#except for how both my mom and sister think i apparently am

[sweetestcaptainhughes]

hello can I do a 17 ❤️‍🩹 and is it possible to do it w/ jamie drysdale? if not then with trevor zegras 🙏🙏

ooo so I only did leprechaun man as a joke because I wanted MK (@chukys-mouthguard) to show the world that she calls him a fucking sweet potato. 😂😂 Plus no one has requested Trevor at all during this celly, so Trevor it is. Sorry you had to sit in my inbox all day, apparently my body decided to sleep the entire day. I had no idea where this was going and I'm debating if I lost the plot half way through but it's cute I think.

200 Followers Celebration

Overcompensating by giving compliments and being extra nice, but feeling frustrated all the same when their crush doesn't seem to notice their efforts.

Trevor has been acting strange lately, you couldn't pin point what it was or when the turning point was but he definitely had a shift in his behavior. Trevor was one of those people in your life that you couldn't really tell anyone if they asked how long you have known him or when you guys first met. Both of your moms went to college together and you were destined to be cousins from that moment on. Except, Trevor and you never acted like cousins. Not in the same way you interacted with his little brother and sister. Not in the same way he interacted with your siblings.

Trevor and you, you both acted well like an old married couple most of the time. Two people that would do anything for each other, hell they would move the heaven if they needed but when it came to everyday life they bickered like they have been stuck with each other since the beginning of time. Jack and Cole constantly gave him shit for it back when they were all on the same development team. They both told him that he needed to make a move before someone stole his 'wife' from him. At the time, you remember Trevor telling you over FaceTime both of you laughing about it till their were tears in your eyes.

Now years later, you ended up in LA for work. Trevor was so happy he had someone with him, even though at the time he was already living in Orange County for years. He insisted on finding the perfect apartment in the middle of of your work and the rink. Which meant that both of your communites with traffic were a little over an hour. On the phone with him when he proposed the idea of a shared apartment you told him how insane he was being.

"Z no. It's insane for both of us to have such a wild commute. LA traffic is already insane and you know that. What happens if I accidentally sleep in one day and then I'm what 2 1/2 hours late for what." you try to reason as your folding your laundry, trying to deicde what to donate since you don't want to pay to lug so much across the country.

"fine then we will pick a place closer to your work. it's only fair anyway, you're there year round anyway." he decides, glancing at his phone for a second, while he continues to search on his mac for new apartments.

"No." you argue.

"yes Y/N I am not letting you live here by yourself okay. " Finally looking at you in the camera he seems your black dress your holding up, as if your debating if it's time to part ways with your 'slutty little black dress' that was your saving grace during college. But Trevor remembers it as the dress you wore with him to the go out to the bars, the dress you wore when he realized his friends were right he was madly and deeply in love with you.

"did you just put that in the donate pile?" he asks. Nodding your head yes, before you could speak he continues. "No you have to keep that one bee. " he begged.

bee a name only he could call you. a childhood name he started calling you because he said your words could sting anyone like a bee if you wanted to. what started as an insult became a name of endearment and one he only used when he really wanted something.

But now months later, as he's driving you home and your in that exact dress he begged you to keep all you want to do is for the ground to swoll you whole as you sit in his jeep. Glancing over at Trevor you see his eyes are clouded with anger, not sure if your mad at you or his teammate for flirting with you. As if he could read your mind, he brings his hand over to yours bringing it to his lips and lightly kisses it.

"I'm not mad at you bee okay." he says as he glances over at you as he comes to a stop. It's the first time he makes eye-contact with you since leaving the club almost 30 minutes ago, he sees that you're fighting back your own tears. "fuck bee don't cry." he whispers, deciding to pull over because the thought of continuing to drive while you're this upset physically pains him. As soon as the car is in park, he unbuckles his seatbelt, wiping your tears away with the rough pads of his thumbs. "I'm not mad" he keeps whispering like a promise until you finally shake your head okay.

"why did you punch him?" you finally ask.

"because he's a fuckboy and he doesn't deserve someone like you." the anger taking over in his voice again, you wince as if his tone of voice could physically hurt you, like his fist hurt his teammates.

"then who?" you whisper, suddenly feeling a boost of confidence you haven't in a long time.

"what?" he asks so quietly you can barely hear him over the hum of the music playing through the speakers.

"who do I deserve? because ever since I moved here you seem to have a lot of ideas of who I should date and shouldn't. I know we've known each other our entire life's but that doesn't give you the right to cock block me every chance you get Trevor!" by the end you are red in the face from your screaming confession.

"Y/N you deserve someone who will love you! Who knows you like the back of their hand. Someone who won't ever hurt you even if it's by accident. Someone who can give you everything you ever hoped for and more. Someone who will sit with you while you rant about the newest project at work or your new favorite obesession for the month. You deserve someone who will stay up late with you just to spend time with you because they missed you. You deserve someone who can give you the world. You deserve someone better than me and that little fucker isn't better than me." Trevor's face is one of pure shock . His eyes are wide, his mouth slightly ajar as he realizes what he just confessed.

"Trevor." Unbuckling your seatbelt so you can get closer to him, even thoguh you are already in a small space. "what if all I want is you?" you ask, leaning closer to him.

But he shakes his head pleading, "no you deserve better."

"no there isn't" you reason, taking your hands resting them on either side of his face, resting your forehead against you.

'what if I hurt you." he confesses

"you won't" leaning close enough that your lips are almost touching.

"you don't know that."

"I know that you doing nothing is hurting me more than you ever could hurt me by trying." His eyes snap open at your words. "please kiss me Z." That's all it takes for him to close to space between you both.

[shadowsandsunset]

I wish nothing but good things for Oliver Stark and Lou Ferrigno Jr.

They gave us such an authentic, gentle, tender experience. I've watched the clip of that kiss several dozen times now.

Oliver, especially, has been amazing in his interviews and social media posts, empathetic and honest and sweet. I don't know his sexuality and I don't speculate in real people's sexualities, but regardless he seems like a true ally. He seems to Get It.

As someone who came out later in life** it really touches my heart what they're doing.

9-1-1 has always seemed to try to do good by their queer characters and I really appreciate that.

Hen and Karen have always been a fantastic and very real feeling example of a wlw relationship.

This show is doing amazing. I wish nothing but good and happy things for the cast and crew who make this happen.

**Under the cut is my coming out/self acceptance story if you're interested.

Tw: repression, self harm, drug use, shitty relationships both familial and romantic.

I tried to come out as a teenager in the early 2000s after I kissed a girl for the first time. It did not go well.

My mother was a complicated woman and she loved me very much, but when I told her I was bi (I prefer pan now but at the time I didn't have that word) she told me it was a phase and that she was disappointed, that she would always love me but that it was wrong in the eyes of God and she couldn't accept it.

Disappointing my mother was worse than her being angry. It felt like my heart was carved out of my chest. I feel like if she had been angry or openly cruel I could have fought back, but her sadness destroyed me. I was 16 then and I continued to live at home until I was 24. I'm in my mid/late 30s now.

So I repressed that part of myself for well over a decade and spent a lot of time depressed and miserable. I self harmed and did A LOT of drugs. I'm clean now except for super occasional weed use. I have a lot of scars from self harm.

My mom died several years ago and it wasn't until after her death that I allowed myself to even think about it, any of it. I was in a relationship with a man for eight years that was loving but he was an alcoholic and I had to walk on eggshells around him because of his mental health struggles; he was emotionally abusive but in a way that was only apparent in hindsight. I thought that my relationship with him was as good as I was going to get. We broke up not long after my mom died.

The only family member I am out to is my older sister, who has been amazing and accepting and loves me completely. Without her support I would be lost.

I have now dated/hooked up with women, men, nb and trans people. I have explored my own gender identity (it's whatever, I don't feel like a woman despite having the female equipment and appearing female in body, I feel pretty masculine but not like a man either, and I don't have strong opinions on pronouns, but I feel like I fail at femininity and masculinity in equal measure so I call myself genderqueer. I don't have any desire to take hormones or have any surgeries, I just want to be a person without having to perform gender).

I live in a conservative small city in the US south and I feel disconnected from the wider queer community. I don't know how to bridge that gap. There is a small queer community here but you can't really be openly out and be safe.

I'll be going to my first pride event this June. I'm excited and terrified because I don't feel like I'm queer enough or The Right Kind of queer, which is such a stupid stress to have, but I don't have many friends to talk about this with and I am hoping to get out there and make some but I'm nervous. I'm socially awkward and kinda weird. I'm also single and trying to mingle, lol.

I like who I am now but it was an incredibly difficult road to get to this place. I'm still on that journey, and maybe I always will be but that's ok. I'm finally myself.

[palmtreepalmtree]

I honestly don't know if I can do Rosh Hashanah this year. There is so much baggage I'm carrying with my family right now. There's a part of me that just wants to drive away. But I don't think I can do that to my mom, and also that's just avoiding the issues.

The biggest thing is that I haven't really seen my brother-in-law since my niece's bat mitzvah in January. It wasn't intentional, but it wasn't unintentional either. I definitely let it happen. He's been having issues with my sister and while they've reconciled or are working on things, I have not forgiven him or let shit go. I have always had issues with him. But me being me, I always just kept my silence and tried to avoid confrontation.

Then he was unkind to my mom last year in a big family blow up where he complained about how he was treated in our house. As it was, I always felt that I had to work so hard to cater to his ego in our house, and that blow up just made me feel like what was the fucking point. Now more than ever I feel this heightened need to be careful around him. I pretty much just ignored him at the bat mitzvah, but he'll be staying in the house so of course I can't do that now. And apparently ignoring him was part of the problem. I can't believe how much emotional work I am doing to accommodate this person.

And to make matters more complicated, his brother will be visiting from out of town. Our house is pretty full already - I already give up my bedroom to accommodate my sister and brother-in-law. Now this guy is going to be sleeping on the den floor. He's perfectly nice, I guess, (though we're both lawyers and that can be sort of a thing iykyk), but what adult man decides to sleep on a futon in the middle of the house instead of just getting a hotel room? He's a big law lawyer, he can afford it. I would never. I barely want to stay with friends when they have a guest room (am I weird about this btw?).

And then there's my cousin and her in-laws. Firstly, my cousin is sicker all the time with cancer. I think she might be close to the end of her fight. Which is a heartbreaking thing to say about someone I adore, someone I grew up with, who is 45 years old, and has three children in their teens. She is fighting so hard, but she's in treatment three days a week, and she will never stop for the rest of her life. I'm happy she'll be coming, but I worry about her being around the 19 other people.

And then her in-laws are coming, and they are bringing their 100-year-old matriarch, who is a wonderful woman, but she is 100 years old, no one ever talks to her except me and my mom, and I don't know who is risking bringing someone like that around a place with 19 other people right now.

AND my cousin is not on the best terms with her mother-in-law. That's too complicated to get into here, but it's not the most pleasant thing in the world. As it is, they are not my favorite people. We've known them and included them for almost 20 years at this point, and over the years it has become clearer and clearer how different my values are from theirs when it comes to money and society. They're not Trump people, but they're definitely Rick Caruso people.

All of that is the backdrop to this dinner that I will be helping my mom to host for 20 people. She will be very stressed so I expect to get yelled at a lot tomorrow. And we're the type of people who smile and get along and pretend, while seething inwardly.

And it's not just like everyone goes home at the end of the night. I'll still have my brother-in-law and his brother at the house, probably all weekend. And I'm obligated to sit through like four hours of services on Saturday in the middle of this. All while not having my own private space to retreat to at the end of it until the family leaves.

Seriously, the more I type this, the more I think I should just leave. But I would never do that to my mom.

[heystephen]

hey ebd anon! to be honest i knew she was wacky from the first day i met her because she started yelling (at the top of her lungs) in an attempt to win a dumb argument

i was weirded out for a hot minute there until i realized she has narcissistic traits much like my dad does, and she's very similar to my grandma (dad's mom) too.

just as an example, my grandma made me swear i would never share this info with anyone until i die: she sat me down one day and told me my other grandma (mom's mom) is a whore. mind you both of these women were in their 70s at the time. but yeah apparently she was a whore because she started dating for a brief period in her 50s after becoming a widow. my best friend's boyfriend tragically passed away last year, and this woman had the audacity to tell me she wanted to set up my friend with someone not even a month after the funeral because "she's young, she's not gonna be alone forever". this is a woman who went to book a church and priest for me to get married on a date that works for her. then somehow found the phone number and called my mil and told her "the church is handled" so i got a call - while on vacation and not in the process of planning a wedding btw - from my mil who said "handle your grandmother" and hung up on me. i had no idea what had been happening, or even that the two knew each other because the families hadn't met yet. and i was on vacation. out of the country. this woman booked a church with just my name?! like am i marrying myself or something?! nope, she just wanted it to be that date because she heard her other son might be in town that day too.

anyway, given the similar traits she shares with my mil, they have sort of become very close friends since i got married. no one knows what they talk about, but they're on the phone for hours and both lie about who they've been talking with (i've caught them in these lies myself). my mil is very chatty especially after a drink or two (it's an issue) so she spills most things to my sister in law, except anything to do with my grandma. then my sil shares all the gossip with me, which is how i learned the woman thinks im a witch out to get her. i have noticed my mil has picked up some language patterns from my grandma, and some beliefs too, which is how i know they're very close these days. aside from the comments ive heard from my mil about my grandma (moms mom) being a whore (that sounds familiar doesnt it?) and then also my cousin because she dared to wear something tight that looks good on her. yeah.

meanwhile, my "whore" grandma and cousin are women i actually really look up to because they're incredibly strong. hell, my grandma was the first person to teach me about feminism when i was in elementary. she was having coffee while i was visiting her and she told me i should never feel afraid of the partner i choose in life and that we should both be equal in both similarities and in differences. it was her simple way of saying the ideal relationship is when both parties respect each other even in arguments and disagreements. and my cousin left the country at 18, as soon as she could get a passport, so she could make a better life for herself than what she had in her hometown. she found a job, accommodation and lived through god knows what (i know small bits) to make it out of this country.

anyway, my mil is convinced her sister in law is a witch and a whore and she's told me all about her. allegedly, she's seen the witchcraft books this woman owns. my first thought upon hearing that was "how did you ever find them oh innocent soul that can do no wrong without snooping" and then i learned she went snooping. so i know she's gone through my shit in the last few months we've been living together but i got nothing to offer so 🤷🏻‍♀️. oh and the witchcraft books turned out to be some eastern healing books. she told me this herself going off about "this eye" and "special points on the body" and whatever else is in books like that im not too familiar.

sorry for the long ask scout, i tried to summarize as much as possible, and now im sending loving bites to both you and ebd anon <3

.... maybe the bites are witchcraft 😂😂😂

there is So much lore to unpack from all of this i feel like im going to be ruminating on this for days

[pepprs]

ok two things.

not that i need to clarify and not that anyone needs to know more detail but. to clarify from my post last night: my brother did nothing wrong by showing his music to me AT ALL. but there are two things that are hard about it and i hate to say it but the bigger one is… he has the same spark i used to have and feel like ive lost forever snd him making unfathomably beautiful music makes me… jealous. or at the very least mournful about what happened to my own musical / poetic pursuits and skills and how i feel like i will never be able to do anything like that again bc ive lost myself and feel detached from my life and am frozen like a dear in headlights. and the second thing is he’s in a lot of pain rn with his own situation and we don’t communicate abt it except in ways that are extremely like.. strained and sheepish and i feel like a bad big sister for not being more affectionate and like trying to force through the barrier and be lovey dovey with him basically bc i think he needs / wants that even though we’re both weird about it. lol

my cousins posted a picture of them smoking together on their ig story and my mom screenshotted it and sent it to me and my siblings w/o knowing that ig tells you when you screenshot someone’s story and is now doubling down on how righteous she is abt taking a screenshot bc they’re being stupid and smoking when it’s unhealthy. and my dad is telling her “people are allowed to be you g and make mistakes” and she’s continui ng to double down abt how when she was their age she didn’t care about fitting in and just accepted that she didn’t fit in instead of engaging in bad behavior etc etc. like first of all our cousins didn’t hurt anyone by posting that why did she need to screenshot it 💀 they’re going to read into that for sure and i don’t blame them like it’s just so weird and im so fucking embarrassed abt it. and second of all lkke… you are not better than them for not smoking or doing other stuff and also them smoking isn’t necessarily abt fitting in. shut up 💗 [UPDATE post cancelled apparently ig doesn’t notify ppl when they screenshot stories anymore. but my point abt her being judgy abt young ppl being young ppl remains]

[rivalsforlife]

I finished the new persona 5 tactica game and its dlc in 7 days which is faster than most people with their priorities in order, so I am ahead of all of my friends and therefore am going to dump all my spoilery opinions here.

The gameplay was fun (I played on easy mode because I am a baby) and I liked making triangles. that was definitely the most satisfying part of the game when I could make triangles and wipe out every enemy on the board at once. I felt like a god. I liked seeing these characters again, I like them, I like getting little insights into their lives.

I can't say that the story was """objectively""" bad but it did a lot of things that just kind of irritated me / felt sloppy / holy shit this is some of the worst Women Writing in a franchise I wouldn't say has particularly stellar Women Writing.

To begin with, I will list off my predictions going into this game based off of trailers:

-This is obviously taking place inside this toshiro guy's brain and/or he's the one who is causing all of this.

-all the villains are going to be Evil People In His Life

-first boss Marie is going to be his wife/fiancee, but it's some kind of political marriage type deal. second boss is going to be some kind of mentor/boss. probably run into a character that is going to be his teacher at some point when the school arc hits

-erina is based on a real person in his life as well who was involved in whatever sort of rebellion toshiro did outside of all this.

This is practically exactly what happens in the game, with the exception that I got the second boss's identity wrong (he's the father, which in hindsight I should've guessed from the start - instead I guessed as soon as Toshiro brought up that his father arranged his marriage).

It might be my fault for watching the trailers before playing but in my defense this game is extremely predictable. Like I said, I guessed the second boss's identity before he even showed up in the game. I think it became pretty apparent this was toshiro's fault early into the game.

uh what else. first kingdom I didn't love much because it felt very repetitive and like it went on for too long. as I wrote in discord after finishing it:

toshiro and erina are both fine but a lot of it is like. extremely predictable and blatant about it. like I could guess marie's whole deal from the trailers so it's a lot of "yeah we know. yeah we know" and it feels weird how the phantom thieves haven't yet at all guessed that toshiro is the cause of this when it feels like that's deefinitely how they're going to end up. a lot of the early segments felt repetitive (toshiro "oh no we should run away why would we risk getting hurt" erina "but we have to stand up for what is right!" toshiro "!" repeat endlessly until close to the end of the kingdom). and I definitely did not enjoy marie as a villain, she's so cartoonishly evil that it just kind of got to the point of exhaustion. comparing her as a first-game villain to someone like kamoshida for example, both are horrible people, but seeing kamoshida in real life and his actions in real life and how it was affecting everyone, despite him being fairly one-dimensional as a villain, made him an extremely hateable but very effective villain. I did not feel any of that for marie I was just sick of her. I'm hoping the game steps it up a bit moving forward bc I think the "not seeing the villains in reality aside from a few brief glimpses" thing might be rough on that aspect

I played the DLC after the first kingdom, which was a mistake because they have the same credits as the full game meaning I got spoiled on Yuki being related to him somehow. I thought she was a sister, maybe, until the moment toshiro brought up that his mom was dead, and then it was pretty obvious but it took the game FOREVER to actually state this.

Yuki's writing is where I really started to lose it because her character trait is Mother. There's nothing else. I actually laughed a bit when she jumped in front of that beam to protect toshiro because literally where else could it possibly be going. at this time I declared her "the most fridged persona character ever". this was, perhaps, naive.

THIRD KINGDOM. the introduction of eri natsuhara who dragged erina down with her. we have now completed the "bitch wife - mother - manic pixie dream girl" trifecta of shitty female character writing tropes. And I don't think it would bother me quite so much if they didn't go for all three in the same game and none of those three seemed to have any amount of motivation outside of toshiro.

Like again I'm not going to claim that persona has ever had stellar female character writing, but they typically at least manage to have the characters have some amount of traits outside of whatever guy they're associated with...? They have some characters I really like (Futaba, Yukari, Mitsuru as examples off the top of my head) and most at least have some part of their character arc as an individual one.

I guess the closest I could compare Eri's whole thing to is Aigis, but Aigis at least had a good part of her character arc independent, tying into the overall "meaning of life" theme, trying to figure out her own purpose and soul and ending up on "wanting to protect the protagonist" isn't bad because the game is about friends giving you the meaning of life. aigis contributes a lot thematically and I think her character arc makes sense. at least in my view.

I did not see any reason for Eri to be the supportive character to Toshiro's whole deal, but she's like "I'm going to help you achieve your dreams!!" when her own dreams and goals took a hard sideline in the plot. We know basically nothing about what Eri's done in the presumably decades between the high school events and the events of this game. The game really tried pushing the "sometimes, if you fight back... people get hurt!" but it was much more of an emphasis on "toshiro is sad that eri got hurt" and much less "how is Eri actually suffering from this other than in hospital wearing bandages". we know she lost her will to fight but the girl literally just got hit by a train so who can blame her for that, we don't know how or why she regained it, I especially don't like that she made the whole thing about "I'll catch up to you one day!". Did she get to graduate? What's her career like? What's the extent of her injuries and how do they impact her day-to-day life? We know Toshiro got shunned by everyone but did Eri have her social circle decimated as well, especially since Toshiro apparently never talked to her again??

It's like the focus on Eri's injuries was a) she lost her will to fight :( b) Toshiro is sad about it and they won't be able to fight together anymore :( and not the things about how it's impacted her life outside of Toshiro. I think that would've been nice to see more.

And the thing I especially didn't like about how they wrote Eri is that her character dragged down Erina, who was pretty good throughout the first arc, fell kinda into the background in the second arc, and then in arc 3 just got pretty much merged with Eri and suddenly her sole purpose was to protect Toshiro's heart -- nothing about the people she was trying to protect in the first arc or really anything other than a few allusions to an ongoing identity crisis over not being a real person. I will admit that her turning into a Persona was the first time I was genuinely caught off guard in this game.

(Sidenote: It was so obvious throughout the third arc that the ruler would be Shadow-ish Toshiro that the red herring they were pulling with nakabachi was completely insufferable.)

Anyways I get that this wasn't an Erina Game it's a Toshiro Game but it's just the combination of a bunch of weird writing decisions that really got to me in this case and at a certain point it was like doing a bingo for "shitty women writing". Eri is both the Inspiration For Toshiro's Rebellious Spirit who also Sees His Potential and Wants To Help Him Achieve His Dreams and then is later The Poor Defenseless Victim And Her Being Hurt Causes Toshiro To Lose His Way But Still Inspires Him To Be Better, and she's also The Woman Who Broke His Heart And Spirit And Is The Cause Of His Suffering But He Doesn't Regret The Time They Spent Together... it's just a weird checklist and it got tiring for me. I don't mind some of these things if it wasn't also in conjunction with Yuki's sole personality being Mother and Marie's sole personality being Bitch Wife Only Marrying Me For My Status.

idk maybe I'll feel better about it as time passes but at a certain point it was like my god are we really still doing this.

anyways what else. the DLC! I enjoyed the DLC overall. I really liked Guernica and Luca's whole thing. I think it was mostly held back by the fact that neither Akechi or Sumire were their normal selves and you couldn't fully allude to their Problems. Akechi kind of did nothing even if bullying him was fun. Sumire got a few good moments. I found it especially weird that Akechi didn't pick up on anything being up with "Kasumi", especially when at one point Luca literally calls her "Kasumi" in front of everyone, and especially when he should have picked up on something being weird when Sumire was talking about her sister since to the best of my knowledge japanese doesn't have an age-neutral "sister" word so she would have been saying "younger sister" when she meant "older sister". but I'd be interested in checking the original out to see if they got away with it some other way.

(I do find Akechi's one weird "let me guess, you're a god" comment extremely funny though. Is it meant to imply he's dealt with gods before this because I don't think he should have. I think Akechi got too much knowledge of how persona games work for a second.)

I really think Akechi could've been an interesting addition to the main game considering the plot is centered around the guy who is rumored to be becoming prime minister after Shido, but I figured out pretty quick that they couldn't put him in here because he would just have too much knowledge about the current political state and would be able to deduce at least most of the second arc very quickly. at least half this game apparently operates on idiot plot or in one memorable case "yeah I thought something was off but apparently decided not to say anything about it until now". so back to purgatory with you, akechi.

oh one last thing. in the main story. why the fuck were the phantom thieves there?? I get how the whole thing got constructed for toshiro but there was no reason for the thieves to get called into this, because the god wouldn't want them there and (unlike the dlc) toshiro wouldn't have called for them, unless maybe it was subconscious, but they really don't even attempt at giving a half-assed explanation so I am still completely lost on that.

anyways overall like I said I had fun but a lot of this felt sloppy. sometimes I feel bad about my writing skills but then I remember how incredibly unsubtle persona is and feel better about myself. I really wish erina could have driven the plot on her own right and not just for toshiro's sake. that's kind of the part I feel bitterest about at this point.

[meganwasbored]

The Dragon Prince Thoughts Season 2 Episodes 5 and 6

(I thought I posted this a week ago but apparently I accidentally saved it in my drafts instead but better late than never)

I finally have the time to watch more I swear this was the most stressful week of my life

Episode 5

-“Breaking The Seal” L E T T E R ?

-I think I’ve been patient enough just open the dang letter before I lose my mind

-“I’ve done terrible things” shoot I forgot he said that is he talking about killing the dragon king or something related to that

-slightly confused about how these kingdoms work, are there multiple kingdoms within Katolis, or are these kings and queens from outside of Katolis

-“it seems I am a crown without an adult, and you are an adult without a crown” !!!!!!!!!

-BOOM GET HUMBLED

-ofc Viren had to make this all dramatic, literally just showing off at this point

-a NEW threat?? Haven’t y’all been at war for idek how many years?? How is any of this new??

-“there are reports of shadows in the clouds, dragons” MORE DRAGONS

-I take it back this room is boring, bring back the special effects

-I can’t tell if the others are scared of the elves or scared of whatever Viren just did

-I was confused why Ezran seems so chill about his father dying but then I remembered that he doesn’t even know, man this is gonna hurt

-“I won’t send my armies to face unknown danger over a two minute speech. I may be a child but apparently I’m the least impulsive of us all. Besides, I hardly call ‘we’ll do what everyone else says’ a decision.” GIRL

-I may as well quote absolutely everything Queen Aanya says because she’s my new hero

-“Sweet words can be more dangerous than hidden daggers”

-don’t mind me just crying over this flashback scene oh my gosh

-“I know you will stand by me through anything” Whoops actually he just stood there as you were murdered and is now trying to kill both your sons

-bruh even baby Ezran is a menace when it comes to jelly tarts

-“why do I deserve this? What did I do except being born with everything?” Harrow buddy you deserve the world

-Viren is a master manipulator and while it makes me wanna hurt him you gotta admit he knows how to get what he wants

-NO POOR BAIT JUST WANTS TO BE LOVED

-dude it looks like Viren actually cared about Harrow a lot what the heck happened to him

-Sarai is literally so awesome why do all the best characters die, this better not become a trend

-Obviously the titan isn’t actually dead idc how dead they think he looks they just went “oh he’s not moving so I’m gonna hammer a stake through him, what can go wrong?”

-Callum and Bait being besties is something I didn’t know I needed

-THE SEAL IS BROKEN I REPEAT THE SEAL IS BROKEN

-fire titan dude is pretty ugly like uglier than I thought he would be

-Venus fly trap looking head

Episode 6

-LETTER TIMEEEEEE

-why did they put this at the beginning I shouldn’t be crying this early in the episode

-they took the dragon egg MONTHS ago??? Did they say this before cause I thought it was like years ago, I’m so confused with this timeline

-IT JUST CUTS OFF???

-YALL BETTER NOT BE MAKING ME WAIT AGAIN TO HEAR TO REST OF THAT LETTER I SWEAR

-oh my gosh I’m freaking stupid this story is how his mom dies isn’t it

-“the injured must be left behind” right when past-Viren earns my respect again he says stupid stuff like that

-“you wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t your wife’s sister” well I don’t see a ring on your finger so how would you know

-“I ask you and your brother to reject history as a narrative of strength, and instead have faith that it can be a narrative of love”

-all these flashback scenes are so cute I just know I’m gonna rewatch the heck outta this episode

-“Rayla, that’s a funny name” it’s literally the most normal name out of every character we’ve met

-The boat guy (I forgot his name so I’m just gonna call him Boat Guy) encouraging Rayla to literally kill people is hilarious

-“I’ve never actually killed anyone”

“Maybe someday! Never give up on your

dreams!”

-“with the heavy heart of the titan, and the additional burden of carrying the wounded” I actually wanna punch him through the screen just the way he said that makes me so mad, like he’s bitter about Harrow not wanting to leave most of their soldiers there to die

-Zym steals my heart all over again every second he’s on screen

-“you can’t control where the river goes, there’s one thing you can know and control, yourself”

-“I want to talk to you about life and growing up and how sometimes there are changes you don’t expect” WAIT IS THAT THE THING CALUM SAID TO EZRAN I THINK THATS THE THING CALLIM SAID TO EZRAN

-“free yourself from the past, learn from it, understand it, then let it go” y’all don’t understand how much I needed to hear this rn

-I KNOW YOURE NOT TELLING THIS POOR GRIL WHAT HER MOTHERS WOULD HAVE WANTED TO GET HER VOTE YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT HER MOTHERS WOULD HAVE WANTED

-Viren throwing a baby tantrum the second someone tells him no is hilarious, the child in the room is more mature than he will ever be

-that fact that Harrow gave Callum the cube of all things makes it seem like he knew that Callum was gonna be a mage

-“extra-super-secret-bonus-secret” I love him so much we lost him way too soon

-DRAGON DRAGON DRAGON

[epros]

hey guys do you remember when i first got into milgram and made a crazy post about haruka? im about to ramble a bit because i dont feel like making something more in depth but remember when in that post i talked about how my first impression of the girl hes with as a child was not his sister 9or friend???) but his idealized self? well i decided afterwards that both of those things can be true and the release of “all knowing all-agony” solidified that for me hey. dont walk away. let me explain. (deckard cain voice) stay a while and listen... its obvious that harukas relationship with his parents (particularly his mother) is very fraught. they clearly dont care for him. when they have a daughter who is “normal” (not an effeminate ‘son’ who is developing differently than other children) (because haruka is autistic) (if you get it you get it) they stop pretending to care about haruka and focus on the daughter instead and haruka is like what the fuck 😐... haruka killed her for 2 reasons: 1. because he was sick of being neglected by their parents who favored her, particularly their mother because idk the dad has to be absent or a serial killer considering haruka didnt even attempt to latch onto him for approval in the absence of his mothers love (dad does not want a girly “son” even if said son will join the serial killer business) (i cannot explain this further at the moment but it makes sense if youre me or tshirt) (to be brief the fact haruka had been previous validated for killing someone/something and thinks killing Again will totally earn more love and validation is so strange and makes no sense even in the context of if the death was because of his parents taxidermy hobby because theres a stark difference in killing an animal and killing a person and most taxidermied animals are already dead not killed For The Sake Of Taxidermy in this the year of 2022 so someone is a serial killer) and 2. because he was like well there can only be one girl here and youre a REAL girl which is not fair . But if youre gone i will be the girl again. #win the fact all knowing all agony starts with lines like “why was i born like this / why does it hurt so much?” and “you kept calling me ‘hopeless’, you never called me by my name / you were always comparing me to someone else / you were always generous, except towards me / i will definitely make you love me again” and him going into his mothers(?) jewelry drawer and taking a necklace (that might have been his sisters 🤨✍????) is like. there is something happening here. the insistence that “i wasnt wrong, i wasnt wrong” (which was also present weakness) during the chorus, along with pleas for someone to “hug me again as you once did” and “dont leave me alone, dont leave me” and, like the beginning of the song, “why was i born like this? why does it hurt so much?” just makes the soup in my brain start bubbling the real meat of what im trying to talk about comes from lines like “i just wanted to be your good boy. why am i crying again?” and “i will keep on killing to be a good boy”. near the end we also get “why was i born to be me? why does it hurt so much?” like, his mother only validated him when he was a “boy”, and he was killing. apparently. but doing this is painful for him. existing as a boy and also killing people(?) (things?) for attention isnt something haruka particularly wants to do but its what gets the attention he needs. i havent forgotten that in weakness he asked “how many more times do i have to do this so i can be human?” implying if he does not kill he is not human enough. but also his mother was clearly distraught at the end of the video when haruka was on a pile of animal corpses (which was an awesome visual just btw) theres something going on anyway the point im winding to is haruka is a girl actually and maybe her dad is a serial killer (who knows) her mom sucked and maybe she killed her sister out of frustration and neglect and also because she wanted to steal her gender (but haruka was a girl before her sister came into the picture make no mistake she did not decide to become a girl because her sister got more attention and love than she did. but it did prove to her in her mind that oh well if im a girl then 🤨... like do you get it?)

tshirt put it thusly after we watched all knowing all agony: “i'm just like. narrativizing this in my head like "oh and haruka self consciously models himself after specific women in order to gain their approval and also disavow the femininity as emerging intrinsically from him-- btw also his dad is killing people" which i think sums up what im trying to say because ive just kind of been on a stream of consciousness ramble because i fell asleep thinking about harukaisms last night truly i cant get over the repetition of lines like “why was i born like this why does it hurt so much” “i wanted to be your good boy / why am i crying again” like im sorry but there is something so gender about taking on the habits of the women around you and being agonized by the fact you are not physically like them and crying over being a boy but wanting to be a boy because its what you “are” and the only thing your parents will see you as and they are the only source of love and validation you have in your life even though they are not validating or loving you and resent you the more you try to gain their affections. LIKE MAKE IT MAKE SENSE ? also i think its really funny if harukas dad IS a serial killer because we have someone like kotoko who is gungho for vigilante justice so much so she beat the shit out of an 11 year old cult survivor (i wont forgive milgram fandom for voting amane guilty btw) and mikoto who is so stressed by familial responsibility and work that he started disassociating and beat a guy to death with a baseball bat and also shidou botched surgeries for reasons currently unclear (finger paresthesia? moving a loved one up on the organ donor list? both?) and its just like. haruka with the actual lucid serial killer dad. who also kills people because she feels like she has to. i dont know its just really funny to think about... (theres also futas whole thing and kazuis and yunos but they arent killers. probably. futa wasnt a willfully malicious murderer he just accidentally doxxed a woman alongside the guy who was sexually harassing her and social pressure drove her to suicide. kazui is a closeted gay man with a wife who may or may not have killed herself. i wrote a whole thing about it remember? and yuno had an abortion. which like, is against the law, especially if she didnt have the ‘fathers’ consent to do it, and depending on the method of abortion. mahiru has something going on idfk if shes a stalker or what. and then theres haruka and muu. muu is so funny spoiled rich lesbian schoolgirl who is feeling super validated that her murder was justified because she was being bullied and now she has haruka to yank around. falling back on her old ojou-sama hobbies. good for her) milgram is so funny.... anyway tl;dr i do think haruka displayed girl power when she murdered her sister(?) and whoever or whatever else she might have killed for attention and voting her innocent/forgiven is the best option (because its the funniest option for her future development)

[symptoms-syndrome]

UGH and now there's fucking DRAMA with birth parents!!!

My birth dad is taking my birth mom to court AGAIN. It's like his favorite activity. He just takes her to court on baseless bullshit because he has a lot of money and she doesn't.

Apparently this time it's about my little sister's college stuff. He's saying he needs total control over her college decision and that birth mom has to pay for it. What the fuck ever.

My like. Perspective on both of them has definitely changed as I've gotten older. I feel...pity, for my birth mom. She's a very, very mentally ill woman who had one kid by accident and one in an attempt to save her failing marriage. She wasn't ready to have kids and wasn't able to take care of them. She's been dealing with my birth dad, which got worse after he divorced her, and is too proud to accept help financially, medically, socially.

My birth dad...is a bad person. I hesitate to call people "bad people" but I'm obviously biased here. He's manipulative, self centered, and needs to feel important and powerful and admired above everything else. Everything he does is solely for his own gain. He doesn't care about anyone else except as stepping stones to greater and greater things. He's told me so himself, he told me to think of people like that. To him, it's a dog eat dog world and he needs to be seven steps ahead. I see some of the worst parts of myself in him. He takes advantage of my birth mom despite her being less powerful, less wealthy, and less capable than him. Maybe because of it. He needs total and ultimate control over his children because his children are part of his image. That's another thing that's straight from the horse's mouth. Every time there was some minor infraction, that was the scolding. "The way you behave and present yourself reflects on me. You need to act proper or people will think I'm a bad father."

That's the only reason he keeps trying to be nice to me, I think. It looks bad on him to have an estranged kid. He keeps trying to get me back. But I wonder why he hasn't given up on me. Just erased me from his perfect existence. One time he told me a father's job is to "keep his daughter off the pole." Now I'm like. Doing drag that involves stripping. So. I'm not sure how much he knows about that though.

Individual parts (big or little p, not sure, probably both) have varied feelings. Some are scared of him. A lot of them are, I think. Some are neutral. There's also the opinion that I should keep some sort of loose connection. Which is where I am now. There's the very strong but not very popular opinion I need to cut him off entirely. But that's counteracted by the fear. Lots of fear. But there are still parts that desperately, desperately need his love, approval, affection.

IDK. I have a lot of "daddy issues" TBH. Freud would love me.

There's also the issue of. My little sister. She's still... IDK. I can't blame her for anything. She's in a really traumatic and scary situation. I cut my birth dad off (though I don't remember it) around 15. She hasn't done that yet and she's 18. She's scared to. Part of me feels angry at her. She doesn't have the courage to do what I did. But I can understand. She's scared to be on her own without support. She wants him to help pay for her college. All this sort of stuff. But I'm like... you're an adult now, legally. You don't need to do anything he asks of you. You don't even need to live with him anymore if you don't want to. But she's just... IDK. Compliant. I was too. It's like he makes you into a robot that needs to follow orders. He frames it in a way that makes it feel like if you don't do what he tells you to you'll doom yourself to a shit existence. Which I guess. IDK I fell into the doomed shit existence. Things probably would have been easier, in every way except mentally, if I had been compliant. But I didn't make that choice. I couldn't be compliant so I was thrown away. And now he thinks he can fix me, I think. He regrets throwing me away.

I can't blame her for her decisions, or lack thereof. But it does make me angry. I want her to have the courage to stand up for herself. She's so trained by him she can't even tell me what she wants or doesn't want to do. She can't make any sort of decision without three hours of reassuring her that it's her choice and I won't be upset with whatever she chooses. And sometimes that doesn't even work. I can understand it but that doesn't make it less frustrating. Less infuriating. I don't understand even though I do. Just do it!!! Just have the courage and make even the smallest choice to distance yourself!!! What is she going to do when she's living by herself, or in college? If I were to be mean, I'd say it's pathetic. She's pathetic. I can only hope that she toughens up.

[clunelover]

Gah I overinserted myself and now am reaping the awkward consequences…to try to be succinct, BFF as I’ve mentioned had a pregnancy loss at 18 weeks that was devastating. My local sister is also friends with BFF, and will often say things like "I want to hang out with BFF more!" But never ever takes any initiative there (or, I’ve noticed, with like…anyone she claims to want to be closer to). After BFF’s baby died (I am using that terminology because that is how she talks about it), my sister was apparently the only person who BFF considers a friend, who just never said anything about it. And there are reasons for this…a lot of people are awkward about pregnancy loss…my sister is definitely emotionally stunted or something…but also, when this happened BFF sent a mass email to let everyone know what had happened, and how she and her husband were doing, and then specifically said "we’re sad, but we like talking about our baby, it feels better to talk about him, so you don’t have to avoid it"…and my sister got that too, so, if anyone would say they weren’t sure if they should bring it up, they wouldn’t so much have a leg to stand on. And how hard is it to just say "I’m sorry for your loss?" Really, that’s all it would have taken…

Anyway, BFF was very upset about this, and still is. But didn’t want to tell this to my sister, and didn’t want me to tell her either. Which, totally fair! She was like "I just don’t want to have that close a relationship with her, so I don’t feel like having that emotional discussion with her." All good, except our lives are somewhat intertwined. We have a group chat with BFF, one other friend, and my sister. Which still gets used, but BFF never talks about her baby in there or sends pictures, she does that on a separate chain with me and the other friend who is also a mom. She invited my sister to her baby shower. My sister gets invited to this semi regular event BFF’s brother hosts at their family farm that BFF comes to too…So it’s just weird, like…sister doesn’t know she did anything wrong! So, from her POV she just sees this person who is, as far as she knows, her friend, never mentioning her four month old baby…which is weird! Although also if your friend had a baby, wouldn’t you EVER ask "hey how’s the baby?" It’s fucking weird all around!

I told BFF that my sister might reach out to try to meet baby, and she was like "oh I’d be fine with that" (I wanted to see if she just didn’t want to do it at all, because I was considering just inviting them both to my house for coffee, but didn’t want to do that if BFF just didn’t want to see her at all) and then said something like "she’s just literally NEVER asked me anything about the baby" which…is true..but ugh the whole thing is just so weird! I feel like at this point, BFF really ought to 1. Finish the job of cutting my sister out of her life or 2. Have the emotional conversation or 3. Move on and act a little more like they’re friends and stop giving these mixed signals.

I am more on BFF’s side (but also my view is colored by my existing feelings about my sister) but I do feel like she’s at this point putting me in an awkward position. Like why did you invite her to your baby shower if you planned to never ever mention your baby to her unless she asked? I even told her, don’t invite her on my account! Only if you want her there. And then she did!

Anyway, I was talking to my stepmom about this because she knows all the underlying dynamics and is close to all three of us, and said I planned to invite them both over, and could I invite her too? And she said sure, but also pressed on "why are you hosting? Because then you’re still ‘in charge’ of the whole thing and you don’t want to be" ….so I was like "Hey YEAH! My sister should host!" But of course also knew she’d never think to. So I did the totally dumb and sideways and still controlling thing of telling my sister "hey, BFF doesn’t work Fridays and I often blow mine off, so if you’re not working then you should invite her and me over!" Dumb dumb dumb. And even better, I think she misunderstood me, and said "that’d be great! I work this Friday but most of them I don’t work" so I think she thought I was offering to host? Which of course would have been a more normal thing for me to have been saying?

Anyway - BFF is coming by today so I think I’m going to say "I need you to resolve this somehow, it’s awkward as fuck, and yes my sister seems emotionally detached and doesn’t do give and take the way you or I would, and it drives me fucking crazy too, but if you want to be friends with her you need to accept that that’s how she is or be prepared to let her know how her behavior is landing"

[nervouscloudtheorist]

May 12th 2024

Dear Diary,

It was Mother's day today. Mom sent me a letter and it just made me miss her so much. I don't know how people can move so far away from their parents. I mean I guess I can know because I am doing it but still it's rough.

When I asked Sly about it he said that not everyone has a good relationship with their parents and that my relationship with my mom was the exception and not the norm. So in reality I really should appreciate my relationship with my mom more.

Isabelle and I had a nice picnic together since we both didn't have the time or funds to see our moms.

It was really nice honestly.

In other news, the T&T mart upgraded again and it's now called Super T&T. Timmy and Tommy are really moving up in the world. Maybe we will finally get a hair salon I hope. This hair is not doing me any justice and I have to wear a bunny hood just to keep everything in check....

It's a pretty nice store and I'm glad this town is getting modern because let's be honest as cute as the Nookling Junction was, it was in no way a shop made for a modern town.

Also, I think the Able Sister's is getting an upgrade too because the empty storefront that was directly on top of the Able sisters is getting a renovation. I don't know what it is though because even though I am mayor, I am not entitled to such knowledge apparently. I know I have said this before but I really do think Isabelle is the mayor for this town and I am just the figure head.

I know I haven't been writing much and I'm really sorry about that. I haven't' forgotten about you at all I just have been having a lot of fun haning out with Sly, Clay, and Marshall. I call us the four amigos, you know because it's not exactly 3. That's not really an excuse to forget to write it's just that this place is feeling a little more like home every day.

And it's nice.

I will try to remember to write more often I promise! I don't ever want you to think I forgot about you. After all, you are my very best friend. Life is just busy. I hope you understand.

Thanks for everything you do!

- Finn

[faerociousbeast]

the scariest part of it was there was another bed in the room i woke up in right.and it was like this hotel. so naturally i was like....Weird but obviously my sister is also here and woke up before me cuz shes a lot more punctual than i am lmao. i genuinely wasmt that concerned i didnt recognize the place??

so i was running around in the hotel looking for her, there were a lot of weird hallways and lobbies and ig the power mustve been out cuz it was dark as FUCK and really empty, until i randomly stumbled into a lobby full of middle aged white men on couches also in the dark and was like. Um. Anyway. and continued running

and then i ended up where i started except in the room next door, bc again it was dark and apparently they had two doors? one in the back of their room and one beside my rooms door, so i went in a circle basically. but anyways i didnt recognize them but thye were wearing traditional clothes and suddenly said "oh have you seen [cousins name]?"

i got confused bc this whole time id been searching for my sister, and i was like "oh noo haha i didnt come with my cousins family, i came with..." and THEN i started thinking and realized like. Hang the fuck on i havent seen my parents anywhere OR MY SISTER ANYWHERE and i dont actually rememver us coming here now that i think about it. The hell. well time to look for my cousin now i guess!

so i yell his name (not in a scared way but in the way your mom does from downstairs when you took too long to get to dinner or something) and he shows up casually. "which room did you wake up in???" "the one you were in lol, i got bored so i left you and was looking around."

thats when i was like. "...so your sister isnt here? or your parents???" and he was like "no? why?" bc. how do i explain this hes kind of.... hes not that much younger than me but he looks up to me a lot? so its not actually that unrealistic even not in a dream, that if he woke up in an unfamiliar place, if he saw me there with him hed probably be fine

but him acting like this plus with the things i noticed in the dark while running around earlier kinda confirmed for me we were kidnapped and whoever did it was most likely going to beat us up soon for ransom or info or something. so i thought back to last night

and APPARENTLY me and my cousin are part of the armed detective agency now???? and last night, we had to make dinner for everyone, and we did kind of badly but fukuzawa was proud of both of us or something. and everyone else (who wasnt the actual characters, this was like if the agency was just a regular police force that hires children for odd jobs sometimes?) was laughing at him for it. so i made the connection it had smth to do with the fact fukuzawa cares about the both of us and those bitch ass guys who laughed

and then i told my cousin that, like "hey uhh so we're probably kidnapped." and he was like "no we arent lmaoo.... Oh wait. yeah we probably are." so we went into our shared room and really quietly discussed the situation, bc the people in the room next to us were trying to listen in and there wasnt exactly anywhere else to go, and then we started walking while just casually whispering

my cousin started saying things like "you said theyre probably gonna torture the victims now right? well since we're part of the agency maybe i can use some of my reputation to tell them to stop" to which i was obviously thinking. Uh no my dearest cousin i actually do not think that would work in case you hadnt noticed we are kind of in the same boat as everyone else.

and then our walk took us to a different person in the hotels room and it was KUNIKIDA??? and looking back katai was probably with him bc it seems to be 2 to a room + there were computers and servers and shite all over in his room 💀 and he was basically like. "What are you doing here." what are YOU doing here dude??

and then i woke up before we could get horribly tortured

[milkweedman]

Worst thing abt cleaning is that rubber gloves and wrist/hand braces really do not mix. Meaning that unless i'm basically just picking stuff up and moving it, either my braces get disgusting/covered in bleach/soap/whatever, or else i wear gloves and no braces, so my wrists and hands hurt really badly the whole time. Literally no way to win

[xmalfoyweasleyx]

I hate that girl - F.W

Summary: Fred doesn’t really know how to cope. He hates y/n and everyone loves her. But is the feeling truly hate, or something else?

Warnings: Mean Fred, eating, semi-smut it's just oral: male receiving, a little hair pulling and stuff like that :)

A/N: Maybe I'm going to write a PART 2, with the rest of the smut? Idk? What do you guys think? x

Words: 2,1k

It was summer, finally, my favourite season. I sat at the table with my family at the Burrow, enjoying my moms dinner.

“So, y/n is coming tomorrow mom, you remember?” Ron asked while trying to put a big piece of meat in his mouth.

“Of course I remember dear!” Molly smiled.

“Pfffttt ohno” I sighed, making the whole dinner table glare at me.

“Don’t be mean Fred, I really don’t know what’s wrong with you” Ginny said angrily.

What was wrong with me? That girl was wrong.

I hated how my whole family fell for her trap. Like she’s so innocent. They all believed her act. But I knew the truth, I hated the girl. She wasn’t sweet and shy and helpful. I just knew it. She couldn’t be. I didn’t believe it.

I never liked the girl. She visits us every year, being very good friends with... yea, almost every person here.

She was a liar, I saw it in her eyes. The girl was always like: “Molly can I help with the dishes” or “Hey George, I looooveee the new joke product” with her silly sweet voice.

No I didn’t fall for that. She didn’t even say those things to me any more, I've already scared her away. Well, great. That’s great.

“I really don’t understand why you hate her that much Freddie” George sighed when we were back in our bedroom.

"Well and I don't understand why you like her that much Georgie, are you in love with her or something?" I accused him.

"It seems like you are the one in love with her, silly brother" he answered laughing.

What the hell??

"WHAT? For God's sake! Why would you even think that?!" I screamed defensively. George only laughed.

"I give up" he smiled. Leaving me extremely irritated.

Me in love with y/n, like I said, I hate that girl.

*

I almost threw up seeing the girl acting like that.

We were all welcoming her in the living room. She hugged Ginny, then my mum and Ron and... you know how it goes.

Then she hugged George giving him a kiss on the cheek. Urgh disgusting. It was my turn. It was clear she didn't really know what to do. It was pretty awkward.

"Fred" she nodded staring at me full of doubt. She gave me a sad look and I almost fell for it.

I knew my sister was looking at me with eyes full of anger without even looking her way. I couldn't take it any more and just left without saying a word.

"I'm sorry about him" I heard George saying to her. "It's okay" she answered softly.

*

It was quiet at the burrow, everyone was already asleep. I've always been the only person in this house that stays up this late.

I was getting tired so I decided to get ready for bed. Even George had ignored me all evening, I don't get it, why are they this mad? I mean, okay, I wasn't very nice to y/n. But I can do what I want and I can dislike who I want, what do they have to do with it?

So I opened the bathroom door and before I could process what happened, my face was already bright red. Y/n was changing, her, apparently pretty, chest was bare in front of me.

The first thing I did was slap my hand to my face, trying to close my eyes and hide the redness. What the actual fuck, did I just see the girl naked?

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE THIS LATE" I screamed.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should've locked the door, I'm sorry" she answered embarrassed.

Okay how could I ever get this image out of my fucking head?! Yes, she did have an impressive body, and...but... BUT NO FRED, NO.

"Stop apologizing all the time, for god's sake, it makes me crazy" I hissed angrily.

She didn't really answer and she ran past me, I didn't even see the look on her face. Maybe that was a good thing, because I knew I may have been a bit too mean this time...

*

"Fuck Fred, keep going" y/n moaned, she looked like a mess and her perfect boobs bounced up and down when she rode me. It was the hottest and the best thing I've ever felt. Moans and grunts left my mouth. "Fuck I'm cumming baby" I grunted.

Suddenly a loud knock on my bedroom door woke me up. Y/n wasn't there any more.

Shit, was this a dream, an actual sex dream? About her?

"FRED WAKE UP IT'S ALREADY 1 PM, WE'RE GOING TO SWIM!" I heard my little sister scream at the door.

I freaked out immediately. I could never face y/n again after this, why did it happen? Why is my brain like this? And then I had a little problem down there too, I had an obvious boner.

"I'm coming Gin wait a minute" I answered nervously.

An hour later, I finally reached the lake that was a mile away from the burrow. The others were already there.

Great, swimming.

The dream was still spinning around in my head. I was so confused and like it couldn't get any worse, they decided to swim. Why today?

This was the worst moment ever to see y/n in her bikini. I saw her from a distance. God she looked hot. Her perfect boobs in the red bikini top, and damn it, that ass...

Bloody hell, STOP IT FRED, I just got rid of my boner, I don't need it to come back again.

"There you are Freddie, finally!" George smiled when he saw me. Damn it.

Y/n looked up too, still smiling at me even though all the mean things I said or did to her. Her hair was in a perfect bun and I could see her red bikini better now. I never really realized how sexy and good she looks until now, until the moment I walked in on her changing this night. Or maybe that was the problem, maybe I always knew, but shut it out?

But what if this was her trap again? The trap everyone fell for except me. I couldn't allow myself to fall for it, I promised myself!

I walked up to them and tried to get out of my confusing thoughts. "I'm sorry I didn't realize I slept for so long" I answered trying to sound okay.

"Guess it's because you were still up pretty late" y/n joked. Her pretty smile appeared and out of nowhere my legs were weak, like jelly.

"Fuck y/n SHUT UP, SHUT THE HELL UP" I snapped out of nowhere. My face went red and the others looked at me in shock.

It was quiet, y/n gaped at me, speechless.

"I.. I-" I tried to apologize when I saw y/n her hurt eyes, but nothing came out. My heart broke when a tear fell down her cheek. Maybe I was wrong about her.

I was the bad person in this story, not her.

She ran away and I heard her sobbing behind me.

It wasn't a trap, she never acted like she was an innocent sweet girl, she really was an innocent sweet girl. It wasn't her trap, it was my own trap, a trap I made up in my own head.

*

I heard sobs coming from her room. I stood behind the door. I promised my siblings I would apologize, because it was true, maybe I was wrong about her.

I opened the door slowly.

"Fred, please go away, you don't have to act like you're sorry because I'm crying. I know you hate me." she sobbed when she saw me.

“N-no, I, I don’t know what’s wrong with me” I stuttered.

She looked confused. Her red eyes really broke my heart. It was my fault.

I sat next to her on the floor and put my hand on her leg. She seemed shocked.

“Why do you hate me?” she whispered.

I sighed. Not really knowing what to answer.

“I don’t hate you, I just had the wrong idea about you y/n, I’m stupid.” I answered.

It was weird, she was still in her bikini and this was so not the right moment, but I felt that bulge in my swimming trunks appear again. I guess it’s because of the dream that was still so damn clear in my head. And of course, the fact that my hand was stroking down her bare leg.

Before I could cover it up, her eyes were already on it. Fuck.

We both didn’t utter a word. It was silent.

“You have a problem down there” she whispered, breaking the silence.

I gulped, trying to not get red.

“Is that why you hate me? You just want to fuck me?” she grinned extremely bold.

I wasn’t really used to being this speechless. But she was right. So, so right. So I just nodded.

Suddenly she was on my lap. My breath hitched in my throat. Her, so perfect, boobs now pressed to my bare chest.

“You make me crazy, I can’t even explain how crazy y/n” I finally said.

Her hands were now stroking my hair. Shit. My tummy tingled. Was George right, am I in love with her?

“So you just decide to be mean Freddie? Ignore me? Hurt me? Why?” she squeaked, searching for a rightful explanation.

“I... I’m sorry, I don’t know what I feel. I’m so confused but I know I was wrong about you now. I’m sorry for hurting you.” I apologized.

“It’s okay Freddie, I understand, we have enough time to find out how we feel” she promised me while lightly stroking my cheek with her small fingers.

A wave of electricity went from my feet to my head. So is this what being in love feels like? I wasn’t sure, maybe it was something else. I’ve never experienced this before. But one thing was sure: my pants got too tight now.

And that’s when I felt her move slowly. She moved the (oh so thin) fabric of her red bikini against my clothed cock. I could feel everything that was underneath and a shock of pleasure went through my whole body.

She kept grinding down on me, a soft whimper left her mouth and a grunt left mine.

I slammed my lips on hers. They moved perfectly in synchrony. They were soft and sweet. It was perfect.

I’ve kissed before, a lot. But this. This was different. The passion was overwhelming.

Her tongue explored my mouth while I helped her hips grind up and down.

She stopped the kiss and her beautiful y/e/c eyes locked with mine. In an instant, she was already on her knees in front of me, pulling down my swimming trunks.

"Can I?" she asked politely. I nodded eagerly.

She kissed my tip gently making me gasp a little. Her beautiful, soft hands stroked down my thigh.

"I'm pretty sure you're finally gonna stop hating me after this" she promised.

"You already succeeded princess" I praised, making her eyes go wider because of the nickname.

She started to kitten lick my tip slowly and my hands were already in her hair, making a ponytail with my hand.

She took my whole cock in her mouth, all at once. A grunt escaped my lips when I felt my tip hit the back of her throat.

"God y/n where did you learn this" I moaned huskily.

A smirk appeared when she started to bob up and down. I tried to control myself but I couldn't resist from pulling on her hair a little, guiding her head up and down. It was clearly something she liked because a moan left her mouth. The oh so sexy sound and vibrations made me grunt loudly. "Fuck baby" I moaned

I tried to hold it in but my hips started to pound a little into her mouth, making her gag on my cock.

"I'm gonna cum" I stuttered. One second later her mouth was already gone. I whined with a frown.

"Now already Freddie?" she smirked.

"Please don't stop, your mouth is amazing y/n" I asked trying to not sound too desperate.

She didn't answer but put her lips back, taking my cock in her mouth again. Now she started to suck fast and harder, making me go completely crazy.

She was so beautiful and so so so sexy. I couldn't hold in any longer. My head fell back and my eyes scrunched shut, a loud moan slipped from my lips when I came. I've never felt this amazing before. It was perfect. Y/n stuck her tongue out, showing me she swallowed all of my cum.

"Good girl" I praised huskily.

"Did it feel good?" she asked. She looked a little insecure now.

I grabbed her hips and placed her on my lap again.

"So good, I think I might be in love with you, and not just because of this moment, but for so many reasons y/n" I admitted.

"You.. you do?" she whispered getting red and shy. But the little smile on her lips said enough

_____

[mike-wheel]

here’s my byler autumn event one shot i kinda hate it

Drunk on Halloween

inspired by the song “drunk on halloween” by wallows

⚠️TW: drinking/alcohol consumption⚠️

Michael Wheeler was being dragged to a high school party that one of Lucas’s basketball teammates were throwing. It was a halloween party and the rest of the party had begged Mike to dress up as the Mystery Gang with them but he refused. Ever since Will had moved away 3, now almost 4 years ago, it was hard to spend Halloween together, especially because of the distance but they did, every year. Except for this one apparently. And Mike didn’t like celebrating without him, so for the first time ever, he didn’t dress up this year.

This year El had come into town to celebrate Halloween with them. Will had come to, but he wasn’t at the party. He didn’t know where he was and even if he did, Will probably wouldn’t want to see him, not since last Halloween.

“Mike!” Max called to him from the back door, “We’re gonna go out back and play a quick game of basketball, wanna come?”

He just shook his head, resulting in Max rolling her eyes and heading out the back door. Mike stayed in the corner, leaning against the wall, drinking his can of coke. He didn’t like parties. He didn’t like being around all these people, yelling, dancing, just so many people. He couldn’t just go dance and drink without thinking about if people were watching him and if they were, what they were thinking. So he stayed in the corner. Away from everything.

Usually he and Will would be in the corner together. Laughing and talking about people’s costumes and dance moves. Drinking soda because neither liked the feeling of alcohol, and waiting until their friends would say it’s time to go. Usually they’d be together, this time was different.

Well only for about 10 minutes when Will bumped into him in the corner.

“Sorry I hope you don’t mind I’m here with you, it’s just loud and I can’t find my sister, she said we’d only have to be here- Mike?”

“Will. Hey” Mike said awkwardly, tugging at his hair a little “I thought you weren’t coming to the party”

“Yeah well El made me, my mom too. Said it was important to come, see my friends again, you know the same stuff. But I was tired and didn’t want to go, so El promised only for an hour, I don’t know where she is though” He shrugged

“Yeah totally” But Mike knew he didn’t want to come because he didn’t want to see him. “You didn’t come with us though?”

“Robin dropped me off”

“Oh” Even though the party was loud as all hell, the silence between him and Will killed him. “Are you drinking?” He asked, pointing to the cup in Wills hand

“Ha no, you know I don’t like alcohol, it’s just sprite.” He smiled for the first time he’d seen him that night.

And Mike smiled back. And it stayed like that for a little, both smiling with each other in the corner, like old times. And Mike took a risk. He got the confidence to bring it up. He finally got it in that moment.

“Will about that night, last Halloween,” And he fucked it up. Because the smile immediately disappeared from Wills face and his eyes became wide with panic, as he looked around the room for some kind of escape.

“Will I, I’m sorry okay-“

“No Mike, just forget it okay? I want to forget it, we’re fine”

“Will I know we aren’t, I just want to talk about it. Please”

“You had all year to talk about it. I wanted to talk about it, but you chose to forget it, and now i want to too.”

Mike opened his mouth, searching for some kind of response, any reply to make it better, but he couldn’t think, he couldn’t find one.

“I should go Mike.” He sighed “Tell El I went home. We’re staying at Dustins, make sure she gets home safe.”

“Okay” And he got that same feeling he got when he watched Will bike away that summer of ‘85. The guilt, heartbreak, anger at himself all coming back. And then the music felt louder than normal. It hurt his head and he just wanted to leave. And as babyish as it sounded, he wanted to be in his moms arms.

He threw his coke away and went to the front, and took a seat on the porch steps. Putting his head in his hands, trying to block out the sounds, the loud music that gave

him a headache. He just wanted to talk to Will, to be with him, talk to him, make things right. He wanted to try it, he didn’t want to be scared. He knew what he wanted and wanted to go through with it.

“Mike?” Dustin and Max were in front of him now, “Are you okay? What happened?”

———————————————————————

“Are you drunk?” Mike laughed as Will slumped his head on his shoulder. They were sitting on the bathroom floor. Will said it was too loud for him and Mike took him to the bathroom. He had a red solo cup full of something. He didn’t know what, but Wills breath smelled a little like alcohol.

“I’m not drunk! You know I only drink soda” Will said smiling up at Mike

“I think you mistook some alcohol for soda William” He teased, brushing some of Wills hair out of his face. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired”

“Do you want to go home?”

“No I like being here with you. Do you like being here with me?” He asked, eyes closed now

“Of course I do. I’ve missed you a lot Will, I’m really glad you came home for Halloween”

“I’ve missed you too. My friends don’t like Halloween” He pouted a little

“They sound crazy”

“No were crazy remember?”

“Ha yeah we are. Are you feeling a little crazy Will?” He asked looking down at Will who was playing with Mikes jacket zipper

“Yes”

“How come?”

“I like someone”

“Really? I never thought this day would come” Mike chuckled “Who?”

And to Mikes surprise, Will sat up, looked him in the eyes, and placed a soft quick kiss on his lips. And for a couple seconds, Mike kissed back and then he felt a snap of reality and pulled away.

“Will..”

“Mike” He smiled

“You’re drunk, you don’t mean that.”

And his smile fell

“Yes I do, I like you Mike.”

“Will cmon this” he motioned between them “It wouldn’t work”

“You kissed back, don’t you want it to?”

“I- I don’t know. I mean the kiss was nice, but it wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. We’re both boys Will, what would my family think? Our friends?”

“They might not care, our friends love us, and your mom and nancy cares about you so much.”

“That’s a big might Will. And I cant trust my family. Nancy maybe but my mom? My dad, holly even.” He started tugging at the back of his hair. He really needed to stop doing that.

“But Mike-“

“I don’t want to talk about this Will!” Mike softened his voice “I just, I don’t want to talk about this, please” He put a hand on Wills shoulder, but Will pulled away.

“Fine Mike. But maybe you should try facing your feelings, instead of running away from them all the time.”

————————————————————

“Can you take me to see Will, Dustin?”

“Sure”

The car ride was quiet as everyone kept giving side eyes to Mike. They didn’t know what was wrong, but knew if it was about Will, it was important.

Dustin dropped Mike off at his house, saying the rest of them were gonna go get some dinner and bring some back.

“Will?” Mike said knocking on the guest room door, “I’m gonna come in okay?”

“Okay” he called from the other side of the door

“Can I sit?” Mike asked, pointing to the second twin bed, next to Wills.

“Sure”

Mike took a breath of relief, “Okay, I want to talk about last halloween. And before you say anything I know I made the choice to not talk about it. And that’s my fault. But I’m sorry. I really am. I was just scared of what people would think of me. I said stupid shit and I should’ve been worried about you. You were brave and took an insane risk, and if I’m being honest. I loved that kiss. I think about it a lot, well all the time. And that night. I would’ve done that night completely differently if I could. And I’m just really sorry Will.”

And Will laughed. A laugh of relief and Mike laughed with him.

“Thanks Mike, and I’m sorry too. I was kind of a jerk. I know facing your feelings is really hard. Shit it took me like 2 years, and I just put so much pressure on you. And that was super unfair.”

“Yeah we were both kind of stupid that night huh?”

“I guess we do make each other crazy”

“Yeah we do.” Mike smiled at him

“So you loved that kiss?” Will teased, “Want to do it again?”

“I- I uh yes” Mike laughed awkwardly as he moved over to sit next to Will, “Is this okay?” He asked, placing a hand on Wills cheek

“Yes” Will smiled brightly as he put a hand on Mikes waist and leaned in a little

“Are you sure about this Mike? I want to make sure you’re okay with this”

“More than okay” He smiled and closed the gap between them.

“Happy Halloween Mike” Will whispered as he put his forehead against Mikes

“Wow both our ‘first’ kisses with each other on Halloween”

“Yeah, I guess it’s kinda our holiday hm” Will laughed

“I guess so”

[idkthisisjustforfanfic]

that makes four.

story page | talk to me + join the tag list

PART 4

Tristan had slapped his menu shut before you could even sit down. He’d been begging you to try a new place in Encino with him, you figured it was a good excuse to get Zoey out of the house and to let Maeve and CeCe duke it out in Shelli and Irv’s backyard instead of yours.

It was all work talk at first, he offered an update on a meeting you missed to drop off Maeve at a friend’s and Zoey sucked down a glass of wine promising to pump and dump before the night ended.

But now your plates were in front of you and you twirled spaghetti around your fork when she asked: “How’s your pool boy?” You stared up at her, unimpressed.

“He’s not my pool boy, and he’s fine.”

Tristan raised his eyebrows across the table. “Would you let Harry Styles be your pool boy?”

“Can we not talk about him like this, please?”

“Oh come on,” Tristan pulled a face. “If you’re not going to sleep with him at least let us fantasize.”

You must have twitched, a quick glance in Zoey’s direction or a quiver of your lip. Zoey leaned in and her voice was serious. “What was that?”

“What? Nothing.”

“What do you mean what was that?” Tristan asked.

“She made a weird face when you said that.”

“No I didn’t,” you defended. “I just don’t like talking about him in public, especially like this.”

“Bullshit,” Zoey laughed, leaned back in her chair. “What are you not telling us? Did you see him shirtless again?”

You let out a breath, wiped at your mouth and wondered if telling them would be the biggest mistake of your life. You couldn’t even get the words out before Zoey leaned in.

“You had sex with him?!” her eyes nearly bugged out of her head, Tristan’s fork clanked against his plate when his jaw dropped open.

You’d made it a whole week, almost. You pushed the thoughts down and brushed them under the metaphorical work rug. The body wash prototypes were in, you were booking models to do a photoshoot, video shoot, everything was getting lined up for the rollout in another few weeks. You didn’t have time to tell them about something silly and stupid and maybe a part of you didn’t want to fill them in because you were afraid they’d burst your bubble. It’ll never work out, what happens when his house is ready, he has a tour to go on.

“Be quiet,” you looked around and worried if anyone had overheard Tristan’s not-so-subtle name drop. “It’s not a big deal, okay? It’s not like it’s gonna be a regular thing.”

Tristan pulled his head back, offended by your words. “You had sex with him and you’re not going to make that a regular thing? Have you seen him?”

“Yes,” you made a face at Tristan. “I have seen him.”

“You are going to hit and quit Harry Styles?” Zoey leaned in and said his name much more quietly now.

“Well,” you dropped their gaze for a second, reluctant to be honest with them in fear of their reaction. “It’s happened once, and then we kissed once but CeCe came down, but she didn’t see anything. I’m just too old to be hooking up with a twenty-four year old.”

“Wait, okay, slow down. When did this happen?” Zoey asked.

“After my birthday dinner,” you shrugged. “We came home, had wine, the girls were out.”

“And when did you make out with him aside from that night?”

“The next night. And we didn’t make out, it was barely even open-mouthed.”

“Ew,” Tristan grimaced.

Zoey snapped to get your attention. “So twenty-four hours after you had sex, you kissed him?”

You made a face at her, unsure where she was going with it. You hadn’t been clocking or documenting your sexual encounters. “I don’t know, probably.”

“This is straight out of a trashy romance book written for middle aged women,” Tristan leaned back in his seat and took a pull from his glass of rosé. “I mean that in, like, a nice way.”

“Okay,” Zoey leaned forward. “So, nothing has happened since a week ago, then?”

“No,” you shook your head quickly. “Just those times. And I don’t think anything should happen again.”

They both groaned at the same time, Zoey’s shoulders sunk and she rolled her eyes. “You deserve to have sex with a hot guy.”

“I never said I didn’t.”

“Even if he’s younger than you.”

“I don’t want to traumatize my children.”

“Well you don’t have to have sex in front of them,” Tristan made a goofy face and you waved him off.

Zoey snorted out a laugh but you ignored their immaturity.

“I mean that having Harry here is already probably confusing for them, right? Their dad leaves, their grandpa dies, now we have some stranger in our house and he’s playing with them in the backyard and--”

“Being more of a dad to them than Luke ever was?”

Zoey’s words brought a sigh out from between your lips. “Exactly.”

“Having a positive male role model is good for them,” Tristan said.

“Sure,” you nodded. “But what about when Harry moves out? He’ll just be another man that will leave them. They’ll be super fucked up.”

Tristan reached forward and took your hand in his. “Hey--it’s more about the fact that they have you and they have other people who love them. Who cares if their idea of a family isn’t the stereotypic, heterosexual norm?”

“I know,” you relented. “I just don’t want them to be poorly adjusted.”

“Okay, that sounds like something an obnoxious prep school guidance counselor would say to you,” Zoey eyed you with skepticism.

You shrugged your shoulders. “It was Maeve’s teacher.”

“Okay, fuck that teacher!” Tristan nodded. “Your kids are adjusting, and that’s because of how good of a mom you are to them. And mommy deserves a pool boy.”

You couldn’t help but laugh, even if his words were worthy of an eye-roll. Zoey tried not to let wine drip from her nose after a snort escaped between sips.

“Not my pool boy!” You giggled.

“Which is good,” Tristan nodded, his tone completely serious. “That would be so cliché even Nora Roberts wouldn’t write it.”

**

Slumber parties always made you anxious. They were one of those things that made you question how on earth people trusted you to watch a group of children when sometimes, you still felt like one yourself.

Maeve’s 11th birthday party was no exception. Five other girls danced around your living room and CeCe sat at the counter while you iced cupcakes. Her little face was scrunched into a pout so intensely that it almost made you giggle.

“You alright?” You asked her, dish towel over your shoulder when she let out another sigh.

“Just wish I could play with them,” she held her palms towards the sky in exasperation, reaching for a container of sprinkles when you let out a laugh.

“You get to go for ice cream with Uncle Jeff, remember? You’re gonna go to the beach, too, I think.”

You’d been trying to bribe her all week: a new tutu, a new doll, anything she wanted just to make her give up and accept the fact that her older sister didn’t want her at her slumber party.

And you couldn’t blame either of them. Of course Maeve didn’t want her younger (and very loud, dramatic, and demanding) younger sister trailing behind all night. But, on the other hand, of course CeCe felt left out when she saw all of the older girls arrive with their sleeping bags and birthday gifts.

She sighed again, your conversation interrupted by a ringing from your cell phone on the counter beside her.

“Uncle Jeff?”

She was right, you reached for the phone and held it up with your shoulder, hoping the laughter from the living room wouldn’t travel it’s way into the speaker.

“Hi--are you here?”

“Y/N, I am so sorry to do this--”

“Oh god, Jeff, no!”

“I just got called into the office because one of my artists apparently just posted some stupid shit on the internet--isn’t there someone else who can hang out with CeCe? Where’s Tristan?”

“I don’t know where he is, but I doubt he’d be thrilled to play dress up or skip through a park.”

“Zoey?”

You could hear traffic through his line, his karma for backing out at the last minute was having to sit on the 405. “She has a ten-week-old infant, Jeffrey.”

“Well where’s Harry? Can’t he pitch in?”

You let out a groan, CeCe had taken to pouring sprinkles into her hand and lapping them up with her tongue.

Harry was upstairs, hiding away from the girl gang currently singing karaoke and sipping on juice boxes. He had the day off and had dipped out in the afternoon to meet a friend for lunch. You tried to mind your own business--he could come and go as he pleased and just because you had slept with him once didn’t give you the right to suddenly start asking questions about his plans.

But the universe pitied you, apparently, because right when you told Jeff you’d figure it out and hung up on him aggressively, Harry pranced down the stairs and headed for the fridge.

“How’s it going down here?” He reached for a juice box, crisp apple, and fumbled with the straw when he turned to face you.

“Everyone is alive and nothing is broken,” you scanned the counter, another batch of cupcakes still in the oven with 10 minutes to go.

With the straw now between his lips, he raised his eyebrows. “Bar’s that low, huh?”

“Well, your friend Jeffrey just bailed on watching CeCe and going for ice cream.”

She was blissfully unaware of the change of plans, still licking sprinkles out of her palm, but now swiveled around on the stool to watch the girls jump around in the other room.

“I can take her,” he shrugged nonchalantly, ran a hand through his hair when you stared at him for a second.

If traffic was Jeff’s karma, Harry must have been yours.

“Are you serious? You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all,” he smiled. “CeCe? What do you say we do ice cream and pizza?”

She turned around at the sound of her name, her eyes lit up. “Pepperoni?” She asked.

“Of course,” Harry replied to her like it was a crazy question.

“Is Uncle Jeff coming?”

“He’s not,” You informed her, arms crossed over your chest. “You’re alright to go with Harry?”

You didn’t mean to make it awkward, but mom mode kicked in and you realized CeCe had never spent time alone with Harry except maybe in the backyard.

“Yeah!” She hopped down from the stool and grinned up at him. “Can I get a milkshake?”

Harry looked over to you and when you nodded, he held out his hand. “As many as you want.”

“That’s not what I said,” you called after him, watching as he led her over to the back door. He plucked his keys off the hook on the wall and smiled at you over his shoulder. “Please don’t be out late, text me when you get where you’re going!”

CeCe shouted a bye mommy!!!! before they disappeared into the driveway. A sudden raise in your pulse had you questioning what type of mother lets their 6-year-old get in the car with a pop star who’s probably hounded by paparazzi and maybe even doing cocaine on the weekends.

You picked up your phone and it rang four times before Zoey answered. “I need you to talk me off the ledge.”

“What ledge?”

The timer beeped and you gloved up to retrieve the rest of the cupcakes. “I’m apparently a psychopath because I just let Harry take CeCe for pizza and ice cream.”

You could tell she held back a laugh. “Why does that make you a psychopath?”

“Because he’s a stranger! What if he never comes back with her? What if he gets chased by paparazzi and CeCe is the next Princess Diana?!” The thought shuttered through your bones, a shiver down your spine when Zoey cleared her throat.

“Okay, so, as a mom, I totally get that. But I also think you’re freaking out too much.”

The cupcake tin rattled onto the granite. “How?!”

“He’s not a stranger, he’s been living with you guys for like, over a month now.”

You thought about it for a second. Two weeks turned into a few more, four weeks slipped by easily. What felt like it was going to be a blip on the radar now felt like a totally normal thing: dinners with him as the fourth seat and texts to him in the middle of the day asking if there was anything he was in the mood for.

“I just can’t believe I trust him enough to do that, I guess.”

“Y/N, he’s a good guy,” she laughed. “He likes your kids and he definitely likes you.”

“We’re not going there,” you said. “I have a house full of ten-year-olds and cupcakes to frost.”

“Okay, well, you’re not a psychopath. And there’s nothing wrong with having feelings for him.”

“Zoey! You are starting to sound like the psychopath!”

“I’m alright with that,” laughter through the phone when you told her you had to go. Love you, see you later, pinch Benny’s cheeks for me.

You were swept up in the excitement of the night. Your own pizza was delivered before 8pm, a movie turned on by 9pm. They decorated cupcakes at the dining room table and proceeded to eat more than they could fit in their tummies.

Maeve was in heaven, opened presents when you snapped pictures on your phone. Harry had texted to let you know they’d stop at Shelli and Irv’s before heading home. If CeCe came home in the middle of presents, she’d probably break down right there.

So when you heard the alarm signal a new entry, you hoped CeCe was too tired to argue with you about sleeping in her own room and not in Maeve’s with the rest of them. Your legs were folded beneath you on the couch, noise in the kitchen when Harry rounded the corner with CeCe asleep on his shoulder.

You stood up, eyebrows high when he smirked in your direction. “She’s out cold,” he laughed. “Fell right asleep on the way home.”

“It’s like a ten minute drive from their house,” you said, opening your arms to take her. “Sorry, here.”

“I can bring her up...just lead the way,” he motioned with his head for you to go first up the stairs. He followed you down the hall and to CeCe’s room, pink walls and a plush carpet underneath her twin-sized bed that still seemed too big for her.

He put her down when you flipped on a nightlight, watched when you tugged the duvet over her and kissed her on the forehead. You sighed when you stood up straight beside him, voice quiet. “I’m not waking her up to brush her teeth cause she’ll freak out and want to be included in the party. Am I a bad mom?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, smirked down at you quickly before looking back to her. “You’re a great mom.”

You elbowed him in the ribs playfully. “You have to say that.”

“I do?”

“I’m your landlord,” you laughed, leading him back into the hallway.

“I thought you were my friend?”

A sigh, the darkness a cover for your confusion and your fluttering heart beat. “Yeah, that too.”

He was quiet for a second, if it weren’t for the bedroom of kids down the hall you’d pull him into you despite better judgment. He stared down at you with a dimpled smile, but you took a step back.

“Thanks for taking her, and hanging out with her. You really didn’t have to.”

“I had fun,” he reassured you. “We got a pizza and ate in a park near Westwood Hills, then got ice cream, visited with Shelli and Irv,” he listed it off like it brought him as much joy as it did her.

“Hey, not to be weird or anything, but--how’s your house coming?”

He sensed the shift in the air too, but he didn’t know that it came from a place of fear. A question you had to ask: this was temporary, this wasn’t real, this was just a convenient set up and you couldn’t lose sight of that.

“Oh, yeah--I’m going over on Sunday to see it. Apparently there are still issues with the plumbing that have to be updated. They said it might be a few more weeks.”

“Okay, I just didn’t know.”

“Yeah, is that okay? I can try to find somewhere to stay if you need me out?”

“No,” you said it quickly. “I don’t need you to leave.”

“Okay,” he said, his eyes still on yours. He reached forward to brush a piece of hair behind your ear. “I like staying here with you guys.”

“...I like it too.”

“Mom?” Maeve’s head poked out of her bedroom. “Hayley spilled soda on the carpet!”

He stepped back from you quickly, like his reflexes were getting better each time. You laughed at his sudden movement, “coming!”

He smiled down at you and let out an exaggerated sigh once Maeve’s door was slammed shut and the music was back on, a magnetic pull between your chests that maybe he felt too. “Hayley, Hayley, Hayley.”

But again, a rush of uncertainty and self-doubt made you grateful for the interruption, your stomach weaving itself in knots when you stared at your ceiling fan and hoped that sleep would come.

Work picked up in the next week, Tristan was in your office most days with spreadsheets and graphs and to-do lists that made you feel like you needed a margarita at 2pm. On Wednesday Harry made dinner and CeCe had a meltdown when you forced her to take a bath.

Friday night entailed dinner at Shelli and Irv’s, the girls and Harry and Jeff too. You stood in the kitchen with a glass of wine in hand, Shelli watched as their chef sautéed something through steam. When Jeff pulled Harry away to show him a new guitar Irv had been gifted, you ignored the smile on Shelli’s face.

“How are things going?”

“Fine,” you said, casually and calm and cool. “How are you?”

“Y/N,” she smiled. “Does Jeffrey know?”

“Know what?”

“About you and Harry?”

“No,” you told her quickly. “There’s nothing to know, alright? We were drunk, it was not a big deal.”

“Alright,” she held up a hand, effectively resigning when she sipped her Pinot Grigio, a disappointed sigh before she asked: “How are the girls holding up?”

You sighed, unsure if she’d really drop it. You told her about Maeve’s birthday party and caught her up on the body wash debut. Deadlines were quickly approaching, the launch party was being scheduled and production was full steam ahead.

You almost thought you’d make it through the rest of the night without any drama--no more mention of Harry or the happenings between you. But eventually he and Jeff found their way back to the kitchen and you hoped that no one noticed how close Harry stood to you.

Jeff was in the middle of filling you and Shelli in on Harry’s album plans: they were wrapping up production and soon they’d announce the release date, his excitement cut off by a shout from the backyard.

“Mommy!” CeCe’s voice was shrill and desperate as it rang through the house. She let out a loud sob and when you looked up, you saw her clutching her elbow with a new grass stain on her shirt. She was fine, it was one of those moments where she thought the world was ending but everyone else knew getting knocked over by her sister wouldn’t kill her.

“She���s fine,” Maeve rolled her eyes, a quick look down to CeCe who’s eyes were already filled with tears.

“No I’m not!” she screamed back at her sister.

You looked to Shelli with an exasperated look, set your glass of wine down on the counter. Before you could make any movement, though, Harry’s hand hovered on the small of your back. “I’ll go, enjoy the wine. She’s fine.”

He was right, there was no question that CeCe would survive her scraped elbow and bruised ego. He moved towards the backyard and you were frozen in place when Jeff’s forehead wrinkled.

“What was that?” he asked, eyebrows strung together like tea lights once Harry was out of earshot.

“I don’t know--what do you mean?”

You looked over at Harry, now on the ground in front of CeCe who’s wails were much quieter. She wiped at her wet eyes, a little laugh escaped her lips when Harry brushed the grass off of her elbow and cracked a joke.

“Well, he seems pretty good with them,” Jeff leaned against the counter, the sliding door providing a perfect view as CeCe stood up and raced back towards Maeve.

“Yeah, I mean, he is.”

“He also touched your back in a funny way.”

Shelli raised her eyebrows and sipped at her wine again.

“And now my mom is making a weird face,” Jeff’s eyes narrowed when he looked at you. “Are you--is there, like, something going--”

“No,” you said quickly, a finger pointed at Shelli and another pointed at Jeff. “Do not say anything in front of the girls.”

Shelli stifled a laugh but managed to look incredibly innocent at the same time.

“Oh my god!” Jeff said this with a noise of shock, eyes wide when he looked between you and Shelli, then back out to the yard where Harry laughed with Irv. “Oh my god, and you knew?”

Shelli shrugged her shoulders, a don’t blame me look crossed her face when you took a swig of wine to calm the pounding of your heart.

Jeff had always been protective and caring and like a brother. Not in a weird way, not in the you can’t date my friends way. Just in the sense that he wanted to know who you were hooking up with and he’d been encouraging you relentlessly to stop picking assholes ever since you filed for divorce.

But this was different, this was a friend of his and a client of his. It was someone that his entire family knew and this was probably the worst choice of rebound.

“Please relax,” you said this with a look of warning in his direction. “I will explain to you what your lunatic mother is smirking about but you have about fifteen seconds to wipe the look of shock off your face before he comes back in here.”

“She’s fine,” Harry waved a hand once he was back in the kitchen. “And what look of shock are we wiping off of our faces?” The dimple was there again, the corner of his mouth pulled up and he scanned all three of you for any sort of information.

“Just that you are so good with the girls,” Jeff covered for you, a confident nod when he hoped Harry would believe him.

“That’s surprising to you?” Harry pulled his head back, an obvious look of mock offense. “I’m great with children. They love me.”

Maeve came in from the fading light, out of breath from running around with whatever ball they’d gotten their hands on. “Who loves you?”

“Kids,” Jeff replied for him.

“Oh,” Maeve said. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” You looked down at her, unsure if she was agreeing or just voicing that she understood.

She shrugged, plucked a chicken skewer from a dish in front of Shelli. “I mean, I like having him around.”

Harry was practically tickled pink. “Thank you, Maeve.” He turned to rub this in Jeff’s face. “See?”

“He cooks well, plays outside with us, definitely funnier than mom,” Maeve kept listing things off, pulling laughter from the rest of the crew.

“Maeve!” You whined. “I’m funny!”

“You’re like, sometimes funny.”

“Sometimes funny is better than never funny,” Harry nodded in your direction, an attempt to soften the blow.

CeCe had wandered in behind her sister, she picked at the scrape on her elbow until you called her attention. “CeCe--do you think mommy’s funny?”

“Mmmm,” the thought on it for a second, put her finger to her chin and scrunched up her nose. “Sort of.”

Jeff let out a big laugh at that, Harry tried to stifle one and you dismissed the jabs. “Okay, well, it’s not like anyone here is a comedian.”

“Harry’s funny,” CeCe said with a smile. “He reads books in silly voices.”

Jeff’s eyebrows shot up at that again, amused and surprised by the fact that Harry was in on the bedtime routine. But it was infrequent, sometimes CeCe would beg for more time outside or another thirty minutes of TV.

If the tears got aggressive or the tantrum became too much, she perked up pretty quickly if Harry offered to read with her. It was way more exciting than reading with you, Maeve had explained.

After showering Harry with compliments, the girls were excited to sit on Shelli and Irv’s patio. Pink lemonade and a delicious dinner, though neither of them would even so much as take a bit of your salad.

They ran around some more while you sipped wine, Jeff and Harry had been talked into a two versus two soccer match and Irv laughed his head off when Maeve actually scored on Jeff. Darkness came and CeCe crawled into your lap, eyelids getting heavy until you buckled her into the backseat.

You’d taken one car, CeCe’s booster seat was too clunky to move over to Harry’s so you drove and felt slightly embarrassed about the crayons and coloring books scattered on the floor of the backseat.

“Mom, can I have another sleepover this weekend?”

“With who?”

“All of the girls from last weekend.”

“Honey, no, that was a big party for your birthday.”

“I’m aware,” she shot back quickly. “But we all had so much fun and we wouldn’t be as loud as we were last time.”

“I said no, Maeve. You can do something with your friends if you want but we’re not doing another sleepover right now.”

You’d been hesitant about it in the first place. A group of ten and eleven-year-olds? With Harry in the house? It felt like a recipe for disaster and aside from a few excited stares when they were first dropped off, you all escaped relatively unscathed.

You worried at first about the whispers from other moms--she’s letting a twenty-four year-old live with her children?--but you soon realized that they were almost more excited about sneaking a glimpse of Harry than their daughters were.

“You’re so annoying,” she quipped from the back. “You never let me do anything fun.”

Harry’s lips twitched up in a tiny smirk, a sideways glance in your direction. You’d already told him how awkward it felt to discipline them with him right there, a glass of wine in the kitchen one night and he teased you about your frustrated mom voice.

“Maeve--don’t be rude. You just had a birthday party and now you want another, basically.”

“No, I want to have the same girls over. It’s not my birthday so it’s not a birthday party.”

A left turn into the driveway. “But you want me to order pizza and make cupcakes and you want to drink a bunch of soda again?”

“Yes.”

You pulled into the garage and cut the engine, turning to look at her. “Maeve, sweetie, I love you. But no.”

She let out a huff and shoved the door open, she typed in the entry code and slammed the door to the house before the rest of you could even climb out.

“The drama,” CeCe shook her head, tired steps towards the house.

“The drama is right,” you told her with a laugh. “Go wash up and I’ll come up in a few, okay?”

She scampered up the steps, you dropped your keys on the counter inside and then turned to look at him. “Do you have a second?”

He nodded, leaned on the counter. “What’s up?”

You didn't know if it was a good idea, but you'd spent enough morning drives to school lecturing about how honest is the best policy, so you figured you'd give it a shot.

“Uh, well--Jeff may or may not be suspicious about you and...me.”

Using the phrase made you nervous, like he’d laugh and think it was stupid. You and me.

“Oh,” he said, eyebrows arched. “Did you--why did that come up?”

“Well you went to handle my crying child, which is--you know--”

He laughed a little, “too boyfriendy of me?”

Your heartbeat picked up in pace, your face felt hot and it suddenly felt like he was watching you too closely.

“No--I don’t know--you touched my back and he just asked what was happening.”

He deflated at that, hung his head low for a second and then looked up. “Oh, I--uh--I’m really sorry, I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

“No!” You felt bad, that wasn’t the message you were trying to convey. If anything, you wanted to give him the out and the okay that he didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to step into your family like some hero for you or your daughters. “You didn’t make me uncomfortable, I just--I don’t know where you are at, I guess.”

“And now Jeff is asking questions,” he laughed, a nod like he knew where you were going with it.

There was no label necessary. It wasn’t that type of thing, you knew that. “That’s what you walked in on after CeCe got hurt.”

Another nod, like the puzzle pieces were fitting into place. “Right. Got it. Was he--how did he seem? Did you tell him that we--”

“He put it together,” you cut him off, again careful of the words used around the girls even though they were upstairs and--by the sound of it--bickering in the bathroom. “But he was fine with it. I just think we need to be careful, you know. The girls...and this is temporary, and--”

“Absolutely.”

“So, you know, just--”

“Yeah.”

An awkward silence. “I should go tuck them in.” You turned on your feet and headed for the stairs before he could reply, desperate to get out of the situation out of fear of having to find more words to string together in a messy jumble of emotions.

Another slammed door from Maeve when you reached the top of the stairs. You knocked twice. “Can I come in, please?”

“No!”

“Maeve,” you leaned against the doorframe. Harry came up and offered an awkward smile. “Please let me talk to you.”

“I’m not talking to you!” She shouted.

Harry came over and knocked. “Maeve? It’s Harry--can I come in?”

Silence for a second, her footsteps were audible on the wood floor. The door opened a crack, she peered out with narrowed eyes. “Fine--but not her.”

You looked over at Harry, unsure of his game plan but also fed up with the theatrics and the overreaction. He shrugged his shoulders half-apologetically, a smirk in your direction before he slipped into the room.

Did you stay and listen? Was it weird? What would he even say to her?

You decided against it, headed for your own bedroom and tugged on pajamas after you flicked on CeCe’s night light and kissed her goodnight. At least only one of them was being dramatic today.

Five minutes passed, then ten. You tried not to look at the clock and focused instead on a book Zoey had told you was a must read.

Eventually there was a knock on your door, Harry pushed it open and smiled. “Do you want some intel?”

“Duh,” you said. “Come in.”

He walked forward and sat on your bed, a sigh when he brought his eyes to yours again. “Well, she said you’re annoying again.”

“Of course.”

“She’s just grumpy. Said Hayley wanted to have a sleepover this weekend because it would be better at her house.”

“Ah,” you nodded. “Some 5th grade rivalry.”

“Classic, really.”

You laughed. “Was she okay talking to you?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, eyebrows low on his forehead. “Opened right up.”

“Well, we do know she likes you more.”

He rolled his eyes. “She just likes that I’m not you.”

“Feels like that’s the same thing.”

Quiet for a moment when he angled towards you, scanned your face with his eyes.

“I guess I’ll go say goodnight.”

“Oh, I tucked her in.”

Your mouth tugged into a smirk. “You what?”

“She said she didn’t want you to come in.”

“So you tucked her in?”

He let out a laugh, explained the process like it should have been obvious. “Yeah--pulled up the blanket. Patted her on the head. She said she brushed her teeth.”

You leaned back against the headboard, the same buzzing feeling in your chest took flight when he asked: “why is it so shocking to everyone that I’m good with them?”

It slipped out before you could think of the possible consequences. “Because you’re young.”

“I’m not that young.”

“And Luke was just--not like that. He was pretty disinterested after CeCe was born.” You hoped this was enough of a redirection.

“You’re really caught up on my age, aren’t you?”

“No.”

He raised his eyebrows and offered a look that said: bullshit. When he didn’t speak, you cracked a joke.

“Or...you are not hung up enough on how old I am.”

“Why should I care how old you are?”

“Cause you’ve had sex with me and you’re living in my house.”

“Both of those things I am aware of. And feel really good about both of them.”

You let out a laugh at his nonchalance, folded your arms over your chest when he stood up. “You’re something else.”

“I’m not,” you disagreed.

“I think you are,” he nodded, leaned closer to you and offered a challenging glare. His hair was messy, he’d been running around in the backyard with them at Shelli and Irv’s, a few glasses of wine in him seemed to loosen him right up to the point that he was ready to slide tackle your six-year-old.

He watched you for a second, almost like he was waiting for you to stop him. You didn’t, though, you wanted him to kiss you just as much as it looked like he wanted to close to the distance between your chests.

Instead of telling him you shouldn’t, instead of telling him that the girls were down the hall and this was risky, you pulled him on top of you, tugged him by the t-shirt until he flopped down on your bed with a laugh against your lips.

He lifted himself up after a clumsy moment, looked down at you and smirked.

“What?” You asked playfully.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been so turned on by someone in my whole life.”

His words circled around you, pulled your body up to melt into his when his hand cupped your face. He laced his fingers through the hair along your neck, the warmth from his body made your pulse rise with each second.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this when they’re home?”

If the dimples on his cheeks weren’t enough, if the way his tattoos littered his skin wasn’t enough, if the look in his eyes right now on top of you was not enough to create a full-on mom fantasy in your head, the way he talked about your daughters was.

“Yeah,” you tugged him back against your mouth, felt the way your hips tilted against his without any thought. His hands moved to your wrists, holding them in place when he trailed his lips down your jaw, down your neck, pressing kisses in a line along your collarbone.

His hands were warm when they grazed your hips, connecting with skin beneath the fabric of your shirt. You grasped for the hem of his and tugged it over his head in a quick motion, eager to reconnect and feel his skin against yours.

He tasted like wine and smelled like summer, yanked your panties down to your ankles and used his fingers to pull quiet gasps from you like no one had ever before. He held onto your headboard and thrusted into you after you begged: please, please fuck me.

S’probably my favorite thing to do, he said.

The lights were long off and when your heart beats settled and you wiped sweat from your forehead, he laced his fingers between yours.

“Does Jeff want to kill me?”

“No,” you giggled, turned on your side to get a better look at him. The moon through the window illuminated his nose, his eyebrows, the specks of light green in his eyes as they devoured you. “But I’m sure you’ll get a talking to.”

“Should I not talk to him about it?”

You knew what he was asking, you knew he really meant what am I supposed to tell him? What does this mean?

You didn’t have an answer. You didn’t know what he should say or how you should address any of this, because at the end of the day you were a mom and a business owner and he was eight years your junior. He had an album to finish and tour and you knew how that worked.

You watched your dad’s busy lifestyle pull his marriage apart at the seams. Late nights, dinner parties, too much coke in the 80s before you were born and all of those signs pointed in one direction: this would never last.

It couldn’t last, nothing about the equation made sense. Harry + you = fling, rebound, a hook up or friends with benefits type situation that would eventually fade into a memory when he went on tour or when he got the call: your house is finished!

You didn’t have to answer him, though, the pattering of feet in the hallway as a little voice shouted mommy! had you shoving Harry out of bed and onto the floor with a thud before CeCe could push the double doors open.

“Mommy! I had a bad dream!”

“Hi, honey, oh, it’s okay,” you were upright in bed and welcoming her into your arms when Harry grimaced in the dark.

He mouthed a few swear words as you held CeCe, squishing her face into your shoulder to keep her eyes from landing on Harry. You gestured at him wildly with your free hand, ordering him to duck down and remain unseen.

“It was just a dream,” you told her, “you’re okay. Do you want me to walk you back to bed?”

“No,” she cried out quickly. “Can I sleep here?”

You hesitated, then nodded and looked at Harry in the dark. “Of course, yes, you can fall asleep here and then I’ll bring you back to your room.”

“Okay,” she said, the steadiness of her voice returning when she crawled out of your lap and to the spot where Harry had just been. She tugged at the comforters, pushed the pillow in different directions before she let her head rest atop it.

She let out a sigh, her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks and soon enough Harry poked his head up to look at you with wide eyes as you rubbed CeCe’s back.

You held up a finger to your mouth, gave him a threatening glare when he bit back a laugh. You rolled your eyes--it wasn’t funny. She almost walked in on the two of you and while she’d already endured some traumatic things this year, seeing her mom hooking up with the pop star from down the hall would be sure to take the cake.

When Harry caught your gaze again, you smirked, he giggled, clamped a hand over his mouth and watched you for a second.

“Be quiet!”

“You’re the one talking,” he laughed.

“Well she’s asleep now, but we can’t bring her back yet or she’ll wake up.”

“How long do we have to sit like this?”

“A while,” you told him with certainty. “This is called parenting.”

But he did, he sat on the floor on the side of the bed, watched you watch her and eventually, he picked her up from the mattress and followed you down the hall to her room. She softened into him, head on his shoulder and arms around his neck. The sight of it made you want to replay the earlier scene in your head over and over.

She didn’t stir, a few heavy sighs when you pulled the comforter back up to her shoulders, and once the door was shut behind you both, you smirked up at him.

“I think you should go back to your room.”

“Really? After all of that?”

“After almost getting caught by my six-year-old? Yes.”

He laughed and rolled his eyes playfully, crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine, but maybe we can do that again at some point and have it end differently.”

You nodded. “I think that sounds doable.”

He leaned forward, kissed you quickly, and then turned to head for his own room. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Goodnight, Harry.”

**

Harry came home from his house tour with good and bad news. The plumbing was fixed, which sped up their timeline, and yet the painters and interior decorator had gotten behind because of it, pushing the timeline out a few weeks.

You weren’t sure which part was good and which part was bad, because by now you were having trouble imagining what your house would feel like without him in it.

You got the news when he strolled in, athletic shorts and a baseball hat on his head when Jeff clapped him on the back. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Harry eyed him suspiciously, reached into the fridge for a juice box. “I live here…”

“Oh, I know you live here.”

“Hello, hi,” you waved at Jeff. “Please do not be weird.”

“That’s all he knows how to be,” Harry offered you a fake-apologetic look.

“That’s all he knows how to be,” Jeff mocked him. “Actually, I know how to be cool and not weird about the fact that my childhood best friend and my adult best friend-slash-artist are now, you know, involved.”

Your stomach did a somersault at his wording, a quick look in Harry’s direction, sure that he would deny the accusation or play it all down.

You found it hard to believe that Harry would be in support of labeling this as anything. Why on earth would a guy like him want to be tied to you with any sort of label or phrasing or word?

“Moving on,” Harry said with a nod. “Are we down to meet up with Tom and Sam tomorrow?”

“Yeah, and we have to do that phone call on Tuesday to go over tour dates.”

Maeve ran in then, a smile on her face when she looked up at Harry. “I have something to tell you.”

“Yeah?”

“I learned a new chord on the guitar. By myself.”

“You did?” He acted way more excited about it than he likely was.

Jeff smiled and then told Maeve: “If you learn enough chords maybe you can be his guitarist.”

“Really?!” She beamed.

“No,” you shook your head.

“Of course you would say that.”

“Maeve--you’re a kid, you can’t go on tour.”

“She’s right,” Harry said with a sweet smile, “You’re a bit too young for life on the road.”

“I’m eleven now, though!”

“I know! And very mature for eleven,” he complimented. “I’ll tell you what. You can for sure come visit and come back stage and maybe even bring a friend if your mother lets you.”

She looked to you quickly, excitement in her eyes when they all waited for your response. “Yeah--we can go at some point...see a show or something.”

“Hayley is going to die, oh my god!” She squealed with delight and then moved to sit at a stool beside Jeff.

He had half a sandwich on a plate, one he picked up on his way over for a boring Sunday afternoon of lounging by the pool. Maeve reached for a chip from the bag in front of him.

“By the way, mom, she invited me over Wednesday after school to work on a project, so can you bring me?”

“I have to bring CeCe to dance, sweetie.”

“Well I need you to bring me to the store to get supplies for this stupid poster-board thing we have to make! And Hayley’s mom said she had a question about Luna--something about a moisturizer or something.”

“I can take CeCe to dance,” Harry shrugged, almost like an onlooker in the room. “S’not a big a deal.”

“Are you sure?”

Jeff and Maeve crunched on chips between you, watching the exchange.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll just need to put her booster seat in my car.”

“And bring her a snack for after--she’s always cranky and hungry.”

He laughed, “I can manage that.”

“What would we do without you, Harry?” Maeve asked, a smile on her face.

Jeff put his chin in his hands, teasing. “Yeah, what would we do without you?”

“No one would get anywhere, people would seriously be missing out on my chicken tacos, and this house would be a lot less fun to live in.”

Maeve nodded in agreement, another chip stolen from Jeff. “True, true, and true.”

A few nights later it dawned on you that Maeve and Harry were as close as ever, spending evenings in your dad’s old office while Maeve tried to wrap her arms around a guitar long enough to strum a few chords.

CeCe didn’t seem to feel too left out, she was more than happy to be an audience for Maeve when she’d come running into the living room: Harry taught me a G chord!

On Tuesday night after school it was CeCe’s idea to go for pizza, she chirped about it in the backseat the entire way home, and after learning that the body wash production was behind schedule, you weren’t in the mood to cook.

You took Harry’s car--showed him how to strap the booster seat in and make sure it wouldn’t budge. He wore a hat and sunglasses which both girls found hilarious, but to you it was almost disheartening. What did it mean for him to be seen out with your family?

He sat beside CeCe and cut her pizza into tiny bites so it would cool off, Maeve sipped Mountain Dew from a straw and filled you in on the latest with Hayley. This week was going well, though Hayley said something annoying in the cafeteria.

It felt normal, not weird for him to be sitting across from you, his feet against yours beneath the table and a smirk in your direction every once in a while.

Both Tristan and Zoey had been dying to hear more details. It slipped out one day in the office that okay...maybe it wasn’t just a one time thing, and now the group chat you had with them was blowing up every day.

They were excited for you, rooting for your comeback and rebound and eager for you to just admit that there was something there. But you weren’t able to do that, especially not when everything in your heart wanted to.

By the time you’d all finished eating, he dipped out the back to pull the car around front. You pointed at Maeve and told her to watch CeCe while you went up to the counter to pay for the pizza.

The woman behind the register smiled when you approached. Long acrylic nails, wrinkles at the corner of her eyes made it obvious that she could have been your mother.

“We had one large plain and one small with pepperoni,” you told her.

“Oh, you’re all set, sweetie, your boyfriend paid on his way out.”

Your head pulled back in surprise. “Oh--he’s--we’re not,”

She let out a laugh at your hesitance. “He was just as taken back when I told him he had a beautiful family--said they're not his, though."

You forced a laugh, if only to match the humor in her voice when you turned on your heels to head back to your booth. The thoughts started spinning when Maeve and CeCe climbed into the back of Harry’s car.

He smiled at you when you slid in, patted you on the thigh before he turned around to make sure both girls were settled--Maeve clicked CeCe’s buckle into place and then he put the car into gear.

Sleeping with Harry was mostly meaningless, right? He was attractive and living in your house and clearly you both got something out of it. Convenient, easy, fun. Most of your brain had you convinced that there’d never be any more to it. There was no way that Harry would be interested in sticking around: two kids, a business to run. You didn’t exactly come with no strings attached.

And he corrected the woman too--not my kids, not my family, not my wife, not my anything. Had she settled on the next step down when she called him your boyfriend, or had he offered the label to avoid an awkward encounter?

It felt immature, your heart beating with urgency as you thought about it the whole way home, beads of sweat along your hairline and not from the warm weather. He sensed it, eyed you from behind his sunglasses when he parked in the driveway. Maeve and CeCe raced to the backyard, leaving the two of you alone.

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah, all good,” you offered a small smile, the same response you gave to one of the girls if they caught you on a bad day.

He followed you inside, kept his eyes trained on you when you dropped your purse on the counter. “What?”

“You seem off.”

“I’m fine,” you lied again. What were you supposed to say? The woman behind the register at the pizza place is making me question the relationship we have and what it means?

You weren’t 17. You were 32. He was 24. All of these numbers swirled in your head when he took a few steps closer to you, eyes out the window quickly to make sure neither of the girls were watching you through the sliding doors.

He pushed a piece of hair behind your ear, lips turned down when he looked over your face. “You can talk to me, you know.”

“I know,” you caught his wrist and held on for a second, like if you let go he’d disappear and take everything between the two of you with him. You closed your eyes, knew better but still said: “the woman behind the counter called you my boyfriend.”

He let out a laugh, unaware that your words were actually a confession. “She called you my wife, said the girls were cute. I told her I couldn’t take credit.”

“Yeah,” you forced another smile.

“Is that--are you, did that bother you?”

“No,” you shook your head. “I just didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“I’m not,” he said, eyes still on you like he wasn’t quite sure where your head was at. He pressed a confusing kiss to your forehead but then said something about calling his sister. You checked work emails and night faded into morning like it always did, no matter how uncertain life was, you always had that.

The next afternoon you brought Maeve to Hayley’s, dropped her off with glue sticks and markers and a plethora of project supplies. A yoga class after that, had her home and with dinner on the stove by 6pm.

Eventually, CeCe burst through the door with a smile on her face. Her pink tutu was around her waist, her legs clad in light pink tights and her hair in a messy ponytail on top of her head. “I had the greatest time at ballet!”

You turned around in the kitchen, eager to hear about her day. “You did?”

“I did,” she nodded confidently. Harry came in the front door behind her, sunglasses on his face and CeCe’s unicorn backpack in hand. Maeve was sat at the counter with a pencil, growing angrier with fractions by the minute.

“Why’s that?”

“We danced to a fun song, and we played a fun game, and everyone loved Harry!”

Your eyebrows rose at that, eyes caught his when he lifted the sunglasses. “They did?”

“Moms, not the six-year-olds.”

This caught Maeve’s attention--she sounded almost disgusted. “Moms?”

“I guess ballet pick-up is typically a mom thing?”

You shrugged. “I mean--I don’t see a lot of dads there, so yeah.”

CeCe shimmied out of her tutu and then climbed up to a stool beside Maeve. Harry walked to hang her backpack on a hook by the backdoor, you questioned if it was even worth asking.

“Were they, like, hitting on you?”

“I mean, not really.”

“Not really?”

He walked over to the island and leaned on it, the dimple in his left cheek let you know he liked the hint of jealousy in your voice. “Maybe a little.”

Dinner simmered on the stove, evening sun brought a glow to the kitchen that made his eyes even more green than usual. When you didn’t reply he broke your gaze, let out a sigh and said: “I’m going to shower before dinner, yeah?”

“Sounds good,” you nodded quickly, embarrassed by the silliness of your question. Of course the moms were hitting on him, of course they were intrigued by his presence and of course they couldn’t help but say hi or even ask for a photo. It shouldn’t have surprised you in the slightest.

He was up the stairs and out of sight quickly, CeCe picked up an extra pencil of Maeve’s and started doodling on her agenda book. You pushed sautéed veggies around in a frying pan and pretended that all of this was normal.

“Hey mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you like Harry?”

You turned around quickly, Maeve’s eyes were inquisitive but not judgmental.

“Do I like Harry? Of course--he’s nice.”

“No, I mean do you like like Harry?”

CeCe didn’t seem too interested in your answer, she hummed to herself and kicked her feet back and forth. Maeve, though, waited patiently while you tried to piece together words that wouldn’t make the roof blow off of your house.

“Harry and I are friends, sweetie.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

You let out a forced laugh. “What is making you ask this?”

“You seemed jealous about the other moms.”

“I wasn’t jealous,” you defended. Were you really about to get into it with your eleven-year-old? Would you really defend yourself and make this the hill on which you'd die?

She watched you for a second, looked back down at the worksheet in front of her. “You seemed jealous.”

You were thankful for the fact that she wasn’t making any eye contact now. You let out a sigh and decided that not responding was your best option. Adrenaline coursed through your veins, had it been that obvious? Was she old enough to pick up on the undertones of your relationship?

You turned back to the stove, watched the vegetables sizzle in the pan as your mind started to cave in on itself. All of this was getting out of control, right? First the woman yesterday and the dizziness that overtook you when she said the word boyfriend. Now Maeve sitting at the counter with a curiosity in her that you couldn’t really blame her for.

The doorbell rang, CeCe’s head popped up in excitement. “Who is that?!”

“I don’t know,” you said. She hopped off her stool and took off the door as you followed behind her. You hadn’t planned on a visit from Jeff, maybe Tristan needed last minute approval on a product.

But when CeCe yanked the door open with both hands and an excited smile on her face, you didn’t expect to see Luke, hands in his pockets and eyebrows raised high.

“Daddy!”

“Hi sweetie,” he knelt down on one knee, wrapped his arms around her when Maeve made a noise of excitement before rushing over. She crashed into him, pushing her way into their hug.

“What are you doing here?” she asked excitedly.

“I wanted to visit, I was in the neighborhood,” he said with a shrug, eyes glancing up to you.

It was bullshit, he’d always been good at talking his way out of things or coming up with an explanation, smile sweet and words even sweeter. He backed away from them when they let go, stood back up and smiled at you, a quick nod in greeting.

“How’ve you been?”

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