#everything in the ninth is from dead people

[harrowedsoup]

Where did Gideon’s porn mags come from? Because surely Harrow didn’t allow her to get them off planet while she was in charge. So that means everything she had had to have come from Ninth House.

*stares off into the middle distance* Gideon’s mags (and actual books she probably read unless she got her vocabulary from just being on the Ninth) were the belongings of the dead generation. In fact that is probably the ONLY reason she was able to have entertainment at all.

[fawnindawn]

the line between thieves and healers (Luke Castellan x apollo fem! reader)

Summary: Luke Castellan returns from his quest as a ghost of his old self with a bleeding scar to prove it. With his golden boy exterior all but shattered, no one in camp has tried to approach him since his return. This changes when you stumble upon the son of Hermes when he decides to go back to his old roots, stealing from your infirmary at midnight.

pairing: luke castellan x apollo fem! reader

Content: forced proximity, tending to wounds, luke develops a little crush, set after Luke's failed quest in the Garden of Hesperides, mentions of injuries and scars, Luke tries and fails at being mean, hurt-comfort, fluff

masterlist for this series (everything in between) every part in this series can be read as a stand alone!

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"Come on." One of the campers prodded despite your obvious discomfort. "I'm sure you've squeezed something out of Castellan by now. He's been silent about what happened during his quest for days."

"I told you, I know nothing, and even if I did- patient confidentiality exists." You repeated for the ninth time in a week. Ever since people found out Luke had come personally to you to tend to his wounds, they had lost all decency over the hope of digging for some good gossip. If you were asked one more time, you were sure you would tell them to stick their noses right back up their asses and leave.

Even after his return, Luke Castellan remained a constant in word of mouth around camp over his sudden change in persona. His usual grin and charm was replaced with a dark gloom unfitting for the son of Hermes, who used to light up any room he entered. The scar that permanently rests on his face didn't make it easier for him to avoid watching eyes either. After refusing to play in Capture the Flag for the first time in history, whatever patience the camp was trying to uphold dissipated into chaos.

Sure, you could see why it was a big deal. If you're a person with a sane enough mind (of course, not guaranteed in the premises of Camp Half-Blood), you’d understand why the fellow camp counsellor of the Hermes Cabin was popular. With his constant presence around camp as the cool, attractive camp counsellor helping other campers with that small quirk up his lips, or through word of mouth of how talented and kind he was, it wasn't a huge surprise that he attracted as much attention as he did.

Once the ninth camper in a row finally gave up and left with a huff, your eyes lingered over the bed where you first tended to Luke.

_

It was the dead of night when you were woken by the sound of creaking wooden floorboards and the cold chill of the wind that had snuck into the infirmary. Somehow, you had overslept again on your shift and no one had bothered to wake you up or even check for your missing presence.

Groaning at the awkward shift of your bones from your horrible sleeping posture on the desk, you were halfway through your stretch to crack your stiff neck when you heard the sound of footsteps. Freezing in place, you paused to listen in once more only to heard the soft thud once again. Peering to the left side of the infirmary, your heart stopped.

"Hey, listen." You spoke with that awkward crack in your voice whenever you go too long without speaking, causing the large shadow to flinch, pausing in its pursuit through your medicine cabinet. "I may not seem like it, but I am the best in combat in my cabin so whoever you are, step away from the cabinet and put your hands up."

Gee, that's convincing, you sound like an unnamed extra from the first few minutes of a horror movie before they end up six feet under. Cursing yourself internally, you watched the shadow raise to full height from its bent position. Gulping at the height that seemed to be at least six feet, you wonder if you should have just left this cabinet thief be and go to sleep for the night.

Why would anyone even want to ransack an infirmary at midnight?

You quickly grabbed for your oil lamp situated beside you, still flickering with the smallest of flames and you stood from your chair, causing it to creak back and scratch at the wooden floors as you made your way around the table to approach the thief.

The light was dim, but you spotted the familiar outline of a broad back and curls before he even fully turned.

"Castellan?" You gasped in half-asleep shock, disbelief obvious in your tone as you moved the oil lamp nearer to prove your eyesight wasn't playing tricks on you.

He didn't respond verbally to the call of his name, but when he turned around, his eyes narrowed on you as if you were the intruder. You barely had the chance to form words, questions- before you spotted the dripping crimson liquid near his eye.

"Oh gods." You muttered, grabbing at his arm and tugging him towards the nearest bed. "Why didn't you wake me up? It's not like you could wrap this up yourself."

With some struggle, he finally gave in, plopping down the edge of the bed and watched you scour through the medicine cabinet for bandages and other supplies, muted and stiff.

"I seriously don't understand why you didn't wake me up. Would you rather bleed to death or get an infection?" You scolded, your inner concern bleeding through your usual sense of politeness for injured visitors.

"Maybe." You thought you heard him mumble, but when you turned to look at him, he was facing the window right beside the bed and staring out into the shadows of the forest, the glow of the moonlight illuminating his features like a haunted painting, blood dripping down his cheekbones like fallen tears. You waited longer for an elaboration but there was none. You assumed you heard wrong, or at least you hoped you did.

You got off your knees, splaying out the supplies on the surface of the bed beside him, and pulled up a stool for you to sit at. He was still facing away from you, and your irritation combined with your lack of sleep made you more reckless than you'd usually be with an injured patient.

You gripped at his chin, forcing him to look at you, watching with satisfaction as his eyes widened at the sudden force. He looked more alive when he was caught off guard, his face devoid of the usual disinterest and distance it had ever since he arrived back from his quest.

"How do you expect me to treat you if you keep looking away from me, Castellan?" You challenged, gazing back into his eyes with fire you hoped was fierce enough to break down the coldness in his gaze.

After seconds of nothing but two stubbornheads trying to win a useless battle of eye contact, he sighed. "..Fine."

You were more gentle after that, letting go of his chin and reaching for the cloth. Your hands remained delicate on his skin that seemed to have pulled at the edge of the scar, where it was now bleeding again through its previous stitches. You mumbled a warning before dapping a wet handkerchief on top of the wound to soak in the blood, and he unintentionally grabbed at your thigh as he tried not to hiss out in pain.

You froze at the sudden tight grip, moving the cloth away from his skin and he was quick to retract his hand, positioning it awkwardly on top of the bedsheets instead.

"It's okay if you grab me." You reassured. "It'd be easier for me to gauge if you need me to stop when it gets too painful. You could give me a squeeze if you need a breather?"

You waited, watching his thoughts flicker through his narrowed eyes before slowly, his hand went to rest around your thigh again.

Ignoring the warmth of his palm on your skin, you cleared your throat. "Ready?"

He nodded stiffly, and you went back to work. After the cut had stopped bleeding, you were quick to grab the gauze and bandages. Tenderly, you placed the gauze above his wound, then wrapped the bandages around his face, from the top of his head to below his chin. This was the closest you had ever been to him, and you could feel and hear both his and your breathing in the quiet silence of the infirmary, with no living signs of life aside from the two of you on the infirmary bed and the dim orange hue of the oil lamp.

You could feel his intense gaze on you from his one good eye, while you concentrated on tying a secure knot so it wouldn't fall loose. The moment felt oddly intimate, knowing how sensitive his temper had been ever since he arrived back at camp, scarred in ways not even ambrosia could heal fully.

His hand resting around your thigh felt hot, and you tried to ignore how your mind subconsciously kept track of every time his thumb would brush over the material of your pants.

"Next time.." You hinted, hopefully not crossing his boundaries. "If this happens again, you come straight here, got it? I don't care if I'm sleeping or attending someone else. You are not allowed to take care of a wound like this yourself, especially since I remember how reckless you can be."

Luke Castellan may be an excellent swordsman, but his cockiness was one weakness that he failed to keep controlled, and on days where it won over, he would always end up at the infirmary with a bashful smile as he tried to explain to you on how he ended up with a dislocated shoulder. That felt like eons ago, when that cheeky smile would always be present on his face, his signature move in getting away with any chaos he caused.

Staring at him now, you caught sight of that smile for such a split second you could've sworn you mistook it.

You couldn't stop the teasing smile that slipped past your stern attitude. "Was that a smile I saw, Castellan?"

He cleared his throat, his face falling back into practiced nonchalance, wearing a frown too forced to be real. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I may be sleep-deprived because a certain someone decided midnight was the best time to ransack an infirmary, but I'm not blind. For making me work overtime, I at least deserve to know what you found so amusing."

He made a face, and you were sure if his face wasn't tightly bandaged, he would roll his eyes in exasperation. "I wasn't amused. Just don't remember you being this.. unhospitable with someone that's injured. And I am not reckless."

You scoffed, causing him to look over at you. "I'd say trying to steal from an infirmary is pretty reckless. I thought Hermes kids were supposed to be good in stealing?"

You realised all too late that you may have touched on a sensitive topic, with the mention of his father, but he didn't seem to notice over the frank insult of being called a bad thief.

"I am excellent in stealing." He bit back so quickly, you choked on a snort. Hermes kids and their egos. "I was just going easy on you because you were knocked out at your desk. Oh, and you snore, you know that?"

"I do not."

"Do too."

"You're a liar and a thief. Don't get why your reputation is as marvelled upon as it is, Castellan. You don't live up to the hype at all."

"Oh, and what about you, Miss Sunshine?" He retorted. "Aren't you suppose to be the famous sweetheart who sings all injuries away with a smile on your face?"

"Don't call me that ever again." You must have looked extremely repulsed because he let out a laugh so genuine, it wiped any disgust off your face at the sound of pure heaven flooding into your ears. God, you forgot he could laugh like that.

"Yeah, I suppose it doesn't suit you, does it?" He murmured. "Maybe Apollo kids are only nice when others are around to see it."

"You've only come back meaner, Castellan." You scoffed. "I almost regret helping you. Would much rather see you stumble over trying to deal with this yourself if I knew you'd be so ungrateful."

"Sounds righteous of you." He nodded with a sarcastic hum. "Leaving me to bleed out to death while you watch. I understand why the camp has such high stakes when it comes to survival now. Never knew there was a sadist hiding in you, sunshine."

"I told you not to call me that." You reminded. "And I'm doing the best I can to keep everyone here alive so don't come to my infirmary talking about stakes when I've just saved your ass from blood loss."

Your response triggered something in him and he grew silent, his gaze locked on you as if analyzing you. That was when you're really reminded of how awful you must've looked. With your bed hair, sunken-in dark circles and sunken shoulders from the lack of sleep, you did not exactly feel the most confident. You didn't know what happened to make the casual atmosphere disappear as fast as it did, but you were anxious that somehow, you had shut him up again and you'd never get the chance to see him that way again, with his playful banter and light-heartedness of a teenage boy that he should have.

"You shouldn't have to." He muttered, almost to himself rather than to you. A seriousness unlike the previous few quips he'd thrown at you took ahold of him, and you had a feeling this was a slither of who he had really become through his rapid transformation, hidden under the jokes and sarcasm.

"What?"

"You shouldn't have to." He repeated a little louder, trying to get you to see his point. A point he'd been trying to tell Chiron, his friends even- ever since he came back here, only to be meet with pitying looks like he was a madman who spoke nonsense to try and make sense of his failure. "Lives should not be your responsibility. You're younger than me, and yet, you're dealing with kids that are near death's door every time they make it past that barrier. I barely made it back here. Some don't even.."

Luke tried to breathe, remembering how he got to camp in the first place. The unnecessary sacrifice that had to be made, the tree that now rests at the barrier of camp, the sound of thunder and pouring rain beating at his face.

"Now, I'm stuck with this disgusting scar on my face for the rest of my life, a stupid reminder every single time I look at myself, that I failed my only chance at proving I was something more than just wasted potential. Now I've gone and screwed it up for everyone because I couldn't do some easy quest someone else already accomplished-" He winced suddenly, grabbing onto the bandaged part of his face that seemed to grow more irritated and inflamed as he spoke.

You were quick to reach for his hand, knowing his aggression may harm the wound more. "It is not disgusting." You answered for him, and slowly, your hand rested over his, removing it from his face so he wouldn't accidentally cause the wound to start bleeding again. "You are not a failure, Luke."

"Don't take pity on me by saying words you don't mean." He muttered. "Everyone expected me to succeed, I could feel it in their gaze when they looked at me. I was supposed to be the best, and just because everyone told me that, I believed it. Now, I'm nothing but a disappointment to everyone."

He didn't know why he was saying all this to you. Maybe because you were the only person to treat him normally in the past two weeks, to really listen instead of trying to get him to move on, and maybe because his heart felt like it was growing too heavy to carry on his own. The insecurity and vulnerability made him feel sick, and he found himself trying to tear his hands away from you out of the need to run, which only made him feel more disgusted with himself. Like a coward, his mind taunted.

You remained stubborn, holding onto his cold palms because you know he has had no warmth, no real genuine words spoken to him since he returned. No one to see him when it was clear he was suffering, that he needed all the time in the world and more to heal, and that he deserved more than self-loathing and an absent father who sentenced him to this fate.

"I am not pitying you." You insisted, and you leaned closer so he couldn't look away from you. "Your scar does not make you ugly or less valuable to anyone. It is not pity, it is a fact. You are a person who has survived a fate so close to death, and any feat to survive death is strength. You are strong, and you made it back here alive with a scar to prove it. It is not a sign of weakness."

"Anyone who tells you different has no right or say in your situation because they did not go through what you did." You said with a stern voice, your anger not towards him, but for him. "Not your father, not anyone."

Luke finally looked at you, like looked. His eyes were scanning all over your face as if not quite believing you were real, but the fire in your eyes was so magnetic, he couldn't look away. The pinch between your brows, the addictive warmth of your hands in his, and the close distance between the two of you, and yet, it didn't make his skin itch with the need to pull away. To hide in his corner and wallow over the heavy weight of knowing his world had ended in the Garden of the Hesperides. Or had it?

Your eyes looked right through him, and for once, he felt like there was someone there for him.

"I suppose I can see where your reputation comes from now, sunshine." He responded weakly, and his heart gave a thump when you smiled back at him.

"Healing's what I understand best." You shrugged casually, as if you didn't just silence his thoughts for a moment of peace, or that you have somehow dulled the internal blades that bled with self-hatred and world-consuming anger pointed at himself, and at the injustice of the gods who could not give a damn about their children. “If I can help you even a little, why shouldn’t I?”

He could feel time ticking again in the back of his mind, the night slowly passing into a new one, and he thinks as he holds your gaze, that maybe this world wouldn't be so painful to live in if he had someone to look at him the way you did.

"I don't know how I'm going to go back to normal. Or if I'll ever be normal again." He admitted, softer in his voice now that his mind didn't deem you as a threat.

"Normal can be lots of things." You said with a comforting smile. "It's normal to have a breakdown when you've nearly faced death. Multiple even. It's normal to feel fine one moment then not in the next. Healing isn't linear, and when you come to terms that you have a right to feel upset and a right to exist without being held to any expectations of others or what you think others want from you, it'll feel easier to just allow yourself to exist throughout the day. Not the perfect camp counsellor or a hero with no faults. Just as yourself."

He let your words sink in, his thumbs subconsciously rubbing over your knuckles, feeling the healed scars of your own from what he assumed must be from previous combat training. "I'm not that great as myself. You might find me disappointing."

You quirked your lips at that, and shook your head. "I don't believe in that one bit. You're already great just as you are now."

He raised a brow. "Even after trying to steal from your infirmary and having a mental breakdown past curfew?"

"Well, just be glad I was around because I'm much more understanding than Will would be with four hours of sleep."

"I am glad." He insisted. "That it's you."

"I'm glad it was me too." You reassured. "It is midnight though and there's Capture the Flag tomorrow, meaning someone's going to end up whining and moping in here in about eight hours so why don't you let me close shop and come by tomorrow, Castellan?"

"Luke." He corrected, giving you a smile you're sure must be the one the other campers rave about all the time. The charming one that made your heart stutter, even with half his face bandaged and eyebags resting below his caramel eyes.

"Luke." You tested it on your tongue tentatively, and it only seemed to spark an electricity between the two of you that you were sure he must've felt too. In the dark corner of the infirmary, with nothing but crickets and your hushed voice, you spoke again with a heavy heart when you needed to tell him to leave. "I have to close this place up or someone else might try and steal from the medicine cabinet, not that I thought it was possible before but.."

"Fine." He complied, getting off the bed and rising to his full height, towering over you and blocking the moonlight from your view. "I'll wait outside and walk you back to your cabin. It's the least I could do."

You tried not to seem too elated over the idea that you could spend a little more time with Luke, though you're sure your glowing smile must've shown. "Sure you're not just trying to improve your image around me, thief?"

He smirked, following you out to the front door while you wrestled for the keys in your pocket to lock up for the night. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

_

"What are you smiling about?"

You looked up from your daze to see Luke leaning over the door frame, watching you with a smirk over his face.

"Can't a girl smile just for the sake of it?" You bit back, cheeks flushing at the idea that he could've possibly seen your focus lingering a little too long on the bed he had sat on. "Why'd you drop out of Capture the Flag? You know your cabin's going to lose their streak to Ares at this point."

"Wanted to see someone." He replied with a shrug, pushing off the door frame to walk towards where you sat, leaning over your desk and watching you compile the latest stock of ambrosia into a box. "Plus, Athena and Hermes are joining for today so Annabeth's got it handled."

He shuffled his fingers along the edge of the table, outlining the curve before clearing his throat. "I heard you covering up for me just now, and I wanted to say thank you."

You looked up at him then, and his eyes seemed to convey that he was thanking you for more than just that. He looked like he wanted to say more, but didn’t know how to.

"Eavesdropping on me now?” You teased. “Careful or you might end up becoming obsessed with a poor, overworked healer."

He scoffed exaggeratedly. "You wish. Just take the thank you. Should've known not to show my gratitude to an Apollo kid."

You stuck your tongue out at him before going on about how mind-blowing it can be that some kids really did not have emotional intelligence when it came to basic decency. Listening to you ramble on as you went on to arrange your first aid kits, Luke realised for all the disappointment he has experienced in his life, maybe there was one good thing his father led him to.

a/n: Couldn't resist writing how this duo met because I live and die for banter. inspired by 'my reputation's never been worse so you must like me for me' trope which is what i live and breathe for. His reputation as the perfect golden boy is in shambles, and sunshine couldn't care less.

taglist: @stars4birdie @elysiandumbash @kehlanislefttoe @mqg125 @madzlovez @0revna0 @auroraofthesun1 @idli-dosa @buubsii @kaylasficrecs @that-daughter-of-hephaestus @itsdragonius @moonlightfoxs-cantina

[deadsetobsessions]

Tim Drake had a lot of free time.

In between the time little Timmy was deemed old enough to not need a nanny and his ninth birthday when he got his first film camera, Tim Drake had so much time after school to explore his big, empty house. And so he did, hours upon hours were spent exploring his house.

Mansion, Tim corrects himself. His house isn’t a house. It’s an abandoned mausoleum disguised as a mansion. He intimately knows every creak of the floorboards in the out of the way galleries, every heavy weight curtain shut closed so what little sun that makes it way through Gotham’s gloom is reflected in order to protect the artifacts stored within the walls. Tim probably knows the exact amount of fleur-de-lys on the fourth sitting room’s wall paper- by extrapolation from preexisting data and personal data collection. Basically, he laid on the floor and counted.

Tim had a lot of time. He also had a lot of artifacts to pore over, making stories as he goes and double checking the actual history of the object.

Tim thinks he’s an artifact, almost. To his parents, at least. A child, a thing, they collected at one point in their lives and put on display at the galas they deem worthy to return to Gotham for. Perhaps he’s worth even less, had his parents bothered to look at him more than the lesser art pieces in their storage-mansion. The story everyone knows about him is prerecorded by people who weren’t really there.

Regardless, Tim Drake knows every single corner of his prison mansion. He’s catalogued everything, after all, on a nice spreadsheet. 

And that’s why, as he entered the fifth- and least used- guest bedroom, Tim’s attention immediately cut to the wrong bit of detail. Eyes flickering between the indent on the bed, the mussed- but not terribly dirty- state of the sheets, Tim slowly backed towards the door. His eyes fixed on the spot on the bed, he called out a soft “hello?”

He immediately cringed. He’s not an amateur, and that little “hello” was a mistake that might get him killed.

Tim trembled as the panic set in, tears pooling at his eyes. He wished Batman and Robin were here, they’d know how to-

There’s something appearing on the bed. Tim Drake stares as a glowing figure with white, wispy hair and a black hazmat suit appeared sitting cross crossed on the guest bed. His gloved hands were held out in the universal I-mean-no-harm gesture.

“Don’t- don’t panic!” The thing said, looking rather panicked itself. “I’m, uh, Phantom.”

Tim Drake’s curiosity and mystery-solving mindset slammed down on the toddler’s mind, quickly banishing the fear and panick in favor of interrogating this new, exciting thing.

“I’m Tim. Are you…” Tim frowns, wishing he had Batman’s intimidating growl. “A ghost?”

“Got it in one, kiddo. I’m, uh, not here to harm you. Or steal anything! I just wanted to rest.”

Tim blinked. He decided right then and there that he likes this person. This… Phantom. If his trust was based on the fact that the loneliness was worse than a dead person, no, it wasn’t.

“I thought you sleep when you’re dead..?”

——

Danny stared at the child in front of him, watching the kid- Tim- pout at something. Danny is distracted from the staples holding his ghostly guts from falling out of his non-consensual vivisection when the kid asks him if he’s a ghost.

“Got it in one, kiddo!” Oo, he should tone down the energy. Danny’s too tired right now to maintain that level when speaking to Tim. Now, gotta reassure the kid he means no harm before he reports Danny’s presence to whatever authorities around.

His parents, at best. The cops, at worst.

“I’m, uh, not here to harm you. Or steal anything!” He could tell he landed in some richie rich mansion by the opulent decorations in a seemingly impersonal room alone. “I just wanted to rest.”

Ancients, that had been more honest than he’d wanted. He really was out of it.

“I thought you sleep when you’re dead?”

Danny snorted.

“Yeah, but you can almost never have enough sleep, you know?”

The toddler looks unsure but nods anyways.

“Listen, would you… not tell anyone that I’m here? I’ll be out of your hair soon, promise.

Tim looks like a smart kid. There’s no way he’d fall for-

“Okay.” He fell for it. Danny blinked, stupefied. “My parents won’t be home for a while.”

“What.”

Tim shrugged. “You can stay. The housekeeper is only around a couple of days.”

“You… are you supposed to tell me that?”

Tim sent him a derisive look, clearly bolder now that Danny made no moves to hurt him.

On his cherubic but skinny face, the effect is both adorable and absolutely devastating.

“You’re hurt.” Tim fidgeted with his hands. “I can… I can get you water…?”

His core purred.

“Please. Thanks… Tim?”

The kid beamed at him and left.

Crap. New fraid member it is.

——

Danny, naive: “Surely him trusting strangers is just a one time thing, he’s so well behaved”

Tim, staring Danny in the eyes as he jumps out of the window to go stalk his vigilantes: “I’m gonna go take a walk in Crime Alley”

——

Tim gets Danny water, but it’s tap water from Gotham and is infected with both an ungodly amount of toxins (that doesn’t affect either of them bc one’s dead and the other had been chugging it since they were a baby- Gothamites get bottled water or from Wayne Foundation’s Clean Water Stations) and also like trace amounts of ectoplasm.

Danny: woah this is so healthy water!

Tim, pleased because Danny ruffled his hair: yes, I’m perfect

The rest of Gotham, if they knew: making warding sigils against these two eldritch gods

——

Basically, Danny gets attached and stays mostly because of said attachment but also Danny could see Tim’s budding world dictator tendencies and went yeah gotta curb that

[lastflowerofyourhouse]

hey, kid. yeah, you. commere. now look, the order of the deaths in gideon the ninth isn't an accident, okay? they all mean something. look me in the eye. listen. abigail and magnus first, right? and that causes a dramatic shift in tone from which the series never truly recovers. magnus and abigail were Kindness, you get me? capital K. they're the lighthearted, the feel-good, the healthy relationship. they make you feel like everything's gonna be ok. but everything's not gonna be ok, so they die first, right, and that's the moment when Kindness leaves the situation. then jeannemary and isaac. they're Innocence. stop looking around, look at me. their deaths dispell the notion that anything is sacred or that anyone is safe. they're just kids, they didn't do anything wrong, and that's---don't back away, stay right here---that's why the brutality of their deaths is so shocking. Innocence died screaming, right? it's got to. and judith and marta are meant to be Order. this is important. their deaths represent the loss of stability and the dissapation of understandable rules, signaling the beginning of a free-for-all in which the previously understood conventions no longer operate. but here's the thing, kid. judith fails to die. she doesn't finish the job. she gets right up to the finish line and refuses to cross it. and the thing-- the thing you've gotta understand is, that doesn't mean Order isn't dead. that means Order was never alive in the first place. the rules never actually existed. there was no stability, there was no script or formula, the whole time it was just a bunch of people dying for no reason. no fucking reason at all, and everything i just said was absolute horseshit. i'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

alright, i'm finished. run along now.

[theriverbeyond]

Nona the Ninth is such an experience to (re)read because you spend just over 200 pages -- a full 40% of the book!! -- being deeply confused, thrust headfirst into a brand new world. there are familiar people, but none of them are people we've spent much time with Before, so even that familiarity is limited. and then not only is everything around you SO different, the narrator just doesn't care about anything that happened Before. Nona zones out during important conversations or is physically pushed away from having the type of information that could orient the reader, so for like 200 pages you have been aclimated to this very slow, drip-feed of information.

and then you get The Broadcast, which feels like a cold bucket of clarity, or like if you were inside a bucket (perhaps initially resistant but now growing quite comfortable with your predicament) and then suddenly dumped out of that bucket into a freezing lake. in 5 pages we get more direct information than we've been given thus far but it's so fast and so much and for half of it Nona's comprehension is hampered because it's just audio, no faces, that the reader goes from being parched to drowning. the slow drip turns into a fire hose.

Ianthe is here and, inexplicably (though of course later explained), a brunette. Gideon's body is here, and extremely dead. the girl Nona has been dreaming about is Gideon. Ianthe's biting commentary is both comfortingly familar as well as deeply disquieting; the enemies of the Empire's forever war no longer being mysterious, unnamed forces but Nona's friends and the city she loves so much.

and then the book just. does not let up from there. the firehose continues for 300 more pages. you've been lulled into complacancy by 200 pages of Nona's School Days Adventure, but Situations have come to call. this is still the Locked Tomb Series, and your respite is over.

[phaedraismyusername]

Happy International Lesbian Day! Here's some super brief book recs to celebrate

Books dealing with love, loss, longing and abandonment

This is How You Lose The Time War is a short but beautifully written epistolary novel between two agents on opposite sides of a time war as they slowly fall in love.

Our Wives Under the Sea is one of the most beautifully written debuts I've ever read about a woman whose wife comes home wrong after they thought she'd died at sea and how it feels to grieve the loss of someone who's still in your home.

Lucky Red is a western novel about a young girl working in a brothel who meets her first female gunslinger and falls head over heels for her, and the consequences that come with loving dangerous people.

Body horror galore

Camp Damascus is about a young woman living in a super conservative christian town built around the worlds most successful conversion camp and the horrors that are uncovered there when praying the gay away fails.

To Be Devoured is about a woman whose fascination with the local vultures turns into obsession and the urge to know what carrion tastes like overtakes her life and leads her down stranger and stranger paths.

Chlorine is about a girl whose entire life revolves around being a competitive swimmer, and how abuse, neglect, and obsession with being the best takes its toll on the young women caught up in these destructive cycles.

Flawed character studies

Big Swiss is about a woman who has a kitchen floor reset in her 40s, moves away and starts a new life as a transcriber for a sex therapist and becomes obsessed with one of his clients before inserting herself into this poor woman's life.

The Seep is a speculative sci-fi set in a future where there's been a quiet alien invasion that has given people the ability to make almost any changes to their own bodies and what that world feels like to someone who doesn't want to partake.

Milk Fed is about a woman in therapy who feels cut off from almost everything until she meets another woman who triggers in her a melding of sex, hunger, and religion and where that takes her. Huge trigger warnings for ED content. It gets tough, y'all.

Fantastical wlw books

Bitterthorn is an amalgamation of fairytales retold as a slow burn sapphic love story between a sad young girl from a cursed land and the evil witch who takes her as a companion in the latest of the generational sacrifices made to appease her.

All the Bad Apples may be set in contemporary Ireland but it is a fairytale following a young girl as she travels across the country looking for a sister she refuses to believe is dead and the people she meets along the way.

Gideon the Ninth needs no introduction on this site but for the sake of formatting - lesbian necromancers in space who find themselves in an isolated murder mystery plot. It's not a romance but it is a love story and this series will change your life if you let it.

Translated novels

Boulder is a short character study following a free spirited woman when she accidentally settles down with the woman she loves and how love and resentment can take up the same space in your chest when life doesn't turn out the way you hoped it would.

Notes of a Crocodile is a cult classic coming of age story about queer teens in Taipei in the 1980s. It was written in the 90s so please keep that in mind if you choose to read it.

Paradise Rot is about an international student studying in Australia and her growing obsession with her housemate as they share a space that allows no privacy. I've never read anything that feels stickier.

[drastrochris]

Ok, stick with me on this one:

Harrow is born, and Priamhark and Pelleamena are overjoyed. The Ninth is saved!

But there's this weird redhead baby who rudely didn't die. The horrible great-aunts don't like it, and over Aiglamene's objections, send the child up with Crux to the top of the shaft where he opens her protective suit and watches as she insolently continues to live. So he chucks her down the shaft, where she bounces a few times, cries for a bit, then eventually crawls over to a basket where she steals a leek to chew on.

A few years later, they give Harrowhark the bones, and she immediately can manipulate them, again saving the Ninth. They give some to Gideon too, and she uses them to drum on every surface, including Harrow's head. She's told "the Reverend Daughter is not a percussion instrument," before Aiglamene takes her away to start her proper Cavalier training.

"You can't die," Aiglamene informs her as she slides a sword through Gideon's stomach, "so you must do whatever you can to protect Harrowhark."

"This still hurts, you know," Gideon replies.

Instead of growing up hating each other, they're brought up as a team. They still go into the Tomb, of course, because they're kids, and have been told explicitly never to go into the Tomb.

Harrow can't understand why Gideon can't die, but as long as she agrees to sign off on delivery orders from the Cohort of "periodicals, misc" and "cookies, assorted," Gideon is perfectly happy to let her drain a bit of blood and feed her deadly poisons. Eventually, she's watched Gideon not-die from nearly everything she can think of, and picks up on a slight resonance that sings out when Gideon doesn't die.

The letter arrives, Ortus has no part in this story, and Harrow and Gideon arrive at Canaan House without incident.

Until they walk down the shuttle ramp and see everyone else staring at them. "It's like these people haven't seen an immortal hero before. Or maybe you're just too much of a butt-hurt nun for the other houses." Chaos erupts as the Seventh House cav and necromancer immediately attack them, but the body of Protesilaus falls apart quickly under Gideon's blade, and the Lady Dulcinea is subdued with only minor structural damage. Even when she screams out that she's Cytherea the First, and that she "will not be stopped by children," it's clear that she has been.

In the aftermath, Teacher is delighted. "May I call you Harrowhark the First, with your living cavalier, Gideon the First? The first perfect lyctor. No, the first lyctor of any kind to see these halls for a myriad?"

Palamedes is torn between "my beloved penpal is definitely dead" and "this angry scrungle rederived lyctorhood alone, on a planet with no resources, and with a cav who seems to be most interested in eating everyone's desserts."

Ianthe is furious, but can't quite identify why, other than she /hates/ Harrow the First's cav.

[katakaluptastrophy]

Can we talk about Juno Zeta?

You're living the dream, Master Archivist of the Sixth House. The Archaeology department hates you. The secretaries love you. Your son has risen to the very top of the absolutely unproblematic meritocracy of the House to become Master Warden. Sure, you treated him as a colleague when he was 7 too, but this is much more intellectually satisfying and much better for your publication record (suck it, Archeo). You sit on the Oversight Body, making decisions for the 3 million strong House of the Sixth.

Then the Master Warden gets summoned by god to become a Lyctor. (No civilian has seen a Lyctor for thousands of years. But the information you do have speaks of astonishing power. Are you intrigued? Do you regard it as an even more stellar opportunity for the Master Warden? Do Lyctors have access to interesting material for the archives? Does the possibility of your son becoming an immortal finger and gesture of god ever feel strange?)

A few months later, some fragments come back in a box. There's nothing left of Camilla at all. No one will tell you anything. Every House but the Third and the Ninth has lost its head or heir (the poor girl your son loved is dead. You're never going to get another overly-formal letter from the Fifth begging for Lyctoral documents from your archive.)

Then the Master Warden makes contact from beyond the grave to tell you that the saintly founder of your House left a plan in place in case it ever became necessary to betray god. He tells you why god should be betrayed.

Suddenly, the Oversight Body has to make a decision. To take your home and 3 million people away from the Dominicus System (away from its thanergetic soil, no more necromancers will ever be born). To break the contract of tenderness made on the day of the Resurrection. Do you have time to call back your soldiers in the Cohort? Do you have to leave them behind? Has the Oversight Body ever felt unanimously about something before? And how frank can you be with the House? You have visiting scholars from almost every House, and who knows where the Bureau have eyes and ears.

There are calculations to make. How to transport a whole House? How do you work out that it takes five hundred and thirty-two obselisks? That there are deleterious effects past five hundred and sixty? How do you find a stele that would anchor such a big thanergy transition? (Only the Fifth make stele. Do you try to do it yourselves? Who do you trust on the Fifth to help with that? Is that why Kester Cinque left Koniortos?)

The Master Warden, who is dead, lives inside the body of Camilla, who is not. He picks you - in your capacity as Master Archivist - to be one of the negotiators. How do you integrate 3 million people into a completely alien society with whom your people have been at war for millennia? How does negotiating with terrorists feel compared to academic committees?

What happens then? One day you just...lose it? The sun rises too bright and too blue and you are in agony, unconnected from yourself, screaming and writhing. And when the thing in the sky is at its furthest orbit from you, in some exhausted moment of clarity, you nearly kill yourself using necromancy to restore your sanity. You blind yourself. Do you think beyond that moment? As someone who deals in documents and artefacts and forms in triplicate, do you mourn your sight alongside everything else you have lost? Your son, your home, your god, your sanity...

And now you are a hostage. Sixteen of you in the back of a sweltering truck, held at gunpoint, always moving. The only thing keeping you alive is the possibility of selling you back to the empire that you've betrayed. Your captors have signed a 'no torture' clause, and perhaps they do stick to that. You're needed for providing proof of life and are probably better off than most. But it's too hot, there's not enough water, you can't see, and the only way out is either that the Master Warden gives Blood of Eden a Lyctor or being released to the mercies of the Kindly Prince. You sit in the dark and do mental maths with each other to stay sane.

Somehow, the Master Warden has done it. Without a Lyctor, he's turned his own cell commander against her fellows and you have been released. Most of the Oversight Body can't even walk out of the truck without help. But you're free, and the Master Warden - now in the stolen body of a Lyctor's cavalier - has the sort of mad scheme only he could come up with. Those mental maths will come in handy. The cell commander isn't bad either...

You can't see your son die again (the last time he speaks to you, from that borrowed body, he calls you 'mum' instead of 'Master Archivist'). But you can smell Camilla’s flesh burn. Perhaps the Commander, holding your arm, describes it to you. You follow this new person, your child, now something else, back into the truck where you were held captive and watch as they drive it into the River.

The Tomb is open. Your child is part of a being of strange and unimaginable power. The House Formerly Known as Sixth is on the other side of the universe. You are on the Ninth with a dead cavalier in the body of her necromancer, the Emperor’s construct, legions of demons, and a very mysterious dog...

Anyway, I'm very excited to see what havoc Juno gets to cause in ATN. She's there to be snarky, do psychometry, and be a romanceable MILF. Let her yell at god. And for goodness sake, let her get some peace at the end.

[sadcoms]

timepetals thoughts i keep having:

i know that the assumption is “she is my s-” means soulmate but i always think he just thinks of rose as his soul. less that she completes him or is his other half and more that she just is his conscience and any goodness he may have is hers. he was born out of love for her, she is such an integral part of him, she is his soul itself.

i know everyone has taken permanent damage from the “how long are you going to stay with me” and why the general focus is on the doctor’s reaction but the way rose says forever gets to me. she’s not giddy or girlish when she says it, in some ways she almost sounds resigned to it, which has wonderfully angsty connotations in the timeline of s2. but it’s why it really works for me, she is so dead serious and committed when she says it, because she understands everything it means (and therefore part of her feels solemn about it). it has a lot of weight to it. even the first time donna says she’s going to travel with the doctor forever to martha at the end of the doctor’s daughter she sounds a lot more fanciful.

every time i hear the doctor scream when rose loses her grip in doomsday i just think that he would absolutely not have survived her actually being sucked into the void.

i always think the vocals in doomsday are similar to the doctor’s theme so to me the angry rock music is rose’s side and the vocals are his, rather than the howling wolf idea i’ve heard some people compare it to. how the doctor’s theme is lonely and mournful with its sparse instruments but calm, everything the ninth doctor was, while doomsday is heartbroken and angry and an entire orchestra because it’s two people overcome with grief together. how doomsday becomes such a motif for both characters individually, even when they're separated.

i still struggle to comprehend that the doctor wearing floral ties in s3 is canon and NOT a fanfic trope like you're telling the doctor said "i need a floral motif as close to my two hearts as possible" and you're describing him as something other than a grieving widower???

the doctor really could not go anywhere in s3 without running into some kind of couple but i never see people talk about the parallels in 42. “we chose this ship together / he keeps me honest so i don’t want false hope” and the way the doctor literally gives mcdonnell his condolences through gritted teeth?? the fact that she would rather die with korwin than be without him and have it be her fault

that the doctor, king of self-loathing, saw rose dressed as his ninth self and carrying a giant weapon and he not only RAN to her but then deliberately protected her from the trauma of seeing him change again. and then tentoo immediately picks a blue suit to be like now i’m matchey matchey with rose 🥰 the universe was ending and he’d seen rose again for two actual minutes but the doctor was so utterly focused on her.

how tentoo truly is rose's doctor, especially as he's got that little bit of nine in him. he's born out of the same love and protection of his previous incarnations but he loses a heart and the curse of the timelords and goes oh, this is rose's heart. and then he wears the blue mourning suit and yes, there is still mourning, but there is also the start of the rest of their lives together.

how the doctor’s hair most noticeably changed after school reunion to become spikier and less boyish. how that coincides with him using mickey to put distance between himself and rose now that he’s been reminded of rose’s mortality.

how wild the doctor and jack’s conversation in utopia is. the way the doctor says “rose” like it’s an entire explanation in itself because even before she absorbed the time vortex she fundamentally changed the life of everyone she met. the way he says “everything she did was so human” and the way he accepts jack’s sorry to him because there’s no trying to deny his feelings from jack, not when he saw his ninth self. the way jack has BARELY finished his sentence about watching rose grow up when the doctor casually asks him if he wants to die, the almost playful way he says it. one semi suicidal immortal who spent half of the season trying to get himself killed to another, both of them still kind of toying with the idea. both of them trying to have hope even though they've lost so much.

[sundrop-writes]

hiya! Might be a bit broad of a request but could I get headcanons with jj x autistic female reader ?

Broad in the sense if I could get hcs of her reacting to reader with autism, how she helps reader with overstimulation and struggling with social cues and noise. If you wanna throw in smut hcs (jj being the dom) i’m also fine with that!

Basically anything with jj and autistic female reader, thanks!

I love this request so much!!! If you want smut/smutty hcs with JJ and autistic reader, definitely feel free to send in a separate request - I will come back for that in another post. For now, I hope you enjoy this!!

Requests are currently - OPEN.

Jennifer Jareau x Fem!Autistic!Reader (Headcanons)

(Warnings: typical CM themes, the reader is described as touch avoidant (with some exceptions); mentions of molestation and murder (related to a case, mentioned in passing); mentions of blood, mentions of someone being shot in the reader's presence. Idk, I don't think there's anything else. Not proofread.)

JJ was raised around everything (neuro)typical, so when she meets you, she doesn't quite get you. Not at first.

You are one of the smartest people on the team - that is why you're there. Your ability to pick up on patterns and bits of detail that others don't see is incredible, and your brain holds mass amounts of obscure information that she could never even dream of knowing.

But you are quirky. More than quirky.

You have difficulty making eye contact, you freak out if someone even motions toward touching you unexpectedly, you have very odd, specific little rituals with your snacks and meals (which JJ does come to find endearing over time) - you go from talking at incredibly fast speeds, blabbering out information to being silent and stoic for long periods of time.

When she finds out that you have autism, she is a bit surprised. She is one of those people who thinks that autism is a disorder related to school aged boys - but you explain to her how it affects your life. How it makes it difficult for you to relate to people, form close friendships, how it's difficult for you to focus on larger 'important' things when smaller details are bothering you.

(It's one of the reasons you're so good at your job - but it also makes it hard to focus on people's words if their shirt is wrinkled and it's distracting you.)

You act cold toward most people on the team, and it's one random day that JJ finally starts to figure you out. A day that you finally warm up to her.

You were helping Morgan escort a suspect out of the police station, to a squad car where he would be driven to jail to be processed. He had confessed to molesting and killing eight boys after being caught with a ninth, and when the father of one of the boys heard the BAU had arrested someone, he came to the police station with a gun.

When the suspect was shot, you were covered in his blood, and in horrible shock from hearing such a loud bang right beside your ear - from feeling the sudden dead weight drop in your arms.

You ran back into the station screaming, and JJ followed her instinct - followed you into the women's washroom, wanting to see if you had been hurt. She was surprised to see you pacing back and forth in front of the sinks, muttering something under your breath.

"L/N." She called out your name, trying to get your attention. "Y/N? Y/N? Hey? Are you hurt?"

You didn't look up, not for a second. But your muttering became louder. And it became more clear what you were saying.

"My pen, my pen, I dropped my pen..."

JJ had no clue why you were so concerned about a pen when you were covered in someone else's blood, your ears likely still ringing from the gunshot - but she knew that you had a pen-clicking habit. It was something that often annoyed Reid and Morgan - but from what she had observed, you did your best work when your thumb was twiddling, clicking the end of your pen insistently. It meant your brain was whirring hard, putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

JJ reached into the breast pocket of her blazer, and took out a pen that clicked on the end.

"Here." She offered it out to you. "You - you can borrow my pen." She said shyly, hoping it would help you calm down.

You extended out a shaking hand, and took the pen, and then began to click it harshly with your thumb. You gripped it so furiously, the skin around your knuckles so tight - but after a moment, you let out a tight breath. And then, for the first time since she had known you - you looked JJ in the eye.

"Thank you." You murmured, your voice ripe with tears.

"Keep the pen." JJ told you, feeling like it was a small consolation if it helped you calm down this much.

You reached up, petting a shaking hand over your face, and pulled back in disgust when you felt the sticky blood.

"Let me help you clean up." JJ said, grabbing some paper towels out of the dispenser and wetting them in the sink.

It was the first time you had ever let her touch you - you clicked the pen the whole time, and from then on, that sound became less of an annoyance and more of a comfort to her.

That was the day she realised one incredibly important thing:

To you, small things matter on such a big scale.

Coffee in your favourite mug instead of a random one she found in the back of the cupboard - that gets a smile out of you. Scones with blueberries instead of raisins - raisins get a shrug at best, blueberries get a giggle and a big 'thank you!'. Organising your files in alphabetical order instead of by date.

You and JJ became close after that day.

She wasn't a profiler, not in training, but she learned to read you like a book.

She knew that you bouncing your knee aggressively meant that you were becoming overstimulated - things in the room too loud, the florescents too bright, the day too overwhelming.

When this happened, she would take you outside for a break - often siting that she herself needed some air and she simply wanted your company. She knew you didn't like to be outwardly babied (who does?), but she also knew that you had a hard time self regulating. You had a hard time deciding when to take yourself out for a break, and if you didn't have one, then you would become irritable, have a hard time focusing, and hardly get any work done.

She also picked up on the fact that you just plain didn't get sarcasm.

Before, she thought you were being cool, or aloof. When someone said something sarcastic and you didn't understand, she thought that you were pretending not to get it in order to snub them or make a joke out of the whole thing.

But during one of your many conversations, you told her that you absolutely didn't understand sarcasm - you didn't get when someone was using a sarcastic tone, and you often took everything people said in its most literal interpretation.

So you and JJ developed a wonderful, silent system - if someone said something and you didn't understand if it was sarcasm right off the bat, you looked to her, and she would nod at you if they were being sarcastic, or shake her head if they were being literal. It was something people on the team picked up on, but nobody said anything about it - they just enjoyed the way you bonded with her, and how your quirky habits were spreading like a delightful little plague.

JJ knew that your life wasn't easy, living with autism, but she always tried to make it a bit easier. Because you were worth it.

Criminal Minds Masterlist

[the-modern-typewriter]

The Art of Turning 30

“So, am I allowed to talk?” Annabelle gave an awkward little laugh, that she immediately wanted to stuff back into her mouth. “I’ve never done this before!”

“You can talk.” Julian flashed her a quick, reassuring smile. “At least until I tell you not to.”

They both laughed, then. Julian’s laugh was not awkward.

It was six months until her thirtieth birthday.

She had met him at her girlfriend Camille’s twenty-ninth birthday party, a few weeks ago, only to be surprised that they’d somehow never crossed paths before. London was big, but it wasn’t that big surely, and Julian was an artist.

Annabelle felt like she spent half her free time at artsy bohemian parties and amateur gallery openings, though maybe that was why. He wasn’t an amateur, was he?

She’d looked him up online after and seen several shining reviews of his first exhibition, and a rosy buzz of anticipation at what he’d do next.

She remembered that buzz. People used to get that buzz when they talked about her. Apparently, his work was ‘visceral’ and ‘felt startlingly alive’.

It seemed impossible that he wanted to paint her, of all people.

Annabelle shifted on the stool, glancing around Julian’s studio space as he finished setting up his easel and paints. Oils. He’d said he was using oils. That mattered in painting, didn’t it?

The studio was everything she’d always imagined a professional artist’s studio to be. It was quite large, with clean wooden floors and white walls crowded with stacks of sheet-covered canvases in progress.

There was only one that was ready and visible; a painting of a beautiful blond man, probably nearing thirty too, lounging on the same stool that Annabelle was perched upon. He gazed out at the viewer with a hungry sort of hope. Like they were the best thing he had ever seen.

The studio smelled like drying paint and the sandalwood diffuser wafting its calming scent from the window sill. Sunlight coated the room like honey, or gold.

“You’re not going to make me look ugly, are you?” she asked.

He smiled again, meeting her eyes. “I couldn’t possibly.”

He probably flirted with all of his models, but she still felt a blush of heat rise to her face.

He looked like he could be in a painting, or one of those classical sculptures still concerned with archetypal ideals of beauty. Of course, she was with Camille, so nothing would happen…but still. The attention made her heart pound. Camille was usually too tired from work to flirt with her anymore.

Annabelle wasn’t sure how good she’d be at seeing a painting of herself that she hated, and not letting it show on her face. She’d probably tear up. It would be embarrassing for both of them. She shifted on the stool once more, and tugged at the hem of her summer dress.

“This is for your next exhibition?”

“I think I’m going to call it ‘The Art of Turning 30’.”

“Explains why I’m your muse instead of some gorgeous twenty two year old ingenue.” She laughed again. He did not. She continued, even as she willed herself to stop babbling, because he wasn’t looking at her with the expectation that she do anything. He plucked up a pencil, beginning his work. “It’s like, when you’re a woman, after you turn thirty your life is over, right? It’s like with my acting. And then by the time you’re forty all of a sudden all you can possibly be is, like, a mother or a witch. Or, you know, the dead wife. It’s all downhill.”

“You wouldn’t want to be a witch?” He raised a brow. “They always seemed pretty powerful to me. I could see you as a witch.”

“But do you know what I mean?”

“Can you turn your head a little the left, please?”

“What? Oh. Yes.”

She turned her head to the side, towards the window, and hoped the sunshine made her seem younger rather than highlighting every growing crag and wrinkle.

She could only watch him out of her periphery vision now; a wistful muse, seemingly unaware that she was being observed. She tried to look deep and mysterious.

“Perfect,” he said. “Thanks. You’re just perfect.”

The canvas of the blond man fell to the floor with a soft thump.

Annabelle jumped.

“Sorry.” Julian shook his head, another easy laugh on his breath. “The landlord never lets me put proper hangings on the wall here. Says it wrecks them. I guess so long as they don’t do that at the exhibition?”

“I don’t know, you could probably play it off as a stunt…lean into the photorealism.”

“Now, there’s an idea. Genius.” 

She probably didn’t look deep and mysterious. She probably just looked smitten.

***

She sat for Julian three times a week for the next several months.

It became a pocket of peace in her life, the hours when it was okay to finally stop and be for a while, because everything else seemed to be hurtling through her fingers faster than she could clutch hold of it.

She’d always imagined that she would be a successful, or at least up-and-coming, actress and screenwriter by the time she turned thirty.

Sure, women only made up around 30% of the directors or writers behind the camera, but back in school everyone always said that maybe she’d be the one to change that. She wasn’t entirely sure when they stopped saying it, but they had.

It was three months until her thirtieth birthday.

“Here.” Julian caught hold of her chin, featherlight, angling her back towards the sun. The days were getting shorter. Time was running out for them both. “You were like this.”

She had got in the habit of always sitting a little wrong, because he’d always adjust her, oh so careful and attentive, like she was his masterpiece.

She would have probably preferred to be her own masterpiece, but being his seemed like the second best option. She could practically feel the ghosts of forgotten, underappreciated female muses-past screaming at her that no, it was always better to be somebody than someone’s, but frankly she wasn’t sure she could be picky.

She’d been getting less and less call backs, and was starting to feel more like she was a part-time waitress dabbling at film than a part-time actress-filmmaker working hours in hospitality to make ends meet.

It was like a window was closing. Her window. That morning she’d found an honest to the devil grey hair on her head!

Camille told her that she was being ridiculous – that she’d become increasingly vain since Julian started painting her.

Annabelle had snapped back that vanity wasn’t vanity for an actress. Her looks were her currency.

It hadn’t always been so hard, had it?

All in all, it didn’t seem like a sin to let him touch her. It was nice to be touched. There was nothing untoward in that.

She peeked up at Julian, standing over her, his star ever on the rise. Their stares met again. He smiled that quick, reassuring smile of his.

“You look tired,” he said softly.

“Sorry.”

“No, no.” He widened his eyes. “I didn’t mean—” he huffed gently, and let go of her. “I haven’t got to your mouth yet. If you want to talk about it.”

Annabelle grinned back before she could stop herself.

It had become a standing joke. She sometimes felt she spent their whole time together talking about herself, but he always said it was interesting and made the hours fly. He was a very good listener.

More privately, she sometimes suspected that he was leaving her mouth for last just so they could continue chatting, but she wasn’t allowed to see the painting to check. The thought was thrilling though.

 “It’s nothing,” she said, even if she already knew she’d probably tell him everything on her mind. “I don’t know.”

What would she do when the painting was done? She’d see him at his exhibition opening, probably, but there would hardly be a reason for them spend time together like they did when she was sitting for her portrait.

Maybe it was silly to consider him one of her friends. She’d miss it, though. She’d miss him.

Maybe he’d want to do another one of her, but who was she kidding? Maybe in ten years, when he did a gimmicky but charming follow up. The Art of Turning 40: Where Are They Now?

What did he know about turning thirty anyway? He couldn’t be more than twenty-five. He had loads of time.

“There’s an intimacy,” he murmured, “to painting someone. Especially like this, in the old fashioned way. A lot of people use photographs and quick studies because they’re more convenient and you don’t have to catch the right light, you know? But I love it.” The air filled with their breathing, and the soothing dab of his paint brushes on his palette, mixing up the colours of her. “You really get to know people this way. It adds soul to the work. It’s magic.”

She felt, more than saw, his gaze cut over her again.  Her blood was electric beneath his scrutiny.

He continued, softly.

“I knew from the moment we met that I wanted you to be my centrepiece for this one.”

“Flatterer.”

“It’s true!” He laughed. “You have this great energy. I knew you were going to be interesting, and I was right. And you know how to model well. Because you’re an actress, right? You’re used to people looking at you.”

An actress, no ‘wannabe’ or ‘aspiring’ or ‘failed’ tacked on front. She couldn’t help but sneak a glance at him as best she could without turning her head.

“My boss always says I should have more energy, then I’d wait tables faster.”

“What does Camille say?”

“Camille—” Annabelle blinked in surprise, then swallowed. Her hands curled in her lap. She resisted the urge to sigh.

“Uh-oh.”

“No, no,” she said. “It’s fine. I just – she thinks if I’m not happy I should do something about it. She’s always telling me about other things I’d be really good at that have better pay, or more sociable hours.”

“So, give up on your dreams already.”

“Yeah.”

Annabelle deflated. She knew that Camille didn’t mean anything bad by it, but that was what it implied, right? She was never going to be a famous and successful actress or screenwriter, so she should settle for something manageable.

“Well, she’s not a creative, like us,” Julian said. “She doesn’t get it.”

Like us. Annabelle was a horrible girlfriend for feeling a swell of pleasure at that. It was true, though. Still.

“We’ve been together for a really long time, and she’s been really supportive. I think she’s just finding the whole ‘me turning thirty’ thing annoying. Mainly because I won’t shut up about it. Which I’m sure you sympathise with!”

Camille said that anyone who claimed life stopped at thirty was an idiot. There was no limit for potential, no one age where everyone had to have their life together and perfect by.

She was probably right, but Annabelle could still feel the panic of it clawing at her the closer her birthday got. Even if she was successful after thirty, she wouldn’t be one of those young geniuses that everyone had expected her to be. She wouldn’t be exceptional.

She would just be Annabelle. It didn’t feel like enough. Maybe if she could see herself like Julian apparently saw her, it would be better.

“Chin up,” Julian said.

Annabelle cleared her throat again. “Right, yeah.”

“No, I mean.” His voice was deadpan. “Your head. You’ve moved. Drooped.”

She shot him a look over her shoulder. The melancholy shoved itself down again in the pit of her stomach.

He tossed her a wink from behind the easel, to indicate he was joking. Only trying to cheer her up and lighten the mood.

“So, I still don’t get to see what else you’re working on, huh?” she asked.

“I’d have to kill you.” He switched to another, smaller brush in her periphery vision.

She snorted.

“It would be very inconvenient all around,” he said. “Rigor mortis sets in fast. I’d never get the painting done in time.”

“Well we can’t have that. After you’re finished with me then, I suppose.”

“Our art is a part of us, Annabelle.” He shot her another glance in turn, brush poised above his image of her, considering. “So how, then, could I ever truly be finished with you?”

Her breath hitched in her throat. She debated possible responses to that, and how he could have meant it. Her body felt warm and flushed.

He gestured that she angle her head left once more, not looking away for a second himself.

Annabelle turned.

The summer waned outside the window, but in the painting she would still be in her sundress, legs tanned and toes painted sky blue.

Thank god he kept his studio warm. The minutes ticked by, the air between them settling tranquil once more.

“Sometimes,” she said, softly, “I wish we could stay like this forever. Freeze the moment. Is that stupid?” It felt a confessional thing to say. Bold.

“No.” She could hear the equally soft smile in his voice. “It’s not stupid. Isn’t that how I got you to agree to do me this favour?”

She remembered the party; an adult version of what they all used to do, even if it still felt like they were all pretending to be grown-ups. Or at least, Annabelle felt like she was pretending. She didn’t feel twenty-nine.

She’d clutched her glass of wine and hovered near a somewhat strained conversation about mortgages and the state of the housing market, and how none of them were going to be on the property ladder before they were fifty, before she caught sight of Julian coming in. 

She echoed his words, and didn’t have to fake her wistfulness that time.

“To be remembered in art is the closest any humans’ get to immortality.”

He echoed the next line back at her. “Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

And she’d said yes.

***

“I’ve got a date for the exhibition,” Julian said, from behind his easel. “A few weeks after your birthday. Short notice, I know. Soz.”

“Ugh, don’t mention the B word. But that’s exciting! Can I come?”

“Of course you can come,” he said. “It’s why I’m telling you. This wouldn’t be possible without you.”

“I mean, while sitting here is terribly difficult,” she said, “I do feel like you should get some of the credit. Just some.”

She heard him laugh.

She’d grown to love Julian’s laugh; he was so ready to do it, at least in their sessions.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Camille laugh at something she said. Then again, she wasn’t sure the last time she and Camille had spent all that much time together.

By the time Camille got back from a day of teaching, Annabelle was usually already out for the night shift at the pub she waited in. Yet another thing in her life that wasn’t working like it was supposed to!

Camille said that could be worked on if, hey, Annabelle was willing to actually prioritise their relationship.

It had been one of their worst arguments to date.

“There’ll be thirty paintings in total, I think,” he mused, more talkative than normal. “Yours being the main one, like I said.”

“I’m sure you will perfectly capture the raw turmoil of turning thirty.”

He laughed again. It had been one of the most notable reviews of his first exhibition – except the exact wording had been that his work perfectly captured ‘the raw turmoil of adolescence, as an emotional and nostalgic period of change and growth’.

He’d finally caved and showed her some of his previous pieces, other than the ones she’d managed to find online, as a compromise of his refusal to show her how his painting of her was coming along.

Most of the individual pieces from his first exhibit had been sold off, but he’d kept the main one.

His main piece – Girl On Swing – got the most praise, so it had apparently been a bit of a scandal that he hadn’t sold it. He’d had offers.

It was a triptych (Julian’s word) of a girl, unsurprisingly, on a swing.

In the first of three paintings she was a child, carefree and giggling. In the second, a young teenager, her face a storm of emotion. In the final one, she was a young adult, caught mid-leap flying off the swing she’d been sitting on for seemingly eighteen years. Her arms were painted halfway to transitioning to a bird’s wings. She was no longer looking back at the viewer but forward, to all that life had to offer.

Annabelle wondered what people would say about Julian’s version of her.

People liked to fantasise about how amazing being a teenager was when they were an adult, but she hadn’t met anyone who fantasied about turning thirty. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous.

She hoped he made her glamorous.

“Of course,” he was continuing, “with the date so near, we might need a few more sessions to get finished on time.”

She looked over at him again, then, even if she wasn’t supposed to be moving.

The golden light danced across his handsome features, and caught the edges of the canvases behind him. There were twenty nine of them waiting.

“I make a pretty good lasagne,” he said, biting his lip. “If I say so myself. Compensation. If you don’t mind finishing late. There’s also a nice wine I got for Christmas that I really couldn’t drink alone.”

“I don’t mind,” she heard herself saying, before she’d even thought about it. “I don’t mind at all.”

“It’s a good venue,” he said. “A really good venue. Everyone’s going to love you.”

With him, maybe, the window wouldn’t close.

***

“I’m done, except for the varnish.”

The words sent a bolt through her, stirring away the sleepy content that came with posing for an extended period of time. She felt seen. Now, though, she wanted to see. Finally.

It was the day before her thirtieth birthday, and Camille had a massive surprise party planned, that Annabelle was both pretending that she didn’t know about, and dreading like a punch to the gut.

It was sweet that Camille was doing it. But also, maybe, if she didn’t celebrate the date she could still, somehow, be in her twenties for another year. That was how it worked, right?

“You are?” She leapt off the stool, and felt her joints click. “Can I see? I feel like I should have a right to see before everyone else. I won’t tell anyone.”

“It is top secret.” He pretended to consider.

She took the opportunity to relish actually looking at him for once; there was a kiss of red on the cuff of his painting shirt that hadn’t yet dried. It was the exact colour of her lipstick. She smiled.

He really had left her mouth for last.

“Fine,” he said, and gestured her over, eyes bright with amusement. “But only because I know you won’t tell.”

In the short space of walking over, Annabelle had time to feel her stomach clench. Her old fears boiled nauseously to the surface.

What if it was awful?

What if it wasn’t what she wanted, as if that had ever been the point?

What if her immortality looked like the part-time waitress she didn’t want to be?

She would have to keep a straight face, and not hurt his feelings. He’d been working on it for so long. It would ruin everything if he knew she hated it. It would no doubt be technically very skilled. She should have researched painting techniques she could comment on.

She rounded the easel, a little dizzy.

His hand fell on the small of her back, thumb tracing the curve of her hip, idly almost.  

She stared.

Her painted self was lovely. So alive, as if thirty couldn’t possibly contain her.

It was not as realistic as ‘Girl On Swing’ though.

She was caught in the motion of talking, hands gesturing animatedly in the air despite her best efforts of posing, and though her face was turned towards the light of the window it was as clear as confession that her eyes were always turning towards him, trying to steal a glimpse.

She looked at him, at the viewer, like he was the best thing she had ever seen.

Camille would see the painting too.

She had already said that she had to come to the opening, especially ‘after all the time her girlfriend had spent with this Julian fellow instead of her.’

Annabelle swallowed.

The perfect bubble burst.

She released a shaky breath, abruptly more aware of his hand through the thin material of her dress.

They hadn’t done anything.

Even the night when she ended up staying over at his, after lasagne and wine, they hadn’t done anything.

The painting made it look like they had, though. She wasn’t even sure she could accuse Julian of exactly making it up, either.

He had painted the truth. Raw. Even when it would have been politer to hide it.

“Oh,” she said. “Wow. Um. Julian—”

“Happy Birthday,” he murmured. “For tomorrow.”

His hand moved up to the back of her neck and all of the colours of the painting swirled and rushed forward to meet her.

“Oh, and Annabelle?” His voice sounded very far away. “This is the bit where you stop talking.”

***

Annabelle had been thirty for nearly a month. Well, not exactly.

They all said that she looked amazing. So realistic.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t feel her body. But, she could watch, from her frame.

She’d watched as Julian approached her with a paintbrush dipped in varnish – to seal the work – and she’d watched with her world turned sideways as they carried her canvas from the studio to the gallery.

She’d watched as they hung her up on the wall and made comments about her like she wasn’t there at all.

She’d screamed, too, or tried to. They hadn’t been able to hear her.

Julian had approached her again when they were alone, hands in his pockets, perfectly relaxed and pleased with himself.

“It’s a good trick, isn’t it? I’ve always had the knack of turning people into portraits.” He’d flashed her the same quick, reassuring smile he always did as he peered up at her. “As I said, it’s all about getting to know the person. Getting them to pour their soul out to you.”

He’d laughed, like he so often did, only this time it was at his own joke instead of hers. Or maybe she had always been the joke. 

“I did worry for a moment that I wouldn’t be finished in time. But, don’t worry. We made it. You’re twenty-nine forever! Just like you wanted. Just like I promised. I’m not that cruel.”

She’d wanted to tell him that this was not what she’d wanted. She wanted to ask a million questions. She wanted to punch him.

Instead, Annabelle watched as Camille stepped into the exhibition room, on opening night.

She watched Camille scan the crowd, feverishly, expecting her to be there.

She watched as Camille’s attention snagged on the vast painting of her across the room.

God, Camille.

Her girlfriend made a beeline over. It had been an age since Annabelle had last looked at her, properly looked at her, hadn’t it?

Camille’s face crumpled a little as she studied the portrait; a myriad of regret and fear and confusion. Hurt. Her eyes were red and swollen like she’d been crying. She raised one hand towards Annabelle’s life-sized face, as if to touch, but didn’t. Her fists curled at her sides instead.

Guilt twisted in Annabelle’s gut. Camille looked exactly like how one might when learning that their girlfriend had cheated on them.

She felt an absurd surge of hope, despite everything, that Camille might see her where no one other than Julian had. The portrait, for all of its intimacies, suggested a grand love affair. People didn’t vanish fairly from grand love affairs, they just didn’t! It was suspicious, right? He was the last person to see her. The proof was in the painting!

Camille stared at her for a moment longer, her jaw set with grim determination. Then she scrubbed a hand over her face. Her shoulders hunched against some unbearable, undefinable weight. Her dark hair was greasy with worry.

“I’ll find you,” Camille still whispered. “I swear, I’ll find you.”

Annabelle’s stomach sank.

“No, Camille—” Of course, the words didn't come out. Nothing did.

She’d had been such an idiot, hadn’t she?

She felt a fresh stab of longing for that surprise birthday party.

How long had they waited for her to arrive? Waited for her.

Had Camille reported her missing? There would be no body to find, no evidence. The painting, the wanting limited eyes she looked out of, felt like a mockery.

Maybe the life she had with Camille hadn’t been perfect, not by a long shot, but at least they’d been alive. At least they’d been real.

Camille began to turn away.

“Please.” Annabelle’s voice broke. “I’m so sorry. I’m here, please. Don’t leave me! Camille!”

More attendees bustled to claim prime spot in front of the painting, murmuring about how talented Julian was, speculating on if Annabelle was his lover. Camille flinched.

“It makes me feel,” one of gallery attendees said, “like I’m interrupting them in a private moment, you know? Of course, it’s so Julian that she’s not actually a nude—”

She couldn’t see Camille anymore.

She was never going to see Camille again, was she?

CAMILLE. CAMILLE. CAMILLE.

Annabelle screamed it with everything she had, every atom of her, with the absolute certainty that if her girlfriend walked out the gallery door that Annabelle would never escape the painting.

She would never get to say sorry, or kiss Camille, or tell her properly that nothing had happened or would ever have happened, despite what she may have let her foolish heart feel.

She’d just liked the way he looked at her.

She didn’t want to stop the clock.

She wanted her life back, to live.

The painting hit the floor of the exhibition with an almighty crash.

Everyone scattered back. Red wine spilled like a crime scene against the polished floor.

Camille whirled back around too, alone a few metres away, her eyes wide and startled.

Julian appeared, clutching a glass of champagne in one hand.

“Goddamn these hooks. Who set this up? It’s a hazard. Everyone alright?” He looked around at his adoring fans, and summoned up a rueful smile. “I should have just got eyes to follow you all around the room instead, huh?” He looked down at her, where she stared up, in the same narrow periphery vision he’d painted her with. “Really leaned into the photorealism.”

Past him, past his taunts, Camille looked between the two of them. Uncertain misery flashed across her features once more. She opened her mouth, as if to say something, before closing it.

Annabelle willed her painted self to move again too, to speak, to do anything. She willed Camille to question, to press, to not give up on them and on her. Not now.

“Camille!” Julian had caught sight of her too, and straightened. He gestured for one of the gallery employees to get Annabelle back into position. “I’m so glad you could make it! Is Annabelle not with you? She was so excited for the exhibition…”

“You haven’t seen her?” Camille’s voice broke. “I – I thought she’d be here, at least. With you.”

“With me?” Julian spoke mildly. Innocently. “No, no. I haven’t seen her. I thought she was with you. Is something wrong?” His tone gentled, as he walked towards Camille. “She mentioned you’d been having some problems…”

“No – it wasn’t like that – Camille—”

Crowds swarmed Annabelle’s painted self once more. She was lifted back on the wall, as if nothing had happened.

"Let me get you a drink," Julian said. "You can tell me everything."

She caught a glimpse of Julian's arm wrapped around Camille's waist. The way she leaned into him, looked up at him. His lips by her ear.

"Camille—"

By the time the room cleared, they were already gone.

[theemissuniverse]

“ALL YOU WANTED” EMILY DAVIS X TOUGH! FEM!READER

SUMMARY : You and Emily are best friends…but best friends always means something more these days right?

WARNINGS : lesbian smut

A/N : this takes place when they all go back to the cabin.

It hadn’t even been an hour of all of you coming up to the mountain and you were witnessing Emily Davis and Matthew Taylor break up.

All because she had went to see Michael.

Despite you being Emily’s best friend, you could see where Matt was coming from. Getting caught having a conversation was not a good look.

You were even surprised at Emily being your best friend but the two of you were the meanest people in your own way so it kind of made sense.

You were made her best friend by force though in ninth grade where she forced you to sit with her at lunch because she thought you were pretty. Now you two were besties.

For better or worse? You’d have to find out.

“God, Matt! It didn’t mean anything! Get over it!”

Mike raised his hand as if he was in the classroom. “I can vouch for that. Trust me, I do not want her anymore.”

You were sitting in a chair, eating a cookie, watching the whole scene play out. You knew something was going to happen and you didn’t know if you wanted to stop it or keep it going.

Emily angrily turned to Mike at the statement. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think he means he doesn’t want to fuck skank anymore.” Jess replied for Mike.

Not only could you not help but comment because you were Emily’s best friend but because you always had to make your own remark of common sense. You finished your cookie and dusted your hand off. “If that’s the case then why is he fucking you?”

Emily had laughed at what you said and bit her lip to hold back her smile. Matt shook his head, rubbing his temples in irritation while Mike just did a whistle and looked away from the situation.

“I’m sorry? Did I ask you to bud in Ms. School Drop out?” Jess asked you while standing up from the couch where she was sitting next to Mike with.

“No but something told me that you needed a reality check and well, here I am to give it to you.” You told her, brushing off her calling you a drop out with ease.

“Don’t you find it a tad bit pathetic you follow Emily around all the time?”

“No. But what I do find pathetic is you not having any men to choose from so you chose your best friends man.”

“Last I heard, your relationship is dead so you don’t get to tell me how to live mine.”

Emily had watched the whole argument, entertained because you were winning. Up until the last remark Jessica said and she didn’t think she could go lower.

Beth was your girlfriend a year ago. Before everything happened. You had blamed everyone for a long time. Healed from it. Even from Emily. Emily apologized multiple times, which was unlike her to be honest and you forgave her.

This is why you never forgave Jessica because here she was, throwing that in your face.

The room felt silent. As if they knew the damage Jessica had done.

You stood up slowly from your chair then began to walk towards her. “You wanna try that again?”

Jessica gave you a deadpanned look. She would be a little scared but she knew that Emily would stop you before you hit her. So she kept going. “Don’t talk about saving people’s relationships when you couldn’t even save your own.”

Emily saw your fist balled up and instead of you hitting her, you gave her a warning push. A push so aggressive, it landed Jessica back on the couch. “Hey!”

As much as Emily wanted to see you kick her ass, she knew it would be trouble. It wouldn’t be the petty cat fight that she knew she would face up against Jess. You knew how to fight and you knew how to hurt her.

Jessica came from a wealthy family and Emily did not want to see you go to jail for a petty argument.

Emily immediately got in between the two of you. Then stood right in front of you. “Calm down. She’s not worth it.”

Mike brought Jess towards him. “Both of you, stop it.” He said.

“I can’t do it.” You said. “I have to hit something.”

“Just relax.” Emily told you. “Breathe. It’s going-“

“See, Emily. All you do is bring drama and I’m sick of it.” Matt started to say. “Look what we’re all doing! Because of you!”

You had chose your target. You turned around, facing Matt. Then you gave him your best punch. Him falling to the ground and him holding his mouth.

“(Y/N)!” Emily scolded you.

You ignored her. Then you left out the back door.

You needed some air and were fine if you had to freeze to death in order to get it. You hated the way people got in your head. You were a hothead and it got the best of you sometimes.

Emily was right behind you. “Hey! (Y/N)! Slow down!”

You sighed and stopped in your tracks, allowing Emily to catch up to you. “Look I’m sorry I-“

“I don’t care, meat head! Put this on.”

You looked to see it was your jacket that you had left in the lodge. You grabbed your jacket and started place it on you.

Emily looked down to your hand and saw the bruises on your knuckles. She shook her head and placed a hand on her hip. “You really did knock the shit out of my ex boyfriend didn’t you?”

You sighed, feeling guilty of your actions. Emily was the only person who could make you feel guilty. “Look, Em I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have hit your-“ Then you had thought about what she said. “Did you say ex-boyfriend?”

“Yeah I did. He’s too soft for me obviously and I don’t have time for that. And he left my bag with all my expensive clothes in it! That idiot.”

You knew the two wouldn’t last that long but that was pretty fast you had to say.

Emily grabbed your hand and started to lead the way. “Help me look for it.”

“Ugh. Why do I gotta help you look for it?”

“Because I said so!”

You knew best not to argue with her so you let her lead the way. Besides, you weren’t going to let her be out by herself anyway.

The two of you walked to the picnic table area. Emily looked over to one of the tables and saw a carving. She dusted the snow off and saw your initials with Beth’s.

She felt jealousy when she had looked at the carving but knew she had to swallow it. “Wow. You must’ve really loved her huh?”

You were confused. You walked over and saw the carving for yourself and remembered. “Oh…that…” You leaned against the picnic table, looking down a little. “I liked her. A lot. Can’t say I loved her though. It takes a lot for me to do that.”

Emily nodded at your choice of words. It made sense. You’ve had a lot of girlfriends before Beth and you had never really loved any of them. Love was a hard thing for you and she understood that.

You decided to change the subject. “What’s so important in this bag anyway?” You asked her.

Emily smirked when you had questioned it. “Oh just my undies. The lace ones.”

You raised a brow when you had noticed the flirty tone in her voice. Emily would always flirt with you but you had always considered it to be friendly flirting and nothing romantic attached to it so you played along.

“Well we don’t need those.”

Unbeknownst to you, Emily was actually flirting with you. She had always had a secret crush on you but was too scared to do anything. Also, she was used to people hitting on her. Not her hitting on other people.

“You don’t want me to model them for you.” Emily asked you. She did a little spin so you could examine her body.

Your eyes darted all over her and it was at this point you were starting to realize that you also flirted with her more than the friendly way. “I’m just going to rip them off of you anyways.”

Emily had did something she never did before. She took a step towards you. Then grabbed your hands and made them be on her body. “You ever done it outside before?”

You were intrigued at how far Emily was willing to go to just play flirt with you which was confirming in your mind that she was serious. But how could she be serious? You two were just friends.

You had laughed at her question. “Have you?”

“No. But maybe I want to.” Emily went to tug at belt of your jeans which made you groan a little. You felt her breath on your neck and her kissing softly. “I cant with this on though.”

You moaned at the soft kisses that she placed on your neck. Yeah. She definitely wasn’t playing anymore.

Emily pulled away from your neck. She looked you directly in your eyes. You pushed away the hair that was in her face. She looked so beautiful to you.

Emily leaned in and kissed you on the lips. You didn’t hesitate. You cupped the back of her neck with your right hand and kissed her back.

You used your left hand to place on her hip and bring her closer. Emily moaned and continued to kiss you like she was hungry. She had been waiting for this.

It was freezing out but the two of you didn’t feel any cold. You were in each other’s warmth.

You just had to confirm something. You pulled away from her lips. The two of you slightly out of breath. “Wait a second.” Emily looked annoyed at you for stopping but waited for you to ask her what you needed. “Are we straight girl kissing or gay girl kissing?”

Emily shook her head at how unserious but serious you could be. “The second one.” She confirmed before going straight back to kissing you.

That made you more bolder in your movements. You picked Emily up by her ass and made her legs wrap around your waist. Emily moaned in the kiss while you sat her down on the picnic table.

Your lips went down to her neck. Instead of kissing you sucked on her sweet spots making her moan, gripping you. “God that feels so good.” Emily commented.

You pushed your knee in between Emily and made your knee make contact with her clothed area. She moaned at the friction you were going and made you pull away from her neck. “I can’t take this. Let’s go to the lodge.”

You were still lost a little. Surprised this was happening. “O-“ You couldn’t finish your sentence as Emily was already dragging you back to the lodge.

The two of you walked back into the lodge. Emily paid no mind to the people that were in the living room and dragged you upstairs, all the way to the room Emily had picked out.

When the door was closed, the two of you were back on each other. The two of you took your shoes off while you made out.

You helped Emily take her jacket off and throw in on the floor. Emily did the same for you. Emily pushed you on the bed. You sat there, watching her.

Emily’s hands went to your belt and started to unbuckle your pants. When she had finally got your pants to unbuckle, you grabbed her and laid her on the bed.

You got on top of her and took off her shirt. She was wearing a lace purple bra. You gave her a look. “All your lace underwear was in your bag huh?”

Emily giggled and kissed you. You kissed her back. You never kissed anyone the way you were kissing Emily. It was different.

That’s when you realized it was always different with Emily.

You unbuttoned her pants and helped her take them off. Her underwear matched her bra.

“Why am I the only one naked?” Emily complained while kissing you.

“It’s more fun that way.”

“Yeah, fun for you.”

You chuckled and removed her underwear. Leaving her exposed. You licked your index and middle finger before placing it on her clit and rubbing it in circles.

Emily moaned loudly. She gripped on your arm. You started off slow and teasingly. You didn’t have to do much. She was already wet from you.

You found your rhythm and started to go a little bit faster on her clit. She tried to meet your rhythm but any time she’d get too excited, you’d slow down.

“Stop torturing me, (Y/N).”

You laughed. You kissed her gently on the lips and picked back the pace. Emily moaned loudly in the kiss. You stuck your fingers in her pussy, knowing she was wet enough. The palm of your hand hit her clit while you kept the fast pace.

“God, (Y/N). Yes.” Emily tried to quietly moan but came out of extremely loud. It’s like she didn’t care to be quiet and wanted all the pleasure she could get from you.

Emily’s hands went to her chest. She held on to her chest while throwing her head back. You regretted not taking off her bra before starting.

Her clit constantly bounced off from the palm of your hand and Emily felt herself getting close. “Wait. I’m almost there. Stop.”

You kissed her on the neck. Licking and sucking on her sweet spots. “Why stop? I want you to cum on my fingers.”

Emily moaned at your words. “I want you though.”

You understood what Emily was trying to say and pulled away from her pussy. Then licked your fingers clean off. “Mmhm. I kinda want you to sit on my face.”

Emily shoved your shoulder, making you laugh. “No, (Y/N). Come on. I want you.”

You took off your pants. Then slid off your underwear and threw them somewhere. Emily was about to place her fingers on your clit but you stopped her. “Trust me, I’m already wet from you moaning.”

Emily bit her lip smiling and you got on top of her. You made sure to position your clit above hers before looking at her. “This is not how I expected to spend my weekend.”

She took off your shirt, leaving you in your bra. “Isn’t this so much better?”

“It is.” You couldn’t deny. You kissed Emily on her lips again before placing your clit directly on top of hers. The you were moving slowly.

You knew Emily all too well because you were best friends which meant you knew Emily never had sex with a woman before. So you tried moving slowly for her.

Emily was doing exactly what you knew she would do. Getting sensitive quickly. Emily let out a sharp moan. She clung onto your body, not expecting to be so sensitive. She was whimpering, pleading for you to get her to cum.

“You sound so sexy.” You told her. You tried to ease her in by kissing her lovingly all over body.

“Don’t stop. Oh god, yes.” Emily was practically screaming and you should’ve figured she would by how sensitive she was.

“Your boyfriends might hear you.” You jokingly said to her while kissing all over her body.

“I don’t care. Just get me to cum all over you. Please.”

You could’ve came off her just moaning for you. You should’ve figured Emily was submissive. She was a brat. You gripped onto her leg and went faster. Your pussies colliding against each other. Making the both of you moan in pleasure.

Emily’s hands felt like fire on your body. She unclipped your bra from the back and threw the bra on the floor somewhere.

As you kept your pace, you noticed Emily staring at you in awe. You tilted your head at her. “What?”

“You’re so beautiful.”

You weren’t expecting her to say that. You bent down to give her a sloppy kiss on her lips. She returned it.

“Mmhm. (Y/N). Let me get on top.”

You pulled away from her warmth and laid down on the bed. Emily got on top of you and placed her pussy back on yours. You chuckled at the gasp she had let out. It was far more sensitive for her to be on top than you.

“You sure you don’t want me on top?” You teased a little.

“Shut up.” Emily more so moaned and started to move on you. She didn’t go slow though. She went back to the fast pace you were doing.

You moaned, hugging onto her hips and helping her move. “Shit. Keep going. Just like that.” You went to unclip her bra and when you did, you immediately started to rub her titties.

Emily moaned at you playing with her nipples while trying to focus on her pace. “Oh god. (Y/N).”

You noticed Emily was losing her pace so you went back to her hips and helped her move on you. “Come on, baby. Move your pussy on me.”

You calling Emily baby turned her on and motivated her to move even faster on you. “(Y/N)?”

Noticing she was asking you something and not moaning your name, you nodded, still feeling immense pleasure. “Yeah?”

“When I make you cum on my pussy you’re going to be mine.”

You knew that was Emily’s way of asking to be your girlfriend but she was always the demanding type. You closed your eyes, feeling yourself become closer to release. You gripped her hips tighter. “You make me cum, you can have anything you want.”

Emily’s hands reached to your chest and started to play with your titties. You moaned at the touch. “I’m so close.” She told you.

You watched Emily’s chest bounce up and down. You couldn’t help but lick your lips. Seeing it was starting to make you close. “Keep going. I’m almost there too.”

Emily whined at how sensitive she felt herself start to get. You notice her slowing down some and you were so close you didn’t even want to help her anymore.

You flipped her on the bed and quickly got back on top. Your pussies continued to make out with each other. Wetness was heard all around the room and was even starting to go down your leg.

“(Y/N), I need you.” You felt Emily’s nails claw at your back and you knew it was only moments before she came all over you.

“Cum all over my pussy, baby. You can do it.” You said while kissing on her neck.

“Oh, god. (Y/N). Yes.”

You felt yourself coming undone, closing your eyes. “Fuck, Emily.”

“Yes, yes. I’m cumming. Oh god I’m cumming. (Y/N).”

You felt yourself cum and Emily was following right behind you. Your pussies became so wet that the juice soaked the bed sheets.

You continued to move until you knew both of you were done. You got up from her and laid down next to her.

Emily grabbed the blanket and placed it on top of the two of you. “I can’t believe I waited that long to do that.”

You chuckled before nodding. “Yeah. Me too.” You turned to look at her, seriously. “So…how do you wanna play this?”

Emily sighed, knowing what you meant. “They’re all just drama filled. I just want to stay up here with you.”

“It’s gonna come out. Especially at how loud you were.” Emily hit your shoulder at what you said and rolled her eyes.

“Well they’ll just be mad they couldn’t get me to scream like that.” She said before kissing you.

So you were with your best friend now? Not what you expected.

[flammenkobold]

I find Harrow's and Gideon's reverse arcs so fascinating in terms of how entrenched they are within the culture of the Houses/the empire.

Harrow starts out with upholding the culture and the structure Jod build his empire on. She is not only a symbol of it but a literal manifestation, the Reverend Daughter, leader of Drearburh, the last heir of the Ninth House, born from mass murder committed specifically to create her. And she plays up to it, she holds onto these rigid traditions and rules for herself and her house. But there are hints already that she might divert from it eventually. She puts on a show for everyone else, with her parents, with her cavalier, but these are less for her benefit than for the people around her and for the honour of her house. And then of course there is her opening the tomb.

Gideon starts out with wanting to flee from all of that, bargaining for her own freedom from the oppressive system the Ninth represents for her. She's portrayed as a rebel and sees herself as an outsider to that culture. But again, there are hints she might be already deeper entrenched into the culture of Jod's empire than she wants to admit. She doesn't just want to get away from the Ninth, she wants to join the Cohort, she wants to join the military so she can also taunt Harrow.

Then slowly Harrow's arc goes into her rejection of norms and expectations resulting from House culture. A cavalier is meant to die for their necromancer - something that's not just accepted but expected of a cavalier - and Harrow puts her cavalier above her own House rather than willingly sacrifice her. A cavalier is meant to serve as fuel for their lyctor and Harrow violently rejects it. She'd rather put herself in the tomb she opened all those years ago than become a grave for one more person. And finally in Nona she rejects God and walks into the unknown. She walks away from everything she's known and believed in so strongly to find something more worthy of her. What else is there for her? She doesn't know but she is going to find out.

Meanwhile Gideon's arc goes into her embracing and throwing herself into the empire's culture. A cavalier should never watch their necromancer die, she thinks when Isaac dies and Jeannemary has to watch. A cavalier is meant to die for their necromancer, so she does. A cavalier is meant to serve as fuel for their lyctor and she is pissed that Harrow doesn't allow her to be that. Harrow's rejection of that culture is viewed as her rejecting Gideon. And then we get to Nona, Gideon is the Emperor's heir, decorated with medals and titles, made into a dead symbol of the empire of an undying god. She wants to kill Alecto to become John's cavalier, sign herself over to him fully. Because what other purpose has she, what other way is there for her, what other worth?

So yeahhh I got a lot of emotions over this and it's gonna be so interesting to see these two clash in Alecto.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 61

With some Gallifrey at War content because I Make The Rules

The Fesitval of the Timewright, or Anmers-Tonastide, is a Gallifreyan holiday. (Novel: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)

When the Sixth Doctor was forced to work with Davros at a company, he quickly made a nuisance of himself by ruining hours worth of Davros's work and then made Davros his assistant, having him make tea. (Audio: Davros)

The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith once defeated an android maker, and out of revenge, the android maker made an android identical to the Third Doctor. The android had a bomb in its head. The plan was for the android to kill the Doctor, take his place, and then detonate, but it was all for naught because when the Doctor returned, he was in his Fourth incarnation. (Short story: The Android Maker of Calderon IV)

The Sword of Never is a weapon used for execution on Gallifrey. It can completely obliterate living things, rendering all of a Time Lord's regenerations useless. (Novel: Scratchman)

The Ninth Doctor's signature outfit was made of the first clothes he saw after his regeneration, not the result of prolonged rifling through wardrobes as it had sometimes happened in the past. (Short story: A Day to Yourselves)

When time spiders created a time loop, the Eleventh Doctor was bitten, but before he could permanently die, Valarie allowed herself to he bitten instead as time rewound. The time spider would target her. This killed her, which caused the Doctor to decide to blow up both himself and the TARDIS in the resulting grief and rage. Then time rewound again, and everything was eventually resolved. (Audio: The End)

The Third Doctor once developed a time bomb to defeat the Xhinn. It had the effect of aging them past their natural life span (and thus killing them) and destroying their space ship. (Novel: Amorality Tale)

The Mimesis was a theater on Gallifrey in which people could rewrite reality as part of an act. It was created by a cult of Gallifreyans. (Novel: Managra)

During the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords developed a weapon called the Hush - a being of living sound that could steal and eat voices. Later, the Tenth Doctor trapped the Hush in an audio recording, but it eventually escaped. (Audio: Dead Air) The Hush was also voiced by David Tennant.

One time, people began receiving phone calls from lost loved ones due to time distortion. Liv spoke to her father, Helen spoke to her brother, and the Eighth Doctor spoke to someone as well. It is never clarified which lost loved one it was that he spoke to. (Audio: Absent Friends)

When asked what animals they thought they were most like, Fitz said he was probably a golden retriever. The Eighth Doctor, on the other hand, thinks of himself as a unicorn. (Novel: Fear Itself)

Leela calls Jamie "Little Knife." (Audio: Dumb Waiter)

The Brigadier was able to recognize the Sixth Doctor based only on his clothes, the unexpectedness of his arrival, and the manner in which the Doctor greeted him. (Audio: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor)

When the Third Doctor 'resigned' from UNIT after the Brigadier killed the Silurians, he left England for Peru. While running away, he stowed away on an airplane disguised as an air stewardess after placing the original stewardess in a closet. He chose that particular stewardess - Fiona - because she was the tallest and would have a dress that fit him. (Audio: AWOL)

The War Master created several War Seeds - Gallifreyan-TARDIS hybrids - using his own DNA. The Seed could see into the future, can sense their siblings, and can dematerialize on the spot, and they embed themselves into a society and turn the people there into weapons for the Time War. The Seed's face changed between the different incarnations of the Master. Missy encountered the Seed and called him her son, bargaining with the one keeping him to give him the army the Seed created in exchange for his return and then leaving him on a safe planet to rest. (Audio: War Seed)

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[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 28

‘golden eyes like a dead animal’s’ you are sick and twisted Tamsyn Muir, sick and twisted (affectionate). also that is an interesting description of Kiriona's eyes. of course part of it is that she is quite literally in a dead body, but these are also the eyes that John got after he gained his necromantic powers

ohhhh my god. i don’t think my heart can take Kiriona asking after Harrow. she gave up her life for her, did the best she could to take care of Harrow’s body, and now she doesn’t even know if Harrow’s alive or not

oof both Pyrrha and Nona clearly know that she’s Alecto, but Nona really doesn’t want to remember. i wonder how long exactly Pyrrha knew who Nona was, even if she was hoping she was Gideon, i feel like part of her must have suspected since the beginning

hmm i wonder if there’s something significant about Alecto’s name? not in terms of its Doylist meaning i.e. being named after one of the Furies, but in universe. here Nona doesn’t want Pyrrha to say her name because it will make her remember, John (from what i recall) only ever used nicknames like A.L. and Annabel Lee etc. when talking to Harrow, and both he and the other Lyctors had a remarkably strong reaction to Mercy using it at the end of HtN:

'A ripple of ice over the face. A hardening of the mouth. He said quietly, “Don’t call her-” “Alecto! Alecto! Alecto!” repeated Mercy shrilly. The other Lyctors flinched each time she said it, as though it were an aural stab’

oh wow, Alecto’s consciousness (voice?) rising up to speak from Nona is very disturbing. once again, Alecto doesn’t seem like the nicest person. which makes sense i suppose given she is in actuality a Resurrection Beast herself and seemingly very pissed off about the whole ‘killing humanity and putting her in a human form’ thing

‘astonishingly, Pash, helping an extremely feeble and aged person’ i mean good on Pash for helping the elderly, i guess?

it’s gotta be so strange for Palamedes’ mother and the other people in the Sixth to be dealing with the ‘i’m dead and in Naberius Tern’s also dead body’ thing. it can hardly be what they imagined when he and Camilla went off to the First in GtN. speaking of, i do still wonder how everyone’s family members, the Cohort etc. reacted to the news of basically everyone dying after going off to try and be Lyctors

‘Palamedes was acting as though he were a tiny at show-and-tell’ is that not how Palamedes always acts about everything

Pyrrha Dve queen of ill-advised romantic relationships. poor her, she’s lost basically everyone she cared about before (G1deon, Wake, and now Pal and Cam, Nona is dying) now as a result of Lyctorhood to some degree

oh why does everything they’re saying here feel like a goddamn funeral, i categorically don’t like this

'something white and grey and powdery [...] Camilla [...] - to Nona's horror - ate it' i’m assuming that’s Palamedes’ skull goop making a reappearance. ew

ohhh wow this is a lot worse than i thought it was going to be, they’ve actually just straight up merged themselves into a single person. i suspected the whole Camilla-and-Palamedes thing was going to come back but not like this. it’s not like they had a lot of choices, and i mean i guess it’s better on an emotional level than one of them dying and the other having to live with it, but still, yikes

wdym i am categorically not crying about the fact that Kiriona is apparently totally disinterested in this whole situation, but her first instinct is still to want to hand over her jacket to … Cam/Pal. (Pam?)

listen i get what Palamedes is trying to do here, encouraging Ianthe to accept Lyctorhood as a mutual loss & rebirth rather than a sole sacrifice of the cavalier, but quite frankly i think poor Naberius would like being merged into a single person with Ianthe even less than being murdered

[devskindawritingblog]

Heey, I was wondering if you could write a Natalie x rich!reader who loves to spoil Nat, and she doesn't know what to do with all that attention.

Like, they're at a record store where they usually hang out, but this time is different cause they're finally together, so r says that Natalie could get whatever she wanted and that r would pay for it and Nat doesn't know how to react, maybe getting a little defensive

Click to help Palestine 🇵🇸 🍉

And I love her

Natalie scatorccio x reader

AN: I tried to do a song title, but I don’t know any like nirvana songs. So I picked one that I felt kind of went with the vibe. Please don’t come for me nirvana fans 😂😂😅😅. This request sounded much like @yameoto Natalie bot. So I want to make sure I say that here. This is my own fic but I’m like 99% sure it’s based of her bot. But please check her bots out, they are great.

word count rounded: 3.4K

divider from @strangergraphics-archive

You and Nat have been together for a while now. You knew about her shitty family life and how she grew up. Everything Natalie got she worked for, she saved up for a while just to buy herself that leather jacket. But you grew up on the opposite side of the spectrum. Growing up on the other side of town, your parents were rich. Big house, lots of money; parents made six figures. You basically got anything anytime you wanted. It was a pretty lonely childhood. Your parents were also off on business and out of town most of the time.

So you spent a lot of time with Lottie, having lived in the same neighborhood. So when she joined the soccer team at the start of ninth grade, you joined with her. From there, you and Natalie became friends. At first, she didn't like you, but Nat never liked anyone at all. She thought you were annoying and a brat. You got everything you wanted, and she was jealous, and she knew it. She never thought you’d be nice.

One day, you invited the Yellowjackets team over to your house. Nat would never be caught dead at your sleepover, but she was curious about your home and, deep down, wanted to be close to you. She caught a ride with Van, as they lived close to each other. As Van pulls up to your house, Nat stares up at your house, raising an eyebrow at Van. ”Rich people, man,” Nat scoffs as Van shuts off the car, and they both get out, heading toward the house.  

Before Natalie could even knock, you swung open the door, already dressed in your pajamas. “Hey guys! Come in! Come in!” You usher them in before Van or Nat can even greet you. The other girls are in your bedroom getting set up for movie night. Natalie walks through your hallway, trailing behind you. She glances at old family photos of you when you were little. She tries not to notice that she smiles at an old photo of you as a toddler. 

She enters your bedroom after you as she feels the soft carpet underneath her feet. She walks in, taking it to your bedroom. It's much bigger than any room in her house. The girls are laid across your bed, and some are on beanbags on the floor. 

 She makes her way over to the end of your bed and notices a record player sitting on a table. She scoots closer, silently admiring it. She breaks out of her trance when Taissa throws a pillow at her. She whips around, scoffing dramatically and flipping her off. She positions herself at the end of your bed, focusing back on the girls trying to pick the movie, but every so often she finds herself staring at the record player.

 You move over while also sitting on the end of your bed as Shauna and Van argue over which movie is “the best." “You like it?” you ask, nudging Natalie's shoulder.

 “What? ” Natalia snaps out of her trance again to look over at her. “My record player. It was a gift from my last birthday. Do you like records?” You ask, staring at her as Natalie tries to process. “Uh, well yeah, I just don’t really have that much.” She trails off, avoiding your eyes. You understand what she means. 

People gossip all the time about how Natalie lives in a “dump” and how much of a “whore” she is. You knew she had it hard, but the girl that they were describing was nothing like the one sitting in front of you. 

You ended up dropping it and watching the movie with the girls. 

As the girls all filed out the next day, you noticed Natalie was still admiring your record player. You walk over again, tapping her on the shoulder. She jumps, clearly not hearing you approaching.

“Hey, you have a record player, right?” You ask as Natalie shifts, still embarrassed that she was caught again. “Uh.. yeah. Old thing. It used to be my grandpa's, but he’s gone, so he let me have it.” Natalie replies a little awkwardly. "Oh, I'm so sorry.” You respond sympathetically. “No, it's alright. I didn’t really see him often when I was little.” Nat responds, trailing off, still awkward.

“What albums do you have?” you ask excitedly as you sit down on your bed next to her. “Uh, well, it's mostly my dad's old ones. I have Guns & Roses and Metallica. And my grandpa had an Elvis Presley one.” She states, naming them off. “Nice, I’m kind of a music "freak,” so to speak. I go to the record shop at least once a month. I don’t always buy new records, but I love to look at them. Wanna check out my collection?” You basically jump off your bed, grab her hand, and drag her over to your bookshelf. Natalies smiles a little, never having seen someone so excited to show her vinyls.

 “OK! So obviously, Madonna, AC/DC, Kate Bush, and Stevie Nicks I was so excited to get this one. Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, and The Smashing Pumpkins as well. Ooh! Nirvana, the Cranberries. You go on and on, showing her your extensive collection. She wants to be annoyed, but deep down, she knows it’s pretty cool.  

“You have Nirvana. That’s so cool. I wish I could get their albums.” Natalie says it mostly to herself. “You want to barrow?” You ask, holding it out for her to take. Natalie locks eyes with you and is almost confused by the fact that you're not a bitch to her. “Wha-t? No. No, I couldn't; it's your record.” She says she is pushing her hand out. “It’s one of my least favourites anyway. I’m not going to miss it; I have so many Nat.” You insist on putting it in her hand. 

After much convincing, Natalie takes it home. She listens to it and couldn’t possibly be happier. She brings it back to you at school because you share an English class. “So what did you think?“ you ask, smiling. “Really good; I love it.” She smiles back, and that’s the first time you’ve seen Natalie Scatorccio smile, let alone look at you at school. 

 “Why don’t you keep it then? Gotta be honest, I’ve only listened to it once.” You say, passing it back. “ uh…. It’s alright, really. I don’t need it.” She replies awkwardly again. “Okay, Nat. I’m going to ask you a question and just answer with yes or no.” You say, and she narrows her eyebrows but sighs and nods. 

“Do you like the album?” 

 “Yes”

 “Did you have a good time listening to it?”

 “Yes”

 “Do you want to keep it?”

 “Well………kinda…..” She replies, slowing down her words, and you raise your eyebrows before she sighs and gives in. “Fine, Yes.” She replies, trying not to sound too excited. “Yay!! It's going to go to a great, loving parent.” You smile, giggling at your own joke.

 After that moment, you and Natalie Scatroccio became so close. It really shocked both of you and the whole school. The whispers and rumours didn’t bother you. You now have someone to talk about music with and share yours with. You began hanging out at the record store together almost once a week. Digging through the albums and talking for hours about music. Sometimes you would buy something, but Natalie would never. 

 She wouldn't express it, but money was really tight lately, and she didn't have the type of money to spend on a new record. Her dad would also get mad at her for “wasting” her money. She already has three records. How many more could she need? Mostly, her dad didn’t like seeing her happy, and he craved control. So she would mostly follow you around; you picked them out, and if asked, she would make something up at first. After spending crazy amounts of time together, you picked up on things. You never went over to her house; you never met her parents or even learned about them.

But you also picked up on her favourite songs and artists. Her likes and dislikes. She was such a closed-off person, and you wanted to learn everything you could about her. You found out her birthday and her favourite foods. After hanging out with her as friends for months on end, you developed feelings. And unbeknownst to you, she did as well, not that she would admit it to a single soul. 

You decided to just go for it. You invited Natalie over under disguise to show her your “new record." She was a little suspicious because anytime you went to the record store, it was with Natalie. But still, she shrugged it off. She had grown fond of you, and much more than that. She comes over and lets herself in, seeing that your parents are away again. She heads up for you calling out to tell you that she is over. When you don’t respond, she furrows her brow, calling out again before she makes it to your bedroom and opens the door.

She finds you wearing one of your favourite outfits, quickly whips around, and hides something behind your back. “Hey!! Nat, you’re here!!” You say it overly enthusiastically. She can’t help but laugh at your inability to play it cool, but she decides not to press you about it. You smile a little too wide and hide whatever you have under a blanket. “Come in! Come in!” You say, shutting your door and pulling her so she is sitting next to you on your bed. “Hi, are you good?: she asks, smiling at your eagerness.

 “Me? Yeah, wonderful, so great.” You respond a little too quickly. "Soo, what's the new record you got?” Natalie inquiries. “What?” You respond, your face twisted into confusion. “OH! Right! Uh, that was a lie.” You decided not to lie to her this time and just ripped off the bandage.

“Well, the truth is... I don’t have a new record. I haven’t been there since our last hangout. But I knew it would get you over here. The thing is, I have been thinking about us recently. I love hanging out with you; you’re one of my best friends. But I don’t just want to be your friend. When I hang out with you, I never want it to end. You just kind of get me, and you love what I love. I guess what I'm saying is that I like you a lot." You confess, finally making eye contact with her, trying to read her expression. You reach behind you and pass her another Nirvana album with a cute little handwritten letter.

 You find her staring back at you, her expression extremely unreadable. Her face is twisted into confusion, as you can see her thinking intensely. “Really?” Natalie finally asks quietly, almost worried about saying it too loud for fear of you making fun of her.

 “Yeah! You think I insisted on giving you my record because I wanted to just be friends? I want to be your girlfriend, Nat." You proclaim, grabbing her hands and smiling. You see her face light up and smile back. “I want to be your girlfriend too!”. She admits, and you smile, tackling her in a hug on your bed. She yelps in surprise as you giggle. She lands on her back, and you hover over top of her.

She looks up at you, placing her hands on your hips before looking at your lips. “Can I kiss you?”. She asks as you smile and nod. She pulls you down, capturing your lips in a kiss. She rolls over, and you laugh as she hovers over you now, pulling you back into the kiss. You both spend the rest of the night cuddling in bed and listening to music together. 

It's now been over a year since you asked her to be your girlfriend. It was a Saturday morning. You slowly woke up to the soft glow of the sun through your white curtains. You tried to rub your eyes, but Natalie was cuddled up to you, her arms locked around your arms, which were by your side. You smile softly, tugging an arm free to fix your hair and rub your eye of sleep. 

You smile, reaching up to run your fingers through her freshly blonde, messy hair. You lean closer to give her a kiss on the nose, giggling to yourself as her nose scrunches up. She blinks awake and groans, burying her face in yours. “Babe”. She whines, “Your blinds don’t do anything." She rewraps her arms around you, holding you as close as she can. “I like them, Natty; it’s nice and bright in here. It helps wake me up." You say, kissing her forehead and tracing your fingers down her spine. 

“If you needed help waking up, I'm sure I could help you with that." She smirks, pulling her head out of your chest. Her eyes finally adjusted to the light. You roll your eyes and giggle, "Uh, huh, and how are you going to do that, babe?”. You smirk, pushing her hair behind her ear.

“I can think of a few ideas...”. She trails off before you feel her hand sneak under your pyjama shirt. She places her hands on your hips and pulls you into a heated kiss. You wrap your arms around her neck as she kisses you deeply. She pulls back after a few minutes before she finds her way to your neck. 

You glance over at the time and almost push Natalie off, trying to sit up. She whines and pushes you back onto your pillow. “Baby, come on. It’s Saturday”. Natalie whines into your neck as you giggle at how whiney she is when you interpret your guys' make-out time. “I have a surprise, Natty. Fine, one more kiss." You give in as Natalie makes out with you again. She finally pulls away and sits up, getting off the bed with you as both of you get ready.

It was your one-year anniversary, and you both have been talking about what you want to do. You told Natalie that you didn’t need anything for it because she was already enough. But unbeknownst to you, she saved up a bit to buy you a CD. She wanted to buy you a walkman, but they were way too expensive. She understood why she was never able to get on when she was younger, even now.

"Baby, I have a gift for you.” Natalie says, smiling shyly as she pulls out a CD in the case with a cute pink ribbon tied around it in a bow. "Awwww, babe, you didn’t need to get me anything. Today is already perfect because of you.” You smile, but take it from her, pulling her into a hug and a soft kiss as she wraps her arms around your waist. 

 “I saved up a bit; I wanted to do something nice for our anniversary. And we both love our music." She smiles, proud of herself that you liked it. You both pull back, but you pull her back into another kiss. 

 “I have a little surprise for you, but it's not here right now. It's more of an activity; get ready, then we can go." You say, pulling her into a little kiss and smirking. The both of you got ready and took your car to the record store. As you pull up, Natalie grabs your other hand, smiling. “Our hangout spot?”. You nod and kiss her cheek, shutting off your car and holding Natalie's hand as you walk in. 

 You enter the shop together, and you both walk around looking at all the records together. Natalie eyes up a certain album—the first album you gave her. She cherished it; it was so special to her. Before her dad died, he came home drunk out of his mind, and when he heard Natalie’s music coming from her room, he went in there and broke it. She went over to your house and stayed over for a few nights. She apologized to no end, and you comforted her all night before she fell asleep and cuddled with you.

Same with the day her father died. You went over to her house for the first time because Natalie wanted to show you her mixtape, and that's when it happened. He came home early and shoved you out of her house. You didn’t want to leave her, but you didn't have a choice. You called her house phone every hour, praying and stressing about her. You ended up finally throwing on a sweater and heading to your front door. 

 You swing it open and find Natalie, her eyeliner smudged and running. Her face was speckled with blood. You were in shock and pulled her into your house, bringing her to your bathroom and wiping the blood off her face. She didn't say anything the whole time; she was visibly shaking. You brought her back into your room and let her cuddle with you.

 She told you everything after an hour. It all just came out at once. She broke down, talking about how it's her fault and how you should hate her. You, of course, didn’t hate her. The first time you met her dad was that day, and you already knew you didn't like him. You reassured her until she cried herself to sleep in your arms.

 After that, you knew she couldn't live like that, so you offered her to stay with you. She was reluctant at first, but she also wasn't super excited to go live alone with her mom. So in the end, she decided she would stay with you. Having your girlfriend with you every day was great, and knowing she was safe was another layer of happiness.

 As you watched Natalie stare at the album that started all of this, you went over, wrapped your arms around her waist, and kissed her on the cheek. You knew about what her dad did to the last album and knew it would be a great gift. “That's my gift to you, baby; I'm going to buy you the album." You say, "Smiling." "Awwww, babe, that's so sweet. I know you're sentimental, but that's adorable.” 

 She grabs the album and turns around, giving you a little kiss. "Oh, and the second part: Do you want anything else? I'll buy you whatever albums you want for today." You say as you take the album from Nat, holding it for her.

 “What? Babe, come on. I don’t even need the first album.” she counters 

“It's our anniversary; you bought me a CD. I get to spoil you. We are not going to argue about this because I am not leaving her until you let me buy them." You say back, insisting. 

“You already got me a place to stay, and I don't deserve this." She says she is getting a bit defensive. 

You stop stepping closer and hugging her. “You deserve the world, Nat. I want to spoil you, and I won’t take no for an  answer." You pulled back, looking into her eyes, not relenting until she sighed, and you smiled in triumph, giggling excitedly.

 She walks around the shop at a slow pace. She was still reluctant to pick out albums. But you ended the day with six new records. It took even longer to convince her because after every one she picked out, she tried to talk you out of it. You doubled down, and she knew you wouldn't give up. 

You both returned home and cuddled in your bed while listening to her new records together. She thanked you more, and you again told her that she was worth it. She told you she would do something better on our next anniversary. But you told her she didn't need to. Being your girlfriend was already enough for you. You didn’t need things to know how much she loved you, and neither did Natalie, but new records are pretty good.