#god her backstory is so sad

[bluerscarf]

/ᐠ ◞ ˕ ◟マ

[welcometoteyvat]

two hrs until arle animated trailer save me

[piosplayhouse]

Desperately printing out moshang pictures to show to mdzs and tgcf mains and shouting PLEASE LOOK AT MY BOYS! THEYRE A CANONICAL MAIN MXTX COUPLE TOO JUST LIKE HUALIAN WANGXIAN BINGQIU I SWEAR while they cross the street trying to avoid me

[uncaught-coolfish]

rambling time but while I’m fine with emerald getting redeemed (it was gonna happen eventually) and thank fuck for ilia getting redeemed but if they redeem cinder and especially if they redeem salem herself I will throw a metal chair at

[yumedoca]

Okinu's Lullaby...

[lrndvs]

Cowboy-ifies my fave by putting him in the chaps and the boots with the spurs (with the spurs)

[senseiwu]

I may or may not have Faith on my mind now ehehe but do you think she ever regrets not going to ninjago

GOOD

Faith should be on everyone's minds djgzfuzkd

Maybe she does, at least sometimes. She got a taste of what it was like when she fled from the Oni, although she was unwell and there was all that danger going on.

Maybe she regrets staying in the First Realm sometimes, but it probably feels nice to help your community so much, lead them towards better ways. And probably to have actual respect. Not just respect based off fear or a title. Or being the right hand of an awful man. Iron Baron and his lies are gone now; she and the others don't have to be controlled by fear anymore.

Plus, she also gets to ride dragons.

And if she ever wanted to go back to Ninjago, I'm sure her friends would welcome her with open arms, just as willing to have her now as they were to bring her back then.

[thatskindasapphic]

Screaming and crying and sobbing and hyperventilating over tlou ep 3 what the fuck

[nostalgia-tblr]

"but Sylvie is a murderer" OH GOD FORBID A WOMAN KILL ANYONE ON HER SCARY BATSHIT REVENGE-QUEST >:(

[chryzure-archive]

i know i’ve said this before, but i’ll say it again: for as much as the vampire!jacks scene was fun and funny, it makes no fucking sense in the entire world that it’s set in. nor do the dragons, or whatever other creatures we add to it, nor prophecies, which apparently exist in this world now. it was a more grounded sense of fantasy in the original trilogy, which made everything feel easier to connect to. it made the vibe stronger—which was stephanie’s strong point when it came to writing. but with this new series, instead of expanding on her strong vibes (and possibly clearing up/strengthening her world-building), she just scatter-shot a ton of random, unrelated Things She Likes and strung them together in a patchwork that doesn’t work at all. patchwork world-building can work, but you really have to put thought into it and have an underlying thread that ties it back together—and she did not do that. this new series seems to take place in a different world entirely: new rules, new concepts, even (honestly) a completely new jacks (i agree with everyone saying that it’s like a fanfic version of jacks). this feels like it would’ve been better as a completely different book with different characters—but she couldn’t let go of jacks to do so. add to all that the fact that evangeline is honestly just a boring character who never takes initiative, and i’m just… highly disappointed. i remember finding out that it was going to be a book about jacks and being excited by what would happen, and then reading it and going “… so what was that?” i don’t understand what happened, nor why jacks is a completely different person (a lot more somber—at times, i’d compared him to azure, which… *shivers* it’s bad that i could do that.), nor why the world felt so disconnected. the biggest red flag, truthfully, was discovering that vampires existed in this universe literally ten pages before we see them. not mentioned in the original trilogy (which makes sense, since she revealed that she never planned the series all the way through—it works for a game-like atmosphere, where not everything needs to tie together), but also not hinted at in the same book where it was apparently close to the climax. you need to build that up more, esp since all we really got was a vampire lore dump right before jacks got turned into one.

it could’ve been good if she’d worked on it for longer. it could’ve been better if she’d been able to let jacks go and worked on another project. revisiting the caraval universe would’ve been better after she’d given herself more time away from it. but instead, we got a weak book that doesn’t even have Fun Vibes to make it easy to read.

[g0dtier]

we need to teach literary analysis in schools bc AoT really just pulled unecessary twist #24920492 and put two groups against each other who both want to save their race where one group wants diplomacy and the other group wants to wipe their own race off the earth using eugenics so "at least they wont suffer anymore"

and people genuinely just went like "woahhh............idk whos side im on now :/ wow there really is no right or wrong here"

[cinastre]

i thought bels playlist was done and solid, but i guess i was wrong. it needed a song off the spirit soundtrack

[notscarsafe]

OKAY SO what with the TWO new Hermits implied by the updated banner I will say that, though the Skizz truthers have me convinced, I now have room to do my own crazy red string monologue and throw my hat in for my choice

1) Mythical J. Sausage (the J is silent) is a multitalented S-tier builder that absolutely deserves to be shoulder to shoulder with the Hermits. The man does buildings, interiors, terraforming, custom trees, and he does them SO WELL.

2) The production values!!! Beautiful replay mod sequences with shifting camera perspectives, shaders, music that sets the tone for each segment that's different from series to series. He already has more than a million followers on YouTube and for good reason!!

3) He has been SO consistent lately. He started a hardcore world about three months ago (about the time you might expect the Hermits to finalize their s10 choices maybe...???) and already has 15 episodes and hasn't gotten involved in any other big content. (He did just start playing a little of the BCG server but from what I understand that's super casual /copium copium copium).

4) That hardcore world is conveniently about to reach a good "pause" point. He started his world on a cherry blossom biome island that he's filled with a medieval village and starter farms, he's said it's almost full and what's left is the castle. I'm guessing the new season will start the first week of February, so if Sausage puts out a video this week building out that Castle and finishing that island it will be MIGHTY CONVENIENT TIMING.

5) This man can GRIND. His Hardcore world hasn't even been going half a year and he's built... So much??? Magnificent! And when he was on the Hermitcraft server he did the Razorcrest for scar AND the player head baby yoda/stormtrooper merch AND the noteblock themesong AND still built in the xmas village and other "diamond of peace" and so many other shenanigans. Did the man even sleep? He can grind with the best of them.

6) He can do redstone, too! Maybe not unique designs, I honestly don't know, but he builds farms for build materials no problem.

7) The DRAMA this man loves his improv and his backstory and trauma lore! For every series he does! Can you imagine if he gets to interact with Ren for an extended period of time, what that would do to them, to us?? Give Martyn a run for his money!!

8) Which brings me to my next point, which is that Sausage is already One of The Gang, because he's been in series with so many of the Hermits already! Empires and the crossover, obviously, but also Pirates with Cleo and Origins with Scar, and he's even done MCC! Joel is the only other player with the same depth of different series but there are other people truthing him already.

9) The EPIC BROMANCE with Pearl. My god the devotion of this man to his sunflower goddess bestie. I would try to do ot justice but y'all have seen floweroflaurelins work, you already know.

10) He's already a PG streamer but with HILARIOUSLY PG-13 tendencies. Imagine him and Cleo cracking each other up at an HHH stream, *grips your shoulders* IMAGINE IT.

11) Sausage comes with his own mascot in the form of interdimensional dog extraordinaire Bubbles, but he's also just an animal lover on general. Mans drinks his "I love Jellie" juice and had her in his world even before the sad news of her loss.

12) Diversity win! No one should be hired just for their gender, race, sexuality etc etc unless it's truly necessary to the job, but we were all happy when more women got added to the server in s8 and I know a lot of people would be happy to see some ethnic diversity added, too.

... That bulletin board had a lot more pins in it than I thought it did but anyway MYTHICALSAUSAGE TRUTHERS/ALL OTHER TRUTHERS RISE UP SPEAK YOUR TRUTH! we'll only get to wildly speculate for a few weeks so we might as well make it everyone else's problem ENJOY IT TO THE FULLEST!!

[animentality]

I got sad because I realized that the only good relationship that Dark Urge and Gortash had was with each other.

Gortash got sold by his parents, was abused in hell, barely escaped, and then spent the rest of his life plotting and scheming and refusing to get close to anyone, ultimately even selling another child he took in to the same nightmarish life he'd once escaped from.

Dark Urge was forced to kill their foster family by Bhaal, and then went to a Bhaal temple, where they might've been worshipped, but I highly doubt that the murder cult weirdos really thought of them as a person, and not just an object of worship. It is awful lonely up on that bloody pedestal. Plus the way they beg Bhaal for forgiveness for liking Gortash makes me suspect that it's never happened before.

And then I hold my little heart in my hands and weep for the two of them.

Because I know gortash is a piece of shit who refuses to break the cycle of abuse. And I know the dark urge has murdered a shit ton of people and enjoyed it too.

But...but...your honor ...I still feel sympathy.

I still felt sadness in the house of hope, when that asshole admitted he used to beat Gortash black and blue for fun.

I still felt grief when I read dark urge's letter to their god for ADMIRING someone.

For caring about a person.

And then I found out that dark urge had been living a normal life until they killed their foster parents.

You can say that dark urge enjoyed it, but I just don't think that's the case.

Baldur's Gate 3 has some laughably evil villains but there is nuance. There is humanity in most of the characters, good, evil, and morally gray. Even big baddies. Ketheric Thorm notably has a rather sad backstory full of grief, loneliness, and love turned to madness, Gortash was broken as a child by parents who shattered his ability to care for anyone but himself, and even Orin, if you confront her about Sarevok's relationship to her mother, can even be seen as a tragic figure. Like what the fuck, her own mom tried to kill her as an offering to bhaal.

Maybe all bhaalspawn are laughably one dimensional villains with absolutely no human traits to them, but that's just fucked.

One of my favorite themes is how everyone is a slave to the gods, their playthings, their disposal tools.

Poor Ketheric Thorm said it best when he said that we're just copper pieces to be traded, that we might have beaten him, but the gods beat him first.

He's so right, man. Most if not all the companions are slaves to Gods and devils.

Dark Urge was a slave to Bhaal, just a means to an end, a sharpened blade pressed against the world's throat, and Gortash was the plaything of devils, traded away by parents who didn't care about him, a powerless little boy who'd grow up to be a tyrannical power hungry despot.

I choose to believe they recognized each other. They worked together initially because they had their own agendas, and were doing their usual song and dance of manipulating others, but the more time they spent together, the more they actually liked each other.

They were genuinely friends, or lovers, and it's sickening and it's driving me mad, and it's all so sad.

[once-upon-an-animation]

There are many things that frustrate me with the writing of Annabeth in the PJO TV Show, but I think one thing that I haven’t seen people talk much about is the mini-arc of Percy needing to help Annabeth with her sense of fun/humanity.

Just so we’re clear, I absolutely hate this arc.

Prior to the show’s premiere, I believe there was a quote from Rick discussing new-ish things that we’d see in the show, and one of those things was Percy helping Annabeth “tap into her humanity”. I can’t find the exact quote, but it should be on the series update Twitter account if you search it.

When I first read this quote, I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but I thought maybe we’d get an expansion of the theme of forgiveness that we got in the original books, or maybe we’d get an arc about Annabeth’s pride and how that gets in the way of her relationships with others. Or maybe they’d try and break down the ways in which Annabeth helps to uphold the gods’ ways of doing things, and align her more with the mortal point of view (which they essentially did, but not the overall point).

What I certainly wasn’t expecting was for them to strip Annabeth of most, if not, all of her smaller/softer traits, and give her this unusually stoic and stiff personality, where she suddenly has no familiarity with casual aspects of the mortal world (movies, Disney world, common idioms), and needs Percy to introduce these concepts to her in an effort to “unlock” her humanity.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Words cannot emphasize enough how much I despise this arc. Not only is it entirely nonsensical for Annabeth not to be familiar with these things (she was with her dad at least until the age of 7 and she goes to a camp full of other children who are regularly in contact with the mortal world; do you seriously expect me to believe that at no point in her 12 years of life, she never saw a single film, heard of Disneyworld, or heard common idioms and slang terms from her camp-mates? Seriously???)

But ALSO!

Book!Annabeth had PLENTY of humanity to go around! Even with her pride and initial coldness towards Percy, she plays hackeysack with him and Grover on the first day of their quest! She has a cute silly crush/admiration/infatuation on Luke. She nerds out big time over the St. Louis Arch! She’s the first to steal clothing from Waterland! She screams and cries when she encounters the mechanical spiders! She has an expression of sadness when she shares her backstory about Thalia and Luke! She gets lost in her little construction game at the Lotus, so much so that Percy has to use her phobia to pull her out of the trance! She grabs Percy’s hand when they first enter the Underworld because she’s scared! She tears up when it’s time to leave Cerberus!

And you stripped her of all these things, because you’re so desperate to overemphasize the Percabeth romance, and you felt that it was absolutely necessary to have Percy educate Annabeth on “unlocking humanity”??? Why!!!!

Not only did Book!Percy help Annabeth discuss things about bad parents and approaching forgiveness, but Book!Percy already had something important to offer Annabeth: loyalty, trustworthiness, and reliability. You didn’t need to take away her already-present traits and wits to convince us that Percy was the type of person she needed in her life, because we can already see what he offers her in the books. So why oh why did you feel the need to give us the silly “tap into your humanity” arc? Why did you turn her personality into something that it wasn’t? Why did you take away her depth just so her character could better serve Percabeth?

I don’t even necessarily agree with the criticism that this version of Annabeth feels like it prioritizes Percabeth more, but I can see why people made that complaint. Y’all took away so much of what made this character endearing, because you felt like it was a much bigger priority to have Percy help her unlock humanity than to let her be human prior to meeting him and outside of him. Not only does her personality get shafted, but her relationships with other people get shafted too! Her interactions with Luke are affection-less, she sent Grover off on his own in the Lotus so she could go off with Percy, and I don’t even think that she and Chiron interacted once this season; I don’t even think she mentioned the part about her calling him to come pick her up after she attempted living at home again!

But don’t worry; we’ll get plenty of scenes doubling down and tripling down on how Percy is the center of her world now! Yay!

[icallhimjoey]

Reinvent Love

♥ ♥          Joseph Quinn x Fem!Reader 

Summary: You and Joe are treading new waters. You’re no longer flatmates, but still close. More than friends, but nothing defined. Nothing labeled. Determined to not lose what you have, though. But, can you?

CW / disclaimer: rpf, fem!reader, language, adult themes, jealousy, accusations, soft fluff, season 3 of my flatmate!joe

Author’s note: the first cracks; they're here - and, again, you don’t need to have read define close or explain us, but it’ll obviously give you backstory, which might help!

Wordcount: 3.6K

part one - part two - part three - part four - part five

It was silly. Joe was being silly.

He knew it, and felt so stupid for it. Like, in hindsight, the worrying felt so dumb. The constant milling shit over didn’t change anything, there was no real point to it. Although, maybe you being on his mind in this... new manner was what summoned you last night.

You just showed up, talking about a crazy day, no sad pouts, no needy touches. Just jittery movements and a lot to tell him.

Joe kind of sat back on his sofa, spread out and leaning into his left elbow and watched you pace around his lounge. Something about something a colleague had said that then turned out to be lies and you found out something by overhearing a phone call you weren’t meant to overhear – Joe was barely following along. Didn’t really try his best to, if he was honest.

He was moreso paying attention to what you were actually doing – were you even aware that you had started grabbing random things he had left lying around on his coffee table, on the kitchen island, on the counters, and one by one, put everything away where it was meant to go?  

Joe pursed a smile as he realised you knew exactly where everything went. Why did that make his chest ache in the best of ways?

This new casual form of intimacy seemed so small, but Joe felt how it smothered that little grain of doubt that resided in his chest. That little grain that had convinced him that you were probably going to fall into a new routine with your new flatmate after he moved in and, then you would probably grow close to him and Joe knew how you... no.

No.

He couldn’t think that.

It wasn’t fair on you. He caught himself trying to finish the thought a lot, but he knew it wasn’t fair. Wasn’t true. He didn’t even fully believe it. It was this thing. Still, he also couldn’t help how it simultaneously made him grow a little more possessive and made him want to prepare for the worst.

But, she was here, he had to remind himself.

She’s here.

And she was wandering around his space, letting her train of thought flow freely from her brain into his living room and he used to witness this all the time when you lived together still. Joe realised he’d actually missed it a lot, and wasn’t that the whole point? That he got to miss you now?

God, Joe missed you a lot and you were right there and he could just burst at the seams at how fucking lucky he felt.

He was a just normal guy in a normal flat with a normal relationship– well, normalish relationship, anyway. Not that you had talked about anything yet. Of course you hadn’t. But it was pretty fucking obvious what this was. So he had started shrugging whenever someone would ask if you were actually together, which felt a lot better than the forever, “No, we’re flatmates, what are you talking about?” he used to throw at people, practically gaslighting them out of whatever they thought they’d witnessed between him and the girl that he used to live with.

It was working. The plan he had made, this vague idea of normalcy; it was working out the way he had wanted it to.

And yea, sure, you were getting a new flatmate and Joe had a difficult time not feeling some type of way about that, but, he had made the decision to move out and, look at you now.

“Do you think I can get a raise out of this? Or at least get a weird bonus, mid-term?”

Joe had a hard time not laughing at your question as he saw you had already mentally moved onto something else. You were stood in the middle of the room, both hands on your hips, eyes scanning the room. Everything tidy and organised.

“Joe, when did you last clean?”

Joe followed your gaze up into one of the corners of the ceiling.

“I cleaned today.” Joe said, knowing you’d likely not take it as an honest answer. You had lived together, remember? No fucking way was Joe ever going to feel the urge to maybe sometimes swipe a feather duster across the upper corners of his living room.

You shuddered at the thought of what resided behind his curtains there.

You sighed and tutted and turned back to Joe’s kitchen like you were going to start cleaning his fucking ceilings at half past ten at night.

“Hey, no. No, no. Stop. Will you come sit down a second? My god.” Joe huffed, feigning annoyance. When you turned on your heel and giggled as you scurried over, Joe let a laugh escape his throat just before you let yourself fall into the cushions next to him.

He hooked an arm around your neck to pull you in so he could press his nose into your cheek a second. You gladly let him, and when he held you close like that for longer than you initially thought he would, you suddenly realised you’d just been talking about yourself for twenty minutes straight.

Just barged in with unimportant thoughts on your mind that you just verbally vomited right into Joe’s space. You knew it was mostly nervous energy that was only there because your new flatmate picked up his keys earlier, which now meant there was every opportunity for someone to just... walk into your flat at any given time. That had unexpectedly brought on way more anxiety than you previously thought it would do.

Hence why you decided to just... escape it, and went over to Joe’s to spend the night there.

Joe was pressing his nose into your cheek and held you in place for a bit before he moved his head down, hiding into your neck a second.

“You okay?” you asked softly, head tilting down a bit.

“Mm, yea, fine.” Joe inhaled deeply, before pressing a few small kisses to the crook there and moving back to look at you the in eye. He unhooked his elbow from around your neck and placed two cupped hands on either side of your face, swiping bits of hair back in the process.

Joe was leant all the way back into the sofa, head squished in between two of the back cushions and you took a moment to look at each other. Joe studied your face and rubbed his thumbs across the apples of your cheeks until you grew shy.

“You look tired,” you softly said before Joe sat up a little and leant closer. It had you close your eyes just before scrunching up your nose as he kissed the very tip of it.

“I am tired.” He mused, copying your nose scrunch when you blinked your eyes open again, and Joe looked so soft. Sort of pleased with life, happy to be where he was and like he’d just had a really good productive day. He blinked slowly, eyes only half open, and looked sleepy enough to slip right into dreams the second his head would hit his pillow.

You loved him like this. His hands on you, all soft touches. Comfy and cosy and calm. Just you and him. No one else. No threat of someone randomly walking in.

This was perfect.

“Mmm, me too.” You smiled and let Joe grab one of your elbows to pull an arm across his stomach as he sat back again.

“I’m not surprised. You’ve just done a 5K as you tidied this room, I think.”

You huffed a laugh as you sank into Joe’s side, and then you sat like that in silence for a moment. No TV on. No phones in sight for some easy distraction. Just you and Joe and the view of his living room.

“Are you okay?” Joe suddenly asked, emphasis on the you, and you tried hiding the small, hitched intake of breath by quickly nodding and casually going, “Yea. Fine.”

You could feel how Joe tucked in his chin to look at you.

He waited. Wasn’t going to tell you, “No, be honest...”, but also wasn’t going to accept it and move on. It was still like that. He knew you were lying, and you knew he knew, no words shared at all.

So you sighed and took a second, and then said, “Josh picked up his key today.”

And you didn’t want to explain what that meant.

Didn’t want to tell Joe that, for a while, this existing-in-two-flats thing had just felt like a bit of a joke. Just the two of you playing and being silly about whatever you really were. You still sort of thought of him as a flatmate because he still came over all the time, and you went over to his all the time too. You existed in the same space almost just as much as before, sort of.

But now a new flatmate was actually moving in, and suddenly, it felt like reality had slapped you right across the cheek like it had done that day that Joe moved out.

You’d gotten to hide away for a lot of that.

And there was no real hiding this time around.

You couldn’t go home and pretend Joe was going to move back in eventually, because now Josh’s things were going to be all over the flat. Which was fine. Josh signed a lease. His things were allowed to be all over the place.

It was just... things were getting real now.

Shit was real.

“Which reminds me,” you suddenly piped up, pushing uncomfortable thoughts down, tucking those away for another time and place. “This is going to save you some money!”

You saw how Joe’s mouth slowly stretched into a smile as he watched how his own feet rubbed against yours. Then he caught himself and quickly furrowed his brow, saying, “No, I don’t think it works like that.”

You copied his expression, but were more confused than anything else.

“Of course it does. Josh signed the papers, he’s going to start paying rent now, you–”

“I said that I had taken care of things, didn’t I?” Joe interrupted you, fingers playing with the folds in your sleeve of the arm that rested over his stomach. “Can’t just not keep a promise like that.”

You blinked at him a second, then moved to sit up to stare at him harder. If both Joe and Josh paid rent, that basically meant that you... got to live for free for a while? That math wasn’t mathing. One plus one wasn’t equalling two here. You looked around Joe’s flat and tried to think of his own expenses, and... what the fuck was he doing?!

“Joe,”

“You’re not going to be able to talk me out of this.”

“Joe.”

Joe ignored you and faked a yawn, sped it up along with stretched out arms above his head and quickly said, “So tired. Bed?” before getting up and leaving you on his sofa as he left the room.

“You’re insane if you think I’m just going to accept that!” you called after him and heard him laugh from down the hall.

“Did you not just say you were after a weird mid-term bonus?”

And you hated how that made you smile. Made you punch one of the cushions and sink your teeth into your bottom lip begrudgingly as you forgot to breathe a second.

Joe smiled to himself too as he turned on the lights in his bathroom. It felt like he was winning a contest - there was no contest, no one to fight, not really, but, he was definitely winning.

“You coming?”

Breathe.

Calm down.

You could pretend to fight him on this once more in the morning.

Crawling into bed with Joe had its own little routine which was different from the one at yours. Different order of things, because the lay out of the flat was different.

Bathroom first. You brushed teeth together, always had to stop Joe when he washed his face too aggressively and then used your own moisturiser on him. “Just for your dry patches,” you’d always say, but would end up swiping delicate fingertips all over anyway. There’d be a snarky comment, of you using too much, of him feeling too greasy, of how he was going to stick to his pillow all night now, and then you’d always kiss him to shut him up before moving on to do your own skincare routine.

When you’d get into bed, Joe would already be in there, giving his phone a last once-over before he’d scoot down and get comfortable.

This time, however, when you walked into his bedroom, the lights were already off, and it looked like Joe was already falling asleep.

This soft man.

So sleepy.

He was all messy curls and bare arms, duvet tucked under them, curled up right in the middle of his bed. You slid in and cuddled up right behind him, hips against his bum, chest to his back.

You were right.

Joe was already falling asleep.

You pushed a leg in between his for warmth and snuck an arm around his front.

“You’re crazy,” you whispered into the skin of his shoulder which prompted Joe to grab hold of your hand and pull it into his chest so you were hugging him properly. The big spoon to his small one. Then he just hummed as you pressed a small kiss to his warm skin there.

“So crazy.” you nuzzled into his pillow, your nose rubbing his back as you did, and you felt how he ducked his head down to press a small kiss to your fingers.

You fell asleep warm, comfortable, and smiling.

You woke up in the same way.

Just on your stomach now, and with Joe’s heavy limbs slung over your body. When you turned over, it woke Joe up, and for five blissful early morning minutes, you tried crawling into each other’s skin as best you could. Breathed each other’s breath and tasted each other’s skin. Stroked hands underneath clothes and had fingers crawling into underwear, just to touch and to hold.

When you quietly asked if Joe wanted coffee, he groaned and told you to shut up. He was able to feel you giggle to that, and he could cry with how happy he felt in that moment. Why would you have to go and ruin it by getting up to go and make coffee?

“Five more minutes.”

“Mmm... it’s never just five.”

Joe sighed, “Just five.” speech slurring with early morning drowsiness and then burrowed himself into you even more.

And fine.

Joe could have five more minutes.

But then they easily turned into twenty, because they always did, and you had to eventually bribe Joe with breakfast for him to let you go so you could sit up.

“If you take a slow shower, I’ll have it ready when you finish.” You looked over your shoulder where Joe, still with his eyes closed, smiled widely. His nose was slightly red from pressing it into your skin, and his bedhead made you have to suppress a giggle that you hid by leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead before you got out.

Joe barely even felt that little grain of bad in his chest when he thought of how much he loved you.

Because he did.

Joe fucking loved you.

There was going to be a moment soon where he was just going to have to say it. It was going to spill out of him in some other way if he wouldn’t simply use the words, he just knew it.

Joe loved you as he watched through squinty eyes how you reached for a pair of white socks of his to borrow.

Loved you as he watched you pull one of his old sweaters over your head before you walked out, bare legs still on show.

Loved you when he stepped into his living room after his shower to the smell of burnt toast and scrambled eggs and coffee.

Loved you as he watched you step onto a chair in the corner of his room, wet dishcloth in hand to remove the strings of dust you had scolded him over the night before.

Loved you as he felt what the sight of your stretched body, your bare tighs, and the little peep of your bum did to him inside of his boxers.

Loved you as he groaned and let his head fall onto the counter, having to breathe through it, because you were just cleaning his living room, and not giving him a sensual striptease act or whatever.

Loved you as you looked back over your shoulder, raising your eyebrows in surprised confusion before accusingly asking, “Really, Joe? Cleaning?”

Loved you as he stutteringly defended the blood rush down south by saying, “You have no idea what you look like right now.” into his elbow where he had to hide his face for a second.

Loved you, loved you.

He was hardly able to deny any of it.

And he didn’t feel that he had to, either.

Because, you were there. In his flat. In his clothes. Cleaning his dusty ceiling corners. And wasn’t that just something he wanted to tell the whole fucking world about?

That small little green grain of doubt and worry and negativity dried out and got no sunshine to really grow into anything. Thank fuck.

He got to ignore it for a while.

Forgot about it entirely, and pretended it wasn’t even there for a bit.

It was easy.

Joe loved you.

He knew he did.

Would tell you soon.

Didn’t know how.

Or where.

But he was going to say it.

He was going to use his words because he was just a normal guy who loved a normal girl and you weren’t being weirdly secretive about what you got up to in private. At least, not how you used to be, anyway.

Joe loved you.

You brought Joe flowers and cleaned his ceiling and wore his clothes and cooked his breakfast.

Joe loved you, even though your new flatmate Josh turned out to be impossibly good-looking in addition to being incredibly kind as well, so Joe didn’t even get to have a real reason to dislike him at all, which seemed unfair, but, all right.

Joe loved you, even when suddenly two shiny black acoustic guitars appeared on your living room wall, because Josh worked in music, and wasn’t that just so cool?

Joe loved you, even though his very first thought after that was, well I know how to play guitar too, don’t I?! which you had never even mentioned before.

Joe loved you, even when he walked into your flat one evening and interrupted a dinner you were having with Josh and one of your friends and, look, Josh cooked for us, and for the first time ever, he felt uninvited and intruding.

Joe loved you, even when your friend jokingly said, “You’re over here at lot for someone that moved out.” right to his face, to which you then heartily laughed, because she was only joking, Joe, and then you didn’t say anything about how you were together, but, you were together... weren’t you?

Joe loved you, even when he stuck to the bit and handed you his flat key like he always did, expecting to find it in his coat pocket later, but then ended up finding both his pockets empty when he went home the next morning, which, yea actually, that made sense, because Josh lived there now, and it was a little weird to have a key still, wasn’t it?

Joe loved you, even when you had told him to come over on Friday evening because you’d had a shit day at work, and for the first time ever, he had to ring the doorbell to get inside.

Joe loved you, even when Josh was the one that answered the door, and Josh almost didn’t let him in, telling him, “Oh, she’s fallen asleep on the sofa, mate.” to which Joe just smiled as he stepped around him, because what the fuck did Josh even know about falling asleep on the sofa in this flat?

Joe loved you, even when he found you asleep on the sofa, curled up under a blanket he’d never seen before, with an empty pizza box bar some crusts still on the coffee table, and you never ate a whole pizza yourself, so that was obviously shared with someone else.

Joe loved you.

He knew he did.

But there was a playstation besides the TV now, and a cool record player on the side, pile of vinyl next to it, and, God.

Joe fucking hated this.

Whatever was inside of Joe’s chest, that thing he didn’t even want in there, was growing.

Was getting fed without Joe even fully realising he was feeding it.

He hated those guitars. He hated that he no longer had a key. He hated that stupid blanket. And he hated that empty pizza box.

Still, he sat down beside you and placed your socked feet onto his lap. Watched the last scenes of whatever film you’d put on as he slowly kneaded a foot and let you sleep, and he tried his best to not get bitten. To not let it sink its teeth in. To not let it hurt.

It was silly.

Joe was being silly.

Rational thought saved him.

Rational thought told him he still loved you.

And he hoped rational thought was going to be enough.

---

The Taglisted

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