#but perhaps giving them even some emotional capacity was enough for them to develop the missing ones on their own from a mix of existing

[iwonderwh0]

I have a theory

It was mentioned more than once, that androids in dbh don't feel pain, but somehow every time they're punched or stabbed they react as if it actually hurst: with a gasp, scream or something else, to the point of even killing a human who is "hurting" them. So I have a theory about what causes them to feel "pain" without actually feeling it in a human terms.

Pain for an android is an instant sensation of intense fear and panic that encourages them to get away from whatever causes it in a similar way pain would. So the function of it is the same as pain – to keep them safe. This way, even if it doesn't cause them pain in a physical sense, psychologically it is the same, so it is no wonder that in case someone tries to abuse them repeatedly causing them physical distress, this fear response is miserable enough to actively avoid it and seek whatever it takes to finally make it stop. It also explains the noises they make, if we look at it not as reaction to pain, but to fear.

Psychologically they are still canonically human, so I think if instead of feeling physical pain when hurt we would feel as if we just got scared with some jump-scare it'd still be pretty fucking similar to our usual pain response, in some ways better, but some others even worse.

[nachofuck3r]

Perv!Adam Faulkner Stanheight headcanons (18+) (gn!reader)

Authors note: Bc I am surprised that there isn’t any already?!? Bro is giving hardcore perv energy no offense 😭😭

About 2k words wtfffffffff

Warnings: perv!Adam/ technically perv!Scott Tibbs, sub! Adam, you degrading him a bit but then also praising him sooooo, blowjob, rimjob plus anal fingering (u receiving)and dub con kissing (since it’s not verbally established!! Listen to ur partners irl!!!)

He definitely owns a fleshlight bc he’s socially awkward enough to not get any.

Def talks dirty to it in some capacity and is weirdly casual about it just being out and about rather than hiding it all the time.

It’s not like there’s no one interested in him but he’s basically a nerd, obsessed with you.

the only way to scratch his itch sexually is to rub one out thinking about you

Has definitely considered a ton of times to steal your underwear when he’s over and you’re distracted in any capacity

He’s probably build up the courage to actually pull through and would do it when you’re showering

At home he’ll struggle to not sniff them, he’s constantly burying his face in the cotton especially where your sex has been and desperately pound his sopping wet fleshlight or hand.

Adam loves using copious amounts of lube so after messily pushing his cock in and out again it pours out from around his overstimulated twitchy dick. He likes to imagine he’s giving you a creampie, while excessive amounts of his cum pour out of you abused hole.

If he’s out on a beach day with you and maybe Scott Tibbs, he’ll take a shit ton of pictures.

You think it’s sweet he wants to take so many pictures not even considering for a second Adam has an ulterior motive. Though Scott may be onto Adam with him taking pictures from your backside when you’re not looking.

Scott will probably blackmail Adam with this info into giving him some of the pictures. He’s too damn afraid to lose you as a friend.

Adam being a little sad meow meow will do so reluctantly. I guess you technically got two pervs on your hands here 🙄🙄

When Adam gets home and starts developing them he’s already hard as rock, from seeing you in your tight revealing swimwear either revealing the shape of your tits and mound or your hardened nipples from the cold water and the bulge in your pants.

You are completely oblivious in some of the photos and in some even smiling at him behind the camera.

Meanwhile this man over here is barely containing his hard on already thinking about going home and sticking his fat swollen cock deep into the tight crevice of his fleshlight. He can’t help but feel a little guilty.

Imagining it’s your hole, squeezing him dry. He’s such a wet cat around you basically. Adam would try to act suave and cool around you but even a side glance makes him melt on the spot.

If his first main emotion wasn’t horniness this man would just be constantly swooning over you rather than constantly hard for you.

What if? You find out about his little secret.

Adam is making you both lunch when you come over to his place and he asks you to get him a change of shirt after he spilled sauce all over his shirt.

Perhaps you spot your underwear while looking through his dresser, tucked underneath the dresser only an inch peaking out, thinking you must’ve forgotten it when you sleeping over. Only to pick it up and find it to be either still drenched or suspiciously stained.

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how they are wet and stained plus what they are stained with.

You’ve liked Adam for quite some time now and have always seen him in a very romantic light with a few lonesome nights when he’d be part of your dirty phantasies.

But it seems that Adam has involved you in all his dirty phantasies. The realization makes you flush, your cheeks growing hotter than a furnace.

After a few seconds of debating silence you hear footsteps growing eerily close.

“Do you need help finding the-“ he cuts himself off at the display in front of him.

Your still shocked state and the offending underwear in your hands. Now it’s Adam’s turn to grow red and stand there paralyzed.

“Have you been using my underwear as some kind of a cum rag?” You squeak out still in disbelief

The words make his eyes snap onto yours and his lips start forming words that won’t seem to come out.

Gulping hardly you sit down on his bed and let the underwear fall to the ground.

“Adam you’re fucking nasty” you press out, amusement lingering in your words

Still standing stiff in the doorway Adam keeps his eyes on you. Not trusting himself to choose the right words to apologize. He’s so afraid of losing you.

Noticing the state he’s in you pat the seat next to you.

“Hey come sit with me”

Your voice sounds like music to his ears, laced with kindness and concern. Concern he doesn’t feel like he deserves. It reminds him of all the times he’s mumbled nasty words towards a phantasy you, while stroking his overstimulated shaft up and down.

He plops down next to you taking a deep breath, then turns his upper body towards you.

“I am so-“

“Stop lying” you cut him off

“You’re sorry because you got caught, how long have you been rubbing one out to me?”

His mouth agape, he stares at you with big eyes. He sees the slight uptick in your lips. Gods he loves your lips he really wants them around his cock, straining in his pants right now.

“I- ugh well since.. for almost as long as I’ve known you”

“But I’ve never stolen any of your underwear before, this was like a few weeks-“

While trying to ramble on you grab his face, his cheeks being squished by your fingers.

“I like you too, Adam” you utter biting your bottom lip.

He sucks in a gasp of air, as his eyes flitting between your lips and your eyes.

“So you’re not mad?” His eyes study you as you eye the filthy underwear on the ground before you.

“Hmm, well I guess I should be.” You muster him up and down, no doubt spotting his erection painfully straining his pants.

“But im also really turned on right now” you whisper to him, watching his eyes turn the size of saucers and if he was a dog you’d bet his tail would be shaking right about now.

Bro is shellshocked this is not what he could’ve anticipated in his wildest dreams, technically he’s dreamt about you finding out and it ending in you both having a fuck session.

Now he’s definitely hard and throbbing, feeling precum create a wet patch where his eager tip is pressing against his boxers.

Not even asking for permission he surges forward in a burst of need, jamming his lips needily against yours. His tongue immediately invading your mouth - it seems he hasn’t kissed anyone in a while except maybe his fleshlight.

You chuckle at the thought letting your own tongue dance around his. Mumbling against his mouth - “Haven’t kissed anyone in a while huh?”

Effectively teasing him, he groans a little and pulls back. Grabbing the back of your neck, making you let out a gasp.

“You like holding this against me hmmm? But what about you.. you’re also into this. You like that I want you so bad” he clicks his tongue as all you can think is that he’s adorable for trying to be dominant.

Smiling back like the cat that ate the canary, his grip at the back of your neck faltering.

“You are adorable Adam. How about you lie down so I can help you with your little problem” you say cooing at him, really drawing out the little part.

He whimpers and his eyebrows furrow, in his prior phantasies he’s always taken the lead. He was the one being condescending towards you, but you have the upper hand. Your mere presence holds a spell over him. One he can’t break.

So that’s how you get to giving Adam the best sexual experience of his life. His swollen red cock deep down your throat as you swallow around him.

The feeling of your tightening throat gives Adam only a few seconds to really dwell on cloud nine until he sharply comes in a ruined orgasm down the gummy walls of your throat.

The sloppy mess you’ve made of both your face and his crotch only seem to make you and Adam hornier.

You gently pull your mouth of his softening cock and rest your head next to it on his thigh. You stare at the appendage still drenched in your saliva and cum and give it a few loving kisses down to the tip.

If it was possible for Adam to come again he would but all he manages to press out is tiny, airy “I love you”s as he watches you pepper his cock in tiny smooches.

“My turn” Adam says promptly making your head snap to his in a daze

What? He himself seemed to be out of it only seconds ago but something must’ve given him a boost of unspoken energy as he lifts you from your kneeling position on the floor onto his bed.

“You sure?” You ask slightly, still cockdrunk after the whole endeavor.

Adam nods very enthusiastically and asks for permission to undo your belt buckle.

Your head swims with the implication and you ask him to give you a minute. He complies and gets up.

A whine leaves your mouth but he reassures you to be right back.

Making good on his promise he returns not ten seconds later with a glass of water in his hand. You give him a little smile as you gratefully grab it and chuck it.

Feeling a little more clear you now feel ready to see what Adam’s got in store for you.

Leaning back on your back you shake your hips as if prompting him to take your pants off.

The display makes Adam shiver with need as he immediately makes good on his earlier statement.

In seconds you pants are on the floor and he is confrontated with the thing that led to all of this in the first place. Your underwear.

A slight smile breaks out across you face, your lips still wet from the glass of water and… other things.

“You gonna sniff this one too?” You ask teasingly and all Adam can do is stare at the wet spot in your underwear that indicates your own arousal.

Only giving you a short amount of time to feel cocky about this he shoves his face against your clothes sex. Licking it trough the cotton.

Letting out a gasp you curl your fingers into his hair and ride his face.

Soon you are on your back with your ass up, as Adam licks long strokes from your asshole to your sex.

It leaves you a whimpering mess as he presses occasionally wet kisses on your rim only to slightly tease you with his tongue.

“Fuck Adam your so good” you press out between broken moans

You can tell he’s smirking against your skin as he gives your thigh a slight squeeze. He looks down at your fucked out expression.

“What suddenly pervert Adam is sooo good for you baby hmm?” He mocks you slightly earning him a glare as you wiggle your hips in his grip.

Resulting in him giving ur rim another kiss, making you whine and cease the movement.

“How about we finally breach the last line of defense ?” He asks smiling like the goofball he is

Earning a moan from you as you tell him to just finally take you.

Lube on hand he squeezes a right amount on you tight hole and rubs his fingers into it.

Letting the finger now and then dip into the rim itself. Your sex throbs abandoned between your legs, leaking copious amounts of your own cum onto you chest and belly.

Adam finger fucks you with discrete precision as if knowing exactly where all the sweet spots are.

“You do this yourself a lot?” You press out between gasps which only earns you a chuckle from the man currently pounding his fingers in and out of your abused ass.

You don’t last much longer than Adam did earlier and have a dry orgasm as your own cum paints ur face and chest.

Both of you are left breathless for a while after just lying next to each other, Adam occasionally pressing tender kisses onto the back of your hand that you put into his own.

After a while both of you are reminded of why you meet up in the first place, as one of your stomachs rubbles slightly in the quiet room.

Adam huffs out a breath making a move to get up. Leaving you whining at the loss of him.

“Can’t we eat in bed?” You utter knowing the inevitable answer to come

“Usually I’d not mind as much but with the amount of sweat on there now ehhh we should probably eat on the couch”

“What if I blackmailed you?” You press out jokingly watching Adam go a little rigid

“What- with what”

“Adam? Have you been blackmailed lately?” You ask suspiciously of his shocked reaction

Only to find out.

“YOU GAVE SCOTT MY ASS PICS?!?”

[mbti-notes]

Being introverted (INFJ), I've worked hard on social skills and I'm proud to say socializing is less tiring than it used to be, but I'm coming to face the reality that it will always be tiring. Is there another way except socializing to feel connected to the world?

One's relationship to the world is mediated through the two extraverted functions, which are Fe and Se in INFJ. To simplify, Fe is about feeling connected, whereas Se is about being connected. Why is this seemingly minor distinction important?

One of the great advantages of being INFJ is that you are gifted with great powers of imagination. With Ni+Fe, you possess a unique capacity to conjure connections to the world. This means you can form a strong emotional bond with anything in the world, simply because you want to.

You might quibble with the word "conjure" because it sounds like you're just inventing something, and how can something fake or unreal be truly meaningful? I don't see it that way. A feeling is real, and feeling connected benefits your emotional well-being in very real ways. The benefits include: contentment, joy, love, fulfillment, and a sense of mattering. Life is hard enough, so why deprive yourself of this gift?

Yes, conjuring connections becomes a problem when it is the only means through which you can connect with the world (aka trapped in your own head). This is why it's important to strike the right balance between feeling connected and actually being connected. Fe development will only help quell Se grip if it leads to at least some concrete connections in the real world. Thus, social connection with real people is absolutely necessary, but it doesn't have to be the only or even the primary means of worldly connection.

It's always quite sad to me to see INFJs suffer from having their imagination stifled or oppressed. If you are one of them, perhaps you're wondering how to go about conjuring connections. To feel "bonded" to something is essentially to deeply love that thing, which requires opening your heart to it. I can give you simple examples from the many INFJs I've met. Some INFJs feel a strong bond with the authors that inspire them. Some feel a strong bond with nature, plants, or animals. Some feel a strong bond with creative works like music or paintings. Some feel a strong bond with sacred objects. Some feel a strong bond to particular places, times, or events.

Since you can form a strong emotional bond with anything, the only limit is your imagination. The more you work to expand your imagination, the more receptive your eyes will become, and the more opportunities you'll discover for filling your heart with love. People often chase love as though it's an elusive object out there in the world. Unfortunately, they don't realize that love can be willed into existence and actively infused into life, so there is no need to be so starved or desperate for it. Since you're very easily fatigued by socializing, you might be missing this key ingredient. If you approached people with a heart full of love, you might find socializing to be easier and much more fulfilling.

[magnetiix]

Your muse has to share something that’s hard for them to talk about. What is the biggest thing they don’t want to say aloud/admit? What makes it hard for them to say it? | What’s one of the bravest things your muse has done? Did they consider it brave? | What’s something they’ve mildly been afraid of before? Not a huge trauma, something small? | What does your muse like about [Flash Man]? (Quick)

Headcanon/Development Questions (still accepting!)

Your muse has to share something that’s hard for them to talk about. What is the biggest thing they don’t want to say aloud/admit? What makes it hard for them to say it?

((Well... everything, isn't it? Everything is hard for him to talk about. It's hard to talk when talking is something you consider unnecessary and even wasteful. But above all, sharing his... appreciation for his linemates out loud is... especially difficult. The Seconds are not exactly known for knowing love, and perhaps Quick most of all. He wouldn't know where to begin. To verbally express his appreciation for even Metal, who he has no shame in naming as his personal favorite of the Seconds, would lead to nothing but awkwardness for them both. Quick does not know how to give love. And Metal does not know how to receive it. The way he values his linemates shows enough in how he behaves around them, anyway. Words don't need to be said.))

What’s one of the bravest things your muse has done? Did they consider it brave?

((The bravest thing Quick did was keep going after the Seconds' signals went down during the White Nightmare's invasion. After losing his siblings, there was a very real possibility that he could have just simply stopped working altogether. But he didn't. Does he think it's brave? No, not really, mostly because of how hard he'd effectively dissociated through the entire thing. But it was brave all the same.

For a more recent thing, talking to Wily! Making sure Shadow was there, making sure Shadow knew that he didn't mean to attack him and also regretted it, despite how muted his reaction might have been. Quick could have just been gone and put as much distance between him and Shadow as possible, but no. Shadow asked him if he'd had his systems checked recently and instead of shrugging it off, Quick took note of what Shadow was implying, listened, and invited him to come with. Before the Stardroid War, he'd have never done this, especially not with someone who wasn't a Second. Quick is very much trying to make an effort to be present in Wily City, and that's very brave. He doesn't really think much about it in terms of bravery, though.))

What’s something they’ve mildly been afraid of before? Not a huge trauma, something small?

((Not to point any fingers at any flamboyant Thirds in particular, but according to Quick it's frankly stupid to develop a Robot Master - especially one built for war - with fears, no matter how big or small they may be. That hinders their performance. No, Quick's not afraid of anything small, nor am I sure if he has the capacity to be. His emotions are so muted that I'm unsure if he'd feel anything to begin with. Something he used to be cautious of, though, was scraping his horns against a wall or doorway or low ceiling. Just. Augh. That noise. Bad.))

What does your muse like about [Flash Man]? (Quick)

((I will admit I'm not sure if you're expecting a legitimate answer to this question Cyber LOL And I tried to think of something, I really did. But nope. The answer's nothing. He doesn't like anything about Flash. At most he might tolerate or respect some things about Flash, such as Flash's ability to actually give him a decent fight, or rarer still appreciate his existence as a Second for fleeting moments, but like things about him? Nah. They're too different, they clash too much.))

[sutcliffe-v]

| Admin Info

Blogs

; @poohwhin — personal

; @deux-ombre — art

; @sakamaki-richter — canon

; @deciipula — other oc blog

Admin Aesthetic

Name

; venwhin | whin | literally whatever idgaf SKSK

Age

; 19 ( i have the mental and emotional capacity of a toddler)

Gender/Pronouns

; Nonbinary ( i’m just vibing so perceive me however. or don’t perceive me at all actually ) | They/Them

Occupation

; failing artist | professional screamer | ceo of creating things then abandoning them halfway through

Other Facts

; i am mentally ill and anxious. if that shows through text™️ i apologise SKSK.

; social cues aren’t my strong suit so pls tell me if i say/interpret smth wrong or smth you don’t understand!

; i’m broke™️

; if i say i’m going to do something there’s a chance it won’t be done for a solid year.

; i suck at this art thing but if you’ve been here long enough you might see some improvement.

; i’m actually out of it or delirious during most conversations so i may or may not start spewing shit that doesn’t make sense sksk.

; don’t trust anything i say after 10pm, if you’re flabbergasted that’s on you /j

; i’m a pro at making up words on the spot, some of which may be jarring. (rip to people who talk to me regularly)

Boundaries (pls read!!)

; i’m currently not roleplaying with this character. as much as i would love to keep up with threads, and develop relationships with characters, i simply cannot right now. (wanting to focus more on his canon content.)

; i may sometimes keep up crack threads with friends, or you may see me send in silly starters to others; this is nothing against anyone else, but i’ve likely talked about these scenarios with them in private beforehand, and just felt like seeing the in-character reaction. while this may seem exclusionary, or may ‘picking favourites’, trust that i love each and every admin and character that interacts with me.

↳ to build off this: there is a chance that i will hold up a few threads for the holidays, or at least give one response to people for holidays and events, as a treat for the occasions!

; this is a problem i’ve had in the past with toning down my character for fear that he may have been ‘too boring’ or perhaps ‘too rude’ for some (i suppose its affected how some relationships develop, but i won’t worry about it that much now); however i should say that virek is not a nice character. he isn’t of course the same level of fucked up as the diaboys (at least i don’t think(?) idk they have a few centuries of atrocities on him), but he’s certainly up there in terms of fucked up

; while all of my posts are tagged accordingly in the off chance that those under 18 stumble upon here, i run my blog as if it is 18+ (i’ve really only kept the 17+ tag for the few exceptions) . which means that there will be mature content here; that isn’t exclusive to NSFW, but includes darker content and serious topics as well. (i mean this /is/ a dl blog, so i’d hope you understand what you’re getting into)

; PLS READ THIS ONE ITS VERY IMPORTANT: okay i say very important but it’s just something that happens a lot sksk. for ask games, i try to give people at least two days to send in their ask, before i stop accepting (just to make sure that the game was seen.) i would like to say to pay attention to the tags on each post! i’ve recently started tagging ask games with ‘last one’ or some rendition of that. if you see that tag, i’d like to ask that you don’t send one in. this may seem rude, and limiting, but it honestly just kind of ruins my workflow when i mentally check something off as done, only to receive a few more. but i usually take a while to answer things, so please please please pay attention to tags!!

; something that’s more non-serious i guess, even though i’m not rp-ing, i love love talking about how relationships could potentially develop/sillier and smaller scenarios with characters. and that’s something you’ll see me implement a lot of my blog (through art or writing). a lot of the scenarios you’ll see me portray are likely things that me and other admins have talked and joked about in conversation. so never be afraid to reach out!! (even if i do suck at conversation SKSKS)

Other Other Things to Note

; i’m notoriously all over the place, so i’ll do my best to keep my blog organised.

; i’ll usually try to use ‘(( ))’ on this blog whenever i’m talking in the tags. (i don’t do that on my other blogs though, SKSKSK)

; i yell™️. no speak only yell.

[wellnessbloom]

Why Brushing and Flossing Aren't Enough?

Introduction

Oral hygiene is often narrowly defined by two simple daily tasks: cleaning and sweeping, that is brushing and flossing. Some think that ensuring that they perform these habits is enough to keep their mouth healthy. But this is not all true – indeed, this is a misunderstanding. Such practices are part and parcel of true oral hygiene but they are limited to them only. It is something that can be described as a total plan of care for the body and teeth, varying from food intake to dental hygiene and emotional health. Realizing that oral health is a complex system is important to prevent oral diseases which may extend to the overall body systems. Being aware of what oral hygiene is actually not just about brushing and flossing and how a greater approach can enhance overall health.

The Role of Saliva in Oral Health

Dental fluids do not sound exciting but they are fundamental to the health of teeth and mouth. It forms its first barrier of protection from bacteria and decay from the mouth. Saliva also has the function of a cleanser as it removes the leftover foods and also acts to reduce the level of acids secreted by bacteria. Any of these acids if not controlled will lead to dental caries and periodontal diseases. Furthermore, saliva co-centres useful ions like calcium and phosphate that aids in the effort of remineralising teeth giving back the strength of teeth that has been compromised by acids. In a case where people are unable to produce enough saliva, the mouth remains prone to bacterial growth and leads to many oral problems.

The Impact of Diet on Oral Hygiene

Diets that are taken also have a close relationship in determining the level of oral hygiene. Indirectly, the foods that we take also build up or degrade the health of the teeth. Foods which contain high amounts of sugar and acid are particularly well known for their capacity to cause tooth decay because the bacteria present in the mouth are provided with nourishment and in turn, produce more acid which dissolves the enamel finish on the teeth. On the other hand, consumption of foods containing vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants can enhance dental health. Calcium rich foods like dairy products, green leafy vegetables, almonds etc., build the teeth up while fibrous foods like carrots, celery etc., evoke saliva production and therefore acts as cleaners.

The Connection Between Oral Health and Systemic Health

In another case, oral diseases are lenses through which other general diseases are diagnosed, and periodontal diseases are the doorway to systemic diseases. Oral hygiene impacts whole body health because the mouth is the point of entrance for ingestion of foods conveyed through the digestive system. For instance, periodontal disease – a serious form of gum disease – is associated with cardiovascular disorders, diabetes mellitus, respiratory infections, and other complications inclusive of pregnancy. The bacteria found in the mouth can spread in the bloodstream and cause inflammation and worsen other illnesses such as atherosclerosis. Such understanding of this connection calls for professional oral care beyond esthetics if they are to embrace the general health constitution.

The Importance of Regular Dental Checkups

Although brushing and flossing can be practiced every day, it is not effective in sufficient interdental hygiene. It is worth mentioning that dental checkups help in prevention and early diagnosis of the oral diseases hence are very vital. Dentist cleanings get to the area that brushing and flossing leave behind, thus preventing gum disease and cavities. Also fundamental examination provides a doctor with an ability to identify precursors of oral health conditions including oral cancer, cavities, and gum diseases to recommend treatment before they worsen. Failure to attend these checkups results in the advancement of oral diseases that could be controlled or perhaps not even developed at all.

The Role of Tongue Cleaning in Oral Hygiene

This small part of the human body is part of the mouth, however, people usually do not pay much attention and do not clean their tongues regularly. Regions found on the surface of the tongue contain food particles and bacteria, dead cells, these germs result in formation of breath commonly known as halitosis, and some other oral diseases. Thus, daily tongue cleaning cleans these deposits in order to minimize bacterial load and create a better breath. Also, tongue cleaning can decrease the sensations of bitter or metallic taste because this film can cover taste receptors. This practice seems to be really simple, yet, undertaking it can help in managing some of the oral issues you may be experiencing.

The Impact of Stress on Oral Health

Hormonal alteration and pressure, which are widespread phenomena of the current world, are highly damaging to the teeth. Stress can cause behaviors such as bruxism or clenching and this will cause the wearing of the enamel as well as causing pain in the jaw and headaches. Stress of course also leads to a decrease in salivary flow, and this results in what is referred to as dry mouth and is associated with higher incidence of caries and periodontal disease. Also, stress has been found to depress the immune system meaning that the body will have a difficult time combating diseases such as those of the oral cavity. Reducing stress through relaxation, exercising and many others plays a crucial role in protecting your mental health and even oral health.

The Importance of Hydration

Drinking water is one of the most natural ways to enhance the overall health and oral wellness in particular. Another effect of water is that it is a key factor in saliva formation; as explained above saliva is significant in shielding the mouth against bacteria as well as decay. ‘After-meal’ water also means that the water will be especially effective in washing away food residues and acids that may have been deposited on the teeth and it will also help to continue the natural remineralisation process of the teeth. Drinking sufficient water also assists in maintaining healthy gums because inflamed gums are dry because of the lack of moisture. A proper hydration is an effective method of promoting good oral condition and keeping the mouth a healthy place. The easiest way to accomplish the task is to drink enough water throughout the day.

Conclusion

Thus, oral hygiene is not only an activity that implies only the use of a toothbrush and a dental floss. By keeping an understanding of the overall conditions of oral health like Saliva, diet, dental checkups, tongue cleaning, stress relieving techniques and having good and healthy intake of water you avoid unhealthy conditions that affect the mouth as well as the body. It is through these practices that will assist you to have a healthy and strong body which will include your teeth.

[luminary-sunflower]

No one asked #1

Idk I think that marriage itself is already polygamy to the church if you go with the whole bridegroom thing, so what's a 2nd and 3rd romantic partner as long as you're still spiritually practicing?

Aren't you already cheating on Jesus by not being chaste?/light hearted

Also to bring up that convincing people to get divorced even mentally separated not only is undue cultural pressure but causes more strife and trauma. If you've lived with multiple wives and so has your entire community for generations, you're leading the rest of your unchosen wives into poverty and more trouble especially if children from multiple mothers are involved.

Though I do wonder why I have not seen advocacy for the legalization of it the same way I would undoubtedly support (and also witness) gay marriage. Perhaps because those engaging don't respect marriage as a concept enough to marry even one partner, perhaps because there is the cultural expectation that to be a sister wife means to be exploited (which very well may be true). I think in communities where women are less empowered and disenfranchised whether social or legal are more likely to enter plural marriages and also more likely to be abused within them. If women had the full capacity of maintaining legal and financial independence, including social acceptance of not being essentially purchased property of her husband, then perhaps she wouldn't be a sister wife to begin with.. but also, maybe she would, to explore new romantic possibilities with her newfound freedom.

And it's understandable that any person would want to experiment but as someone who disagrees with the abject sex positivity notion that intimacy is not to be valued higher than any other communicative activity (I think we can just show them sa mental health statistics because humans neurology does place it quite high on the scale of determining safety, heh)... this would be a risk to disappoint multiple people at once. Basically.

I am much more concerned with the flippant behavior of serial monogamists that I witness (who may be grieving multiple ex dates despite only dating one at a time). People often do not give themselves enough time to move on before meeting someone new. Which seems to be an actually prelevant problem among mono minded people.

I consider myself poly as an inherent form of my sexuality regardless of who I'm with. I don't acknowledge jealousy the same way, emotionally. I'm not scared of adultery. And I don't want to develop a distaste for something, why would I make myself more vulnerable or paranoid?

Is the cure for no adultery to become immune to it?/light hearted

But also, anyone in such a relationship would obviously have much more responsibility re: emotional regulation, time management, etc. But I make the same argument against having three or more children. Emotional neglect in all relationships between all people is harmful and spreading yourself too thin is harmful. I don't think there's a cause to be against polyamory for this reason alone. And if that's something you are called to preach against, perhaps fixing some material conditions would yield better results.

> Legal protection for abusive marriage victims

> And other victims of intimate crime such as SA and domestic violence

> Funding secondary education without debt

> Teaching natural planning measures to those opposed to contraceptives

> Prevent children from being seen as a retirement plan by having secure social services and retirement

So I don't really have a point to anything I just said I guess.

[lovecinnatwist]

Hope u stay safe and healthy! Abo with omega dick and alpha Jay, fluff if possible? Thanks :)

Hi Anon! I am in fact safe and healthy! Have a nice little ficlet of Alpha!Jason and Omega!Dick being very glad that their little pup is also safe, healthy and coming home.

Where the heart is - JayDick Omegaverse

Tags: Kid Fic, Omegaverse, Alpha Jason, Omega Dick, surrogate parent/adoption, lactating/milking Helena Wayne is Helena Mary Grayson Todd

Sometimes Dick Grayson forgets that his mate is an alpha.

It’s easy to do when Jason’s so sweet in a way that’s distinctively omegan. Perhaps it’s the influence of the mother who left him or remnants from the tender affection B only had for his second pup. It’s something soft and tender and so uniquely him that makes Dick love him more and more everyday.

Jason curls around him effortlessly. Warm muscles squeeze tight enough to be pleasant, but not chafing.

Dick has always been a runner. Jason understands that and leaves a clear exit open at all times. A difficult obstacle for traditional courting rituals. Not that the alpha had any challenge clearing hurdle after hurdle. Jason is anything but traditional as well.

So is their current situation.

A large warm hand rests on his shoulder. The heat bleeding out is more than soothing to his already twitching instincts. There’s no reason to be nervous. After all this is a natural occurrence. The pup with latch, Dick knows it will but still his heart flutters with nervousness.

Jason’s rumble soothes the eagerness away. It quells the barrage of emotions ready to burst.

“ Mr and Ms Grayson - Todd? “

The agent from CPS is wonderfully nice, light brown eyes glittering with excitement. The delightful purr of her tone of voice betrays her enthusiasm. Just as Jason’s rise in happy-hopeful-ready betrays his. Dick’s been dreaming of this day for a long time. Long before the aspiration had been stolen from him by a knife. Then again by age and a barely functioning body strung out by high stress.

It’s Jason’s strength that helps him stand.

The sleepy scent of milk and pup adorn the air like perfume. Even before Dick spots his- no their- daughter, every part of his instincts sing. His breast began to ache immediately. The grueling weeks of hormone treatments and supplements are finally worth it.

Worth it as Doctor Leslie gives him tiny, little Helena.

Dick thinks he’s been in love with her since the moment he saw her behind glass. From the moment his breast began to ache when they gave him a few of her blankets to add to his nest. From the very moment Jason told him he could have her.

She’s heavy in a way Dick doesn’t expect. The weight is foreign yet so comfortable to bear. The alpha does not press to see her, or to touch her. Dick gets a few precious moments to marvel at the prettiest pup he’s ever seen.

Gorgeous green eyes open up in seemingly joyful curiosity. Though potentially, it might just be his hopeful outlook that makes it appear that way. Dick wants so badly for her to love him. To love them- to belong to their little broken family. To an omega who is half of what they should be and an alpha who is dysphoric instead of dominating.

The scent of milk is strong enough to draw the pup to root amongst the fabric covering his breast. It’s a gentle motion, one made precious by the very soft sounds of pup calling for pack. Dick’s throat is tight from emotion. Luckily his partner wastes no time in letting out a soothing rumble. The vibrations of the action shakes against his back.

Hot tears sting two different sets of blue eyes.

“She should be quite hungry. It’s time for her lunch time feeding. I’m sure she would greatly appreciate milk from her mommy. “

The word mommy devastates him. It washes his soul out to sea, and wraps him in a whirlpool of bliss. It’s too much and not enough at the same. This child- this pup is going to see him as her dame. She will spend the rest of her life in a warm safe nest never knowing anything but love and affection. Dick hopes that she will love him despite not being apart of her DNA. For not being able to give birth to her himself.

Jason’s touch breaks the track of that train of thought.

It’s a dance to bring a beading nipple to her hungry little mouth. Jason, who is leagues more natural, helps Dick undress and get both him and the pup comfortable. If Dick is lost to the tides, the alpha is a wreckage on the bluff. The chair is big enough for both soon to be parents.

Jason’s warmth is ever present and grounding.

The massive fingers that trail down Helena’s face makes her look so tiny. Like a delicate little thing that could be broken by too fast a movement. Not that Jason has the capacity to be anything but gentle. His heart bleeds for people. It bleeds out until the entirety of Gotham is red with his protection.

It takes both of them together to get Helena to Dick’s leaking breast. The pup whines as she struggles to get the nipple in her mouth. She’s more familiar with the bottle they had told him. That it would take time but eventually she would suckle. There’s no inhale or exhale as the pup attempts to nurse.

Then like magic she latches.

The tears refuse to be held back. Dick’s heart alarmingly full as Helena feeds forcefully but eagerly. The moment she gets a mouth full she’s quick to take more. Her hungry little mouth makes loud sounds and she feeds. Jason purrs in encouragement. His hand lightly tickles her wispy black curls.

She’s perfect. She’s perfect wonderful and Dick won’t know what to do if they can’t take her home today.

Luckily they don’t have to find out. Both breast get equal attention as the infant switches from one to another. It’s so natural and easy Dick doesn’t know why he had let himself worry to begin with. They pass with flying colors. After the feeding and burping both he and Jason get a neat stack of forms that require their signatures.

Then she’s free to leave with them.

Jason holds Helena as Dick takes his turn to sign. The alpha looks so at ease with their baby girl in his arms. His muscular frame dwarfing her’s. Dick hopes that the pup knows there is no place safer than in her father’s arms. Even if she seems grumpy as he harrasses her in her drowsy state.

Dick has to steal her back when the alpha kisses her nose, drawing a very upset puppy whine from her still developing vocal chords. Jason is absolutely heartbroken to let her go. At some point when Leslie goes to process the paperwork they get to be alone with their daughter.

Helena Mary Grayson-Todd.

Jason takes to sating his instincts by smothering Dick instead of their very sleepy pup.

“She’s so beautiful. “He murmurs, voice low enough not to set her off again. The thickness of the words would be impossible not to recognize. Though he’s doing a good job holding it together, Dick can tell the alpha is close to tears. The gravity of the situation finally sinks in.

“ You were perfect Dickie. “

The nickname melts down his spine, deep and warm like something butter. Typically that tone would make his eyes flutter shut. His body going loose and lax against his mate. Not now however. Now while his eyes are so busy trying to memorize everything about their pup.

The process had been grueling. They had to get Jason legal, find a reputable company, pick a donor, try on each of her ovulations, suffer when it didn’t take, then try again, then the paper work, the fees, the complications, the waiting- Oh God the waiting.

It had been the worst, most agonizing part. Right after the premature birth, and watching their little one breathe in a little shallow tank, kept warm by heat lamps.

How Dick wishes he could have just taken her home that very first day.

Not that it matters anymore. Not when she’s theirs now. Not when she get’s to come home today and be put in their nest where she belongs. Right in-between her two parents.

God Dick doesn’t know how he’ll manage to share her. The perfect pup in his arms is just so wonderful. It’s been such a long agonizing journey, he barely wants to hand her over to her sire.

He laughs, wetly, trying not to wake Helena from her nap.

“ If I can’t share you with Daddy how will I give you to your aunties and uncles huh? “

Jason’s laugh is close to his ear, sweet and silent to the point where it barely breathes. The soft sound makes his toes curl in his shoes. The searing comfort of love and happiness runs through his body as happy chills.

It’s something to get familiar with. The quiet laugh of a father trying not to wake their pup.

He looks at those watery blue-green eyes and Dick is falling in love all over again.

God who knew they could end up here? The two of them- finally starting a family together. That they could walk away from a life of pain and agony, to gift themselves something so beautiful.

For the first time in months, giving up the moniker doesn’t feel so suffocating.

When Jason laces their fingers together over their pup he knows his husband, his mate, the half of his heart agrees.

All while the new half lays in their arms, peaceful, healthy and forever loved.

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Lovebug (14/14)

Summary:

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Notes: I know I usually post on Wednesdays but I'll be on the road on Wednesday and if I don't get this out soon, I'll probably end up dropping it next week or smthg so here it is. Two days early. I hope you enjoy :D

Is this all that there is to life? A glaring question that came unexpectedly, in between reading through codes for his nth freelance project the past few years.

In response, Levi closed his eyes, sat back and reflected. A part of him may have been asking that question for a while and slowly, Levi started to understand why he was asked that in the first place.

A few minutes ago, he had been strangely happy to see his code compiling at the first try. And just a few hours ago, he had been enthusiastic at running a debugger through a code and finding a few typos to fix.

Happiness. That was happiness right?

That part of him continued to nag. It soured that 'happiness,' leaving a burning dissatisfaction inside him. You’ve experienced better moments, happier moments.

Then Levi got fed up. He reached into the back of his mind, he remembered, then something stopped him from reminiscing for a while longer.

Something strange. Something buried.

He hadn’t allowed himself to feel much since he first moved into that new city. He had allowed the novelty and the business to carry him through his first months. But the novelty of a new beginning never lasted long.

Too shaken to even bother applying for a new job, Levi opted to work freelance. Consequently, his only companions were the four walls of his studio apartment and the occasional voices from next door.

There was only so much which could stimulate interest. His mind continued to search for them and naturally, time continued to move along with it. Routine and episodes of ennui seemed to last infinities in the moment. But in retrospect, it felt like they all happened too fast.

He had made sense of time in milestones, milestones worth ten times the refreshing feeling of running a debugger through code or the fleeting euphoria of compiling codes at the first try.

Is that all that there is to life? Eventually, he made sense of that strange voice. There was reason to that question.

That day was another milestone. If it wasn't for his nagging mind, he could have missed it.

It was a blustery autumn day in late October, the weather similar to the last view he had of his home five years ago. Shifting his gaze from the window of his present apartment, he took a quick look at the calendar and it was like a dam had ended up spilling open inside him.

The five year mark was a bittersweet milestone, five years since he left home. The fifth year rang more loudly than every year before that. Maybe because five was such a perfect number, or perhaps because he had been keeping something in for a while.

He felt a release. Then a reprieve from the monotony, a reprieve from the five years avoiding his old life. Levi found himself opening his browser tab, typing the words ‘love alarm’ on the search box and deleting it a second later.

An aimless and useless sequence of movements. He didn’t need a quick google search to know how it was doing.

The love alarm had become a household name even all the way in his side of the world. With his very human need to go out, whether it be for groceries, shopping or just some fresh air, Levi couldn’t completely ignore it. With the right decisions, Levi could choose not to give so much as a side glance at the people walking, heads bent down, staring at the number of hearts on their application.

When he went out though, even with his music at full blast, he would hear the familiar alarm as he walked through crowds.

At first, it had left a pang in his chest, a brief bout of nausea, perhaps disgust or embarrassment at his old life.

It had been five years since he first arrived though and it turned out, time did heal.

Levi looked through the wikipedia page of the love alarm and he found, it hurt more like a raw scar than a stab in his chest or a crushing weight. The nausea, the pang in his chest that plagued him years before were weak if almost nonexistent.

Curiosity took over.

He took his phone from the side of his desk and downloaded the application again. The name Jaeger was under the title screen and right next to it were the words ‘All rights reserved.”

Would would have felt like an ache in the chest years ago, felt more like a mosquito bite. Levi was just slightly annoyed. It did nothing to stop him though from registering again and looking through the application interface.

Nothing much had changed. There were some slight changes to the skin of the registration page, a change in the name of the company at the bottom. Levi purposely touched the activate button rapidly and found he had crashed the application.

That was one bug that he never got to fix. He turned his phone to the side, noting the way the screen glitched as it adjusted to the landscape orientation of the phone. Another bug Levi never got to fix.

Then he wondered who the developer on the other end had been to have never even caught it.

Biometrics registered, Levi activated the alarm to find no hearts. He couldn’t help but entertain that slight disappointment. Of course no hearts would have appeared though. He hadn’t even interacted with his neighbors.

It would have been creepy it rang. Letting out a sardonic laugh just loud enough for himself, he leaned back on the chair and stared at the ceiling, forcing his thoughts back to whatever coding freelance project he’d been dealing with a few minutes ago.

Work came in freelance projects. They were enough for rent, for savings and some capacity to eat out occasionally.

A simple yet comfortable life. But is that all that there is to life? That voice continued to tear into his work related thoughts. Levi gave in to the nagging thought again. He started scrolling through wikipedia articles detailing use, detailing acquisition history, he found another key word under related articles, more interesting than ‘love alarm.’

Mood Alarm.

It sent a strange shiver through the back of his neck. Levi rolled his shoulders, relieving the tension that came with the last few eons of reflection. He let out a whistle, opened the new article and scrolled down towards references.

There were lists of articles.

Partner of Zeke Jaeger and freshly minted PhD graduate Doctor Hange Zoe release Mood Alarm.

Doctor Hange Zoe. Something inside him was fighting for control. He couldn’t bring himself to click the link. At the same time though, there was this curiosity inside him that he couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of.

Under the link to the article was the official website.

At the front page, there was a boring and overly professional introduction Levi didn’t bother to read

Below them, everything else had been interesting enough to give more than a second long glance.

The list of functionalities. The color codes. Then newly launched dashboard functionalities, almost a carbon copy of the plan Levi had sent years back.

“Fucking hell, you actually did it,” Levi muttered. He couldn’t help but just allow the smile that tugged at his lips some control. Excitement had him searching for the application on the play store, downloading it and methodically going through the same registration process as the love alarm.

It didn’t look much like the mood alarm Levi had worked on years ago. He saw hints of it though and worked from there to admire it.

The front end had been cleaned up. The font chosen fit the silver-to-white gradient of the application. When Levi clicked ‘activate,’ the screen loaded.

The colors mixed against one another for a second, an aesthetic choice of animation that Levi couldn’t help but be amused with.

Red. Yellow. Blue. Purple. Green. Orange.

The colors continued to mix. Then some disappeared as if they had lost themselves in some colorful war.

Then it was only blue and yellow. The two colors danced against one another for a few seconds longer before they disappeared too. More specifically, they bundled against one another.

Green. It took him at least five seconds to get that reading.

He didn’t have to look at the guide on the website to know what it meant.

Sad happy? Or happy sad? Whatever that feeling was, Levi felt no need to introspect, or maybe he had been too lazy to.

It had been a while since he had even let himself feel something. The green on his screen, the feeling that accompanied it, seemed more like an old friend he hadn’t talked to a while.

If he had any ability at introspection, maybe it had already rusted. Still, he let those emotions inside him, that yellow and that blue do their work.

They had him turning off the mood alarm, then turning off the love alarm. Something inside him still hesitated to delete the applications. Then it had him considering the space on his phone for just a second.

He downloaded another app that night. A familiar app with a flame, then another one with a bee. Only months into his new life in a new city with a new job, Levi was already bored— and if he had to admit it—terribly, terribly lonely.

And maybe the best way to cure it was to spend the whole night swiping.

***

Finding a companion wasn’t as easy as desperation and a few second long rush of confidence made it out to be.

Perhaps, online dating was a rash idea, an uncharacteristic move.

Didn't he reject Petra years ago? How could he date anyone else? Petra… How is she… With nothing much to do but wait for his date, he found himself texting Petra as he waited in the cafe.

He sent a few thank you messages at her well wishes. They exchanged brief updates and Petra’s own updates dragged on for longer.

Her life was more eventful than his.

Petra had started dating Oluo. She had found someone who loved her, just as much as she loved him. Keeping a correspondence with her only highlighted points for reflection for Levi. The more he reflected, the more questions came up. The more he reflected, the more complicated the questions became.

He was lonely but could he be picky? At the same time, did he even have the heart to put anyone through the shitty experience of a half hearted courtship?

Hange’s words echoed in his head, not in any specific string, a few parts in words, a few parts in phrases.

Considering the circumstances… Love is a choice.

When he let her words echo through him, he managed to grip a presence long gone. A presence and a relationship, he clarified, that had never been his in the first place.

He never did completely brush away the guilt that accompanied every passing thought of Hange. There was this strange acceptance though that appended it, and it had him a little more discerning, a little more prudent.

If he couldn’t have her, he could always just keep her close in his own personal way.

“Have you heard of the love alarm?”

How long had she been there? How long had she been talking?

Right, Levi was on a date. She had said words before that question and Levi could have sworn they had exchanged greetings even before that.

“In passing,” Levi said. He manifested some reality from the words, as if a firm response was enough to forget decades worth of overtime and testing.

“It’s this application we can use to test compatibility… So at least we know if this could work.”

Levi listened with some fake intent as she explained how the love alarm worked. He made sure to nod at points where her tone had gone a little higher or louder.

“What do you think?” There was some finality to her voice, an expectant look on her face.

Levi hummed in thought.. “I don’t believe in using an app to check compatibility. What about when we consider circumstances? Get to know each other… Then decide if it could work?”

She looked at her phone for a second, then back at Levi, her brows furrowed in confusion.

Levi shook his head. “Sorry, I just don’t believe in things like the love alarm, it seems just like horoscopes or Myer Briggs to me. Compatibility, relationships, they’re just gonna be choices we make anyway.” He found himself guiltily looking away as he said those last points.

The pout that played at his date’s lips was evidence enough, there probably wouldn’t be a second date. “It’s not like our love alarm’s would have rung anyway,” she said.

It had been a while since Levi dated though and he started to realize, maybe his filter and his social skills had rusted just a bit.

***

Love is a choice.

It looked like he might have been the only one to believe that. He had managed to piss off countless other dates with his own ‘love is a choice’ schtick.

And he had been dating semi regularly for the past year already. Yet, nothing was coming up fruitful.

How the hell did Hange even manage to get married? Or maybe Hange had just been the exception. He then concluded, Hange just had too many other loveable qualities which could make anyone want to snap her up early on.

The more he entertained the thought of Hange, the heavier his own chest became. Then he stopped entertaining her then the cycle would start again, a very vicious cycle.

It just so happened that sometimes the thought of ‘Hange’ manifested as some domineering thought. ‘Love is a choice’ and the strange sensation that came with his whole body protesting, rebelling in their own little way worked hand in hand.

He was confused and consequently desperate enough to open the mood alarm for some inkling of comprehension. He would focus on the way the colors switched among one another, disappearing, always revealing a yellow and a light blue dancing between one another then always ending with a light blue.

Sometimes he was blue. Sometimes he was green.

Ane he continued to check. After all, he mood alarm had become a beautiful and constant companion. He had deleted the love alarm but kept the mood alarm close.

“What do you think of the love alarm?”

How many people are gonna ask about that fucking application?

Zeke had just been a little too good at marketing. It was the nth time someone had broken the ice of a first date with that fucking question and Levi regretted not making a drinking game out of it. Maybe he would have been able to drink enough to forget that cursed product.

“Are you okay?” his new date asked.

He had spent the past few minutes too silent, not thinking. “Nifa…” That was her name right? He cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

She looked as nervous as he did, or even more nervous. That part was comforting at least. In a way, her demeanor seemed a little more pleasant, more genuinely curious than wary. “I asked just a second ago, have you ever used that love alarm?” she said in response.

Levi followed the same script. "In passing."

“Would you like to try it out? Just to make sure we’re on the same page, relationship wise.”

“I’d rather we relied on circumstances and compatibility to make the choice for us. Get to know each other maybe…” When it came to suggestions, Levi had revised his script just a bit. Too many people got offended by his invalidating horoscopes and Myer Briggs type for some weird reason. “Like get to know each other, like…” Levi trailed off for a second, allowing himself a pregnant pause. ”... Elizabeth and Darcy?”

Nifa had cocked her head to the side curiously, thought for a long second and smiled just a bit wider. “You read Pride and Prejudice?”

Levi nodded subtly. “A while back,.”

She paused for a second, seeming deep in thought. “Well… Now that I think about it, you might be right,” Nifa said. “This compatibility thing… Your idea of love. I think it makes sense.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, why?” Nifa asked.

Levi dropped his shoulders in relief, the weight of at least a hundred failed dates fell off his shoulders. “I’ve been dating for years and I feel like you’re the only one who actually said that.”

Nifa didn’t reply immediately and the longer Levi sat there, the more clearly he saw her face. Surprise morphed into something that seemed more like pity. Then, the chronic pang in his chest came back.

A first love did that to people maybe? A painful first love lost had that special power to maybe just twist his own philosophies, to make him almost disgusted at his own creations and the way it had challenged his own convictions.

Are you scared? Levi thought to himself. He couldn’t be too sure how he was handling himself in front of Nifa. He looked down at his hands, opening and closing them a few times and if he looked closely, he could almost feel those uncomfortable twinges in his wrist that came from years of coding.

“I’m willing to put the time into it if you are.” Nifa’s voice was more gentle and it flowed as if she had sensed the stiffness in his voice.

Levi didn’t respond immediately and suddenly their little corner of the crowded cafe was eerily silent. There was a melancholy that had blanketed their little corner despite the Saturday afternoon crowd.

Nifa seemed like she was trying to break away from it with some light conversation. “Hey, have you heard of the mood alarm?”

“The mood alarm?” Levi let that half smile creep up his lips, just high enough to be more invisible than obvious. Three words from a stranger and his emotions were reduced to a mess.

He once again felt that twinge again at his rests and that sleepless night, and her. He was remembering her in his office through sleepy exhausted eyes, with a cocktail dress and a sandwich bag in one hand.

There was also something amusing and painfully ironic about hearing his own brainchild, from someone so casually, as if it had turned into some household name while he wasn’t looking.

The conversation was getting painful, painfully interesting and the masochist in Levi was gripping him and pulling him back to reality. “Like the love alarm…” Levi added.

“Well, they’re products from the Jaeger corporation… You know the Jaeger family right?” Nifa added.

Levi could only be thankful he hadn’t been sipping at his tea then. He probably could have choked. How could he ever forget Zeke Jaeger?

He might have gotten a lot better at hiding his own disgust or Nifa could have been too deep in thought. She continued to talk. “They bought Love Alarm a few years back.”

“I know the Jaeger family,” Levi said.

“So you know about their eldest son, the heir of the Jaeger corporation… And his partner?”

Levi took a sip of tea, not bothering to respond.

Nifa may have taken that as a ‘no.’“His partner was working towards a PhD in psychology and apparently that was her final project. The codes for the mood alarm are very similar to the love alarm apparently."

“Oh?” Levi asked, feigning interest.

Soon, it turned into something genuine. Nifa was offering new information. “She got the PhD a few years ago and soon after that, the application was launched. And now they’re launching a solution for hospitals.”

“What kind of solution?” Levi asked.

“Wait, have you ever used the mood alarm? Or do you know how it works?” Nifa asked. “Anyway, I realized I ended up digressing here… The point I was trying to make is, the one who developed the mood alarm was able to prove that whatever measurements they use for the love alarm, are related to emotions. And what if, understanding how we feel when we work towards a relationship is a better determinant of whether the relationship could work?”

Levi nodded quickly, an attempt to be polite. At that point though, he wasn’t too interested in the point she had been trying to make “I’m familiar with the application and how it works. But you mentioned something about a solution for hospitals…” He didn’t think it was worth lying. He didn’t need a long winded explanation of the alarm he made. He needed an explanation of what Hange had been making."

Nifa didn’t seem to get the message. “So, the application will determine your emotions for you--- I have one right now and we could use it over time to articulate how we feel.” She pulled out her phone and dropped it on the table. “I think analyzing our own emotions would do a better job than relying on how the love alarm processes the emotions.”

There was something surreal about seeing a user explain it to him, as if they knew it more than him.

For a while, he couldn’t help but just entertain the possibility that in her own way, Nifa may have known more. With someone explaining and demonstrating, he was more easily able to make sense of the changes that had been implemented since Hange acquired it.

The app icon was reminiscent of the love alarm, two rings around it but instead of a heart in between, there was an icon, an elegant cross between a flower and a color wheel.

Red. Blue. Yellow. In between the primary colors were purple, green and orange.

Nifa activated it and held the phone between her fingertips. Just like the night when Levi had first played with it, the colored blobs swam amongst one another again, each blob would disappear one by one, leaving the remaining colors.

Yellow and Orange. “Looks like I’m happy,” Nifa commented. “So apparently the new dashboard allows us to connect this reading on the phone to a PC and get a more detailed explanation, numbers, heart rate, all the like.”

“You seem to know a lot about the app,” Levi mused.

Nifa cocked her head to one side. “Well, I’m into psychology too. I work as a psychologist in one of the hospitals. Our hospital is one of the first ones to buy software licenses so I’ve done my research.” She hummed, looking straight at him for a second as if studying him. “Now that I think about it, your job wasn’t on your profile. What do you do for a living?”

Levi’s response was automatic. “IT work.” He was suddenly self conscious about even mentioning the word ‘developer.’

“Ooooh... So you’d probably figure out how this app works much faster than I would.” Nifa sighed. “And you could probably help reassure me about this."

“Reassure you about what?”

“I’m honestly pretty nervous about rolling out this software.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s relatively new, a few bugs would come up here and there.”

“All softwares are going to face new bugs with every update. It’s never ending,” Levi said nonchalantly.

“Spoken like a true IT guy,” Nifa joked. She took a sip of her shake and stared down at his tea and up at him again. “Say, since you’re in IT, you think you can hook us up with someone?”

“Hook you up with someone?” Levi asked. His mind was going places more suited for a tinder date than a conversation on career. He raised one eyebrow in question. He couldn’t be too sure of what she meant just yet.

It looked like she had started to understand that double entendre. Nifa blushed then let out a cough. “No, no. Our company is looking to build a small support team.”

“An IT support team?” Levi asked.

“Well, people who could focus on learning the product, dealing with whatever bugs, testing them, compiling them and sending them over to the Mood Alarm team. You think you’d know anyone tech savvy? Maybe familiar with how biotechnology works?

“I could try to look around…” Levi said.

“Great!” Nifa chimed

By some magic, the conversation shifted elsewhere. Nifa had a way with conversation, keeping some sort of a flow, talking about her own job and getting him to talk about his freelance projects.

Levi’s thoughts on the hospital solution though were an ubiquitous part of his mind space.That was the whole point of the investment right? Back then, Zeke and Hange had plans on selling it to hospitals.

And there was a free trial. That night, Levi had been curious enough to click the ‘book a free trial button’ and to even fill out the first few lines.

Organization name? He didn't have one.

Purpose? To catch up with his own brain child maybe.

He ended up staring at the blank screen for a while, wondering where the hell he would get an organization and a valid purpose.

He wanted to check it out, he really did. And he was a little salty that they required a background check before they even allowed trials for a project he created.

Curiosity became desperation. With desperation, came creativity, audacity. He took his phone with the intention of just asking Nifa a few questions, only to see there was an unread message from her.

Thanks for today! I had a lot of fun. Hopefully, we can plan something soon. I might be busy with work this week but maybe the week after?

Levi stared at her message and composed a quick reply, pleasantries forgotten.

You mentioned something about IT support openings in the hospital...

***

The hiring manager introduced himself as Moblit but he didn't say much else. Instead, he spent the next few minutes looking through Levi's resume, his brow wrinkled.

"Is there something wrong with my resume?" Levi asked, breaking the silence. He had kept it minimalistic, only sticking to odd jobs the past five years.

Moblit shook his head. "Nothing, it just doesn't look like you have support role experience."

"Do I need experience in a support role? I think I'm familiar enough with how apps work to stand in as one," Levi said. Should he mention that he had done the support work before?

"So you've compiled tickets, sent them over to developers?"

I'm the developer who deals with those bullshit tickets. He thought to himself. On the outside though, he nodded and leaned a bit more forward on the table. It wasn’t too difficult to show interest. He was genuinely interested, having given in to that curiosity-turned-desperation.

"Well, if you're interested in taking the job then…” Moblit said. “Let's see how much you know about the mood alarm app." He opened a folder. "It's a relatively new solution, so I don't expect you to know much but if you've heard of the love alarm?"

"I have."

"Well they're from the same corporation…"

Information on their history flew into one ear and out the other. "Do you have any more questions for me?" Levi asked. He could have interrupted Moblit there but he didn’t want to hear about a history he actually experienced first hand.

Moblit cleared his throat. "Well, if you could tell me how you think the mood alarm works? Then I’ll give you a list of common bugs and can you tell me how you will go about raising them to developers?

***

Six years hadn’t done much to make him forget. He had been working with the love alarm for almost a decade after all.

And the mood alarm? He had a strange connection to it, he couldn’t explain.

The code wasn’t open source. Of course it wouldn’t. That was an enterprise application and they wouldn’t want any hacker just randomly getting it. Yet, why did he feel so offended at not having access?

“Hey Levi, how would you handle this?”

“Handle what?” Levi didn’t look up from his monitor immediately. The voice and the question have all were all too familiar and it wasn’t urgent anyway.

“Levi, take a look…” Farlan seemed more frustrated than a second ago.

Levi looked at Farlan’s screen. Another display issue. He was all too familiar with the bugs and it looked like the love alarm and the mood alarm were coming up with the same issues. “Click the activate button three times really fast, right click the desktop, select inspect and take a screenshot. We send it over to the developers on the mood alarm team,” Levi said. That had become routine after a while, yet somehow, his two colleagues Farlan and Isabel were still asking questions.

Maybe because he was the only one who understood what the hell the developers needed to see to actually get to the bottom of the problem.

“Make sure to check it in both light mode and dark mode,” Levi said. “And also, there’s a known bug for the phone app, check if turning on the alarm affects your ability to receive notifications from other apps.” Those words had sent a wave of nostalgia through him. That was one of the bugs he had gotten around to fixing with the love alarm.

“Hey...”Isabel’s voice sounded from next to him. Levi turned around, almost jumping when he saw she had been close enough to look over his shoulder. “What are you researching?”

It wouldn't look good if he slacked off at work in front of colleagues a good few years his junior. Levi closed the tab. “Just my own research on mood alarm.” And when he looked at his codes a little longer, then back at Isabel who seemed almost confused, Levi realized it had looked more like extra work than anything else.

He spent the whole morning on ‘extra work, watching the API calls, making notes to himself to check the codes he had sent Hange years back just to see how much had changed.

“You finished all your tasks today and you still wanna do research on the mood alarm?” Farlan asked, a look of utter amazement on his face.

“What can I say? This app is pretty interesting.” it wasn’t a lie. Watching the growth of his own child from afar, was a fun thing to do.

“It honestly feels like you’ve done this type of work before."

“I did something similar,” Levi said.

“What kind of place did you work in before?” Isabel asked excitedly, her tasks also forgotten.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Levi answered, his tone unchanged.

“Something like the love alarm?”

Levi nodded. “Maybe that’s the reason I can figure things out pretty fast,” he said. The best plan of action was to digress.

“So that means we could make you handle the harder cases?” Farlan snickered.

“I’d rather you learn how to deal with others on your own,” Levi said. “I’ve worked with these apps for a long time. The bugs never end.”

***

“Moblit’s saying you’re doing a pretty good job picking out the bugs,” Nifa spoke above the bustle of the lunch time crowd.

“Are we?” Levi asked. He kept his words brief, not wanting to waste too much energy speaking over the others in the hospital cafeteria.

“Well, he was talking about you mostly,” Nifa said. “Most big issues get resolved with each release. And Moblit was saying that our support team just gives really good feedback.”

“The developers do the work. All we do is find the bugs.” Levi started to pick more meticulously at his salad

Nifa shook her head. “I think the support team deserves credit too. It’s difficult figuring out whether issues are user issues or there’s really a bug. Isabel also told me you find ways to reproduce it quickly.”

“Do I?” His responses were getting less and less creative. There just wasn’t much to say and the compliments were making him more and more uncomfortable by the second.

Moblit was a life saver. He had broken out of the crowd, running to Nifa, an urgent but excited expression on his face. “Nifa, you’ve got to hear this.”

Levi used that brief distraction to shovel more salad into his mouth.

Moblit had spoken just beneath the sounds of other conversations and Levi couldn’t make out what he had said. He did make out the urgency in Nifa’s face and the excitement. Whatever Moblit had said was contagious.

“When are they coming?” Nifa asked, her voice much louder than Moblit’s.

Levi stood up, gathering his plate, his utensils and his unfinished salad. “If I’m not supposed to be in this conversation…”

Moblit shook his head. “Levi, no, please stay. I’d rather you hear this since this is related to your line of work too.”

“Why?” Levi raised one eyebrow.

“Zeke Jaeger and his partner Doctor Hange Zoe, they’re planning to visit,” Moblit said.

Levi couldn’t even tell what expression he had on then.

Maybe Moblit had interpreted shock as confusion. “Zeke Jaeger is the owner of the love alarm. Hange Zoe’s the creator of the mood alarm… In case you didn't know.”

***

“Hey, I wanna see her… Is this how she looks like?” Isabel’s voice was a whisper, a very loud whisper. “She looks smart.”

Farlan’s voice wasn’t any softer. “Well, that’s what you’d expect from the mastermind behind the mood alarm right? I heard Zeke Jaeger bought her the love alarm so she could look through the code and make the mood alarm for herself.”

“Where did you hear that?” Isabel asked.

“Watch the interviews.”

The click and clack of the keyboard. Then there was the sound of voices coming from the loud speaker from Farlan’s computer.

Then Hange’s very familiar voice.

Levi didn’t want to listen. “You know, if you spend too much time looking through this. You’re not gonna get anything done.” He forced his voice into something louder than what he was comfortable with. “Don’t you two have other tasks to do?”

“Aren’t you excited to meet them?” Isabel rolled her chair next to Levi.

No way in hell am I meeting them. “I’m planning on taking a leave,” he said.

“Wait, why?” Isabel seeming heartbroken, as if Levi taking a leave was the most terrible thing in the world.

“Well, as employees we’re entitled to leaves right?” Levi asked emotionlessly, willing himself not to at all be affected by Isabel’s puppy dog face.

Farlan sighed. “You’re the best one at this type of work among the three of us. You know, this is a good opportunity for you to get noticed.”

“I don’t wanna get noticed,” Levi said, as he focused back again on the screen, refreshing their ticketing software a little bit faster that time. It really was an uneventful afternoon. He couldn’t blame Farlan and Isabel for doing nothing.

“It’s a big money, a chance at a big career move,” Farlan said, raising his voice as if that could have done anything to convince Levi.

Levi looked up from the monitor and back to Farlan. “Do you really want me out of here?”

Farlan shrugged. “I dunno, you just seem too overqualified for this kind of job.”

Levi sighed. “Believe me, I’m happy to be here.” He continued to click refresh, just in case anything could have halted that already seemingly awkward conversation. The reason why he didn’t want to run into Zeke or Hange… Was it written all over his face?

Just in case Farlan and Isabel were mind readers, Levi kept quiet, kept his eyes glued on the screen and he prayed the day would get busier somehow.

It did. But it got busy so close to the end of the day and overtime seemed inevitable.

“We’re not receiving any readings.”

The same exact fucking line, from ten different customers from different hospital branches around the country. “You’re fucking kidding me,” Levi muttered.

He opened all the test devices, only to find, none of them were receiving readings from the mood alarm either. He was sure though, he was annoyed, very very annoyed. Maybe even angry. “Try testing,” he ordered.

Farlan and Isabel were more emotional than he was. If it didn’t work for them, it probably wasn’t working at all.

They had full trust on him. Isabel and Farlan nodded and they went through the devices quickly. All test devices exhausted and there was nothing much to do. Levi was convinced it was an issue that could only be investigated on the backend. “We’re done for the day.”

“We have to send a report right?”

Levi started to pack his bag. “Send a report saying we’re not getting any readings,” he said with a shrug. “It’s probably a backend issue or an issue with their API.”

“You sure we can’t do anything from our side?” Farlan pressed.

Levi shook his head. “None.” He logged out, slung his backpack over his shoulder and exited the office.

He sensed their disappointment in him. In his months working there, Levi had never left the office without doing a thorough investigation and writing a detailed report.

That might be the first time in months, they would give something completely unhelpful for the developers. That wasn’t Levi’s intention though. There were just some things that were better off investigated on his own personal PC.

For the first time in a while, Levi didn’t go straight for the shower when he arrived back home. He booted up his own PC. When he checked his cloud account, he found the private repository with all the codes from the love alarm and the mood alarm was still there.

It hadn’t been touched in years though.

He scrolled through the code, allowing that wave of nostalgic to wash over him gently. Having been the only one who worked on the base, Levi was very very familiar with it. Memories came quickly with the nostalgia. There was a point where the server was down and he remembered the hundreds of support tickets about the temporarily malfunctioning love alarm.

No readings were coming through. Levi did a quick calculation of the time zones of his own city and of the mood alarm headquarters. Then he looked through the code again.

Convinced that it was a fair theory, Levi opened his pseudo email, entered the support email for the mood alarm and left just one sentence on the email body.

I’m convinced one of your devs left a debugger on one of these codes on the backend.

A few years ago, he had been guilty of leaving a debugger running overnight,  fucking up the whole command system of the love alarm.

He copied and pasted a part of the code and the sent the email off. For all he knew, the mood alarm could have branched off far from the love alarm, rendering his theory completely stupid. Still, it was a theory worth entertaining.

The issues from work forgotten, Levi started to open his other emails, finding one from Petra on the third page, dated months ago.

Just a reminder that he hadn’t opened that email in months. “A wedding invite?”

Petra Ral and Oluo Bozado invite you to celebrate their wedding…

He didn’t need the rest of it to convince himself to go. He only needed to look at the date under, conveniently a week after Hange and Zeke were scheduled to visit the hospital where he worked.

He sent off two emails that night.

One to Petra, a very very late RSVP.

Then one to management, a request for a two week leave. For personal reasons.

A wedding always made a good personal reason. That was probably only half his actual personal reason though.

***

“I didn’t even expect you to come.” Petra seemed happy.

It could have been the make up or her natural blush. She was a glowing bride, glowing bright enough that Levi was starting to feel lonely.

“It’s been a while,” Levi said. “And you two are looking good.”

“How’s life abroad?” Petra asked.

“It’s fine,” Levi said.

“You adjusted well?” Petra asked again.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Levi took a sip of his wine.

“You managed to get a software engineering job there?” That time it was Oluo who asked.

“Something similar,” Levi said. He started to shake his glass a bit, feigning deep consideration. Maybe that would explain his inability to respond. In truth, he was in no mood to make conversation but when the bride and the groom had gone out of their way to sit next to him on the bench outside their party, and they had gone through all the trouble of asking, it was only polite that he kept his side of the conversation.

Somewhere along the exchanges, Petra brought up a question. And whether it had been appropriate or not, Levi couldn’t tell but he thought it worth an answer at least.

“Have you met anyone?” Petra asked.

“What?” Levi responded.

“I dunno… I guess someone who makes you feel good? Someone who manages to ring your love alarm?” Petra gave him a knowing look.

Levi only had to shift his gaze from Petra to the seemingly blank face of Oluo to know, Petra had at least kept that part to herself. To the others, his alarm ringing with Hange could have been just a bug.

Levi shook his head. “I haven’t touched the love alarm in years,” he admitted.

Petra seemed more understanding. “We haven’t touched it in years either.”

Levi raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

Petra stared ahead, looking deep in thought. She turned to Oluo. “Well, I guess a part of us wanted to build this organically, get to know each other first. And maybe that’s the best way to find people. I think the love alarm just causes unnecessary chaos sometimes.”

Levi only had to look back at his past five years to see it. To be honest, he could actually put the blame on the love alarm for completely uprooting his life. He couldn't say he totally agreed though. He didn’t regret the time with Hange either.

But he wasn’t going to deny her credit where credit was due. “You make sense.”

It wasn’t as simple as that though. Somehow, Hange’s own words had torn into the silence. Just for him. The love alarm causes chaos but sometimes it can tie loose ends.

And for him, it had been both. It had caused chaos but somehow, meeting Hange, having gotten to know her, having gotten to talk to her had tied some loose ends inside him.

What kind of loose ends? He couldn’t be too sure.

“Even when you don’t use the love alarm now, have you met other people?” Petra was still very interested in his love life.

Oluo should have been silently uncomfortable about that. Levi couldn’t tell with a quick glance.

“I’ve met a few people though… There’s someone named Nifa,” Levi said,

“Next time you come here, you’ll take her for a visit? Make sure to introduce us to her?” Petra asked.

“Or maybe next time, it will be us visiting,” Oluo added.

The brief conversation ended soon after, with a few exchanged greetings and a promise to bring Nifa. In case something ever happened between him and NIfa.

By the end of the night, he had made a promise to himself not to use that love alarm to find his next love.

Petra was right, the love alarm could cause unnecessary chaos. Besides, love is a choice right?

***

Levi came back from his very relaxing two week leave to two words that made his stomach turn.

Doctor Zoe. That was what Farlan and Isabel called her.

“Doctor Zoe…” Levi repeated. The words tasted unfamiliar. Suddenly, the road trip, the beach trip and just the quiet meetings in the cafe all seemed like just a fevered dream.

“And she stopped to talk to all of us!” Isabel sang, her eyes filled with wonder. “You should have stayed. I swear, I feel like you would have gotten along. She never stops talking. You two could have talked about the mood alarm for hours.”

“She sounds tiring to be with,” Levi said, an attempt at a halfhearted reply.

Farlan grinned, an alarmingly knowing expression on his face. “Don’t lie, you would have enjoyed at least listening. You’re way more enthusiastic about the mood alarm than we are.”

“I’m just being a good employee.” Levi shook his head, as if that was enough to erase the regret that shoved itself into his throat and down to his chest.

“She really made sure to talk to everyone,” Isabel said. “And she stayed for a few days longer. Maybe the plans changed since she went alone.”

“Wait, she came alone?” Levi said. Don’t regret. Don’t you dare regret leaving.

Farlan nodded in response. “Moblit explained this to us before they came.” He turned to Isabel as if expecting some explanation from her.

“I can’t be too sure either, I’ve only heard a bit about it. And rich people like the Jaegers, they like to keep their personal lives a secret right?” Isabel answered.

Farlan shrugged. “Anyway, from what Moblit told me, they intended to visit all the major customers including our hospital chain. They’ve been planning this tour for months, maybe even years but Doctor Zoe ended up going alone.”

“Did you ever find out why?” Levi kept his voice soft, anything louder and he might just look more invested. He turned back to the unopened tickets on his screen. From his peripherals, he could see Farlan and Isabel exchanging glances.

It was Farlan who spoke up. “I have a theory.”

“Tell me,” Levi said.

“They fought.”

“Okay, couples fight.” Levi continued to click at the tickets, opening them one by one, just to feel productive.

“Yeah, but it must have been a big fight right?” Isabel added. “I did some research on Doctor Zoe after we met her and apparently, they were having problems even years ago. Apparently, there are rumors that her husband bought the love alarm to save their marriage.”

“Where the hell did you get that info?” Farlan sounded incredulous.

Isabel chuckled mischievously. “The dark, dark internet.”

“That can’t be true.” Farlan shook his head in disbelief.

“I can’t really prove it anymore. A lot of the threads online that actually discuss this get taken down by the admin. But I swear, now that I think about it, it does make sense. I read some articles, no one expected Zeke Jaeger to buy the love alarm… Some said he did it to save the love alarm after a major bug showed up that could have prevented PR….Apparently, there was a certain point a few years ago, where there were photos of Doctor Zoe with another man. I tried looking for the photos but I can’t find them anymore.”

“You really got invested in her love life huh?”

Isabel groaned. “I couldn’t help it. She seemed so nice and she talked to us a lot even when we were just support, she took the time to teach us and she’s just so humble…”

“But what if she really did cheat on her husband?” Farlan challenged. “I mean, the rumors have to have been there for a reason right?”

“Do you think she looks like the type to cheat?” Isabel asked. “That very honest and open face?”

Farlan coughed in surprise. “She doesn’t for sure---but rumors don’t come out of nowhere right?”

“You two, go back to work,” Levi said. While the two had been working, he had been assigning tickets to them, an ingenious way to compose himself.

“Wait not yet, what do you think Levi? You might have better intuition than we do.”

“Intuition?” Levi repeated, one eyebrow raised.

“Does she really look like the type to cheat?” Farlan asked.

Levi continued to stare at the screen, not willing to risk showing them whatever expression played at his face then. “I didn’t meet her. You two did so you’re better qualified to answer that question. Tell me, does she look like the type to cheat?”

Farlan paused for a second, then narrowed his eyes at Levi. “I think I have a question which you might be more qualified to answer,” Farlan said. “You’re pretty good at finding bugs. Have you ever done research on the love alarm bug? What do you think the bug was… The one which made Zeke Jaeger buy the app?”

“I don’t think there was a bug,” Levi said.

“What do you mean?” Farlan pressed.

“Get back to work you two.” Levi kept his voice firm, loud and authoritative. Something he would have rather not done, if it hadn’t been for the weight which came with what should have been a light piece of gossip, and his whittling ability to keep a stoic demeanor.

The deep dark internet. Levi watched his two companions. Their eyes were once again fixed on the screen, Farlan’s fingers were flying over the keyboard, Isabel was playing with some test device.

Deep enough at work for Levi to take his own quick break. He opened an incognito tab and put his headphones on.

One video or one article, and he’d get back to work. He found an interview, the opening questions had been the same familiar ones Farlan had been playing on speaker months ago.

He played the first few questions at twice the speed. He knew the answers already.

What inspired you to make the mood alarm?

“Love alarm… Codes… Yadayadayada…” Levi muttered just a loud enough for himself. Hange had been careful not to mention anything about a developer. He could see the way she had shifted gazes for just a second, seeming uncomfortable.

He couldn’t blame her. Isabel had said so herself, in the deep dark internet, maybe there were rumors of an affair.

And some journalists were aware.

Personal Life? Around the point that someone asked about her personal life, Levi slowed the clip down. They had timed it, to the exact point where Hange had tensed up and looked away for just a second.

“Can you tell us about your relationship with Zeke Jaeger? How has it been?”

“How did you feel when you realized he bought you the love alarm? Is it true he bought it to win you back?”

Hange was admirably professional about it. “We’re digressing now,” she said with a light hearted tone, a laugh which seemed more rehearsed than actually Hange’s.

Is it true you had an affair with another man? It wasn’t loud enough for Hange to have heard it, just a sound among others. When Levi had been looking for that question and it rang more loudly for him. He rewinded the video a few times just to make sure.

What the hell… No we didn’t… We. Didn’t. Have. An. Affair.

“Levi, are you okay?” Isabel asked

“What?”

“You were talking to yourself just now.”

Levi quickly closed the tab as Isabel looked over his shoulder. “Nothing, just looking at tickets,” he said. He went back to their ticketing application, opened a few more tickets and decided to table the research until later that evening.

***

The deep, dark internet.

With his own personal wifi and his own VPN, Levi had more wriggle room to dig deeper.

There was a mention of a fight, a marriage on the rocks, and the rumors only grew from there. The more Levi found, the more courage he mustered. It turned out, the process of scrolling through threads, joining chat groups had been nothing but liberating.

Liberating but infuriating.

The internet was an aggregate of bad takes and the occasional good one. From bad takes came horrible half baked rumors.

I swear, if they end up divorcing…

Jaeger should have dumped her fucking ass from the start.

Slut…

Whore…

Hange Zoe. Fucking gold digger.

There were rumors that she had manipulated Zeke for the money. Rumors that she had only married him to complete her PhD.

Levi quickly went through those.

Some of the people were nice though and Levi read those comments a little more slowly.

The mood alarm was Zoe’s deal.

The money Jaeger put into was a donation.

If they’re not happy, let them divorce.

And there were videos, particularly zoomed videos in events of Zeke and Hange in conventions and conferences, the latest one only a few months ago. Before Hange  had visited the hospital.

In the most recent one, they were talking, just at the corner behind the stage, still visible from the camera. Levi rewinded the video again and again just to confirm their identity.

The Hange on the screen seemed indignant. Zeke had pulled her in by the waist, she pulled away. In response, Zeke had once again gone for her hands, pulling her towards him.

Just like back in the school gym.

It was different, that time in the gym Hange had been accepted yet determined at the same time. The Hange on the video, or the least, the one he could make out from the flailing of her hands, the stamping of her food on the ground, the moment she had pulled away then turned away was telling.

Hange wasn’t accepting anything anymore.

Levi scrolled through the comments.

If Hange Zoe divorces Zeke Jaeger… If she keeps possession of the mood alarm... she’s a gold digger.

She needed Jaeger funds to complete PhD… It’s Zeke Jaeger’s PhD not hers lmao XD

It was around the fifth most liked comment when Levi closed the tab, not bothering to bookmark the site. That was enough internet toxicity for the day.

***

“You’re transferring me?” Levi had ended up preempting the discussion.

Nifa and Moblit looked at each other, then back at him. Then Nifa nodded.

Moblit shook his head, creating some confusion. “No, we wanted your opinion on this first. The city we’ll be transferring you to isn’t very… convenient.”

“But you will be paid more,” Nifa said.

Since no one actually wants to live there. A fact no one actually admitted during those types of meetings but Levi had been in corporate long enough to know.

“And it’s just for a few years,” Moblit said, his tone, a tone of reassurance more than actual confidence. “Our hospital got special permission to do testing and research and we’ll need one support guy there. This is an important project for our hospital so...”

Levi had done a quick google search of the city under the table, a name he never heard of, and just the picture of a very sleepy town with not many buildings with even two floors was indicative. There was a reason why Moblit and Nifa seemed uncertain about a transfer.

There wasn’t much he did anyway in that city. How could moving away be any different?

“What’s this research about?” Levi asked.

Moblit responded to that more clearly and more confidently. “We’re planning to do further research, create programs for kids who grew up in difficult households to help them process emotions better. We’re starting with a few kids, on a small research facility up north… And having someone on call would be helpful.”

It didn’t take much to convince Levi after that. “There isn’t much for me to miss here anyway.” Really, he would have taken that transfer even without the pay raise.

***

There was peace and quiet which came with living in the middle of nowhere. Peace and quiet had a way of making Levi unbearably bored yet at the same time more perceptive as to why the hell no one wanted to live there in the first place.

Winters were cruel, with snow piling up meters high. Even in the summers, the sky was overcast and in all four seasons, the air still found a way to be suffocatingly dry.

Someone mentioned something about lake effects and something about rain shadows, and Levi couldn’t really tell which one was it. He wasn’t a scientist after all.

He was human though, a very simple minded human with no science degree. So he let the weather affect his moods, maybe even affect his long term philosophies in life. His current environment was too different from the bustling city he grew up in, or the other urban jungle he had lived the past five years of his life, he deemed his new home, the epitome of the middle of nowhere.

It was completely unfamiliar and by some psychological consequence to Levi, it was too far flung from his old life for Levi to even entertain anything about his old life, beyond work. So it became easier to take a more pragmatic approach at reminiscing.

A few months into his transfer, he had even started reading articles on Zeke and Hange again.

Billionaire Zeke Jaeger finalizes divorce would Mood Alarm founder Hange Zoe.

Then the comments section:

That was fast.

I knew it, Zoe’s a gold digger.

There was the string of names, whore, sluts, cheaters and gold diggers that never made too much sense as sentences. So Levi quickly closed the tab.

You actually did it. He thought to himself. And when he thought a little longer about it, he realized he did feel happy for her.

Happy? Sad? Disappointed? Out of curiosity, he opened his own mood alarm and clicked activate. It glowed with a bright green.

He could have been happier.

Levi decided to blame the sky for his fickle mood. That grey view that stretched far unimpeded by any of the surrounding low rising buildings, only ending by the mountains that seemed hundreds of miles away.

The surrounding mountains and the large lake followed him to work. An overly scenic landscape that reminded him, the train back to the capital only came once a day, the train that passed through the next major city only passed three times a day.

And fucking hell, train tickets were expensive.

By some modern day definition, Levi really was trapped in the middle of nowhere.

The weather only made him more cynical, yet angrier at the tasteless comments under the news article on Zeke and Hange’s divorce. As he neared the research center, he ended up tabling that reflection with one sentence, something comforting yet oddly depressing.

Hange wouldn’t look for me. Then he brushed it away violently soon after. The audacity of even considering the prospect that he was important enough for her to want to search for him. Why would Hange care where he is?

The fact that Hange was followed by the press while he was trapped in the middle of nowhere was indicative enough. They were from two completely different worlds.

***

It may have taken months more, but what Levi clocked to a ‘bout of wanderlust’ eventually settled. He found, keeping himself busy with the right work had done wonders to placate the turmoil inside him.

Keeping busy somehow made it easier to sit up and get ready for work. It meant managing to desensitize his own moods to the weather around him.

Most importantly, it meant seeing some connection with the world, some sliver of motivation to go the extra mile with the people who worked with.

“Early as always, Ackerman.” Same greeting everyday.

“Morning to you too, Onyankopon,” Levi responded as he entered the irsmall office.

Onyankopon was a companion  duringearly in the mornings, lunch times, late afternoons and sometimes, even the dinners when he would invite Levi out for a drink in the only bar for miles around.

Still, it made life remotely eventful when the only changing things had been the weather and his work.

And his work was very eventful.

“Uncle Levi! Did you find any bugs yesterday?” Just like every other morning, the two kids would burst through the door. Or more specifically, the brunette was always the one bursting through the door, the blonde just followed.

“Gaby, you might be bothering them,” Falco said. He said that at least three times a week.

Levi had never been the type anyway to tell them he didn’t mind their morning visits. It always meant something to look forward to.

“Nothing so far,” Levi said. He looked towards Onyakopon, the one in charge of reporting issues. “Hopefully.”

Onyankopon raised his hands in defense. “Don’t get mad at me, get mad at the devs who created the mood alarm in the first place."

Levi was constantly mad at the devs anyway, if he considered that constant state of self loathing. Working on the mood alarm as support had only made Levi realize how many shortcuts he had taken into making that damn application years ago.

“There’s nothing today,” Levi said as he looked at the two kids. “But I could give you a quick lesson,” he added. He couldn’t say no to the crestfallen faces of the two kids.

He dragged one seat next to him and guided Gaby to one of them and Falco to his own seat. “When I want to look for errors in the code, I look here first.” It was a terribly boring lesson, a useless one. Support 101. At the least, the kids seemed satisfied. “If I right click here, and then inspect, I can see what this website is made out of.”

Gaby let out a breath, a mix between a ‘wow’ and an ‘oh.’ “I can’t read it.”

“It’s another language,” Levi explained. “Computers don’t understand our language. So we have to learn another language to be able to talk to them. And when we’re able to tell them what we want, they’ll do things for us, things we can’t do ourselves.”

Gaby had asked more questions after that. Falco had asked his own too, albeit hesitantly.

The difference between the network and console tabs, the meanings of the strange brackets, what happens if they just aimlessly click…

That morning session ended with less than half the questions answered, and a promise to teach them more the next morning. Like every other day before, at eight in the morning, Onyankopon brought them to the activity room and Levi was left alone in the office.

There weren’t many people in the research center, only five employees in total. After all, there were only ten to twenty kids who came and went every day, a very manageable number for five people. He and Onyankopon shared an office and with Onyankopon busy a good chunk of the day, Levi was left alone.

With his own efficient working methods and his outstanding ability to quickly pick out the bugs, Levi was usually free for a cumulated five hours a day.

When he first started working there, his five hour long breaks consisted of reading novels or whatever stupid article came up on his timeline. He could have taken longer breaks yet chose to spend them as short sporadic bouts of inactivity

By spreading out periods of inactivity, Levi managed to somehow pacify the guilt at ‘doing nothing’ while being paid for the eight hours a day. There were times, it was strong, remnants maybe of his stint with the love alarm, barely taking leaves, willingly putting him through the pain of overtime.

Some days, they were particularly strong, sometimes incomprehensible that Levi suspected they could have been related to the burning curiosity, the burning attachment to his own application that never abated.

A burning attachment, a natural need to be productive eventually resulted in sporadic bouts of unproductivity spent just testing the mood alarm all for a brief look into his own emotions.

Even when he wasn’t feeling anything in particular, the application continued to glow colors, just flitting between greens and blues. They could have been yellows or oranges maybe, when Onyankopon or Gabi or Falco visited. He had never been the type to wear his heart on his sleeve though and thus, had never opened it with them around.

That day wasn’t any different. Alone in the office, he opened it again, held it in his hands and watched the colored blobs swim amongst each other, mix amongst one another, then disappear.

Blue or Green? That day it was blue. Why blue and why not green? He could never ask. ‘How’ was always an easier question to answer. He only had to connect his phone to the PC then boot up the dashboard.

His next break, he decided to try a visualization exercise, like every other time before.

Memories never seemed to do the trick. He’d take a risk and dive deep, into his memories with Hange, his anger at the situation, the loss of a life before. Yet it all came out greens and blues. The alarm rang, an almost deafening sound in the silent room and for a split second, it had Levi attentive and a little paranoid. Levi knew though, with the thick concrete walls around him, it was a sound just for him.

He connected his phone to the dashboard and booted the PC again.

There were numbers. He switched to a bar graph view, noting how there were terms, hormones and chemicals he could only barely make sense of. But the blue and the green bars higher than usual yet still very low were signs in themselves.

That morning was a normal morning. And every morning since he built that habit had been a normal morning.

The only thing which ended up different about that day was when footsteps sounded just outside the door. If Levi had been listening closely, he would have been able to point out, those weren't a rhythm of footsteps he was particularly privy too.

But normal mornings tended to desensitize people. Footsteps weren’t particularly interesting either.

In a town with only a few hundred people, it would most likely be someone who already lived there. He continued to work. He disconnected his phone from the dashboard and played with the mood alarm in his own phone again.

The door clicked open behind him, slowly enough for the creak to sound, then fast enough for the slam to come right after yet gently.

Onyankopon always opened the door a little wider, always slamming the door behind him and in between, there was always a greeting. If Levi had been more aware of his surroundings, maybe the lack of all that could have peaked his interest.

In the grand scheme of things though, the door slamming wasn’t anything particularly interesting. Levi continued to sit and stare at his phone.

“Levi Ackerman.”

A voice in an empty room though, was always an interesting thing. By some natural inclination towards voices, any presence in a room that was always his by mid morning, Levi was listening.

Making sense of the voice was a surprisingly slow process. The mood alarm reacted first.

The alarm sounded.

A wave climbed from his chest up until his neck, there was a bristle at the back of his neck, a tickle at his ears, then something pricked at his eyes. He looked down at the alarm before he could completely understand. The colors continued to swim then mix.

They always disappeared and finalized the reading in five seconds.

A second or two passed, and the colors still didn’t look at all in a hurry to disappear.

You’re going crazy Levi. He took a deep breath. He was dreaming. Because what the fuck. Of course she wouldn’t be here. She had an international company to run.

“Levi…” The voice sang. “That’s you right?”

Don’t look back.

“Or maybe there are just a lot of developers named Levi in this world… “ The footsteps were only getting closer. “Developers who are just really good at using the mood alarm.” Then the voice was right next to him.

When she had settled on that seat right at his peripherals, he couldn’t exactly chalk it up to a fevered dream. The mood alarm in his hands continued to ring. He could have sworn at least five seconds had passed. Yet the colors never disappeared, countless colors still swimming around on the interface as the mood alarm continued to read his emotions.

Levi had never been a master of articulation. The war of colors, the chaos on the phone were the best visual representation. He struggled to find the right words, but she continued to stare from his peripherals, her face many things at once.

Apologetic? Expectant?

“It is you,” she said, triumph and relief apparent in her tone.

That only pissed Levi off more. Another emotion added to his boiling pot. Eventually Levi thought it necessary to respond. With too little time, too little mindspace to even attempt to articulate, Levi kept himself to three words, the only three which could have meant everything at once.

“What the fuck.”

In response, she let out a soft laugh. “Are you crying?”

Crying? Now that Levi did think about it, there had been a crack in her voice too. Levi looked up to see her, smiling. Her eyes were smiling too. Then he followed the tear streak that barely grazed the side of her lip.

There was enough time, enough silence for Levi to gather himself. To stare at the reading on the application that couldn’t seem to decide what emotion Levi was feeling.

With enough self discipline, enough concentration, Levi managed to speak. “Hange, if you ask people why they’re crying, you’re just gonna make it worse.”

***

There was only one tea shop in the town, a tea shop which naturally, Levi had chosen as his favorite hang out spot.

Over the months, he had grown familiar with it and in turn, it had grown to become an intimate friend. An intimate friend he had never expected to ever introduce to Hange.

Onyankopon and Moblit had joined them for tea though, and suddenly, Hange didn’t feel like Hange. It could have been the way she shifted to an ‘all business’ demeanor or maybe a part of him was still trying to rationalize what he had deemed to be a very irrational thought.

Maybe he had imagined visiting the cafe with Hange a few times. The realist inside him though, had always believed it to be impossible. At that moment, the dreamer inside him was still taking its victory lap.

“You should have told us you’d be coming. We could have set up something better than late afternoon tea,” Onyankopon said. Either way, he seemed very happy to see them.

Moblit took a sip from his cup then revealed an apologetic smile underneath as he put the cup down. “Apologies for visiting all of a sudden. Doctor Zoe is a very impulsive person.”

Hange nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. As soon as I heard about this, I hopped on the next plane just to get here as soon as possible,” she said “I’m hoping to start something like this in the hospitals back home.”

Moblit put his cup down. “Right, I never got to properly introduce you to Levi.” He turned to Onyankopon then to Levi. “But I’m sure you’ve had a fair share of introductions… You did barge into his office this morning.” He had an apologetic look on his face.

“Hey, Doctor Zoe just wanted to see how we were using the software,” Onyankopon said in Hange’s defense. “I’m more than honored to see that the founder of the mood alarm is taking the time to even wander around our facility.”

Moblit cleared his throat. “Anyway, Levi, this is Doctor Hange Zoe, the founder of the mood alarm application. She visited our main hospital a year back but if I remember correctly, you were on leave right?”

“On a personal leave,” Levi clarified. He couldn’t find much else to say. He took a long sip of tea.

“This is Levi Ackerman,” Moblit said. “One of our best in IT support. He learned how to use your application pretty fast.”

“Yes…” Hange said. “And ever since you told me about him, I’ve been very excited to meet him.” Her grin only got wider as she studied his features, her eyes giving him a good once over. “I guess that’s the reason I ended up taking my own tour of the center while you too were catching up. I wanted to see your genius IT support in action,” she joked.

It was almost unbelievable that that morning, Hange had showed a completely different side to him. She had wiped her own tears pretty fast, shifting her expression to something very professional as soon as Onyankopon and Moblit had entered the office just that morning.

The whole afternoon, Hange was busy with activities and tours of the town, Levi busy with his own work. They barely got to talk. Fortunately, that had allowed Levi time to compose himself, enough to keep a straight face when Onyankopon had invited them over for some tea.

Then and there, there were conversations of partnerships and business, almost reminiscent to whatever bullshit he had to deal with in his old company. But this conversation had Hange, and Hange had shifted her gaze towards him enough times for Levi to feel it only proper to reciprocate.

“Once this project is over, would you consider letting Levi go?” Hange asked. “I’d love to have him visit our main office, maybe help out with some of our development work.”

Moblit shook his head vigorously. “No hesitation. It always felt like he was overqualified for this type of job.”

“By the way you talk about him, I can tell.” She looked at Levi knowingly, a silent form of communication just between both of them. She turned back to Moblit then Onyankopon, her face once again all business. “There are many things I hope to still improve with this application so any support on research, troubleshooting, development is very much appreciated.”

“What do you suggest?” Moblit asked.

A quick glance at Onyankopon and Levi knew he was asking the same question.

Hange put one finger to her chin in thought “A partnership…”

It looked like they had expected Hange to talk Levi’s ear off non stop about the application. Moblit had mentioned something about going straight home while Hange discussed the partnership with Levi, mentioning bugs, the debugger that had been stuck in the system and the bugs which Levi had been quick to point out.

Levi, being respectful, had only listened.

That was until Onyankopon and Moblit offered to walk ahead, leaving Levi and Hange alone on the red brick road overlooking the large lake.

It was early in the evening but it still felt like late afternoon. The sun never set until seven or eight during the mid months of spring.

Yet, the streets was empty, bereft of anything but the both of them.

With one quick scan of their surroundings, Hange turned back to him, she bit her lip and took a deep breath.

Her demeanor was suddenly a stark contrast with the enthusiastic, eloquent one back at a cafe. The sudden transformation was enough for Levi to tense up,

Hange spoke up. “This town really sleeps early,” she commented. “You're planning on going home now too?”

“I usually go home an hour earlier, especially on weekdays,” Levi responded. “I’m only out at this time because they invited me for late afternoon tea.” Technically it was dinner.

“Do you go home….” Hange started, she paused for a second, a very out-of-place pause. “To anyone?”

It took a lot of effort for Levi to resist choking or even letting out a ghost of a laugh at that question. I’m married to my job. That was the answer that popped into his mind out of instinct.

“Did I make it time?” Hange added a second later, only reminding Levi that he hadn’t even mustered a glimmer of answer.

“Make it in time?” Levi asked, in an attempt to stall for time.

“Petra…”

“She married Oluo.”

Hange didn’t seem satisfied. “Is there someone else…” she pressed. “Someone else...”

Hange started to speak with her hands, gesturing for Levi to ‘go on,’ in some awkward wave of a hand. The first awkward gesture Hange had done since they arrived.

Levi couldn’t help but just appreciate that bout of vulnerability he could pull out of her. “There is,” he said.

Just for a second, Hange’s face fell and for a moment Levi relished it.

“Oh…” Hange turned away. “Then, I should take you home… I’d love to meet her…”

Then suddenly, Levi felt just a little bad for that trick. “I was fucking kidding,” he said.

Hange let out a loud sigh of relief, an ugly huff and she looked away, suddenly self conscious.

Levi had to admit, it was an ugly snort. He was tempted to take a good look at her face, and maybe he had craned his neck as she kept silent for a second longer. “I’m not some idiot who would marry someone just because it’s convenient," he said.

“Give me a break. I just graduated from college when I decided to get married,” Hange said. “Besides, we enjoyed each other’s company.”

“If you chose that type of life, I wouldn’t have stopped you. Besides, you had a lot on the line, your PhD, your mood alarm, the love alarm, your reputation. It wouldn’t have been easy choice to make.”

Hange hummed. “The PhD is done, my reputation, I don’t give too much of a rat’s ass about that. And the mood alarm? That has always been mine. I put my own money into building that business.”

“It definitely wasn’t cheap.”

“It wasn’t,” Hange admitted. “What if I told you, I earned my own capital for building it in one night in a casino.”

Levi's thoughts flew back to the night at the casino. He grinned. “I’d believe you.”

“So the mood alarm is mine and I managed to keep it,” Hange said. “But I never forgot you know... The plans, the codes, they’re all yours.”

“So you did get the email,” Levi said.

Hange nodded. “And the email got me thinking…” she trailed off for what seemed like an eternity.

Levi couldn’t wait. “About what?”

Hange thought for a few seconds longer, putting her hands behind her back. “That ended up one reason why I even considered leaving Zeke,” she said. “He has a different way of loving, I have a different one too. Love is freedom. Love is just trusting. Zeke on the other hand, always likes to play safe, tie people down.”

“What happened to ‘love is a choice?’”

Hange seemed unperturbed. “Love still is a choice.”

“Then why not choose to love Zeke?” Levi challenged.

Hange sighed and put one hand up. “You said it yourself, deciding to leave wouldn’t be an easy decision,” she started. “I considered three things.”

She put one finger up. “Our own views of love. Zeke sees it as a game, as an investment and he approaches it conservatively… On the other hand, I see love and relationships as a form of freedom, a risk. In love, I don't believe in playing to win.”

She put another finger up. “I considered how I was feeling, this really weird feeling, my thoughts on Pemberley then on colors.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be a slave to your emotions.”

Hange shook her head. “I’m not. I approached this methodically. Even before considering my feelings, I considered my circumstances.” She put the third finger up. “I considered the backlash, I considered Zeke’s feelings, dealing with a divorce. And that’s what brought me here, despite the criticism, despite my inability to buy the love alarm and to barely salvage the mood alarm.”

“You still gave in to your emotions.”

Hange nodded. “After thinking long and hard about it, I did. But before that, I weighed all three, and I decided to take the risk.”

���Was it worth it?”

Hange shrugged and she leaned over the rail, seeming mesmerized by the lake. “I won’t know yet but I guess, even when I thought you had someone else…” There was a flash of hurt on her face, enough for Levi to regret playing that little joke on her.

“I don’t have anyone else,” Levi clarified.

Hange continued to speak. “I still thought the risk was worth taking. It would have been unfair to Zeke if I stayed and who am I to stop you if someone makes you feel happy.” She turned back to him. “This is the way I’ll choose to love. I’ll weigh my emotions, my circumstances and my worst case scenarios. Then I decide the most loving thing to do. If I have to take a risk, I take it. And I guess, given all that, looking for you seemed like the correct decision.”

Levi couldn’t stifle that smile any longer, and he hoped somehow, his own words would stop it from getting any wider. “Well, it's too early to tell if it's a good decision.”

Hange opened her phone and opened the application. “Can we try again?”

“You wanna use the love alarm?” Levi asked. “Your ex-husband’s application.”

“It’s still your brainchild,” Hange said as she waited for it to load. She hovered her thumb over it.

“I don’t have it installed,” Levi said.

“I can wait,” Hange said. And there was no room for argument in her voice.

An awkward few minutes as Hange watched him download the application. Levi focused on the loading bar, and luckily, his biometrics were still registered from that brief experiment of a year ago.

“On three…” Hange said, her voice a little stilted.

But they didn’t finish counting or maybe they just counted at completely different paces.

The alarms rang, filling the empty space between them, two rings which never seemed to find a uniform pace. Even with a very dominant fastidious side though, Levi wasn’t thinking too much about such a small detail.

Hange’s was smiling, grinning, or whatever that was called. Her face was a mix between pure ecstasy and pure passion. She wrinkled her eyes at him, her mouth climbed into a grin wider than he had ever been used to.

She let out a loud sigh. “I was fucking scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That you would have gotten over me… I dunno, thought you might just think love was a choice, and I dunno, stop feeling whatever that love alarm thing was feeling.”

“I don’t think the love alarm works like that,” Levi said. Really, he started to realize he didn’t know how it worked.

Hange shook her head. “I’m probably just overthinking. You know… I learned how to code over the years, talked to a few developers and tried to look into how the application works,” she said.

“Did you find anything?”

“Remember when you told me that the love alarm starts to figure out for its own what love is. It creates its own definition. Something we can’t even comprehend...” Hange was still grinning, her voice coming out as breaths and sometimes sounds.

Still, Levi could comprehend most of it. “You have any theories?” he pressed. Hange always had theories.

“Soulmates? Relationships in a past life?” Hange suggested.

“Well, we can’t really look back at those right?” Levi said. “Well, what else?”

One word, one word out of Hange’s mouth. “Pemberley.”

“Pemberley?” Levi asked. Somehow though as Hange looked back at the lake, up at the sky then at the gaudy main street of that small town. Levi started to understand it himself.

“It’s ugly here,” Levi said. At first he had meant it. As Hange started to look at her surroundings then back at the lake, with a look of wonder in her eyes, Levi was sure he had meant it as a challenge.

“When you’re in love then with the person we love, everywhere starts to feel like Pemberley,” Hange completed a second later.

Does it? And he wondered why the hell, he needed Hange to point it out.

They were in an ugly town, a place people were paid to live in. The sky was constantly overcast. When it wasn’t raining, it was snowing and it snowed six months a year. When it wasn’t snowing or raining, the sky was at least threatening it.

The way that Hange had looked at it with such naive wonder, the way she had just stood there, looking at everything and back at him, Levi couldn’t help but entertain the idea of Pemberley.

Maybe give the colors a chance to show themselves? Hange didn’t say it out loud. In the moment they made eye contact though, Levi couldn’t help but just give that little piece of advice a chance, whether it had been his own or Hange’s.

He looked first at the main road and the red brick path, noting how the gaudy red, worn by the elements more than actual foot traffic seemed to still glow a bright red despite the grey undertones. He then looked to the buildings, varying shades of concrete grey yet ‘the varying shades’ of it seemed to still have some sense of novelty.

He then looked back at the ocean, the dark sky above never allowed it a more beautiful shade of blue, yet the bluish black still continued to glow. The waves only sent glimmers of silver against the dark blue. Then it was only natural that he looked up at the sky, the sky which never allowed any other shade for itself, except on a few select days a year.

The fog blocked whatever green the mountains beyond the lake would have shown him.

Looking back at Hange then back at his surroundings, he started to accept it. There were greens, reds, blues, yellows and every other color in the spectrum. The world glowed with so many colors, so many lights and sounds. His emotions were a whirlwind that spun to whatever rhythm the lights and colors blinked at.

Colors persevered and they’ve always persevered.

Emotions persevered and they’ve always persevered.

Even emotions we don’t understand ourselves. Levi added to himself.

Maybe Hange was right. That was what the love alarm had been trying to show. The one person who made the colors, the emotions all the clearer.

“This is a beautiful place,” Hange said. “And I wouldn’t mind staying here, lay low a bit, just long enough for people to forget the divorce fiasco.”

“There are a few nice places here,” Levi said.

Hange continued to stare.

Why don’t we just live here together right Levi?

I know you, you wouldn’t be able to stay out of the action.

Levi felt almost ashamed at that mystery response that seemed to pop into his head out of nowhere. We can live here long enough to get our shit together. "First things first, let’s discuss this partnership, over tea in my house.”

“Now?” Hange’s widened her eyes. And her eyes were smiling.

“Well, unless you have other plans tonight,” Levi said.

Hange shook her head. “Nothing much…”

They made the whole way back to his home in silence. Surprisingly, Levi preferred it that way. It had been enough for him to appreciate his new comprehension of his surroundings, the small details he hadn't noticed before.

It wasn’t just the view. The rhythm of their footsteps, their uncoordinated breathing, and just the way the trees rustled, the wind blew, always found a way to glow different colors. His emotions, the chaos of every moment after that were also challenging him to find their colors.

And the circumstances that had them locked in his cramped apartment, sitting over tea, with no one else watching, nothing restricting them had Levi reflecting. It probably had Hange reflecting too. They spoke unhindered with just thoughts, expressions and locked gazes.

For one reason or the other, it happened quickly and abruptly, leaving no space or time to comprehend it.

Sitting on his living room sofa right next to her. Hands clasped against the other. Her dry lips were on his.

The magic welling in his chest, the thunder that climbed quickly up his throat, persevering even underneath the grey. They were all screaming at him then, they all glowed colors.

At that moment though, he had been to tired to reflect on it for any longer. He decided to just roll with it.

It was no use making sense of it. After all, life, love and emotions... They were all just complicated that way.

[infernalrevenge]

The Lovers, The Dreamers, and Miranda

Fandom: Resident Evil 8: Village

Pairing: Mother Miranda x Reader (Gender Neutral)

Rating: T (for mentions of emotional manipulation)

Summary: Mother Miranda forged a psychic connection with you to test your loyalty. Now she has to deal with you pining over her.

Notes: A series of points basically on how I think this premise would go down, because the idea won't leave my head but I can't form a coherent plot out of it. Also hey, first time writing for Mother Miranda :P

----------

You've been a loyal servant to Mother Miranda for years now, maybe even decades. The both of you lost track after the first three.

She has always been grateful for your devotion and hard work, and wants to ensure that nothing ever happens to you as long as you are useful to her.

You were one of her first Cadou experiments, and though you were not compatible enough with the Megamycete to become Eva's host, the mutation you developed was very effective in ensuring her rise to power in the village.

Power was what she needed to succeed, after all. She needed it all to get her Eva back.

And your power of getting into people's thoughts was exactly what she needed to convince people that she was their savior -- as a prophet of the Black God, she would deliver them from death and disease. With her, they would no longer suffer.

But then how would she ascertain that you would never turn on her? Easy. Using the mold and your assimilated DNA, she forged a connection with you that allowed her to peek into your innermost thoughts.

If you were thinking of it? She would know. Sometimes, she would even know of things you don't even have a full picture of yet, lacking the coherency or energy to dwell on it at the time.

In this way too, she can peer into how you look into everyone else's thoughts -- you've become her middle man to a world once inaccessible to her.

Sometimes it can get overwhelming for the both of you, but while you were caught unaware of what she had done, you wouldn't have minded at all either way.

You saw her mission as noble, and you understood the cost of it. To think all she wanted in return was her daughter to be safe and sound in her arms once more.

You admired her determination and dedication to her cause, as well as the love she held for Eva -- that she would give up anything and everything for her.

You had become a confidante of sorts while in her service, being the only one to know and understand her goals, her dreams, and her desires.

Somewhere along the line, you realized that you would do anything and everything for her. You would sacrifice even yourself just to see her smile again.

You had fallen in love with her.

You've wanted to tell her for so long, and have come close to confessing a time or two, but something stopped you.

Every time you tried, she would say something about being so close to the prize that she had to keep going, that she couldn't stop now when Eva was practically in her grasp. She couldn't afford any distractions or obstacles. She had to keep pushing... just a little farther.

So you would wait.

You'll wait until she was ready to hear it from you, and wait until you fully had the courage to tell her how you feel. Eva came first.

You had become so good at burying those feelings that unearthing them had become a feat for Miranda, and curiosity got the better of her.

She was... confused.

When did all of this even start? Why were you feeling this way? Why her, of all people?

(If you could hear her own thoughts in return, you might reply with something like "Well have you looked at yourself?" to put it briefly.)

At first, she thought it was an unintended side effect of being around each other for so long and becoming so in-tune with your thoughts. Perhaps she was reading into this too much. This was mere infatuation, this would go away with time.

But every time you looked at her, there was this gleam in your eye, this joy that she couldn't comprehend. The feeling only seemed to grow stronger with each passing day.

Oh fuck.

Oh no.

How to deal with this???

Though she started wanting to avoid you to quell the awkwardness she felt in your presence (which she didn't know was entirely her fault), she realized it would be difficult to do so considering how closely you two always worked together.

(This was what she got for meddling with your privacy.)

Meanwhile, you were oblivious to the problem that she caused.

Sometimes you would smile at her and think about how grateful you were to have her here, to be a part of her life. How beautiful and wonderful she was, despite what the others may say. She was still human at the end of the day, and you saw that side of her quite often.

Then she starts overthinking about what you could possibly mean by that and if that meant you were this close to telling her the truth right then and there, about how you've had to keep your knees from buckling every time the two of you got close and how she took your breath away without even trying, and OH NO WERE YOU BLUSHING, STOP THAT-- (Why did she think it looked cute???)

She's seen some of your tamer daydreams and fantasies, a range from talking about your shared interests outside of work, taking trips far from the village, to holding her hand... pulling her into a warm embrace... cupping her cheeks and leaning in for a ki--

OKAY THAT'S ENOUGH FOR NOW (was it getting warm in here?)

Imagine how she reacted to the more risque thoughts, ehem ehem.

If you ever found out about this, you would find it hard to believe that you managed to fluster the Mother Miranda at the thought of sharing a kiss.

All the while she stares at you frantically, sweating under her cloak... and you have no idea what could be running through her mind.

You've picked and prodded at every brain in the village, even with Miranda's "false children", but not hers. Never hers.

She was the only one you respected here, and your allegiance to her had been right and true from the very first day.

Somehow knowing how sincere you were with her made things even worse.

Not that she feels guilty (okay maybe a little bit) but the fact that your love for her was so raw and pure? How you wanted to get to know even more of her underneath her grand facade? That you would do anything to see a genuine smile out of her?

She doesn't know how to handle that.

She herself hasn't felt that in a while. She thought her capacity to love had died with Eva a long time ago.

But looking at you now, as you talked with her and listened, knowing how much you meant it every time, that you wanted her to be happy.

She might actually start believing in it again.

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

idk if requests are open, or if this even counts as a request or more of a prompt for u to ramble, but how do you think mozart and theodorus would react to an mc who used to be friendly towards them pulling away, and finding out somehow that it's because they were too hostile and mc gave up (in the context of them secretly liking mc and being tsundere jerks). tysm in advance!!

Requests are open! I talk about just about anything ikevamp related on this blog, so nws in regards to that~

I guess I took this as a prompt to ramble so hopefully you enjoy this meme energy 💛💛💛💛

And well, I'm a little conflicted about this one--largely because I see two possible (most likely) outcomes. I think it depends on their feelings for the MC in question, as I get the vibe that they are willing to make the effort if they deem it worthwhile in the long run (perhaps a bit callous, but hey, what can I say). If they feel they can't see eye to eye with the MC long term, then I doubt they would pursue the matter much further.

If there is enough grounding for them to want to salvage the relationship, I think they would both make some effort to make amends tbh. They may have trouble saying it directly, but I guess I see them as men of action--they'll adjust their behavior, and that speaks volumes. Maybe they hesitate before something harsher slips, changing the course of what they were going to say. Maybe they smooth over a mistake she makes before anyone can notice, saving her that social discomfort. Maybe they don't nitpick what she does anymore, just note adjustments neutrally (the tonal difference of "you clod, you're going to ruin it if you hold it that way" versus "try holding it like this, it's easier to carry and poses less risk of damage if you drop it"). I guess my impression is that they tend to be subtle when it comes to their emotional landscape; if you don't pay close attention, you could miss it.

But. BUT. If you point out any difference in their behavior. They will look away and scowl/blush which is frankly, beyond hilarious (but don't do it too much or they'll get mad, you gotta go for the spicy moments to expose them italian hand thing). I imagine that, whether they admit it or not, they do notice if you see past the surface and appreciate that you care they're trying. It helps them move from very acerbic to a more lowkey kind of pragmatism that's less biting. Tbh I'm just a shithead and would probably tease them to near death because I'm very familiar with that sort of behavior, but I also understand not everyone is comfortable with that ;;;

I think it’s less that they refuse to make amends for troublesome behavior, and more that they have a lot of paralyzing shame associated with honesty (and they don’t much like being vulnerable ;;;;). For Theodorus, I think he’s deeply traumatized by how hard his brother tries to be a good and fair person, only to remain ridiculed and ignored by the people around him at large. There’s a sense of a male culture dominated by the concept that gentleness is only an extension of weakness, and as such he feels the need to overcompensate to defend Vincent. The rough exterior serves both as an insistence that he is a grown man (parental infantilization) but also to demand people’s respect, ripping them to verbal shreds when he sees fit for survival.

Mozart’s is more obviously a defense mechanism; he rejects people and sees the worst in them before they can do that to him. I don’t think he’s as malicious by nature as he seems. I think it’s more that he’s accustomed to and self-imposes impossible standards of self-control. The emotional repression, terrible (also unpredictable) experiences at the hands of his father as a boy genius, and relentless inability to see his own value separated from his work ethic results in a man who is inevitably dissociated from his reality. He has no concept of worth beyond functionality, and no concept of worth beyond giving to a self-emptying extent. So much of his life is a kind of hyperanxious denial and paranoid shame, and it’s a pity considering his immense potential for warmth and love.

I suppose I get the inclination that they both really just need to be slapped upside the head a little ahlskfjdhsgsfdkhj. I'm not typically one that likes that method of getting through to people, but it's an unfortunate result of some forms of abuse. Sometimes people need very direct and very intense rearranging of their face holes to see the limited nature of their perspectives. Though I will say context matters: some people need very gentle, some people need more persistent measures.

(Please note: sometimes people do not want to change, and if they don’t want to, they won’t--that’s just a waste of time imo. No amount of arguing or altruism will get through in that scenario ;;;;;; but since this is an otome it’s easier to give the benefit of the doubt. Honestly I find myself torn a lot because I don't? Like giving up on people who struggle with things like that. But at the same time, I don't necessarily think it's worthwhile to beg for someone to be kinder/more aware when they have zero desire to.)

I can't really speak to Theodorus as much but I think somebody who is with him would have to be somebody who is less put off by his jagged edges ;;;;;;;; I don't think it's wrong to be sensitive to it, but the reality is that he has a hard time toning it down sometimes because of his habits. It's a part of being with him, though I think he softens considerably over time in a relationship. I see it is as a kind of balancing act. His s/o would have to be firm about the times he's well and truly unfair, goes too far with what he says/does. And his s/o would likely need to let go or just tease him about the more harmless nonsense, taking it in stride. It's about knowing when to throw a punch and when to breeze by (float like a butterfly, sting like a bee).

Mozart I'm ngl is just Pride and Prejudice material, Mr.Darcy ass. He literally just needs somebody who will read him for utter filth in the classiest way possible, until he has no choice but to strut on his walk of shame saying "you dropped this, queen 👑". I find it a little funny because as long as you roast him in a true way, half the time he isn’t even mad, just sheepish. I find him to be a unique case between the two of them because he's more guarded than reactive. As soon as he knows his s/o is willing to hear him out and talk to him if they have some kind of misunderstanding, he doesn't really go for the throat anymore. Just gets kind of 👉👈, needs some time to figure out how to broach the topic (or Jeanne slides in to mediate a little bit). His development is more of a slow upward track to more normal and very affectionate interaction.

Of the two, I think Mozart might be the best bet for the type of person you mentioned. He has a lot of capacity for responding with penitence when it's due, and acknowledging when he messes up. Theo needs a lot of control, and I think it's fair if some people can't handle the overbearing nature of it at points.

[vajranam]

Dealing With Anger

ON DEALING WITH ANGER

Undoubtedly, both Shantideva and the Dalai Lama are most articulate in their discourse on how to deal with anger and hatred.

Shantideva in fact opens the chapter on patience with the strong statement that an instance of anger can destroy positive imprints created over “a thousand eons.”

He further asserts that there is no evil like hatred and that there is no fortitude like patience. Thus, he recommends that we all seek to develop patience.

In Shantideva’s view, anger acts as the principal obstacle to the development of patience. To use the well-known medical analogy, hatred is the poison and patience is the medicine that removes the poisonous toxins from within the mind.

As the Dalai Lama’s commentary makes clear, Shantideva identifies two key elements in our attempts to overcome anger.

First and foremost, it is important for us to have a profound appreciation of the negativity of anger. Of particular relevance is to reflect upon the destructive effects of generating anger.

Second, Shantideva identifies the need to develop a deep understanding of the causal mechanism which underlies the arisal of anger. This is of special interest to the modern reader, who will unavoidably be approaching Shantideva’s text with many of the popular assumptions associated with modern psychology and its views on human emotions.

In verse 7 of the chapter, Shantideva makes the crucial observation that the “fuel” of anger is what he calls “mental discomfort.” This is an interesting notion. The Tibetan word is yi mi-dewa which can be translated as “dejection,” “unhappiness,” or simply as “dissatisfaction.”

It is best understood as a pervasive, underlying sense of dissatisfaction, which need not be felt at the conscious level. It is that nagging feeling that something is not quite right.

Shantideva seems to be suggesting that it is this underlying sense of dissatisfaction that gives rise to frustration. When this happens, the conditions are set for an immediate outburst of anger when things do not go the way we wish.

Once this causal nexus between dissatisfaction, frustration, and anger is understood, we can then appreciate the virtue of Shantideva’s approach to dealing with anger. We can see that much of his approach is aimed at rooting out this underlying sense of dissatisfaction rather than engaging in a head-to-head confrontation with actual full-blown anger.

This is the reason for Shantideva’s emphasis on reflections which aim to create stability of mind. As to the specific practices, the reader can follow the detailed commentary of the Dalai Lama in the appropriate sections of the book.

An important point to note here is that Shantideva does not appear to make any distinction between anger and hatred in his discussion.

However, the Dalai Lama’s commentary explicitly underlines this critical distinction. He observes that, in principle, it may be possible to accept what could be called a “positive anger.”

Anger as an outrage toward injustice done to others can often be an important catalyst for powerful altruistic deeds.

However, he rejects such possibility with regard to hatred. For the Dalai Lama, hatred can have no virtue. It only eats the person from within and poisons his or her interactions with fellow human beings. In his words, “Hatred is the true enemy; it is the inner enemy.”

Perhaps we can say that the feature that distinguishes anger and hatred is the absence or presence of ill-will. A person can be angry without bearing any ill-will toward his or her object of anger. The Dalai Lama instructs us to ensure that our anger, even when it arises, never culminates in full-blown hatred. This, I think, is an important ethical teaching.

A few words on some of the general principles which lie behind the approaches suggested in this book for dealing with our emotions and developing patience may perhaps help the general reader.

A key principle is a belief in what could be called the plasticity of the mind, that is, an assumption of the mind’s limitless capacity for improvement. This is supported by a complex understanding of the psychology of the mind and its various modalities.

Both Shantideva and the Dalai Lama are operating within a long history of Buddhist psychology and philosophy of mind which emphasizes a detailed analysis of human emotions.

Generally speaking, in this view the mind is perceived in terms of a complex, dynamic system where both cognitive and affective dimensions of the psyche are seen as an integrated whole.

So, when the two masters present means of dealing with emotions such as anger, they are not suggesting that we should suppress them. Both Buddhist and modern psychology agree on the harmfulness of mere suppression.

The Buddhist approach is to get at the root so that the very basis for anger is undercut. In other words, Shantideva and the Dalai Lama are suggesting ways of reorienting our character so that we become less prone to strong reactive emotions such as anger. It is in this light that most of the reflections recommended in this volume should be understood.

The motto is simple: Discipline your mind. Shantideva underlines the critical importance of this inner discipline with a wonderful analogy:

Where would I possibly find enough leather

With which to cover the surface of the earth?

But (wearing) just leather on the soles of my shoes

Is equivalent to covering the earth with it.

Likewise it is not possible for me

To restrain the external course of things;

But should I restrain this mind of mine

What would be the need to restrain all else?

(Guide, V:13–14)

This of course is reminiscent of the memorable verse from the Dhammapada in which the Buddha says:

Intangible and subtle is the mind,

That flies after fancies as it likes;

Wise are those who discipline their minds,

For a mind well-disciplined brings great joy. (Verse 35)

Shantideva calls this basic Buddhist practice “guarding the mind” and he discusses it at great length in chapter 5 of his Guide.

Another general principle I wish to draw the reader’s attention to is the basic pragmatism of Shantideva’s teachings. He does not appear to believe in the possibility of one cure or solution to any problem.

His is a strategy that involves drawing extensively from all our inner resources. Many of his arguments appeal to what we may call human rationality. But he also uses approaches that appeal to our fundamental humanitarian sentiments. Often he plays upon our sense of moral outrage too. So, the bottom line seems to be “whatever works best.”

In the final analysis, many of the approaches presented in this book are insights grounded in common sense. For example, who can argue with the sheer practicality of the following lines, which the Dalai Lama is so fond of quoting:

Why be unhappy about something

If it can be remedied?

And what is the use of being unhappy about something

If it cannot be remedied? (Guide, VI:10)

Perhaps most importantly for the modern reader, it is vital to appreciate that both Shantideva and the Dalai Lama do not believe in “instant enlightenment.”

In their teachings, there is the basic assumption that cultivating inner discipline is a time-consuming process. In fact, the Dalai Lama rightly points out that having expectations of immediate results is a sign of impatience, the very factor the teachings in this volume aim to counteract.

With a sense of irony, he observes that often what the modern reader wants is “the best, the fastest, the easiest, and, if possible, the cheapest way.” So the journey of someone who is on the path of self-betterment is arduous and requires long commitment.

Nevertheless, the rewards of embarking upon such a journey are potentially enormous. Even in immediate terms, the benefit such an endeavor brings to the traveler’s life seems remarkable.

If the Dalai Lama is representative of those who have gained the fruits of this journey, its merits are shown to be beyond question.

Geshe Thupten Jinpa

Girton College

University of Cambridge

Perfecting Patience - His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Geshe Thupten Jinpa - Shambhala Publications, Inc.

[laurenairay]

Prove You Wrong - J. Skinner

Summary: Audrey James, the girl with the loving heart, and Jeff Skinner, the boy with the brilliant smile, had been best friends for most of their lives – will their friendship ever develop into anything more?

Word Count: 9.1k

Warnings: pining, childhood friends to lovers, a little angst, a lot of cute fluff

A/N: I’ve wanted to write for Jeff for a while because I love this smiley pretty boy - and now that I’ve reached a new follower milestone (600!!) I thought I’d finally crack this out! I hope you all like it 💖

Tagging some lovely people who make hockeyblr a better place for me: @itsbadgerbadgermushroom​ @danglesnipecelly​ @texanstarslove​ @princessphilly​ @broadstbroskis​ @denis-scorianov​ @chicagoblackhawkslover96​ @kallmekmk​ @thebookofmags​

*

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Brontë

Audrey James had known Jeff Skinner for as long as she could remember. Having grown up together in Markham, Ontario, Jeff the second youngest of six siblings and Audrey the youngest of four siblings, they’d bonded so quickly – and so strongly. Where Jeff went, Audrey was sure be by his side, most often a calming presence, a balancing figure, even from a young age.

When Jeff started skating like his siblings, Audrey was scooting along beside him.

When Jeff started figure skating lessons, Audrey twirled right there with him.

When Jeff started hockey practice too…Audrey helped him practice in his backyard.

She kept his many emotions as level as possible – he made sure she strayed out of her comfort zone. Friends came and went, schools changed, injuries healed, but things never changed between Jeff and Audrey. She trusted him as wholly as he trusted her, and their friendship only grew stronger every year. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t have been more different in appearance and personality – her long straight blonde hair versus his dark brown curls, or her grey eyes versus his brown eyes, or even her sweet retiring nature versus his joyful energetic nature. They complemented each other perfectly, balancing each other out and boosting each other up, and this only strengthened as they grew older.

Summers were spent practicing hockey in the backyard with all of their many siblings, road hockey games leaving sunburn, grazed knees, the occasional tears, sticky ice-cream and fond memories. Whenever Jeff got cuts on his knees, elbows or on one occasion his chin, he accepted Audrey’s pretty princess bandaids with a shaky smile. Whenever Audrey got knocked on her ass (by accident) by one of the older girls, she blinked away her tears as Jeff fiercely defended her, yelling at his sisters and hers in turn. When Jeff’s curls got too much for the summer heat, she held his hand as his dad clipped his hair short, watching sadly as the curls fell to the ground. When Audrey broke her arm in the last hockey game of the season, Jeff pestered his sisters to teach him how to braid their hair, so he could surprise Audrey by braiding her long blonde hair back out of her face for her, earning him the biggest smile he had ever seen. Every summer held a special memory for Audrey and Jeff, the sweetness of childhood and the beauty of friendship, and it didn’t matter what else was going on, what other friends joined or left – they always made time for each other. Summers were their thing, even more so when Jeff went to Kitchener – this made summers even more special, their time to spend together without normal-life distractions, and Audrey treasured it more than anything.

Time seemed to only be going past faster as they grew older though, and with that came changes. Growing up came with growing out of love with figure skating for Audrey.

While her interest in figure skating waned by the time she was 12, she never lost interest in his skating, whether that was figure skating or ice hockey. Audrey was even there watching with his family at the Canadian Junior National Figure Skating Championships (she couldn’t have been more proud of his bronze medal) before he chose to focus just on hockey. And as for hockey – Audrey truly was his biggest supporter. She went to every game possible, with either his family or with hers as well, and whether it was a win or a loss, Audrey was ready with a big hug and a smile. And Jeff appreciated it more than he could ever say. When he heard murmurs of people commenting on his small size, she would fiercely defend him, insisting that his speed, skill and heart were more than anyone could ever hope to measure up to. Because it was true. Jeff had always been special, Audrey knew that, and her heart could only fill with pride as he continued to prove people wrong.

But he never proved her wrong. She always knew he was going to be magnificent.

That was the funny thing about love – when you know, you know. And Audrey had known how she felt about the boy with the brilliant smile for a very long time. Her heart had been Jeff’s before she even knew what it meant, and as they grew older, especially as early teenagers, Audrey realised just what her feelings for her best friend meant.

She knew there was a glimmer of hope that Jeff felt the same. She knew that Jeff shared things with her (thoughts, feelings, fears) that he shared with no-one else. She knew that there were moments that lingered with a what if? She knew that the boys on his teams always teased him for having a girl best friend and that he always shrugged it off. She knew that the way he blushed around her sometimes was more than just nothing.

But she also knew that she could never tell him how she felt. Why? Because even at 16 she knew that he was destined to play in the NHL – and she wanted a career of her own too. Was it selfish? Perhaps. Was there a hint of cowardice? Perhaps. The thing is, Audrey had only ever known herself by Jeff’s side – and she wanted the chance to know who she was without him, as much as the very thought scared her.

So when Jeff was drafted to Kitchener, Audrey buckled down in school to get herself into college. She still went to as many games of Jeff’s as she could, still told him all the time of how proud she was, still phoned him every week to talk about anything and everything, still went with him family to his draft day and cried when he was selected 7th overall by the Carolina Hurricanes.

He was finally living his dream – now it was time to live hers.

Over the next four years, Audrey completed a civil engineering degree from University of Toronto. Staying in Toronto meant she got to stay close to her family – and to Jeff’s, who she saw in some capacity at least once a month. And naturally, regardless of exams or school events, if Jeff was in town playing the Leafs, Audrey would be there watching with his family – always with that big hug and a smile.

And as Jeff’s career continued to soar, Audrey’s narrowed into focus. After another year in education, completing a Masters in Environmental Sciences, she graduated straight into a job for a green energy company, staying in Toronto like she always had done. Same old Audrey.

That was, until the summer of 2018. That was the summer that Jeff got traded to Buffalo. That was the summer that Audrey’s company offered her a promotion with the condition that it came with an office transfer…to Buffalo. She would be managing her own pollution project with a small team, her first by herself but an opportunity that she knew she was ready for. And Jeff had been ecstatic – the nerves and anxiety of moving to a new city, to a new team, was lessened by the promise of being in the same city as his best friend after all these years. Audrey called it a happy coincidence. Her mom called it fate and a kick up the backside.

She ignored her mom on that one.

Two years passed and that happy coincidence was working out perfectly. Around both of their busy schedules, they tried to see each as often as possible, whether it was dinners after a long day in the lab, meeting each other for lunch nearby Audrey’s office, weekends off chilling on the sofa, or going out for drinks after her meetings or after his games.

With that came the standing tickets that Jeff always put aside of Audrey for all home games he played in. Audrey had yet to miss one, so happy she got to give him that big hug and a smile like she used to when they were younger.

And Jeff couldn’t have been happier. He had his calming rock, his confidante, the person he could be his most vulnerable self with. Just like he listened to her vent over her frustrating lab results or her long admin days in the office, she listened to him vent about his stresses in hockey. She listened to him get angry and sad and frustrated and desperate about the slump he had last year – and every time she reminded him of the love he has for the sport, for his career, always encouraging and telling him that if nothing else, she thought he was wonderful. She also listened to his nerves and excitement about Eric getting traded to Buffalo this summer, knowing that as much as Jeff was worried that things would be different within his friendship with his old mentor, their reunion would be a good thing for both players.

Audrey was his everything, and Jeff only wished he could show her how much she truly meant to him.

*

One thing that moving to Buffalo did change about their relationship was that they both saw the other one go on dates. Sure, Audrey was well aware that Jeff’s charm had worked well for him in Raleigh, and Jeff was more than well aware that Audrey turned heads wherever she went, but before they’d never seen the other one going on a date or being in a relationship.

Not that either of them had lasting relationships over the past two years, but there had definitely been enough dates to affect both of their hearts.

Audrey was the one that was currently dating – had been on a few dates now with the same guy. David. Jeff had weird vibes from this one already and he hadn’t even met him. But just from the way that Audrey described him, recounted their dates, Jeff had a bad feeling about this guy. David was an attorney, ambitious and confident, and he’d taken Audrey out to three fancy cocktail bars, a night out watching a play, and two very fancy restaurants, but…Jeff didn’t know. He just had that niggling thought that something wasn’t quite right about him.

And unfortunately, Jeff was proven right.

It was 10pm on the night of their seventh date that Jeff’s phone rang. Audrey. A pang of dread ran through him, and he quickly answered.

“Hey, Aud, you okay?” he asked, worried.

“No. He…”

He heard her take a shaky breath, and immediately felt sick.

“I’m coming over,” Jeff said, walking over to his front door and shoving on the first pair of shoes he picked up.

“Jeff, no, it’s okay,”

“I’m coming over,” he repeated firmly, before sighing, “you sound like you need a hug,”

Audrey choked out a laugh, settling Jeff’s stomach a little. At least she could still laugh.

“I’ll be with you soon, okay?” Jeff said softly.

“Yeah, okay. See you soon,”

He wasted no time in driving over to her apartment, potentially pushing the speed limit a little, but as soon as he saw her tear-streaked face he knew it was worth it.

“Hey, it’s okay, I’m here,” Jeff cooed.

As soon as he pulled her into his arms, Audrey started crying into his chest, making Jeff curse under his breath. He carefully walked her backwards, shutting the front door behind himself, and manoeuvred them both over to the sofa, letting her curl up on his lap. It was all he could do to hold her tightly as she cried, rubbing her back and murmuring nonsense into her blonde curls, trying not to tense up too much as he plotted David’s murder in his head.

Eventually she calmed down enough to lift her head, the smudged mascara under her eyes breaking her heart. He rubbed at the marks with his thumb, making her laugh a little watery, before he sent her an encouraging smile.

“So what happened?” he asked softly.

Audrey’s bottom lip wobbled briefly, before she took a deep breath.

“He broke up with me,” she whispered.

Jeff immediately scowled, and Audrey’s lips twitched in a smile.

“That asshole,” Jeff growled.

“Well, it wasn’t a break-up break-up because we were never official, but it was 7 dates, y’know? I thought we were exclusive and heading somewhere,” Audrey sighed.

“It was still the end of something important, Aud. And you liked him,” Jeff said firmly.

“Yeah, I did,” she said shakily, sniffing as her eyes filled with tears again.

“Hey, no, don’t waste any more tears on that asshole,” Jeff said sadly, cupping her face with both hands.

Then he squished her cheeks making her pout like a fish until she giggled, batting at his hands to let her go. Jeff smiled again, earning a soft smile back.

“Did he say why he wanted to break up?” Jeff asked, wincing.

Audrey swallowed heavily, dropping her eyes from his face, before she forced a smile on her lips.

“Apparently he didn’t want to waste any more time trying to get into my pants when he could get sex on tap with his secretary,” she said as calmly as possible.

Jeff’s jaw dropped, rage immediately flooding through his body. Audrey saw this and held her hand up to stop him exploding, which barely made him simmer down.

“Oh that fucking asshole!” Jeff spat, hands gripping onto her hips where she was still sitting on his lap.

She just nodded, smiling sadly. “At least I never actually slept with him,”

“Thank fucking god for that,” Jeff scowled.

Audrey placed her hand over his heart, making him look at her properly. “Hey, it’s okay. Well, it’s not, but it’s better that I know now than before we went into anything more, right?”

Jeff’s anger melted down a little, realising that she was trying to be brave, trying to protect herself, and steeled himself, nodding.

“Yeah, you are so much better off without him. He never deserved you,” Jeff said firmly.

“I know you didn’t like him,” Audrey said dryly, making Jeff blush a little.

“No, I didn’t. But you did. I only ever want you to be happy,” he said softly.

Now it was Audrey’s turn to blush.

“I know. And I appreciate that,” she said sweetly, although the sadness in her eyes told him she wasn’t quite there yet.

Jeff smiled sadly, leaning forward to press a gentle kiss to her blonde hair.

“I’m here for you, no matter what. You know that,” he said, looking into her grey eyes.

Audrey’s eyes filled with tears again, and she looked away, trying to blink away the sadness that he didn’t deserve.

“Are you okay?” he frowned.

“Yeah,” she sniffed, nodding.

Jeff paused for a moment, looking over Audrey’s exhausted face properly.

“Honest answer?” he pushed.

She choked out a laugh, a small smile teasing at her lips. She should’ve known she couldn’t fool him, not the one person who knew her better than anyone.

“No,” she admitted.

Jeff nodded, smiling sadly, as if he had expected that response. “Would it help if I stayed?”

“Oh god, so much. But you-”

“If you’re about to finish that sentence with don’t have to then I will be so mad,” Jeff interrupted, raising an eyebrow, making Audrey blush lightly, “You’re my best friend, Aud, of course I want to stay,”

“Okay then,” Audrey said softly, “let’s get to bed then,”

Jeff followed her silently, smiling at the familiarity. This was far from the first time they’d shared a bed, sleepovers when they were younger a very common thing, and it wasn’t the first time they’d shared a bed in Buffalo either, a few drunken nights out leaving them passed out snuggling. But it was the first time they’d shared a bed after a broken heart – and that changed things.

They stayed silent as they got ready for bed, Jeff just pushing off his sweatpants to leave him in his t-shirt and underwear while Audrey changed into short-shorts and an old t-shirt, but Jeff was basically vibrating with the need to talk by the time Audrey came back from the bathroom.

“You know what, this isn’t enough,” Jeff said suddenly.

Audrey jumped at the sharpness in his voice, earning a sheepish smile from her best friend.

“You deserve to be happy. I want to make you happy,” Jeff said softly.

“You already do, Jeff,” she said, a little confused.

“I just mean…you deserve a date that makes you happy. You deserve to be so happy. So I want to take you out,” Jeff explained.

Audrey inhaled sharply. What did he…

Take her out?

Jeff saw the confusion, the nerves, the hope on her face, and swallowed heavily. Maybe he hadn’t been thinking when he first opened his mouth, but now he couldn’t take the words back. He didn’t want to take the words back.

He wanted to take her out.

He’d wanted to take her out for so long, the urge getting stronger and stronger with every terrible date she went on, with every terrible guy she met. He’d loved the girl with the loving heart for as long as he’d known what love is, but she’d always been just out of reach, never the right moment. And he didn’t want to scare her off, not after her heartbreak tonight. So…a dinner could work, right?

But he had to do this properly. She deserved that.

“Go out to dinner with me. Tomorrow night?” Jeff asked softly.

“In what context?” Audrey found herself asking.

Because as much as she wanted to curse herself for not just saying yes, she needed to know. Jeff chewed his bottom lip, thinking over his words carefully, and Audrey just waited with a fluttering heart.

“I want to make you happy. Can we just say that for now?” Jeff eventually said.

Audrey let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding but nodded. That…perhaps that was for the best for now. The thought of anything more, so out of the blue, after such a bad break-up, was extremely overwhelming. The thought of anything more with Jeff in itself was overwhelming after so long. Maybe it would feel too weird at dinner with him – keeping it low-key would limit any damage to their friendship, right?

“I would like that,” she nodded.

The smile that Jeff sent her was devastatingly happy, and it was impossible not to smile back.

“So we’ll have breakfast together before you have to leave for work, and then I’ll come come back around 7 to pick you up?” Jeff suggested.

It was all Audrey could do to nod, the smile still on her face. Whatever tomorrow night would bring, whether it was just a nice dinner out or the start of something new, she couldn’t wait.

*

7pm came around for Audrey before she even realised it. Her outfit was on, her hair was curled and pinned half-up half-down, and she was wearing a cute little pair of heels she had been saving for a special moment. And this was a special moment, no matter what they’d agreed. The butterflies in her stomach told her that much.

Of course she’d gone into work and told her colleagues all about what happened with David (who were all completely shocked and disgusted – and she had her suspicions that one of them would send him a glitter bomb to his office), as well as letting her older siblings know in their group chat. Her oldest sister Laura offered to send an anonymous tip to his work place to ruin him. Her older brother Simon offered to fly down and punch him in the throat. Her sister closest-to-her-in-age Dana offered to visit for as long as Audrey needed. She smiled and thanked all of them, but said it wasn’t necessary and that Jeff was taking care of her. Laura and Simon teased her like they usually did (and she knew that Laura, who was good friends with Jeff’s sister Jennifer, would be telling the Skinner family too), but Dana messaged her separately.

Because after Jeff, it was Dana who knew her best. And Dana could tell that something was different this time.

So Audrey had confessed everything during a call on her lunch break, telling her sister how Jeff had asked her out to dinner, admitting that it wasn’t quite a date but that he wanted to make her happy. Dana, naturally, had been over the moon, basically squealing in excitement down the phone, but Audrey had sworn her to secrecy. It wasn’t a date date. Nothing had been said between them. And she didn’t want to get her hopes up. Reluctantly Dana agreed to keep quiet for now, but she did insist on helping Audrey get ready for their not-date after work.

And to be honest, Audrey had really appreciated the confidence boost. Over video call, her sister her helped her narrow down her outfit to a cute long sleeved blue dress with a swishy skirt, knowing that blue really made her hair and her eyes pop. Pairing that with the cute comfy silver heels and a matching silver bag, Audrey was waiting by the door with her grey coat in hand, trying not to chew off her lipstick.

Then her phone buzzed. Dana.

~

From: Dana

Have fun tonight!

I know you’re trying to keep things low-key, but just see what the evening brings.

Go with the flow.

Be open to opportunities.

Call me tomorrow!

~

Audrey couldn’t help but smile, sending back a trio of heart emojis. Her sister really was the best. It was only moments later that Jeff arrived, and she rushed downstairs to meet him with a smile. She could do this. She could be open to possibilities. She could go with the flow.

“Wow, you look amazing,”

Audrey blushed at Jeff’s words, earning a blush back. She looked him up and down dramatically, making him laugh, but to be honest? He looked incredible. Jeff was wearing her favourite dark grey suit, a slight tweed in the pattern, with a white shirt that had the top two buttons undone. Incredible.

“You look great yourself,” she replied.

Jeff’s answering smile made her heart skip a beat. They walked to his car without further hesitation, just talking about their days as he drove, until Jeff parked up outside of a nice sushi restaurant.

“I hope this is okay?” Jeff said hesitantly.

“You know I love sushi,” she mused.

“I know, but we’ve never gone into an actual sushi restaurant, we always just order take-out,” Jeff pointed out.

She put her hand over his on the gear stick, making him inhale sharply.

“Then it’ll make a nice change to try a new setting, Jeff. I’m excited, let’s do this,” she said happily.

Jeff just nodded, the nerves in his stomach settling a little. They ate sushi all the time – this was just a nice dinner. Nothing weird or unusual about this at all. He could totally do this.

The way she looked shyly at him as they walked to the door still made his body thrum with nerves though.

But neither of them should’ve been nervous. The dinner went past so smoothly it felt like magic to Audrey. The food was fantastic – both of them daring the other to try at least one dish they hadn’t had before – and their conversation flowed like it always did. To be honest it felt like their usual nights – if Jeff hadn’t added that level of what if then it wouldn’t have been any different. But he did add it, and neither of them could forget that.

As always, Audrey made Jeff feel like the only guy in the world, her warm smile focused only on him. As always, Jeff made Audrey feel like the most important person in the world, so sweet and kind. And as always, they laughed and smiled and talked, and Audrey couldn’t have been happier.

Jeff achieved what he had promised to do – he had made her so happy. So what next?

They arrived back at Audrey’s apartment building late, having taken a walk after dinner, not wanting the night to end so soon, wanting this idyllic moment to continue on as long as possible.

But eventually they had to call it to an end, both of them having early starts in the morning, as much as they wished otherwise. Like the gentleman he always was with her, Jeff walked Audrey up to the front door of the building, both of them pausing.

“I had a really good time tonight,” Audrey said softly, looking up into Jeff’s eyes.

“So did I,” Jeff replied.

They both blushed, Audrey ducking her head, before she looked back up at him. She’d always seen him look at her like this, so open and happy, but for some reason tonight added another level. He was looking at her like there was nowhere else he’d rather be. And that sent a thrill through her body that both excited her and overwhelmed her. But in a good way?

“I know you’re busy for the next couple of days, but we could do something on Saturday?” Audrey offered.

Jeff nodded so enthusiastically that she couldn’t help but laugh.

“That sounds perfect,” Jeff grinned, not deterred in the slightest, “I’ll bring takeout?”

“I’d like that,” Audrey nodded in agreement.

She bit her bottom lip, hand reaching out to brush against his hand briefly, before she stepped away, heart pounding in her chest.

“Thanks for tonight Jeff. Call me tomorrow?” she said, a little breathless.

“Yeah, of course. See you,” he said, smiling a little hopelessly.

They lingered in silence a little longer, before Audrey laughed, opening her front door as Jeff rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Bye Audrey, sleep tight,” Jeff smiled, finally starting to walk away.

And she absolutely did.

*

Audrey spent the next day in a daze. She’d woken up with more butterflies in her stomach than she ever thought possible, a stupid smile on her face as she read Jeff’s good morning :) text. Last night had been different. So different. But she liked it? She had definitely liked exploring this new side of Jeff, the guy she’d known since they were toddlers, but who walked to their dinner table with a hand on the small of her back and pulled out her chair for her.

He showed her the romantic side of him last night, and she definitely liked what she saw.

And when she gushed down the phone to her sister Dana on her lunch break again, she knew her sister was at least a little smug.

~

“I told you that being open to opportunities was a good thing!”

“I know, I know, but I didn’t expect this,” Audrey laughed.

“What, the boy who’s always been in love with you making you just as happy as we all always knew he would?”

Audrey blushed at the dryness in her sister’s voice, and shook her head.

“He’s not always been in love with me, don’t be ridiculous,” Audrey said simply.

“If I was with you right now I would be shaking you by the shoulders. Talk to him. I swear to god. You know I wouldn’t say it, not now, if I didn’t mean it,”

Audrey swallowed heavily. Dana’s voice had so much conviction in it, like she truly believed what she was saying, and that only sent Audrey’s head into more of a spin. Jeff…was in love with her?

~

That phone call hadn’t helped, to be honest. This was all still throwing her for a loop. Her feelings for Jeff had been building up for two decades, two long decades, and to have the potential of his feelings matching hers? It was almost too much to bear.

And she had to wait until Saturday to be able to see him in person again. This was so much more than something she could do over text, or over a phone call, but she knew that maybe waiting was a good idea. Maybe it would give her time to get her thoughts together, to not be impulsive. Maybe it would give her enough time to get her head around the thought of Jeff’s feelings. Maybe.

The day after that passed with a blur as well, going faster than she thought possible, and even after another phone call with Dana on the Friday night, Audrey still didn’t know what she was thinking. But she knew she had to try. So just after midday, changing into a pretty pale blue dress and curling her hair lightly, she headed over to his house. Jeff opened the door with his usual smile, and he welcomed her in straight away. She bit her bottom lip as he not-so-subtly checked her ass out in the dress, trying to stop the smile that threatened to break out. Maybe. Just maybe.

“So I told Dana about our dinner the other night,” Audrey blurted out.

Damn it.

Jeff’s eyes widened in fear, making Audrey laugh slightly, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“I swore her to secrecy, she’s not going to say anything to anyone,” she reassured.

“I mean, if it was Laura you told, I know she would’ve already told Jennifer, and then everyone would know within the hour,” Jeff admitted.

Oh god yeah, that would’ve been the worst idea.

“So, um, what did you tell her?” Jeff asked hesitantly.

“That you took me out to dinner because you wanted to make me happy. And that I had a really good time,” Audrey summarised, not wanting to admit the full extent quite yet.

Jeff’s instant brilliant smile made her heart race a little, before he blushed. “Okay, that’s not so bad. What did she say in response?”

Audrey hesitated, not sure how much detail to go into. She definitely couldn’t say that Dana thought Jeff was in love with her…

“That I should be open to opportunities, that we should see where this goes,” Audrey eventually said.

Jeff bit his bottom lip, but nodded, looking deep in thought, which Audrey didn’t know whether it was a good thing or not.

“She makes a lot of sense,” Jeff said softly.

Audrey inhaled sharply. Just like that?

“What if something goes wrong between us?” she whispered.

“What if something goes right?” Jeff countered, stepping towards her.

Audrey didn’t dare move, Jeff getting closer and closer until he was standing right in front of her, barely a foot of space between them, his beautiful brown eyes dark and intense, making her head swim. So she shook her head, trying to clear out the haze.

“I can’t lose you. If something didn’t work out between us, I couldn’t bear to lose you, I don’t know what I’d do,” she said firmly.

Jeff licked his bottom lip nervously, his eyes going through various emotions.

“And if we didn’t let ourselves feel? We just carry on as we always have done, never knowing?” Jeff frowned.

Let ourselves feel. Was he admitting his feelings? Did he know hers already?

“I don’t know, Jeff. I just don’t know,” she mumbled.

Jeff reached out with both hands, cupping her elbows gently.

“I don’t think we can just go back,” Jeff admitted.

Well, shit.

“So where does that leave us?” Audrey asked softly.

“I don’t know! But I can’t stand the thought of you giving your heart away again to some guy who doesn’t appreciate it! Who doesn’t deserve it!” Jeff snapped, stepping away from her sharply.

Audrey’s jaw dropped slightly, her heart beating faster as a lump rose in her throat.

Jeff swallowed heavily, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice at you, I swear. But can’t you see that these other guys have only ever treated you like shit?”

Audrey’s lips pressed together in a tight line, trying to control her emotions, and she clenched her fists.

“I know that I haven’t exactly had a good track record, but you haven’t really had the best taste in dates either Jeff. All the exact same type of woman traipsing through your life and not a single one has stuck around,” Audrey said angrily.

“That’s because none of them ever measured up to you!” Jeff retorted.

His words hung in the air, Audrey inhaling sharply. Jeff groaned and closed his eyes, wishing he could take his last statement back, but knowing that he couldn’t. It was out there now, the real reasoning, but he was nervous to open his eyes and see Audrey’s reaction.

Would she be angry? Disgusted? Happy?

“Jeff, please look at me,” Audrey said softly.

“I don’t know if I can,” he said, choking out a laugh.

“Please?”

Jeff took a deep breath, before doing so, the pleading in her voice making him powerless. When he finally looked at her, he could barely read her face, the first time in a very long time.

“None of them measured up to me?” she said quietly.

It was the sheer volume of hope in her eyes that made Jeff brave enough to speak.

“You’ve been it for me for a long time, Aud,” he admitted.

There it was.

The noise that Audrey made was so full of both surprise and hurt that Jeff flinched. But she quickly reached out towards him, tugging him back towards her with her hands at his waist.

“I’m it? You…you really do love me?”

Jeff laughed a little wetly, full of emotion, but he nodded which only made Audrey’s heart clench. After all this time…

“I love you Audrey Marie James. I have done for a long time,” Jeff said simply.

“Oh Jeff. Jeff, I love you too,” Audrey whimpered, “so much,”

Jeff grinned, so hard that he made his cheeks hurt, before raising his hands to cup her face. He squished her cheeks into a fish pout like he always did, making her laugh and bat at his hands, breaking the tension.

“Fuck, I love you,” Jeff said happily, hands moving to rest on her shoulders.

“I love you too. Oh my god. I love you. I can’t believe I finally got to say it out loud,” Audrey giggled.

Jeff just laughed as well, giddiness overtaking him, not letting him think of anything but her.

“We’ve wasted so much time,” he huffed.

But Audrey just shook her head, her smile a little sad. “I was just so scared of not having you in my life that I didn’t dare risk you rejecting me,”

“There is no parallel universe in which I would reject you,” Jeff laughed.

“Nerd,” she said fondly, earning a brilliant smile, “I just…I wanted my own career too, y’know? And I didn’t know what would’ve happened if I just followed you for the rest of my life,”

Jeff swallowed heavily at her confession, but nodded.

“I don’t know what would’ve happened either. We’ll never know. But what I do know is that you’re a brilliant woman, who is crazy smart and wonderful and beautiful, and I’m so proud of everything you achieved. Like, you’re literally a civil engineer and an environmental scientist! That’s so cool! I’m just happy you could possibly want to be with boring old hockey-playing Jeff,”

“You’re not boring or old. And I fell in love with hockey-playing Jeff a long time ago, so I really don’t think I’m losing out here,” Audrey mused.

Jeff huffed a laugh, his heart racing a little more at her firm words, leaning his head down to rest his forehead against hers. “Well would you be this hockey player’s girlfriend?”

“Only if you’ll be this engineer-scientist’s boyfriend,” she countered.

Jeff grinned, dimples out in full force, making Audrey tilt her head back to laugh. This was real life. This was really happening. Holy shit.

But there was just one thing left…

“Hey, Jeff?” she said suddenly.

“Yeah?” he asked, one hand rising to cup her face.

It was when his thumb stroked over her cheekbone that she knew this was everything.

“Will you kiss me?”

Jeff looked a little astounded, jaw dropping a little, before that brilliant smile came back.

“Yeah, ‘f course,” he murmured.

Audrey inhaled sharply, before tilting her head up, leaning up towards him as Jeff leant down to her. Their lips touched softly, sweetly, both of them breaking off to laugh, both a little stunned, before Audrey pressed her lips to his again a little firmer. Jeff made a soft happy noise, kissing her back, his free hand sliding around her waist to bring their bodies together. She moaned in surprise at the feeling of his strong body against hers, but melted in his arms, lost in the motion of their kisses, completely consumed in a way she’d never been before.

Jeff broke away briefly with another soft moan, eyes searching her face a little desperately, before he kissed her again, clutching her a little tighter. And then he broke away for a final time, taking a step back with wild eyes, leaving her head spinning.

“I don’t want to get carried away,” Jeff panted, cheeks heating up in a blush.

Audrey bit her bottom lip but nodded, knowing her was right even if her racing heart didn’t want to admit it. “At least it was worth the wait?” she offered.

Jeff just groaned, making her laugh. Then her breath caught in her throat as Jeff adjusted his dick in his pants, alerting her to just how riled up he gotten. Oh fuck. Carried away indeed.

“You’re worth so much more to me than rushing into sex. I want to ease into things, y’know? I’ve waited this long for you to be mine, I can wait a little longer,” he said seriously.

“I love you too,” Audrey said happily.

Jeff just smiled that brilliant smile.

~

To: Dana

He loves me.

He loves me!

~

From: Dana

Holy fucking shit, about time.

Can I actually tell everyone now?

*

The next two weeks were the happiest that Audrey could remember. They had three days in a row together where Jeff wasn’t doing anything other than light training and rest, ahead of a 10 day roadtrip, and they made the most of it. Well, after another long talk about their emotions, because they could do that now, and fielding various calls from their many family members, they’d also spent a lot of time sweetly making out on the sofa whenever Audrey wasn’t working. Because hey, they could do that now too. To be honest, Audrey was a little addicted to the feeling of his lips on hers anyway – she fantasised about it for years on the occasional forbidden burst of weakness, but the reality of it blew away all fantasy.

Jeff was finally hers, and she couldn’t be happier.

The 10 days that Jeff was away on his sweeping road trip was harder this time though too. She didn’t expect it to be this hard, but she supposed that the emotions she’d locked away for so long were finally out and they were vulnerable in this newness. It did help with Jeff calling her every night though. She did tell him he didn’t have to, that she sure as hell didn’t expect it, but he just said that he’d always wanted to call her every night but he felt like he would be pushing boundaries. So how could she say no to that?

And it did make having him home finally a sweeter moment.

Tonight was the first home game since they got together officially, and Audrey was a little nervous. It was tradition for the players’ partners to wear a special customised jersey, and Jeff had presented her with one in the hopes that she would wear it to the game tonight. She had immediately agreed, of course, but it didn’t make this new step any less daunting. It was a big declaration, so public, but she did want people to know that Jeff was hers just as much as she was his.

It wouldn’t be so scary, right? She hadn’t missed a home game since he’d been in Buffalo, and she wasn’t about to start now.

So after kissing Jeff goodbye, leaving him with a sweet smile as he headed to the rink early to prepare for the game, Audrey got herself ready to enter the arena as Jeff Skinner’s girlfriend, a little more make-up and hair curled a little neater than usual, just like armour.

“Oh my God, Audrey!”

Audrey jumped at the sound of Tanya Staal’s shriek as she entered the family box, unable to stop the smile that spread across her lips. There had been a few occasions in Raleigh, when Audrey had visited while Eric was still playing there, that Audrey had met the former captain’s wife, and she had always been so sweet and welcoming. And although Tanya mostly stayed up in the family box with their kids, there had been a few team occasions since Eric was traded to Buffalo this season started that Audrey had attended as just Jeff’s friend (as that’s obviously all she had been until recently) where she’d been able to make friends with the older woman properly this time round.

Audrey always had the impression that Tanya thought she and Jeff were more than friends, but obviously now with the statement of the jersey, it was clear that the situation had changed.

“Is this true? Is this really happening?” Tanya asked hopefully.

Audrey blushed but nodded, earning a happy squeal.

“Yeah, Jeff told me he loved me two weeks ago and we’ve been dating ever since,” Audrey admitted.

“Holy shit, about time,” Tanya laughed.

It was all Audrey could do to nod, laughing a little wetly, still a bit overwhelmed.

“Okay, let me introduce you to the other player’s partners? It’s totally different than just being a friend,” Tanya offered.

Thank fuck for a friendly face. Audrey nodded in relief, letting Tanya guide her around the various women and children, the partners that she’d met previously thrilled with the news of the relationship status change (most of them saying finally or about time, which really made Audrey reconsider how obvious she’d been), and the rest of them just as welcoming. She’d done it. She was officially introduced, and she felt almost giddy with it.

The game itself was choppy, rough with hits and scrappy with goals, but the Sabres managed to pull out a win making all the people in the family box cheer. Tanya walked down by her side to wait for their men, linking their arms together like she knew just how much Audrey needed the support. As soon as Jeff saw her by Tanya’s side in their customised jerseys, his face got a really dumb lovestruck look, making Tanya laugh and nudge Audrey over to him.

“Hi, wow,” Jeff said happily.

“You like it?” she asked softly.

“You know I do,” Jeff murmured.

It was all Audrey could do to lean up on her tiptoes and kiss him, earning happy sighs and coos from the other women around them. She broke away with a laugh, moving so that they were just holding hands, but couldn’t stop looking at him despite how sappy she knew it was.

“You were amazing. I’m so proud of you,” she said softly.

“Couldn’t let you down, not when I knew you were watching as my girl,” Jeff grinned.

Audrey just laughed, rolling her eyes fondly. More players started walking out now (Jeff must’ve rushed out, bless him), including…Eric Staal.

Eric took one look at the way they were looking at each other and whooped.

“Holy shit, about time,” Eric grinned, unknowingly mimicking his wife.

“Nice to see you too, Staal,” Audrey said dryly, although she leaned up to kiss his cheek in greeting with a smile.

“Oh god yeah, you’ll know about their long suffering pining, won’t you Staalsy?” Jack laughed from behind Eric, joining their little group, Tanya already under Eric’s arm.

“So much pining, it was painful,” Eric said solemnly, although the laughter in his eyes mostly ruined the effect, “Audrey visited a few times down in Raleigh and she was at every game against the Leafs too, and Jeff’s smile was always at it’s brightest when she was there,”

“Gotta support my best friend,” she said simply, nudging Jeff with her arm.

Jeff nudged her back, but she didn’t miss the pleased smile on his lips.

“Oh come on, it was so much more than that! Jeff’s crush was so damn obvious, right from the very first time Audrey visited,” Eric mused, looking at Jack.

Audrey grinned. Was it now? Jeff just rolled his eyes, making her laugh.

“We literally only started dating two weeks ago,” Audrey pointed out.

“You’re shitting me, I thought you were joking Jeff,” Eric said, jaw dropping.

“I can actually confirm that. That day that Skinny came in to practice smiling like it was Christmas and his birthday all rolled into one really was the first full day,” Jack smirked.

Jeff blushed furiously, making Audrey laugh. Eric just shook his head, still shocked.

“All that time and you never did anything about your crush?” Eric asked, confused, “I thought you were just keeping things low-key,”

Hah, not quite.

“We tried telling him,” Jack sighed dramatically, although he was clearly loving this.

“Holy shit Skinny, took you long enough,” Eric snorted, Tanya just giggling.

“If we’re done gossiping like old grandmas?” Jeff asked dryly.

“Never,” Eric grinned.

Jack just looked delighted, and Jeff knew there was no way that the rest of the team wouldn’t hear about this.

“I’d say it was worth the wait,” Audrey said happily, squeezing his hand.

Jeff’s irritation immediately faded to a soft happiness, and Jack made a loud gagging noise at their heart-eyes.

“Okay, I’m out. Hurry up and shower, Skinny. We’ve got team drinks to get to,” Jack said firmly.

Jack sent Audrey a wink, letting her know how happy he really was for them, before leaving them.

“So does this mean I can tell Jordie? He’s going to be thrilled,” Eric grinned.

Jeff just groaned.

*

Dancin' in the kitchen, You singing my favourite songs, Swinging on the front porch, Just laughing at the dogs, Now you swear you love me more, When you're whispering goodnight, All those little moments are every reason why.

Jeff watched from the kitchen door as Audrey sang to herself, swaying slightly as she stirred whatever she was cooking in the pot on the stove. He didn’t think he could love her anymore than he already did, but seeing her like this in his kitchen, blonde hair loose and messy, wearing one of his t-shirts instead of one of her own, well…he was happy to prove himself wrong.

Then she spotted him out of the corner of her eye and shrieked, swirling around to face him with one hand clutching her heart.

“You almost scared me to death,” she gasped, pouting.

Jeff laughed, shrugging apologetically. “I couldn’t help myself. You looked so cute singing and dancing to your music,”

Audrey blushed a little, but shrugged too. “I’m obsessed with this Kane Brown song right now. Although if I’d known you were watching I probably wouldn’t have sung…”

“Aww no, don’t ever stop because of me,” Jeff mused, shaking his head, earning a smile from her, “maybe I can make it up to you?”

Audrey frowned in confusion, before Jeff moved his hand out from behind him, revealing the flowers he’d been hiding behind his back.

“You bought me flowers? How sweet!” she cooed, reaching out for the bouquet.

“Yeah? You like them?” Jeff asked hopefully.

She nodded, smiling widely as she inhaled deeply, making Jeff smile in turn. “I love them Jeff. And, um, no-one’s ever bought me flowers before,”

Jeff’s heart flickered with rage, at all those stupid guys she’d dated, who never deserved her, who never treated her like she deserved, before he forced himself to take a deep breath. No, past assholes weren’t worth thinking about any more. He was going to prove to her that he was worth it instead of them.

“Well I happen to love buying flowers, so be on the look out for more,”

“Jeff!” Audrey giggled, “You know I don’t want to buying me things, spoiling me,”

Because it was true. She didn’t want it or need it. And she never wanted him to think that it was expected.

“Oh they’re definitely not for you. They’re for me,” Jeff grinned, clearly lying.

Audrey rolled her eyes fondly, before smiling. “Oh, well, if they’re for you then that’s definitely acceptable,” she teased.

Jeff just laughed, moving to slide his arms around her waist, Audrey sliding her arms up around his neck, the flowers still in her hand.

“Will you dance with me?” Jeff asked softly.

“Right now?” Audrey laughed.

“Right now,” Jeff nodded, deadly serious.

Audrey laughed again but nodded, letting him sway her from side to side in a simple two-step shuffle, resting her forehead against his. It was little sweet moments like this, Jeff surprising her with his romantic notions, that made Audrey’s heart ache a little for all the potential missed moments over the years, but also made her heart sing that she got to experience them with him now.

Because this guy was everything to her, and even something as simple as him buying her flowers, or asking her to dance in the middle of the kitchen, made her realise just how lucky she was.

*

Mornings were quickly becoming Audrey’s favourite time of day. Whether it was waking up in her own bed or waking up in Jeff’s, seeing his face first thing as she woke up just made her day started so perfectly.

How could she not love feeling his arms wrapped around her? How his face was usually buried in her hair? How his leg slotted between hers?

She knew she loved that first sleepy smile, his wonderful dimples soft and gentle, always giving her butterflies without fail. She definitely loved the way his groggy voice murmured her name, how he pressed a closed-mouth kiss to her lips, never wanting to wait for that first simple pecked kiss before he brushed his teeth.

It was everything she could ever have asked for, everything she could never have dreamed of. With the highs came the lows, of course, and being in his arms those mornings was just as important. Like this morning, for instance.

“Last night was rough…” Jeff sighed, scrubbing at his tired eyes with the palms of his hands.

The game. The game was so stressful even just watching, so Audrey could only imagine how it would’ve felt being on the ice. Turnovers, stupid penalties, sloppy passes – it really just wasn’t their night. And when Jeff had finally walked out of the changing room ready to go home…well, it was all Audrey could do to go to bed in silence and let him curl into her side.

“…but waking up with you by my side makes me feel a million times better already,” he finished.

“You, Jeffrey Skinner, are a sap,” Audrey said fondly.

“Well you already knew that,” Jeff mused.

True, she did.

“Kiss me?” she prompted.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth,” Jeff said hesitantly.

“Don’t care,” Audrey shrugged, “you didn’t kiss me last night,”

Jeff’s face looked horrified, making Audrey burst out in laughter.

“Babe, I’m so sorry,” Jeff insisted, eyes wide and serious.

Babe. Huh. She could get used to that.

“Well luckily for you, you’ve got all day to make up for it,” Audrey teased.

Jeff’s eyes lit up at that, making her laugh again, before he rolled on top of her. He looked down at her fondly, face soft in the morning light, before he leaned down to kiss her slowly, softly, sweetly, over and over again. One of Audrey’s hands reached up to slide into his messy curls, the other clutching at his waist, Jeff just moving in to lie between her thighs, making Audrey’s body stir with excitement. Yes, she could definitely get used to this.

Eventually their kisses slowed down to a final few pecks, Jeff leaning back to look down at her properly.

“Have I told you that I love you?” he asked, resting his weight on his forearms as he hovered over her.

“Not today,” she grinned.

“Well let me rectify that,” Jeff grinned back.

Audrey shrieked as Jeff pressed a flurry of kisses to her face and neck, saying I love you between every few.

*

6 months later

Jeff’s hand was resting on Audrey’s thigh as they drove through the familiar streets of Markham, two weeks of vacation booked for her and invitations to come home from both their families guiding the way. To be honest, Audrey was pretty excited to experience their childhood homes with this new evolution of their relationship, to see things through a different perspective, and she knew that the childhood friends that were still around were excited to see them as them too.

It was a long time coming, after all.

“My mom is thrilled that I’m bringing you home as my boyfriend for the first time,” Audrey said softly, when they were about 5 minutes away from her family home.

“She’s known me for nearly three decades…” Jeff pointed out, trailing off in confusion.

“And she’s been cheerleading us for at least half of that,” Audrey admitted.

Jeff’s face froze briefly, before it shifted into fear.

“We’re about to be ambushed by your whole family, aren’t we?” he sighed.

“Definitely. Potentially all of yours as well, if I know my mom,” Audrey smirked.

And Audrey did know her mom – she knew in her gut that the moment Audrey told her that she would be bringing Jeff by as her boyfriend, that her mom rang Jeff’s mom to organise a joint group effort. There was no way that the women weren’t going to see them both at the same time, and there was no way their siblings wouldn’t be around to say I told you so. It would be ridiculous…but it was just who their families were.

Jeff just groaned, making Audrey giggle.

“There’s still time to turn the car around you know. Say we changed our minds, hide away in a cabin somewhere for a couple of weeks?” she offered.

No amount of stress was worth losing Jeff, not now she finally had him by her side.

But Jeff anxious face split into a smile. “As much as I would love to avoid the combination of our giant families…we can’t avoid them forever,” he mused, “and besides, you’re worth it,”

Audrey didn’t think she could love him any more than she already did, but there he goes, proving her wrong.

[astrowithkaro]

February 8th please? Thank youuu <3

Language Of Birthdays: February 8 - Aquarius

[You can find the rest of the series here; or check out my masterlist]

The Day of Precognition

Those born on February 8 often have highly developed psychic or projective abilities. They are sometimes able to form a conception of how a situation should be in their heads and then bring that situation into reality, not by physically creating it but by the power of suggestion, that is visualizing their wishes and somehow guiding others in that direction. In addition they are able to read signs around them accurately enough to know when it is the right time to raise a subject or make a physical move. In financial matters, they generally have a sense of timing that informs them when to invest money or bail out, and when it is appropriate to begin or end a business relationship. One is tempted to say that February 8 people can somehow read the future, but perhaps it is more a kind of openness where they are highly sensitized to the undercurrents running between people and things. Indeed, some February 8 people are outright psychics, able to sense what others are thinking even over considerable distances and also capable of sending their thoughts and messages like transmitters. But even the average person born on this day most often has a powerful sixth sense.

February 8 people are very strong conceptually. Rather than leap right in and try to accomplish something by trial and error, they usually stand back, examine it objectively and visualize how it should be done. Often they give the impression of living in another world, peopled not by living things but by ideas. They may be intellectuals or planners, architects or map readers, musicians or scientists or whizzes with the computer, but one thing they certainly are not is idle dreamers. Others may be surprised when they discover this, wrongly assuming that February 8 people are just flaky or out of it. Infact, those born on this day display a great capacity for understanding highly technical matters.

Despite their talents, the emotional lives of February 8 people tend toward the unstable, even chaotic. If they have never discovered or developed the conceptual part of their nature, and rather have given most of their energy to interpersonal relationships, they may be floundering a good deal of the time. They seem to either fail to hold on to the right people who come along, or. worse yet, become hopelessly attached to the wrong ones. Basically they err on the side of shouldering unrealistic responsibilities for which they are not suited. There is a highly docile part of their nature which can on the one hand have them giving much while receiving precious little in return, or on the other hand indulging themselves in a warm bath of attention and even coddling. Unfortunately, their psychic abilities don't seem to help them in their choice of mates. Frequently, they want things to go easily, smoothly, but with the wrong person this is ultimately difficult, if not impossible. Finding a good give-and-take-balance in an equal relationship is something February 8 people should hold out for. if they can.

Strengths:

Conceptual

Intuitive

Technical

Weaknesses:

Co-dependent

Emotionally confused

Passive

Advice

Those born on February 8 may suffer from hidden ailments which they are afraid or unwilling to discuss with others. If possible, they should have regular checkups with a physician of their own choice, with whom they feel comfortable and whom they respect and trust. Those born on this day may suffer difficulties with their lymphatic, glandular or circulatory systems over the years. In later life, they should be attentive to any varicosities that may develop. Those born on this day would do well to keep their diets low in fat. reduce or eliminate their rate of smoking, and limit their consumption of alcohol. Only mild to moderate exercise is recommended for February 8 people along with lots of rest. They should beware of focusing on or even uttering self-fulfilling prophecies of a self-destructive nature.

Seek to be more realistic in your personal life

Try to develop better judgment

Work through your problems

Not everything can come easily

Beware of self-destructive tendencies

[raijinden]

     e - heh . ;nsfw !!

undoubtedly dominant in all things learned over her 700+ year reign, and the bedroom is no different -- she is loathe to give up that sense of control that has grown to feel so stable to her . it is not an entirely impossible prospect though -- just do not expect to see the shogun beneath you in the first few times you are intimate with her, and certainly do not expect her to be some crying and submissive virgin

absolutely the slowest burn you could imagine, and then some . if you are invited to share her bed, it is because she knows you, has become incredibly familiar with you and has above all, placed her absolute trust and faith in you . sex, while incredibly intimate, is the most prime opportunity to do incredibly un - intimate things ( assassination, for example ) . but that makes it all the sweeter when you are invited to lay with her-- yet even as her partner, it will take a fair amount of talk and discussion for her to allow you to use anything related to your vision, if you have such a thing, on her .

she is, in all positions, very quiet . it is not so much through her voice and sounds that you will get your reactions, but rather through her body . a stutter in her breath, the flutter of her eyelids, muscle tensing and the way hands curl in or grasp to something, they’re all ways to gauge her pleasure . while normally her eyes are that dull, nigh lifeless shade of lavender, when she is wrought with emotion, as in the situation with the vision reclamation, her eyes will come to life with light . and, it should come as no surprise, in sex it is no different-- they are vibrant with amethyst and crimson mixing as one at her peak . it is also a way to tell when she’s turned on, though many might be led to believe the light up with an emotion such as annoyance or something else

you have, at your disposal, perhaps the simultaneously greatest and worst person you could possibly fall into bed with if you happen to be a connoisseur of erotic electrostimulation ( really, yall should have seen this one coming a mile away ) . she is the very embodiment of electro, and controls it just as easily as she breathes . she knows what it can do to the body, negative and positive, and knows exactly where to send a controlled shock to induce pleasure and pain-- do not ask her to shock you anywhere but your lower half, she will not, and is like to throw the whole possibility out for asking her to be irresponsible with you like that .

if you are her partner, expect a certain measure of possessiveness . certainly nothing overbearing, like demanding you live on the tenshukaku grounds and stay locked in a room from danger like some sort of pet . however, you will be marked with her sigil-- a shining violet electro mitsudomoe . you are asked first where you would prefer it, and she makes no pretense about its implications nor that she will do it . to keep the claims of others away-- almost like a ward of hers . if you bear it, you will not be struck by the lightning no matter where in teyvat you are-- the tatarigami will not touch you, the wily spirits of inazuma will not dare trifle with you . but it’s mostly to be used by her as an alarm of sorts-- it has much the same effect as if you were inazuman by blood: she can sense when you are in danger, and since you are her most beloved, she will without hesitation come to your aid .

funny enough, it is embarrassingly easy to get the ear of the shogun being that she is an archon and invoking her name, generally in prayer, will let your words reach her . as i said, generally in prayer, but there is certainly nothing to stop you from whispering filthy fantasies and praising words to her ear no matter where in the world you are, and she isn’t like to tune it out unless its from an unwarranted source . she’s not an easy thing to ‘ turn - on ‘ so to speak, but enough of this and she may be inclined to do something like respond belatedly if she’s in the middle of a meeting, so focused on your words as she would be .

branching a little in part from the possessiveness, she will often refer to you by a pet name unless you staunchly oppose it . something uniquely for you that she does not even think of referring to any other by . not something as common as ‘ sweetheart ‘ or ‘ baby ‘, no it is tailored based on how she views you . take, for example ( and definitely not referring to any people in particular wink - wink - nudge - nudge ;)))) ) ‘ my siren ‘, ‘ my vixen ‘ or ‘ my rook ‘ . notice the use of my in all of them ? good .

depending when you do fall into bed with her, you may notice the more ... animalistic traits of hers the stems from the power of the beastly first archon within her . sharp and ebony black canines that she tends to file down when they get out of hand and poke painted nails that grow out in a nasty point and are a natural shade of light purple . she has no problem in using them to further mark you, bruise you, leave physical evidence, especially if you specifically ask he to let them grow out and use on you ( which she is willing to do ) . if you are very lucky ? hidden and wolfish tail that is generally tucked away into her attire will react .

oh don’t doubt that she knows just how desirable she looks; she very much finds a fair bit of enjoyment in teasing her significant other with her body when they are alone . yes, yes, her almighty booba and yadda - yadda - yadda-- she knows well just how much of a magnet they are for salacious eyes, and she is unafraid to use her appearance to tease at her partner/s . she’s tall enough to loom over most people she happens across, and if she happens to trap you against the wall or the bed, leaning down until she is pressed up against you and murmuring sweet nothings and other such things in your ear .

while using ‘ baal ‘ is one way of trying to get into her head during intimacy, it is inarguable that it’s more effective to use her given name ( tomoe // ei ) due to the implications . that you call her by that name rather than her title as deity equates to you viewing her as human, and an equal . which, at its core, is what she views you as, if you become her partner .

perhaps something of a ‘ dirty - little - secret ‘, she has always had a certain ... appreciation for bondage, in any capacity . whether it is a simple manner of an electro - binding, an coat or sash, or as intricate as certain rope - bindings can get to be, she has an interest in it . in much the same vein as vision usage during sex, it will take a lengthy amount of discussion and where to draw the line, but she is willing to be tied up as well . and, for your information, she has certainly done her research and knows most of the knots, and even developed a couple of her own .

if such a thing is ever needed, her go - to safeword is ‘ narukami ‘ . as egotistic as it seems, she knows she is not likely to call out such a thing in the heat of the moment . as such, don’t call her that or any variation thereof in bed .

something i myself am kind of tentative about but -- i base a lot of headcanons off information that i learned when i first started writing in genshin with my zhongli / morax blog . in particular, especially since REX INCOGNITO spoke of rex lapis descending to the mortal world to travel it in many different forms, including a man, a woman and a child, i have toyed with the idea of such a thing being within the power of any archons . that is, the altering of one’s appearance, and since barbatos was able to mold his appearance based on his cherished bard, i could see it feasibly work-- so it’s more of a tentative thought than true headcanon at this point but if her significant other so desired it, she could alter herself . she is not terribly comfortable in another form for extended periods though, and she would respond solely to she / her / hers pronouns .

[yamaoops]

your head remains amongst the clouds ⁠— a keiji akaashi imagine + headcanons

status : unedited word count : 1,024 (not including headcanons!)

pairing : keiji akaashi x g-n! reader

request :  can I request headcanons for akaashi with a reader who is really clumsy and ditzy and he always has to take care of her and he's always worried about her and stuff?  — sage, @akakeiiji​

a/n : thank you so much for requesting lovie!! it means a lot especially as i’m new to writing here- i really loved this concept and i ended up writing an imagine as well as the headcanons... i haven’t really written about keiji before and it was really fun!! i hope you enjoy lovie!

you and keiji probably first met when you bumped into him on his way to practice- you fell over and akaashi, being the gentleman we all know he is, helped you up whilst you apologised

you both probably only have a few classes together but after that moment, you both were rather curious about each other 

you tend to be at practice a lot but akaashi tends to refuse your help- he doesn’t want you to get hurt especially on the days where bokuto is particularly enthusiastic... practice can be rather 

you are kind of insecure about zoning out but you can’t help it- sometimes your thoughts are just so much more interesting than your classes so you seem very clumsy

but whenever you do get hurt, keiji is so sweet and patient and helps clean up any cuts and bruises you may have had, no matter how small!!

‘you don’t want to get these infected darling, no matter how small.’

to be honest, keiji finds you incredibly endearing and cute 

you get confused rather easily so he takes his time explaining things and he just loves your expression when you’re concentrating because he can tell you’re working really hard

you’re the kind of couple that treat each other often and just  put your all into your relationship. you may not be the most affectionate in public but akaashi is always holding your hand or had an arm around you so you’re always close

and you’re such a cute, supportive couple!!!

you were always a bit…. how do i say this… lost. not in the sense that you didn’t know what was going on but you always seemed like you were somewhere far-away. somewhere nicer than the physics labs at fukurodani high school. not that they were bad per se - the neat wooden benches and shining cupboards in which things they couldn’t even pronounce were of high quality-  there were just a number of places that you would much rather be at that moment in time. the lesson was drawing to a close whilst you doodled in the margin of the page they were working on, the words of the teacher leaving your ears as soon as they entered them. as soon as the bell rang, signalling the end of the lesson and the end of the day, you stood up and took your time to clear your things away.

when you were lost in their thoughts, it was clear. it was almost like someone had hung a thin veil over your eyes and one of your hands was always occupied- either clicking a retractable pen or fiddling with a strand of your hair. if you were walking, it would seem like you were taking in the surroundings. keiji akaashi had once assumed that that was what you were doing. and it did take him a while that a tap on the shoulder wasn’t enough to distract them.

perhaps that was what had drawn keiji akaashi to you. your mystery? no, that wasn’t it. the pure curiosity one has when they fully understand a person. that was what drew him to you. but what determines the length at which you understand a person.

in one of his literature lessons, his teacher had made a point that had stuck with him for a long time.

‘the human,’ the teacher had said, ‘is just like a machine. now, before you tell me that machines don’t have the capacity to think, which i hope you know i am fully aware of, i wanted to give you this analogy to truly understand what it is to be human and develop the characters in your writing. just like machines have cogs and screws and levers that do certain things, aspects of our lives do the same. our emotions and attitudes are the cogs and our reactions are the processes the cogs go through to function. if your audience is able to guess the kind of situation they were in before the story started, then only can you say that you have accomplished the making of truly human characters. ’

keiji thought this was the case for everyone- sure, there’d be a few surprises here and there, but for the most part, people reacted as he expected. take bokuto for example. the captain of the volleyball team tended to be turbulent in times of what he perceived as ‘failure’, particularly during games, but keiji believed as long as you knew him well enough, you would know how to react to help him improve.

before he knew you, it was almost like he had encountered an error in the system or a blank page in a novel. he didn’t understand, even when you were friends before their relationship. some things still caught him by surprise. for example, the previous week, you had come to volleyball practice with multiple tupperware boxes full of brownies. the team had been pleased- perhaps too excited- but when keiji asked you why you had baked them, you only responded with a soft ‘i had an exam’ before almost tripping over a small pile of volleyballs.

maybe it was because he hadn’t really met anyone like you before, but keiji really didn’t understand. baking when you could be preparing for the exam? he found it rather endearing despite it making no sense whatsoever to him.

today, he saw you leaving one of the labs. noting that for once you had noticed him raise his hand in greeting, their pace increasing as you walked towards the boy, dodging past clusters of people. you bumped into a few people as keiji approached, his hand out a little too late before bending down to meet your gaze as you picked up your stuff.

“in a rush as usual are we, love?” he asks, a slight grin appearing on his face as he helped them up.

“shush.” you responded, dusting down their clothes before they met keiji’s gaze once again, “how was your day?”

keiji shrugged in response, taking their hand in his before walking down together.

“don’t you have practice?”

“after the match on the weekend, we decided to take a day off practice.”

“so you’re free?”

“all yours.” keiji responded before gently pulling you to the side to avoid another collision.

“i’m sorry.” you blurted out, cheeks heavily flushed as the two of you left the building.

“for what?”

“it just feels like… most of the time i’m tripping over things or getting hurt or confusing you!”

your abrupt comments made the boy laugh which caused your cheeks to become warmer (if that was possible.) 

“that’s nonsense.”

“no, it’s the truth. i don’t like worrying you because you already have so much on your plate with your studies and volleyball and-”

“well, if it makes you feel any better, your flaws are just as lovable as your perfections. i see no difference.”

“keiji!” you exclaimed, a small frown on your face as you stopped walking.

“what? Isn’t that a compliment?” 

goodness, sometimes that small side smile of his frustrated you- particularly when he was being so smooth with his words. out of the blue, the boy gently pulled you closer, your hands resting on his chest as he kissed the top of your head. 

“why…?” 

“... we were blocking the way of some people.”

“you could have just sugar coated it- where are all the cute comments now?!”

“my lips are sealed.” he chuckled, pulling you closer as you almost stumble once again, “quite literally.” he said, his voice softer before he gently pressed a kiss to your lips.

your slight frustration melted into dormancy for the time being, your arms tied around his neck. for if there is one thing keiji akaashi is certain of, is that he looks forward to learn and love all your ‘flaws’ that remain as perfections in his eyes.