pointed his spoon at Kaminari as he added, "Stalking."

Kaminari sank into his seat. His cheeks turned red. "That's not..."

"What the fuck?" Bakugo asked as he turned toward Kaminari.

"No! Listen," Kaminari insisted, leaning toward Bakugo. "There's a girl in my class, I'm not stalking her! She mentioned that she had a food blog and when I checked her out, she said that she was planning to come here this weekend. I was hoping that I might run into her and maybe we could... talk?" He rubbed the back of his head and looked away from Bakugo's harsh stare.

"You're pathetic."

"We can't all be as confident as you," he murmured.

"Don't mind him," Shinso said. "He's just disappointed that this isn't a date."

Bakugo's eyes widened as he looked at Shinso. "What? Shut your fucking mouth, Shin! I'll kill you!" he yelled as Shinso snickered.

Kaminari stopped listening as the person he was hoping to see walked in through the doors. He stood up as he waved. "Hey, Uraraka!"

She turned towards him, smiling when her eyes actually landed on her. She came over to him quickly. "Hey! You're.... Kaminari, right?"

"Yeah. What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I wanted to check this place out for my blog," she told him. "I've heard good things about them. What about you?"

Kaminari ducked his head and shuffled nervously. "Actually," he lowered his voice, "I was going to hang out with my friends but I think I'm being a third wheel."

"The fu--" Bakugo began, but Shinso interrupted him by shoving a piece of the graham cracker flower into his mouth.

Uraraka looked over his shoulder at them, blushing lightly as she averted her gaze. "Oh... Um, if you want, you could join me."

He perked up immediately. "Really? You don't mind?"

She shook her head. "Not at all. The more the merrier."

Kaminari smiled widely. He turned back to his table as he said, "Hey, I'm gonna go eat with my classmate, will you guys be good without me?"

"We'll be fine," Shinso said. He waved them both away with a lazy grin. "Have fun you two."

The two of them walked away as Bakugo glared at Shinso. "I fucking hate you."

The sound of camera shutters echoed each other as Kaminari and Uraraka both took pictures of their food. She looked up at Kaminari in surprise, meeting his eyes unexpectedly. "Oh, you do it too?" she asked.

"Yeah... I mean, why not, right?" He shrugged. "It gives people something to talk about."

"We should follow each other," she said cheerfully.

"Yeah, sure!"

They exchanged sites and handles, scrolling through media feeds as they dug into their food. He'd already seen her food blog, which was filled with pictures of food and reviews and anecdotal stories of her excursions to try certain things. Her personal account had more pictures of her and her friends, selfies, and a few text posts that he told himself he'd read later.

"Hey! I didn't know you were in a band," she said. She turned her phone toward him, displaying the picture she'd found of Kaminari, Shinso, and Bakugo with all of their instruments. "What's it called?"

"Brain Blast," he told her. "I play guitar, Bakugo is on drums," he explained as he pointed, "And Shinso plays bass, or keyboard, or sings. We're still trying things out."

"That's so cool. I'd love to hear you play sometime."

"Sure! I'll let you know the next time we practice," he told her. "Here, I have a separate account for our band. It's shared between Shinso and I."

She immediately followed the new account, scrolling through posts and pictures before pausing on one in particular. It was a picture of Bakugo, mostly from the waist down, and she could only tell because Kaminari's head was sleeping on the table in the background and Shinso was sticking his tongue out in the corner of the camera. Bakugo was ripped, way more than she'd expected at a glance, and she felt her face going red. The caption read, 'look what I have to deal with in the morning.'

Uraraka put her phone down and focused her attention on her food.

"You okay?" Kaminari asked her.

"I-I'm fine!" she squeaked, before shoving food into her mouth and almost immediately choking on it in her haste.

"Whoa!" Kaminari moved to her side to rub her back, handing her a glass of water. "Careful there!"

She accepted the water, sipping slowly lest she make herself choke again. "Man, that was so uncool," she murmured.

Kaminari smiled kindly at her. "I already thought you were cool," he told her.

"Are you kidding?" she asked. "You're the one with a band."

He laughed. It was a nice laugh and she felt warmer inside as she listened to it. "Nah, they're the cool ones," he admitted. "I'm just there to fill space."

"You fill it well," she said without thinking. She blushed. So did he. Uraraka suddenly noticed how close they were. He hadn't moved back to his seat after handing her her water and his arm was on the back of her chair. They met each others eyes, feeling the pull between them yet frozen with indecision.

"Everything alright here?" They both jumped at the sudden appearance of the waiter. Kaminari moved away from her, sliding awkwardly back into his seat.

He cleared his throat. "We-we're fine," he said.

"As you say." The waiter moved away.

They both let out a breath of relief before smiling at each other.

They had both exchanged numbers by the time Kaminari returned to his band mates’ table. Shinso had ordered another dessert and Bakugo was glaring into a cup of coffee. Kaminari smiled brightly when he sat down with them.

"You look pleased with yourself," Shinso said around his spoon.

"She's so cool!" Kaminari gushed immediately. "She was so funny and cute and she wants to come to band practice and--"

"Glad that your deception worked out for you," Shinso said. "Now you can add stalking and lying to list of romantic moves."

"Who says I was lying?" Kaminari asked, looking at Bakugo. "Maybe I was just reading the atmosphere."

Bakugo's eyes raised, meeting Kaminari's immediately. "Well you read it wrong, idiot." He pushed his chair back and stood, tossing some money on the table. "I'll see you two later," he said as he walked off.

Shinso and Kaminari both stared after him.

"What's wrong with him?" Kaminari asked.

Shinso rested his face in hand. "Nothing. Ignore him." Despite saying that, Shinso kept his eyes on Bakugo's retreating form until it could no longer be seen.

Kaminari was pretty sure he hadn't stopped smiling all week. In between classes he'd been playing a game of social media tag with Uraraka, replying to messages on different sites and trying to keep up with five different conversations, not to mention the occasional texting they were doing. He was laying out on the couch, holding his phone on above his head as he typed his messages before Bakugo stole his phone out of his hands.

"Hey!" Kaminari objected immediately as he sat up.

"Stop fooling around and start studying," Bakugo commanded.

Shinso was sitting on the floor across from him, chewing on the end of his pencil with three different books open before him. He was watching the two of them with heavy, tired eyes, rather than looking at any of the books before him.

Kaminari pouted, putting his head in his hands as he asked Shinso, "What are you working on?"

Shinso's eyes glanced down to the books in front on him. "I'm not even sure anymore. One of these was math, maybe... I've been staring at these for so long I'm not sure I haven't turned into a text book myself."

Bakugo pushed Shinso over with his foot, meeting with surprisingly little resistance. "Go the fuck to sleep. You've been studying all night."

"You're not the boss of me," Shinso replied without moving from his uncomfortable looking slump.

"I don't have all day, blondie!" Bakugo yelled.

Kaminari jumped to his feet immediately, before asking, "What? What I do?"

Bakugo pointed to the table where there was an open text book and a note book. He sat across the open place, glaring at Kaminari until he slowly came over. He eased into his seat cautiously, eyes reluctantly going to the notebook. He was surprised to see that it was Bakugo's handwriting in the notebook and looked up at him questioningly.

"You take shit notes," Bakugo told him.

Kaminari smiled softly as he looked back down at his study aides. "Thanks, Bakugo."

Bakugo's only reply was a dismissive grunt as he kept his eyes glued to his own text book.

Ten minutes into studying, they could hear Shinso's soft snoring from where he's fallen asleep on the floor. Five minutes after that, Bakugo got up and draped a blanket over him, pretending that he's gotten up to get a bottle of water. Kaminari knew it was a pretense when it ended up on his side of the table a few minutes later.

'The idiot can't talk anymore. He has to study.'

Uraraka stared at the strange text message for a few minutes, trying to decide how she should reply. She and Kaminari hadn't been texting anything particularly private, but it was still a little startling to think that someone else could potentially read their private conversation. She chewed her lip as she thought before finally settling on asking, 'Who is this?'

'His roommate.'

'Which one?' she questioned before she could think better of it. It didn't really matter which one it was, since she didn't know much about either of them. Well, outside of what she'd gathered from looking at the post on their band blog. Somehow, in the rush of everything else they had talked about, it really hadn't come up.

'The fuck does it matter?'

The grumpy one, then. Uraraka scrambled to remember what she knew of him, but all she could think of was that picture she'd seen on their band blog, with him shirtless and center stage. Her face flushed bright red and she held her phone to her chest as if to keep it from seeing.

"Talking to your boyfriend again?" Her roommate, Mina, asked as she plopped down on the couch beside her.

"No! He's not my boyfriend!" she objected immediately. "We're just talking."

"And what are you talking about?" Mina asked, moving closer.

Uraraka held her phone closer to her chest as she leaned away from her friend. "Don't be so nosy, Mina."

"This is my only joy," she said dramatically.

She stuck her tongue out at her as she moved off the couch. "Go bother Jirou," she said as she rushed into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

"Meanie!" Mina yelled after her.

Without thinking, she unlocked her phone and sent a message to Kaminari. 'My roommate is so nosy. She hasn't stopped bothering me since she saw me texting you.'

'Just tell her to fuck off,' was the reply that came not a minute later.

'I can't do that!' she answered quickly. 'That would be so mean.'

'Fine, give her the phone, I'll do it.'

'What?'

Not a minute after she sent that message, the phone rang. It was so unexpected that she almost dropped her phone and her heartbeat got twice as fast when she accidentally answered and then scrambled to hold the phone to her face. "Ye-yes!" she said stiffly.

"Put her on the phone," the voice said immediately. Uraraka felt like a bucket of water had been dropped on her. She had completely forgotten, due to Mina's interlude, that she was talking to Kaminari's roommate. That was embarrassing.

"I told you, I can't do that," she insisted. Her heartbeat was slowing down now that she knew she was talking to a stranger. "It would be rude to--"

"She's the one being rude. Are you gonna let her walk all over you?"

"Well, no, of course not," she sighed.

"Then what are you gonna do about it?" he demanded. "If you keep being polite, she'll think it's okay to do whatever she wants."

"Maybe you're right, but still..."

"Still, nothing!"

She heard a shuffling in the background, followed by Kaminari's voice asking, "Bakugo? What are you doing?"

The reply was slightly muffled and she had to assume that he covered the phone with his hand. "Shut up, I'm on the phone."

"Isn't that mi--"

"I said shut it!"

Uraraka couldn't help it, she found herself giggling helplessly at the absurdity of the exchange.

"What's so funny?" he demanded.

"Nothing, nothing," she told him. "Your name is Bakugo, right? It's nice to meet you."

Shinso leaned on the edges of his keyboard as Uraraka applauded loudly. Bakugo slammed down his drum sticks before reaching for a bottle of water and Kaminari grinned madly at her. "So you liked it?"

"You guys sounded great!" she cheered.

"Do you mean it or are you just placating us?" Shinso asked. "It's okay to hurt Kaminari's feelings."

"Hey!"

Uraraka laughed as she picked up two more bottles of water and handed them to Shinso and Kaminari. "No, I really mean it! I liked it. Your lyrics are really good, Shin."

Shinso paused where he's lifted the bottle to his lips. "Shin, huh?" he asked before continuing to drink.

She blushed but before she could say anything, Kaminari was already adding excitedly, "Right? I keep telling him he's really good."

"I still think you would make a better lead," Shinso told him. "You've got the looks for it."

"Maybe," he said uncertainly. "But you're better for the tone we're going for."

"We could go for a different tone."

Bakugo threw one of his drum sticks at Kaminari's head, making him flinch and cover the spot with his hands. "Shut up," he told them. "We'll run through each song twice and you can both have a turn."

"That's a good idea," Uraraka said. "Mind if I record you guys?"

"For personal use or for profit?" Shinso questioned wryly.

"Profit is personal," she told him solemnly.

He snickered. "Go ahead. Just send me the footage later so I can put it on our site."

"I'll need your number, first."

"Kaminari will give it to you."

It wasn't until later that she realized that she could have just sent the footage to Kaminari.

Twin flashes went off as Kaminari and Uraraka took pictures of their plates. Uraraka's plate was piled high with pasta, while Kaminari had a dessert. She almost couldn't tell what it was other than a pile of chocolate.

"You two are fucking annoying with that shit," Bakugo said grumpily before shoving his own food into his mouth.

Shinso had his head slumped over on the table, but perked up when Kaminari slid his dessert over to him. He sat up and spared a smile for him before shoving the mess of chocolate into his mouth and humming in pleasure.

Uraraka giggled. "Why do you two always do that?" she asked.

All three boys looked at her in confusion, but Kaminari was the one to answer. "Do what?" he asked. Shinso rested his head on his palm, the spoon still hanging out of his mouth, and Kaminari took the opportunity to take a picture of it.

"You always order dessert first, but then you give it to Shinso," she pointed out.

Kaminari shrugged as he put his phone down. "Desserts are the best things to take pictures of and Shinso likes them. When I tried to give them to Bakugo he got mad and accused me of trying to feed him scraps." He rolled his eyes.

Bakugo narrowed his eyes. "You got something to say about it?"

Kaminari put his hands up in surrender and shook his head, but he was smiling too widely for the gesture to look sincere. "Nope. Nothing at all."

Shinso hummed again as he took another bite of the chocolate mass. "She's right. You should eat something."

He nodded in agreement, picking up his fork and sticking it into Uraraka's plate. She squeaked in protest, waving him off, but he stole a noodle before she could stop him, smiling smugly as he shoved it into his mouth. She bent over her plate, using her arms as a barrier to protect her food. "Get your own food!" she told him sternly.

Kaminari laughed. "I was just joking! I'm not gonna steal your food. That's your work plate, right?"

Uraraka flushed a little as she sat up. "Y-yeah..."

"If I took too much, you wouldn't be able to review it properly and then what would your fans think?" He winked at her. He briefly glanced over the menu that he'd kept before handing it to her. "Here, you can pick something that we can share."

Uraraka turned red as she took the menu. "What? But, um, I..." she looked down at her food, at the menu, at his face, seemingly tongue tied as she tried to find a graceful way to decline.

"Don't worry about it," he told her. "This way you'll have more you can review, right? Plus, Bakugo always pays when we eat out on band practice days, so you can order the most expensive thing you want."

Bakugo grunted. "Who says I'm paying for your shitty date?" he grumbled.

Kaminari grinned at him, before turning the smile to Uraraka. He folded his arms on the table and laid his head down. "Try to pick something, okay?"

Her blush brightened, but she tried not to pay it any attention as she scanned the menu.

"Pick another dessert for me, too," Shinso said.

"You're gonna rot your teeth," Bakugo told him.

"Then I'll stick to the soft deserts once I do," Shinso replied immediately. "But until then, I'm going to indulge."

"At least eat some real fucking food."

"What's wrong, Bakugo? Would you like to feed me?" Shinso asked. He leaned across the table and opened his mouth.

Bakugo put a hand on his face and pushed him back in his chair. "Shut the hell up, idiot. Don't make me kill you in public."

Shinso snickered.

"You two are really cute together," Uraraka said. The silence that fell over the table just then was unexpected and she looked around at them in confusion. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, it's nothing," Kaminari spoke up.

"Bathroom," Bakugo said as he stood abruptly and left.

Shinso put his head back on the table, both him and Kaminari watching as Bakugo stormed off. "We're not actually dating," Shinso told her softly.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Uraraka apologized frantically. "I thought... because that first time..."

Shinso waved away her concern. "It's really not a big deal."

"Yeah, Bakugo is like this all the time," Kaminari assured her. "He's... pretty much always set to angry. All emotions are filtered through grumpy first. You really don't have to worry. He'll get mad if you make a big deal out of it."

"If you're sure," she reluctantly relented.

The waiter had taken their order by the time Bakugo returned. Kaminari pushed a bright green drink toward him. "I got you a drink."

"The hell is this? Neon in a glass?" Bakugo asked as he eyed the glass warily.

"It's alcohol," Shinso told him. "I'm gonna take a picture of you when you drink it."

"No."

"Just try it, you'll like it!" Kaminari told him.

Bakugo looked skeptical as he picked up the glass, but paused before lifting it to his lips. He glared at Shinso. "I swear to God, if you take a picture of this and post it on that damn hellsite of yours..."

Shinso raised his hands in surrender, leaving his phone on the table. "Fine, I won't do a thing."

Bakugo took a tiny sip from the glass. A light flashed from the opposite side of him. He looked up in surprise to see Uraraka holding her phone up and giggling. "Oops," she said, completely unrepentant.

"I'll kill you, Round Face," he said with utmost seriousness.

"Hey! None of that!" Kaminari insisted. "Not while we're in a restaurant!"

Bakugo narrowed his eyes at her as she stuck out her tongue. "I won't forget, he promised."

The rest of their food arrived. Kaminari had a platter of shrimp and after popping one of them into his mouth, the rest ended up mostly shared between Uraraka and Bakugo. Shinso got a dessert that was mostly hidden beneath piles of fruit and dribbled with strawberry syrup. Kaminari smiled as he rested his head on his folded arms, watching them all.

Bakugo and Uraraka were arguing about his stealing shrimp. Her argument was that it was supposed to be for Kaminari, while Bakugo argued that since he was paying for it, he could take whatever he wanted.

Shinso poked him with the end of his spoon. "You look happy," he said softly. "What's on your mind?"

Kaminari shook his head. "Nothing, just enjoying this."

Shinso placed his spoon in his mouth as he watched the two arguing back and forth. "Yeah, I know what you mean." He pushed his dessert towards Kaminari and wiggled the plate. "At least take a piece of fruit. For me."

Kaminari obediently took a strawberry.

Kaminari held his phone above him, trying to get the perfect angle for his selfie when someone began banging on the door, startling him with the abruptness of the sound and making him lose his grip on the phone. "Hurry the fuck up!" Bakugo yelled.

Kaminari sighed as he unlocked and opened the door. "You ruined my selfie," he said despondently.

"Like you won't just take a million more," he said with an eye roll as he pushed past Kaminari and went to the sink.

Kaminari sat on the edge of the tub, watch Bakugo brush his teeth before the blonde found his eyes in the mirror and glared at him. Kaminari changed focus to his phone, trying to find a new pose, a new angle, for his picture. They all looked terrible and he couldn't decide whether he wanted to focus on his face or his torso, but he felt like all the pictures were crap anyway. His earlier picture had been nearly perfect and he mourned its loss.

At some point Bakugo had turned around to watch him, but Kaminari didn't notice until Bakugo was wiping his mouth off and asked, "Have you lost weight?"

"No," Kaminari answered without thinking.

Bakugo scrutinized him, eyes raking over his shirtless chest, staring at his stomach, examining his arms and legs. Kaminari covered his chest self consciously. "What are you doing? Cut it out," he told him.

Bakugo marched over to him and pulled his arms away, continuing his examination. "You have," he said accusingly.

"So, what about it?" Kaminari asked as he pulled away. The move nearly made him fall into the bathtub, but Bakugo placed his hands on Kaminri's shoulders and held him in place.

"So, you don't need to lose any weight," Bakugo told him. "When was the last time you ate something?"

"What are you, my mom?" he asked. He brushed off Bakugo's touch and stood, walking out of the bathroom. Bakugo caught his arm. "What now?"

"You feeling okay?" Bakugo asked. His voice was calm, worried. It was odd not to have Bakugo yelling or growling for once.

"I'm fine," Kaminari told him. He smiled, though it didn't have the full force of his usual smiles. "You worry too much."

Bakugo let him go, but Kaminari felt his gaze lingering on him as he retreated back down the hall.

Shinso was laying on the couch, looking over Kaminari's shoulder where he sat on the floor scrolling through social media sites. He was kind of bored, and kind of tired, and maybe halfway to falling asleep when Shinso spoke.

"Hey... Are you gonna ask that Uraraka girl out?" Shinso's voice was low, quiet. Kaminari wouldn't have heard it if he'd actually been asleep. He let his head lean back on the couch and tried to look at Shinso over his shoulder with little success.

"It's not like you to ask questions like that, Shin," he replied. "Why? What's up?"

Shinso was quiet for long enough that Kaminari actually sat up and readjusted his position so that he could look at him. There was conflict in his gaze, which turned to surprise when he found that Kaminari was watching him. He looked away, half burying his head in his arms. "You remember what you said...when you went on that first date with her?"

"What did I say?" Kaminari asked without thinking.

Shinso hid himself further in his arms. "You told her that you felt like a third wheel."

His eyes widened as the memory returned to him and he scratched the back of his head nervously. "Oh yeah, I guess I did say that."

"And later, when you came back and I accused you making things up, you said that maybe you were reading the atmosphere..."

Kaminari dropped his hand and looked at Shinso more closely. "Yeah..."

"So, can you?" Shinso asked.

"Huh?"

Shinso lifted his head to look at him. "Read the atmosphere. Can you?"

Kaminari was certainly reading something in this atmosphere, but he was hesitant to attempt parsing it out and naming it. He sat up straighter, eyes never leaving Shinso, though Shinso didn't look back at him. "What should I be reading?"

"Have you noticed how much crankier Bakugo's been?"

He felt himself relaxing at that. He'd been expecting, and was glad to have that expectation dashed, that Shinso was going to talk about something more...immediate. A smile returned to his lips as he leaned on the couch. "Bakugo is always cranky. There's no reason to be concerned about that."

Shinso actually raised his head to meet Kaminari's eyes at that. "Do you really think?"

He sighed, the smile slipping off his face. Kaminari found that he was the one looking away this time. "No, not really. Do you know about it?"

"Yeah. Don't you?"

"Would I ask if I did?" he questioned angrily.

"I think you would," Shinso told him.

Kaminari didn't respond.

Shinso sat up and moved to the floor so that they were at the same level. He stared intensely at the side of Kaminari's head, but Kaminari didn't acknowledge it other than to press his lips together stubbornly. Finally, Shinso said, "He's upset because you're paying all this attention to some girl. A girl that you never mentioned before, at that. You caught him off guard. You know he hates that."

"Why would he care? He hates listening to me talk about shit he doesn't think is important."

"A girl that you were thinking of trying to date counts as important and you know it."

"I didn't know she'd say yes!"

"You know that's not the point," Shinso said fiercely. "And even if it was, you didn't tell me either. You haven't told me anything about her. I see you texting her, and she shows up to watch us practice sometimes, crashes our lunches, and you haven't told me anything." Kaminari still wasn't looking at him and Shinso had apparently gotten sick of it. He made a frustrated sound as he grabbed Kaminari's shoulders and forced him to meet Shinso's eyes. "You know I would care about that. You know that I would listen to you."

"I'm sorry, alright!" he yelled as he pushed Shinso's hands off of him. "What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to say why."

"I don't know why."

"I think you do know why," Shinso said. "I think you know and that's why you avoid talking about it. You know why Bakugo's upset and you know why you avoid talking to me, but because I haven't said anything, you think you don't have to deal with it, but you do." Shinso lowered his voice as he corrected himself. "You should."

Kaminari pulled his legs up to his chest and pressed his forehead to his knees.

"Bakugo likes you," Shinso said quietly.

"You don't know that," he said immediately.

"Alright, fine," Shinso said. "I like you and you do know that. You've known that for months. I'm not saying that Bakugo and I don't share some of the blame for not saying anything, because we do, but not talking about the fact that you're ignoring this... whatever this is, whatever it could be or could have been, that doesn't make it better. Not talking about her doesn't make it better, it makes it worse."

Kaminari didn't lift his head. He stayed stubbornly curled into a ball until he heard Shinso get up and leave. He ignored the fact that his knees were becoming wet, forcing his lips closed and trying to stay as silent as possible.

It was an hour later that Shinso came back out of his room. It was really only to head to the bathroom and he'd planned on avoiding his roommates fort he rest of the day, but Bakugo passed him in the hall and caught his arm.

"Hey," he said in a low, dangerous voice. It was a rare thing to hear Bakugo so angry without also being loud. "You made him cry."

Shinso had to swallow his guilt at that statement. It hadn't been his intention, but everything he'd said was necessary. They couldn't just ignore everything and let it continue to fester. Kaminari's guilt was obvious and being handled in the worst way possible, and Bakugo spent a lot more time growling and storming out of rooms, and it was starting to get under Shinso's skin. "That wasn't my intention," he said quietly.

"What did you say to him?" Bakugo demanded.

Shinso turned just enough to meet Bakugo's eyes. "What you should have said months ago."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Shinso sighed. "Seriously?" he asked. "I don't want to do this twice. I talked to him about Uraraka."

"Oh."

"And us."

Bakugo didn't say anything to that. He let go of Shinso's arm and turned away. Shinso started to walk back toward his room when Bakugo added, "It doesn't involve you," Bakugo said.

Shinso stopped in his tracks. The expression on his face was some mix of incredulity and angry that he didn't know how to define. "Excuse me? What did you say?"

Bakugo didn't answer, didn't move.

Shinso didn't have the energy to deal with this. "You know what? Fuck this." Shinso continued to his room and slammed the door after him.

The next few days were tense. None of them talked to each other more than necessary. Shinso stayed in his room, Bakugo was quiet and perpetually frowning, and Kaminari just tried to stay away as much as possible. He also wasn't speaking to Uraraka, at least, not directly. He skipped the classes they had together, ignored her texts, but responded to her comments on various sites that they interacted on. It was a bad compromise, ignoring her while not ignoring her, but it was all that he could think of.

"This is fucking stupid!" Bakugo said during one of the rare moments that they were all in the same room.

Kaminari had been sitting at the table, staring at his phone as it vibrated on the table, alerting him to messages that he wouldn't answer.

Shinso was pretending to study and pretending to listen to music at the same time. Bakugo knew that he was pretending, having seen his eyes follow them around the room when either of them moved and the way he reacted to Bakugo's abrupt statement.

Bakugo had been in the kitchen, angrily shuffling around food that he wasn't cooking while he watched the two of them. In fact, of the three of them, only Kaminari hadn't been preoccupied watching the room, and that honestly pissed him off even more. "Just fucking call her already!" he yelled, staring straight at Kaminari, whose eyes were wide like a deer caught in headlights.

"Wha-- I..." Kaminari swallowed thickly, clearly not knowing what to say.

Bakugo stormed over to the table, snatching Kaminari's phone off the table, and scrolling through his contacts. This kicked Kaminari into action as he tried to grab his phone back, but Bakugo was having none of that.

"Wait, no! I'm not ready!"

"Too fucking bad," Bakugo said. "I refuse to watch your dumb ass mope over something that isn't even a problem."

"But Shinso--"

"Who gives a fuck what Shinso said?" he yelled. He could see Shinso thinning his lips out the corner of his eye, but he didn't protest. "Who is this helping?" he asked. "You aren't talking to us! You aren't talking to her! What's the point of that?"

Kaminari flinched like he'd been slapped. Bakugo didn't care. Maybe he needed to be slapped. He'd been upset with Shinso for butting in, but he'd known, even then, that it was the right move. It irritated Bakugo that he was doing the same thing, sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. But fuck it! Uraraka was kind of his friend too, at this point, and if you couldn't give advice to your roommates, then who could you talk to?

"We see you every fucking day, so at least we know what's going on," he continued. "She doesn't know shit! How is that fair to her? You go out of your way to bring yourself to her attention and then you just fucking ignore her?"

Kaminari shrunk into himself, eyes glued to the floor. "I don't know what to say."

"Tell her what's going on," Shinso suggested.

"I don't know what's going on!" Kaminari shouted at them. "I don't know...what to say. I don't know what to think..."

"Alright," Shinso said, shutting the book in his lap and putting his headphones aside. "Then let's figure out what's going on." Both Bakugo and Kaminari turned their attention to him. "Instead of ignoring everything, let's actually talk about this."

Bakugo huffed and looked away.

Kaminari bit his lip in hesitation.

Shinso held out his hand, meeting Kaminari's eyes. "Come over here."

Kaminari hesitated a moment longer before walking across the room to take Shinso's hand. Shinso smiled at him as he wrapped his hand around Kaminari's. He choose not to sit on the couch beside Shinso, instead deciding to take a seat on the floor beside him.

"Isn't this better?" Shinso asked. "Instead of trying to wildly ignore every thing, we can just... deal with it, talk about it, and not jump down each other throats or push each other away."

Kaminari slumped against the back of the couch. "I'm... sorry," he whispered.

Shinso nodded, holding tight to his hand, but didn't say anything. He looked up to meet Bakugo's gaze, which was watching them steadily. He tilted his head in question, but Bakugo just shook his head, choosing not to join them by the couch. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, letting the space between them fill with silence.

"Who wants to go first?" Shinso asked when no one else did.

"This is stupid," Bakugo said.

"What's stupid?" Shinso asked.

"This... this entire thing is stupid," he insisted. "This whole situation."

"Alright," Shinso said neutrally. "Let's make it less stupid. What do you suggest?"

Bakugo didn't answer. When he lowered his gaze to Kaminari, he was also silent, just shifting his gaze down to look at the floor and squeezing Shinso's hand.

"What do you want?" Shinso asked. "What do either of you want?"

They didn't answer. Shinso knew this conversation would be like pulling teeth. That was probably why they hadn't bothered to have it in the first place. Instead they just danced around each other with Kaminari giving him desserts and Bakugo paying for their lunches and Shinso taking dumb pictures of them. Would they have ever broke out of that holding pattern if Kaminari hadn't decided to make a move on Uraraka?

Shinso sighed. He moved off the couch to sit next to Kaminari. "Let's start small," he told them. "I would like it if we weren't avoiding each other all the time."

"Yeah," Kaminari finally spoke up. "I'd like that. I hate it when we fight."

"We fight all the time," Bakugo said.

"This is different!" he objected. "You know this is different." They lapsed into another short silence. Shinso thought he'd have to be the guiding force in the conversation again, but Kaminari surprised him by continuing his thought. "I like how it was before," he admitted. "I never had to think about this stuff. Leaning against Bakugo or holding Shin's hand or anything like that. It was just... something I could do without it needing to be a big deal."

"You made it a big deal," Bakugo said. "You're the one that decided to change things."

"I know," he admitted quietly.

"And you can't do that anymore. We can't do that," Bakugo continued. "Not thinking about it." He held his hand up, balling it into a tight fist. "I never thought about any of this, but I knew... I hate that you made me think about this and that you made me think of it because you were threatening to take it away. I was... fucking comfortable with you assholes!"

"Must have been a rude awakening for you," Shinso said.

Bakugo glared, but it didn't seem angry. Rather, the anger wasn't really directed at him.

"Sorry," Kaminari said again. "I didn't... I don't know."

Shinso rubbed his thumb over the back of Kaminari's hand, letting his head fall onto the back of the couch. "I kind of expected this," he admitted. "In the beginning. I liked how things were, so I never thought it was going to last. But I didn't think that Bakugo would get so attached. I didn't think he was attached to anything, lest of all this... not until that first day..."

Bakugo turned away from them, his face red.

"Bakugo?" Kaminari called out. He waited until he had Bakugo's gaze before holding out his hand.

Bakugo visibly wavered at the offer, but eventually moved across the room to take Kaminari's hand. He let himself drop face down on the couch. Shinso leaned his head next to Bakugo's.

"What do you want, Shin?" Kaminari questioned.

Shinso sighed, drawing his knees up to his chest. "Any version of this that I can get," he admitted softly.

Uraraka sighed as she placed her head on her desk, staring at her phone. She was constantly switching between sites, refreshing pages, checking forums and messages and comments to no avail.

"He still hasn't messaged you?" Jirou asked from her position on her bed. She had a notebook open on her lap, but Uraraka wasn't sure if she was studying or working on song lyrics. She should really try to introduce her to Shinso and the others, see if they got along with their music talk. If Kaminari ever spoke to her again, that was.

It was true that she had Shinso's number, and he had given her a bare bones update of 'I don't think he ate today, we didn't really talk, but he's alive.' that failed to make her less worried in the slightest.

"No," she answered. "And he didn't come to class either."

"Maybe he's sick?" Jirou suggested.

"Maybe."

She was glad that Mina wasn't here, because she would have have been offering ideas and theories that, while probably good natured, would only increase her worry. She was already plenty worried.

She jumped when her phone finally vibrated and it took her a whole minute to process that she'd gotten a message and to make her body move to answer it. Her heart leapt into her throat when she saw that it was from Kaminari, only to plummet again when she actually read it.

'Sorry that the idiot has been ignoring you. He's been going through something. Also, he's an idiot. Maybe I mentioned.'

Despite herself, the comment made her laugh. It was a weak laugh, but it eased the worry that was held in her chest, if only marginally.

'Why do you have his phone?' she asked. If she wasn't going to be able to talk to Kaminari himself, she could at least try to get answers.

'I took it because he was being an idiot.'

Of course. Uraraka rolled her eyes at that answer. She really should have expected as much from Bakugo. She'd only known him a little while, but he was pretty easy to figure out.

'You use that word a lot.'

'Do I need another word?'

'You could stand to branch out a little.'

'Fuck you!'

There really was an easiness to talking to Bakugo that she wouldn't have expected if it wasn't for that first time he'd texted her on Kaminari's phone. She didn't realize that she was smiling until Jirou spoke again.

"You look better. Did he text you after all?"

She blushed slightly, unsure how to explain herself for a moment before just stuttering out, "Um, yeah..."

She hesitated before typing out her message and hesitated again before sending it. There was nothing wrong with what she was doing and she reminded herself of this before she gathered enough courage to do it.

'You could just send me your number or get mine from his contacts and stopped stealing from him.'

She already had Shinso's number, so it wouldn't be weird. She should calm down. There was no reason for her heart to be beating so fast as she waited for her reply.

She got a message from an unknown number. 'Why would I want to talk to you?'

The amount of relief that flooded her was unreasonable. 'I could ask you that questions, seeing that this is the second time.'

'Fuck off, Round Face.'

"Round Face..." she repeated. She couldn't stop herself from giggling helplessly. She had to admit, Bakugo was pretty good at making her feel better.

Bakugo was at the stove when Kaminari stumbled into the kitchen and went to sit at the table. Shinso was slumped underneath it, making Kaminari assumed that he'd fallen asleep and fell out of his chair. He had a hard time keeping his eyes open and was halfway to falling asleep when Bakugo placed a plate on the table before him. "Here," he said. "I haven't seen you eat in days and I don't like it."

"You watch me eat?" Kaminari asked.

Bakugo just glared. "You'd better finish the whole thing, or I'll kill you." He walked around the table to poke Shinso awake.

"You really do worry too much," Kaminari told him.

"Someone has to." He pulled Shinso upright and then into the chair before giving him a plate as well. "Also, you have a test next week and Uraraka's coming over to help you study."

Kaminari sat up in his seat, dropping his fork. "What? I'm not ready for that!"

"Too bad. You can't avoid her forever and you skipped class anyway, so this is as good of an excuse as any."

"No..." Kaminari groaned, putting his head in his hands. "Wait," he said as he lifted his head to look at Bakugo. "How do you know?"

Bakugo handed Kaminari his phone. "I texted her. We worked it out."

"When did you..." Kaminari hit himself on the forehead. "I never got my phone back yesterday."

Bakugo grinned before digging into his food. "You have until three to get yourself together."

Kaminari groaned loudly.

Bakugo ended up tutoring them both. He wasn't in their class, but Bakugo was smart and Kaminari had asked him for help before. It started with Uraraka explaining things that he'd missed and sharing her notes, but then Kaminari started asking questions that she didn't know the answers to and they both started flipping through the text book trying to find the answers and it broke down from there.

Bakugo was apparently annoyed at having to watch them struggle on something that he considered easy, so he multitasked berating them and actually tutoring them, explaining the concepts to them both and finding the relevant passages in the books.

"Wow, Bakugo! You're really smart," she smiled.

"What? Did you expect different?" he asked.

When Shinso came home, he sat on the couch, using the book on his lap as an excuse to stay in the living room and throw snarky commentary at them. It got the biggest rise out of Bakugo, but occasionally Uraraka would join in or snark back, which only got more of a reaction from Bakugo.

Kaminari for the most part was just amused. Amused and happy and... warm. This was what he was missing when they were all at odds. This was what he'd wanted. More days like this where they just hung out and snarked and studied, more days when she watched them have band practice and they went out for lunch, more days where he and Uraraka took pictures for their blogs and Bakugo criticized and Shinso smiled at him when he passed over his dessert.

There was an idea forming in his mind, but it was too big, too bright, for him to focus on at the moment. He tucked it away for later and tried to focus more on his book.

Kaminari went to Shinso's room later that night. Shinso had already told them what he wanted, so he would be the easiest to talk to. The door was unlocked. It was pretty late, he'd spent a lot of time procrastinating, but Shinso often had insomnia, so Kaminari was pretty sure he'd be awake. Shinso was under the covers, but Kaminari could make out the light of his phone. He hesitated before closing the door softly behind him and slipping into the bed behind Shinso.

Shinso paused for a moment, but continued whatever he was doing on his phone. "Can't sleep?" he questioned softly.

Kaminari moved closer, pressing his forehead into Shinso back tentatively. Shinso's weight shifted slightly to press back against him and he felt himself relax at the easy acceptance. "I wanted to talk," Kaminari told him.

"And you felt better doing it in the dark?" Shinso questioned. Kaminari didn't answer and Shinso didn't press. "That's understandable. What did you want to talk about?"

"You said the other day,"Kaminari began slowly, "That you wanted this. Wanted..."

"All of us, together," Shinso finished. "Whatever that has to mean."

"What if you couldn't have that?" Kaminari asked. "What if you had to choose?"

Shinso sighed. "I wouldn't," he told him. "I said that I wanted whatever version of 'this' that I could have. If I had to choose, that would be something different. It would be easier to just stay friends if that was the case."

Kaminari moved closer, hesitantly wrapping an arm around Shinso’s waist. Shinso leaned into the touch, phone forgotten, leaving them in complete darkness when the screen went off. "What about... Uraraka?"

"What about her?" Shinso questioned. "If you're asking if I'd be against her..." he shrugged and Kaminri felt the movement rather than saw it. "You and Bakugo get along with her really well and I don't mind her."

Kaminari let out a breath in relief.

"That's a conversation you'd have to have on your own, though."

"I know."

"What about you?" Shinso questioned. "If you had to choose between her and us, would you? Could you?"

"I don't think I have," Kaminari answered carefully. "No matter, you guys are still my friends and we're still roommates."

"That's not what I meant." Shinso rolled over in his arms. They still couldn't see each other, but Kaminari could feel Shinso's breath on his face. His heartbeat sped up a little. "Kaminari... are you asking?"

"I don't know," he answered breathlessly. There was electricity running under his skin. "What if Bakugo doesn't want us?"

Shinso brought his hands up to cup Kaminari's face and brought their foreheads together. "You know he does, you're just afraid to ask."

"I don't know if she'll want to," he said.

"You don't," Shinso agreed. "What will you do if she says no?"

"I don't want her to say no," he whispered.

"I know."

Kaminari closed his eyes, placing his hands on top of Shinso's and leaning into the touch. "Shin..."

"Are you asking?" Shinso questioned once more.

Kaminari nodded.

"Then ask me, Kam."

Kaminari took a deep breath and gripped Shinso's hands tighter. Knowing the answer didn't make him feel less nervous. "Hey, Shinso?"

"Yes?"

"Will you...go out with me?"

Shinso laughed as he answered. "Yeah... Yeah I will."

Bakugo was actually easy, compared to how much emotion had been spent already. They had band practice that day, so they ran through their routine like normal. They went their separate ways early for classes and met up for lunch before going to practice. Kaminari was vibrating with nervousness even as he took his usual pictures, so much so that he didn't realize Shinso had ordered for him until he was pushing an ice cream sundae his way and Shinso was pushing a plate in front of him in return.

"Huh? What's this?" Kaminari asked.

"Yours," Shinso told him. "You don't eat when you're nervous. We've all noticed and you're starting to loose weight."

Kaminari's gaze slid toward Bakugo at that. "Yeah, I told him," Bakugo said immediately. "Got a problem with that?"

Kaminari shook his head. He didn't really eat his food at first, just pushed it around with his fork. Bakugo was starting to growl under his breath, clearly irritated. Shinso took that moment to ask, "Hey, Bakugo, wanna date us?"

Bakugo spilled his water. He did not knock over the glass and only a small amount splashed on him. He still glared at Shinso when he replied. "You did that on purpose."

Shinso grinned in response.

"Fucker," Bakugo grumbled. "I guess I don't have a choice. You idiots wouldn't know what to do without me."

"Really?" Kaminari perked up. "You mean it?" He leaned across the table toward him.

"I said yes! Don't get so..." Bakugo folded his arms as he blushed, then unfolded them to push Kaminari back in his seat. "It's not that big a deal."

"It is!" Kaminari insisted. "You really want us?"

Bakugo glared at him for a long moment before he relented and answered. "Fucking yes, alright! I like you two nutcases. For reasons that are far beyond me."

Kaminari lit up. Shinso smiled at the sight. Bakugo tried to busy himself with his meal.

"So how are we gonna do this?" Bakugo asked them as they they were leaving the restaurant.

Kaminari had squeezed himself between the two of them and was talking pictures that Bakugo refused to smile for and Shinso snickered at. He was practically glowing, his smile was so bright. Bakugo didn't want to admit how happy he was to see Kaminari this happy again, but the looks Shinso kept sending him meant that he was probably not as covert about his feelings as he thought he was.

"What do you mean?" Kaminari asked as he began uploading the picture to various sites.

Shinso linked an arm through Kaminari's and guided him away from a few obstacles that he likely would have tripped over. Bakugo tugged on a lock of his hair. "Pay attention, idiot."

"Hmm?" Kaminari looked up, questioning eyes landing on Bakugo.

The fact that Bakugo thought it was cute had nothing to do with Bakugo's reddening face or the fact that he pushed his head back down into his phone. "Nothing! Forget it! Look at your damn phone!"

Shinso laughed even louder.

"Shut up!" Bakugo yelled.

"You're answering your own question," Shinso told him. "This is how it would work. Just like it has been."

Bakugo thought about that for a minute. Thought about band practice, and Shinso's snark, Kaminari's cheer, Bakugo's own tendency to...care... about them, loudly and fiercely and... He supposed he had answered his own question. Except for one thing.

"What about Uraraka?" he asked, voice quiet.

"That," Kaminari spoke up, "Is your decision." He didn't look up from his phone as he answered. "Shin and I talked about this. He doesn't care too much and I really like it, but I..." He clutched his phone tightly in his hands. "I don't want to do anything without talking to you guys again." He looked at Bakugo shyly, face red.

Bakugo placed his hand on Kaminari's head. "Learned your lesson, huh?"

"Trying to," he muttered.

Bakugo stopped them all from moving, leaning closer to Kaminari and catching Shinso's gaze. "If we add her, I want that to be it. No one else. And if she says no, that's it, just us."

Kaminari nodded.

"I agree, of course," Shinso said. "You two are the only assholes I need."

Kaminari smiled at him before looking back to Bakugo, who was still leaning close to him. Kaminari bit his lip for a moment before he asked, "Can I kiss you?"

Bakugo jerked at the questioned, stiffening in surprise. He could feel himself blushing again, could feel Shinso's gaze on him. He looked away as he answered. "Whatever. I'm not gonna stop you."

Kaminari took Bakugo's face in his hands as he moved closer. "Look at me," he whispered. Bakugo did, his blush deepening in response. "Thank you," Kaminari said as he leaned closer and pressed their lips together. He heard the click as Shinso took a picture, causing Kaminari to break the kiss with burst of laughter.

Bakugo growled. "Shin, if you post that anywhere!"

"I won't, I won't," Shinso replied through his own laughter. "This is for me. I want a picture of my favorite people together."

Bakugo put a hand over his face as he grumbled, "What did I get myself into?"

'Hey, I have a question.' Uraraka was surprised when she looked at her phone to find the message was from Bakugo and not Kaminari, who had been texting her like normal since their study session.

'What is it?' she replied.

'You like us, right?'

Uraraka gave her phone a look, but she was well aware that he couldn't see her. 'Huh? What kind of question is that? Of course I do.'

'Wanna date us?'

"What?" Uraraka shrieked loudly, falling out of her chair and dropping her phone in surprise. She was really glad that neither of her roommates were around to see her massive freak out and question her. As it was, Uraraka snatched up her phone and slammed the call button. He answered on the second ring. "What? What What?" she asked loudly.

"You don't have to yell," Bakugo replied. "We can hear you."

"What are you even asking me?" she continued to yell, too caught off guard to moderate her volume.

"Do. You Want. To. Date. Us?" he repeated slowly.

His words finally sank into her mind and she questioned, "Wait, us?"

"You heard me."

"Us?" she repeated. "By us, you mean..."

Bakugo growled impatiently. "Us!" he repeated. "Me, Shin, Kam. Do you want to date us? It's a yes or no question."

Uraraka's head was utterly spinning. She hadn't seen this coming at all. It was true that she got along with them better than she'd expected and she had all of their numbers at this point, but still! Kaminari was... cute, true, and they had a lot in common. Bakugo was grumpy, but secretly really caring and he often made her laugh. Shinso was easy to talk to and fun to snark with. But! She hadn't considered... this!

"Are... are you serious?" she asked faintly.

"Do I sound like I'm joking?" he asked. He didn't. He definitely didn't. But how would that even work? She must have taken to long to answer, since Bakugo added, "If you don't want to, just say so!"

"Give me a minute to think about this!" she yelled back. "You can't just drop a truck on me and expect me to be ready!"

"Why did we let him do this?" She heard Shinso question in the background.

"Give me the phone," Kaminari's muffled voice demanded. There was a shuffling, Bakugo's growling, before she heard Kaminari's voice loud and clear. "Sorry about him. I didn't think he would... I don't know what I was expecting."

"Kaminari," she said, "Was he serious?"

"Yeah. Um..." he paused a moment before he explained. "The guys and I talked some things out and... we like you. Bakugo and I like you. And we like each other. So, Shin and Bakugo and I decided to, um, date each other. And since we like you..." he trailed off.

Uraraka let that sink in. They were dating. The three of them. Dating. They wanted to date her. Three boys wanted to date her.

Well, two, of the three. And how does that work?

"It works however we want it to," Kaminari answered.

"I said that out loud!" she pressed a hand to her mouth, feeling herself blush in embarrassment.

Kaminari laughed. "You did, but that's good. We should talk about this, if we're gonna do it. So you can say whatever you want and ask us whatever you want."

Uraraka leaned again her desk. "Why... why me?" she asked.

Kaminari laughed again, happier this time. "Are you kidding? It's because we like you! You're cute and sweet and fun. Of course we like you."

"I think you're alright, too," Shinso said in the background, making her laugh. That was exactly the kind of response that she expected from him.

"Can I come over to talk about this?" she asked.

"Of course," he told her. She had been trying not to think of things like this, but she already knew how she felt. "Kaminari... Um... yes!" she told him.

"Really?" he asked happily.

"Yeah..."

"She said yes!" he said to the others.

"Not surprised," Shinso responded.

"Good," Bakugo grunted.

"You can come over whenever you feel like, but we can also work things out now if you want," Kaminari told her.

"Um... can I talk to Shinso?" she asked.

"Huh? Uh, sure." Kamimari passed the phone over and she waited anxiously.

"Congrats, you've gotten three new boyfriends," Shinso said immediately.

She blushed. She was so glad her dorm mates weren't around and she wasn't sure how she would possibly explain this to them. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"I figured."

"Are we actually... you and me, I mean?"

"Are we dating? Yes," he answered simply. "It's a package deal. One for all and all for one, as they say. I'm not... as interested in you as they are, but I like you well enough and I won't be... upset about this."

"So about..." she paused, holding her phone tighter and lowering her head, hiding her bright blush from the room at large despite being alone. "K-kissing... and stuff..."

"What about it?" he asked. "Do you want a kiss?"

She made a loud sound in the back of her throat that was between surprise and something dying in her throat. It was really embarrassing and Shinso laughed really hard. "Don't laugh at me!"

"Sorry, sorry," Shinso said. "You're just really cute."

She was increasingly glad that this was a phone call. She really didn't want to see the expression that he was making or have them staring at how embarrassed she was. "Don't tease me."

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but if you think I'm not going to tease you, you should probably back out of this now."

"Don't tell her that!" Kaminari objected in the background.

"It's not like she didn't know that," Shinso replied. "Anyway, all that's up to you. I'm not particularly interested in it right now, but it doesn't mean I never will be. If we want to, we will, and if we don't, we won't. Simple as that."

"It's not simple at all," she grumbled.

"It is if you want it to be," he told her. "You all worry too much. It really is as simple or as complicated as you make it."

"Good thing we have you to keep out heads on straight," Kaminari said.

"Yeah, good thing."

"Good thing you idiots have me around to keep everything else straight," Bakugo said.

"He's feeling neglected," Shinso said.

"Let me talk to him?" Uraraka asked.

Shinso passed the phone over.

"What?" Bakugo asked immediately.

"Bakugo, thank you. For being the one to ask," she told him.

"Whatever. Next time, say yes faster instead of making me wait!" Instead of making him worry, she knew he meant.

"I'm sorry," she told him.  "Thanks for being so patient with me."

"Wow! Bakugo knows how to cook?" Uraraka asked cheerfully as she and Kaminari watched him in the kitchen. The two of them were sitting close together on the couch, scrolling through their phones.

"Yeah, he's really good at it!" Kaminari cheered. "I don't know what we'd do without him."

Shinso was sitting on the floor with three books open in front of him and his pencil hanging out the corner of his mouth. "You would keep losing weight and all your photos would start to suck. I would never wake up because you can't make a decent cup of coffee to save my life."

"Hey! My coffee isn't that bad," Kaminari pouted. "And my pictures would never suck."

"Don't worry, I'll get him back on track," Uraraka said. "I'll take him with me when I review things and make him eat some of everything that I try."

"No fair," he grumbled.

"That's what you get for getting into unhealthy eating habits," Bakugo told him. "And if you even try to waste any of my food, I'll shove it down your throat myself."

"Keep your kink out of the kitchen," Shinso said.

"Shut up!" Bakugo yelled.

Uraraka laughed, leaning into Kaminari's side. He smiled as he watched her, as he watched Bakugo and Shinso's back and forth. He was pretty sure he was the happiest that he'd ever been and he owed it all to them.

Read the follow-up, Overcast Trigger, here.

[angstymarshmallow]

Fifty-fifty (Zig x MC)

[A little note: I was kind of annoyed with The Junior chapter this week; mostly because MC kind of abandoned her LI just to hang with a bunch of rich kids? In any case I wrote something different, an AU with a scenario where my MC goes home instead of helping with the prank from chapter 4].

[Summary: After leaving their apartment after their emotional fight, Dia (MC) finds herself hanging with a different crowd. It doesn’t take long for her to realize the only place she wanted to be is home with Zig].

The cool yet crispy midnight air did little to quell the boiling rage building inside her chest. It threatened to burst under the weight of their relationship, the strain that had lingered over the past several weeks since the fall quarter began.

It was rare for her to be this angry, and even rarer to feel this out of control after spending an entire year thinking things would be different. After being happier than she had ever been in a long time. Now that she was nearly a block outside of their apartment kicking pebbles underneath her boots; the only company she had was her own ears, pounding slightly against the sound of cars whizzing by. And she could feel a slight tremble that resonated from her hands as she shoved them angrily inside her suede jacket.

She grumbled as she stormed the sidewalk, boots clicking with undeterred impatience. She shoved people out of the way while she passed. Some swore at her – looking just as angry at the interruption, while others gave her a wide berth as though realizing she was in no mood for an apology. But none of it mattered. None of it mattered because all she could think about was his words, and as angry as they were – they had shaken her confidence. They terrified her when she thought of us with a big question mark.

Dia felt the corner of her eyes sting at just the thought. She wiped them hastily aside, still angry and mortified all at once that she had almost cried in front of him. She never cried in front of anyone. And she didn’t want to start now. It was all a matter of bottling back everything inside. And knowing she was so close to bursting the dam inside her chest, made it difficult for her to think about him without feeling choked up and afraid.

They yelled at each other, threw names around when she mentioned how upsetting it was for him to constantly be on the phone with his mom – at least seven times a day ; while she had trouble finding time to write in peace.

But she was the one that left.

After promising she would never again abandon him in the middle of an argument, all she had done was turn on her heels and ran at the first sign of trouble.

She was a mess.

A sobbing, emotional mess – the very last thing she had ever wanted to be.

What have you done to me Ortega?

She spent some time wandering on her own, lost inside her thoughts. She nearly stubbed her toe more than once until reality came sinking back in. She felt torn between wanting to go home to fix things and apologize, while the rest of her wanted to avoid him and their home at all costs.

She brushed a pale strand of hair from out of her face and sighed. She stared helplessly up to the bleak sky, leaning against the side of the building and wishing desperately for some sort of guidance to night.

Someone called her name.

She sat upright, straightening her shoulders her eyes darted towards the familiar voice.

She frowned slightly at the sight of Nathan; one of the seniors she met recently standing several paces away.

His hands were inside his pockets. “Hey.”

Not knowing what else to say or do, Dia blinked at him before wiping her eyes again. She felt self-conscious but didn’t know how to break the uncomfortable silence that had now fallen between them until he smiled. “Hey.”

“You look a little upset.”

She snorted. That was the understatement of the year.

“Are you doing okay, Dia?” She was surprised by the amount of concern in his voice, as though he actually cared what happened to her.

And despite how little they knew about each other, his expression still softened at the sight of her shrugging and avoiding his stare directly. Nathan was alright by all accounts, but sometimes – she felt something pricking her near the back of her mind that something wasn’t right about him. Still, she ignored it and decided that whether her intuition was wrong or not, it didn’t change the fact that he was here right now – glancing expectantly as he waited for an answer.

And what was she supposed to say? Did she look okay? Half-tired, half-shaken and ready to collapse at any given moment to the pavement beneath her feet. “No.” She replied shortly, running her fingers through her hair. “I feel like a giant mess.” She admitted slowly.

She didn’t want to talk about it – not to someone she barely knew. She had a hard time figuring her own whirlwind of feelings to begin with and settled with a vague answer instead. “It was just…a stupid fight with my boyfriend.” She exhaled harshly, nodding to herself more than to him.

“Oh,” he offered her a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He cleared his throat, “I’m sure all you two need is to talk about it, I know communication is key for pretty much every relationship.”

She nodded mutely, not bothering to respond. He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t heard before. Countless of people told her similar versions of the same thing – trust and communication went both ways, and for someone like her neither of those had ever come easy.

Except with Zig – it somehow worked. All of it. She was letting go of all her familiar notions of shutting people out when he was around her – he made her want to be better because with Zig it was always different. And it only took her storming out of their home and wandering the streets aimlessly to realize that.

“I’ll tell you what,” Nathan’s interruption drew her from out of her thoughts. He draped a friendly arm across her shoulders. “How about I take you back to the clubhouse and we drink a little to talk about what’s bothering you.”

Dia hesitated.

“And if anything else – you’d be in a safe space just to breathe for a little bit and we’ll even head out of town.” He added hopefully.

She bit her lower lip and searched his eyes for a moment.

-

Several Hours Later

She shouldn’t be here.

They weren’t her friends. They weren’t people that spent the last two years getting to know her. She didn’t know their little quirks, the little things that mattered and she couldn’t help but feel out of place as Beau chatted animatedly between them.

The drinks made it a little easier to keep up. Dia wasn’t made from money and didn’t care for it, but nevertheless she laughed at nearly every joke; and almost knocked over Kassidy’s drink when she offered to get new ones.

And yet the moment when she allowed her thoughts to drift, the second she wasn’t paying attention – all her thoughts lead back to Zig. What was doing at home without her? Was he still angry? Should she call him?

She glanced at her phone more than once; fingers hovering over her screen as she decided what to do. She had almost forgotten to listen to the rest of Beau’s story until he interrupted her quiet brooding with a question.

“I’m sorry what?” She frowned faintly, drawing her attention back to them.

“Earth to Dia?” Kassidy waved a hand in front of her. “We thought we lost you for a second.”

She shook her head, “no I’m fine. I – I just need a second.” She excused herself quickly, not bothering to explain once she caught sight of Claire again – another mild annoyance after the confrontation they all had with her earlier.

As soon as her feet hit the pavement from out of the club, she inhaled deeply. She glanced worriedly at her phone again; swiping through the last messages she sent to Zig – finding herself at odds with guilt and anger; yet realizing how much she missed him after their argument earlier.

“You sure you’re okay Dia?”

Dia glanced back, surprised to see the worried frown on Nathan’s face. She supposed she had forgotten to enjoy herself again. Shrugging wordlessly, she leaned near the door’s entrance; pressing her back into the wall as she thought of a suitable answer. “I don’t know…I guess I’m just still bummed about my argument.”

He nodded sympathetically, “that’s perfectly understandable.” He murmurs, “it only just happened – you’re still processing.”

“But that’s just it –” she lets out an aggravated breath, “I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Maybe talking about it is what you need, not drinking your problems away.” He offered quietly.

She stared off into the distance, not meeting his patient stare as she shrugged. “What’s there to say? I flew off the handle because I was angry at him for always…for always being the perfect kid,” she squeezed her eyes shut. “He’s constantly checking in with his mom, telling her about his day – about how Sophie’s doing,” she exhaled sharply. “And maybe apart of me is just so damn jealous because I’ve never had that, not in a long time at least with my own parents.”

She dropped her hands to her sides, digging her nails into her skin until they turned pink. “And maybe…maybe seeing and hearing it everyday made me fly off the handle.”

She glanced up at him then, her shoulders sagging by her own admission. “Maybe I wasn’t being there for him the way I’m supposed to be. I love him, and I want what’s best for him.” She continued shakily; now that she started – she couldn’t stop.

“He’s been so excited about college – ever since the beginning of last year. And all he wants is to succeed, and for his sister to succeed. He wants his mom to know everything about what’s going on because he wants to make her proud. How can I be mad at him for that just because –” she stopped short, biting her lower lip before she could finish her sentence. Just because my own relationship with my mom has gone to shit. “I should be happy for him…” She trailed off for a moment, “I am happy for him. He is making his mom proud. He’s making me proud.” She finished finally. Suddenly feeling overwhelmed by her own feelings for him, she blushed and cleared her throat – filling the sudden quiet space with an off-beat smile.

The answer was so clear now that she had the proper time to think about it. It wasn’t simple as black and white – as with everything, their relationship could be grey too. And finding greyer layers was the only way for compromise to work.

“Well what are you waiting for?” Nathan inclined his head at her, “shouldn’t you be telling him all this and not me?”

She nodded slowly, letting his words wash over her. Letting her own words sink in. They were bigger than a petty fight – bigger than the next one they’ll probably have; she couldn’t forget that and no matter what, she wasn’t going to let him down anymore.

No more running.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re good at listening?” She shook her head and continued before he could speak. “Thanks, I think I should just go – this prank thing wasn’t my cup of tea anyway.”

“Oh.” He seemed a little surprised but didn’t stop her once she swept past him.

“Dia! Dia what the hell?! Where are you going?”

She heard Beau’s voice angrily snapping her away from her phone as she logged into her uber app. “Yeah, I’m bailing on all of this.” She gestured at him.”

He scowled, “you really going to let Claire get away with talking so much shit?’

“Yup.” Dia responded without missing a beat, giving him and Kassidy a shrug. “I’m not a fan of stupid pranks and frankly I don’t really care enough to begin with.” She gave Nathan a small smile, “My uber’s on the way here – but thanks for the advice.” To the rest of them she jerked her chin, “and thanks for the invite out.”

Beau grumbled something hotly under his breath and turned away while Kassidy gave Dia an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that, he…gets that way sometimes.” She summarized lamely, “but get home safe okay? Let us know if you need anything.”

Still surprised by how genuinely kind they were,Dia only managed a nod before excusing herself to find the right street for her ride.

“Take care Dia!” Nathan called, “don’t be a stranger.”

Her response was lost to the sound of cars blaring as she jay-walked across the street; hoping to find herself home as quickly as possible.

-

On the ride home, Dia thought of several different scenarios, all in which her apologies to her boyfriend had sounded flat. Saying sorry had never been something she was good at and every attempt at saying an apology whether out loud or in her head fell flat. Uncomfortably so that she wanted to kick herself for having been in this situation to begin with.

Every word failed to carry any depth of real sincerity – it sounded too rehearsed and impractical until she had abandoned all hopes of convincing herself – let alone him that she was more than sorry; she was wrong.

She sunk lower inside her seat as she watched streets blur by her, and each road they turned into brought her closer to him – yet farther away from believing in herself.

What had happened to her quiet resilience and confidence half an hour ago? Where did it go?

By the time she left the car and had stared up at the impassive apartment building, her stomach knotted into nerves. Without thinking she checked her phone and traced her fingers fondly through messages they had sent to each other earlier.

They gave her the confidence booster she never thought she would have ever needed.

You can do this.

Nodding to herself, she released a sigh before entering the building and walking promptly towards the elevator.

-

The apartment was quiet.

As Dia closed the door softly behind her and flipped on the closest light switch, she was surprised to see Zig half naked; huddled with a blanket on the couch with his math texts sprawled out across the coffee table and his favourite T- shirt draped across the back of the couch.

Her heart nearly melted at the sight and every word she thought she had prepared herself for; braced herself for – was non-existent.

She walked over softly, careful not to wake him as she tucked the blankets around his lean body.

The moment her hands accidentally slid near his ribs, he squirmed and his eyes flew open. “Woops,” Dia mumbled; suddenly remembering how ticklish he was. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” She added sheepishly, dragging her eyes back to his.

His dark eyes were sleepy, still tinged with fatigue as they rapidly blinked up at her.

It took only a minute for him to adjust and suddenly his whole posture changed. His jaw locked tight – a telltale sign that he was angry but there was no missing the relief in his eyes when he caught her hand. “You’re back.”

“Yes.” She said simply, squeezing his hand.

He moved to make room and she sat on the couch beside him. He hadn’t let go of her hand but he made no effort to cuddle with her either. She imagined there was still some bitterness left behind because she ran instead of meeting the problem head-on.

“I’m sorry Zig,” She said finally, interrupting the silence first. All the ideas inside her head of apologizing had disappeared and instead, she tried speaking from her heart. “I…I was angry at you, and you were angry at me. And somehow through it – we stopped listening to each other.” She stared at the floor in front of her. “I ran away, and I didn’t mean to make things worse –”

Zig leaned over then, wrapping her inside his arms and burying his face into her neck. “I was so worried about you.” He whispered against her skin.

She slammed her eyes shut and leaned into him. “I know, I’m sorry I worried you.”

“When you left like that – I didn’t know if you were coming back.” She could hear a slight tremor in his voice. “I was scared you wouldn’t come back.”

“Zig,” she wrapped her hands around his back. “I would never leave you,” and she meant it. The words had been etched inside her own heart; an unspoken promise she made to him – and herself when they moved in together, when she told him she loved him. “How could I when you’re the only person I’ve ever….” She bit her lower lip as he pulled away enough to search her eyes. “When you’re the only person I’ve ever loved.” She finished softly, brushing a hand across his cheek.

“I love you too,” his eyes were warm now and his jaw was finally laxed. “God, I love you so much, and that fight was so – so stupid.”

“Soooo stupid.” Dia agreed jokingly, then sobered up as he pressed his forehead against hers’. “But I shouldn’t have flied off the handle like that…that wasn’t fair.”

“Hey I flied off the handle too.” He reminded her. “I guess we both have some growing to do.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “But I shouldn’t be so angry about you talking with your mom…it’s just you’re so close with your family, and I guess…” she trailed off for a moment, as he tucked a stray hair to behind her ear.

Zig was waiting for her to speak; knowing she needed to get this off her chest. He was always patiently waiting for her to open herself up to him.

“I guess…apart of me was jealous because I’ve never had that…or at least I haven’t in a long time.” She finished slowly, averting her eyes elsewhere until he spoke. “That thing that keeps your family together.” She blew out an irritated breath; struggling to find the right words to explain. “All I have are missed calls and empty promises.”

“Look at me, Dia.”

After a hesitant beat she did.

“That isn’t all you have.” He gave her hand a light squeeze. “You have me, you’ve always had me. And I know how hard it was for you to admit that. I didn’t realize –” he frowned faintly, concern making his brow wrinkle. “I didn’t realize it was so hard on you. Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me,” he squeezed her hand tighter. “And you don’t need to be jealous because my family is your family.”

Her breath caught, “Zig –”

“My mom loves you.” He interrupted.

“She does not.”

“No seriously, she does.” He insisted with a small smile. “And so does Sophie.” He added, running his thumb over her knuckles.

“Aw, shit.” Her cheeks grew warm and a shaky laugh escaped her throat. “Even with all my hard edges?”

“Even then.” He scooted closer. “You’re not the only one that has to work on compromising,” he said solemnly, his eyes boring into hers. “I guess it’s just with everything that’s going on with my dance team, Sophie and my own school stuff – I forget sometimes that every good relationship has compromise.”

“Maybe I’ll go to library more?” She offered.

“And I can always take fewer calls when we’re home together.”

She smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Yeah,” he exhaled slowly. “Yeah we can definitely work harder at compromising.”

“And at trust. And communication.” She mumbled.

“Yeah,” he chuckled lightly. “I’m working on it.”

“No,” she shook her head, pressing herself into him; shifting until their hips aligned perfectly to one another. She sought his lips, wanting to pour everything she had felt tonight into her kiss – her gratitude, her love, her pain. It was all a silent demand as her tongue darted inside his mouth. “We’re working on it.” She corrected softly, whispering against his mouth as she felt the corners of his lips turn into a smile.

Wordlessly, his taut arms encircled her waist and he lowered her into the couch, pressing his length against her center the second her legs shifted to capture his waist. He peppered anywhere he saw skin with warm kisses, kisses that tingled all the way to her spine.

She softly moaned, capturing his mouth whenever she could before his lips drifted lower. She ran her fingers through his dark hair, lightly pulling until he uttered a hiss. “Hey,” she waited until his heated expression met her cheeky grin from her down her cleavage. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He whispered back and spent the next two hours showing exactly how much he loved her.

-

[inhumansforever]

Marvel Rising Alpha #1 Review

spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers

The creative team of Devin Grayson, Georges Duarte and Rachelle Rosenberg assemble once more to bring us the next chapter in the Marvel Rising saga.  Recap and review following the jump.  

In the previous zero issue of Marvel Rising, an unseen villain had hired a splinter faction of the renegade science terrorists known as AIM to raid the Stark Institute and conduct genetic screenings on a group of students.  Fortunately, Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl were on hand to save these kids and defeat the villains.  Yet one of the AIM scientists managed to escape and transferred the data he had collected to his secretive benefactor.  Their mission had proven a success and the villain was able to identify a young Inhuman named Ember Quaid who possess substantial powers… and now it would appear that the cad has initiated a plan to use young Ms. Quaid and weaponize her abilities toward a nefarious end.  

We are introduced to Ember as the issue opens.  She’s a troubled young woman who describes herself as a total loser.  It sounds as though Ember’s mom is kind of a mess, constantly moving from home to home, city to city looking for a fresh start after bad relationships.  

It has been very difficult for Ember to make friends and foster a sense of self with all of this moving about.  The only degree of constancy Ember has been able to find is online gaming.  While Ember sees herself as a loser in real life, she feels something of a goddess in the realm of multiplayer online role-playing games.  Which is all fine and good until some of the guys she plays against realizes she is a girl and it triggers insecurities and vitriol…  

Ember has made the mistake of playing one of these games against a group of male classmates at her new high school in New Jersey.  She defeats these guys thoroughly and they angrily insist that she must have been cheating.   These guys are complete jerks who seem to feel as though losing to a girl threatens their delicate sense of masculinity.  They refuse to believe it and level insults at her and accuse her of using cheat codes.  These bullies end up ‘doxing’ Ember, freezing her out from her gaming accounts and taking away from her the one place in her life where she has felt in control.

All the while, Ember has been text-messaging with a mysterious online pal who has been a sympathetic ear for Ember’s troubles.  And it soon becomes clear that this unseen friend is likely the so-far faceless villain who hired AIM to seek out Ember in the first place.  

On top of everything else going on in Ember’s life, she is also an Inhuman.  The Terrigen Cloud had floated over the East Coast some time ago... it awakened Ember’s latent Inhuman genes and caused her to be encased in a transformative cocoon.  Yet when she emerged she found that she apparently gained no super powers.  Once again, Ember felt cheated by life.  

It turns out that Ember did indeed gain super powers, only they remained dormant... requiting a specific emotional stimuli in order to be triggered into bloom.  These power entail the ability to absorb electrical energy and re-manifest it into hard light constructs.   And being bullied by these poor-sport jerks is exactly the kind of trigger needed to bring about access to these powers.  

Meanwhile, Doreen Green has been teaching a class in game theory at the the high school.  And it also turns out that this is same high school attended by Kamala Khan, who is taking the class in order to make up credits.  Of course, Doreen is secretly the super hero known as the unbeatable Squirrel Girl; and Kamala is the marvelous Ms. Marvel.  

Somehow these two heroes don’t recognize one another, despite the fact that Squirrel Girl’s ‘disguise’ is little more than a pair of squirrel ears attached to a headband.  It all sort of stretches the willing suspension of disbelieve and is played for laughs when Dorren’s correctly surmises that Kamala is secretly the fan fiction writer, ‘Slothbaby,’ whom Doreen is a big fan of.  

Having a couple of superheroes at the school ends up fortuitous as Ember’s powers spark into bloom.  Draining energy from the electronic devices around her, Ember is able to unconsciously manifests a digitized squirrel wielding a giant mallet.  The video-game-style squirrel goes on a rampage, looking to wallop the boys who had bullied Ember.  Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl jump into action and team up to take out the rampaging squirrel.  

Ember’s mysterious texting pal helps her to realize that she was the one who created that video game squirrel… and they encourage her to take it further, to concentrate and create an even bigger manifestation and get revenge on the guys who had bullied her.  Ember follows the advice and the next day she manages to create a giant Donkey Kong style digital gorilla that runs amok and attacks the boys who had bullied her.  

Once again, Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl spring into action, interceding to make sure no one gets hurt.  Chaos ensues with a battle that is equal parts comic book action and old school arcade game.  The two heroes are ultimately able to pool their strength and demolish the gorilla, shattering it into a scattering of digitalized cubes.  

In the wake of all this Ember is left enraged.  It feels so unfair to her that these superheroes should show up only to protect the bullies who had given her such a hard time.   It’s as though these heroes are only interested in maintain the status quo and keeping outcasts like her on the fringes, disenfranchised.  

Ember’s mysterious texting pal is able to capitalize on her anger, encouraging her to take it all further.  If these heroes are against her then it stands to reason that she must be a villain.  And the only way she is going to gain satisfaction, to feel a sense of empowerment, is to embrace such villainy and take the fight to the heroes.  

And it is here that the issue ends, with Ember using her powers to summon an appropriately villainous guise; and the next step clearly to be an attack on Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl.  A panel informs us that the story will continue next month in Marcel Rising: Ms. Marvel & Squirrel Girl #1.  

Grayson and company make an interesting decision in having Ember be something of a central focus to the issue.  She’s a sympathetic character.  She is being mislead and coerced into making bad decisions, yet the factors that bring her to this point is quite relatable.  The best villains are often those who don’t see themselves as the villain, who feel justified in their actions; and whom the readers can in some ways relate to.  

Ember is just a lonely girl who has had to deal with bad parenting and not having any friends.  The one place she felt self agency and empowerment was gaming… and yet the malignant sexism so prevalent in the world of online gaming has acted to take that respite away.  It isn’t fair, it’s enraging… and it’s rather understandable that she would want to see justice… to get a little revenge.  

A better path is presented to Ember when Kamala approaches her and tries to make friends.  Ember would so fit in with Kamala and her pals.  Unfortunately Ember is too angry to seize upon this opportunity.  Besides, why even bother trying to make friends with Kamala when it is likely only a matter of time before her mom uproots her once again and has them move somewhere else?

Again, it all casts a sympathetic light on Ember.  And I hope that things change for her as the story plays out.  She could end up a villain for life, but it is possible that Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl might be able to help her see a different path and break free of the influence of this mysterious figure who has been pulling her strings.

There is a rather overt undercurrent of the whole ‘gamer gate’ ordeal in the way the boys bully Ember and try to put forth gaming as a place for boys only.  This is interesting and of course an important matter to address… although it’s presented in a kind of ham-fisted fashion.   Sometimes it can be more effective to be a touch more covert in recapitulating real life matters into fictional stories.  

Also, I’m not sure if the term ‘doxing’ is being used correctly.  My understanding is that doxing is publishing an individual’s real name, email address and whatnot.  Yet here it is presented as blocking a gamer’s ability to access their online account.  Are there multiple definitions for doxing?  

All of this aside, the tale is successful in putting forth Ember as the victim of bullying, and as someone whom many readers are likely to be able to relate to.  

As was the case in last month’s zero issue, Grayson does a really terrific job scripting the interactions between Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl.  They are both such bubbly and positive characters, yet Grayson is able to give each a distinct sense of voice… even without the arrows on the voice bubbles, it is clear which character is talking.   The two are as fun together as I hoped they would be and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of it.  And I like that Kamala appears to have figured out Squirrel Girl’s true identity… very intrigued as to how this will play out.  

The illustration by Georges Duarte matches the story quite well.  It’s a little clunky at some points while generally fluid with dynamic action sequences; while also remaining accessible to newer readers.  I especially liked the digitized creatures and how they had a sort of 64-bit style to them.  Also the way that the manifestations were reduced to cube-like bits when defeated was pretty cool.  Rachelle Rosenberg continues to be a total rockstar in the coloring department, utilizing a vibrant scheme that really brings to life the electrical nature of Ember’s powers.  

I liked everything about this issue except for one crucial component: the price point.  Four ninety-nine… that is way too much.  What is Marvel thinking?   Paying five bucks for a comic is not a big deal for me, but I’m an adult with a job and disposable income.  Yet I am not at all the target demographic for this comic.  Marvel Rising is supposed to be about appealing to both new and longtime readers, those who are older and those who are younger.  And it is meant to inviting to a broader, more diverse group of possible readers.  This is all great, but the five dollar price tag is likely to filter out a substantial number of potential readers.  The zero issue was free and now the subsequent issue is five dollars?  That’s not how you sell comics… that’s how you sell crack…

Despite my being bummed out over the price tag, this was an extremely fun read, with cool art and strong, relatable characters.  Definitely recommended.  Four out of five Lockjaws.    

[rex101111]

Why Candy Coated Fury by Reel Big Fish is the best breakup album ever-a song by song analysis that no one asked for by me

 A few years back my first relationship ended...roughly(not abusive or toxic, just one-sided and unfulfilling, and I broke it off), and a big reason as to why I was able to move on and laugh about it was because I spent the first few months listening to this album non-stop, allow me to go over each song and explain why:

1. Everyone else is an asshole: Okay, so technically this song isn’t about breakups or love or whatever, but it being the first song on the album gets you into the proper mindset.

 People are shit, that facts makes you feel shitty and angry, and you wanna talk about and maybe laugh about it. 

It’s also a super cool song if your just in need of venting some anger on account of someone rubbing you the completely wrong way.

2. Punisher: That’s more like it. Again, not a song specifically about love, but about a person who just can not take a hint and LEAVE. 

Perfect for those ex-partners that just can’t seem to leave you alone even though you have made it clear that it is over. Or maybe towards people who don’t seem to get that they’re not your type and are Not Welcome.

It’s quick, it’s angry, and most importantly, petty as all hell for when you just do not have the strength to be polite about it anymore and decide to be honest about your feelings, very cathartic.

3. She’s not the end of the world: The first proper breakup song, and it’s not angry or spiteful, but regretful as all hell. 

It tells of a guy who’s girlfriend just broke up with him and he is not taking it well at all, he’s talking with his friends (the backing vocals) about it, begging them to put him out of his misery because he just can’t wrap his head around the fact that she’s left him. 

He actively wants his friends to change his mindset about this and convince him that, well, “she’s not the end of the world”. Except that he can’t change how he feels about it, he’s just bummed out and, right now?, she is the end of the world as far as he’s feeling, his friends joining him on the final verse to indulge him in his sorrow in solidarity. Funny, overly dramatic, and heartfelt in a way that makes you wanna sink into your couch and sigh, perfect.

4. Don’t let me down (Gently): Okay so this one is a cover of a song by a band called The Wonder Stuff (I think) so listen to that version too but I still think Reel Big Fish’s cover is super cool.

A couple is on the verge of breaking up, the singer is very well aware of it and has already mostly accepted the eventuality of this relationship not lasting much longer, and just wants his partner to get it over with and get to the point.

A song to hear when a relationship has reached full on burnout and you lack the energy to keep it going, when you don’t want your feelings to be spared and just want both you and your partner to move on with your lives. Bittersweet and sarcastic tinged with resigned acceptance.

5. I Know You Too Well To Like You Anymore: A bit of a curve ball! And my personal favorite song on this album. Not a breakup song, but a love song disguised as an anti-love song!

A once lovey dovey couple has since grown embittered and jaded about each other and their relationship, and have decided to uh...”air their grievances” so to speak. And both sides have plenty to say to each other, letting each other have it with no restraint and no tact whatsoever.

The girlfriend’s possessiveness, the boyfriend’s absurd expectations of her, her violent comments, his lack of maturity, on and on they rant and rave until the very last verse devolves to the both of them firing petty insults at each other back and forth culminating in them shouting “I wish you’d go to hell!”

But...in the end the fact that they still love each other, despite how much they piss each other off, is the thing they lament the most. Because this song isn’t about a couple hating each other, not really, instead it’s about the time after the “honeymoon period” during the start of a new relationship, when it’s truly tested in the face of the annoying habits of your partner that you just can’t ignore anymore, and the mental image in your head of that person breaks apart.

You don’t like them anymore...but now you love them. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth?

6.  Hiding In My Headphones: One of 3 songs on the album that don’t really fit the theme directly in anyway, but is still a pretty cool song.

A short and relaxed Ska/Rap about the singer making the whole world go away when they have their headphones on, a brief escape from the anger and sadness of the previous songs to give you a breather.

7. I Dare You To Break My Heart: Back to business, a straight up Anti-love song.

A guy in a brand new relationship lets his bitterness over past pain get the better of him, he believes that this will end just the same as always, and only tries to enjoy what he can while angrily daring his new partner to try and make him feel something when she leaves.

A distinctive message of sour grapes if I ever heard one, the singer makes all sorts of excuses over how this time won’t be any different, even going so far as to say that, even though he’s enjoying this, he’s resolved not to let this hurt him this time, even if it ends up pushing his partner away.

Self inflicted tragedy hidden under angry bitterness...also super fun to shout along to the chorus while you’re driving.

8. Your Girlfriend Sucks: An outsider perspective this time, and honestly probably the funniest song on the album for my money.

The singer’s friend has an absolutely awful girlfriend, hence the title, and the singer is making it his mission to try and get his friend’s head back on straight before their friendship suffers for it.

It is hilarious start to finish, the singer has no filter whatsoever as he regales his friend with the myriad reasons that his partner is a fucking monster, perfect for when your friend is in a sucky relationship and they don’t see it.

8. Don’t Stop Skankin’: Another song that doesn’t fit the theme and...yeah I got no idea.

It’s a, mostly, instrumental piece that’s just kinda...there. 

It is actually pretty catchy...y’know, for an intermission piece, next!

9. Famous Last Words: And the last song that doesn’t fit the theme! Ah, well, least it’s good.

A singer laments a writer’s block and/or the feeling that he’s reached the end of his rope, creatively speaking.

Another good song to get you in the melancholy mood.

10. Lost Cause: Back on track with this rockin’ song. Sad but oh so catchy.

The singer is in a relationship that’s on the rocks, and he feels like his partner is starting to give up on before him and he feels more than a little helpless, but tries to argue his case any way.

He grows more and more desperate as the songs continues, singing more and more loudly hoping to change his partner’s mind, only to admit at the last moment that “I’m a lost cause.”

Very Cathartic when you feel like you’re the only one who cares and don’t know what to do about it.

11.  I Love/You Suck: In a similar vein to “Know you too well”, but significantly more bitter and less hopeful.

A singer complains about how his once happy relationship has fallen apart and his partner has grown cold and mean spirited. And more than anything he despairs over the fact that he knows he needs to end it, but he just can’t bring himself to do it.

The whole song is him building up the strength to say what he feels without justifying it with a half hearted “I love but”, focusing on how everything went to shit in their relationship, eventually just ending on him repeating the phrase “I think you suck” with what can only be a relived smile as he finally got it off his chest.

For those feeling very conflicted over your partner and need to get your thoughts in order

12. P.S. I Hate You: The most straight up aggressive and angry breakup song on the album, and the most triumphant.

The singer, fresh out of a horrible relationship with someone he just hated, decides to let his ex know exactly how he feels about her and what they were, and how glad he is to finally be rid of her and how awful she made him feel.

The whole song is one giant middle finger to the ex, the singer utterly unapologetic in his anger and makes no bones that, right now, he is more happy and giddy than he has ever been with her.

The last chorus is just the singer belting out his angry and unwavering goodbye, shouting at the top of his lungs as he leaves to start his life anew.

The absolute perfect song to hear after you end a bad relationship with an asshole, treat yourself and scream the chorus at the end with all the pent up anger and frustration your ex had ever given you, you’ll feel loads better after.

13. The Promise: And in sharp contrast to the rest of the album, the previous and first songs especially, the very last thing you hear is a simple and gentle love song.

A new relationship is is blooming, and the singer makes a promise to his partner. He promises that, what ever might happen in the future, what ever bumps there may be on the road, he’ll always try his best to be there and love her as much as he can.

So long as she trusts him and loves him back, that’s it.

He promises to help whenever her temper gets the better of her, to apologize if his own temper escapes him, and to always be a friend to her. It’s tender and vulnerable and adorable.

It might be in conflict with most of the rest of these songs, but its a good one to end on, giving you hope and reminding you that, for all the anger and strife that a relationship can bring, it should always start from someplace good and loving and happy, which I think is a great message to end off on...before you start the album over and sing about how everyone except for you is an asshole 

IN SUMMATION: This album has a great variety of songs looking at the subject of love/relationships/and breakups from all sorts of angles and perspectives, making more likely that you relate to at least one thing on here, and it even has a few outliers to keep you from getting too stuck in your head while you listen.

So yeah buy this album somewhere if you can, it’s great.