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aww-canon-no · 1 year

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Steddie (Deaf Steve) Pt 2

You asked, so I’m here to give you more. This time from Eddie’s POV.

First kiss, sequel to Shoot Your Shot.

***

Soon Enough

Rated: T

Steve/Eddie

Modern AU, first kisses, Deaf Steve, ASL

(Content warnings: mentions of childhood neglect/abuse)

Eddie has never, ever once believed in conformity. And he’s not about to start now.

(Eddie’s ASL fuck-up is translated in notes at bottom of this fic)

***

Eddie Munson’s life has always been…difficult, to say the least. Born under a bad sign, Wayne liked to call it, but in a kind of affectionate way. The way where he’s holding small Eddie who can’t stop crying and wondering why all the other kids in his class have really nice parents who buy them things and, you know, feed them.

Wayne stepped in when he could. He never failed to show up with food and threats against his brother when he heard Eddie’s tiny, broken voice on the other end of the phone because his dad was too drunk or too high to feed him. Eventually they struck a deal. Eddie’s parents disappeared after signing some scary looking paperwork, and Eddie got to pack all his things and move to Wayne’s trailer which was small compared to where his classmates all lived, but nice.

So nice.

Like washing machine and running water nice.

He won’t have to be the smelly kid in class anymore.

He just didn’t realize how reputations clung in small towns.

So suffice it to say that Eddie abhors difficult things—including difficult people. It’s why, when his little lambs started going on and on and fucking ON about their cool, badass older friend Steve who used to date Nancy, Eddie was determined to never meet him.

It wasn’t just the jealousy.

It was that Steve communicated on a whole other level. Literally. He was Deaf. He went to the Deaf school that wasn’t anywhere near Hawkins and he knew no one, but somehow Steve and his perfect fucking hair was still popular amongst people who weren’t freaked out by the whole, he can’t hear shit, thing.

Yeah, it definitely wasn’t jealousy.

It was the fact that Steve was complicated and he used a whole separate language and Eddie just…had no plans to involve himself in that.

Never mind the kids were over the goddamn moon about being able to know ASL. They communicated with it during campaigns whenever they didn’t want Eddie to know their plans, and—although Eddie actually did look up stuff online about Deaf people (all that stuff about capital D and lowercase d and the community and culture was all very overwhelming) he was pretty sure his little lambs were technically not allowed to make up sign names for all the creatures in their guides.

But they did it anyway and who was Eddie to stop them.

He ended up picking up a few things by osmosis, whether he liked it or not.

But he was determined, damn it. He existed over here, Steve existed over there, and they all lived happily ever after.

Until the afternoon he walked into Scoops Ahoy.

***

Eddie had actually gone in to bother Robin. They were sort of outcast friends. Two freaky little gays at Hawkins High, though she was younger than him and had absolutely no interest in DnD, but they had a shared trauma bond of bullies and bullshit.

He came to a stop when he saw the absurdly good looking guy at the counter who was staring at him in ways no one had ever stared at Eddie. The way that said he had no idea who Eddie was and it was always great to have a fresh start like that.

Then Eddie fucked up by not reading his badge and realizing exactly who was there.

And like Dustin had once predicted, the second he met Steve’s eyes, he was a gonner. There was no resisting him.

He was smitten and the hole was too deep for him to claw his way out of.

He went home and looked up a bunch of videos that seemed suspect as fuck, so in the end he called Dustin who showed up at Eddie’s trailer with an arsenal of websites.

“Can’t you just get me, like, a book or something?” Eddie had asked, feeling intimated and overwhelmed and already kind of tired.

Dustin had given him the bitchiest bitch face that ever bitched. “You can’t learn ASL from a book, numbnuts.” Then his hands twisted into the complicated shapes—all fast the way Dustin kept bragging about—and Eddie assumed he was repeating most of what he’d just said.

Eddie damn-well knew that if he actually wanted Steve to say yes to him, he was absolutely going to have to learn because while the kids said Steve could speak, he hated doing it. And Eddie was the kind of guy who had been rebelling against forced conformity his entire life.

So yeah, he’d rather die than put that choice to Steve.

He learned enough to feel confident going back to the mall. And Robin was once again playing the long game with Vickie who would literally drag Robin into the cleaning closet and rock her world if Robin only asked—but he knew she wouldn’t. But it left the perfect opening for Eddie who walked up to the counter, panicked, and immediately forgot everything he’d learned about ASL in the time he’d been away from Steve’s ice cream counter.

In the end, he remembered a little, then tried to backtrack and tell Steve he’d ask him out when he was a little more fluent.

Which made Steve laugh, and Eddie wouldn’t find out until much later that it took at least seven years of immersion to become fluent so…

Yeah it was kind of hilarious.

For Steve.

Mortifying for Eddie.

The blow was softened when Steve touched him—like actually touched him without reservation or hesitation. And then he told Eddie he didn’t want him to wait. Eddie was fine as he was—that patience with his language could be a thing and Jesus H Christ Eddie was pretty sure he could die right then.

Except if he died he wouldn’t get the chance to touch Steve back, and kiss him, and make him laugh, and make him make other noises and Jesus H Christ he wanted that so bad he could taste it. Because he’d been avoiding Steve for what felt like half his new adult life but he was head over heels smitten in two visits to the ice cream shop.

And he didn’t even like ice cream.

He was lactose intolerant for fuck’s sake.

Anyway, he got Steve’s number and he didn’t wait to text.

But the date did.

They planned for the movies and then…

Wayne got hurt at the plant. He ended up being fine, but it scared the absolute fuck out of Eddie who staying at the hospital until his back hurt from the small chair, and his phone was dead, and he felt like passing out.

The nurses had to kick him out, and Eddie walked out of the room in a fog, and stumbled into the downstairs lobby where he came to an abrupt halt at the sight of a familiar, gorgeous head of hair. Steve was facing away from him with big headphones on, bobbing his head to…music?

Eddie totally didn’t get it, but he couldn’t help himself from walking over and laying a hand on Steve’s shoulder. He felt like shit when Steve jumped half a foot off the chair, but then his face broke out into a soft, sympathetic smile.

‘Hi.’ It was a simple enough sign that Eddie didn’t have to try for that one. ‘You OK?’ He signed slow, mouthing the words.

Eddie swallowed heavily, then shrugged. His fingers felt a little stiff and he wasn’t sure he had the emotional capacity to take embarrassing himself by getting signs wrong no matter how frantically he’d been practicing since the day at the mall.

Steve’s face fell a little more, and Eddie was pretty sure he’d never seen anyone look so…so soft at him before. He walked around the benches toward Eddie, then yanked him into a hug. It was so unexpected that Eddie just…melted. His head pressed against Steve’s headphones which were blaring with music, and Eddie had about a thousand questions but instead he just lost himself in the way that Steve hugged.

It was…a lot.

Of course, it was mostly that Eddie just never, ever got hugged and all the touching he did was imitated by himself and almost never returned, but that was a different trauma for a different day.

For now he just let himself have this. Have Steve. Have the body pressed to his and voiceless permission to kind of shake apart after holding it together for hours, and hours, and hours.

When he pulled back, Steve gave him a cautious smile and Eddie reached up, tapping Steve’s headphones.

‘Hurt?’ Eddie asked. ‘Loud?’

Steve frowned, then rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone, turning off his music before pulling them back and draping them around his neck. He shook his head and shrugged. ‘Can’t…hear?’ Eddie was pretty sure that was the sign for hear. Not hearing, which was a little finger twirl under the bottom lip. ‘Not hurt Feel it.’

Eddie nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets before remembering—oh shit, I need those to like, talk to Steve, and pulled them out again.

Steve laughed—but he was maybe one of the only people in the world who didn’t seem like he was laughing at Eddie, and wow what a goddamn novelty that was.

Steve tapped his arm and Eddie looked up at him as Steve curled his hand into a C-shape and dragged it down his throat. ‘Hungry-you?’

He was starved. He mimicked the sign and remembered the lesson he learned online where he had to exaggerate the sign if he wanted to emphasize what he was saying. So he ran his C-hand over his throat a few times, then added, ‘Eat, before, work.’ He met his left wrist with his right wrist once with heavy force. He knew that wasn’t right but maybe it was close enough?

Except Steve was suddenly all red in the face and making a choking sound. Eddie took a step back, but Steve reached out and snagged his arm before he could get too far, shaking his head.

Eddie was pretty sure he was supposed to be mortified but right then he was mostly curious and uh…yeah. Steve was touching him again so that was good.

Steve touched the underside of Eddie’s chin and he made an embarrassing noise which Steve must have felt because his grin twitched a little wider. Then he shook his head.

‘H U N G R Y,’ he spelled very slowly. He repeated his sign, then added, ‘S T A R V I N G?’ He made a little question mark motion with his finger. It was weirdly cute, and Eddie didn’t describe things as cute very often.

He nodded. Yeah. He’d been trying to say starving.

Steve made a noisy sort of huffing sound with some rumble behind it, then squared his shoulders and nodded before raising his right hand. His left signed, ‘Watch.’

Eddie nodded.

Steve made an exaggerated face and dragged his C-hand down his throat with more force. ‘Ok?’

Eddie nodded. Okay, yeah. He could do that.

Steve wasn’t done. ‘W O R K?’

Eddie smiled and nodded his fist. ‘Yes.’

Steve tapped the inside of his right wrist against the back of his left wrist. ‘Work,’ he signed.

Eddie repeated the sign, and Steve nodded, giving him an enthusiastic thumb’s up.

‘Now- go-you-me.’ Steve signed—Eddie was...pretty sure? God he needed to practice more.

But he answered Steve with a happy, ‘OK,’ and didn’t mind at all when Steve took his hand.

Until suddenly he did mind because…

He dragged Steve to a halt and cleared his throat, pulling out his phone with his free hand and typing as fast as he could, ‘What did I say? Before? What did I fuck up?’

Steve’s eyes got wide and he waved him off, but Eddie tugged on him until Steve let out a small groan, snatched the phone, and began to type. Eddie had not one single qualm about reading over his shoulder, and in about five seconds, he wanted the earth to swallow him whole.

“I signed what?” he demanded aloud, forgetting himself entirely.

Steve looked over his shoulder, his face kind of…different. Confused? Full of pity at how fucking pathetic Eddie was? Embarrassed to know him?

Was he…

Eddie’s thoughts came to a sudden, screeching halt when Steve cradled his face between his hands. He leaned forward until his lips were practically brushing Eddie’s ear and he whispered aloud, “I’d be happy to fix that problem too.”

Eddie was already pretty sure spontaneous combustion was a thing, and now he was about to be living proof because oh my GOD. Oh my... god oh my god oh my…

Steve dragged a thumb over Eddie’s lower lip, then raised his brows like he was asking, ‘Is this okay?’

Eddie nodded frantically and Steve began walking him backward until his back suddenly hit…oh. It was a tree. The bark was sharp against his bare elbow, but all of that ceased to matter the second Steve’s lips touched his. It wasn’t a wild, desperate kiss of star-crossed lovers in the books Eddie secretly read.

No, it was soft. It was gentle.

It was warm and it was fucking needy as hell but it was also the first kiss in a line of what Eddie was determined to have as many, many, many as he could. As many as Steve would allow.

For the rest of their lives, God help them both.

Steve gently licked into Eddie’s mouth before finally pulling away, and the stress of Wayne being hurt and then him thoroughly embarrassing himself, he wasn’t hard or anything, but there was definitely a sort of humming desire under his skin which were as warm as his hands were because they...

Oh.

He looked down and realized that he’d rucked up Steve’s shirt and was digging his fingers into Steve’s bare hips. ‘Sorry,’ he signed, dislodging one hand.

Steve laughed—a quiet huff mostly through his nose, and he shook his head before stealing a last kiss. Eddie wanted to chase it, but he forced himself to keep his back to the tree as Steve dug into his pocket for his phone again.

‘For now,” he wiggled his phone. ‘Until we can spend more time together and I can teach you more,’ Steve typed out.

Eddie swallowed heavily, then nodded. ‘Why are you here?’

Steve frowned like he was confused why Eddie would even ask that. ‘Dustin said your uncle was hurt. I didn’t want you to be alone when they kicked you out.’

Those words, that simple fucking act of kindness, was almost too much. The emotions overwhelmed him and he wanted to laugh, and cry, and scream, and fucking sing until his throat seized up and he lost his voice.

He stared at the phone screen until Steve dragged a tender touch across the top of his hand, and he looked up.

‘Come home with me tonight. Sleep,’ Steve typed before shoving his phone back into his pocket without waiting for Eddie’s answer. He knew he should probably say no because they hadn’t even had their date yet, but then again, Eddie had never been conventional.

Never would be conventional.

He rubbed a flat palm over his chest. ‘Please.’

Steve’s eyes darkened, just for a second. Eddie panicked before he realized that no, he’d gotten the sign just right. Steve was just maybe thinking of other ways Eddie might use that sign and…yeah.

Shit yeah.

Maybe not now. Not tonight. Not even very soon.

But soon enough.

Steve linked their fingers together and tugged…

And Eddie followed.

***

(Eddie’s ASL fuck-up. Common mistake in ASL- Hungry=Horny. Work=Fuck. Steve is kind of okay with that idea too lol)

#Steddie #Steve Harrington #Deaf Steve Harrington #Eddie Munson #modern AU #Stranger Things #dustin henderson #steve x eddie

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tabl3 · 3 months

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lil things about the team:

kaz's hair grows really fast. he often has bree or chase cut it because it needs to be too often to pay for a barber, and has to shave his face at least once a day

oliver and kaz teach the others about a lot of real-world things because all three of them have only been living in it for a maximum of 4 years

whenever the team watches horror movies - bree acts like she doesn't get scared but can't close her eyes in the shower for a week, kaz and oliver scream the whole time, skylar cheers for the kills, and chase criticizes how unrealistic they are

kaz never bothered chase's touch aversion, but oliver and skylar never really did either when they all became friends (even still they're both extremely respectful of it which was whiplash vs his family lol)

all 3 of the trio are huge huggers, even though oli is more emo now than when he was younger lmao. they also use physical touch often in the day to day, like touching shoulders, high fives, etc. bree and chase were never used to physical affection before tasha and leo came, but they've just gotten used to the influx of it

chase and oliver are the only tea drinkers (sometimes the girls too but usually not). they go to tea shops in the city often :)

chase sings in the shower. he doesn't know that whoever is in the boys' room can hear him (all four of them have recorded it before)

speaking of: chase is an amazing singer and can play almost anything perfectly due to his bionics. bree is also a good singer. kaz can't sing even a little but plays the guitar (sometimes with chase). skylar can sing, but she doesn't care for the more musically inclined hobbies. oliver can play the flute and piano bc he had lessons for most of his life

kaz and skylar are great with kids. they volunteered at after school programs whenever they didn't need to go to mighty med back in Philly. oli can't stand children lol

kaz and bree or kaz and skylar play wrestle often. kaz and bree due to growing up with brothers and skylar just bc she thinks it's fun

skylar spends most of her time on the roof. chase will join her if he thinks she needs the company

kaz and oliver have at least half a dozen secret handshakes

chase will make clothes that bree designs for her. he acts like he's put upon but loves seeing how happy his sister gets when they're finished

whenever bree asks skylar what lipstick to wear, skylar chooses the one that will look the best on her cheek after bree smooches it

tasha tried very briefly to set chase and skylar up bc she loves skylar until chase told her she was gay. when bree came out tasha moved to cupid-ing them

oliver stole a lollipop at the checkout when he was 5 and still feels guilty about it

skylar keeps an arsenal of calderan weapons in her closet

literally none of them sit in a chair properly (chase gets close)

chase falls asleep downstairs at his desk often. whoever stumbles across him carries him up (normally kaz or skylar)

chase and bree are bad at saying sorry. the other three understand that and the ways that they convey they're sorry

kaz is really good at using chopsticks. no one else can

chase is great at styling hair

bree and chase will sometimes share a capsule when they miss their family

oliver enjoys studying his medical textbooks

bree has accidentally punched all of them because of her glitches (chase has gotten so good at predicting it that she usually hits a shield)

kaz doesn't own a single pair of matching socks

skylar tells dad jokes

oliver is the team's moral compass and voice of reason. after him it's probably skylar or chase, but those two are willing to do whatever is necessary

kaz sometimes sleepwalks. he'll stand over oliver's bed and scare the shit out of him lmao

bree crashed a riding lawn mower into the family's fence

if chase is too tired he'll just eat coffee beans

chase is bi/trans/demisexual, bree is pan, kaz is gay, skylar is lesbian, oliver is hetero/trans/asexual. they let bree do their makeup and go to centium city's pride together :)

chase fell first when they met in mighty med, but kaz fell a whole hell of a lot harder

oliver knocks on any closed door to not be traumatized lol

the cats really like oliver

bree and kaz were banned from energy drinks

kaz was dropped out of a window as a child (he was fine lol)

kaz and oliver never talk about their siblings. the only ones kaz will mention are katie and kyle, while oliver never brings up his older brother

bree hates berry sodas with a passion

skylar rollerskates around the penthouse a lot

chase often has to cover for the team's mistakes. he's a single mom who works two jobs

kaz is a really good hacker

oliver sleeps with a stuffed animal

kaz often gets caught staring at chase with puppy eyes, in total disbelief that they're together. oliver and skylar make fun of him for that lol

skyalr throws great birthday parties

chase keeps snacks on him for bree's fast metabolism, water for oliver's quick dehydration, and bandaids for kaz inevitably tripping and falling when they go out

#lab rats #mighty med #lref #elite force #lab rats elite force #disney #chase davenport #bree davenport #kaz #kaz mm #kaz lref #skylar storm #oliver #oliver mm #oliver lref #kase #chaz #brylar

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internet-ink · 2 years

Note

Would you write a fic where LW and reader have been best friends for years, both play for arsenal. They’ve both been in relationships until this year. Reader thinks she’s straight until she realises she’s in love with her best friend

Confessions

Thank you for the request anon!

I haven’t wrote anything like this before but I hope you enjoy it :)

This past year had been a difficult one. It started out great - I was with a wonderful guy, I was doing well at Arsenal, and I had my best friends surrounding me.

Then it all went to shit.

In the space of a week I had caught my boyfriend in his bed with another girl and my childhood dog had passed away.

This was ten months ago and now there was another issue arising. My landlord had decided that now would be a great time to evict me. One night I had a few people round and apparently someone had complained about the noise. He said that he had past complaints about the noise from my flat which just wasn’t true but I really couldn’t be bothered to argue with him.

I had nine days to find a new place to live. Originally I had planned to just find another place to rent, however with the days going by and having no luck finding anything I was beginning to worry.

“Y/N! Pass the fucking ball!” Katie shouted, interrupting my thoughts. I snapped out of my day dream and quickly passed the ball to her.

“Sorry.” I replied.

She ran over to me and put her hands on her hips in a sort of ‘you better tell me what’s going on’ way.

With a sigh, my shoulders deflated as my mind went back to all the issues in my life. “I’m just stressing about this whole finding a place to live thing. You’d think in a big city like London there’d be at least somewhere that was available. But no…anything that is available is just ridiculously expensive and out of my budget. Like what am I meant to do? Live on the streets? If my stu-”

“You could stay with me?” A voice from behind me interrupted my rambling, and a smile took over my face as I saw it was Leah.

Leah and I had been close friends since I joined Arsenal three years ago, I mean we were literally inseparable from the first day of training. She was there for me through everything that had happened this year and I was there for her while she was going through her break up with Jordan.

Up until a couple of months ago everything was normal between us but then I started to get butterflies whenever she gave me a hug which then turned into feeling awkward whenever she’d hold my hand - everything that felt normal before now turned me into a complete mess. I had come to the realisation last month that I was in love with her…with Leah.

“Uhh…em. Do you have the room?” I stuttered, mentally kicking myself for acting so awkward around her.

“Yeah, Jordan moved out a couple of months ago so I’ve got a spare room.” She shrugged although I could still see that the mention of her ex-girlfriend’s name hurt her.

I scratched the back of my neck out of awkwardness before replying. “Only if you’re sure.” I said while scrunching my face up.

“Y/N we’ve been best friends for years, of course I’m sure.” She smiled. My heart sunk at the words ‘best friends’. That was all we would ever be and it hurt to think of that.

“Okay well if you insist.” I giggled.

———

“Is that all you’ve got?” Leah asked after I brought all the boxes with my stuff from my car and into my new house. There was a significantly smaller amount of things with me now than what Leah was used to seeing at my old place.

“Uh yeah, I donated some stuff. Decided to start over.” I laughed. Leah took a box and carried it into my new room, which was across the hall from hers.

“Well this is you. Feel free to decorate obviously…just don’t go knocking down any walls.” She deadpanned making me uncomfortable before she started to laugh at me. Leah was always like this.

With a roll of my eyes, I started to unpack the first of my boxes. As I turned to place my fake bonsai tree on the bedside table I noticed Leah staring at me with a small smile on her face, snapping out of it when she noticed I was looking at her.

“Takeaway pizza for dinner?” She asked.

“Yup. Plain cheese?” I replied. She nodded with a chuckle before turning to leave the room.

I spent the next hour or so unpacking everything and decorating the once plain room. It felt weird knowing that this room once belonged to her ex, I wasn’t entirely sure if they did sleep in the same bed while they were together, but I did know that this room was Jordan’s from the previous times I had come over. It just never once occurred to me that I would be living here with the girl that I had a fat crush on. How was I going to survive this? How would I manage if Leah ever brought home another girl or guy? I didn’t know how to feel.

“Y/N! Pizza’s here!” Leah called up to me from downstairs. I sighed to shake the doubts from my head before walking down to where Leah was waiting in the living room with one big box of pizza.

With a confused look on my face I opened the box, my confusion only growing as I confirmed that there was indeed only one pizza. “Where’s the other one?” I asked.

“Oh, I only ordered one. I thought we could share.” She shrugged as she sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her, telling me to sit down.

My heart fluttered at the idea of sharing a pizza with her. “Cool. Sounds good.” I smiled, internally groaning at how weird I sounded. Leah returned a small smile before reaching over to take a slice.

Pull yourself together, it’s a pizza for Gods sake.

“You okay?” She asked with her hand covering her mouth to prevent the food from showing. I nodded before taking the seat that she had previously pointed at.

“Sorry, just in my own head.” I giggled as I grabbed a smaller slice than the one Leah had, letting out a small moan at the taste of it. Leah whipped her head to look at me with wide eyes as I blushed at the thought that I had actually done that out loud. “I’m so sorry, but holy shit where do you get this? This tastes better than most pizzas I’ve ate.” I exclaimed.

Leah laughed before shaking her head and wiping her hands with a napkin. “This chippy down the road. Discovered it when I was drunk and I’ve been loyal ever since. I can’t say I’ve ever moaned at the taste though.” She spoke, still laughing her head off. I rolled my eyes before taking another slice.

“Shut uppp.” I groaned. “It just slipped out.” I sighed, still feeling rather embarrassed about the whole situation. “Wait…you kept this delicacy from me this whole time?” I questioned, my mood now going from extreme embarrassment to confusion and slight betrayal.

“Guilty.” She put her hands up like she had been caught red handed before the both of us folded into each other in laughter. During our antics, Leah’s hand made its way onto the top of my thigh, making my breath hitch and my laughter halt. As her laughter stopped too, I looked up to see that she was already staring at me with a nervous look on her face and her eyes half closed, focusing on my lips.

“Leah?” I whispered. The tension in the room grew as the distance between us shrunk until I could feel her warm breath on my lips. My heart rate rapidly increasing as her eyes fully closed and her lips moved closer so that they were millimetres away from my own, my chest finally felt like it exploded as I finally felt the weight of Leah’s lips on mine.

I wrapped my arms around her waist and she wrapped hers around the back of my neck as her tongue licked my bottom lip, sighing as I opened my mouth wider and felt her consume me. We broke apart as the need for oxygen overcame us.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

I panted as Leah looked intensely into my eyes, making me feel more nervous than I had ever felt. “Are you alright?” I finally asked as she had been quiet for quite some time.

She leant forward so that her elbows were resting on her knees and her head was in her hands. Feeling immediately off, I reached forward with her and placed a comforting hand on the back of her shoulder.

In all honesty I thought it would’ve been me that was like this if we ever kissed.

“What was that?” She finally asked, leaning back into the couch and staring at me again. I felt my heart sink as she asked that. She sounded annoyed.

“A kiss.” I deadpanned.

“Obviously.” She rolled her eyes. I let out a breath as I mentally prepared myself for the possible rejection that could come from my next statement.

“I like you.” I replied, now looking anywhere but Leah as I didn’t want to see the current look on her face. “No…I love you. I have for awhile - well, a couple of months anyway.” I continued.

“Really?”

I frowned as I stared into the wall behind Leah. “Yeah. I’m sorry.” I said.

As I was getting up, a hand on my knee prevented me from moving anywhere. I took a deep breath as I looked at Leah, not seeing the disgusted face I though I would, in fact she had a huge grin on her face.

“I love you too.” She stated, making my world feel like it crumbled. She actually liked me back? I sat back down next to her and looked at her with wide eyes.

“Really?” I replied.

She laughed and leant in closer to me. “Of course I do, I thought I made it obvious but maybe not? Ever since that night when you held me while I was drunk crying, not complaining once about the snot that I had gotten on your favourite jumper. I love you, Y/N.”

“I think that’s the most romantic thing someone has ever said to me.” I smiled, noticing the crinkles on her nose as she smiled and the small freckles that dotted her nose.

“Shut up and kiss me.”

#fanfic #arsenal #imagine #leah williamson #leah williamson x reader #lgbtqia #oneshot #request #wlw post #womens football #katie mccabe #romance #confession #leah williamson one shot #foorball #woso soccer #woso one shot #woso fanfics #woso x reader

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drawnfamiliarfaces · 8 months

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I was rewatching rc9gn and revisited “Dawn of the Driscoll” and I gotta say, Randy’s art of healing is crazily overpowered.

He revived someone who was reduced to nothing but bones and had been dead for who knows how long. Not only that but it was later shown that he revived various animals who had dissected and most were nothing but eyes. Not to mention he did all that from just skimming through the instructions.

Imagine the full potential that he could unlock if he studied the art of healing fully and practiced enough times!

Oh BOI YEs. It's ridiculous how overpowered Randy can come across, because the show wanted to make a funny episode (and we love that of course but still xD).

Like, how strong of a potential this boy has, if he managed to execute what must be one of the hardest techniques in the Ninja arsenal? Just imagine all the implications of that ability??? To literally save someone from a brink of death/resuscitate them? No wonder some ninjas go power crazy! I would too, if i had ability to bring back the dead!

Though I do like to think that there are more nuance to all of that, than it was shown in the series. (A bit of a me yapping on beneath, feel free to ignore it.)

One of the things that actually bothers me about this ability - is that technically, for something called the Art of Healing, we never saw actual healing performed (because its a kid's show duh but still) BUT it has been used in the show more to 'restore' inanimate objects (the bike) and bring someone "back to life" (skeleton & dissected animals) - which IMO is not 'healing' but more of a necromancy ability.

After all, Randy didn't restore Driscoll to full life (gave a fully functioning body back) and the animals/body parts are also in their post-mortem states. So, what he essentially did is reanimate remains, by (perhaps) returning their souls and binding them to what was left of mortal bodies (which probably reflected very badly on their mental state = reason why Driscoll&animals were full of anger/insanity) or sharing some of his own life energy to restore minimal physical 'aliveness' (I mean a bunch of eyeballs in a jar could hardly be called alive, but they do perform their basic function of looking/blinking). Seems like classic nercomancy to me!

Of course one could argue that the reason it happened is because Randy didn't execute the technique correctly, because he 'skimmed' through instructions, and that potentially he could have restored their bodies too....but I like to think that the ability have its limitations - and returning long-dead bodies to full life back (basically rebuilding a whole creature from a body part/single cell scenario) is one of them.

Otherwise, in my opinion, while it is impressive that Randy 'revived' someone long dead, what he has done is technically one of the easiest (and thus more dangerous) variation of Art of Healing/basically Art of of Necromancy - reanimation through spiritual energy, but not actually returning someone to full life. Another variation of Art of Healing - is Restoration of Physical Body without any sort of Spiritual Energy - aka the freaking bike. I mean, is it really healing if one just restored the original form of the object without any actual prior life in it??? Bike is not the same as a human after all, its not alive in any sense, it doesn't have a soul/life energy.

So you see, in these two occasions Randy used Art of Healing, none of them actually healed anything. Because actual healing of live things is much harder! And further proof of my headcanons is in the plants.

The original reason Randy learned Art of Healing is to restore their Botanical project - and despite hitting at first full blast before Randy lost control of 'beams' - it never actually worked on it. I mean, we basically see the plant still dead even as an already alive Driscoll pops out behind them!

So obviously healing a recently dead plant requires a much more fine touch/precise control than just full-blasting healing energy at long dead remains. And further emphasize on it we have with The Skunk Pine. The pine cone is alive and in whole condition - but the application of healing energy gave it a boost that accelerated its growth to the point that Randy implied that in few days it would be a fully functioning tree.

It kind of aligns with my understanding of how magical healing works - the healer basically shares their energy with the target to kick start and accelerate their own healing rapidly and sort of suppliment their reserves with the healer's help. But again - the pine cone was not injured/dead/damaged so it would be much easier for Randy to 'heal' it in order for it to grow rapidly - but no actual healing took place.

So the point of all this rambling recollections - is that while Randy's raw potential made something like reanimating and restoring look too easy - the things he did were already the easiest parts of Art of Healing because either option essentially requires only one aspect of either soul/body to be restored. The true Art of Healing is much more complicated. Not only it requires concentration and precise control/application in restoration of both physical and spiritual aspects, it also most likely has power requirements and repercussions to the user if they tried to overcome those limitations.

All in all, thinking about application of fantasy healing is always fun when you look deeper into its simplified canon version. ;)

#que?#sorry.i went onto a something of a pointless ramble?? im pretty sure people smarter and more eloquent than me #wrote whole analysis on this stuff but i guess i just wanted to share some of my thoughts #but anyway basically ye i agree nonny #rc9gn #randy cunningham 9th grade ninja

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whatswrongwithblue · 5 months

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The Fire in the Sin

Chapter 2 - Reflections

Word count: 2,600. Read on AO3. Series Masterlist. <- Previous Chapter

Chapter summary: The story of Mina's (Alastor's wife) life and death. Trigger Warnings: Canon typical violence, canon typical language, suicidal ideation, religious trauma if you squint, forced marriage, mention of abortion, mentions of dubcon, terminal illness, drug use, domestic violence, murder.

Series Summary:

In the 1950's, Alastor met the woman he would eventually marry but unfortunately his Radio Demon persona went for her soul rather than her hand. He has to learn what it means to love, and cherish, without possessing and he does. Their relationship is beautiful, strong, unbreakable . . . but he carries a dark secret through their marriage for decades until eventually he has to face the consequences of that secret and leave her, without warning, for seven years. He returns, finding her at the Hazbin Hotel, and has to convince her to forgive him, while being literally bound to secrecy, unable to tell her any of things he now is desperate to explain to her.

(This is a duel timeline fic, timestamps will be a the top of every chapter.)

Chapter 2 - Reflections

October 4th, 1917

California coastline, near Sonoma

Mina Gallagher looked out at the Pacific Ocean and wished she was dead.

Fantasized about it, more like.

Growing up in Ireland had given her a enduring love of the ocean. She was in awe of its power; how it could go from calm as a child’s rocking crib to an omnipotent force capable of ripping sea cliffs apart in a matter of hours. Her small, weak body craved that kind of strength, and she would slip her shoes off to stand in the shallow, icy waves, praying to it as devotedly as her parents prayed in mass every Sunday.

As a teenager, she would run away to the shoreline any chance she could and let the ocean be the only witness to her desperate tears. She had thought about swimming out into it then, letting a rip tide carry her away to freedom . . . and certain death. Same thing, really. But she hadn’t the courage then.

When she was married off at 16, she stood through the whole long torturous ceremony, daydreaming not of a groom as most girls did, but of stowing away on a ship and fleeing to America.

A year later, with her husband in pieces in his coffin and her dead baby not yet dispelled from her womb, she got that wish granted. Only she had been no stow away; she had been a proper passenger, with her fare paid for by her new manager.

Her voice, and her body, were his for the time being. They often snuck out on deck late at night and he would fuck her from behind, thinking she enjoyed the thrill of potentially being caught as much as he did, but in reality, it was so she could watch the waves ahead of them and ignore the man grunting from behind her.

Men were such pigs, but they were easy to manipulate. He had thought he was using her, but it was the other way around.

It took her a couple more years to be free of him but eventually she was able to dispose of him. Not as violently satisfying as she had dealt with her husband but with a poison that she was able to frame his assistant for.

There were many downsides to being a woman born around the turn of the 20th century but getting away with murder was one of the rare benefits. No men were comfortable admitting that a quaint little five foot nothing girl was capable of causing them harm, let alone hacking them to bits or slipping arsenic into their drink, so she was never the prime suspect in either of those cases.

The Irish Siren was the nickname the Americans had given her and they loved her scandalous life story and the lyrics that were inspired by it in a way that her conservative Catholic homeland could never.

If she had lived to see the roaring twenties, she really could have come into her own.

Mina coughed into her napkin and it came back bloody.

She had been able to make a living touring the nation, completely reliant on her “God given” talent to sing until the age of 24. Not long after that birthday, the coughing started. By the year’s end, it was clear her singing career was over. She was the Irish Siren no more.

The Atlantic ocean had always felt like home to her, so she had stayed on the east coast for as long as she could. Back home in Ireland, the Atlantic was mercurial and always in motion but here in America, she saw its other face. This Atlantic was calmer, steadier, and more reliable. The fair weather, high humidity, and low elevation of the Carolinas were supposed to be good for those suffering from consumption and she was able to continue making a decent living as a poet. She couldn’t sing anymore but she could still write, though she kept her favorite, darkest pieces to herself.

Eventually the itch to travel one last time consumed her thoughts, a stronger acting force than the disease consuming her body, and she saved up enough money to cross the country by train and buy a house on the west coast. She had always meant to see the Great American West and now that her time was growing short, it was now or never.

The Pacific Ocean was so much more than she expected. Here on the coast it was often overcast and rainy, and tricked her mind into being nostalgic for her lost childhood home. She had loved Ireland’s landscapes, enough to almost make her forget how much she had hated her life there.

It was so big, this new ocean. She purchased a globe so that even in the evenings when it grew too dark to see the water, she could still admire the sheer dominating size of the thing. There could be so many secrets hidden beneath its depths. Lost civilizations or ancient Eldritch style monsters long forgotten by the modern world.

If she had worshipped the Atlantic Ocean, she had well and truly fallen in love with the Pacific.

Mina stared out her window, watching the rain, and accepted she would have to wait for another day.

Her plan was to row out on the next sunny, calm morning, get out as far away from the shore as the tide and her sickly body could take her, swallow the rest of the laudanum, slit her wrists, and jump in the water. Let the ocean and its creatures, depths, and secrets have her body. It was better than a casket and a last devotional ceremony to a God she had turned her back on long ago.

She coughed again, and the wracking overcame her frail form, forcing her to sit down and double over. Afterwards, she breathed in as deep as she could, but it was painful and hardly satisfying to her oxygen starved body.

That perfect day had to be very soon or she wasn’t going to live to see it.

From what seemed like a distance, she heard a knocking, and realized it had been going on for a while but she was so lost in her laudanum she hadn’t noticed.

It was probably just her one and only neighbor, a bizarre middle-aged man with more money than wits, and a rather strange collection of exotic animals that tended to get loose. He came over more often than her physician, asking if she had seen any of his escaped creatures. The conversation always turned into a proper visit, and she didn’t have the energy or the patience for his strangeness today. So she ignored the knocking and continued in her reverie. Maybe the would-be visitor would assume she had finally died and would leave her in peace.

She laughed out loud at that thought and triggered another coughing fit.

The world turned glossy again and several minutes to several hours could have gone by as she watched the ocean waves in her drug induced stupor until a voice from behind her lifted her from the fog.

“Hello, Mina.”

She turned in her seat to face the man in her doorway, unsure of who he was at first. After a heartbeat, her mind registered the face.

“Johnathan,” she said, acknowledging him as if she had any idea of why he was standing in her living room like he had every right to be there.

She thought she had done away with him for good. In no uncertain terms she had made it clear to him that unless she wanted to continue being dissatisfied in the bedroom, there was no point in him staying in California for her. She was too sickly to perform any kind of proper wifely duties for him, too barren to give him any more heirs and frankly he had enough of them already, and she was clearly dying soon anyway. The only reason he had to continue to propose to her was for her money, and she had told him frankly she wasn’t stupid enough to leave her fortune to a man such as himself. That had gotten her slapped and though she hadn’t been physically well enough to fight back, she had born the shiner proudly in the mirror for a couple weeks. At least she had been left in peace because he had stormed out of her house after that argument and not returned. She had hoped either the war or the pandemic would kill him, or that she would be dead herself before he had the opportunity to bother her again.

“More prospecting business dragged you back to town, eh love? Come to try and marry a corpse while you’re at it?”

“You were always such a cold-hearted bitch,” he said, and she noticed he was slurring his words even more than she was. “I’m surprised there’s enough heat in you to keep that cunt warmed up.”

She had her faculties about her enough to know to stand up and begin putting distance and furniture between him and her. He had never spoken to her that way before, not even when he had hit her.

Johnathan was always a short-tempered little shit with those he deemed beneath him but he had been well mannered with her up until his last visit. She was lonely and often drunk or drugged since her diagnosis and had allowed herself to be entertained by him now and then. But she was realizing too late that she had become arrogant and careless around men in the last couple years of her life and forgotten how dangerous an animal they could be when they didn’t get their way.

And Johnathan looked like he regretted not giving her more than a hard slap all those months ago.

Mina ran, as fast and hard as her tired muscles could carry her, and made it all the way into her rarely used kitchen before he was able to catch up. Not that she had any plan or real means of escape.

But she did have knives.

She was able to grab one out of a drawer but then he was on her, slamming her face into the edge of the counter and she dropped to the floor.

Somehow she managed to roll onto her back and face him, all without dropping the knife. But he saw it and was able to grab her arm before she could drive her weapon into him.

Her arms were as weak as everything else in her body but her grip was still strong enough so that he couldn’t pry her fingers off from the around the hilt, at least not while also trying to hold her legs down as she desperately tried to kick at him.

Johnathan gave up his attempt at removing the knife from her hand and instead turned her wrist so that the deadly point was now facing her stomach.

“Stupid bitch,” he hissed out when she got a good hard kick into his shin. “I don’t want to kill you, stop fighting!”

Oh, he just wants to beat and rape me, how considerate, she thought.

Her face was bleeding badly from where it had made contact with the countertop and she tasted her own blood. Johnathan had strength, size, and health on his side of this battle but she had something he likely hadn’t considered.

She had already come to terms with her death. And she was really, truly, quite insane.

Mina stopped trying to hold him away from her and let the knife plunge into her abdomen. It hurt, but there was little wind to knock out of her lungs anymore and she had so many painkillers in her blood at this point, so she hardly felt more than a deep pressure.

Johnathan’s face was brought suddenly closer to her as he wasn’t expecting the sudden stop in resistance against him so she closed the gap between them by sitting up just a couple inches and bit hard into his cheek.

She clenched her jaw down as tightly as she could and felt the flesh tear and a new taste of blood spurted across her tongue.

He screamed and she laughed.

Mina let go as he pulled away suddenly, clasping a hand over his face and still screaming. She wasted no time in yanking the knife from her own stomach and swinging it up and then down again, burying the blade to the hilt in his neck.

It made a squelching noise as it sank in and Johnathan’s screams were replaced with a wheezing expulsion of air.

She brought the knife out and then right back into his chest.

He fell backward and she stabbed again.

And again.

She didn’t stop until the fatigue in her arms made her stop.

Mina struggled to her feet, using the kitchen counter to pull herself up, and looked down at the body of the man she had just slaughtered with her bare hands. He had not been her first victim. Not even her second. And her only solid thought was it was too bad she couldn’t have done that more often, to more men.

She was so out of breath and getting really, really tired now.

Looking down at herself, she realized most of the blood pouring down her dress was her own and remembered she had been stabbed.

Right. Today would be the day after all.

She stumbled through her house and out the back door.

The rain hadn’t stopped but it was alright because she really couldn’t feel the cold.

Just make it to the water. That’s all I want, to feel it one more time.

But it was so far away.

Her house sat a good 200 yards from shore and she was barely off her back porch before vertigo caused her to stumble to the side. It took almost all her remaining energy reserves to get back up and when she did, her vision was so blurry and her head was spinning to the point that she nearly vomited.

She looked down at the hand that was pressed to her bleeding abdomen, trying to will herself to walk the rest of the way down to the water. It was no good. She was surely going to pass out any second now. If she hadn’t been so out of her mind from lack of blood and opium, she likely would have cried.

When she looked back up, she saw the strangest thing.

A panther was crouched, maybe just ten feet from her, still as a statue and looking right at her. Its coat was shiny and mostly black, but light enough in some places that a dark golden-brown pattern of wide spots could be made out along its sides.

Maybe the knocking had been her strange neighbor after all, at least at first. Come to tell her he was missing a member of his collection and to not venture too far out from her house today.

The panther’s irises were green, with gold around the edges, and her poet’s mind declared it the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

But it doesn’t have a panther’s face, she thought, that’s the face of death.

It leapt for her then and she simply sat down. When it landed, she had a moment to feel its weight push her back into the sand beneath her.

She kept her eyes open as its teeth found her neck but she was already too far gone to feel any more pain.

Next Chapter ->

#hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #hazbin oc #alastor x oc #alastor fanfiction #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel fanfiction #alastor the radio demon #alastor hazbin hotel #alastor hazbin #alastor x reader #the fire in the sin

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ofthecaravel · 1 year

Text

But You Look So Cool

A Danny Wagner/Sam Kiszka fic

Summary: Danny has a crush on a familiar face.

Tags: Fluff, cutesy bullshit, IDIOTS ALERT, literally just the stupidest goofuses alive, NSFW shit AHHHH

Words: 10.8k

A/N: Just trying to keep my Sanny girlies fed. Heavily inspired by Crush by Ethel Cain, everybody go listen to Ethel Cain right now or I will explode you with my mind

Let me know what you think!

~~~

Danny Wagner knew there was no shame in ditching the typical post high school route of moving across the country to start college. Well, maybe it was more like an affirmation he said to himself begrudgingly in the mirror after coming home from work and getting ready to go to class at the local community college. He’d escaped his parent’s house, not that there was anything bad to escape from, and now lived in a crappy one room apartment that he paid for by working a job that he liked an average amount. Every other day, Danny took classes at the community college. He couldn’t help but feel like he was wasting his early twenties saving money and starting small, even though he knew it was the smartest option for him, considering he wasn’t actually all that sure what he wanted to do with life. There weren’t a lot of things Danny was sure of about himself quite yet, but he had faith that it would all fall into place. It had to. Right?

Danny wasn’t sure when things would start to become clear to him, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be during any of his classes. This was an endurance part of his life, he had decided. Get them done, get the associate’s degree, and THEN go from there. He was taking a pretty low course load so he could keep up with work and, well, his sanity, and this was a September where he was taking a whopping two classes. They were both pretty basic, a math course and a history course, and he didn’t expect much from them apart from taking the occasional nap and scurrying to do all of his homework last minute like he’d done his entire academic career.

What Danny especially didn’t expect from his first day of classes was walking into his math classroom (only after double and triple checking he had the right room), taking a seat by the window, and then becoming acutely aware of the smell of cigarette smoke. As he dug his laptop and notebook out of his bag, he wrinkled his nose at the smell and prepared to meet whoever had drug this scent in with them. He could see someone had sat next to him while his neck was craned, and when he straightened, Danny looked to his right and was immediately seized by a cold jolt of surprise. The guy next to him was undoubtedly the smoker, but he was also undoubtedly someone Danny had gone to school with prior.

It was Sam, Sam Kiszka, Sam Kiszka who had been on the robotics team and favored shadowing his older brothers over cultivating a group of friends. Danny had known him with a shaggy emo haircut, braces, and an arsenal of class clown cracks. He’d ultimately lost track of Sam during senior year, when news broke of his dad’s arrest and Sam had shrunk moodily into the shadows while his brothers disappeared into college life and made their own name beyond crime and scandal.

Danny had a feeling that whole era of Sam’s life played a factor into the man he’d grown into. This new Sam sat slouched in a smoke soaked leather jacket with a ratty backpack and scowl playing on his face. It was weird to see him like this. Danny almost wanted to say something, but after Sam’s feline glare passed over him and quickly slid off, he decided not to. He was annoyingly aware of the effect it had on him, though. There was a nervous tremor in Danny’s hand as he opened up his laptop and logged in, staring at himself in the reflection of the dark loading screen and checking for eye boogers or frizz in a sudden attempt to smooth out his sleepy appearance.

The smoke smell was dizzying now in such close proximity, equal parts overwhelming and delicious. Danny breathed it in and, instead of letting out an almost longing sigh, he let out a huge sneeze. In doing so, he knocked his forehead against his keyboard and scooted backwards in his chair in the same motion. Red faced, he looked up and saw almost every eye in the previously quiet room trained on him. Someone called out a ‘bless you’ and he thanked them with an embarrassed smile, finally looking over to see Sam’s assessment. Danny felt his face go hot all over again when he saw Sam was side eyeing him with an amused smile. When they made eye contact, Sam quickly looked forward again and his smile crumpled. For some reason he couldn’t pin, Danny’s heart fluttered.

His mind started racing as his anxiety made him more and more aware of Sam’s presence and every little move. Did Sam remember him? What the hell had he been up to the past two years? Danny had heard rumors that Sam slipped in and out of the county jail since his dad had been sentenced to death row, unconsciously mirroring his family legacy in some sort of effort to cope. But as far as Danny knew, that was just hearsay. As the professor started the lecture and Danny started to focus, his last thought was that maybe he and Sam would grow to be friends over the course of the class.

Danny gave up on that hope after the third class. Even during icebreakers, Sam had barely spoken and seemed to daydream the entire class, taking bare bones notes and racing out the door the second the lecture finished. Still, Danny gave him well prepared smiles in the split seconds that Sam’s eyes would drift over him, considering that Danny’s eyes were now almost always on him. Danny himself was a little startled by how distracted he was by his silent classmate. They had exchanged zero words and yet Danny found himself driving up to the building with anxious butterflies as the days went on. He started fulfilling weird little compulsions he’d never felt before, like standing in front of the mirror messing with the way his hair fell, even though he always left it back in its wavy, brushed-out side part. Danny sat in class with his back straighter and his face hidden by his curtain of waves, using them as a cover to sneak glances at Sam’s frowning profile.

In such a tizzy, Danny had spent the time after a family dinner to corner his sister and ask her for a second opinion on why he was feeling so crazy. He had scoffed when she’d begun to laugh in his face, looking at him like he was the stupidest person alive.

“What, you asshole?” Danny asked, shoving Josie’s shoulder as she stifled her laugh with a hand and used the other to grip his shoulder in comradery.

“You idiot,” she giggled. “You’re not being possessed by the devil. You have a fucking crush.”

Danny flushed and laughed at the accusation, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, okay, sure, right,” Danny mocked, leaning against the doorframe of his sister’s room. “We’ve literally never spoken.”

“You don’t have to talk to someone to have a crush on them,” Josie explained.

Danny paused.

“You don’t?”

“No? What, is this your first year on Earth? Are you experiencing emotions for the first time?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Seriously! Have you never had a crush before?”

Danny thought about it.

“Yeah, in, like, high school,” Danny answered. “I had a girlfriend, thank you.”

“Oh, please, you only dated her because she wouldn’t leave you alone,” Josie accused with a creeping smile. “Sounds like this guy is giving you the real deal. Congratulations, welcome to feelings.”

“What do I even do about it?” Danny whined, sliding down the wood panel and sitting hard. “This shit sucks.”

“Ask him out!” Josie insisted, forming a little heart with her hands. “Follow your heart.”

“You’re a fucking cornball,” Danny countered. “I feel like I should probably talk to him minimum one time before I do that. I mean, I don’t even know if he’s…you know, whatever. Would even be into me.”

“Oh, I bet he’s totally into you,” Josie assured. “When you said he smiled at you after you sneezed? Totally into you.”

“You’re just feeding my delusion.”

“I’m making up for lost time you spent fake dating a weirdo in high school.”

“Yeah, this is some real sentimental bonding we’ve got going on right now.”

“Come on, you wimp,” Josie said, tossing a pillow at Danny’s head. “Do literally anything. Don’t let him be the one that got away.”

“You’re so dramatic, fuck,” Danny accused, but smiled. “Fine, okay, I’ll talk to him.”

Danny did not talk to him. Danny really did plan on talking to Sam during their next class, but when Danny pulled into a parking spot, he found himself next to Sam and his grungy motorcycle. Worse yet, it was one of September’s warmer mornings with a humidity left over from a storm the next before, which meant that Sam was shirtless and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. He took off his helmet and shook his hair out, unaware of Danny’s jaw hitting the floor as he combed it through with one hand and dug a shirt out of his backpack. After allowing himself one more sidelong glance before he stumbled out of his car, Danny saw a scattering of tattoos on Sam’s wiry arms and hiding on his ribcage. The words died on Danny’s tongue and in his mind and he decided that maybe he’d wait another day, so he did. And then he waited for two more weeks after that, and even then, Danny couldn’t get himself to even breathe in Sam’s direction.

The only person keeping Danny accountable was Josie, and she regularly expressed her upset towards Danny’s lack of action. The siblings had a long standing tradition of raiding the convenience store by their house on Saturday evenings so they had a proper snack arsenal for movie night, and on the Saturday after the one month mark of Danny’s class starting, Josie followed him through the aisles and chastised him.

“Why do you even care so much?” Danny hissed at her as he absently looked through rows of crinkling bags of chips and pretzels.

“Because this is the most exciting thing that’s happened to you since you graduated, you nerd,” Josie answered, plucking a bag of chips out of his hand and breezing by. “Plus, it’d be fun to have someone to razz you with.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a kind and gentle soul? Because they were lying.”

Josie laughed and they both continued a steady bicker as they swept the aisles. They settled in the candy aisle for a heated debate on what the “mood” of their candy should be that night. Suddenly, a raucous round of hissing and popping started up outside and they both startled, looking towards the sound. It was the sound of firecrackers, and the owner let out a disgusted sigh and stormed out from behind the counter. He’d seen the Wagner siblings in his store since they were little, and since they were the only ones in there, he quickly told them to not steal anything and then ran out the doors to investigate. The two of them exchanged an amused look and started a joking dialogue about how much stuff they could fit in their pockets when the bell on the door jingled again. They quieted, thinking the owner was back so soon, but Danny felt the wind get knocked out of his lungs when he looked behind him into the next aisle and saw a familiar helmet. He mouthed ‘shit’ and turned around again, Josie quickly picking up on the nervous twitch in his features and looking for herself.

“What?” she whispered, almost inaudible, following Danny as he scooted into the next aisle over to put an aisle between them. Danny gave her a look, and then jerked his head at the man once before widening his eyes. Instantly, her mouth fell open and she started peeking over the top of the shelves to try and catch a glimpse at Sam’s face.

“No way!” she breathed again. “He rides a motorcycle? Hot!”

“Shut the entire fuck up,” Danny seethed, feeling a chill run down his spine when he heard Sam’s boots in the aisle behind them. He moved quickly, a rustle of bags and wrappers as he did. Danny and Josie stood very still when they felt Sam stride into the aisle they were in, exchanging a look and then respectively picking up a snack and examining their wrappers intently. Danny took a brave look over at Sam and saw him pick up a bag of Skittles and then pocket it brashly in the joking way he and his sister had pretended to. Danny blinked in surprise; maybe Sam really was the criminal people made him out to be. Hopefully shoplifting was the worst of his crimes.

Sam moved down the aisle towards them and looked up at Danny, the two of them exchanging a moment of tense eye contact before Sam’s dark eyes flickered over the Twix in Danny’s hands and then away again. Sam walked behind the two of them and then with a quiet ‘excuse me’, he reached his arm in front of Danny and plucked a Twix from the box. Danny stood frozen to the spot but leaned politely out of the way, trying to subtly stomp on Josie’s foot when she sneakily reached up and sank her nails into his forearm in a silent urge for Danny to say something.

However, Danny hardly got the chance to breathe before the owner walked back into the store with an annoyed huff, which caused Sam to startle and then hustle back past them and slip behind a display. Danny and Josie shared a confused look and tracked the top of Sam’s helmet as he sneaked around the perimeter of the store, clearly trying to make his way to the door without being seen. Unfortunately for Sam, they heard his boot knock loudly against a bottle and the owner looked up from his paper. His face immediately twisted into a fury.

“KISZKA!” he bellowed, slamming his paper onto the counter as Sam scurried down the first aisle and out the door, the bell banging loudly as the owner followed him out in a hurried jog. Danny and Josie quietly stood and watched the two men disappear around the corner in a flurry of yells.

“Well,” Josie finally said as they slowly approached the counter and started piling their stuff onto it for when the owner returned. “He seems really nice.”

“Shut up,” Danny muttered, knowing his face was thoroughly flushed from both nerves and embarrassment.

“No, really, I’m super excited for your prison biker wedding.”

“Shut up.”

On Monday, Danny was sitting at his table going over the Excel graphing exercise that had driven him nearly crazy the night prior when something was loudly dropped next to him. His reflexes were not as sharp from his lack of sleep and he jolted, calming when he saw what had been dropped on his notebook: a Twix. Danny immediately looked to his right and watched Sam fall into his seat, cracking his neck and unzipping his backpack like nothing had happened. Heart racing, Danny picked up the chocolate and caught Sam’s eye, holding it aloft with confusion crinkling his arched brows. Sam looked at the Twix like he was surprised to see it, sniffed absently and then reclined further in his chair.

“It’s a bribe,” Sam finally spoke, his light voice betraying his cool, edgy facade.

“Pardon?” Danny asked dumbly, trying not to stumble over his words.

“A bribe,” Sam repeated, looking at Danny like he was stupid. “It seems like you know what you’re doing in this class, right?”

“Barely,” Danny muttered, looking back at the admittedly correct graphs on his screen.

“That’s better than how I’m doing,” Sam scoffed, loudly dropping his laptop on his table and pulling a bulky thermos out of his backpack. “I figured a little bribe would help to make alliances.”

Danny looked back at the candy in his hand.

“You stole this.”

“So, what? You and your girlfriend were talking about stealing.”

“That was my sister,” Danny clarified with a curl of his lip. “We weren’t actually going to steal anything, it was just a dumb joke.”

“Well, aren’t you a perfect angel?” Sam sarcastically batted his lashes at Danny and then rolled his eyes, cracking his knuckles aggressively. Danny bristled at Sam’s attitude, even though a small part of him was thrilled by it.

“I don’t know how you think you make friends, but it’s not like this,” Danny snipped shakily, lifting his chin and looking back at his screen. He could feel Sam staring at him as he pretended to care about his homework.

“You’re Danny, yeah?” Sam asked casually after a minute.

“Yeah.”

“I remember you from high school.”

Danny hesitated and met Sam’s eye again. Sam smiled, knowing he had Danny’s attention.

“I didn’t do much in high school,” Danny laughed awkwardly, a little incredulous that Sam would’ve paid any kind of attention to him back then. Danny had friends, sure, but he coasted through classes and invested most of his time with the golfing team, playing video games and banging on the drumset in the basement. He and Sam had mutual friends but had never run in the same circles.

“I remember you anyways,” Sam went on, picking at the skin of his thumb. “You weren’t the type of person to pass up the chance to help out. And I bet that hasn’t changed much. So, you know, if you could help me with an assignment or two, that’d be sick. Plus, I’d make it worth your while.”

“Will I continue to be paid in Twix?”Danny joked, flushing at Sam’s surprising comprehension of Danny’s character. Sam laughed, a sharp noise that sent chills down Danny’s spine.

“You’re fucking funny, dude,” Sam grinned. “If that’s what you want, but I can get you whatever you need. Pick your poison.”

“Poison?” Danny echoed, blinking blankly. Sam’s eyes softened slightly as he realized Danny wasn’t picking up on what he was putting down. He looked almost endeared.

“Yeah, man,” Sam continued, his voice lowering as he leaned towards Danny. “Dope, coke. If that’s not your vibe, I’ll buy you a stupid six pack or roll you a blunt.”

“If I help you do your homework, you’re going to give me coke?” Danny hissed, leaning in as well. “You’re going from Twix to cocaine for trigonometry?”

“I have to graduate,” Sam hissed back, his voice urgent. “Not graduating is not an option for me. I’ve already flunked a class once and if I fail again my family will-”

Sam cut himself off with a groan and flopped dramatically back into his seat, crossing his arms and stretching his legs out.

“Forget it,” Sam snapped, color rising to his cheeks as he let out a huff. “Forget everything I said. I’m fine, it’s fine.”

Danny paused as he watched Sam shift in his seat, his eyes clouding over as he stared down at his lap. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought that Sam might be starting to tear up.

“Hey, man, I’ll help you,” Danny relented, his heart nearly hammering out of his chest as he said it. “Don’t worry about paying me back or anything, though. Actually, I’m more motivated to help you if you promise NOT to give me drugs.”

Sam stared silently at him for a moment, clearly waiting for Danny to pull the rug out from under him and tell him he was only joking. But Danny was sincere in his promise, and Sam’s tense shoulders loosened slightly.

“Cool,” Sam said quietly, nodding once. “Are you busy after class?”

Danny was supposed to have lunch with a friend, but in a split second he decided to cancel.

“No,” Danny answered quickly.

“Wanna go to the library and, I don’t know, you tell me what the fuck is happening in this unit?” Sam suggested, his voice lowering as he got to the end of his sentence. Danny couldn’t help but let a painfully endeared smile cross over his face as he pretended to think for a second and then nodded.

“Yeah, that works,” Danny agreed casually and Sam mirrored his nodding.

“Sweet.”

“Yeah.”

They looked at each other for a moment, letting a few awkward beats pass before Sam cleared his throat and turned his attention back to his thermos. Danny watched him unscrew the chunky lid and take a deep sip, causing Sam to visibly hold back a wince as his eye twitched and he screwed the lid back on. He looked back at Danny, who was regarding him with another look of surprise.

“What?” Sam whispered.

“Dude,” Danny said simply, unsure whether to be concerned or to laugh.

“Shut up,” Sam replied, narrowing his eyes like an angry cat.

“It’s 9am,” Danny went on, a giggle at the end of his words.

“Shut up,” Sam repeated.

The professor got out of her seat and turned on her computer, signaling the beginning of class, and both of them fell silent as the lecture flashed on the projection screen. Danny decided to try and sneak one more look at Sam before he tuned in completely, allowing himself to relish in the anticipation that they were going to be spending the afternoon together. When he looked, he saw Sam was looking back at him, and they both turned away quickly and didn’t make eye contact for the rest of the class.

After an admittedly awkward walk to the library, Danny very quickly learned the extent of just what kind of student Sam was. His eyes wandered, his questions branched into a myriad of tangents, and oftentimes his conclusions made no sense. A particularly hard problem had Danny making Sam slowly backtrack his process to how he arrived at his answer, which made Danny even more confused and further infuriated Sam as he was reminded of how lost he was.

And yet, Danny was exceedingly patient with him. When the light outside started to fade and they gave up on making any more progress, Sam seemed genuinely shocked that Danny had stuck around as long as he had. Sure, when he got home that night Danny gave an extra little scream into his pillow from how hard he had fought Sam to try and help him understand the unit they were on, but Danny really hadn’t minded getting to spend some actual one on one time with Sam. Between tense discussion and slow calculations, Danny had actually had a lot of fun.

Danny finally admitted to himself that he was completely and totally screwed after the next couple of study sessions with Sam. The issue was that not only was Sam even hotter up close, but that he and Danny got along famously. When he wasn’t cussing out his textbook (or Danny, on occasion) or staring off into space, Sam was funny and quick witted and a surprisingly good listener. He had this habit of cradling his jaw with both hands while staring wide eyed at Danny and the textbook he was working off of, nodding occasionally and scribbling down Danny’s process with his bottom lip sucked in between his teeth.

“You’re really getting it now, man,” Danny said proudly one afternoon, watching Sam’s flimsy mechanical pencil work its way down his notebook page as he linked together a probability.

“Maybe a little,” Sam mumbled, flipping a page to check the answer sheet.

“Seriously, you’ve made hella progress,” Danny went on, motioning at Sam’s paper with his own pencil. “You don’t even need the cheat sheet, I know that’s right.”

“Still gonna check,” Sam insisted, seeming to shrink under Danny’s praise. Danny frowned, watching Sam grow somber in the way he always did when he scoured his homework for problems. Normally, Danny just let him take his quiet pause, but this time he felt himself saying something before he could stop himself.

“You know that you’re smart, right?”

Sam looked up quickly, looking almost disgusted by Danny’s compliment.

“Yeah, okay,” Sam mocked, crinkling his nose.

“You are,” Danny continued. “You were smart in high school, too. I mean, you did robotics and debate and stuff, right? You’ve gotta be clever to do all that.”

Sam blinked, his look shifting from unbelieving to almost shy.

“You remember all that?” Sam asked, his voice oddly soft. Danny felt his face flush.

“Uh, well, yeah,” Danny stammered slightly, shrugging like it was nothing. “I noticed lots of stuff in high school. It was a lot more fun than doing my own stuff, I guess.”

“You did cool stuff, too,” Sam said hesitantly, looking back at his page. “Golf is…cool.”

“No, it’s not,” Danny laughed, and a smirk slipped onto Sam’s face.

“Nah, it’s really not,” Sam agreed, the smirk growing to a cheeky grin. “You know what I mean. You were a cool person.”

“Oh, am I not cool anymore?” Danny teased, basking in the realization that at least once, Sam had thought about him back then.

“You’re still cool,” Sam smiled, his eyes boring into Danny’s own as Danny’s smile grew wide and dopey.

“Cool,” Danny replied dumbly, seeing Sam’s eyebrow raise in his peripheral vision as he pretended to start on another question.

“Not good with compliments either, huh?” Sam accused lightheartedly.

“I guess I just don’t get them that much,” Danny answered honestly. Sam immediately let out a sharp, one note laugh that earned him a dirty look from the librarian and a confused smile from Danny.

“What?” Danny asked. Sam looked him up and down once with an amused smile, but once he realized Danny had absolutely no clue what he found so ridiculous, his smile quickly died.

“Nothing, whatever,” Sam backtracked, letting out another much quieter laugh as if to make up for the brashness of the first one.

“Nuh uh, tell me,” Danny insisted, quickly swiping Sam’s paper out from under his hand and holding it hostage under his forearm. “What’s so funny, funny guy?”

“Nothing!” Sam doubled down, his usually edgy tone taking on a brand new whining quality as he tried to yank his paper back. The annoyed knit of Sam’s eyebrows gave Danny a small thrill he didn’t quite understand.

“You tell me why you laughed or I eat this fucking piece of paper.”

“Oh, I would actually love to see that, go right ahead.”

“Come on, Sam, tell me,” Danny all but begged. “Why is it so damn funny I don’t get compliments on the reg?”

Sam still refused to meet his eye, half heartedly trying to slide the paper out from under Danny’s arm with his fingertips gripping furiously.

“I don’t know, I guess it’s just weird considering you look, you know…” Sam trailed off, his tan cheeks rosy as he stumbled to his point. “Looking the way you do, I’d think maybe you’d be fending ‘em off ‘on the reg’. Your words, not mine.”

Danny blinked, still vaguely lost.

“Looking the way I do?” Danny echoed slowly, and Sam rolled his eyes. Danny looked down at himself, trying to decipher whatever Sam was getting at. “Is there a big sweater crowd here that I was unaware of, or…?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sam mumbled, finally pushing Danny’s arm back with one hand and grabbing his paper with the other. “Nevermind.”

Danny spent the rest of the night trying to understand just what Sam had been telling him, but it didn’t hit him until that last second before he finally fell asleep. Danny had sat up abruptly when the thought settled on him, his adrenaline jerking him upwards like a puppet so hard that his knee collided with his cheek. He fell back onto his pillow with a prolonged groan, pressing the heel of his palm to his sore cheek, feeling his blood pulse as he blinked up at the ceiling with the realization spinning in his head: Sam thought he was attractive. And he had said it right to Danny’s face without him knowing. As he began to drift off again, Danny thought he might be the stupidest man alive.

Danny certainly felt like one when the next time he saw Sam, he approached him with sheepish energy and a big, tender bruise on the plane of his cheek under his right eye. Sam’s mouth fell open and he immediately reached up to touch Danny’s face, his fingers softly grazing over the bruise as his dark eyebrows drew together in confusion.

“What the hell happened to you?” Sam asked, his eyes suddenly lighting up as a snarky comment generated in his head. “Oh my god, did you get in a fight?”

Danny, realizing there was no way he could explain the true nature of his injury without sounding like an utter idiot, quickly nodded in agreement and tried to look remorseful. Sam’s mouth fell open again. The sparkle in his eye paired with his ability to be so quick to believe made Danny’s stomach flutter in adoration.

“Yeah, no biggie,” Danny said coolly as he slid into his seat, shrugging off his bag as Sam landed on his seat harshly, his eyes still stuck to Danny’s face.

“Who did you fight?” Sam gasped. “Did you fight a cop? Oh, please say yes.”

“Yep, you know me, big cop fighter,” Danny agreed, sarcasm edging his voice as he shot Sam a sly smile. Sam slumped in his seat as he began to scowl.

“Oh, fuck you, don’t lie to me,” Sam pouted, crossing his leather clad arms. “Seriously, what’s with the bruise?”

“It’s stupid, I’m fine,” Danny laughed.

“Do we have to cancel midterms studying later?” Sam asked, looking concerned. Maybe even disappointed. “I don’t wanna, I don’t know.”

“Are you worried I’m going to strain my small bruise too much?” Danny teased, butterflies fluttering again at Sam’s genuine worry about his well being.

“I don’t know!” Sam spluttered. “I want to make sure my teacher isn’t being held back from teaching me.”

“Sure, sure,” Danny smiled, finding a random surge of confidence and channeling it by mocking one of the first things Sam had said to him. “Aren’t you just a perfect angel?”

Sam immediately fell silent, rolling his eyes deeply and lolling back into his seat, turning away from Danny for a moment before flopping his head back towards Danny.

“Maybe I am,” Sam joked, giving Daniel a theatrical wink before scoffing and shaking his head, reacting so heavily that Danny figured that he must’ve been genuinely flustered by Danny’s accusation. It was hitting him again now, that Sam might actually like him back. It still felt like a reach, but Danny let the satisfaction of the possibility straighten his spine confidently while Sam continued to sputter.

By the time midterms had come and gone, Danny was beginning to become actually convinced he might have a shot with Sam. A lot of this was attributed to Sam suddenly and consistently indulging in a habit Danny was well acquainted with: kleptomania.

“Sam, you have got to stop,” Danny said defeatedly after Sam dropped yet another grocery bag of snacks on the table in front of Danny before collapsing in the booth across from him. This study session was at a coffee shop, which Danny thought might deter Sam from his now expected habit of bringing Danny bags of treats and the occasional other small, random items.

“Why? It’s funny,” Sam insisted as he did every time Danny questioned why the hell he was doing this. “Come on, laugh.”

“I am not laughing, thank you very much,” Danny said haughtily, sifting through the bag with two fingers. “Aw, come on, there’s even more than last time. Those poor store owners you’re robbing are going to start to notice, you know.”

“Whatever, as if they could prove it was me,” Sam scoffed with pride, cracking his neck cockily.

“Security cams, Sams,” Danny remarked, tying the handles of the bag together. “Seriously, it’s just not worth the risk. I don’t know why you think I’m so desperately in need of a couple hundred granola bars.”

“Totally worth the risk,” Sam argued. “I have a great time doing it, and then you have a great time not starving.”

“Why would I be starving?”

“You said you barely even eat during the days you work. Boom, problem solved, shut up and eat your damn fruit snacks.”

Danny’s heart suddenly began to slam against his ribs as the feelings that accompanied Sam’s shockingly sweet intentions jolted every nerve ending in Danny’s body.

“You started being a full blown klepto because…you didn’t want me to be hungry?”

“So?” Sam’s voice was sharp and defensive, but when Danny blinked at him, he saw Sam’s eyes soften for a fraction of a second and he knew.

“It’s just…actually very nice of you,” Danny said, his voice petering out slightly at the end of his sentence. “Now I kinda feel like a dickhead for yelling at you. Even though I still don’t think you should steal.”

“I accept your apology,” Sam answered jokingly. “So, which homework are we going over today?”

“Oh, we actually don’t have anything due on Friday,” Danny said. “I’m slightly concerned you don’t remember her saying that, but, yeah, we don’t technically don’t have to work on anything.”

“Oh,” Sam said simply, tensing and then relaxing in the same second. “So, we’re just…like, hanging out?”

“I guess,” Danny replied, masking his nerves by taking a sip of his drink. “I mean, we can look ahead in the book. Or you can, like, go if you want.”

“No, no, it’s whatever,” Sam said hurriedly. “I mean, I already ordered a drink, so.”

“Yeah, I mean, then you gotta stay,” Danny teased, still a little surprised by his own ability to flirt so quickly lately. “Maybe we can even attempt a conversation without talking about trigonometry.”

“Sounds like pulling teeth,” Sam agreed, arching a dark brow in amusement. “I’m down.”

“Should I ask you how your day was?”

“Definitely not.”

“What about your childhood?”

Sam bristled but somehow twisted it into a weak smile.

“I don’t know, you were there for a good chunk of it,” Sam smiled, and Danny melted a little. “You weren’t super involved or anything, but you probably know the gist of it.”

“Mm, I guess,” Danny shrugged. “Not enough to know how you went from being such a nice little nerd to…wherever you are now.”

“Is there something wrong with me now?” Sam snapped, giving Danny the stink eye.

“No, no, but you’re definitely a lot different than you were 5 years ago,” Danny went on and Sam swallowed, his eyes traveling in the air next to Danny’s head uncomfortably.

“True,” Sam agreed sullenly.

“I didn’t mean to, I don’t know, drag up anything,” Danny said nervously, taking note of the dark cloud settling over Sam’s head. “Just making conversation. I mean, I admit I am curious, but you can change the subject.”

“It’s…fine,” Sam sighed, shifting in his seat and finally taking off his jacket as he talked. “I mean, you know all the shit that went down with my family. I guess it’s just kind of a weird thing for an angsty little teenager to deal with, and doing spontaneous, adrenaline rush inducing shit is a lot easier to do than dealing with emotions. Way more fun, too.”

“I get that,” Danny said softly. “I was worried for you for a while in high school. You didn’t come to school for like a week straight once and I totally thought something bad had happened.”

“Really?” Sam asked. He looked surprised that Danny had remembered that, and he also looked a little guilty.

“I mean, yeah,” Danny stammered. It was true; it had been a little hard not to be on the lookout for Sam after his dad’s mugshot had been plastered on every newspaper in town.

“Well, I was fine,” Sam insisted, guilt still gracing his features. “With everything going on, I figured nobody would care if I stayed away for a little while. I was pretty much just taking tabs in the woods and eating at drive throughs and stirring up shit at random bars.”

“That sounds like it sucks,” Danny blurted, and Sam looked startled by his candor.

“It did suck,” Sam answered plainly. “But it could have been worse. I mean, I only got arrested once.”

“That’s a miracle,” Danny joked and Sam laughed.

“Honestly, yeah,” Sam agreed with a feline smirk. “I’ve gotten up to some pretty crazy things in my time.”

“I’d love to hear about them,” Danny smiled, cupping his chin in his hand in an effort to look tuned in completely to Sam. Sam laughed again and mirrored Danny’s cheesy motion with a higher notch of dramatics, making both of them chuckle before Sam launched into a highlights reel of the craziest things he’d experienced in the past couple of years. With every new anecdote, Sam loosened up more and more, his eyes staying round and playful as he gesticulated often and laughed between his words. Even though his stories painted him as some kind of a wild thrill seeker, the Sam sitting in front of Danny was exuberant, sweet, and kept collapsing into fits of giggles that made him snort and giggle all over again. Danny couldn’t help but stare.

Suddenly it was November, and Danny and Sam put their heads together to work through the review packet they’d been given. The truth is that the review packet had all the basics of the units they’d gone through, and the professor had said that the final was going to be a collection of all the simplest concepts so there was no reason to unnecessarily stress, but Danny and Sam began to study like it was the bar exam. At this point, both of them were quietly aware that Sam would be able to pass this final without Danny’s help, and that their studying sessions didn’t actually involve all that much studying anymore. They’d go to the library or a coffee shop or any kind of quiet establishment, pull out their folders and pencils and calculators, and then not touch them for the next couple of hours while they chatted. On a few occasions, Sam would shut down when the conversation got too close for him, and Danny knew that during those times he was waiting for Danny to go, but he never did. He’d pick a new topic, broach it carefully, and wait for Sam to warm back up to him. That unthinking kindness was a big part of why Sam actually started to feel comfortable opening up to Danny, even if it was only a little bit. It was also why Sam started to feel like he would do anything to get alone with Danny, such as feigning that he absolutely needed them to start meeting up twice a week more than once. Right before the actual test, Sam even considered inviting Danny over to his place to…not study, he wouldn’t get away with saying that’s why he wanted him over. That’s why he never ended up offering. Part of it was shame, honestly. He didn’t like the imagery of Danny, bright and clean, standing in the basement he called home and pretending to like it. Or even actually liking it, seeing as he seemed to like everything Sam pitched to him, even when it was a tale of arson or getting an unseemly tattoo in an unseemly place.

What it was, really, was that Sam wanted Danny alone because he had a big, fat crush on him. When he’d first seen Danny in class, he’d recognized him from school, sure, but his first thought was that he was absolutely drop dead gorgeous. So gorgeous that he looked entirely out of place hunched over his laptop in a stained t-shirt that he assumed doubled as his uniform for work. Sam wasn’t stupid, he knew that his look attracted his stares, and usually he loved the attention. But he felt uncharacteristically nervous when he began to notice that Danny’s eyes couldn’t stay off of him during class. In fact, even after becoming friends and becoming arguably close friends, he still felt nervous under Danny’s gaze. He wanted to keep his eyes on him at all times, and as the last day of class drew near, he was worried he was going to lose it. Sam knew he had to make a move. He just wasn’t sure how.

“Come over.”

Danny blinked.

“Hm?” Danny asked with a closed mouth, looking up from his paper to see that Sam wasn’t even looking at him. Sam was regarding the motor oil under his nails with great intensity.

“Come over,” Sam repeated, slowly and theatrically. “After the final tomorrow. We’ll party and lay a semester of unrelenting torment to rest.”

“Oh,” Danny replied dumbly, suddenly feeling very warm under the collar of his green sweater. “Yeah, sure, sounds fun. Should I bring anything?”

“Nah, I’ve got enough liquor to be deemed a public fire hazard,” Sam grinned, finally looking at Danny to flash him his teeth. “You’ll probably have to crash for the night, though. We’re going to get pretty fucked up.”

“Oh, are we?” Danny challenged with a smile of his own. “I don’t know how wild a two person party can get.”

“I’d invite other people but they wouldn’t understand the true heart of the party like we do,” Sam explained dryly. “You can pick what we watch.”

“Sweet,” Danny sang, his knee bouncing from jitters under the table. He couldn’t stop thinking about the prospect of sleeping in the same room as Sam. “Do I get to sleep on the couch, or is it a pillow and a blanket situation?”

“Whatever you want, bro,” Sam answered coolly, looking back to his nails. “All I know is you don’t get the bed.”

“You must be so proud of your twin size mattress.”

“Hey, she sees plenty of play,” Sam purred, blatantly lying. He winked and Danny rolled his eyes, landing his attention back on his paper.

“If ‘she’ saw plenty of play, you wouldn’t still have a twin,” Danny accused, his stomach turning at the thought of anyone other than him in that bed with Sam. Sam scoffed.

“Hey now, mattresses are expensive as fuck,” Sam argued, reaching a defensive headspace where his arms crossed and his lip curled. Danny loved it.

“True, true,” Danny humored him. “So, do I get to ride home with you on your big scary motorcycle or do I have to follow you in my car?”

“We’ll see if your excuse for a car can keep up with my Harley. I’ve been meaning to ask you to drag race, anyways.”

“My sheer spite would make my car go faster than your tricycle.”

“Tricycle?!”

Danny laughed as Sam flew into a sputtering tirade of defending his motorcycle, counting out bullet pointed arguments on his fingers as Danny sat there with a dopey smile on his face. Danny wondered if Sam had caught on to the fact that he fired him up just so he could watch him fizzle down. At the same time, Sam wondered if Danny knew how much he liked that he did that.

Danny’s nerves began to run wild about halfway through his final. Not because of any uncertainty at his answers, but because as time passed, he realized just how soon he’d be at Sam’s. He was worried about what he’d be like after a few drinks and finding himself completely alone with the man he’d begun to fantasize about more and more every day. Actually, he hadn’t thought of much else but what he was going to do about this hangout time with Sam, or rather, what he wanted to do. A gentle, almost innocent crush had morphed so quickly in such a short time, and his feelings were quickly developing in a way that kept his head filled with images of his hands on Sam’s hips and how Sam’s neck might look when covered in bruises. As one of those thoughts started to drift into his mind, his thoughts whispering about how it was a very real possibility, Danny’s pencil began to fly over his paper as he hurried to finish as fast as possible.

Sam didn’t keep Danny waiting for very long after he did finally turn in his final and hurry out into the hallway. Sam had dressed pretty nice for once, in his own uniquely Sam way. He had on a rumpled white shirt with a dark green leather jacket, paired with dark jeans that boasted only a few scuffs and minor rips. He stomped after Danny down the hall in heavy workmans boots.

“How was it for you?” Sam asked, his body language bordering on giddy as they burst out the doors into a chilly, biting breeze that immediately reddened both their cheeks and noses.

“Honestly? It was kind of easy,” Danny said brightly and Sam immediately let out a laugh, kicking an icy stick as they approached where they’d parked their respective vehicles nearby.

“I knew you’d say that, ugh,” Sam complained.

“What, was it hard for you?”

“No, it’s just more annoying when things are easy for you,” Sam explained. “‘Cause everything’s easy to you, so, like, duh, of course you thought it was easy.”

“Sorry for being smart?” Danny laughed apologetically.

“Yeah, you better be.”

Danny scoffed and Sam laughed, brushing a few stray leaves off the seat of his bike and straddling it. Danny’s breath caught slightly when Sam adjusted himself, his back arching for a few seconds before he settled down, fiddling with his gloves while Danny dragged his gaze away from the seat of his bike. They weren’t even at Sam’s yet, and he started to become really worried about his capacity for self control.

Danny worried again when they arrived at Sam’s grungy apartment building and he watched Sam flip his hair over his shoulder as he fumbled for his keys.

Danny worried some more when Sam insisted on standing sideways in the doorway to dramatically present his living room to him, so that Danny felt his chest drag against his upper arm as he squeezed past.

Danny worried the most in the moments right after the door closed. Sam pressed his back against the wood coquettishly while grinning softly at Danny, and Danny sort of floated out of himself when he felt his body turn on his heel and march right up to Sam. Sam’s eyes widened and his goofy introductory remarks died on his tongue as he looked up at Danny in puzzlement right before Danny gently palmed the side of his tattooed throat and brought his lips to Sam’s. And Sam, the rough edged, chain smoking, eye rolling, pain of a man immediately buckled at the knee and sighed into the contact, his rough hands grazing Danny’s neck before diving into his hair. Danny felt his entire body go blindingly white hot with nerves as he gasped and went in for another kiss, his jaw angling perfectly against Sam’s as he held him firmly against the door. Sam arched against the wood and into Danny’s touch, melting against whatever contact he could find on the taller man. After a minute of Sam writhing and Danny nearly blacking out from the pleasure of Sam’s soft lips on his own, Danny finally pulled away for a deep breath of air, maintaining frenzied eye contact with Sam as he watched him paw lightly at his neck and take gasping breaths.

“Hey,” Danny breathed, his voice raspy and shaking. “I’m sorry, I should have-”

“Took you fucking long enough,” Sam cut him off, his shining lips splitting into a wild smile. “I mean, fuckin’ A, man. I was starting to think I was reading into nothing.”

“Definitely not nothing,” Danny replied quietly. “A very nervous something.”

“Well, the something is mutual,” Sam grinned, giving Danny a proper up and down with his eyes and chuckling softly. “Very, very mutual.”

“Cool,” Danny said shyly, dipping his head to try and hide his smile, as if he hadn’t just slammed Sam against a door to steal a kiss.

“Come back,” Sam whined softly, grasping Danny by the collar of his corduroy jacket and pulling him back into his embrace. “Come on, don’t be a tease any more than you already are.”

“I’m a tease?” Danny asked with delighted disbelief, smiling into the contact of Sam beginning to kiss along his jaw and neck. “You were the one who was going to make me sleep on the floor tonight.”

“Oh, baby, you were never going to be sleeping on the floor,” Sam whispered in his ear, kissing his jaw and working his way up to giving Danny one, long kiss on the lips before speaking again. “I always get what I want.”

“You want me?” Danny asked against his lips, getting lost in the wide expanse of Sam’s dark eyes.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Sam purred, cupping Danny’s jaw and pulling him into a series of slow kisses while Danny’s mind continued to reel at Sam’s reciprocity. With Sam biting his lip and kissing it better in succession, along with his willowy fingers tracing down Danny’s chest, Danny was honestly beginning to find it hard that this wasn’t a miracle from the universe. Or maybe some kind of dream that he’d fallen into without realizing. He couldn’t even begin to comprehend that this scenario was exactly what Sam had been picturing for their evening the entire time.

Once Sam’s tongue made its way into Danny’s mouth, adding warmth and licking smoothly, Danny started to hurriedly shrug off his jacket and toss it blindly behind him before starting to work Sam’s off of him. It exposed the patchwork of tattoos along Sam’s arms, tigers and daggers and snakes in the traditional style popping against the white of his shirt. To his surprise, Sam’s hands left Danny’s cheeks and boldly slid up under his sweater, causing Danny to flinch and yelp at the feeling of Sam’s ice cold fingers on his warm skin. Sam giggled, still keeping their lips locked together as he grabbed at Danny’s waist and sides, his hands unable to stay in one place. Matching Sam’s reckless abandon, Danny suddenly bent at the knee and hooked his arms around Sam’s thighs, boosting him into the air. Sam hummed into his mouth, crossing his legs behind Danny’s back and snaking his hands out from under Danny’s sweater to tangle back into his curls.

“My bedroom is the door behind you to the right,” Sam mumbled breathlessly, fidgeting slightly against Danny’s firm front.

“That’s awful forward of you,” Danny flirted, taking a moment to breathe and appreciate the weight of Sam in his arms, holding him up with very little effort. This could come in handy.

“Well, do you want to fuck me or not?” Sam scoffed, a further blush flushing his face as he said it. His pupils completely swallowed up the warm brown of his iris as he stared expectantly at Danny, who had to take a second to concentrate on not cumming in his jeans right then and there.

“Yes, god, yes,” Danny answered quickly, immediately starting a slow, backwards walk towards Sam’s bedroom as Sam grinned wolfishly and descended on Danny’s mouth hungrily again.

Eventually, they fumbled their way into the bedroom, Sam closing the door behind them before Danny dropped him on the bed and climbed over him. Danny considered continuing with his conquest, but he found himself looking up to observe his surroundings. Sam’s bedroom was small, with wrinkled posters and flyers for basement shows and concerts peppering the gray walls. There were clothes all over the floor, along with the butts of cigarettes and a myriad of worn out sneakers and boots. Sam watched Danny’s expression carefully as he assessed the mess that was his room, his eyes tracking the pattern on his quilt before smiling at Sam again.

“It’s cute in here,” Danny declared, looking at a string of lights taped to the borders of the walls while Sam blinked in surprise at his words.

“No, it’s not,” Sam muttered, looking around his room and seeing only the disregard for his own environment in the mess he’d created.

“Nah, it’s all very you,” Danny explained, looking at the room and seeing the person behind it all. He imagined Sam wobbling on a stool to paint the walls their moody gray, or pulling his quilt out of a box and smoothing it lovingly over the sheets, wondering if it had been made for him by a relative or hand picked from a thrift shop with a curated eye. It was all painfully adorable to him. It was all so…Sam.

Sam saw the adoring shine in Danny’s crinkled, hazel eyes and felt all his seductive confidence fly out the window, only able to bat his lashes up at him and marvel.

“You really don’t think I’m a scuzzball, do you?” Sam asked with a note of amused realization, his sentence lifting into a slight one note laugh.

“Never have,” Danny answered honestly, cocking his head at Sam while smiling warmly. “I mean, you can pretend all you want, but I know you’re not who you pretend to be. You’re just…”

“What?” Sam challenged, slightly defensive of the persona he’d worked hard to maintain over the years, and also slightly embarrassed that Danny had seen through it so effortlessly.

“You’re just you, I guess,” Danny shrugged as best he could while holding his weight on his elbows, still hovering over Sam’s reclined body. “And that’s not very scary to me.”

Sam was silent for a minute, unsure of what to say to that. Initially, he’d been annoyed that Danny was so nice to him, figuring the other shoe would drop at any time and he’d reveal his worst intentions. This was a pattern Sam was accustomed to. But Danny really meant what he said. He didn’t just see through Sam, he saw him fully, and Sam realized with a relieved jolt that he had never really been annoyed about it. He was grateful.

But Sam was still very much in a certain state of mind, and his body reminded him of it when he looked down and saw how his crotch had lifted to press against Danny’s without his realizing. He figured maybe there was a certain way he could show Danny just how grateful he was.

“Why don’t you show me just how scary you can be?” Sam invited lowly, his hand returning to Danny’s cheek as his thumb swiped over Danny’s bottom lip. This small action seemed to remind Danny of how they’d ended up here, and Sam watched with restrained delight as Danny’s eyes glazed over slightly.

“What do you want?” Danny asked quietly, adjusting and hovering further over Sam, his look of genuine caring slowly morphing into something almost predatory as he smiled. His hair fell around them, the rest of the world falling away.

“I already told you,” Sam pointed out haughtily. “I want you.”

“I’m getting kind of tired of your attitude,” Danny fired back. “You know I want specifics.”

“Is that what you want? Specifics? Not me?” Sam grinned cheekily, enjoying pressing Danny’s buttons even more now that he was getting the idea that he’d be rewarded for it. Danny rolled his eyes and shook his head at Sam.

“Be that way,” Danny hummed, straightening and sitting hard on Sam’s lap, causing him to let out a strangled whine as Danny pulled his sweater off. “Guess I’ll just call the shots.”

Sam really wanted to conjure up a fiery retort, but his mind went fuzzy and blank at the sight of Danny with his shirt off, his broad chest exposed and his smile cocky and triumphant as he watched Sam flounder wordlessly. Sam became even more aware of the strain in his jeans when his eyes traveled downward and he caught sight of the trail of dark hair just over the waistband of Danny’s pants.

“Do you even know how much I like you?” Danny started, casually undoing the clasp of his watch and leaning to the side to drop it on Sam’s bedside table while Sam propped himself up on his elbows. “I literally thought I was going to flunk the class because you were so distracting.”

“I didn’t even talk to you,” Sam said simply, barely audible.

“Didn’t need to,” Danny affirmed. “My mind did most of the distracting stuff.”

“Like what?” Sam prodded, tipping his chin up to stare unrelentingly at Danny in a pathetic attempt to regain control. Danny, taking advantage of this surprising burst of dominance that Sam seemed to give him, gently grasped Sam’s chin.

“Well, initially, I had all these ideas of how we’d end up kissing for the first time,” Danny explained. “Shockingly, none of them ended up being how it went, but I’m glad I had options. And, I mean, those ideas just sort of developed over time. I’d wake up and be all surprised that I’d cum in my pants and not on you.”

Sam’s jaw hung open and Danny shut it gently for him, his body pulsing with heat as his adrenaline raced in his veins.

“You gonna teach me some more, hm?” Sam finally managed to say, straining to try and steal a kiss. “Or do you want me to lead?”

“I’d like to see you try,” Danny grinned, pushing Sam onto his back. Sam, breathless, watched Danny move his hands down to Sam’s aching groin and begin to undo his pants, fingers shaking with anticipation. Sam pushed his hair off his forehead and pressed his covered dick into Danny’s hand after his pants had been tugged down to his knees, not speaking but letting a needling whimper escape that made Danny smile.

“What are we going to do with you, Sam?” Danny teased, running his thumb up and down Sam’s concealed length.

“Danny,” Sam choked out as Danny took his hands off of Sam and began to unzip his own pants. The lack of touch was almost unbearable at that moment. “Come on, fuck me, please.”

“That could look like a lot of things,” Danny said absently, freeing his dick and palming it casually, letting out a slow sigh of relief. Sam stared unabashedly at Danny’s impressive and admittedly intimidating length. He’d fantasized about what he might expect, but the real thing was almost overwhelming. But he knew what he needed.

“In me,” Sam whispered, his tone bordering on longing. “Please. I can take it.”

“You can?” Danny questioned, trying to keep up his domineering tone despite the wind being knocked out of his lungs at Sam’s request. “Have you been getting ready for me?”

“Maybe,” Sam admitted quietly. He took a dangerous leap with what he said next. “But those randos don’t even hold a candle to you.”

Danny flinched, jealousy immediately rolling over him in cold waves as his mind started to conjure up disgusting imagery of Sam on his back for anybody other than him. It must have translated into his expression without his knowledge because Sam’s open mouth twisted into a smug smile, arching an eyebrow at Danny. It was a dare, and Danny dared to prove himself.

“Shut up before I make you,” Danny snarled, challenging Sam to call him out for being all bark and no bite. But Sam obediently shut his trap, lowering himself slightly on his elbows and spread his legs ever so slightly, inviting Danny in without a word.

“So…was I better than those other ‘randos’ stretching you out?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I was joking.”

Sam’s whole body was in absolute, delicious agony, his face buried into the crook of Danny’s neck. He attempted to even out his breathing, his throat raw and his chest tired after all the pornographic moans and whimpers that had escaped him when Danny had driven into him with varying amounts of mercy over the course of what felt like hours. Sam’s shoulders were already blooming with a score of bruises where Danny had left teeth marks, anchoring himself to Sam in animalistic moments of passion when he threatened to finish far too early. Danny’s body was aching too, his abs and hips tense and his shoulders in their own pain from holding himself up for so long. It had been worth it to keep the sight of Sam’s gasps and fluttering eyes, and he was certain he had enough material in his mind's eye to keep him satisfied in his own personal endeavors for weeks. Danny brushed his fingers lightly up and down Sam’s spine, his lips pressed to the crown of Sam’s head as they laid in silence, recovering.

“Do you want to hear something crazy?” Sam said, his voice muffled by Danny’s scorching hot skin.

“Sure,” Danny replied, giving Sam’s hair a quick kiss after he said it.

“I used to have a crush on you in high school.”

“What!” Danny blurted, attempting to push Sam’s shoulder up so he could see his face, but Sam buried his head even further into Danny’s neck. “Explain!”

“I just did!” Sam laughed, his voice still muted. “It wasn’t anything serious but, yeah, I guess you were kind of my hallway crush. It’s no big deal.”

“Wow,” Danny said dreamily. “And look where you are now. How exciting for you.”

“Shut up!” Sam groaned, finally lifting his head and giving Danny a fake frown, his face glowing and flushed. Danny mocked his frown back to him, laughing at his expression and tucking a sweaty strand of hair behind his ear.

“I definitely thought you were cute,” Danny smiled. “I was super into emo haircuts.”

“I hate you,” Sam deadpanned, looking unamused.

“Is that why you just let me cum in y-”

Sam pressed his palm over Danny’s mouth, muffling his subsequent laugh. Sam let out an exasperated sigh and leaned over to reach into an opened drawer of his bedside table, items rattling out of sight until he emerged with his prize: Marlboro Reds. Sam bit down on a cigarette and slid out another to offer it to Danny, who wrinkled his nose at it initially but took it between his fingers anyways, studying it while Sam pulled free the lighter and rolled onto his back next to Danny.

“You ever smoked?” Sam asked, lighting his cigarette and taking a deep inhale while Danny shook his head no. Sam blew out a thick cloud of smoke before rolling onto his front, taking the cigarette out of Danny’s hand and sticking it in Danny’s mouth himself. Danny wanted to protest, but froze when Sam leaned over and pressed the tip of his lit cigarette to Danny’s, both of them silent save for the crackling of the paper and tobacco as Danny’s cigarette began to glow. He took a hesitant inhale, letting the heady warmth settle on his tongue before he began to cough, sitting up sharply and choking on a cloud of smoke while Sam chuckled and patted him on the back.

“You’ll get there,” Sam assured him through laughs.

“I don’t know if I wanna get there,” Danny wheezed, letting the cigarette fizzle between his fingers instead of taking a second drag.

“You don’t have to, just figured I’d give you a taste of the wild side,” Sam grinned, the cigarette dangling attractively from his bottom lip.

“You’ve given me more than a taste of that,” Danny said with a wink. Sam chuckled again, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth as he stared with glittering eyes at Danny.

“I like you,” Sam said simply, conjuring the innocent butterflies in Danny’s stomach.

“Thank you,” Danny answered shyly and Sam immediately slapped his arm.

“Say it back!”

“I like you!” Danny laughed, slapping Sam back. “You knew that!”

“Yeah, but I like hearing you say it,” Sam hummed proudly.

“You’re weird.”

“You’re weirder.”

“You’re the weirdest,” Danny teased, taking another more careful inhale of his cigarette and releasing it with only a mild clearing of his throat. “Ooh, look, I’m learning.”

“Maybe I had something to teach you after all,” Sam smiled. “I guess I never really needed to bribe you into helping me, huh?”

“Not at all,” Danny said. “But I’m enjoying the reward of just you.”

Sam’s smile widened and Danny smiled right back at him. It suddenly seemed so ridiculous that there had ever been a time when he was afraid to speak to Sam. How could he have looked at his puppy dog eyes and cute shaggy hair and not dragged him into his lap right then and there? Danny figured he had time to rectify that, doing just that and catching Sam in a smoky kiss, suddenly thrilled about all the things that they could continue to teach each other.

#you have to listen to crush by ethel cain while you read this btw #caravel nation law #gvf #greta van fleet #danny wagner #sam kiszka #sanny gvf #greta van fleet fan fiction #greta van art #but you look so cool #i couldnt make myself write full smut but i tried #karoufiction

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11x13kyle · 1 year

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hardlaunching the yandere cartman masterpost

cartman genuinely, hand to god, believes that stan is in a relationship with kyle to spite him specifically. he believes that he did something in preschool that pissed stan off, and for that, stan is now committed to fucking cartman over by dating, then proposing to, then marrying, then having children with kyle

one time while drunker than he’s ever been in his life he pulls stan aside to confront him, begging him to admit to this longcon. stan is so confused and has no idea what the hell he’s talking about. this drives cartman up a wall because he is allergic to seeing reason.

stan also (much like kyle) can’t process cartman being in love with and psychosexualy obsessed with kyle because it is way too weird and fucked up for him. it makes him VISCERALLY uncomfortable and he is constantly begging kyle to just get a restraining order, which kyle can’t do, because his livelihood is literally tied up in having public arguments with this guy for money

needless to say, stan and kyle’s relationship (or, to him, “relationship”) makes cartman feel insane levels of rage. he usually just takes this out on stan and kyle in the normal ways, but there have been multiple times where he has tried to murder stan in earnest

his entire life, cartman believes that he Can get stan and kyle to break up, there’s just something he hasn’t figured out yet. he kind of believes that if he succeeds in one of his stan murder attempts that this will woo kyle. for some reason.

one of the stan murder attempts ends like this: cartman is all giddy right before going on the pod that day because he is certain that his most recent attempt worked, so he’s anticipating kyle showing up sobbing, inconsolable because his boyfriend just died of eating poisoned food. instead, kyle shows up perfectly fine and normal. cartman is already mad about this, but it gets worse when kyle offhandedly mentions that a fan sent him and stan and cake, but he says that it “looked like dogshit” so neither of them ate. now cartman is mad about TWO things.

“well you’re WRONG. the cake DIDN’T look like shit. WHATEVER it looked like. and i bet it was a GOOD fucking cake. i’m sure whoever made it put a LOT of effort in and filled it with LOVE and absolutely ZERO arsenic.”

cartman was not invited to their wedding. he still came. kyle factored this into his wedding planning because kyle factored every possible outcome into his wedding planning

kyle paid cartman off to make sure that he didn’t object.

“FINE. HERE’S $600. NO OBJECTIONS CARTMAN. DON’T RUIN MY FUCKING WEDDING THAT I DIDN’T EVEN INVITE YOU TO.”

once the cartman issue is dealt with, kyle can get back to picking colors and accents for the tablecloths

when cartman sneaks into the wedding he brings cupid me as his plus one because he thinks this may help him to break them up. cupid me is just thrilled to finally have that date -> cartman forgets about his objection plans because cupid me keeps foiling them by making sure the wedding goes PERFECTLY

the months following the wedding re: cartman’s kyle fixation are so bad that listeners start to kind of PITY him

kyle makes a whole point of referring to stan exclusively as his husband on the podcast like listeners don’t know who stan is. this ENRAGES cartman. he responds to most of kyle’s comments with snappish one word answers and then rants about absolutely nothing over and over again. he’s never been this upset over stan and kyle in his LIFE. it is getting harder and harder to believe that this is stan’s longcon but he still is able to convince himself of this because he’s ridiculously delusional

cartman keeps calling him sobbing begging him to leave kyle, threatening to kill himself, the works. he climbs into their window the night before the wedding to try and convince stan to change his mind

stan: *takes long drag of a cigarette* if you think i’m ever going to actually leave kyle, you’re wrong.

when they have children, cartman is incapable of being a “fun uncle” because he is so horrifically jealous that he just acts evil to the style kids

also, tweet about anna khachiyan’s baby that reminds me of this whole thing:

cartman engages in increasingly cartoonish attempts to murder their babies, such as dangling one of them off a balcony, putting them on one of those moving saws, etc.

he claims it’s a bit. it’s not a bit.

when they have their second child he’s so mad because the only thing harder than getting away with murdering one infant is getting away with murdering more than one infant

he is so so mega furious that the kids aren’t his, again, he believes this is part of stan’s longcon. whenever they exhibit stanisms or whenever he notices just how much they physically resemble stan this increases his rage

the older the kids get the more verbally nasty he is, but he makes fewer attempts on their lives because its harder to get away with

cartman will do fucking anything. but he is unfamiliar with stan and kyle’s game. as in, the fact that they are legitimately in love and that kyle finds cartman repulsive on every single level.

#microceleb au #one sided kyman is always funny as fuck to write about. his delusional ass truly believes that he can pull kyle. kyle who despises him.#ONE SIDED. PSYCHOSEXUAL OBSESSION. CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.

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localhopedealerr · 2 years

Text

Starry Night

Azriel x Reader Oneshot

Some fluffy late night talk with azzy✨⭐️

Warnings: noneee EXCEPT i literally didn’t edit this at all, i just had to get it posted. so beware and i’m so so sorry. 🫣

You hadn’t meant to spend so long up on the balcony, but the stars seemed to keep your thoughts in an endless conversation. The other members of the Inner Circle had dispersed after an evening full of wine and food, but you had hung behind waiting on your mate. One thought led to another, until you found yourself curled up on the outdoor sofa, staring up into a sky that seemed to go on forever.

You weren’t sure you’d ever get over the view. Tiny bursts of life filling a vast sea of black. The stars were so willing to allow the people who lived here to witness their beauty every night. A beauty you weren’t sure anyone here deserved, but were all damn grateful to see.

“I didn’t realize you were still down here. You should be sleeping. ”

Your head peaked behind the back of the couch, finding the eyes of the infamous Shadowsinger. He had gone off to speak with Rhys about his latest intel, needing to share it while it was fresh on his mind. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his pants, a fitted black long sleeve covered his impressive frame. As casual as he ever dressed himself, usually preferring his leathers and arsenal of weapons strapped to him.

He had been in a rare form tonight, having just returned from a mission that kept him away from home- away from you- longer than he wanted. The Spymaster spoke openly the whole night, laughing and joking with the whole table. Enjoying the much needed family time.

You liked seeing that side of him. Multiple times throughout the night you caught yourself simply marveling at him. He’d caught your eyes a few times, offering a smug smirk in response before returning to the conversation in front of him. Cheeky shit.

You didn’t mind it though. You were in love with that smirk. In love with the way he spoke. The way he laughed. Hell, you weren’t sure there was anything you didn’t love seeing him do.

“It’s not hard to lose sleep when there’s a view like this waiting for me every night.”

Azriel nodded, looking out over the balcony for a moment before he came to seat himself next to you. You moved your legs underneath yourself, allowing Azriel to press up against you as your head fell against his shoulder.

“Cassian was acting a fool tonight, im surprised Nesta didn’t cut him off sooner.”

You snorted at that. “You’re surprised? Im sure Nesta enjoys Cassian plenty when he’s too wasted. He gets a hundred times hornier.”

Your mate laughed, a delish sound falling out of his lips as his head fell back against the cushion. Cassian must have finished at least two bottles of Rhysands wine by himself, much to your high lords dismay. “Yes, i suppose that’s true. I guess we should count ourselves lucky he was sober enough to fly them back to the Townhouse tonight.”

You laughed once more, shaking you head as you thought about your friends. You loved them dearly, but couldn’t deny the sigh of relief you let out when they had decided to spend the night at the Townhouse instead of the House of Wind, sparing their friends the torture of having to listen to them well into the early hours.

“You haven’t told me how your mission went, or what exactly you were doing on it.”

Azriel kissed the side of your head, sighing as his hands tugged at your own, toying with the pads of your fingers. “ mm, let’s talk about it tomorrow. Let me enjoy the night sky with my mate.”

You wouldn’t argue with him, couldn’t argue with him- Not when those dark, angelic eyes met your own. How could you deny your mate of anything when he was so perfect?

You gave a look of contemplation, before finally sighing dramatically. “ Fine. You’re off the hook for now. Have you finished that book i lent you?”

Azriel hummed in response, head lazily leaning to one side. “ I did. I was surprised with the ending, in a good way. “

“ I know, it was out of nowhere. But that’s what i like about the author. “

He smiled when your eyes lit up, like they always did when you talked about books. “I’d like to read more from him. We should start the next one together.”

You shifted, burrowing yourself closer to his side. You blinked slow, body and soul finally feeling at peace now that your mate was back with you. “ Tomorrow, we can go to that bookstore down by the river and grab the next books.”

Azriel held you closer, leaning his head against the back of the couch. “ It’s a date.” His eyes closed.

You could barely keep your eyes open now. “ I love you. I missed you. I’m glad you’re home.”

“Is that your way of telling me you’re going to sleep?” Azriel mused, one eye lifting up to peak down at the girl in his arms.

You had already dozed off. Azriel kissed the top of your head one more time, before shifting your bodies. He now held you on top of him, your legs tangling with his.

“ Sweet dreams, baby.”

#acotar fandom #azriel fic #azriel fluff #acotar headcanon #acotar series #acotar x reader #azriel fanfic #a court of thorns and roses #acotar x you #azriel x you #azriel acotar #azriel shadowsinger #acotar #azriel spymaster #azriel x reader

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sweet-roulette · 6 days

Text

・❥・More Kotoko facts!・❥・

・❥・ Her jacket is an altered version of Riki’s: After Riki died, she kinda stole his leather jacket and then had it altered to fit her style. She also basically stole his whole style, saying it’s to “keep his memory alive” or “I did it better.”

・❥・ Collector of odd trinkets: Kotoko has a knack for finding the weirdest little objects during her travels — old keys, tiny glass bottles, bizarre coins — and she keeps them in a small box in her room. She claims each one has “some secret, mysterious power,” though most of them are probably just junk.

・❥・ Always wins rock-paper-scissors: Kotoko has an uncanny talent for winning rock-paper-scissors, to the point where people start thinking she has some secret strategy. When asked, she just says, “I always know what you’re going to pick. It’s my sixth sense.” This drives Shinyu nuts. Keep in mind Shinyu’s ability literally could let him win any and every game of chance. Wether he’s purposely not using his ability or not is unknown...

・❥・ Keeps a journal but pretends it’s tactical notes: Kotoko actually writes in a personal journal every day, filling it with her thoughts, feelings, and silly moments. But if anyone asks what she’s writing, she’ll lie and say it’s “a record of her strategies and brilliant ideas.”

・❥・ Is always ‘right’ even when she’s wrong: Kotoko is never wrong. At least, that’s what she’ll tell you. Even when she’s clearly mistaken about something, she’ll twist her logic to make it seem like she was right all along. Her quick-thinking turns every argument into a confusing maze of half-truths until people just give up.

・❥・ Has an arsenal of ridiculous threats: Instead of getting truly angry, Kotoko likes to threaten people with the most absurd consequences, like “I’ll fill your shoes with jelly” or “I’ll replace all your shampoo with mayonnaise.” These threats are mostly in good fun, but her delivery is so deadpan that people can’t help but wonder if she’d actually do it.

・❥・ Has a habit of “copying” people’s personalities: If she’s around someone for too long she’ll start picking up some of their personality. For example, Chuuya’s her teacher/older brother figure so she’s around him a lot, as a result, she’s picked up his sharp tongue. Poor Shinyu is the receiver of some sharp tongued cursing respond whenever he does something to annoy her.

・❥・ An expert at “innocent” pranks: Kotoko loves pulling pranks that are so harmless and subtle, people don’t realize they’ve been pranked until much later. She’ll rearrange things on people’s desks by just a few inches or swap out someone’s pen for a slightly different one, watching them get confused without ever suspecting her. Seiun taught her.

・❥・ Obsessed with random trivia: Kotoko randomly spouts obscure trivia facts at the strangest times. During a serious mafia mission, she might casually say something like, “Did you know octopuses have three hearts?” She acts like it’s totally relevant to the situation, leaving her teammates bewildered.

・❥・ Speaks in third person when teasing: When Kotoko is teasing someone, she sometimes starts referring to herself in the third person, like she’s narrating her own life. “Oh, look, Kotoko is clearly superior again. Shinyu could never hope to match her genius.”

・❥・ Pretends she doesn’t care about compliments: Kotoko will act like compliments mean nothing to her, waving them off casually. But as soon as no one’s looking, she’ll smile to herself or blush a little, despite trying to maintain her aloof persona.

・❥・ Always gives people terrible nicknames: Kotoko loves giving out awful, sometimes absurdly long nicknames for her friends. She might call Shinyu “The Unlucky Gambler of Doom” or Chuuya’s nickname, “Walking Mannequin.” She insists the nicknames are a sign of affection, even when they make no sense.

・❥・ Annoying alarm clock app voice: Kotoko customizes all her alarms with her own voice, recorded to sound incredibly annoying on purpose. She’ll wake up to her own sarcastic voice saying, “Hey, rise and shine, you lazy slug. Don’t tell me you’re actually still in bed.”

・❥・ Struggles with basic modern slang: Kotoko tries to stay on top of modern slang, but she often gets it just slightly wrong. She’ll say things like, “That’s, um, very… yeet?” and then look around to see if anyone caught the fact that she clearly has no idea what it means.

・❥・ Uses her ability for petty revenge: If someone slightly annoys Kotoko, she’ll activate her ability in the most petty way possible, like making them think they’re in the middle of a high-stakes decision just to watch them panic for a few seconds. She never lets it go too far, though—it’s all in good fun (mostly).

・❥・ Takes bets on mission outcomes: Whenever the Port Mafia has an important mission, Kotoko takes secret bets among her colleagues on the outcome. She’ll casually start asking, “How long do you think it’ll take us to find the target?” or “Think this guy will try to run, or will he fight?” Even in high-stakes situations, she keeps her playful nature intact by turning everything into a gamble.

・❥・ Enjoys messing with newcomers: Kotoko takes great pleasure in messing with new recruits, acting as though she’s their mentor and feeding them completely made-up stories about mafia traditions or “rules.” She’ll tell them things like, “It’s customary to give the boss a cookie every time you pass him in the hallway,” and then watch with glee as they try to figure out whether she’s serious. She did this when she was a member of the ADA too.

・❥・ Teases her targets before finishing them off: Kotoko has a habit of toying with her targets during missions, especially when she’s been given the task of eliminating someone. She’ll engage them in conversation, make snarky comments, or even challenge them to a quick game before dealing the final blow. It’s all part of her twisted sense of fun, making her feared as both unpredictable and deadly.

・❥・ Challenges authority but never crosses the line: Kotoko constantly pushes the boundaries of what’s acceptable, challenging orders or adding her own spin to them, but she knows just how far she can go. While she might argue with Mori or even Fyodor, she’s smart enough to never push them to the point where there are real consequences.

・❥・ Fan of the mafia’s dark humor: Kotoko thrives in the Port Mafia’s dark humor, often making light of morbid situations with a smirk. She might walk into a room and say, “Smells like death in here. Oh wait, it’s just me,” before proceeding to act like nothing is out of the ordinary. Or when she walks into a room full of people who she’s about to oneshot, she’ll be like “Smells like dead people in here. You don’t smell it? Oh, well, it’s about to.”

・❥・ Has a playlist of over 2000 songs, and then a LOT of other playlists specifically for “vibes”. One of her playlists is called “Songs to kill someone too” and another is “Feeling queencard”. She’s a secret kpop fan and has spent A LOT of money on albums. No one can tell me otherwise.

@happy--prince SOS I THINK I WROTE TOO MANY THIS TIME 😭😭

#🐈‍⬛kotoko #bsd oc #bungou stray dogs #Oc facts

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tired-reader-writer · 1 year

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Magic in Winds of Wolfsong

This is the magic system (if it could be called that) I created for Winds of Wolfsong, my Arslan Senki AU. The post will mainly feature how the Marda clan (a clan of OCs that Arslan, Isfan, Gieve, etc are also part of) uses magic, but they're not the only ones who use magic in the ArSen world, this is centered around Pars and the clan because they are narratively relevant.

A history of magic

The study and usage of magic was much more commonplace and powerful back in the days, days before Zahhak would come to reign Pars. It must've been the case for much of the world, really, magic existed and then something happened that tried to wipe out the existence of magecraft— for Pars, it was Zahhak. Other countries likely had other incidents. For example, even in novel canon, we see the prosperity of magic in Jamshid's era. He and many mages created horrible magical beasts for the sake of hunting them down for sport, if I were to remember correctly. Zahhak himself was actually one of those creations.

In days of old, there were... many “schools” of magic, so to speak. Not school as in like the schools we go to to learn, school as in something like “school of thought”, a particular way of thinking or interacting with magic, a way of life. There were many such schools, each with their own different ways of training and learning magic, and much of the process of learning was via master to protege instead of something more like an institution. They were numerous and diverse.

When the Serpent King took the throne by force, he began to stomp out the use and study of magic outside of his own followers and disciples with extreme prejudice, fearing that any of these mage populations may eventually develop the tools to harm or kill him and end his reign. Much of the knowledge was lost and mages fewer in numbers, more isolated from each other because they had to go into hiding.

The Marda were one of the few that survived to this day, and were instrumental in the defeat of the Serpent King, for they were the ones to craft the legendary sword Rukhnabad.

But things did not get better even after Kaykhusraw ascended the throne. He betrayed them, betrayed the mages, because he feared their power, what they could be capable of. The priesthood, starting from his reign, became mage-hunters of sorts. They feared the possibility of Zahhak's followers remaining, or any of the surviving mages creating another Zahhak, and so they sought to eradicate them, and prohibited the use of magic amongst the priesthood outside of a very limited range of skills.

Because of these reasons, encountering a mage or sorcerer would be rare in the present day, rarer still would be the prospect of two mages from two different schools encountering each other. Magecraft has become extremely localized, only existing in remote or rural areas and masters never really having more than two disciples at most— even the masters themselves are extremely rare. One could say they are of a dying kind.

A clan or a whole organization of magic users would be nigh unthinkable in this day and age. The Marda's continued survival was an extremely unlikely case.

Magic as the fabric of the world

The concept of a world inhabited by spirits and emotions and mystical qualities is older than time— it's a concept present in many religions of our world and history.

The world is alive, in a somewhat literal sense. Spirits inhabit everything— the earth, stone, waters, air, trees, animals, humans, and the like. Some (most?) are untethered, floating freely. The world is saturated with them, and they are an essential part in the way magic works in this world, because magic is the pure energy derived from the soul or spirits.

Let's start small, with the human body.

A human (or really all living creatures) is composed of a body and a soul. They aren't so separate as you might think, the body influences the soul and the soul influences the body, harming one means harming the other, they only separate upon death.

The body is sort of the boundary keeping the soul from just outright blending into the world and other spirits. Spirits have no body, so they don't really have this clear-cut boundary between “themselves” and “everything outside of themselves” the way a living thing w a body will have. They phase in and out and merge and divide and all in all there's not a sense of “self” or “identity”, there's no need. They're of the world and... they're the world itself.

What happens when a person dies is that their body decays and disintegrates, and their soul “returns” to the world to mingle with other souls.

It's like water. The water in a cup is like a soul in a body. But when the cup is gone the water returns to the lake where the water originally came from, anyways. At that point there's no point distinguishing “this part of the water used to be in a blue cup” or anything, it just becomes the lake. It's the same deal with souls.

Magical energy is derived from spirits and souls, and certain locations may have more potent and concentrated magical energy, such as places where mass death had occured in the past, places where religious ceremonies used to be held but aren't anymore, abandoned temples, certain natural locations and structures such as caves, and more.

Magic as concord

The usage of magic would involve the harnessing of magical energy present in either oneself or one's surroundings, and there are many ways to achieve that though many of the schools have gone extinct.

One of such ways is what I call a concord. The interaction and harmony between a mage and the djinn. (Side note: We don't ever get confirmation on what kind of spirit the djinn are in canon, so I'm going to use the word as a catch-all term for all kinds of spirits for the purposes of this lore post.) Asking them for favors, borrowing magical power from them, and the like. It is a relationship of respect, it has to be, it's a part of the djinn the mage is asking to take, after all. Remember that djinn are literally made of magic and nothing else.

Something along similar lines though now largely extinct would be the relationship between a patron deity and a worshipper. The worshipper or priest could beseech for the deity to grant them blessings or boons. This is an older and more powerful form of a concord.

The boons received from a concord could be something like powering the sails for a smooth and speedy journey, charming your fires to stay warm for longer, the wind never getting in the way of one's arrows, fires staying alight for longer and requiring less firewood, the mage being less likely to be affected by temperatures, the ability to sense magic more clearly, things like that. There's not much in terms of spectacle, no showy fireballs or somesuch, that's for other fantasy stories. This is more... subdued. Intimate.

On the subject of concords, the djinn and the divine aren't the only ones a mage can form a concord with— there is another, more permanent kind formed with other living beings with bodies, particularly animals.

Familiars.

When a mage spends an extended amount of time with an animal that they've bonded with, think a beloved horse or a pet or anything along those lines, they begin to influence each other. The animal gains sharper senses, higher intelligence, and a longer lifespan. The mage might also gain sharper senses and the like. Their souls are linked with each other. This is what it means to love, remember that magic is derived from the heart and soul.

The Marda clan introduces animals to their children while they're young, in the hopes that they will develop a deep bond with each other.

Could it happen between two humans? I say yes, a similar sort of thing. Not the same exact thing but think of how people influence and inspire each other. Is that not a form of magic as well?

Magic as craftsmanship

Not the product, not the materials, but the act of crafting itself that is magic, though we'll get to the former two eventually as well.

Hours of needlework dipping and pulling taut on a piece of fabric, hundreds of hammer strikes on a piece of metal. A shuttle carrying the weft thread back and forth through the warp fibers, the taking of something tangled and faulty and spinning it until smooth and strong— that's magic.

Craftspeople are able to tap deeper into the work they do and work wonders as a result of their bonds with it. It gives them a way to connect more deeply, almost to engage empathetically with their materials, feel for what the things they're working with are feeling.

For example, a weaver may get frustrated when the fibers they're trying to prepare for spinning and weaving are sticking all over their body— but with enough firmness and dedication, almost an empathy of sorts, they may be able to pull the fibers off themselves and coax them into cooperating.

There is always a degree of emotionality or awareness from the materials and spirits, the latter of which are made of emotions. It is the craftsperson's task to interact with them, draw out their properties, give them a purpose, shape them into their best forms. Fairly ordinary things crafted from fairly ordinary materials, but the result is something extraordinary that might just be able to touch something more. Craft can give a sense of purpose and direction to the inherent base of magic ordinary materials possess— elevate them into something beyond a mere product. Even simple materials like stone and wood can become sacred when built into structures like temples or instruments for sacred rituals.

Of course, some materials have more potent magic than others... Normal metal vs metal from a meteorite, fruits and herbs harvested under a certain constellation in a particular season vs the same plants harvested at any other period, things collected from a certain location saturated with spiritual power, there is so much wonder in the world.

Some particularly well-crafted items could be passed from generation to generation, and come to embody properties they didn't originally have— they're given a sense of character and honor and whatnot, coming to mean something more than say just a sword or just a table, things used for a long time come to develop their own character, imbued with the user's spirit, entwined.

You will have most certainly heard the phrase “pour one's heart and soul into something” before, writers, artists, craftspeople, anyone who creates anything, it's something dear to us, dear to our hearts, and all creatives know what it feels like. The genuine bond and love we have towards our crafts. I just happened to make it... a little more literal here, because of course, there is magic in souls in this world, and a craft is something you pour your soul into. That is why it is a wedding tradition for the marrying couple in the Marda clan to display a lifetime of things they had created with their own hands, their masterpieces, because it is believed to be proof of the beauty of one's soul, the dedication they are capable of.

Magic as song

Music is the bridge between worlds, the language of all languages that transcend all barriers. It is used as a medium to communicate with the djinn, invite them for a ceremony, incite them to congregate, certain melodies and incantations and words giving a sense of purpose to the formless, amorphous, floating djinn, to achieve a desired effect.

This is also why melodic incantations are present in the prayers of Parsian faith (side note: the religion should probably have an actual name, Zoroastrianism for example is called mazda-yasna aka the worship of Ahura Mazda, chief and creator deity and the all-wise one. As the Parsian faith is based on Zoroastrianism, I suppose their name could be something along those lines as well, something-something-yasna, though I'd like to differentiate it from its irl counterpart just as there's a distinction between Christianity and the faith of Yaldabaoth. Do y'all have any ideas?)

Music is art, isn't it? Like many forms of art and craftsmanship it's something you pour your heart into. The same principles I've described above in magic as craftsmanship also apply here.

Magic as dance

Where there is music, there tends to be dance, and the Marda have traditional dances— dances to old and ancient melodies endeavoring to sync up the body and soul to what the song is conveying. It's a form of magic unique to them.

Dance allows the djinn to dwell in the dancer's body and to channel their strength through them�� music communicates, gives, and dance… dance receives. Music invites the djinn, and dance directs them, like how an orchestra conductor may direct their band. The dancers regulate and control the flow of magic for a desired outcome.

The best mages, the ones who are dancers, dance for the spirits in certain times of the year around which their celebrations are centered. A lot of their ceremonies are centered around song and dance.

Allowing spirits inside your body is the ultimate gesture of trust, and it takes a lot of effort and understanding and practice because one must be in harmony with the spirit they had accepted inside them, lest things go very very haywire and harm the dancer or the people around them. It is regarded as the most intimate form of magecraft because of its nature. For non-masters, incorporating some moves would mean the stay would be temporary, but for masters... spirits dwell for the whole dance.

Kazai’s combat for example is heavily based on his dance, allowing the djinn to dwell in parts of his body to boost his strength or impart their properties unto him, earth for strength, fire for power, water for flexibility, and so on. Outside of combat, though, he can also act as a mediator/conductor for spirits during ceremonies.

Magic as writing and sigils

There is not much to say in this section because this is not a primary method for the Marda to channel their magic, but it exists. Think of charms and talismans, prayers inscripted onto an object. Think of wards and runes and spell-arrays. Just as melodic chants and song give form and purpose to the magic in the world, certain symbols and sigils and letters can achieve similar things. Think of how in many cultures irl true names and such hold power.

Magic as healing

Recall how I mentioned that all living things have souls— magecraft involves channeling not only the magic in the world around you, but also that within yourself.

Energy from the soul is consumed and utilized for things like healing wounds and injuries, and the body and soul work in tandem for both physical and mental tasks. There is a reason one feel fatigued after tasks, after all.

The art of healing is a way to control and amplify the process, skilled healers guiding both the patient's and the djinn's energies using their own as a medium to promote healing in a wound and such, making sure it heals swiftly and correctly.

To help with that, medicinal herbs are also utilized, the healer/physician concocting medicine and poultices, drawing out their properties the same way a craftsperson might. It's the same principle, and the notion of collecting herbs and ingredients in “auspicious” times (for lack of a better word for now) when the properties of the herbs would be most potent, also applies.

For the Marda, there is no distinction between mental problems and physical ones because harming one means harming the other, they're intrinsically intertwined, and so both types of problems are handled with the same amount of care, and healers are responsible for soothing both the body and the mind. I suppose it would be somewhat similar to therapy— just with... more spirits and magic involved.

Magic as defying nature

Not all forms of magecraft are harmonic with nature, though. Sometimes a sorcerer might choose to override nature, domineer over spirits, change their very nature, force the world to bend around them. This is the school of magecraft Zahhak's disciples aka Team Zahhak is under, earth isn't supposed to be intangible like one could swim in water, objects aren't supposed to be able to randomly change into a venomous snake, human bodies aren't supposed to have certain traits, winged apes and four-eyed hounds/wolves aren't supposed to exist, Zahhak isn't supposed to exist.

It's a school of magic diametrically opposed to that of the clan who promotes harmony and respect and cooperation. Zahhak's disciples look down on the Marda, and the Marda are repulsed by them.

Magic in other countries

I mean, they must exist, right? Serics may have something along the lines of stuff we see in wuxia/xianxia fiction inspired by Taoism, Misr and even the pagan religions of Lusitania and Maryam having their own brand of magic. They must have their own history and beliefs, and their own Incident that would've greatly reduced the prominence of magecraft. I have refrained from covering them because they aren't all that relevant to the AU. But they exist.

Inspirations and References

Otoyomegatari

The Ancient Magus Bride

A Tale of Crowns

Magi (even as I have so, so much beef with it)

Hunter X Hunter

Burmese Shamanism

My own experiences as an artist

History and mythology videos from Overly Sarcastic Productions

Videos about soft magic systems by Hello Future Me

The Hinokami Kagura scene from Kimetsu no Yaiba

Various videos from Tale Foundry