#i had a lot of fun designing my twice banner last night ^^

[froghwon]

Highlights from the nct dream concert on Friday:

FINALLY GETTING TO MEET CHELLE (@yutagirlie) IN PERSON!!! 😭❤️

getting souvenirs from a local shop and being told 3/4 of the members were in there earlier 🫠🫠

(it had to have been mark and chenle for sure, but the other 1-2 members are a toss up. jisung maybe??? jeno???? 🤷‍♀️)

randomly seeing a Jeno bday truck around pike place market before the concert <3

(not photographed, but there was a chihuahua sitting in the passenger seat that looked sooo tired that it had to be there sjkfdnksj the truck drove away before i could get a pic 😔😔)

getting surprised by a random czennie before the concert, only for her to hand me a bag of jeno goodies before she walked off without giving chelle anything 🤣 (and none for gretchen weiners BYEEEE)

getting a random pc with my dream tshirt, and it being jeno :'')

jarms <3 (and honorable mention to the cleavage)

jenos back 😌🙏

mark during one of his ments said that his fav thing about seattle is that if u go north a bit, vancouver is there lmao (not even anything to do with seattle, seattle sweetie, im so sorry 🤣🤣 but also, u should have come to vancouver on the tour then u bitch)

Before jenos ment, he didnt start talking right away bc people were screaming. but then he cupped his ear like he was waiting to hear something from us??? so people started barking 🤡ksjkdfnks and i joined in bc i thought it was hilarious 🤡🤡 and then haechan started singing happy bday, so we all joined in :P

jisung running across the stage to ask mark for help with his english ment <3 and haechan narrating their off mic convo like "mark, i love you" "jisung i love you too" 🤡

renjun did so well with his english ments!!!! i was so impressed/proud <3333

also jisung is such an incredible live performer fr even when he isnt the center, he puts 100% into his dancing and has incredible stage presence 👌

jaemin having the time of his life during the encore <3

also he put on a cinnamoroll backpack, which matched the one that i wore 😌 (u can see it during the goodbye ment video in my google drive)

my jeno banner and i are visible in the audience photo <3

i put a white arrow pointing to me and my jeno banner :P

all in all, it was a very fun time!! 👍 but i already miss them, and i wanna see them in concert again!!! 😩😩

also i took a few videos during the concert, which u can see in this google drive here (just pretend u cant hear me during saturday drip)

[inkedtae]

fountain of fantasies ⇾ jjk. [M]

⟶ from the eros universe; you do not need to read eros to read this one shot

𝓅𝒶𝒾𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔 ⇾ god!jungkook x curvy!reader (f.)

𝑔𝑒𝓃𝓇𝑒/𝓇𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 ⇾ s2l, greek mythology au, circa. 1800 au, historical au, light fluff, angst, smut, pwp, filth, 18+

𝓈𝓊𝓂𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓎 ⇾ you rather be engaging in heart racing activities than in heart breaking ones

𝓌𝑜𝓇𝒹 𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓃𝓉 ⇾ 15.6k

𝓌𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 ⇾ dom!jungkook, bigdick!jungkook, buff!jungkook, winged!jungkook, longhair!jungkook, ponytail!jungkook, sub!reader, slightly insecure!reader, shy!reader, mentions and consumption of alcohol, unprotected sex (wrap it to tap it folks), rough sex, playful-ish sex, semi-public sex, fountain sex, dirty talk, creampie, multiple orgasms, slight degradation, overstimulation, exhibition, a lil voyeurism, praise kink, anal, edging, squirting, choking, hair pulling, bodyworshipping, a lil motorboating, a lil begging, water play, a lil spit play, a lil breast play, ass play, a fountain of filth :)

𝒶𝓊𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓇'𝓈 𝓃𝑜𝓉𝑒 ⇾ i’m too much of a hoe for greek god guk not to turn this into a mini-series... 

⤜ banner by ↠ @thebannershop​ (thank you dearie~)

⤜ beta’d by ↠  @moonmintrails​ (my soulmate~)

⤜ le playlist ↠

Plump plum juices leak from your violet stained lips. You watch the storm rage through the balcony windows. Flashes of lightning, streaks of raindrops and the wall-rattling thunder only stares back at you. The noise of the world around you would be just the perfect cover for all the sounds he draws out of you. Teeth sinking into the fruit’s flesh, you take another bite and fix your stockings. Topless, you lean back in your plush seat and cross your legs. 

You know he’s not coming. It’s been a week since his last visit, a week of staying up late only to fall asleep and wake up to a new toy. You glance at your bed. The collection of gifts under it do not compensate for his absence. You don’t want the ruby dildos or golden anal plugs. You can live without the silver tit-clamps and sapphire pearled whips. It’s him you won’t do without. 

But tonight would be a perfect night of fun. You swallow your bite before taking another one as your mind circles every dirty thought you’ve been wanting to entertain for the last seven days. Staring out the rain stained windows, the one that appeals to you the most for tonight would be on that balcony, where it started all those months ago. The thought of being drenched in rainwater while he bends you over the railing makes you squeeze your crossed legs together. And the fluttering flap of his wings as they shake out the storm prickles your skin with goosebumps. Wet hands tangled in your wet hair. Loud moans blended in the loud thunder. 

An urgent knock raps on your door. You sit up, letting out a shaky breath from the remnants of that fantasy. As you set your plum down by some grapes on the side table, you shoot to your feet to grab your robe. 

“Bunny,” Mary, your sister, whispers from the other side. 

The little childhood nickname brings a smile to your face. The two of you would play Wonderland in the garden as children and Mary would have you, Bunny, guide her down the right path. Now, she only ever calls you that when she’s nervous and struggling to admit it. 

Tying the robe around your waist, you eagerly let her in. “What is it, Mary?” You smile as she rushes past you. 

She doesn’t take a moment to properly greet you, darting to your little library instead. “Do you have that book about Mount Olympus?” She asks. Her freshly painted nails scrape over the spines of each book as you part your lips to reply. “Oh! Here it is!”

Returning to your seat, you watch your older sister skim through the pages. “Why the sudden interest in Greek gods?” 

“Michael mentioned something about Hera and I just wanted to- I knew it!” 

Chewing on another bite, you raise a brow at her. “I’m sure he’d be pleased to hear that tomorrow,” you chuckle around your food.

Mary pauses. Her eyes, previously gleaming with excitement, diminish into indifference. She clears her throat and shuts the book. “Mama says to never correct a man.”

You stuff your mouth with a big bite and avoid your sister’s gaze. There’s lots you have to say about your mother’s philosophy on love, but you know better than to voice those opinions. 

Mary continues talking, despite knowing your reservations about your mother. She holds the book to her chest and tentatively sits on your bed. “Mama wants me to talk to you about something.”

Slowly chewing, you glance at her. You already know where this is going. It’s another desperate attempt on your mother’s part to make sure you don’t wear the dress he had gifted you. She knows full well how much it reveals and how well it’s designed. You don’t care for your mother’s opinion though; you haven’t for months. It’s Mary’s opinion on the subject that matters to you. 

“But, I told her that I don’t want to lie to you.” She takes a moment to sigh then meets your gaze once more. “You’ll look gorgeous in that dress, Bunny,” she smiles. “And I have the perfect shoes for them too.”

A laugh bubbles out of your throat and you almost choke on your food. Mary laughs at your struggling state. “Oh, can we get ready for your party together?” You ask, perking up in your seat once you properly swallow your food. 

Mary’s excited gaze wavers. She glances back at the book before hesitantly nodding. “Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing…”

You give her a pointed look. Flopping down on the bed, Mary groans and stares up at the ceiling. “What do you think of Michael?” You part your lips to reply, but she continues, “I mean I know he’s from a good family, and can take care of me, and he’s so handsome.”

You bite your lip at the last comment. Michael is not exactly your type of heartthrob. But, then again, your senses have been obscured by a god, so now not a single person can look as handsome, as beautiful, as heavenly as your Eros. 

“But, he says and does things I’m not exactly…” She trails off. “And I think his previous courtship with Linette ended horribly.”

Her half-sentence rings some warning in your gut. However, by the way she avoids eye contact to stare at your crystal chandelier, you decide not to address it. “What makes you think so?” you ask instead.

“Well, that’s what he told me.”

Resisting the urge to scoff, you simply quirk a brow. Mary may be a couple of years older, but she still hasn’t grown out of her naive tendencies. You’re about to tell her that everything will be okay when you catch a familiar silhouette on your balcony. 

He’s here.

Mary shoots up off your bed. You fear for a second that she may have seen him, but then she asks, “So? What do you think?”

Gulping, you take a moment to collect your thoughts. Erasing the fact that he’s finally here from your mind, you try to remain focused on your sister. You want the best for her. You want her to be excited about who she marries and for the life she will spend with that person. And that’s why it takes you a world of restraint not to tell her that if she isn’t a hundred percent sure about marrying Michael, then maybe she shouldn’t. 

“Do you love him, Mary?” You ask. “And I don’t mean that ‘nobility’ love. I mean that, ‘makes you cry just thinking about losing him’ love.”

Mary hesitates.Your eyes flicker to the balcony where he continues to stand. Inhaling deeply, you silently ask him to wait just a second longer. 

“I think I do,” she smiles. 

Your heart shatters at her phrasing. I think. Where is the room for thinking when true love is at your door? You want to tell her that there shouldn’t be any of this ‘thinking’ nonsense. You either do or you don’t, you want to say. But her smile is so pure and eyes light up just enough that you don’t have the heart to take it all away. Besides, maybe she really does love him. 

“Then, I think he’s perfect for you.”

Mary grabs the book and jumps to her feet. “Let’s meet in my room at seven,” she smiles, ruffling through your hair on her way to the door. “Have a good night, Bunny.”

“You too,” you smile as she shuts the door with a wink. The gesture is unusual but you suppose she’s just excited about the party tomorrow. You’re not exactly sure why she did it and with a winged god at your door, you can’t find it in you to care for too long. 

Darting to the balcony, you pull open the doors to be greeted by empty winds and heavy raindrops. Those wings are gone, balcony vacant of anything but despair. Not even a gift replaces his presence. You hold your tears back and swallow the growing lump in your throat. Your time is not one of his toys, nor is it free. You’ve run out of patience. You’re empty of reason, thriving on broken feelings. 

Shakily sighing, you bury the hurt in your voice and whisper, “if you can’t stay, don’t come at all.”

Sparkling diamonds, glasses, and wine circle the ballroom. Sipping on your drink, you take in the gleaming marble floors and the arches of the grand windows. The Barbury Estate is twice the size of yours. You want to believe that your mother’s delight in Mary’s proposal has more to do with her happiness than the fact that her fiancé is riddled with more wealth than he knows what to do with. But, you know that your mother has a special bond with money. It’s the same relationship she has with social standards. Her philosophy is simple; the more, the better. Now, if only your mother felt that way about you. 

No, wait. This night is not about you. An evening lost in a grand room of people only appeals to you when the occasion for such torture is your sister’s engagement party. Your chest swells with pride as you watch Mary dance with her fiancé. Michael Barbury is not exactly what you would call ‘prince charming.’ His jokes border on racism and thoughts are somewhat insipid, but he makes Mary happy. That’s all that matters to you. Her relapse in judgement last night does worry you. But you know that she’ll be happy with Michael. With Eros gone, you wonder how soon you’ll find a love like that too.

Mary’s graceful giggles cut you out of your trance. You blink once, twice until your senses fully return to you. Even the smallest thought of him throws you out of your consciousness. Settling your eyes back on your sister, watching as she basks in Michael’s unwavering attention and dotting devotion, you’re greeted with a sense of comfort. The guilt of not speaking your truth disappears and the fear of never finding love dissipates to the back of your mind. 

“Miss (Y/N)?” Lee Kyon asks, waving his hand in front of you. 

Right, you forgot he was there. Turning to face him once more, you flash Kyon a somewhat kind smile. “Yes, Mr. Lee?”

He furrows his brows. “Is everything alright?”

Perhaps everything would be alright if your mother didn’t constantly feel the need to set you up with the first poor man that accidently looks your way. Yes, you’re well aware of your mother’s behaviour and the fact that Kyon has no real interest in getting to know you. Judging by the way he continues to loop back to the same dull topic about the history of wine, you can tell that he is merely trying to keep the conversation short enough to be polite, but not long enough to be courting you. 

It’s not as though you care for his company either. Kyon has half of Michael’s intelligence. Even though you were only half-listening to his rant, you already pick out the few historical inaccuracies in his unprompted explanation. Of course, the worst thing you can do to a man is attack his wits and pride; that’s what your mother tells you anyway. It’s what worried Mary last night too. And you’ve tested that theory enough to know how true it is and how fun it can be. Watching them grapple for the right words, flare their nostrils in frustration and demand you apologize will always be just as humorous as when they try to “teach” you about language or art or, in Kyon’s case, history. 

Biting back a sigh, you nod and silently pray for a way out of this boring conversation and into something a bit more exciting. 

Clearing his throat, Kyon searches for a way to fill the silence. He then half-heartedly mutters, “You look darling this evening.”

Glancing down at your dress, your face heats up. The tiger lily-peach layers of satin and tulle fall down to your ankles. The pleated skirt mirrors the petals of a flower. Cleavage on display, the long flowy sleeves fall off your shoulders. Finished with a green ribbon around your waist and gleaming pink jewels, this is possibly the best dress he has gifted you. 

Your Eros left it, no wait- he’s not yours anymore. A friend left it hanging in your closet one morning after another passionate night in his embrace. It was a beautiful surprise to be woken up to and a manageable struggle to explain how it came into your possession. You can’t help but find it a bit ironic how your mother is desperate to set you up with the first man she sees, but hesitant to dress you up for the occasion. He must have known, must have felt your frustration towards your mistreatment. 

It takes everything in you to fight off the smile playing on your lips. You glance back up at Kyon, parting your lips to thank him when he continues, “And how brave of you to wear such a dress.”

You pause. “Brave?” 

Kyon smiles and nods. 

Is he really telling you what you think he is? Is he really undermining your confidence, undermining the beauty you know you have by commending your ‘bravery?’ No, you mustn’t judge too quickly. Perhaps he’s admiring your choice to go against expectations of covering up with a shawl. 

You swallow back your initial assumptions, and decide to give him the benefit of the doubt. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Mr. Lee?”

“Well,” Kyon starts. He looks off to the side and raises both his brows before looking to you once more. His hazel eyes scan your figure, jaw clenching as he clears his throat. “A dress like this is traditionally worn by a woman that looks more like…” he trails off, eyes wandering as well. “Like Miss (L/N).”

A stinging chorus of hushed laughter strikes your pride. Your gut boils with shame and humiliation as your eyes bounce between the partygoers near you. You hadn’t realized they were eavesdropping. As a desperate attempt to ignore their maliciously amused looks, you follow Kyon’s gaze to Mary. Chewing on your lip, you ignore the urge to roll your eyes. This isn’t the first time someone has compared you to her, and you know very well that it won’t be the last. Even the utter disrespect of referring to you by your first name and your sister by your last name further displays their lack of recognition for you. In their eyes, you will forever remain as Miss (Y/N), the spinster-destined sister of Miss (L/N). And though you are certain that the twinge of pain and anger festering in your chest is for Kyon, you can’t help but be a little annoyed with your sister as well. 

But then she laughs, smiling so bright and wide. She looks up at Michael and rests her chin on his bicep, reveling in his attention and embrace. You realize, in her moment of happiness, that you can’t find it in you to hold this grudge against her. Your love for her is greater than your pride. Besides, she plays no part in your insecurities. And, you decide as you turn back to Kyon, neither will this privileged upperclassman.

“How brave,” you sigh with a single shouldered shrug. 

“What is, Miss (Y/N)?”

“How brave of you to believe anyone cares for your opinion.”

Kyon chokes on his drink. The partygoers, previously humoured by your embarrassment, relish in your courage to upstage Kyon. Gasping a giggle, you step back to avoid being spit on. He glares at you as he wipes his chin. You don’t hesitate to return that hard, hateful look in his eye. Raising a challenging brow, you dare him to attempt to embarrass you again.

He takes one step towards you, looking as though he’s about to grab at your arm when his stride is redirected. Kyon walks away without another word. You stare after him in confusion as he mutters an apology under his breath. 

You’re not sure what caused this sudden change in his angry course, but you’re all too happy to be rid of him to dwell on the thought of his motives much longer. He must’ve known how offensive his words were. True, most people compare you to your sister, but at least they have the decency to do it behind your back. You rather be physically absent from a conversation like that. It makes it easier to ignore and avoid the negativity. 

Confidence restored, you feel comfortable in your skin again. The dress is a perfect fit, the struggle to breath nowhere to be found, and sits well on your frame- despite what others think. However, you have very little time to revel in your victory as your mother stalks towards you.

“What have you done?” she hisses over your shoulder. Before you even have a chance to look back at her, she drags you by your arm to the edge of the room. “What did you say this time?”

A heavy sigh pushes past your lips as you clasp your hands before you and reply, “He insulted me.”

Your mother quirks a brow. “And?” She questions as if waiting for a more substantial argument. 

“And?” You echo in confusion. “And he insulted me. I don’t see why that’s not enough of a reason to insult him back.”

She shakes her head and inhales deeply. You brace yourself for the disparaging rant you know is coming. Nothing good ever comes from a head shake and heavy sigh. But, instead of her usual ‘stay in your place’ harangue, your mother cuts to the chase this time. “Do you realize that might just be your only chance for happiness?” 

Suppressing a dry chuckle, you lower your gaze to the floor. You know your mother is well aware of how her question sounds; you know she doesn’t care. Still, you ask, “Is that really what happiness looks like, mother?”

She falls silent. After a beat, you dare to peek up at her. Those once hard eyes soften as her gaze locks on Mary and Michael, locks on how they gaze upon one another with such adoration. Blinking repeatedly, she turns to you and sighs, “Yes, to some people that,” she pauses to glance at Kyon, “is what happiness looks like.” 

A wicked pang of sad, lonely anger twists in your chest then tumbles to the pit of your stomach. Your gaze falls to the ground and heart shatters with that last shred of hope that your mother perhaps did want the best for you. Up until now, you truly believed that in some twisted way, she was just looking out for you, making sure you have someone by your side long after she’s gone. Her words now and that shameless look that matches that shameless confession only point to the painfully obvious fact you have tried so hard to ignore. Your mother’s need to make you look a certain way and throw you at any breathing man has never been for your well-being, but rather the well-being of her reputation. 

“Go to Mr. Lee, (Y/N),” she orders. “Offer to freshen his drink, wipe down his shirt, and then apologize. Beg for his forgiveness if you have to; just make this right.” 

With a deep breath, you trail your eyes back up and try to collect yourself. Your eyes flicker between the exit and where Kyon stands.Your mother clears her throat, drawing your attention back on her. 

“Have I made myself clear?” 

“Crystal.”

She returns to her friends, that gleeful smile plastered on her face once more. Your eyes fall back on Kyon with every intention of following through your mother’s orders. However, he only greets your gaze with malice. A wave of nausea overwhelms you. 

With a shake of your head, you tear yourself away from his threatening demeanour and turn towards the exit. You just need to get out of his line of sight, out of that pretentious atmosphere. Something within you can’t seem to stop telling you that one more moment near that passive-aggressive punk will only make you feel worse. So, you lengthen your strides out of the ballroom and down the hall to put as much distance between you and them. 

The pressure of their expectations suffocates you like no corset ever has. All you can think is how desperately you need some fresh air. It takes you a moment, but you navigate your way around the manor well enough to find the back entrance. 

Cold air engulfs you the moment you step outside. A relieved giggle slips past your lips and you throw your head back to relish in the cool spring breeze. The sky reflects a swirl of silvery indigo. It lures you into its constellations and wonders with every other glance. Lowering your gaze, you scan the garden before you. A cobblestone path leads all the way down to a hedged maze. You can never resist a good garden. In fact, you had helped design the one back home. You hope that when your husband-to-be comes along, he’d have a garden too and maybe you can design it together.

Realizing you can maybe hold on to a few more moments of peace if they can’t find you, you decide to follow the path and hide away within the walls of the maze. You’re halfway down the cobblestone trail when you sense a strong pull dragging your soul closer to the hedges. Picking up your pace, you follow that tug faster, soon weaving through the maze like you’ve been through it before. It’s not long before you reach the centre. 

It’s a large clearing, decorated with a variety of blooming flowers. In the middle stands a grand marble fountain. Three tiered, the fountain sprouts fresh water through the mouths of singing angels. A little smile plays on your lips as you click-clack your way towards it. The tranquil rush of the stream calms your previously erratic heart. You take a seat on the edge and stare down at the pool. It’s empty of floating flowers or little fish like the one you have at home, but still beautiful all the same. 

“Miss (L/N).”

Your eyes well up the moment his sweet voice greets your ears. A shaky breath escapes you and you turn to find him. Did he not hear your words last night? Does he not care? Or is he here to stay this time?

Sitting atop the hedges of the garden maze and out of the moon’s light, he looks just as heavenly as always. Most details of his beauty are hidden, but you can make out his long hair and the way it’s pulled back into a ponytail, leaving loose, short strands to frame his face. And those soft wings are out, spread wide behind him as he stares back at you. Shirtless, he smirks. 

You can’t help the smile stretching upon your lips at the sight of him. It’s an uncontrollable reflex, as is the wetness of your core when he’s around. He usually doesn’t arrive this early when he does show up. How long has he been there? 

Clearing your throat, however, you subside the urge to smile upon his presence. “Mr. Jeon.” His name leaves your lips in a trembling breath as your heart’s aflush with desire. You have to remind yourself that you’re upset with his disappearances.

A sweet smile takes over his features. “I’ve upset you,” he notes. 

Is this a joke to him? How many nights does he expect you to wait around for a maybe? You both know your time is worth more than that. And though you want to tell him that he’s done more than upset you, that he’s disappointed you, you confess something else instead. “I’ve missed you.”

“You know I miss you too,” he replies. 

You resist the urge to scoff. “Are you working tonight?”

He shakes his head. “I just got off actually.”

Without me? You mentally scold yourself for your dirty thought. You can’t even hold onto your anger for more than thirty seconds without having the urge to spread your legs for him. “Lucky me,” you sarcastically reply. 

“Do you like the dress?”

“I’d like it more with the gift from last night,” you glare at him. “If there was a gift from last night, that is.” 

Hopping off the edge, his wings fan out to guide him down before you with ease. Your face falls as he stands in the moonlight. Thick mud coats his muscular body and those once white wings are stained with dirt and grim. His sharp face is scratched with little scabs as well. He looks like he fell from the sky. 

“Jungkook,” you whisper as you reach out to caress his wounded cheek. 

But Jungkook can’t be any less interested in his current state. His attention does not waver off you. Those kind eyes of his scan your frame, lingering around your breasts. “It looks even better than I imagined.”

You feel as though you have to ask him if this really is a joke to him this time. He leaves you for a week with very little behind and returns only to be caked in mud and peppered with wounds and has the audacity to pretend it’s not an issue. Now, you’re upset. 

You blink back your tears, quietly asking, “What happened?”

Maybe it was the hurt in your tone or the worry flashing in your eyes but his usually cocky demeanor trembles just enough to comfort you. “It’s just been a long night, baby. I missed a couple of shots and it took a little more effort than usual to fix everything.”

Fidgeting fingers trail up the exposed side of his thick thigh under the stained toga-like skirt he wears. He shudders under your touch as your hands make their way up to his buff chest where they stay. You inhale deeply to settle your erratic heart. The earthy grim of the mud invades your senses. He doesn’t even smell like himself anymore. 

Knitting your brows together, you ask, “Are you hurt?”

Jungkook’s entire expression softens. Shaking his head, he goes to cradle your body closer to his but stops before his hands reach your waist. You can feel his desire though, to touch and be touched. It’s raw and real, and purely Jungkook. This shared desire the two of you have roots deep within your souls. It breaks your heart to think that he’s not yours anymore, and maybe you made that decision rashly, in a moment of anger. But, you both know it’s not how you feel right now. 

“I need to know your schedule,” you say in a quiet voice. He tongues his cheek, erupting your heart with a surge of want. You ignore the feeling long enough to continue, “I can’t just sit and wait, Jungkook.”

He stares down at you, eyes unreadable. You can tell that he’s mulling over your words, but have no clue how he feels about them. Finally, he cups your cheeks, staining them with dirt, and says “I need you to trust me when I say that I’m doing my best to get to you as quickly as I can, darling.”

Your heart cannot deny him when his gaze reflects such sincerity and honesty. Every ounce of trust, of belief is in him and only him. And maybe you are being selfish, but to be stranded without an explanation is heartbreaking. You know he knows that, or at least feels it in you when you think of him and pray. 

“Just tell me I’m yours again,” he whispers, “and I’ll prove to you how much I’ve missed you too.”

Is that why he’s here? He’s afraid of losing you? Biting your lip, you can’t help but lean into his touch. It was mean of you to punish him like this and make him think that you were really upset with him when in actuality, all you wanted was a little more attention. You give him an innocent look through your lashes. He does his best not to swoon, but you know him well enough now to know that the little quiver in his lips means he’s on the verge of getting on his knees. 

“No man of mine is this dirty,” you smirk, echoing the words of your first encounter. 

Jungkook smiles and this time you have to keep yourself from swooning at the sight of his dimples. “I thought that’s exactly how you like them,” he purrs as he walks you back towards the fountain. 

Heat rushes to your face. The marble edge of the fountain hits the bend of your knees but you refuse to sit down with Jungkook only inches away. His hands may still be on your face, rubbing that dirt into your cheeks, but his body is still too far away from yours. You move to take a step forward, desperate to have your body against his. However, Jungkook is quicker, most likely having read your mind, and moves back before you can even get half a step in. 

Your eyes harden at the action. Pushing his hands off your face, you quirk a brow. 

“I don’t want to ruin your dress.”

“A dress like this is meant to be ruined.”

He smirks. You can tell by the amusement dancing in his eyes that he’s enjoying the sight of you this needy and possessive. He decides to further test the limits of your composure, asking, “Don’t you have a party to get back to?”

He’s teasing. The mockery riddled in his features is enough of a hint, but the playful tone in his voice is still something you bask in. Taking a seat on the edge of the fountain, you let out a deep sigh and look up to the clouds. “A flight back home might do us both some good,” you suggest instead. “It’s not like there’s anything waiting for me at the party anyways.”

“Not even your sister?”

You shake your head. 

“Mother?”

Face folding, you suppress the urge to groan and whisper, “Oh, gods no.” 

Jungkook chuckles as he circles around the fountain. He dips his hand in the clear water, before asking, “What about Lee Kyon?”

Now, what would Jeon Jungkook know of Lee Kyon? A quick scan of his features doesn’t let you in on much besides the fact that he’s trying to draw a reaction out of you. However, what reaction is he hoping for? Is he looking for an explanation? He knows all about your mother’s habits and your relationships, or lack thereof, with mortal men. You never even have to say it; Jungkook knows there’s no one else for you but him. 

“Mr. Lee is fragile,” you sigh. 

His wings twitch. He likes what he hears. You curl in your lips to keep from smiling. Could he, Eros the god of love, lust and desire, really be jealous of an imbecile? Setting your visual tastes aside for a moment, you and Jungkook both know that Kyon, bless him, knows less than the very fountain you’re sitting on… The very fountain Jungkook is climbing into.

“What are you doing?” You ask, shooting to your feet as Jungkook makes himself comfortable. A giggle tumbles out of you, even though you tried to bite it back, at the sight of him washing himself like a bird. 

Jungkook stops for a moment, that playful gaze meeting yours. This one look is enough for you to know he’s heard, and he’s most likely still hearing your thoughts. You wish you could dip in and out of his mind too. It might put an end to all the guessing on your end. 

Continuing to splash his torso clean, he replies, “You’re sending me some mixed messages, baby. I thought you didn’t like me dirty.”

He has a point. Making your way over to him, you sit by his submerged frame on the edge of the fountain. Jungkook rubs his lips as he watches your jeweled fingers trace the curves of your cleavage. Your hand stops in the centre, just above the tied strings of your corset. You begin unlacing it when Jungkook tsks. Snapping your gaze to his, you wait for further instructions. 

“What are you doing?”

“I want to get in with you.”

“So, get in.”

You move to unlace your corset once more, but Jungkook grabs onto your wrist. Catching his darkening gaze, you furrow your brows at his tilting head. He’s gesturing for you to get in, but won’t let you take off your dress. He can’t serious think you’d get in wearing it the water is filthy with his- 

Glancing at the clear water, your thoughts are overtaken by confusion. You expected it to be tinted a dark brown from all the mud but it only reflects the marble bowl of the fountain, Jungkook’s legs, and that growing erection between them. You probably should question him on when he took that skirt off and why the water is so clean even after he went into it with layers of dirt coating his skin, but the heat between your legs is slowly growing more and more insufferable. 

Your eyes flicker back to Jungkook’s to find him already staring at you, a smirk painted on his handsome face. He pushes his tongue against his cheek once more, knowing how much you love that move, then quirks a cocky brow. Kicking off your heels, you lift your dress enough to dip each stocking covered foot into the fountain. You hiss at the sensation of the soggy socks against your feet, but power through knowing how much Jungkook loves the way they look on you. 

Your dress puffs up to the surface and you have to push it down and back to put as little space between you and Jungkook. “Your hair’s filthy,” you pout as you finally straddle his lap. 

Jungkook lets out a little sigh. You first think it’s because his cock stands right in front of your pussy, but soon realize how wrong you are. His dazed gaze wanders over your features, unsure where to stop and what to admire first. Those large hands instinctively find your thick thighs. He rubs and massages them as you untie his hair and wet your hands enough to wash some of the dirt away. You tilt his head back and lick your lips. It’s a habit you have when concentrating. Jungkook knows it well. 

“You’re absolutely beautiful,” he suddenly purrs. His voice is thick, saturated with lust and adoration. “Honestly, you don’t have to do anything, darling, just let me look at you for a little bit.” 

You freeze, hands half tangled in his mud slick hair, and gaze back down at him. Dipping your head down, your lips catch his. You’re obsessed with the lack of hesitation between the two of you. Never has Jungkook thought twice about taking you as his when the two of you are this close. No matter how long he’s gone or how upset you may feel about that, when you find each other again, it’s almost like he never left. Your souls rapture in harmony and bodies tangle indefinitely. Eternity lies in the palms of your hands every second you're together. 

“I’ve got to clean your hair,” you mutter against his lips. He only hums before kissing you again. Inhaling sharply, you let him have another sip of your breath before pulling away completely. And you realize, as you glance at his wings, that they could probably use a good scrub down too before the two of you indulge in the good fun you’ve been dying to have all week. 

Before you can vocalize this, however, Jungkook is already readjusting your shared position. He tucks his wings tight behind him and shifts the two of you around so that the stream of the fountain washes down his back. “Hurry,” he orders. There’s very little room for negotiation in his tone. His appetite for a fun night is growing too and you can’t help but smile at the eagerness you’ve triggered. 

Sticking your tongue out, you hook it under his chin and tilt his head back. Jungkook continues to gaze down at you as he gives into your gesture. “That’s hot,” he mutters. 

This is new. He never talks this much when things start to heat up. Most of the time, you’re tossed looks and expected to decipher his mood, but you’re all too caught up in how gorgeous he is, you can barely understand what he means. Everything is always based on feelings and going with your instincts. But this time, Jungkook’s more vocal. It’s almost as if he’s thinking out loud. 

His wings twitch again. You snap your gaze from his hair to his eyes and find he’s raising a brow. Didn’t you wish you could hear his thoughts too? Could this be his way of granting it to you?

“You know what I like most about you?” He asks as you continue to wash the mud from his hair. Grazing your nails through his scalp, you hum in reply. “You’re incredibly intelligent.” 

Your fingers shudder against his head. The guilt of last night returns. Your sister should be with someone who isn’t afraid of her intelligence either. You should’ve told her not to follow through with this, not to marry Michael.

Jungkook’s hands trail up to your ass, gripping onto the plump flesh. The harsh gesture snaps you back into the moment. You jump a bit and let out a little squeal as your gaze meets his. “I much rather you don’t think of other men when you’re with me,” he groans. 

Fighting off the proud smile tempting your lips, you nod. “Sorry; it won’t happen again.” 

“Better not,” he mutters and that smile finally settles on your lips. “And don’t worry about your sister. She’ll be fine.” 

A part of you wants to question him more about how he knows that, but the death grip he has on your ass and the way he’s looking at you does not leave much room for a sexless conversation. You rather your family stay out of conversations like this with Jungkook. His desire to be the only one in your thoughts makes a bit more sense to you now. 

Smiling, Jungkook inhales deeply through his nose. “You figure things out faster than most people,” he says. 

You kiss the little freckle under his lip to let him know you’re done cleaning his hair. “You spend too much time in my head,” you tease. Instead of in my…  The rest of the sentence twirls in your mind for him to find it. 

As you move to clean his right wing he chuckles and continues, “I’m serious, baby.” He kisses your neck as you stand on your knees and reach for his wing to properly clean it off. “Your mind amazes me. That’s why I spend so much time there.” 

Barriers of the mind fall. They were trembling before but now, with every whispered thought Jungkook voices, you can feel those walls of distance crumble around your inseparable bodies. You’ve always melded perfectly physically and stroked the other’s spirit by caressing your souls, but mental barriers have always halted any real conversation between you and Jungkook. He’s always been able to know your next move, your every thought because of his immortality. And to have the chance to do the same only makes you feel that much closer to him. For this reason, you hope he doesn’t regret opening up to you and giving you a little peek inside his mind. 

Your physical senses shock you back to the moment. His fingers soften their grip on your ass, rubbing it instead and your pussy reactively clenches at that pet name you love so much. Unsteadily inhaling deeply, you move to clean his other wing in silence. You decide you won’t talk this time. Your mind is open to him if he’s looking for your opinion, but tonight you just want to hear his thoughts and be the one tossing unreadable looks. 

Jungkook chuckles against your neck, rolling his shoulders back as you brush your fingers through his wings. His lips trail down to your collarbone. He kisses his way down to your breasts and buries his face between them. Breathing in your scent, he sighs happily and mutters, “This is my favourite thing.”

Your breasts? By the way his hands always settle on your ass and the fact that his first hand-delivered toy was an anal plug, you always just assumed that his favourite feature of yours must be your ass. But you suppose if your breasts-

“Actually, I was talking about the way you smell.”

“It’s called soap,” you tease, earning yourself a light spank. He then bites on your right tit, sucking on the skin just because he can. You giggle and settle yourself back on his lap. Your ass, plush and plump, all but melts over his muscular thighs. 

Jungkook stares at you. His brown eyes are vacant and lost in thought. He quiets under your gaze, only just shifting to pull you closer than you already are. Your pussy frames the length of his cock and you find it increasingly hard to stay still. Trying to read that dazed expression on his face, you wonder what happened with his devotion to thinking out loud. 

Licking his lips, Jungkook finally breaks the silence. “Twenty-three.” He leans towards you turning the two of you back around so his back is against the fountain’s edge again. “I want you in twenty-three different ways, but I don’t think we have time to do all of them.”

You swallow thickly. Grinding your hips into his, you rub your needy pussy against his throbbing erection. Jungkook’s eyes slightly roll back and he has to hold your hips down only to look at you properly again. “Can we make time?” You ask. The desperate cry for more is evident in your voice and you know that, by the quirk of his brow and the shudder of his wings, he’s having trouble saying no. 

“I wish,” he confesses. “My favourite ones take time.” 

His fingers dig into your ass again, hinting at what his favourite positions might be. It’s no surprise that it has to do with your ass, you’re just worried that he’s going to ask for more than you’re ready for. Yes, you may have gotten used to anal plugs over time since he knows how to prep you for them, but his cock is an entirely different game. You are constantly reminded of how those other toys really are just toys because his cock is that uncomparable. 

Jungkook relaxes back against the marble wall and watches you as you salivate over the size of his cock. He doesn’t need to read your mind to know you're terrified of whatever pain may come with it but excited because you’re just that much of a whore for him. 

“You know you don’t have to do it. I have lots of other favourites,” he smirks. 

As your thoughts trail off, he bucks his hips into yours. You breathe moan and clutch onto his shoulders. Every little movement makes you ache for more. A week without a single bit of sexual stimulation, even by yourself, is too long. He never told you that you couldn’t play around alone anymore, but when you have him, why the hell would you play with yourself? You know he’s going to come every night, or at least you hope he is. And the truth is, one he must already know judging by the pleased look in his eyes, even if he had told you he wasn’t coming, you still wouldn’t have touched yourself. Nothing can compare to his touch; you don’t need to try anything else to know this.

A shaky breath escapes Jungkook at your next mental confession. You don't think you were ever really mad at him. You just knew that acting out would get him to come tonight. Jungkook scoffs, looking up at the darkening sky as you wrap your arms around his neck. 

Are you even really sorry? His eyes dart to yours as if wanting to see for himself if your thoughts are true. You don't know if you can answer this question with his eyes on you like that. But, that conclusion seems to be enough of an answer for him. 

He shakes his head and wraps his arms around your waist. Pouting, he asks, “Do you know how worried I was?”

You mirror his expression, drawing a pout in your features as well, and press your chest against his. His breath hitches and body melts into yours, betraying his intentions. Noticing his struggle to stay upset with you, you pepper wet kisses under his chin and along his jawline. 

Jungkook can’t resist you for much longer. He whimpers as his hips grind into yours. Bending at your every touch, he unravels beneath you. A giddy smile breaks your pouty features and it’s only then that he seems to realize how much he’s let himself go in front of you. His grip on your hips hardens. As you kiss up his face, you find his lust-stuck eyes dark with dominance. He hates being vulnerable to your touch this much.

“No, baby,” he rasps. You quirk a brow. “I hate how drunk you get off the power.” 

A proud smirk twitches on the corner of your lips, confirming his words. You’ve barely had taste for the power he’s accusing you of getting drunk off of. However, the fact that you’re able to control him so well with such a small dose fills your heart with pride. 

“You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

“I am?”

There’s a certain cocky pitch in your tone that rings sharply to his ears. His brows twitch, wings flutter, and gaze wavers. He may have been able to look past your exaggerations of dismissal and the way you tease him, but to speak to him with very little regard for his power unleashes something primal within him. You can always tell you’ve really pissed him off when he pouts, clenches his jaw, and breathes so steadily, you can barely hear him. 

Jungkook watches you carefully. “One week without my dick and suddenly you think you own it?” 

“Don’t I?”

A sharp smack lands on your ass. The slow draft of the water does not slow his hands down. In fact, it only increases the sting and accuracy. You gasp and fall forward against him only to be spanked again. Another moan leaves you, this time with your lips hovering over his. Exchanging breathes, a dangerous thought occurs to you. Your lips are over his. What’s to stop you from spit-

He growls. You tremble against him. The purely thunderous rumble in his chest rattles your soul. “I fucking dare you,” he hisses.

Though you want to heed his warning, you can’t help but notice how he keeps his mouth open despite his disapproval. You gather what you have in your mouth and pause for a moment, knowing that he knows what you’re about to do. His mouth remains open. You drop the wad of spit it without a second thought. 

Jungkook swallows it almost immediately. “You’re going to regret that,” he breathes. 

“I highly doubt that,” you smirk.

The cocky persona you seemed to have picked up from him crumbles when his middle finger pushes between your cheeks and circles your tightest hole. His words about his favourite ways to fuck you return to you in distant echoes. You arch your back and push your ass into his hand. His finger threatens to slip in. 

“You’re barely ready,” he scoffs.

Do you harbour reservations based on fears that he just might be too big to fit in your ass? Of course you do; he’s huge. A fact of which he can’t help but always smirk at when you point it out. But, you’re hungry for him and you know that he would never do anything to hurt you. Letting out a shaky breath, you affirm, “I can take it.”

“You aren’t wet enough.”

“Then, change that.”

The continuous authority that drips in your tone has tested his patience for the last time. Reaching a hand out of the fountain, Jungkook grabs for something on the ground. You try to lean over him and sneak a peek at what he’s looking for, but the friction of your clit against his length has you shuddering back in place. 

A little smile breaks Jungkook’s previously callous expression. He pecks your neck and laughs quietly against your skin as he mutters, “You’re adorable.” 

Heat rushes down to your core instead of your face at the little praise. You lean down to press a gentle kiss to his lips when you catch a glimpse of something gold in your peripherals. Glancing up, you find him clutching onto his bow. Before you have the chance to ask what he’s planning, Jungkook only just drops the tip of his bow in to break the surface of the water. A misty rose gold tints the clarity. Little flicks of sparkling gold twinkle back at you as you watch the fountain filter the essence all around you. 

You cautiously meet gaze. He always confirms new things with you before acting on anything, no matter how mad or horny he is. His rash decision to spike the fountain with an unknown substance chills your blood for a second. You start to shift back from him a bit when he breaks the silence. 

“It’s just a lubricant,” he quickly explains. A relieved breath, you didn’t realize you were holding, leaves you. Shifting back against him, you nudge your nose against his. “Sex is a bit different underwater, baby, and I don’t have time to get you as ready as you need to be.” 

A gentle nibble on his lip is all it takes for the rush of the fountain to be the only sound in the silence that settles upon you. His hands guide your hips against his, the fiction much smoother now with that hint of lubrication swirling around. You run a hand through his hand and tug his head back to be greeted with the sweet rumble of his laughter. You can’t help but giggle with him as you place soft kisses along the side of his neck. 

Jungkook quietly moans in little whines and breathless gasps. Every shudder of his wings and furrow of his brows makes you want to rip your dress off and be just as naked and against him. But, then again, there’s something powerful to the taste of being fully clothed and still destroying a man’s composure. You barely have to do anything and Jungkook bends to your every will. You can now understand why he believes you’re so drunk on power, but the truth is you always had this power. He knows this, most likely wanting you to realize it too if he’s the one that suggested you stay clothed. The only difference now is that he’s openly displaying the ways you unravel him rather than keeping it to himself. 

“Do you see what I mean now?” He asks in a breathless whisper. You trail your kiss up to his cheek and moan against it as he continues, “You’re so smart and beautiful and precious.” 

Jungkook pauses, stilling your hips and pulling his face away from yours to look into your eyes. He parts his lips to speak but his words keep falling short somehow. 

His words so far have already ignited an untamable fire not only between your legs, but within your bones as well. He is drenched in every part of you. Shifting to a softer touch, you untangle your fingers from his damp hair and cup his cheeks the same way he had done to you not too long ago. “Go on,” you tease, tossing him a playful look. 

He doesn’t smile, doesn’t even smirk. His eyes, though hinted with amusement, continue to be lost in some sort of trance. He knows you’re curious, but keeps this little bit of thought to himself. Lifting your hips, he hovers your entrance over his erection and finally smirks. 

“Beg a little,” he orders. Though his voice barely carries to the other side of the fountain, the authority in his tone is still as clear and hard as it always is.

Your power trip must have really messed with him if he’s having you beg without giving you a good reason to. An annoyed sigh fans against your collarbone as your body continues to hover over his. “Don’t play,” he rasps, “You know that’s not it. I can hear the truth before the lie, darling.”

That’s an unfair advantage but one you don’t mind too much if it means he talks to you like this all the time. He’s right too. You know that’s not what’s got him eager to hear you beg. It’s the way you beg that’s got him eager to fuck you. Clenching around emptiness, needy to be filled and ruined, you whine a tiny “please,” then a string of profanities as his tip strokes its way to your entrance from your clit. 

“Again.”

Back arched, breasts against his bare chest, and hands clutched onto his biceps, you place your lips on the shell of his ear and blow a gentle breeze against it. “Please,” you mewl. 

Jungkook’s hands tremble and he all but drops you on his cock. Pussy in an instant stretch, with very little room to adjust, you cry out in his ear. Though your voice may be broken and pitchy, Jungkook doesn’t flinch. When it comes to you, the usual results never qualify. You are one of a kind, as unique as him. 

His muscles flex under your palms. Hands finding their place on your ass again, Jungkook guides your thrusts. He can practically feel your weakening body with every bounce and grind against him. You know he can. He shows it in every tightening grip on your ass and grunt in his moans. 

The knot in your stomach is already twisting, conspiring against your better judgement on how long you think you can last. You’ve never been able to outlast him, cumming twice before he finally reaches his first orgasm of the night. He’s just so big and hits those right places way before the rest of him can catch up. How he manages to brush up against your softest spots within the first three thrusts will always be beyond your comprehension. He’s just that good. 

The choked moan that leaves him resembles a chuckle. A frustrated whine escapes you. Is he still listening to your thoughts? It’s not like you’re thinking anything he already hasn’t heard you say, or rather scream, but it still somewhat embrassasses you to know that he will always hear how whipped you are for him. 

“Tell me,” you plead with your lips pressed just under his ear. “Tell me what you’re thinking.” 

The sparkling water around you begins to splash out of the fountain bowl as Jungkook speeds up the pace of your bounces. Deciding your ass seems to be too much of a distraction to him, you pause mid-thrust and move his hands up to your hips. A shuddering gasp escapes him as you carry on with the bounces at his same pace. Your ass claps in and out of the water, thrashing water all around the ground. 

Jungkook digs his short nails into the flesh of your hips, growling every time you whine at his tightening grip. Forehead against his, you catch his gaze and offer an innocent one. “I’m-” he cuts himself off, realizing how breathless and dazed he sounds. You nuzzle your face into his as a silent attempt to encourage him to continue. “Kiss me,” he begs. 

If you weren’t stuffed full of his cock and extremely enchanted by the way he pretends to sound composed, you would’ve refused to kiss him and insisted that he finish that sentence. And that knot in the pit of your gut only tightens with the grip of your pussy. Pressing your lips against his, you slip your tongue in and let him swallow your moans. 

The moment his tongue tackles yours, your legs quake. Thrusts hesitating, your body begins to spasm against his. Your hands grapple at his shoulder just to ensure you stay a float as your threatening orgasm continues to build. 

“Jungk-” You break the kiss to tell him, to ask as he has taught you over and over again. 

But Jungkook only latches his lips onto yours once more. You gulp down a moan or two of his before he hisses against your lips, “Just fucking cum. Now, kiss me.”

You may have been drunk off power not too long ago, but as you kiss him again, you realize that he is drunk off you. And that’s all it takes for your ograsm to finally rush over you. Jungkook lifts his hips up to meet your stuttering ones. Your lips fall off his. Face buried in the crook of his neck, you cry out his name and cream all over his cock. 

“I’m thinking you’re such a good girl for cumming like this,” he suddenly whispers as you ride out your orgasm. Even with your ears ringing and mind shuddering from the second wave of cum gushing all over his hard, huge cock, you can still hear every dirty praise clearly. “My whore got herself off so well.”

The whine that escapes you from his words alone is borderline pornographic. Jungkook even feels it, arching his back so his chest collides with yours as well. “You’re so sexy,” he whimpers as you babble fountain water by his shoulder from exhaustion. 

Wet, wet, wet; everything is wet. You’re both drenched in lube tinted waters, cum, and your desires. You can’t revel in it though, as the skirts of your dress float the surface and corset clings to your chest all too tightly. You can barely find it in you to breathe, let alone tell him that you need a quick break. 

“No,” he groans, settling you on his thighs. Circling his hips into yours, Jungkook grips onto the nape of your neck to peel you off him. 

Your heart stumbles as your mind races to figure out what you’ve done that was so wrong, he’s wanting to stop the night here. “I’m sorr-”

“You don’t need a break,” he sighs between moans. He sits himself up, his wings extending only to drape over the lip of the fountain’s bowl. All movements underwater cease as he digs his fingers into the bust of your corset. In one swift motion, Jungkook tears the first few laces apart, instantly sending a full batch of oxygen to your lungs. 

Gasping, you gaze down at your torn dress before glaring at him. Maybe with just a wet dress, you could have explained your way out of whatever mess this is going to get you in when you attempt to return to the party. However, a torn dress will not be that easy to explain. You want to glare at him and tell him off but he shoves his face between your now exposed breasts and moans before you’re able to. 

He moves your hands up his shoulders so your arms drape over them, then settles them on his favourite place; your ass. Two of his fingers push between your cheeks and stroke your hole. His touch there is much smoother than before and you suspect that it must be the bow-tipped lube. 

You moan quietly, resting your chin atop his damp head as he kisses and bites at your breasts. Your pussy still hasn’t recovered from your orgasm seconds ago. In fact, truth be told, your entire body is having trouble recuperating after cumming that hard in a week. But you want more of him and he still hasn’t filled you of his godly load yet. And with his fingers circling around your asshole, you can’t deny him the second ride he’s patiently waiting for. 

A slow grind of hips into hips is a good start, you tell yourself. You’ve never really had to deal with this before, since Jungkook would usually just keep pounding into you despite the fact that he knows your limbs are exhausted from one orgasm already. Clenching your jaw, you start to bounce again, ass clapping against his thighs in suppressed thumps underwater. The overstimulated pleasure brings tears to your eyes. You cry out his name and hold onto his wings. 

He groans against your right breast from the contact. You’re about to apologize, knowing his wings are sensitive, when he shoves his fingers into your tightest hole. You freeze and throw your head back from how easily he slipped in and how fucking good it feels. Jungkook scissors his fingers within you, peeking a glance up from between your breasts. 

“Are you okay, baby?” he slurs. He licks up the valley of your breasts, holding your gaze shamelessly. 

“Mhm,” you mewl. 

Resuming your thrusts, you feel your tears run down your face freely. You don’t even have it in you to wipe them away. Your hands, instead, centre around his back. You scratch at it for a bit until you feel him add a finger. Moans tumble into his wet hair as your fingers trail up the length of his spine. 

Jungkook stiffens. A choked groan tears from his throat and he hides his face further into your breasts. They bounce around his cheeks with each hop on his cock. Too consumed by your own overstimulated pleasure to dwell much thought on his movements, or lack thereof, you mindlessly repeat the action. You stroke his spine once more and then you hear it. 

He sobs a moan.

You still your hips, looking down at him. As you run a hand through his hair, you’re about to ask if he’s okay when the whooshing flutter of wings obscures your vision. One second, you’re straddling his lap with his fingers in your ass. The next, you’re the one submerged in the water with him hovering over you. Wings fully extended, face stained with tears, Jungkook makes sure your arms are resting over his shoulders like before then takes up a deadly speed of thrusts into you. 

His speed defies the laws of physics, hips moving much faster than they should underwater. Half the fountain is on the ground from the force of his movement. All you can do is sob with him as your body becomes his only source of pleasure. 

What’s gotten into him? He doesn’t even have an interest in your ass anymore, hands locked in a death-like grip on your hips. In a moment of pure animalistic pleasure, you just wish you knew what’s running through his head. 

“You,” he growls in a pout. “You’re all I think about, you fucking whore. You’re all I can ever think about.” He swallows thickly before continuing, “You can’t go one second without thinking of me and now all I can hear is your voice. All the time; it’s you, you, you.”

You don’t know if you should apologize or cum from the simple confession alone. His voice, his words, his entire fucking attitude has you aching to cum all over again. 

Jungkook stumbles over his chuckles. “You just love seeing me like this, huh? You love seeing me worship you, baby?” 

Worship. Does he want you to cum that badly that he’s willing to lie? You both know he doesn’t worshi-

A sharp thrust derails your thoughts. Your eyes roll back as you moan out his name. 

“You’re my goddess,” he confesses. “You’re my only goddess.”

He repeats the phrase over and over again until that’s all that rings in your ear, in your heart, in your soul. His release paints your tightening walls. The knots within your gut have unraveled long ago and it’s only when your blurred vision somewhat clears and convulsing body trickles into tremors do you realize that you’ve both cum together to the words he’s still repeating. 

Voice a tiny, gruff whisper, Jungkook whispers, “My goddess.”

He’s serious. He must be. He truly worships you. The tears in his eyes, the break in his voice, the truth is clear and just as starkly bare as he is between your legs. His eyes suddenly flash with worry, almost as if he’s recognized what he’s said. He meant what he said, you realize, but he never meant to say it. 

Jungkook gingerly pulls out of you as you try to seat yourself up. You pull your legs into your chest and watch him take a seat beside you. He leans his head back against the rim of the fountain and gazes up at the sky. You follow his gaze, noticing it’s gotten much darker out, the silver stream of stars piercing an indigo backdrop no more. A midnight black cloaks the world above you, a crescent moon lighting up your night and an array of stars twinkling down at you. Though your mind is still foggy from your recent orgasms, body still shuddering, you can’t help but think about his words. What makes him think you belong up there, amongst true gods and goddesses? 

His wings twitch as they tuck themselves behind him. You know that combination well. He’s hiding something. Usually, you don’t ask, knowing he will only deflect the topic and shower you with attention and praises instead. But, his spoken thoughts are now looping around your mind, begging to be answered. 

“Jungkook,” you mutter, shifting closer to him. Face still stained with tears, he forces himself to look at you. The questions are on the tip of your tongue; what, why, when? However, as you part your lips all you can bring yourself to say is, “I didn’t hear anything.”

You’re my goddess. 

The words return with ten times the force they previously held. It’s almost like denying their existence is just as blasphemous as saying them. You swallow thickly and try to extract the words from your mind, but it's too late. They are as entrenched in your bones as your affection for him is. There is no undoing what has been done. 

You bring a hand up to his face and wipe away the stray tears. He melts into you almost immediately. Maybe it’s best if you return to the party now. You can make up some excuse as to why you’re drenched and torn on your way there. Jungkook’s state is all but worrying and you feel as though you shouldn’t be witnessing this. 

“I’m not done with you yet,” he finally says. His voice has regained composure and tone controlled. No more does he choke on his words or laughter. The authority he indirectly bestowed upon you has been returned to him. 

You should tell him you’re done, that he shouldn’t say things he doesn’t mean to. You should tell him that he shouldn’t play with your feelings or your heart like this. But, again, the words wither away the moment you part your lips to voice them. And, instead, you ask, “How do you want me?”

Jungkook smirks. His hands snake around your hips and lift you up onto his lap. Back to his chest, you make yourself comfortable, leaning into him. He pushes the excess fabric of your dress aside just to get you as close as possible. Then, you feel it against your ass, pushing its way between your cheeks. His erection is just as hard as when you started. It’s no wonder why he’s not done with you yet. You suppose he didn’t just confess something he can’t take back only to still leave with a full hard-on. 

“I thought you didn’t hear anything,” he whispers in your ear as his hands cup the underside of your thighs. 

You nervously look at him over your shoulder. “I didn’t.”

He chews on your earlobe, warm tongue caressing your jaw. “I should stop thinking about it,” he whimpers against your skin. “I should stop thinking about you.”

I’m not a goddess, you want to tell him. But, by the way he sucks in a sharp breath, you can tell he’s heard and isn’t impressed. He opens his mouth to say something, maybe to scold you for degrading yourself, or to correct you. The words never arrive. 

Jungkook shakily exhales. No more trips into his thoughts it would seem. He remains silent as he spreads your legs and swiftly lifts you up. You expect another harsh round into your pussy but his tip shoves its way through your asshole instead. Throwing your head back, you try to suppress your scream by holding your breath. 

It doesn’t hurt as much as it usually does during the first initial thrust of a toy. Whatever he tinted the water with must be the result of a smooth entrance, and a deliciously blissful stretch. You let out a breath you held, along with a loud, high-pitched squeal. Jungkook folds you up well, holding the bend of each knee into your chest as he continues to slowly lower you onto him. 

Once you finally take him all in, you settle your entire body back into him. Shuddering breaths, drifting eyes, you hold him deep within you and try not to completely lose yourself in a fit of moans and pleads. You don’t even know what you’d be begging for, just that a string of “pleases” will leave you. 

Are you getting bigger, you mentally ask. 

He chuckles and shakes his head as his nose nuzzles into your cheeks. He can’t get enough. Inhaling you deeply, you realize that he can’t get enough of you. He even said so in so many words. And you don’t have much of a problem with that considering you can’t ever get enough of him either. You’ve consumed all of his thoughts it would seem and he’s even lost himself to you so much so that he’s declared you his one and only god-

“Fuck!” 

The stream of the fountain rushes down on your clit. He holds you straight beneath it as his hips move up and down against your ass. You’re at his total mercy, every thought of ever being in control a complete joke. You rest your head against his shoulders, trembling hands placed over his as a desperate attempt to control yourself.

Your first water wave induced orgasm hits you within seconds. You don’t know for sure, but you’re all but certain that you’re cumming. Your eyes have been screwed shut for a while, and body shaking since this endeavor in the fountain began. Only when you try to close your legs do you confirm that you indeed came.

Jungkook keeps them open though. He ignores your pathetic scratches on his knuckles as you try to explain to him that it’s all just too fucking much for you to take. “Just let me cum,” he tries to soothe between little hushes and murmurs about how good you’re taking his cock. 

But then your second orgasm from the fountain hits and you can’t stop squirming in his hold. He keeps you folded and under the water’s subjection nonetheless, somehow even cooling the temperature down. As you shiver under the cold rush, Jungkook positions you higher against him so that the water pours into you instead. You realize, pussy clean of his cum now, that you’re getting fucked by a fountain; a fountain that he controls. And you fucking love it. 

Then, there’s the fullness of your ass. Every inch of you is his. If you’re his goddess, he must know that he’s your god. Your one and only. 

“Careful,” he warns against your thoughts. 

You have an assful of his cock in you, getting off more times than you can both count in a fountain that does not belong to either of you; when have the two of you ever been careful? In fact, your recklessness is what brought you together. Had he not seen you on your balcony every night, he might not be here at all. Carelessness runs in your veins, laced in your tone as you cry out, “You’re my god!”

The clouds rumble above you. The heavens can warn all they want. Interrupting sexual endeavors would do them more harm than it would do you. 

“If you want to cum, you’ll behave,” Jungkook hisses. His thrusts suddenly snap into something primal. 

Your body bounces every time, water rushing down your clit once more. This time you feel your orgasm build, and fast. Toes curling, eyes rolling to the back of your head, you hold onto every twisting, clenching knot at the pit of your stomach. 

“Ask!”

“Please?”

A particular ram into your ass lets you know that half-hearted plea won’t get you very far. He doesn’t deign to repeat himself. Instead, he lets his harsh movements and bone-rattling growls speak for him. 

“Please let me cum, Jungkook, please.”

“Again.”

“Please, please, please, Jungkook.”

He doesn’t say it. But you feel it. You feel the approval in the form of a gentle kiss against your ear. Hips a craze, rolling against the wave, you clench your jaw and try to channel all your pleasure in a high-pitched moan rather than the cry your lungs are desperate to let out. Your cum gushes then, juices squirt seconds later. Entire body on fire, under the scrutiny of the stream as you try and fail to recollect yourself. You’re shattered, ruined, obliterated by his cock and this fountain of fantasies. 

“That’s a good girl,” he coos. “That’s my good girl.”

His. His. Gods, the things you would do to be his always, not just under the cover of the night. Jungkook releases your legs, wrapping his arms around your waist as he grounds your ass over his hips. Load after load shoots within you, making your giggle and shake with ecstasy at the filling sensation of being stuffed so well. 

“Ah-yah, baby,” he groans in a scowl against your jawline. “You’ve got the tightest little hole for me, hmm? If you weren’t so exhausted, I’d have us do this all over again.”

Exhaustion. Yes, that’s what you’re feeling. With your mind foggy and broken from the countless orgasms he’s sent through you, you can barely find it in you to breathe, let alone think to go for another round. Your body’s only excuse for staying afloat is the winged god behind you. He clutches onto you as if his only reason for surviving is you. And judging by his previous confession, that very well might be the case. 

Jungkook rests back against the fountain’s edge once he’s done. Gasping for air, he continues to hold onto you, kissing your shoulder mindlessly. “I never really know how much I miss you until I have you,” he whispers. His teeth graze your supple skin. 

Body limp, you can’t find it in you to reply. All you can think is after he pulls out, he’s going to fly back to Gods know where and leave you to hobble back to the party alone. After all, isn’t that how every night ends? You two share a passionate few moments, both have out of body experiences when orgasming, then you fall asleep and he sneaks away. What’s to say this night won’t be any different?

“I thought I told you to trust me?”

“I do.”

He scoffs. You don’t blame him. Your words are hardly convincing. It has nothing to do with the fact that you just came five or six different times. It’s the lack of commitment in your tone that tips him off. You hear it too. You really do trust him. He’s just let you down too many times to count. 

“What more do I need to do? I’m with you every chance I get.” 

Exhaustion. It’s not a physical one, not the one you’re still recovering from. It’s one of the mind. He’s exhausted with this back and forth. You are too. This isn’t exactly what you thought your first relationship would look like. 

He pauses, body freezing beneath you. 

Oh, right. He’s in your mind. He heard that. Is that not what this is, though? Isn’t this a relationship?

“Say it.”

“What?”

“Say it,” You repeat, looking at him over your shoulder. 

Jungkook starts to soften in you. You’ve really set him off now. He lifts you up and off his cock, sitting you on his thigh and ignoring the way you hiss and whine at the discomfort. You turn to glare at him over your shoulder only to find him already glaring at you. 

“Do you want me to come back?”

Is he threatening you? “Do I have to remind you who came here begging-”

“You lied!” He cuts you off with a shout. 

“You knew that, though. You knew I was lying,” you point out, a pout starting to overtake your features. “You came because you missed me.”

“That’s never been a secret.”

“Say it then, Jungkook. Say this is a relationship.”

He falls silent. His once annoyed eyes can’t even meet yours. 

“I know you’re jealous of Lee Ky-”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he scoffs. Shaking his head, he forces himself to meet your gaze. 

Sad tears vary drastically from blissful ones. Tears of bliss soothe the pleasure and make it bearable. Tears of sadness sting your eyes, pierce your heart and shed any part of you that can make such a situation bearable. Sad tears only remind you of your pain. 

Your eyes sting with despair as he regards you with such frustration. Emptying your mind, discarding all thoughts, you ask, “Are you coming tomorrow?”

Jungkook sighs, but not a beat of hesitance affects his answer. “Of course.”

You raise a brow. See?

“Fine. This is a relationship,” he mutters. “What does that change?”

Nothing. It hasn’t changed a thing. You don’t even feel any different, any better. Maybe it’s because you forced it out of him? You don’t know. The tears only fall faster though, and you can’t bear to look at him. Your heart’s conflicted, shattered and replaced all at once because, though he is the cause of your tears, his presence is also the only thing soothing them. You wrap your arms around his neck and rest your temple over his. 

You can at least relish in his company for a few moments longer. And his scent, that intoxicating waft of creamy coconut and sweet peony orchards returns now that all that mud and grime has been washed off. The scent is comforting enough for you to relax in his arms and forget your pain for a second. 

“That’s not what I smell like,” he whispers. You tilt your head away to get a better look at him. A little smirk tugs on the corner of his lip as he says, “It’s what you smell like.”

Impossible. He’s always smelled like at the end of every night. You’d cuddle into his chest and inhale a breathful of the tropical scent. How could that be what you smell like if he reeks of it? The knowing look in his eyes is enough of a hint for you to realize you know the answer. He’s dripping with your essence every night because he spent the night in you. You wonder if you smell like him too. 

He sighs, circling his arms lazily around your waist. He deeply inhales your skin, smiling against it, but doesn’t answer your mentally posed question. Damp hair clinging to the sides of your faces, you settle in the other’s company. One of his hands rises from the water and wipes away your tears. As you sniffle, he whispers, “I promise I’m-”

“Doing the best you can,” you croak, finishing his sentence with him. 

Yes, yes. You’ve heard it all before. You don’t think he’s lying, your Eros is no liar. You do believe that he is, in fact, doing the best he can. But if his best is only a few hours every night, you’re not sure you can accept that. And, yet, you also can’t find it in you to truly, with all your heart, reject it as well. 

He needs to prove his devotion to you in another way. A risky thought then tiptoes into your mind. Gulping down the lump in your throat, you take a deep breath and ask, “Could you do me a tiny favour?”

Jungkook’s hesitant to meet your gaze. He glances at you through his peripherals, otherwise keeping his gaze locked on your breasts. Whether he’s trying to distract himself or not, you still push them out a bit in hopes that they will grant you the “yes” you’re hoping to hear.

He nods. 

With a little kiss upon his cheek, you stroke his shoulder with the soft tips of your fingers and ask, “Would you please escort me to my sister’s wedding?”

He turns his head away from you. Staring across at the other side of the garden, Jungkook withdraws from you. His hands fall off your frame as he heavily sighs. You press yourself against him, trying to regain his attention but he only shakes his head. 

“Acting cute won’t make this any easier,” he grumbles. 

You huff and slouch against him. “How about just the rehearsal dinner?” You try to negotiate. When he rolls his eyes, you quickly add, “I’ll be stuck with Kyon and honestly I don’t think I handle another minute of his incorrect reilieration about history.” 

Jungkook snaps his head towards you at the mention of another man. You cock a brow to which he only scoffs at. “You’re being obnoxious,” he seethes. “And unbelievably selfish.”

“So?” you question before you can stop yourself. His words sting, slicing through your confidence all too easily. There isn’t much room for thinking and even if there was, he would be listening to them anyways. So, you might as well say what you want out loud. “Was it not selfish of you to make me wait-”

“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters under his breath. “I’m not going to repeat myself, (Y/N). You can’t keep telling me that you trust me only to keep bringing this up. I was busy. You had to wait. It didn’t kill you.” 

Your tears have returned. He rolls his eyes at the sight. Whatever remnants of your heart you thought you had has been obliviated. “You make me feel so loved,” you whisper as your hands retract from his body. 

Jungkook’s expression disarms all hostility. His eyes reflect regret but you’ve heard, seen all you need to. 

“But why do you only make me feel this way when we’re naked?”

“You’re not naked,” he’s quick to reply. 

It’s your turn to scoff. How can a god be this dense? “Aren’t I, though? Tell me, Jeon Jungkook, whose thoughts are open for the other to hear? Who is the one waiting, praying for the other’s attention? Who has been bare since first glance on the stupid balcony you left last night?”

Before he couldn’t meet your eye out of disinterest, but now he avoids your gaze out of guilt. Yes, you’ve been obnoxious, selfish, maybe even a little entitled. However, you’ve had a god to yourself for months. You’ve had endless moments of ecstasy that only end in soft cuddles and whispered sweet nothings into the night. Is wanting that attention when the sun hasn’t set yet too much to ask? 

Jungkook parts his lips to reply when his eyes suddenly shoot up. He sits up, almost knocking you off his lap and snaps his head towards the very pathway you came from. 

“(Y/N)!” 

You gasp upon hearing your mother’s voice. The clicks of her heels draw further towards you and before you can look at Jungkook and ask what you should do, what you should say, you’re thrown into the fountain. 

Ice cold waves engulf you as you inhale a good chunk of the fountain. Your lungs burn from the accidental intake of water. You only just get your hands under you and sit yourself up and out of the water as quickly as you can. Familiar shouts ring in the distance. Coughing up the fountain, you push your hair back and look around the garden. 

Your mother is staring at you in utter shock, screaming at you to come out but refusing to help you herself. As you try to lift yourself up, you find the water has returned to its usual clarity and that Jungkook is nowhere to be found. He seriously left you to almost drown in the fountain by yourself? He’d be lucky to get more than a kiss from your tomorrow night. You can’t believe he has the audacity to yell at you then let you there like that. In a fit of anger, you send a lashing string after lashing string of profanities to him in the form of a prayer. 

“Miss (L/N)!”

Your blood chills. Hands on the lip of the fountain, you turn towards his voice. Fully dressed in a dark blue suit, his wings nowhere to be found, and dry hair pulled back a neat ponytail, Jungkook rushes over to you. His strong hands settle on your waist before he effortlessly scoops you out.

All you can do is stare. Mouth agape, eyes vacant, you try to figure out why the hell he made himself all presentable and left you looking like a mess. You want to whisper your profanities and swear that he will never touch your ass for leaving you in such a mess, but all you can find yourself saying is, “Mr. Jeon.”

His eyes shoot to the sky as your mother rushes towards you. Nothing is making sense and you only wish you can read his mind to know what to do next. 

“Goodness, (Y/N),” your mother hisses as she rushes towards you. “Cover yourself!”

Looking down at your bust, you gasp. Oh, right, he tore it. Crossing your arms over your chest, you look up at him and glare. But Jungkook only takes off his jacket and drapes it over your shoulders. It’s only when you feel your mother’s arms around you do you realize that you’re shivering. 

“What have you done to yourself now?” she whispers in your ear. 

Her eyes then settle on Jungkook. That look graces her face. That look of assessment. She’s scanning the unknown god up and down, looking for signs of wealth, status, and reliability. It doesn’t take her long to innocently smile and fall victim to his beauty, “Thank you kindly, Mr. Jeon.”

He bows his head then turns to you and says, “I told you not to sit on the edge.” Jungkook fakes a polished chuckle. He shakes his head at you when your eyes narrow at him. “I told her, Mrs. (L/N), I told her the marble is slippery. But, Miss (L/N) just had to get a better look at those flowers.”

You glance back at the fountain with your mother, finding an array of tiger lilies floating in the bowl. All this trouble to explain why you’re wet? You look back at him cautiously and wonder what the end of this conversation is meant to look like. 

“Yes, she loves flowers,” your mother sighs. She then sets her sights on Jungkook once more and asks, “Jeon… I’m not sure I know of the Jeons. Are you from out of town?”

Jungkook charms your mother instantly with that kind, toothy smile of his. He nods and compliments her quick wits, to which she laughs, then explains, “I’m visiting for the wedding.”

The wedding? Does that mean?

“Miss (L/N) invited me. I’m rather glad to have run into you, Mrs. (L/N) as I was hoping to ask permission to escort your daughter to the wedding.”

One of your hands, previously covering your right breast, shoots up to cover your mouth out of utter shock. Did he orchestrate all this just to agree to your favour? You hope you haven’t guilted him into it. You’ve done that to get him here and admit to your relationship; you already regret doing that. You just hope he’s acting on his own accord right now. 

Jungkook shoots you a wink as your mother fixes the jacket so that your uncovered breast is concealed once more. Sighing of relief, you offer him a grateful smile. 

“Are you sure?” Your mother suddenly asks, looking back to Jungkook. “(Y/N) is the one you want to escort?”

He glances at you and smiles. “Miss (L/N) the one and only thing I’m always sure about.”

Your mother raises a brow at you. She smells something fishy, knows something is off about this entire encounter. You watch her carefully as she looks between you and Jungkook. And when you expect her to refuse, to lecture you in front of him, your mother adopts an opposite approach. She smiles upon the two of you and shifts you closer to Jungkook. 

“I would be delighted to have you escort my daughter, Mr. Jeon,” she beams. “Do you mind walking (Y/N) to the carriages? I cannot let her go back and drip all over the Barbury’s rugs.” 

Jungkook offers you his elbow, returning your mother’s smile. “It would be my pleasure.” 

You stumble towards Jungkook, your mother practically pushing you into him. With a shaky hand, you take his arm and let him guide you out of the maze. After a turn or two within the tall hedges, you part your lips to ask him what he thinks he’s doing. 

However, Jungkook fills the silence before you can. “I’ll buy you an entire bouquet of lilies, darling. Just promise me to never fall into a fountain again,” he laughs, exaggerating the volume of his voice. 

This time, you pick up on his hints and realize that your mother must still be close by if he’s still putting up such an act. “I promise it won’t happen again, Mr. Jeon,” you innocently reply. 

A smirk, you know is real, graces his features. He walks you around the manor and to the front of the house before breaking out of this noble character of his. “I think she bought it. Your mother is a very suspicious woman.”

You scoff. “That’s just one of many titles she holds,” you mumble under your breath. As you walk towards your family’s carriage, you can’t help but ask, “Why did you do that?”

Jungkook stops you before the door and takes both your hands in his. Those amused eyes linger around your exposed breasts. He chuckles a bit at the way you arch your back to keep them there, making you giggle along with him. 

“Are you happy?”

You pause. Is that why he did this? To make you happy?

“Are you?”

He gives you a pointed look. “Answer the question, (Y/N).”

“Are you just doing this to make me happy, Jungkook?” You ask instead. “Because I will go back to her and tell her that we were both in that fountain and-”

“So what if I am?” He cuts you off. “I want you to be happy, (Y/N). Why is that so wrong?”

It’s not. There’s nothing wrong with him wanting you to be happy. But you want him to be happy with his decision. You’ve forced him into admitting things and meeting you. You don’t want to force him into this too. You want him to want to take you, to want to be with you. That is what true happiness is to you. It’s Jungkook unconditionally wanting you the way you unconditionally want him. 

Jungkook cups your face. Leaning his forehead against yours, he whispers, “I’m sorry I make you think I don’t want you just as much as you want me.” His nose brushes against yours, hitching your breath as he presses himself against you and continues in a breathy whisper, “Watching you cry breaks me in ways I can’t describe. And being the reason for your tears just destroys me, (Y/N). I’ll do anything to see you smile again.” 

Then, he presses his lips upon yours, reaching for the carriage door behind you. When he pulls away, he doesn’t give you a chance to reply, ushering you into your seat. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, baby,” he smiles. 

You’ve misjudged him for the third time tonight. Thinking he doesn’t care for you, thinking he left you, and thinking he doesn’t want you. All you can do now is pray that he forgives you for all the curses you’ve hurled his way. 

He chuckles and places kisses on both your hands. “It was very amusing actually.” 

You nod. “I’m sure.” But, you’re still sorry. 

With one last round of kisses over your knuckles, Jungkook promises, “I won’t be late.”

“I’ll be waiting regardless,” you immediately reply. 

The next three words are on the tip of your tongue. He can almost hear them, judging by the twitch of his brows. You don’t have a chance to say them though as he clears his throat and shuts the door. You watch him from the window, shakily exhaling. 

Jungkook calls the coachmen. The carriage jerks forward. The lasting image of his smirk, those sweet eyes and that muscular frame is all you try to see. However, in seconds, he’s pulled from view. The only memory you have of him remains with that sacrilegious confession in a fountain of fantasies. 

note; please do not leave hate towards me or any other readers. please do not copy, repost, or translate any of my work without my permission.

[yejiroh]

OH HOLY SHIT OKAY! So I request a fanfic about an mc that thought she could handle her social anxiety and go with Levi to a convention... Though she ended up having a panic attack,but luckily Levi is there to try and comfort her. Hope this is okay!

OH HOLY SHIT I LOVE YOUR ENERGY😂😂😂

*Reads through the request*

I got you babe! This was super fun to write! Sadly, I’ve never been to any conventions, but from what my friends tell me they’re pretty chaotic. Broke girlie can only dream. 

Anyways, Here ya go!

***

Conventional Panic!

Leviathan x Social Anxiety! Fem! MC

***

“And so I was saying that maybe we should- Hey, MC! Are you even listening?” 

The pout on Levi’s face was evident as MC snapped her head up, waving her hands muttering ‘Sorry’s’.

Poking her shoulder, Levi looked down at her.

“What’s up with you? You’re so quiet today?”

MC sighed, shrugging off his worried glances. “Sorry Levi- I didn’t get much sleep last night. What were you saying?”

The spark in his eyes lit again as he took a deep breath.

“Okay, so, there’s this anime convention going on in the human world next week, and they’ll be featuring a lot of legendary creators! Like Hiro Mashima, Koyoharu Gotouge, Sui Ishida- all of them! I wanna go and cosplay but deciding which character is gonna be the death of me. And then there’s the TSL- oh there’s just so many options and ah…”

Levi went quiet, a blush suddenly spreading across his cheeks as he realized he was droning on.

Chuckling, MC patted his head, her fingers going through his indigo locks. 

“Go on, Levi, I’m still listening.”

“O-oh...um..can you come with me- NOT AS A DATE! I...just want some company, and you’re the only cool normie around so...”

“Sure.”

***

That was last week. 

That was last week when MC had confidence. 

Now, in his Ruri-Chan cosplay and you in your (desired character) outfit, you walked to the huge building with posters and banners, displaying in bold letter, ‘2020 ANIME CON!’, ‘FEATURING HIRO MASHIMA AND MORE!’, ‘COME GET SIGNED AUTOGRAPHS!’ and in a much smaller, much finer print, ‘$150.00 Entrance fee at the door only. Cash, credit, debit, checks, and PayPal only.”

His blue eyes beamed with happiness as Levi’s hold on your wrist tightened, dragging you to the convention with his wallet in his other hand. 

“MC! Thanks again for coming with me!”

It was a sea of characters, all from different universes, coming together to celebrate their love of anime, and in the back of her brain, somewhere, it clicked that she was actually here, and was not expecting this many people.

A tug on your hand; Levi had gotten the passes, holding you close as you entered the building. 

It was as if he was an entirely different person, as if he wasn’t just an awkward mess last week, or in the car, or walking to the gates. 

It was as if they had switched personas entirely. 

“L-levi, slow down!”

MC exclaimed as she tripped on her own feet, little “Excuse me’s” here and there.

It felt as if everyone was staring at her, judging her silently, thinking, ‘Oh, look, she’s such a dork!’ , or, ‘Where’d she even get that outfit? A thrift store?’

It was an overwhelming feeling, like she was put on a stand in front of thousands, presenting something she didn’t know enough about. 

Leviathan's laughter was her call back to reality; he was chatting with other Ruri-Chan fans. 

“Yeah man- your cosplay is amazing by the way, where’d you get it? I don’t think I’ve seen that design anywhere!”

“Ah, thanks! I made this myself. Not too hard, but I did prick my finger making the wig once or twice.”

“That’s sick bro. And your girlfriend’s costume is awesome too!”

Levi laughed again.

“Girlfriend? Nah, this is my friend, MC. She agreed to come with me today.”

“Like a date?”

“Nah, man. “

Who was this person? Where was Levi?

MC’s head swarmed with a million thoughts, noticing how the guy was staring at her. Was her costume too tight? What was wrong? Stop staring, damnit!

A squeeze in your hand; Levi looked at you. 

“MC? You okay?”

“Huh?! Y-yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

MC, was in fact, not fine. Her throat had swollen from the sudden tears, a gag like reflex restrained.

Head spinning, the blood rushed to their cheeks, and Levi let go of her hand, instead placing both onto her shoulders, shaking her gently. 

“MC? C’mon, calm down. Deep breaths. “

 The guy from before had left, no longer interested in the two.

MC shook her head as the demon pulled her aside, reminding her to breathe. 

Gentle hands cupped her cheeks, and golden blue eyes met her own e/c ones.

“MC, let’s go home.”

MC  put her hands up in protest, but Levi shook his head softly.

“It’s okay. I understand. And besides, I already got what I came for. “

With a cheeky smile and a faint blush, the boy took her hand and they strode home, Levi telling his own awkward adventures, MC laughing and relaxed at last.

[purplesurveys]

1130

survey by nadine07

Where were you three hours ago? Was passed out on the living room couch and probably dreaming away, lmao.

Were you with anyone? Both my dogs were in the living room with me, if that counts.

Have you had anything alcoholic in the last 24 hours? Hmm, I’m trying to remember but I don’t think so. I went outside to eat, but I doubt they put any alcohol in my meal since I literally had a truffle-based pasta. No plans to drink this weekend, either.

Are you wearing shoes right now? Nope, I’m always barefoot around the house.

How long have you known your 1st phone contact? At least since the 6th grade cos I think that’s when she had transferred to my school.

Are they a relative? Nope, I went to school with her. We were seatmates for a while in sophomore year and that’s when I was able to see how talented she was at drawing and painting. She ended up transferring to UP as well after getting accepted to the fine arts program so we got to be collegemates as well, though I don’t really remember what university she initially got admitted to.

Would you ever consider getting back together with any of your exes? Yeah, because I’m a dumb fuck when it comes to these things. I WILL SAY though that I’ll be so much kinder to myself should this ever happen, and no longer tolerate her bullshit and emotional/mental abuse under the guise of ~unconditional love. There’ll be a lot of shit she’ll have to pick up and fix, and I wouldn’t get back with her unless she acknowledges her mistakes and seek to correct them.

Would you ever go skinny dipping with the last person who commented you? That would be Leigh, and no. Idk if I’ve shared this or if this has ever come up on a survey but Andi actually once asked me if I’d like to be a part of a threesome with them and Leigh, and I just had to immediately decline because I view Leigh as a younger sister more than anything and I can’t bear to see her all naked loooool.

When was the last time you saw a movie in theaters? December 2019.

When did you last talk to the last person you shared a kiss with? I think the morning of New Year’s Eve. I was already starting my healing process by then and the holidays were getting me feeling kind of peaceful, so I sent her a few voice notes thanking her for the year that was but giving her a heads-up that I might not talk to her for a while, because I realized I was starting to get happier on the days I didn’t force conversation with her.

I honestly thought ‘a while’ would only take a couple of weeks, but I’ve since gotten used without her presence and it’s been 3 1/2 months since our final encounter; and I think it will stay this way now.

Has anyone called you beautiful today? No.

Are you still friends with the last person who broke your trust? That would be JM, and yeah. I find him ridiculous for lying to our faces about joining a fraternity in law school (frats are a big yuck where I live because of their toxic hazing and misogynist culture), but I mean I still sort of understand why he had to do it - obviously not for the above reason, but for the perks and support that usually come with joining frats. From now on I’ll always see him as someone who can smoothly lie to my face, though.

Does drama seem to follow you everywhere? No. I would hate that lol, that would just be too much to handle.

Do you feel like anyone is playing mind games with you right now? No.

How would you feel if your best friend hooked up with your ex? I think my literal first reaction would be to laugh out of sheer disbelief, and then proceed to call her stupid for cheating and for choosing to cheat with her. After that’s died down, I think I’d mostly feel disappointed and betrayed.

How long did your last relationship last? The stint lasted 4 years, but we were technically together for 6 years if we’re counting the whole on/off thing.

If you knew you had the right person, would you marry them today? No. That’s what I had thought and they left. I’ve stopped trusting my feelings about these things anymore, and will assume anyone is capable of leaving.

Does it make you uncomfortable to talk on the phone around people? I just don’t want to be loud enough that I’m almost screaming around other people, but I can’t always monitor that since I have to concentrate on what I’m hearing on the other line.

Would you rather be 10 years older or 10 years younger? Probably 10 years older so that I can see into my future.

Have you ever kissed someone the same night your met them? No.

Do you bite your fingernails? Occasionally. I pick at them more frequently.

Would you consider yourself very flexible? Nah. Like I said on a previous survey, I can’t even reach my toes either while standing up or stretching on the floor.

Do you embarrass easily? Yeah.

Have you ever tried to talk your way out of getting a ticket? Yup. It’s happened twice; one of the occasions I was able to handle by myself and the other time Gab had to step in to talk to the officer because he was adamant about the ticket and I had started crying.

Did it work? Yes, both times. I’ve only been issued a ticket once, from this annoying grumpy officer in Alabang.

Have you ever been banned from anywhere? Trying to remember if I have been, but I don’t think so.

Do you have a ringtone or do you leave your phone on vibrate? The important messaging apps are on vibrate. I’ve turned off notifications for some apps and I have just the silent banner notifications for others.

What was the last thing you drank from a mug? I’m drinking coffee from one right now.

Has your #1 ever seen you naked?

Does your #2 know your deepest secret?

Will your #3 repost this?

Does your #4 smoke?

Were you born in the 90's? Yes, but by the end of it so I never considered myself a 90s kid.

When was the last time you paid less than $1 for something? The parking fee in Feliz.

Have you loaned anything out to anyone recently? Nope.

Are any of your siblings married? None of us are.

Who was the last person to spend the night with you at your house? Gabie.

How many different picture ids do you have in your wallet? Just my driver’s license and TIN ID.

Do you have a hard time making decisions? Depends on the weight of the decision. The heavier it is, the more I seek out friends who can provide fresh perspectives.

Has anyone kissed you when you weren't expecting it? Idk, Gabie probably snuck in some surprise ones a few times. IBetween the two of us I was more likely to do so, though.

Did you like it? If she did then I probably did during that time.

Who was your date to senior prom? We have junior prom, not senior prom. I just bought my favorite cousin since I had no interest in boys and was still learning how to make guy friends at that point.

Does your dad smoke? No, he’s never tried.

Is your mom over 50? She is turning 50 this year, but not until September.

Do you want to get married? It would be nice to experience it.

Have kids? Yes.

Are there any movies coming out you wanna see? Not that I know of. There are movies I do want to see, but they’ve already come out, like Ammonite and I Care A Lot.

Do you ever feel like you're leading a double life? No.

Do you have any plans to get a new tattoo or piercing? Tattoo, yeah. I’m just super chill about said plan and am not really in a hurry about it. I’ve yet to think of a design and where on my body to place it.

Do you know anyone named Christine? I know several people named Christine but they go by a nickname, like Tin.

Do you know anyone who's biracial? Sure, I went to high school with a couple of girls who are both half-brown and half-white as they both have European dads. I believe one of them is part German while the other girl is part Swiss.

Do you know anyone who works at Walmart? I don’t think so. I know my aunts who live in the US will occasionally shop there though, hahaha.

Has the last person you rode in a car with seen you in your underwear? I mean yeah, as a baby and as a young kid (it was my mom).

Are black bras sexy? They can be, sure.

Spell your full name without 'C','I','R', or 'Y': Obn.

Open the nearest book, turn to page 11, and type the first sentence: I’m at a Starbucks rn and didn’t bring any books with me.

Are you currently listening to anything? There’s jazz music faintly playing at the moment.

Would you ever consider getting breast implants? Before I definitely used to, when people still liked to make fun of small boobs. Nowadays I don’t feel the need to anymore.

If you could spend 30 minutes with someone who's gone, who would you pick? I’d probably pick my great-grandpa over my grandpa. I never met the former; and if I only had 30 minutes with my grandpa (who I did grow up with) I think it would just fuck with me psychologically.

Are you on birth control? Nopes.

Do you know anyone who is bisexual? Lots.

Would you walk into Walmart naked for $10,000? Yes.

Does anyone call you babe? No.

Do you hate it when people try to play with your hair? If I’m not close enough to them I would feel bothered, yes.

Who would you tell, or who did you tell when you lost your virginity? I think I had just told Sofie then.

Were you in a relationship 6 months ago? Yeah but it was cracking and it was cracking fast. It’ll be hitting 6 months this March, actually.

Are you still with that person? No.

Are you the kind of person who has crazy mood swings? No. This happens to my mom and I hate it very much, so I try to watch my actions and not switch rapidly between different moods.

This is question 69...so have you ;)? Sure.

How long is it until your birthday? Around a month and a couple of weeks.

[rosemaidenvixen]

A Secret’s Worth

Chapter 6: Toby

Ao3

The squeak rubber on linoleum got louder as the footsteps came closer. 

Toby didn’t move an inch, eyes locked on the gap beneath the stall door.

Coach Lawrence’s sneakers stepped into view.

The muscles in his legs were wailing in protest, cramped in position to keep him perched on top of the toilet. Toby forced himself to ignore the pain and held his breath, staying as still as he possibly could. They were close, so close, he couldn’t mess things up now.

They hadn’t come this far just to trip at the finish line.

Seconds ticked by, each one feeling like an hour, before Coach Lawrence’s shoes turned and headed out of the bathroom. Toby letting out a silent cheer of victory as the door shut behind him. He waited a few more moments, just to make sure Coach Lawrence wasn’t trying to fake them out, before dropping down to the floor and peeking out of the stall. 

“Coast is clear Jim,”

Right on queue Jim stepped out of another stall and hurried over to meet him by the door. A quick glance to make sure the halls were clear, then they made a break for it. Running through the school as silently as they could, taking care to make sure they wouldn’t be seen.

When they reached the side entrance Toby was shaking, half from excitement and half from fear. Part of him was convinced that Señor Uhl was going to be standing right outside waiting for them, two detention slips held at the ready. Their adventure over before it could even begin. Palms sweaty, he slowly pushed the door open, when he saw that the walkway was clear his heart leapt.

He and Jim ran down the sidewalk, grabbed their bikes, and started pedaling like their lives depended on it. Not even slowing down when they crossed the street and cut through the intersection. When they finally stopped, huffing and puffing in front of the diner’s parking lot, only a sliver of Arcadia Oaks High school was visible, the rest concealed by buildings.

Toby felt giddy energy bubbling up inside his chest. They had done it, for a while he didn’t think he had it in him but he had pulled through. 

Now the afternoon was theirs. 

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh I can’t believe we just did that!” he hopped from foot to foot, practically jumping with exhilaration “We ditched a pep rally and snuck out of school we’re practically delinquents now! And no one suspects a thing! Oooh man if anyone finds out we’re going to get Saturday detention for the rest of the year!”

Jim was giggling and grinning from ear to ear, if anything he was even more buzzed about this than Toby was “Who cares, detention will be worth it!”

Toby gave Jim an admiring glance, he had always been so straight-laced since...well, ever. It really felt good to see him finally cut loose. 

At that moment the girls rounded the corner on their bikes, racing towards their designated meeting spot right on time.

Jim waved them over as the three slid to a stop, panting as they caught their breath. 

“You guys have any trouble escaping?”

Mary leaned heavily against her handlebars, still gasping from exertion “We nearly got caught, Ms. Janeth almost found us, we had to hide in the recycling bins,”

She perked up almost instantly “But we got away, now we have the rest of the afternoon off, and you know what that means!”

Like Toby needed to be told twice “Gun Robot 7 here we come!” he cheered, playfully bumping shoulders with Jim.

Immediately Jim stiffened, a slow shudder making its way up through his body “Tobes,” he hissed through clenched teeth “...arm…”

Oh...oops.

“Sorry dude,” he scooted away, giving Jim plenty of space “Forgot about your needle arm, at least you’re done now, right?”

“Yeah, just finished the last round of shots yesterday,” Jim replied while rubbing his much punctured limb “Thank god, if I had to get jabbed one more time I think my arm would have fallen off,”

Darci snickered “It is kind of funny that the shots you had to get after are worse than when the fox actually tried to bite your foot off,”

“Yeah, hilarious,” 

Toby noticed how Jim kept rubbing his arm as the five of them walked their bikes over to the movie theatre, there was a crackdown on sidewalk laws and they didn’t need to get busted for that of all things. 

It was nuts how Jim and Dr. Lake had been going on camping trips for years without any trouble, and then all of a sudden the most crazy-town-banana-pants thing happens.

Jim was still pretty touchy about it, he’d only ever showed Toby the injury under the bandage once. A cluster of thin red lines an inch above his ankle, not nearly as gorey as Toby had been imagining. He really didn’t like talking about it though, which was cool, Toby knew when to back off. But after enough time had passed and Jim had gotten over almost being mauled, Toby was going to try and convince him to show off the scars more. 

Scars were a huge chick magnet.

Soon enough the theatre was in sight. Not wanting to miss the start of the movie, they hurried to secure their bikes and buy their tickets. Ten minutes and three giant tubs of popcorn later they were all sitting back and watching the pure epicness of Gun Robot 7: Revenge of the Federation. 

The movie was well over two hours long, but they managed to sit through every last glorious, action packed minute of it. Except for Mary who managed a quick potty break during one of the chase scenes. 

In other words a lot better than the pep rally would have been. They should do this more often.

All too soon the credits started rolling, forcing them to gather their trash and head for the door so that broom wielding employees could do their thing.

While throwing they were all throwing their trash away, Toby happened to notice Claire looking thoughtfully at the banner advertising another movie two theatres down. 

Her pensive look broke into a wide, cheshire-like smile “What do you guys say about making this a double feature?”

Toby did a double take at her words, before shooting a discreet glance at the nearby theater employees. One behind the ticket counter trying to pretend he wasn’t reading a textbook and fooling nobody. Two at the snack bar engaged in a heated debate about the Star Wars prequels.

None of them would notice or care if five teens snuck into an extra movie. 

For the first time today Toby didn’t feel one hundred percent onboard with this. Ditching during a pep rally was one thing, but theatre hopping was another. Forget grounding, if they got caught it was game over for real. Darci’s dad might even pull strings to get them all sent to juvie.

This was stupid, crazy, if there was a single brain cell between the five of them they’d quit while they were ahead and just go to Claire’s house and play videogames. 

But that wouldn’t be nearly as fun, or as thrilling.

Mary was practically vibrating “We totally should!”

“We’ve already cut school for half a day,” Darci said with a shrug and a smirk “What’s sneaking an extra movie?”

Toby was about to say that they could count him in when something occurred to him.

He glanced at Jim from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge his reaction without being completely obvious. 

The movie they were looking at was over two hours long, which would mean for Jim to stay and watch with them he would have to break curfew.

Toby had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from saying anything, Jim needed to make this choice by himself, pushing him one way or another never ended well.

Jim always stuck to his mom’s rules, which was one of the things Toby admired about him. But Dr. Lake still made him follow the same rules they’d had back since elementary school. They were in high school now, they were teenagers for crying out loud. Trenchcoat wearing strangers weren’t going to throw them in a windowless van if they were out on the sidewalk five minutes past dark. 

And Toby was sure that if Jim would just let himself relax and forget about the rules just once, he would realize that to. Then he could spend his nights going out and having fun with Toby and their three awesome new friends instead of being cooped up inside. Sure Dr. Lake would probably be a little upset at first, but Toby was confident that she would understand eventually.

But was today the day?

He held his breath as Jim opened his mouth “I’m in to,” his smile was giddy and carefree “What about you Tobes?”

Bliss shot through him from his head to his shoes.

Hearing Jim say that made Toby feel like he was walking on air. It was all he could do to not grab Jim in a bear hug and sweep him off his feet “As if you guys even have to ask me,”

After making a couple bathroom trips as stealthily as possible, the five of them quivering with barely restrained giggles, they scurried into a second theatre. One showing a cheesy romcom that they most certainly had not bought tickets for.

The movie was nothing they hadn’t seen before in other similar films. Completely predictable with cliche miscommunications and an obligatory love triangle, but they were all still roaring with laughter. Not so much at the movie, but at the thrill of successfully having broken multiple rules in a single day and gotten away with it.

So another two hours later they were all still laughing their heads off as they walked out of the theatre.

“We, we--” Darci’s words were broken up by loud guffaws “Should ditch and do movies more often,” 

“Totally,” 

“Definitely,” 

“No argument here,”

Toby sided up to Jim, making sure to avoid his needle arm this time, and flashed him a wink. He knew Jim had it in him, that one day he would realize sticking to old, outdated, frankly babyish rules wasn’t as important as spending time with his friends, he just had to give Jim the chance to figure that out by himself.

“Glad you decided to stay later this time Jimbo,”

“What?”

“Dr. Lake probably won’t be too mad at you for breaking curfew, just make her some of your famous spinach puffs and she’ll get over it,” 

Jim stopped in his tracks and turned to look at him, confusion written all over his face “What are you talking about? It’s only three, I’ll be home in plenty of time,”

“No dude, it’s four thirty,”

Wait. Had Jim not been planning on this? Had he just...forgotten the time?

Frown deepening, Jim rooted through his pocket and pulled out his phone “It can’t be that la-”

He stopped in his tracks, jaw dropping open. Toby could actually see the color draining from his face as Jim saw that it was indeed 4:27 pm.

Just like that the cheerful mood was gone. The waves shock and panic coming off of Jim strong enough to make it crash to the ground. Quickly picking up on the sudden shift in atmosphere, girls all looked at each other uncomfortably, Claire coming up to Jim and gently laying a hand on his shoulder “Don’t worry, I’ve broken curfew a few times, your mom might be mad but it’s n--”

Without warning Jim turned and sprinted towards the entrance. They all just stood there, dumbfounded, for a few moments before speedily following him.

Outside Jim was frantically trying to unlock his bike, his hands were trembling so badly that the lock and key slipped from his grip multiple times.

“Hey, where’s the fire?” Darci’s tone was light, but her question landed awkwardly.

Toby’s could feel his face growing hot. Whether it was anger, embarrassment, or some unholy combination of both he had no idea. 

Why did Jim have to do this? Today of all freaking days. They had been having so much fun and then he had to go and ruin it.

Why couldn’t Jim just not do what his mom told him for once in his life? 

He stepped up to him, prepared to say whatever he had to to get Jim to forget his dumb curfew and actually put his friends first for once. 

At that moment Jim finally ripped his bike free and mounted it. Looking back just long enough to flash them an apologetic look. 

“Sorry but I really need to leave right now,” he said in a shaking voice.

“Jim wa-” Mary shouted at him but it was too late, Jim was already speeding away, he hadn’t even bothered to put his helmet on.

 Expression flickering back and forth between fury and confusion, she grabbed her own bike and took off hot on his trail. Claire, Darci, and Toby rushing to get their own bikes and follow after them.

The four of them pedaled as fast as they could after Jim. Darci nearly got close enough to touch him a few times, but they couldn’t keep pace with the almost manic way Jim was pedaling. In ten minutes, a time frame Toby never before thought possible, they pulled into their cul-de-sac. 

Jim didn’t even slow down, dismounting and discarding his bike on the lawn without missing a beat, and then running for his front door at a breakneck pace.

Toby braked hard on the sidewalk “Hold on Jim, let’s ju--”

Jim vanished as the front door slammed shut with a resounding thud. Toby’s entire face was burning, he was very very aware of the girls huddling up on the sidewalk and exchanging hushed whispers.

This was bad, this was bad, this was so freaking bad.

Toby didn’t care if he had to drag him, he was getting Jim out here.

Blood pumping hot and furious, Toby jogged up and pounded on the door.

No reply. 

He was hyper aware of the girls eyes on him now “C’mon Jim open up,” he forced his tone to be light and friendly “You can’t just leave us hanging like this,”

Still nothing.

Clenching his fist, Toby tried again.

On the fifth knocking attempt the doorknob started to turn. Toby opened his mouth to unload on Jim about his uncool and uncalled for attitude, but to his surprise it was Dr. Lake that answered the door instead. 

“What is it Toby?”

He stretched his fake smile even wider, if there was ever a time to play it cool it was now “Hey there Dr. L, I know Jim has a curfew to stick to...but would it be ok if he just came out so we could say goodbye for the night?”

“Jim is in for the night, you guys can talk tomorrow,”

“Oh,” Toby thought quickly “How about I just pop in really quick, just for a minute,”

He moved to step around her and go talk to Jim himself, but before he could set foot inside her arm shot out and grabbed the door frame. 

Her expression had shifted from calm to annoyed as she stood firmly in the doorway, hand fixed firmly to the wooden frame beside her. 

Barring him entry.

“I’m sorry Toby but Jim can’t talk right now,”

Unwilling to move but able to go forward, Toby stayed where he was, feet rooted to the ground.

That was when Claire came hurrying up from behind him, Mary and Darci right on her heels “Please don’t be mad, Jim wasn’t trying to break curfew, we all lost track of time,” 

“That isn’t--” Dr. Lake let out a deep sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose. 

“I’m not mad,” she said tonelessly “But Jim still can’t come to the door,”

Mary’s eyes narrowed, mouth twisting into an indignant frown “Why not?”

“He...he needs to get started on his homework,”

“We won’t take long,” Darci piped up “And besides, the only thing due tomorrow is the biology worksheet, and I know Jim’s finished it already,”

Suddenly a strange sound came from deeper in the house behind Dr. Lake, it almost sounded like...fabric ripping?

Instinctively all four of them shifted around to get a look at the source of the noise. Dr. Lake grabbed the door handle and started to ease it shut while still blocking them.

“I-- I’m sorry but the answer is still no,”

Toby felt sick. Could today get any worse? Why did Dr. Lake have to do it like this. He already knew Mary was going to give them hell about this, not to mention what Claire and Darci would think “But Dr. Lake--”

“Goodnight,” with that she shut the door firmly in their faces

They all stood there for a few seconds of awkward silence before starting to shuffle toward their bikes.

“What does she mean ‘Goodnight’?” Mary grumbled “It’s still light out...” 

Toby moved to follow them, paused, and then turned back and stepped toward the door. Jim always had lots of weird rules to follow, but this was the first time he’d broken one of them and gotten caught.

But Dr. Lake hadn’t been mad, the way she had acted was...weird. 

On impulse he tried the knob. 

Deadbolted. 

His entire body ignited in a hot flush of embarrassment. They had just missed curfew by half an hour and Dr. Lake was locking them out like they were just some random punks?

Any sense of shame gone now, Toby stepped right up and pressed his ear against the wood.

At first he couldn’t hear anything, then he started to pick up the whispers. Toby pressed closer, most of it was too quiet to make out, but some of it wasn’t.

“What were you thinking?” Dr. Lake’s voice “I must have called you over a dozen times!”

The volume died down abruptly. Toby strained to hear more, the silence ticking on.

Then her voice shot up in a sharp peak, nearly forcing him to stagger back. 

“Do you have any idea how close you were cutting it!”

After that it got really quiet.

For a while he thought that was the end of it, then Dr. Lake spoke up again, this time so soft he could barely hear her “Oh sweetie I’m sorry…stay here, I’ll get the scissors,”

Toby kept listening but things stayed quiet. Except for the hundreds of questions swirling in his skull.

He raised a fist, ready to rap it against the wood. To knock on the door one more time today.

His hand stayed like that, raised and ready for action, for five seconds, ten, twenty, thirty.

Then at forty he deflated, hand falling softly and soundlessly against the wood. Hanging his head, Toby turned and walked away from the house, back towards the sidewalk where his bike and the girls were waiting.

[still-i-fall]

i guess we’re partying

To the anon who requested an au where the spin the bottle kiss happens when they’re older

Also on ao3

I spin it. It’s like it’s moving in slow motion, trying to decide my fate.

-

or an au where the spin the bottle kiss doesn’t happen until junior year

I don’t know how Gen convinced me to go to this party.

It’s not like we’re close enough friends for her to play that card, and her break up with Peter was almost two months ago, long enough for her to be unable to use that excuse as well.

Honestly, she probably just asked. Gen is Gen and when she wants something she gets it.

I just don’t know why she wants me to go to this party. It’s Gabe Rivera’s back to school party and he hosted one every year since the start of highschool. Weirdly enough, I’ve been to every one of them whether it be with Gen freshmen year or Chris sophomore year (the non college party she attended that year). Now we’re junior’s and I’m back with Gen, maybe next year I’ll go with Chris and the circle will be completed, though I doubt it, Chris doesn’t really do high school parties anymore.

Once upon a time, Gen and I were best friends, but then high school happened-- it’s still happening actually-- and we drifted apart. We’re friends, I guess, but nowhere near as close as we were when we were younger.

Actually, I think I do know why Gen wants me to go to this party: to be the designated driver. If that is the case, then the joke’s on her because I can not drive to save me life.

We’re in her car. Some Shawn Mendes song is playing on the radio and I can tell that Gen wants to sing along. Maybe she does when she’s alone, but around others she so self conscious of her voice. When we were younger, not even Peter’s participation could get her to join Choir.

She turns the music down a little, “So I got a new boyfriend,” she says as though he’s an object instead of a person, “He’s in college and really hot. We met at a party a few weeks ago.”

I want to ask if he’s hotter than Peter, or make a comment on how she moved on fast, but who knows how she’d react. Knowing Gen it could be anything from laughter to her throwing me out of the car.

“That’s cool.” I say instead, “Good for you.”

She nods, eyes on the road, “Yep. It’s nice to move on. I feel like I was tethered down for so long with… you know.” She can’t say his name. Everyone knows that she’s the reason they broke up, that she cheated on him countless times and he finally noticed.

I nod as if I understand, as if my first and only boyfriend didn’t move away a few weeks after we started dating. I’m not even really sure if it counts as dating. John Ambrose and I were only in 8th grade, though, Gen and Peter started going out in 7th grade and everyone always counts that.

The car ride from my house to Gabe’s luckily isn’t that far, so I don’t have to endure Gen’s chatter about her new boyfriend for long. When we arrive, Gen leaves me the moment we enter the front door. I can’t say I’m not surprised.

Just like the last two years, I head over to the couch and pull out my phone in an attempt to look less awkward. This happens every time, and I’m sad to say that some part of me almost expected it to be different. I don’t even know what I was thinking.

It’s like this for a little while. I scroll through my entire instagram feed twice and see that little ‘all caught up’ banner that I feel like is just there to mock me. Then, weirdly enough, Peter Kavinsky approaches me, two drinks in hand.

I don’t even notice him until he’s right in front of me asking, “You want a coke?” I stare at him. We haven’t talked since right after his break up with Gen, and even then it was about some party we all went to back in 7th grade. “I grabbed one from the kitchen for Gabe but he’s sorta busy right now.” Peter points over to the kitchen counter where Gabe and some girl are making out. “And I know it’s your favorite type of soda, so I just thought…”

I nod and smile. The fact that he even remembers that from when we were little surprises me, but I guess Peter Kavinsky is always surprising me, “Yeah sure, thanks.”

Peter grins back and sits down next to me, “You excited for school?” Here he goes again, surprising me once more. There’s gotta be something better for Peter to do at this party then talk to me, but I go along with it.

“Yeah, I guess. Junior year is supposed to be insane, though, you know, with all the college applications and stuff.”

He nods, “Same. I’m excited, though. Made team captain for lacrosse.”

It goes on like this for I don’t even know how long. At first, I’m not even really trying, barely holding up my end of the conversation because at some point I know he’s going to spot someone else that he’s closer with and leave. Only, he never does, and at some point in time I become just as enthusiastic as him.

Then Gen suggests spin the bottle. I don’t know why she did, she seems a little drunk, actually, so maybe that’s why, but I doubt it because then I notice her eyeing Peter.

“That’s so 7th grade though,” someone says, but Gabe shouts yes and grabs an empty beer bottle off of the counter.

“You wanna…” Peter gestures out towards the floor where everyone remaining at the party is starting to gather. Now that I look around, there’s not all that many people left meaning that it’s probably starting to get late. I should actually look at the time and head home.

But Peter’s been here with me all night practically, so I say yes.

He sits down next to Gabe and I almost sit down next to him but then I see Gen beckoning me towards her. I look between them, but Gen is my ride, and I really want to be getting out of there. Plus, I’m still across from him, so it’s not like we’re that far away.

Gabe goes first and gets some girl who I think is in our grade, then it’s the girl he was making out with earlier, and then senior guy who I sat next to in chemistry. After that, it’s me.

I’m starting to regret everything now, letting Gen convince me to ever come to this party, not leaving earlier, letting Peter convince me to play this stupid game, but now it’s too late to bow out so I have to go through with it.

I spin it. It’s like it’s moving in slow motion, trying to decide my fate.

And then it lands on Peter Kavinsky.

He grins over at me and I offer him a small smile back before looking to Gen to make sure it’s really, truly alright because she is my friend and he is her ex.

She rolls her eyes as if to say she doesn’t care, though, deep down, I can tell that she does, even if it’s only a little.

“Come one Lara Jean,” someone says and I look back down at the bottle, wondering why it chose Peter out of all the people here.

Deep breath.

Then I lean forward and kiss him.

It’s meant to be short and sweet, but somehow it becomes something else entirely. Peter’s leaning forward too, his lips slightly parted, slowly deepening the kiss. Some part of me never wants it to end.

Only then someone whistles and another person claps and I’m pulling away from his and his lips as quickly as possible.

I stand up, “Well that was fun, but I’m going to get going now. See you all later.” Then start walking towards the door. They’re spinning the bottle again, it’s Gen’s turn, but I’m too afraid to look back. I don’t even know how I’m going to get home until Peter surprises me again and beats me to the door.

“Want a ride?” He asks. My eyes widen. “Gen was your ride here, right.” I nod, “And she is in no state to drive, and still playing that game.”

I purse my lips and nod my head once more, “That’d be great, actually. It’s too far out of your way, right?”

Peter shrugs and says, “It’s like seven minutes away, barely anything.” before opening the door for me. It’s weird, tonight, hanging out with Peter felt like something straight out of 7th grade when him and I were almost as close as Gen and I.

The car ride back to my house, though, is pretty silent. Every once in awhile I’ll take a peak over Peter until we accidentally make eye contact. After that I stick to staring at my lap or the dashboard.

The seven minute drive to my house feels so much longer with the silence. It’s probably the kisses fault because before that we had no problem talking. Ugh, the kiss, why did it have to be so great, why does everything about Peter Kavinsky have to be so great?

It takes forever, but finally we arrive at my house. I turn to him and say, “Thanks for the ride,” before turning back around and moving to get out of the car. Only, before I can, Peter pulls me back.

“Wait, Lara Jean.” He almost looks like he’s surprised he ever said anything.

“Yeah?”

He smiles, “I had a lot of fun tonight talkin to you.”

I smile back, “Me too.” And maybe I’m feeling brave or something, but then I lean forward and kiss him. And he kisses me back.

It’s uncomfortable, though, me having to lean forward like that with the cup holder digging into my stomach, so it’s not a long kiss, but it’s a good kiss nonetheless.

“See you tomorrow morning for coffee?” He asks. Part of me, a small of part of me that’s so incredibly nervous about anything even sort of revolving romance is nervous, but most of me is still in shock from that kiss, and really this night in general.

So I nod, “Yeah, that sounds great.” And I can’t help but feel like this is the start of something amazing.

[sinkingorswimming]

CONGRATION FOR 600 FOLLOWERS U DONE IT

more X-Men coming through, maybe not so “soft” anymore @linneakou

He could be doing a gig in DC at the 930 Club right now, but Ciao Ciao and his teammates are playin’.

An old friend of Celestino’s, Dr. Mireya Thomas, mentioned during a lunch date to check in and catch up her close neighbor’s son disappeared six months ago. She’d been searching for him—Leo had confided in her that he was a mutant, having moments where flames would appear on his body. Leo was a kind kid, she told Celestino—went to mass every Sunday, was in the church band, good grades in school, helped his local Kiwanis chapter—but he’d come to her because Mireya is a leading geneticist in the field of human mutation.

He prayed every night for a cure, he said then. 

Celestino handed her a tissue to dry her stoic tears and said he would try to find out what he could, keeping an eye out for posters or social media posts.

Thanks to some creative computing on Seung Gil’s part, they have the following—

1) There is some shadow org called The Right taking recently mutant-presenting teens.2) They have some kind of crazy financial backing that no one can properly trace. (”Yet,” grumbled Seung Gil with some acid.)3) Blackwater looking goons with masks do the aductions, and some shady dude who speaks only in a mixture of German dialects calls the shots.

Yuuri is in a costume that’s mostly different from his stage outfits. It’s black and made of some fabric Seung Gil calls “unstable molecules” so it’s fireproof, waterproof, bulletproof, shockproof, and Andre Leon Talley’s scathing critique proof. Chris handled the design, making a point to compliment its inventor on how it goes through a serger like a hot knife with butter. It’s a black-form fitting number covered in prismatic crystals, mesh inserts, and fingerless gloves so he can still use his Laser Hands (TM Phichit, not to be confused with his Laser Pants, also TM Phichit) and he puts in red contacts instead of the UV purple ones. His hair’s gelled back and the make-up that obscures his features is charcoal and crimson. 

Yuuri could dance before he could run, which is how he keeps ending up the point man. Little rainbow shimmers float in the air around him, a sublte method to distract people from paying too much attention to his voice or face. 

“I hate this.”

I know you do, Dazz, replies Phichit over their special earpieces. Just know Forge and I are right behind ya’ once you clear the security systems.

“He really can’t just hack it?” Yuuri arches his back, holding his right foot above his head in a Bielmann. The boots he wears have split soles like dance or wrestling shoes.

Sure I can, if I want the FBI on our door in two minutes, comes the inventor’s scating reply.

Yuuri stretches his other leg. Standing at the wall behind him, Longshot clears his throat. 

Yuuri gives him a look. Since he doesn’t have a secret identity at all really, he just lets his face show with nothing to conceal his features. 

His suit’s been modified by Chris to use the same fabric as Yuuri’s—instead of hot pink, he now wears a purple top attached to black fingerless gloves that begin at his elbows. His pants are a tight shimmery black like oil slicks, but his boots are more traditional combat style unlike the Dazzler outfit. The embellishments on his top are actually weapons—the cord doubles as a whip, the “braiding” is actually those short silver darts he throws, and so on. 

Longshot smiles, his eye glimmering with the gold burst for a moment. “Your lucky charm’s on stand by, beautiful,” he assures Yuuri with a wink.

Yuuri turns forward again so he won’t see that his cheeks now match his make up. He coughs, takes a look at the grid, reminds himself of his forays into acrobatics, aerial silks, and capoeira…and goes.

Phichit should really be doing this, he thinks as he manages to get a hold in a cloth banner above the laser grid, climbing it and then doing a triple somersault to the next one. He’s the one who can cling to surfaces that have friction and can freaking teleport. His eyes are better in the dark, too, but since they couldn’t get the schematics on where the grid stopped or if they continue inside the rooms in the facility (since if Phichit BAMFs into a room full of them, they’ll go off), Yuuri has to do it. 

He tumbles through, avoiding a moving grid with a randomized pattern using the steps from a Paso Doble Minako insisted he learn. There’s not much sound here, but it’s enough and when a random beam almost hits him, he manages to shield himself with a bit of white light at a differeing optical density so it refracts around him. 

Nice, Forge and Nightcrawler say in unison.

Only after doing a full split under the last few does he make it and disables the grid. He’s oddly not sweaty or throwing up or anything. Huh.

Longshot saunters to him, and when they’re face to face, he picks up Yuuri’s right hand, kissing his ring finger and then his cheek, the day’s stubble prickling against Yuuri’s skin in a way that makes his breathing stop and his heart stutter. 

The smell of sulphur and a black bit of smoke heralds Nightcrawler and Forge. Phichit doesn’t need a mask since his daytime appearance with the Image Inducer is one—his gold eyes, deep blue fur, and short fangs make him cute in a sinister manner. His costume is deep red and gold, while Forge wears a sedate gray-blue and black jumpsuit as Chris vetoed his idea for a loud costume like a rainbow.

They find an office with a terminal, and Forge cracks his neck and sets to work. It only takes him a few minutes before he can copy the relevant data. There’s a guard rotation but they timed their entrance with the shift changes. 

It only takes three minutes and they have six more before the gig is up. 

“Done,” Seung Gil says. He pockets the HD. 

“Jěng âh!” Phichit grins and his tail swishes like an excited puppy. The four of them link hands, Longshot giving Dazzler a particularly happy look, and they’re BAMFed out to an alley a couple blocks down.

Longshot pitches forward with a pain-filled cry. 

“Sorry,” Nightcrawler says with a sheepish shrug. “It’s hard on passengers the first…eighteen times.”

“I threw up twice,” Seung Gil adds in a voice that has no comfort whatsover.

Dazzler helps Longshot get back upright. “You okay?”

“It’ll be alright, beautiful,” he answers as Phichit sings some of the lines from Ellie’s “Something in the Way You Move” in the background. 

Yuuri might add it to his rotating encores after he punches Phichit for the heckling. It’s a moot point he forgets, because they end up back at the house Chris bought them—it’s a Park Slope multi-million dollar home that the Giacomettis have owned since it was built. 

Chris perfers a skyscraper’s penthouse so he can stretch his wings…literally, so since this was in disuse, they all moved in. There’s seven bedrooms—Celestino has the master, Seung Gil’s converted the parlor into his sleeping area and work shop, and Phichit keeps waggling his eyebrows that Dazzler and Longshot should double up.

Their rooms are the two on the second floor, which take up the whole thing. They share a bathroom and Yuuri let Victor have the room with the terrace access. 

The cellar has been expanded through the backyard, outfitted with steel walls, soundproofing, and Seung Gil’s hologram tech. It’s a gymnasium on steroids for all of them to refine their skills with their gifts, and boy did Seung Gil get a sour expression when Phichit called it the Danger Room.

He twitches every time someone else says it. He twitches a lot, because it’s caught on.

Chris happens to be waiting in their living and rec room when they get back—he’s discussing something with Celestio. Since he’s not acting as the face of Intoxicated by Giacometti or as a board member of Giacometti Corp, he’s wearing a shirt with a low back so he can have his wings out. 

Seung Gil boots up his computer to run the analysis of what they got. and Phichit BAMFs into the kitchen, returning with a bottle of Mekhong and glasses for everyone filled with ice. He pours and they all take one, though Victor looks at his from every possible angle like it’s poison.

“Mote gaow!” Phichit shouts, and they echo it as they drink.

Victor stares at his glass after his initial sip. He looks confused. 

“It’s more or less rum,” Yuuri explains. Victor doesn’t look like he understands better. Right. Alien. Not from Earth. “Uh, it’s a…sugarcane beverage that can get you drunk.”

Victor lights up. “Ah!” He takes longer sip, and things seem pleasant enough until Seung Gil does a literal sitcom-style spittake at his montior.

“That’s not gonna be fun to clean,” Phichit deadpans. 

“What happened?” Ciao Ciao asks with a serious tone.

“Chris—” Seung Gil begins. “When’s the last time you reviewed GC’s R&D budget?”

Chris pauses, thinks. “Five years ago, if I’m honest. Josef insisted on handling the line items and minutiae so I can be free to do the public appearances and philanthrophy without conflicts.” His expression shifts from thoughtful to grim. “I’m not going to like what you say next, am I?”

“…Let me ask a follow up in that…you’re sure Josef is okay with mutants?”

Yuuri’s spine goes rigid. Even Phichit stops smiling. 

“He’s always told me he is since I presented,” Chris answers with no emotion in his voice.

“Well—” Seung Gil says. “He’s clearly lying. GC-0963 Project: The Right. There’s dozens of mutants in here that have either been abducted for experiments or—”

The silence hangs heavy, leaden with horror and dread.

“How many?” Chris says.

“Chris, maybe—” Ciao Ciao begins.

“How. Many.” Chris snaps.

Seung Gil gives Chris a look uncharacterisically filled with sympathy. “198.”

Phichit gasps, dropping his drink before catching it with his tail.

“They’re imprisoned at a facility out in Montauk,” Seung Gil says. “It’s similar to Supermax but for mutants—they have power dampeners most likely, or they’re sedated.”

“Well, we’ll get them out,” Victor says with resolution and stilted cheer. “It’s a good old fashioned jailbreak!”

“No.” Chris stands, reading the data on Seung Gil’s screen. It all bears out, it seems given the pallor in his face. His eyes look haunted. “We’ll do this in a softer way.”

“You’re hitting him in the board room, then,” Ciao Ciao answers.

“Yeah.” Chris nods. “There’s a nuclear option I can employ with the Board to get him out—and I’m sure we can kill this Project: The Right easily enough too. I don’t want my family name aligned with bigotry or human rights violations, and I’m fairly confident they’ll agree.”

Chris narrows his eyes.

“Plan B though,” he begins. “You all are my Plan B.”

[hiraeth-doux]

This one is so funny ahaha ❤️ It’s bloody Valentine’s Day and there is a discount in the cafe for a couple and I don’t have enough money and oh hey you are single too so let’s pretend we are a couple and get this fucking discount I am bloody starving”

A slightly belated Valentine’s Day prompt because I think I promised to post something. Most of the stuff I shared recently was from a while back, so this is the first piece I wrote this year and I hope it turned out okay. 

AO3

There wasnothing more pathetic than getting dumped on Valentine’s Day, and if there was,Claire couldn’t quite think of what it might possibly be. Not on the spot.Sure, getting kicked to the curb a day after prom when she was 17 wasn’t anymore fun, but at least the guy she was going out with back then had enoughsense to wait until the morning and not ruin the night for her.

Not thatEthan From Marketing – somehow, it was always Ethan From Marketing and neverjust Ethan even in her head, which probably should’ve been a red flag that sheblissfully chose to ignore – actually dumped her. This was supposed to be theirsecond date, which hardly counted as a relationship. However, the worst partwas that once she got through about 50 layers of pity, doubt, and self-loathingafter he sheepishly suggested that it probably wasn’t going to work out andthen scrambled away, leaving her alone to process his words, Claire realizedthat she was more relieved and maybe a little inconvenienced than upset aboutthis particular turn of events. As great she looked in these three-inch heelsand the skirt that hugged her body nicely in all the right places, they hadnothing on her ratty sweatpants and a glass of Merlot she could be enjoying onher couch right now. And that, she decided, was more than just a red flag – itwas a fucking red banner the size of Texas.

She took asip of her Daiquiri – because to hell with the diet, she deserved a treat – andput the glass back on the coaster, her reflection in a perfectly polishedcountertop pensive and a little detached.

Still, didhe have to do it on Valentine’s Day?!Couldn’t he have done it yesterday, or tomorrow? Not that she cared about thisnonsense of a holiday designed to make the ‘unattached’ people feel like crap,but there probably was some kind of etiquette. There had to be.

She took asubtle look around, noticing pink heart-shaped decorations, hanging everywhereand the quiet music that was meant to set a romantic mood for the rest of theclientele, sitting in twos at the tables and tried to ignore the fact that shewas the only person nursing a drink alone at the bar. Thank God she had enoughsense to take this joke of a date to the mainland where the employees of thepark couldn’t—

“Well,well, as I live and breathe!”

Startled, Clairesnapped her head up, recognizing the lazy drawl instantly, but refusing tobelieve that she could get this royally screwed twice in one night. Please, dear God, no! Not today!

No luck.

One eyebrowarched, his mouth curved into a smug, lopsided grin, and the top buttons of hisdark blue shirt undone, revealing just enough skin to make every waitressnotice him instantly, Owen Grady was making his way toward her, unmistakableeven in the dim light of the candles sitting on every table that provided justenough illumination for the patrons not to trip over one another.

Her stomachclenched – mostly with humiliation of being discovered by the one person shepositively didn’t want to deal with, but also because of the whole ‘why doesthis man look like a Greek god carved out of a piece of granite, all perfectangles and right lines?’ thing that kept setting Claire’s teeth on edge ever sincetheir date went straight to hell several months ago, but her mind apparentlydidn’t get the memo.

She glaredat him and turned away. Brought the glass up to her lips again, barelyresisting the urge to finish her drink in one gulp and ask for more. Always alight-weight drinker, she was already starting to feel a pleasant hum in herhead and the warmth spreading over her body, and for once, it didn’t seem likea bad idea to revel in the sensation, let it go.

“Go away,”she said flatly when Owen approached her, not seeing him as much as noticinghis presence next to her, the warmth of his body and the smell of hisaftershave that wrapped around her like a cloud, happy that she avoided fallingoff the damned barstool, which would definitely be a cherry on top of heralready crappy evening.

Owenignored her comment. He leaned against the counter and gave her a pointedonce-over, taking in her low-cut top and a teardrop pendant nestled in hercleavage, and not at all subtle about it.

Sheresisted the urge to throw the rest of her drink in his face. Somehow, Clairefound the idea of him being here alone highly implausible, which made her feellike an even bigger loser. Not that it was a competition, but with him, italways felt that way.

“Why don’tyou go back to your company… that probably gets paid by an hour?” She suggestedsnidely.

He snorted.“You think I need to pay anyone to spend the time with me?”

“It’s hardto imagine anyone doing it for free,” she deadpanned, turning to him.

“You did,”he piped up.

“And I’llnever get those two hours of my life back,” Claire retorted without missing abeat.

Owenhummed. Touché.  

He raisedhis hands. “How about a truce? For one night.”

Claire’seyes narrowed suspiciously and she regarded him skeptically, as if trying tosee behind the ever-present cheerful veneer, all easy smiles and complete lackof subtlety. And yet, despite all that, the man was impossible to read. Withouteven trying, he somehow managed to never take off the mask Claire knew wasn’tthe real him, if only because of those flashes behind his eyes that gave awaysomething she couldn’t quite put her finger on. A vulnerability of sorts thatdrew her to him in the first place. The very one that slipped in every time hetalked about work, or when he didn’t know she was looking at him.

Of course,he then went and ruined everything, but that was another story.

Meanwhile,oblivious to her thoughts, Owen jerked his chin toward the poster behind hisback that advertised two pieces of cake for the price of one, a couple’sdiscount and all that, a cheesy lure that apparently managed to fill most ofthe place tonight.

Shefrowned. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Notreally.” He pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans and made ashow out of going through its contents. “I’m hungry and low on cash.” Shruggedand peered at her expectantly. “What’d you say?”

Clairereached for her clutch purse, resting on the counter next to her glass. “I’dsay I’m out of here.” She slid off her barstool and dropped a few banknotes onthe polished surface.

Owensmirked. Shook his head. She wondered how he managed to look so in his elementin any situation – practically one of the animals in the paddock, a heart ofevery company outside of work, not even remotely as pathetic as she thought shewas in this place full of happy couples, enjoying each other’s company.

“Relax,Claire,” his voice was like honey, barely audible and yet impossible not tohear even over the music. “It’s just a cake. I’m not asking you to marry me.”

She pursedher lips together into a thin line, torn between storming out and giving himthe satisfaction of knowing that he managed to make her uncomfortable and getunder her skin again, and staying here and, well, actually feelinguncomfortable and maybe more than a little irritated. Mostly at herself.

“Verywell.” She gave him a measured look, similar to the one that he graced her withearlier, and allowed her lips to curve into smile that didn’t touch her eyes.“Bring on the cake.”

—

“Oh, god,” Clairemoaned quietly when the first bite landed on her tongue, and even closed hereyes, savoring the sweetness.

A triplechocolate goodness adorned with chocolate-dipped strawberries and served withvanilla ice-cream. It tasted so good she thought she might die. Or maybe shealready did and this was heaven. The only problem with that theory was thepresence on Owen Grady not two feet away from her. Unless she went to hellinstead and he was her punishment. Which would actually explain a lot. Thiswhole night, for instance.

“Should Ileave you two alone?” Owen asked around a mouthful of his own treat from acrossthe table where they relocated from the bar.

“Shut up,”she mumbled mildly.

When wasthe last time she had a cheat day? Right, 275 days ago, but who was counting?She could probably marry this goddamn cake right now and have her own happilyever after. Jesus, no wonder all those people sitting around them looked soblissful – they were so high of sugar they probably didn’t even know where theywere or what was going on. She knew shewas close to feeling that way, although that could also be because of that thirdDaiquiri she ordered when Owen asked for a double scotch.

Wonderful.She was getting drunk with Owen Grady. On Valentine’s Day. Okay, maybe notdrunk, but it was still a whole new low for her regardless. Thankfully, thecake was making up for it.  

“What?” Clairedemanded a little more tersely than she intended when she caught Owen watchingher, his fork frozen halfway to his mouth, which was downright insane for a manwho’d never let anything get between him and the food for as long as she knewhim.

“Nothing,”he shook his head, amused. “You were smiling.”

“I wasnot,” she protested.

“You were,too,” he singsonged, chewing with gusto, and waggled his eyebrows at her.Claire did not dignify that with ananswer. “So, who was it?” Owen asked.

“Who waswhat?”

“Who stoodyou up?”

Her mouthdropped. “What makes you think I was stood up?”

He gave hera Really? Are we doing this? look. “Comeon, Claire, even someone like you wouldn’t be drinking alone on Valentine’s Dayat a hotel bar a ferry ride away from a handful of better bars for no reason.”

Shespluttered for a moment, her hackles standing on end at the implication.“Excuse me? Someone like me? What’sthat supposed to mean?”  

He scoopedthe ice-cream onto his fork, mixing it with a piece of cake and took his sweettime to savour it, her eyes never leaving hers. “I’m talking about the whole ‘Idon’t need no people in my life’ crap you’re so into.”

“Says theman who lacks basic manners,” she rolled her eyes.

“At leastI’m not in denial about it,” Owen beamed at her.

Sheregarded him darkly. “I think the real question is – what are you doing here,Mr. Grady?”

He pointeddown at his plate. The at the poster. Then reminded her, “Owen.”

“Not that,”she scoffed and gestured vaguely around the bar. “Here.”

“Oh,there’s a party,” he waved dismissively toward the back patio. “It got boring.”A shrug. “Seriously, come on, who was it? Eric from Business Strategies or Darrenfrom Accounting? No, wait! Alex from Wu’s team. Gotta be him. Am I right?”

Claireplucked a plump strawberry off the top of her dessert and took a bite, notoblivious to how he nearly choked at the sight of it, feeling significantlybetter about herself by the second. “Why would you think it’s either of them?”

Owenswallowed hard and tore his eyes away from her lips, as red as the strawberry,and took a sip of his drink, more to have something to focus on that wasn’t hermouth than anything else. “They’re obnoxious assholes,” he explained. “Thoughtthey might be your type.”

“You’dknow,” she hummed. “I went out with you, after all.”

His eyebrowquirked curiously. “I thought you were pretending it never happened orsomething. Blocking the whole thing out, maybe.”

“I am.” Sheconfirmed. “You do make a nice cautionary tale, though. To remind me not tomake the same mistake twice.”

And thereit was again – a flicker of something in his gaze. Not quite hurt, she decided,caught off-guard and overcome with guilt all of a sudden. Of regret, perhaps.Alas, it was gone before she was even sure she saw anything at all.

Owen letout a short laugh. “Glad to be of service. And for what it’s worth, he’s amoron.”

“No onestood me up. Do we have to talk about it?”

“Okay, noone stood you up. Then where–” He cut off, his smile slipping. “He didn’t…”

“You knowwhat?” Claire pushed her half-finished cake away and stood up, the legs of herchair scraping on the floor and making a few heads turn their way. “This wasfun, but I have to…” She trailed off and cleared her throat, refusing to lookat him because there was only so much humiliation she could handle in a span ofa few hours. Her throat tightened, a hot lump lodged in it making her eyessting.  Trading mocking comments was onething – like playing ping-pong, back and forth, back and forth, to make surethey still got it. Dealing with his pity, on the other hand, was not somethingshe could bear.

“Shit,” sheheard Owen curse behind her back as she made a beeline for the foyer, past thehotel patrons and the personnel, past the bellboys and the sounds of music andlaughter, drifting in from the pool, and toward the doors leading outside.Shouldn’t have had that third drink, she was thinking now, her head light andweightless, like it was going to detach itself from her neck and float into thenight sky. “Claire, wait!”

He was rightbehind her, but the sound of his voice only propelled Claire forward, her heelsclucking on the cobbled street, echoing in the night, carrying her toward thedock. If she was lucky, she wasn’t late for the last ferry to the island yetbecause there was no way in hell she was staying here. She’d swim, if she hadto.  

“Just… waita sec.” Owen trudged up to her, easily matching her pace stride for stride.“Look, you’re upset–”

“No shit,Sherlock,” she muttered under her breath, and winced, never a fan of harshlanguage. Gripped her purse tight and took an unsteady breath, remindingherself to ignore him. Ignore the whole world, for that matter. She would wakeup tomorrow, and everything would shift back into place, and she would forgetthis night ever happened. Owen Grady and his jokes… “Leave me alone, Owen. Goback to—whatever it was you were doing there.” Tired, she was pointedly keepingher eyes starlight ahead – mostly to avoid tripping on the uneven sidewalk andspraining her ankles, but also because the idea of seeing what she keptglimpsing on his face was almost painful for the reasons she couldn’t quiteplace.

He didn’t.Instead, hands tucked in the pockets of his pants, he followed her silently asif it was the plan all along, steering Claire into one of the side alleys thatdid, in fact, was a shortcut that saved them at least 10 minutes, and boardedthe half-empty ferry with her.

The buzz inClaire’s head intensified, and she climbed onto the top deck, holding tightonto the railing as she walked lest she fall into the black water, churningbelow. The wind was chilly up there, tugging at her hair and whipping it in herface, her skin prickling with goosebumps. She inhaled deeply, breathing in therich scent of jungle and the ocean, allowing it to envelop it like a blanket,very much aware of Owen’s presence and half-temped to remind him he didn’t haveto escort her home, but not having it in her to bother.

“I’msorry,” he broke the silence after a while. Leaning against the railing next toher, he was watching the lights of the park grow closer and brighter, his voicemuffled by the wind. “It was none of my business and I… um, I ruined yournight, and…”

“Yeah,because it was going so great before you showed up,” Claire murmured, tuckingher hair behind her ear. “Ethan. It was Ethan.”

Owen’s earsperked up and he turned to her, studying the outline of her profile, paleagainst the blackness of the sky that was pouring into the sea until hecouldn’t tell where one ended and another began.

“A dudefrom Marketing? That Ethan?” He asked and cleared his throat. “Well, I hate torain on anyone’s parade, but it’s probably for the best. Doubt his wifewould’ve approved of you.” Claire whipped her head around, and he addedquickly, “It’s not about you, I swear. It’s just the marriage thing.”

“Oh, mygod,” she groaned and dropped her face into her hands, squeezing her eyes shut.“What is wrong with me? Why am I such an asshole-magnet?”

“I’ll trynot to take it personally,” he noted. His hands handed on her shoulders and heturned her to him, pulled her hands down and framed her face with his fingersuntil she was looking at him, her breathing shallow and warm on his skin.“You’re not an asshole-magnet, Claire.” He ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “You’resmart, and funny, and brilliant, and this particular asshole is very sorry hescrewed it up.” Her eyes were huge and bottomless, and the corner of his mouthcurled up as he stepped closer to her until there was no air left between them.“And just so you know – everyone from Marketing are jerks.”

Clairebunched a handful of his shirt in her fingers and pulled him down to her, hermouth crashing against his.

Theystarted kissing and didn’t stop, hungry lips and wandering hands and anundercurrent of burning desire right beneath the surface. Claire’s tongueslipped into his mouth and a low groan formed in the back of his throat, hispalm hiking up her skirt, inching toward her hip, rough and calloused againsther silky skin. She tasted of chocolate and warmth and Claire, her hands running through his hair, gripping it tight inher fists, and it was almost too much. She nipped at his bottom lip, pressingherself closer to him, warm and real, and so much more than he ever imaginedshe’d be.

“Take mehome with you,” Claire whispered when they found themselves on the solid groundagain, no longer swaying with the ferry, although neither remembered how ithappened, how the dock emptied and there was no but them in the dim light of alone streetlamp, surrounded by the whisper of the waves.

“You’redrunk,” Owen told her, making no attempt to step back, though, his handsflexing ever so slightly on her sides, each movement matching his raggedbreathing.

“Not thatdrunk,” she promised, pulling up to kiss him again.

—

Claire wokeup to the bright sun beaming in her face, which was wrong on so, so manylevels, if only because her bedroom was west-facing, and a loud pounding on thedoor somewhere close to her. She groaned and buried her face deeper into thepillow, squeezing her eyes shut, and it was only then that it finally occurredto her that the pounding was not coming from the outside but was rather araging headache, booming inside her skull.

Grimacing,she reached for her face and rubbed the corners of her eyes, very aware all ofa sudden of several things – this was not her bed. Aside from the windowmagically moving itself to the wall where it didn’t belong, she could attest tonot owning a Winter Fresh fabric softener that the pillowcases smelled of. Inaddition to aforementioned headache, she could also feel a wire from her bradigging rather uncomfortably in her skin, which meant that somewhere along theway she broke her rule about not sleeping in her underwear. And if that wasn’t confusingenough, she could hear someone humming an off-key tune somewhere… wherever shewas.

Claireopened her eyes, squinting in the glare, streaming through the thin lacecurtains and looked around, taking note of a large wardrobe in the corner and adresser opposite the bed, a few books stacked on the top of it. The door to theright from her was half-open and she could see a two-seater couch and a coffeetable, a patch rug on the floor and a pair of boots. Her own clothes from theprevious night were folded and sitting on the chair next to the bed and—

Her eyesflew open and she tossed aside and blanket, momentarily horrified, and thenimmensely relieved to find out that she was wearing an oversized shirt on topof her underwear, a faded logo on which depicted some music band she couldn’tquite make out from this angle.

And then itfinally clicked – her disastrous date with Ethan from Marketing, three glassesof Daiquiri on a practically empty stomach, Owen Grady.

Owen Grady.

Shit!

Clairescrambled out of the bed and peeked out of the room, her nose twitching at thesmell of coffee wafting in from the kitchen and her stomach clenching uncomfortably.For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she was going to get sick, or if maybe herhead would explode first because her skull was suddenly too small for her brainthat apparently was trying to get out.

Thepolished hardwood floor was warm under the bare soles of her feet when shefinally mustered the courage to step into the living room and a take a cursorylook around what turned out being Owen’s small bungalow that, much to Claire’ssurprise, was cleaner and much more in order than she would have expected.Under other circumstances, she would most likely take her time to appreciate itproperly. Right now, however, she desperately needed to fill in the black gapsin her memory that bothered her to such a degree she was almosthyperventilating.

Dressed in loosesweatpants and a grey sleeveless shirt, Owen was rummaging through one of thecupboards in his tiny kitchen. He turned around and stopped humming the momenthe noticed her out of the corner of his eye, and offered Claire a smile sobright it made the sun seem like a 20W lightbulb by comparison.

“Morning,sunshine!”

Clairewinced, her headache pulsing behind her eyes. There was a reason she didn’tdrink much, doing so out of self-pity was proving to be more and more stupidwith every passing moment. “What happened?” She asked, swallowing, her mouthdry and her tongue seemingly made out of sandpaper.

Owen’seyebrows arched expressively, “Before or afterI rocked your world?”

Her eyeswidened, the floor swaying beneath her feet. And for a moment, Claire wishedshe would drop dead, or better yet – wake up yesterday and not end up in thismoment to begin with. “Did we…” She started in a weak, horrified voice.

He studiedher for a moment, then chucked and shook his head. Filled a mug with coffeefrom the machine on the counter and took a generous sip, watching her over therim, his eyes inquisitive and impossibly blue. “Relax. You threw up and passedout. I slept on the couch.”

“Oh, god.”She collapsed into one of the mismatched chairs at the table and buried herhead in her hands. Somehow, this seemed even worse. Granted, if they actuallyslept together, she’d prefer to have some recollection of it, but throwing upin front of him was perhaps more humiliating. Infinitely more! She felt hercheeks grow hot, the traitorous colour rising up her face – her personal littlecurse. Damn it!

“S’okay.”Owen set her own mug in from of her, her stomach still folding in on itself.“This should help.” She glanced up at him, grateful, and he reached out onimpulse to loop a strand of hair around her ear, his fingertips lingering onher cheek for a few seconds. “Want some Tylenol?”

Claireshook her head, caught off guard by the gentle gesture that felt oddly familiarand more comforting than she was willing to admit. “So, you didn’t–”

“Takeadvantage of a woman who had no idea what was happening?” He scoffed. “Give me some credit, Claire. Besides, when ithappens, I’ll prefer you to remember it.” When, not if. A promise, not anotherquip. And her skin flushed again, but for an entirely different reason.

She claspedher hands around her mug and took a cautious sip, allowing it to burn hertongue and wondering if it was going to stay down. So far, so good. She glanceddown at what she figured was his shirt then. “And… um, this?”

Owenplopped down into the chair opposite from her, grinning. “Oh, you did theundressing.”

“Great,”she muttered, wishing she could drown in her coffee. Staring at the scarredsurface of his table, she could feel his gaze on her, warm and palpable, andher heart was a nervous flurry in her chest, beating against her ribcage. “Youknow, I think I could actually use that Tylenol,” Claire said after a few minutesof silence interrupted only by the ticking of the clock on the way.

“Sure.” Hepushed his chair back and stood up. “Ah, and if you want to take a shower orsomething before I drive you back, go for it.”

Claire methis eyes; tried to keep her face neutral, hoping he wouldn’t notice hertrembling fingers. “There’s no need for that. I mean, you don’t have to. Icould…”

“Walk twomiles?” Owen finished for her.

They bothglanced at her three-inch heels sitting on the floor near the coffee table.

She sighed.

—

“I am notgetting on that thing!” Claire announced, regarding Owen’s bike skeptically,her hands on her hips and her lips pursed stubbornly together. Slightly wobblyon the lawn in front of his bungalow, she tipped her chin up for good measure,well aware of how ludicrous she was looking, still dressed in her last night’sclothes and knowing that this man was holding her hair not 8 hours ago when shewas paying dearly for her poor decisions.

“Didn’tbother you last night,” Owen noted, amused, glancing at her over his shoulder.

“Pleasedon’t tell me–”she started.

“And youliked it, too, baby,” he added with acheeky smile.

Clairepinched the bridge of her nose and let out a slow breath, torn betweensuppressing her exasperation and hiding a smile that kept slipping, betrayingthe fact that last night, despite of how it ended, wasn’t the worst Valentine’sDay of her life.

Owen sighedand leaned against his bike, pulling her toward him – uncertain at first andthen more sure when she didn’t resist - until she was standing between hisparted legs, their eyes on the same level. One hand on Claire’s waist, hesmoothed down her hair curling in the tropical humidity with his fingers,threading them through the soft locks, his eyes fastened on hers. She stilllooked sleepy and maybe a little panicky, and he resisted the urge to run histhumb over the sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks, mesmerized by the softnessof what he used to think of as sharp edges.

“I’m sorryyour date didn’t work out last night.”

“I’m not,”she said, allowing her lips to lift up at the corners, still processing thefact that somehow in a span of one night, and seemingly without her say in it,they went from frenemies to something that was making her weak in the knees,her head swimming. “I mean, it seems to have worked out just fine, all thingsconsidered.”

“Do youremember anything at all?” He asked softly.

Claire’shands landed on his chest. He’d changed into a navy-blue t-shirt that stretchednicely over his broad chest, his skin warm through the fabric. She bit herbottom lip, studying him, taking her time to notice golden specs in his blueeyes, faint smiley lines in the corners of his eyes, her hands itching to touchhis face, run his fingertips over the stubble on his cheeks.

Her gazedropped down to his mouth.

“Yes,” shewhispered, watching his lips curve into a broader grin, barely resisting theurge to roll her eyes, but leaned into him nonetheless because what she did, infact, could recollect was pretty damn nice on every possible level.

“Thankgod,” Owen breathed out, tilting her face up to capture her mouth with his. “SoI was thinking,” he muttered between the kisses when Claire’s arms slid aroundhis neck, her fingers gripping his hair on the back of his head, “maybe I couldpick you up later and we’d make some new memories.”

She restedher forehead against his, her hand running over the collar of his shirt. “It’sSunday,” Claire said after a brief pause. “I don’t have to leave yet.”

[mredwinsmith]

Japan’s True Hat Tourney

Coming to Japan, the only “culture shock” that I was worried about was finding a good pickup game of ultimate. Unlike many of you amazing athletes reading this, I never played in college or trained with a team. I’m a pickup player through and through. I started with a crew of friends, orange Home Depot buckets for cones, and fields of patchy, dubious quality in sunny San Jose. By the time I left California, I was playing pickup four times a week—twice on the beach, twice on the field—and running plays as a handler. Nothing made me happier than watching a newbie, some long-distance runner who was still learning how to throw a backhand, streak into the endzone for a point. I loved ultimate, and it had made me a better, more giving person—it had changed my life.  

Online, before my flight to Japan, I was messaging every group I could find about a game. I came up with nothing. Some groups existed, but they were tourney focused machines working their way toward that well-oiled stack and cup play that I had never quite figured out. In the past two years since my arrival, I’ve campaigned—talking to everyone I can, going to social events literally for the express purpose of talking about ultimate—in order to get small pickup games going in Takasaki, the biggest city of our prefecture. It’s two hours on the train for me, but I’ve been able to draw fifteen to twenty people, almost all of them absolute beginners, out into the sun to toss the disc.

Honestly, I came to Japan because life in California had gotten a bit stale. My time on the field was rewarding and great, but off the field, I felt like I was in a rut. I had been tutoring kids for a few years and thought that teaching English in a foreign country would mix things up. It certainly did, but no matter how settled you get in a new place, there’s always something missing. For me, it was always more ultimate.

A couple years after I got here, we were making progress in our pickup games. A bunch of my crew had started to message me regularly, asking when we’d get out again. It made me happy every time people showed up, watching them fall in love with the sport–seeing that first end run, sliding layout, or point scored. I figured it was enough, these five or so games a year.

At least, I did until I met a businessman in my adopted hometown. He threw a shindig at a local restaurant, wining and dining the local foreigner population and asking what he and his friends could do to increase international tourism to our little town. Tatebayashi is fairly beautiful—with sakura blossoms in early April and a few festivals to its name—but it isn’t a draw by any standard measure. There are no world heritage sites here, and the azalea festival, which centers around a walk in the park, looking at—you guessed it—azaleas isn’t quite the ticket for people who want to truly experience Japan. When he popped his question, I was ready.

I took a disc out of my bag and asked him if he’d ever heard of ultimate. “Foreigners love it,” I said, mentioning the Tokyo Ultimate crew (with whom I’d trekked the 3 hours to play a few times), and my own budding disc enthusiasts in and around the prefecture’s capital. “We could have a tournament.” We tossed the disc—and the idea—around for the rest of the night. I already knew what I wanted.

Photo by Shuichi Tsujimoto

There was only one vision that I had for this tournament, only one shining example that I aspired to emulate: Hats, Hops, Hucks. It’s a tourney with hat rules—as in, no hat, no play. If your hat falls off, it’s a turn over. These aren’t normal hats, either. We’re talking fun hats. Massive foam rubber things, or the kinds of hats you buy at Disneyland, wear around the park, and then try to pretend you didn’t actually waste $30 on. My plan was to drop the rules pertaining to hats (too complicated to explain), but to keep the hats–and with them, the spirit of those California games.

This thought wasn’t a passing fancy, though. This was a necessary, intrinsic part of my plan.

To understand why you have to understand something about Japan’s attitude toward sports. From the outside, Japanese sports don’t look like a lot of fun—they look like work. At the middle school where I work, kids come to school shortly after 7 AM and practice before class. They stay after school, too, in nearly all weather conditions, coming even on Saturdays and the occasional Sunday to crank out a few more hours of throwing a ball or swinging a racket. These kids work hard—really hard—and adult sports look much the same. Those well-oiled tourney machines I mentioned before? That’s how they’re trained for all the traditional sports, and if they play ulti in college, they’ve got the same look in their eyes when they see a disc.

Although ultimate is a little more relaxed because of the later stage in life that Japanese people pick up the sport, a game of pickup—no training, no drills, just getting your cleats dirty for the sake of fun—is really hard, if not impossible, to find.

That’s why this tourney had to be different. If we wanted foreigners to come, it needed to be a friendly environment to learn and experiment. It needed to be a tourney that you could come to without a team, but with ten extra pounds of meat on your bones since the last time you laced up. It needed to be a true hat tourney, and it needed real hats. It needed the kind of hats that told the professional players, “hey, we’re here to have fun, remember?” The next day at work, I opened a Word document on my computer and titled it, “Hats, Hops, Tatebayashi. Can we do it?”

It took me months of messaging, reaching out to Club Jr. and talking to my friends, before I was ready to pull the trigger on the tournament. Eventually, Club Jr. settled on a day that they could come out to support us and I went to my man in town. We arranged to meet up, and before long, he had assembled a team of local businessmen. They had watched YouTube videos about ultimate beforehand, and I showed them pictures from my last outing at HHH. “There are a ton of frisbee tournaments here in Japan,” I said. “We must be different—we must be fun. We must have hats.” To my surprise, they understood my broken Japanese, and, more importantly, my reasoning.

Let’s gloss over the details a bit here, but suffice it to say that I spent several hours of every day, from January 5th (the day after my school’s winter vacation) to April 7th (the day of the tourney) messaging people, writing emails, posting to Facebook groups, drawing up t-shirt designs, making banners, clarifying the details, speaking Japanglish with newspaper reporters, and working on every conceivable thing I could do for the tourney. I met up with the guys at other restaurants on other nights and hashed out the details of what could and couldn’t be done.

At one meeting, a special guest member, a fellow ulti player from the capital, mentioned that maybe we could get more players if the tournament became a team tourney—y’know, bring your team and play. Luckily, the guy who had been enlisted to translate for me was more diplomatic than me. What I said was, “if you change it to a team tourney, I’m out.” What he said was more akin to, “maybe we can make the second day be devoted to teams. The first day is hats.” I was okay with that.

After plenty of hiccups and a lot of unexpected spending—prizes for players cost how much?—we arrived at the day. The guys and I chalked the lines ourselves in torrential winds and prayed that it’d die down before the discs started flying.

When the morning of the tournament arrived, the weather was mostly calm, but threatening rain. A cable news team had shown up to interview the players, and another newspaper reporter was walking around with a pad of paper herself. Club Jr. brought us extra tents in case the rain came down as well as the tourney shirts that they had gotten printed for us. When the players arrived, they represented a dozen different races, including 30 or so locals, and claimed true hometowns around the world and local hometowns up to fifty miles away. Sixty people in all ended up coming, from age seven to well over forty. They had heard the message: that this was a tournament for people who didn’t have teams, who wanted a return to the spirit of the game, that feeling of being barefoot in the park with your best friends. They wanted a return to the community of ultimate, where we’d eat barbeque burgers after the winners had been declared.

After tourney BBQ.

They brought their hats, too. Sharks eating people’s heads, local prefectural mascots, hats with spinners and umbrellas, flowers and googly eyes—they were all there. They came to have fun. Even the coach of Japan’s national team, who lives in the capital near where I arrange pickup games, came and brought his family with him. In a pink, flowered hat, he D’ed the only hammer (a low, terribly chosen bullet, cross-field) that I threw in the tourney. The only difference between this and the last time we had played together was that this time, he did it with a smile on his face. People heckled and laughed, they made new friends. Pros had come out and they certainly led their teams, teaching everyone little tidbits of what it takes to go to Worlds, but they still passed to the newbies, the kids, and the ladies (who are sorely lacking in a normal mixed-gender tournament). Games were low-scoring, but every miss was so close you could taste it.

After the tourney, they ate “California style” burgers (I made the closest approximation to In N Out’s spread that I could) and drank beers. The teams mixed and chatted together, some of them staying out until well after midnight. When I had gone before, to another tournament with the local crew, we’d stuck to ourselves. Our team on the field was our team after the game and in the bar after that. I never even learned the names of any of our opponents, let alone what their favorite drink was. This was entirely different, not just for me, but for many of the players, too.

Sitting, drinking with new friends that night, a Filipino player who lived in the neighboring prefecture told me how happy he was to be there. “This is how it is in the Philippines. We all hang out after. You bring your team, but when it’s over, we eat and drink together. I started out with friends just on my team, but every time we went to a tournament, I made more. I used to stay in hotels, but now I can go anywhere in the country for a tournament and stay on someone’s floor. This is what I’m missing here.”

Post-game congratulations–Japanese style (Photo by Shuichi Tsujimoto)

I’m proud to be here as a teacher, and I’m definitely proud of the work that I do on a daily basis, but nothing at school has ever felt as good as hearing that. As of now, I’m preparing to leave the country (three years is a long time to live in a place where you only half-speak the language), but I hope that this tournament will represent the lion’s share of my legacy. In an interview with the TV reporter, one of the organizers said that he wanted people to think of Tatebayashi as a fun town. He wants the name to become synonymous with this tourney, with the fun that can be had here.

Maybe only 60 people came out this year, but in some small way, I changed the social landscape of this place. I changed Tatebayashi the same way that ultimate changed me—bringing true fun and a reminder that life doesn’t always have to be so serious. Here’s hoping that spirit lives on, with or without me, everywhere the game is played.

The post Japan’s True Hat Tourney appeared first on Skyd Magazine.

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[ryancanedy]

Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor

Danielle Driscoll of Finding Silver Pennies has always loved celebrating Halloween. As a part of the Halloween/Harvest Style Challenge, we sent Danielle classic Halloween décor and let her make it her own.

Read on to find out how Danielle achieved a classic Halloween look that is also family friendly.

Family-Friendly Halloween Décor

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a little girl my mom used to make me the most elaborate costumes – a mermaid, a wicked witch with a green face mask (ouch! It tightened on my face as I trick or treated around the neighborhood), a bride, Michael Jackson. I was always so excited to get dressed up and go out that I didn’t even want to eat dinner.

Fast forward a few decades and I still feel exactly the same way about Halloween. It’s rubbed off on my boys. They love getting dressed up and decorating our home.

They played a huge role helping decorate our home in this challenge. In fact, our oldest drew the witch that we used to create the silhouette.

We live in a coastal town and everyone here is crazy for Halloween. The main street in the harbor is shut off to traffic and the merchants fling open their doors for early trick or treating. Once it gets dark, people come up our hill to continue Halloween!

For The Home Depot Halloween Style Challenge I knew I wanted to focus on classic Hallowee décor to go with our historic home. I also didn’t want to make it look too scary or gory.

When the surprise box from The Home Depot arrived, I was so excited because it came with amazingly realistic 36 in. LED Tombstone Assortment (Set of 4), a fog machine, fog machine liquid and a fog tube accessory kit.

My boys were so excited about the fog machine, as was I, because it instantly adds a creepy, Halloween vibe. We had so much fun playing with it and the gravestones. The gravestones light up, which is fun at night, too.

We got busy planning out our haunted front yard.

DIY Witch Silhouette

We created a witch based on our son’s sketch. In his sketch he included a cat and a cauldron.

Materials

¾-in. Plywood

Jigsaw

Rustoleum All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer

Step 1

First, sketch out some ideas on paper. We all were drawing witches and cats. Then we enlarged the sketch using a photocopier. In order to scale the drawing for a large silhouette we created a grid on the drawing.

Step 2

Second, enlarge the drawing onto plywood. We used pressure treated wood because we thought it would last longer in the elements. We used ¾-in. plywood because it’s sturdier. Create a grid on the plywood to match your grid on the paper. Draw image in chalk.

Step 3

Third, go over the chalk with a sharpie pen. Once you start cutting out the silhouette the motion of the saw might shake off your chalk. Sharpie is also easier to see while you’re cutting.

Step 4

Fourth, use a jigsaw cut out the silhouette.

Step 5

Fifth, paint the silhouette with black spray paint, we used Rustoleum’s All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer in one.  I love this spray paint because of the specialty designed nozzle – my finger doesn’t get tired and I don’t get paint all over my hands. Allow it to dry.

Step 6

Finally, build a support (see below for step-by-step instructions).

Isn’t she spooky! We love her nose!

How to Build a Support for the Witch

Step 1

First, create an L shape with two lengths of 2 x 4 connecting with a pocket hole, we used the Kreg Jig to create the pocket hole.

Step 2

Second, cut a length of 2 x 4 with 45° cuts at each end.

Step 3

Third, use pythagorus calculate to determine where the diagonal should go. Position = square root of (length of diagonal squared/2). This ensures that the L shape is square.

Step 4

Fourth, attach hinges to one side of the vertical of the L support, and then attach to the back of the witch. Ensure that the bottom of the support is square with the bottom of the witch.

Pro Tip: The best way to make sure of this is to run a square along the bottom of the witch, and up the back, then place the support along the square edge

Step 5

Finally, attach a hook to opposite side of the support. To make sure that it stays open, attach the eye to the back of the witch.

The fog machine adds to the effect as does the gravestones.

Next up we thought it would be fun to make paper lanterns to line our brick walkway to lead the way up to our front door. These were so easy to make and didn’t cost much at all.

DIY Paper Lanterns

The Home Depot has really cute Halloween stencils that are miniature and great for smaller projects. They’d be cute on treat bags for a halloween party, banners, pillows or lanterns as we created. I picked up some paper lunch bags to stencil.

Step 1

First, separate your stencils. Line up stencil on a bag. You can use tape to hold it in place, but I just held it with my finger.

Step 2

Second, use black paint. I stenciled the images onto the bags using a stencil brush.

Step 3

Pro Tip: Offload most of the paint onto a paper towel from your stencil brush before stenciling. This prevents paint bleeding under the stencil and you’ll get a crisp image.

Third, weigh the bags down with rocks or stones. We used beach rocks.

Step 4

Finally, place a faux tea light in each one. This is safer than real candles and can be used multiple times.

It’s more fun with a little ninja helper, too!

Here you can see the pretty lanterns lining our walkway to greet trick or treaters.

DIY Nature-Inspired Fall Wreath

The other DIY project we did was a wreath for the front door. I wanted to do something inspired by nature and I had a branch wreath down in the basement.

Step 1

First, use black spray paint (the same as you did for the witch) to give the natural twig wreath a spooky feel.

Step 2

Then, dismantle an ostrich duster to use the feathers for the wreath. I used one duster for this wreath. I applied the feathers using hot glue (be careful not to burn your hand).

Step 3

Finally, you can embellish your wreath. I like to keep things simple so I left it has it is, but you could stick on crows, bones, skulls or whatever you’d like to use.

Here is a closer look at the wreath.

Here it is on the door.

Front Door Spiders

You’ll notice we added some spiders to our door. We wanted to give the appearance of spiders crawling across it.

We used WallPOP’s little spiders. We stuck them to the door and painted the trim surrounding it. They were so easy to apply, remove and reposition where needed. This is a great job for little ones to help with. My little Conor (the ninja) loved helping put the spiders on.

I wish you could hear him giggling as he did it. It was so sweet.

Add More Halloween Décor

Here’s a look at our yard decorated for Halloween.

We added a bag of bones in front of the gravestones. This set was great and came with an assortment of may different kind of bones, even some dinosaur bones! The kids were excited about that. I think each set is different. This skeleton’s eyes light up and are so creepy. I’ll show you them lit up a bit later on.

Our front steps are decorated with pumpkins and some fun lanterns from The Home Depot. These LED lanterns are battery operated. They give a spooky look once lit. They also look cute during the day. We used ones with spiders and witches to match our DIY witch.

Ferns and potato vines in our planters add softness to the overall look.

Each fall we carve pumpkins, but if you’re very busy and have a lot going on, The Home Depot has a few already cut, like this one. It is easy to plug in and gave lots of light without the worry of candles.

I also placed a caged raven on an old vintage stool. He talks and is so life-like.

Final Reveal

We enjoyed celebrating Halloween a tad earlier this year. It made it twice as fun!

The fog machine really adds to the ambience. I have a feeling we’re going to be using it a lot leading up to Halloween.

Here’s a look at some nighttime shots our new Halloween décor lit up.

See how eerie it looks at night with the red eyes on the skeleton and gravestone.

Add a little fog.

And DIY lanterns to light the way to lots of treats!

We can’t wait for Halloween now that all our DIY is done! I hope this gave you a few ideas of fun ways you can make your front yard more festive with your kids.

A huge thank you to The Home Depot for inviting me to take part in the Style Challenge. I had so much fun with my boys creating a spooky and classic Halloween front porch. Happy Halloween, everyone!

For more DIY Halloween and harvest ideas, see other articles in our Halloween Style Challenge series, and follow our Halloween Style Challenge board on Pinterest.

Visit The Home Depot’s online Halloween Décor Department for everything you need to decorate your home for Halloween and fall. Check out other scary skeleton decorations at The Home Depot.

The post Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor appeared first on The Home Depot Blog.

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Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor

Danielle Driscoll of Finding Silver Pennies has always loved celebrating Halloween. As a part of the Halloween/Harvest Style Challenge, we sent Danielle classic Halloween décor and let her make it her own.

Read on to find out how Danielle achieved a classic Halloween look that is also family friendly.

Family-Friendly Halloween Décor

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a little girl my mom used to make me the most elaborate costumes – a mermaid, a wicked witch with a green face mask (ouch! It tightened on my face as I trick or treated around the neighborhood), a bride, Michael Jackson. I was always so excited to get dressed up and go out that I didn’t even want to eat dinner.

Fast forward a few decades and I still feel exactly the same way about Halloween. It’s rubbed off on my boys. They love getting dressed up and decorating our home.

They played a huge role helping decorate our home in this challenge. In fact, our oldest drew the witch that we used to create the silhouette.

We live in a coastal town and everyone here is crazy for Halloween. The main street in the harbor is shut off to traffic and the merchants fling open their doors for early trick or treating. Once it gets dark, people come up our hill to continue Halloween!

For The Home Depot Halloween Style Challenge I knew I wanted to focus on classic Hallowee décor to go with our historic home. I also didn’t want to make it look too scary or gory.

When the surprise box from The Home Depot arrived, I was so excited because it came with amazingly realistic 36 in. LED Tombstone Assortment (Set of 4), a fog machine, fog machine liquid and a fog tube accessory kit.

My boys were so excited about the fog machine, as was I, because it instantly adds a creepy, Halloween vibe. We had so much fun playing with it and the gravestones. The gravestones light up, which is fun at night, too.

We got busy planning out our haunted front yard.

DIY Witch Silhouette

We created a witch based on our son’s sketch. In his sketch he included a cat and a cauldron.

Materials

¾-in. Plywood

Jigsaw

Rustoleum All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer

Step 1

First, sketch out some ideas on paper. We all were drawing witches and cats. Then we enlarged the sketch using a photocopier. In order to scale the drawing for a large silhouette we created a grid on the drawing.

Step 2

Second, enlarge the drawing onto plywood. We used pressure treated wood because we thought it would last longer in the elements. We used ¾-in. plywood because it’s sturdier. Create a grid on the plywood to match your grid on the paper. Draw image in chalk.

Step 3

Third, go over the chalk with a sharpie pen. Once you start cutting out the silhouette the motion of the saw might shake off your chalk. Sharpie is also easier to see while you’re cutting.

Step 4

Fourth, use a jigsaw cut out the silhouette.

Step 5

Fifth, paint the silhouette with black spray paint, we used Rustoleum’s All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer in one.  I love this spray paint because of the specialty designed nozzle – my finger doesn’t get tired and I don’t get paint all over my hands. Allow it to dry.

Step 6

Finally, build a support (see below for step-by-step instructions).

Isn’t she spooky! We love her nose!

How to Build a Support for the Witch

Step 1

First, create an L shape with two lengths of 2 x 4 connecting with a pocket hole, we used the Kreg Jig to create the pocket hole.

Step 2

Second, cut a length of 2 x 4 with 45° cuts at each end.

Step 3

Third, use pythagorus calculate to determine where the diagonal should go. Position = square root of (length of diagonal squared/2). This ensures that the L shape is square.

Step 4

Fourth, attach hinges to one side of the vertical of the L support, and then attach to the back of the witch. Ensure that the bottom of the support is square with the bottom of the witch.

Pro Tip: The best way to make sure of this is to run a square along the bottom of the witch, and up the back, then place the support along the square edge

Step 5

Finally, attach a hook to opposite side of the support. To make sure that it stays open, attach the eye to the back of the witch.

The fog machine adds to the effect as does the gravestones.

Next up we thought it would be fun to make paper lanterns to line our brick walkway to lead the way up to our front door. These were so easy to make and didn’t cost much at all.

DIY Paper Lanterns

The Home Depot has really cute Halloween stencils that are miniature and great for smaller projects. They’d be cute on treat bags for a halloween party, banners, pillows or lanterns as we created. I picked up some paper lunch bags to stencil.

Step 1

First, separate your stencils. Line up stencil on a bag. You can use tape to hold it in place, but I just held it with my finger.

Step 2

Second, use black paint. I stenciled the images onto the bags using a stencil brush.

Step 3

Pro Tip: Offload most of the paint onto a paper towel from your stencil brush before stenciling. This prevents paint bleeding under the stencil and you’ll get a crisp image.

Third, weigh the bags down with rocks or stones. We used beach rocks.

Step 4

Finally, place a faux tea light in each one. This is safer than real candles and can be used multiple times.

It’s more fun with a little ninja helper, too!

Here you can see the pretty lanterns lining our walkway to greet trick or treaters.

DIY Nature-Inspired Fall Wreath

The other DIY project we did was a wreath for the front door. I wanted to do something inspired by nature and I had a branch wreath down in the basement.

Step 1

First, use black spray paint (the same as you did for the witch) to give the natural twig wreath a spooky feel.

Step 2

Then, dismantle an ostrich duster to use the feathers for the wreath. I used one duster for this wreath. I applied the feathers using hot glue (be careful not to burn your hand).

Step 3

Finally, you can embellish your wreath. I like to keep things simple so I left it has it is, but you could stick on crows, bones, skulls or whatever you’d like to use.

Here is a closer look at the wreath.

Here it is on the door.

Front Door Spiders

You’ll notice we added some spiders to our door. We wanted to give the appearance of spiders crawling across it.

We used WallPOP’s little spiders. We stuck them to the door and painted the trim surrounding it. They were so easy to apply, remove and reposition where needed. This is a great job for little ones to help with. My little Conor (the ninja) loved helping put the spiders on.

I wish you could hear him giggling as he did it. It was so sweet.

Add More Halloween Décor

Here’s a look at our yard decorated for Halloween.

We added a bag of bones in front of the gravestones. This set was great and came with an assortment of may different kind of bones, even some dinosaur bones! The kids were excited about that. I think each set is different. This skeleton’s eyes light up and are so creepy. I’ll show you them lit up a bit later on.

Our front steps are decorated with pumpkins and some fun lanterns from The Home Depot. These LED lanterns are battery operated. They give a spooky look once lit. They also look cute during the day. We used ones with spiders and witches to match our DIY witch.

Ferns and potato vines in our planters add softness to the overall look.

Each fall we carve pumpkins, but if you’re very busy and have a lot going on, The Home Depot has a few already cut, like this one. It is easy to plug in and gave lots of light without the worry of candles.

I also placed a caged raven on an old vintage stool. He talks and is so life-like.

Final Reveal

We enjoyed celebrating Halloween a tad earlier this year. It made it twice as fun!

The fog machine really adds to the ambience. I have a feeling we’re going to be using it a lot leading up to Halloween.

Here’s a look at some nighttime shots our new Halloween décor lit up.

See how eerie it looks at night with the red eyes on the skeleton and gravestone.

Add a little fog.

And DIY lanterns to light the way to lots of treats!

We can’t wait for Halloween now that all our DIY is done! I hope this gave you a few ideas of fun ways you can make your front yard more festive with your kids.

A huge thank you to The Home Depot for inviting me to take part in the Style Challenge. I had so much fun with my boys creating a spooky and classic Halloween front porch. Happy Halloween, everyone!

For more DIY Halloween and harvest ideas, see other articles in our Halloween Style Challenge series, and follow our Halloween Style Challenge board on Pinterest.

Visit The Home Depot’s online Halloween Décor Department for everything you need to decorate your home for Halloween and fall. Check out other scary skeleton decorations at The Home Depot.

The post Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor appeared first on The Home Depot Blog.

from garage2 http://ift.tt/2xuF25o via great info

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Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor

Danielle Driscoll of Finding Silver Pennies has always loved celebrating Halloween. As a part of the Halloween/Harvest Style Challenge, we sent Danielle classic Halloween décor and let her make it her own.

Read on to find out how Danielle achieved a classic Halloween look that is also family friendly.

Family-Friendly Halloween Décor

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a little girl my mom used to make me the most elaborate costumes – a mermaid, a wicked witch with a green face mask (ouch! It tightened on my face as I trick or treated around the neighborhood), a bride, Michael Jackson. I was always so excited to get dressed up and go out that I didn’t even want to eat dinner.

Fast forward a few decades and I still feel exactly the same way about Halloween. It’s rubbed off on my boys. They love getting dressed up and decorating our home.

They played a huge role helping decorate our home in this challenge. In fact, our oldest drew the witch that we used to create the silhouette.

We live in a coastal town and everyone here is crazy for Halloween. The main street in the harbor is shut off to traffic and the merchants fling open their doors for early trick or treating. Once it gets dark, people come up our hill to continue Halloween!

For The Home Depot Halloween Style Challenge I knew I wanted to focus on classic Hallowee décor to go with our historic home. I also didn’t want to make it look too scary or gory.

When the surprise box from The Home Depot arrived, I was so excited because it came with amazingly realistic 36 in. LED Tombstone Assortment (Set of 4), a fog machine, fog machine liquid and a fog tube accessory kit.

My boys were so excited about the fog machine, as was I, because it instantly adds a creepy, Halloween vibe. We had so much fun playing with it and the gravestones. The gravestones light up, which is fun at night, too.

We got busy planning out our haunted front yard.

DIY Witch Silhouette

We created a witch based on our son’s sketch. In his sketch he included a cat and a cauldron.

Materials

¾-in. Plywood

Jigsaw

Rustoleum All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer

Step 1

First, sketch out some ideas on paper. We all were drawing witches and cats. Then we enlarged the sketch using a photocopier. In order to scale the drawing for a large silhouette we created a grid on the drawing.

Step 2

Second, enlarge the drawing onto plywood. We used pressure treated wood because we thought it would last longer in the elements. We used ¾-in. plywood because it’s sturdier. Create a grid on the plywood to match your grid on the paper. Draw image in chalk.

Step 3

Third, go over the chalk with a sharpie pen. Once you start cutting out the silhouette the motion of the saw might shake off your chalk. Sharpie is also easier to see while you’re cutting.

Step 4

Fourth, use a jigsaw cut out the silhouette.

Step 5

Fifth, paint the silhouette with black spray paint, we used Rustoleum’s All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer in one.  I love this spray paint because of the specialty designed nozzle – my finger doesn’t get tired and I don’t get paint all over my hands. Allow it to dry.

Step 6

Finally, build a support (see below for step-by-step instructions).

Isn’t she spooky! We love her nose!

How to Build a Support for the Witch

Step 1

First, create an L shape with two lengths of 2 x 4 connecting with a pocket hole, we used the Kreg Jig to create the pocket hole.

Step 2

Second, cut a length of 2 x 4 with 45° cuts at each end.

Step 3

Third, use pythagorus calculate to determine where the diagonal should go. Position = square root of (length of diagonal squared/2). This ensures that the L shape is square.

Step 4

Fourth, attach hinges to one side of the vertical of the L support, and then attach to the back of the witch. Ensure that the bottom of the support is square with the bottom of the witch.

Pro Tip: The best way to make sure of this is to run a square along the bottom of the witch, and up the back, then place the support along the square edge

Step 5

Finally, attach a hook to opposite side of the support. To make sure that it stays open, attach the eye to the back of the witch.

The fog machine adds to the effect as does the gravestones.

Next up we thought it would be fun to make paper lanterns to line our brick walkway to lead the way up to our front door. These were so easy to make and didn’t cost much at all.

DIY Paper Lanterns

The Home Depot has really cute Halloween stencils that are miniature and great for smaller projects. They’d be cute on treat bags for a halloween party, banners, pillows or lanterns as we created. I picked up some paper lunch bags to stencil.

Step 1

First, separate your stencils. Line up stencil on a bag. You can use tape to hold it in place, but I just held it with my finger.

Step 2

Second, use black paint. I stenciled the images onto the bags using a stencil brush.

Step 3

Pro Tip: Offload most of the paint onto a paper towel from your stencil brush before stenciling. This prevents paint bleeding under the stencil and you’ll get a crisp image.

Third, weigh the bags down with rocks or stones. We used beach rocks.

Step 4

Finally, place a faux tea light in each one. This is safer than real candles and can be used multiple times.

It’s more fun with a little ninja helper, too!

Here you can see the pretty lanterns lining our walkway to greet trick or treaters.

DIY Nature-Inspired Fall Wreath

The other DIY project we did was a wreath for the front door. I wanted to do something inspired by nature and I had a branch wreath down in the basement.

Step 1

First, use black spray paint (the same as you did for the witch) to give the natural twig wreath a spooky feel.

Step 2

Then, dismantle an ostrich duster to use the feathers for the wreath. I used one duster for this wreath. I applied the feathers using hot glue (be careful not to burn your hand).

Step 3

Finally, you can embellish your wreath. I like to keep things simple so I left it has it is, but you could stick on crows, bones, skulls or whatever you’d like to use.

Here is a closer look at the wreath.

Here it is on the door.

Front Door Spiders

You’ll notice we added some spiders to our door. We wanted to give the appearance of spiders crawling across it.

We used WallPOP’s little spiders. We stuck them to the door and painted the trim surrounding it. They were so easy to apply, remove and reposition where needed. This is a great job for little ones to help with. My little Conor (the ninja) loved helping put the spiders on.

I wish you could hear him giggling as he did it. It was so sweet.

Add More Halloween Décor

Here’s a look at our yard decorated for Halloween.

We added a bag of bones in front of the gravestones. This set was great and came with an assortment of may different kind of bones, even some dinosaur bones! The kids were excited about that. I think each set is different. This skeleton’s eyes light up and are so creepy. I’ll show you them lit up a bit later on.

Our front steps are decorated with pumpkins and some fun lanterns from The Home Depot. These LED lanterns are battery operated. They give a spooky look once lit. They also look cute during the day. We used ones with spiders and witches to match our DIY witch.

Ferns and potato vines in our planters add softness to the overall look.

Each fall we carve pumpkins, but if you’re very busy and have a lot going on, The Home Depot has a few already cut, like this one. It is easy to plug in and gave lots of light without the worry of candles.

I also placed a caged raven on an old vintage stool. He talks and is so life-like.

Final Reveal

We enjoyed celebrating Halloween a tad earlier this year. It made it twice as fun!

The fog machine really adds to the ambience. I have a feeling we’re going to be using it a lot leading up to Halloween.

Here’s a look at some nighttime shots our new Halloween décor lit up.

See how eerie it looks at night with the red eyes on the skeleton and gravestone.

Add a little fog.

And DIY lanterns to light the way to lots of treats!

We can’t wait for Halloween now that all our DIY is done! I hope this gave you a few ideas of fun ways you can make your front yard more festive with your kids.

A huge thank you to The Home Depot for inviting me to take part in the Style Challenge. I had so much fun with my boys creating a spooky and classic Halloween front porch. Happy Halloween, everyone!

For more DIY Halloween and harvest ideas, see other articles in our Halloween Style Challenge series, and follow our Halloween Style Challenge board on Pinterest.

Visit The Home Depot’s online Halloween Décor Department for everything you need to decorate your home for Halloween and fall. Check out other scary skeleton decorations at The Home Depot.

The post Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor appeared first on The Home Depot Blog.

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[chocdono]

Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor

Danielle Driscoll of Finding Silver Pennies has always loved celebrating Halloween. As a part of the Halloween/Harvest Style Challenge, we sent Danielle classic Halloween décor and let her make it her own.

Read on to find out how Danielle achieved a classic Halloween look that is also family friendly.

Family-Friendly Halloween Décor

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a little girl my mom used to make me the most elaborate costumes – a mermaid, a wicked witch with a green face mask (ouch! It tightened on my face as I trick or treated around the neighborhood), a bride, Michael Jackson. I was always so excited to get dressed up and go out that I didn’t even want to eat dinner.

Fast forward a few decades and I still feel exactly the same way about Halloween. It’s rubbed off on my boys. They love getting dressed up and decorating our home.

They played a huge role helping decorate our home in this challenge. In fact, our oldest drew the witch that we used to create the silhouette.

We live in a coastal town and everyone here is crazy for Halloween. The main street in the harbor is shut off to traffic and the merchants fling open their doors for early trick or treating. Once it gets dark, people come up our hill to continue Halloween!

For The Home Depot Halloween Style Challenge I knew I wanted to focus on classic Hallowee décor to go with our historic home. I also didn’t want to make it look too scary or gory.

When the surprise box from The Home Depot arrived, I was so excited because it came with amazingly realistic 36 in. LED Tombstone Assortment (Set of 4), a fog machine, fog machine liquid and a fog tube accessory kit.

My boys were so excited about the fog machine, as was I, because it instantly adds a creepy, Halloween vibe. We had so much fun playing with it and the gravestones. The gravestones light up, which is fun at night, too.

We got busy planning out our haunted front yard.

DIY Witch Silhouette

We created a witch based on our son’s sketch. In his sketch he included a cat and a cauldron.

Materials

¾-in. Plywood

Jigsaw

Rustoleum All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer

Step 1

First, sketch out some ideas on paper. We all were drawing witches and cats. Then we enlarged the sketch using a photocopier. In order to scale the drawing for a large silhouette we created a grid on the drawing.

Step 2

Second, enlarge the drawing onto plywood. We used pressure treated wood because we thought it would last longer in the elements. We used ¾-in. plywood because it’s sturdier. Create a grid on the plywood to match your grid on the paper. Draw image in chalk.

Step 3

Third, go over the chalk with a sharpie pen. Once you start cutting out the silhouette the motion of the saw might shake off your chalk. Sharpie is also easier to see while you’re cutting.

Step 4

Fourth, use a jigsaw cut out the silhouette.

Step 5

Fifth, paint the silhouette with black spray paint, we used Rustoleum’s All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer in one.  I love this spray paint because of the specialty designed nozzle – my finger doesn’t get tired and I don’t get paint all over my hands. Allow it to dry.

Step 6

Finally, build a support (see below for step-by-step instructions).

Isn’t she spooky! We love her nose!

How to Build a Support for the Witch

Step 1

First, create an L shape with two lengths of 2 x 4 connecting with a pocket hole, we used the Kreg Jig to create the pocket hole.

Step 2

Second, cut a length of 2 x 4 with 45° cuts at each end.

Step 3

Third, use pythagorus calculate to determine where the diagonal should go. Position = square root of (length of diagonal squared/2). This ensures that the L shape is square.

Step 4

Fourth, attach hinges to one side of the vertical of the L support, and then attach to the back of the witch. Ensure that the bottom of the support is square with the bottom of the witch.

Pro Tip: The best way to make sure of this is to run a square along the bottom of the witch, and up the back, then place the support along the square edge

Step 5

Finally, attach a hook to opposite side of the support. To make sure that it stays open, attach the eye to the back of the witch.

The fog machine adds to the effect as does the gravestones.

Next up we thought it would be fun to make paper lanterns to line our brick walkway to lead the way up to our front door. These were so easy to make and didn’t cost much at all.

DIY Paper Lanterns

The Home Depot has really cute Halloween stencils that are miniature and great for smaller projects. They’d be cute on treat bags for a halloween party, banners, pillows or lanterns as we created. I picked up some paper lunch bags to stencil.

Step 1

First, separate your stencils. Line up stencil on a bag. You can use tape to hold it in place, but I just held it with my finger.

Step 2

Second, use black paint. I stenciled the images onto the bags using a stencil brush.

Step 3

Pro Tip: Offload most of the paint onto a paper towel from your stencil brush before stenciling. This prevents paint bleeding under the stencil and you’ll get a crisp image.

Third, weigh the bags down with rocks or stones. We used beach rocks.

Step 4

Finally, place a faux tea light in each one. This is safer than real candles and can be used multiple times.

It’s more fun with a little ninja helper, too!

Here you can see the pretty lanterns lining our walkway to greet trick or treaters.

DIY Nature-Inspired Fall Wreath

The other DIY project we did was a wreath for the front door. I wanted to do something inspired by nature and I had a branch wreath down in the basement.

Step 1

First, use black spray paint (the same as you did for the witch) to give the natural twig wreath a spooky feel.

Step 2

Then, dismantle an ostrich duster to use the feathers for the wreath. I used one duster for this wreath. I applied the feathers using hot glue (be careful not to burn your hand).

Step 3

Finally, you can embellish your wreath. I like to keep things simple so I left it has it is, but you could stick on crows, bones, skulls or whatever you’d like to use.

Here is a closer look at the wreath.

Here it is on the door.

Front Door Spiders

You’ll notice we added some spiders to our door. We wanted to give the appearance of spiders crawling across it.

We used WallPOP’s little spiders. We stuck them to the door and painted the trim surrounding it. They were so easy to apply, remove and reposition where needed. This is a great job for little ones to help with. My little Conor (the ninja) loved helping put the spiders on.

I wish you could hear him giggling as he did it. It was so sweet.

Add More Halloween Décor

Here’s a look at our yard decorated for Halloween.

We added a bag of bones in front of the gravestones. This set was great and came with an assortment of may different kind of bones, even some dinosaur bones! The kids were excited about that. I think each set is different. This skeleton’s eyes light up and are so creepy. I’ll show you them lit up a bit later on.

Our front steps are decorated with pumpkins and some fun lanterns from The Home Depot. These LED lanterns are battery operated. They give a spooky look once lit. They also look cute during the day. We used ones with spiders and witches to match our DIY witch.

Ferns and potato vines in our planters add softness to the overall look.

Each fall we carve pumpkins, but if you’re very busy and have a lot going on, The Home Depot has a few already cut, like this one. It is easy to plug in and gave lots of light without the worry of candles.

I also placed a caged raven on an old vintage stool. He talks and is so life-like.

Final Reveal

We enjoyed celebrating Halloween a tad earlier this year. It made it twice as fun!

The fog machine really adds to the ambience. I have a feeling we’re going to be using it a lot leading up to Halloween.

Here’s a look at some nighttime shots our new Halloween décor lit up.

See how eerie it looks at night with the red eyes on the skeleton and gravestone.

Add a little fog.

And DIY lanterns to light the way to lots of treats!

We can’t wait for Halloween now that all our DIY is done! I hope this gave you a few ideas of fun ways you can make your front yard more festive with your kids.

A huge thank you to The Home Depot for inviting me to take part in the Style Challenge. I had so much fun with my boys creating a spooky and classic Halloween front porch. Happy Halloween, everyone!

For more DIY Halloween and harvest ideas, see other articles in our Halloween Style Challenge series, and follow our Halloween Style Challenge board on Pinterest.

Visit The Home Depot’s online Halloween Décor Department for everything you need to decorate your home for Halloween and fall. Check out other scary skeleton decorations at The Home Depot.

The post Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor appeared first on The Home Depot Blog.

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Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor http://ift.tt/2xuF25o

Danielle Driscoll of Finding Silver Pennies has always loved celebrating Halloween. As a part of the Halloween/Harvest Style Challenge, we sent Danielle classic Halloween décor and let her make it her own.

Read on to find out how Danielle achieved a classic Halloween look that is also family friendly.

Family-Friendly Halloween Décor

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a little girl my mom used to make me the most elaborate costumes – a mermaid, a wicked witch with a green face mask (ouch! It tightened on my face as I trick or treated around the neighborhood), a bride, Michael Jackson. I was always so excited to get dressed up and go out that I didn’t even want to eat dinner.

Fast forward a few decades and I still feel exactly the same way about Halloween. It’s rubbed off on my boys. They love getting dressed up and decorating our home.

They played a huge role helping decorate our home in this challenge. In fact, our oldest drew the witch that we used to create the silhouette.

We live in a coastal town and everyone here is crazy for Halloween. The main street in the harbor is shut off to traffic and the merchants fling open their doors for early trick or treating. Once it gets dark, people come up our hill to continue Halloween!

For The Home Depot Halloween Style Challenge I knew I wanted to focus on classic Hallowee décor to go with our historic home. I also didn’t want to make it look too scary or gory.

When the surprise box from The Home Depot arrived, I was so excited because it came with amazingly realistic 36 in. LED Tombstone Assortment (Set of 4), a fog machine, fog machine liquid and a fog tube accessory kit.

My boys were so excited about the fog machine, as was I, because it instantly adds a creepy, Halloween vibe. We had so much fun playing with it and the gravestones. The gravestones light up, which is fun at night, too.

We got busy planning out our haunted front yard.

DIY Witch Silhouette

We created a witch based on our son’s sketch. In his sketch he included a cat and a cauldron.

Materials

¾-in. Plywood

Jigsaw

Rustoleum All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer

Step 1

First, sketch out some ideas on paper. We all were drawing witches and cats. Then we enlarged the sketch using a photocopier. In order to scale the drawing for a large silhouette we created a grid on the drawing.

Step 2

Second, enlarge the drawing onto plywood. We used pressure treated wood because we thought it would last longer in the elements. We used ¾-in. plywood because it’s sturdier. Create a grid on the plywood to match your grid on the paper. Draw image in chalk.

Step 3

Third, go over the chalk with a sharpie pen. Once you start cutting out the silhouette the motion of the saw might shake off your chalk. Sharpie is also easier to see while you’re cutting.

Step 4

Fourth, use a jigsaw cut out the silhouette.

Step 5

Fifth, paint the silhouette with black spray paint, we used Rustoleum’s All Surface Satin Black with Paint and Primer in one.  I love this spray paint because of the specialty designed nozzle – my finger doesn’t get tired and I don’t get paint all over my hands. Allow it to dry.

Step 6

Finally, build a support (see below for step-by-step instructions).

Isn’t she spooky! We love her nose!

How to Build a Support for the Witch

Step 1

First, create an L shape with two lengths of 2 x 4 connecting with a pocket hole, we used the Kreg Jig to create the pocket hole.

Step 2

Second, cut a length of 2 x 4 with 45° cuts at each end.

Step 3

Third, use pythagorus calculate to determine where the diagonal should go. Position = square root of (length of diagonal squared/2). This ensures that the L shape is square.

Step 4

Fourth, attach hinges to one side of the vertical of the L support, and then attach to the back of the witch. Ensure that the bottom of the support is square with the bottom of the witch.

Pro Tip: The best way to make sure of this is to run a square along the bottom of the witch, and up the back, then place the support along the square edge

Step 5

Finally, attach a hook to opposite side of the support. To make sure that it stays open, attach the eye to the back of the witch.

The fog machine adds to the effect as does the gravestones.

Next up we thought it would be fun to make paper lanterns to line our brick walkway to lead the way up to our front door. These were so easy to make and didn’t cost much at all.

DIY Paper Lanterns

The Home Depot has really cute Halloween stencils that are miniature and great for smaller projects. They’d be cute on treat bags for a halloween party, banners, pillows or lanterns as we created. I picked up some paper lunch bags to stencil.

Step 1

First, separate your stencils. Line up stencil on a bag. You can use tape to hold it in place, but I just held it with my finger.

Step 2

Second, use black paint. I stenciled the images onto the bags using a stencil brush.

Step 3

Pro Tip: Offload most of the paint onto a paper towel from your stencil brush before stenciling. This prevents paint bleeding under the stencil and you’ll get a crisp image.

Third, weigh the bags down with rocks or stones. We used beach rocks.

Step 4

Finally, place a faux tea light in each one. This is safer than real candles and can be used multiple times.

It’s more fun with a little ninja helper, too!

Here you can see the pretty lanterns lining our walkway to greet trick or treaters.

DIY Nature-Inspired Fall Wreath

The other DIY project we did was a wreath for the front door. I wanted to do something inspired by nature and I had a branch wreath down in the basement.

Step 1

First, use black spray paint (the same as you did for the witch) to give the natural twig wreath a spooky feel.

Step 2

Then, dismantle an ostrich duster to use the feathers for the wreath. I used one duster for this wreath. I applied the feathers using hot glue (be careful not to burn your hand).

Step 3

Finally, you can embellish your wreath. I like to keep things simple so I left it has it is, but you could stick on crows, bones, skulls or whatever you’d like to use.

Here is a closer look at the wreath.

Here it is on the door.

Front Door Spiders

You’ll notice we added some spiders to our door. We wanted to give the appearance of spiders crawling across it.

We used WallPOP’s little spiders. We stuck them to the door and painted the trim surrounding it. They were so easy to apply, remove and reposition where needed. This is a great job for little ones to help with. My little Conor (the ninja) loved helping put the spiders on.

I wish you could hear him giggling as he did it. It was so sweet.

Add More Halloween Décor

Here’s a look at our yard decorated for Halloween.

We added a bag of bones in front of the gravestones. This set was great and came with an assortment of may different kind of bones, even some dinosaur bones! The kids were excited about that. I think each set is different. This skeleton’s eyes light up and are so creepy. I’ll show you them lit up a bit later on.

Our front steps are decorated with pumpkins and some fun lanterns from The Home Depot. These LED lanterns are battery operated. They give a spooky look once lit. They also look cute during the day. We used ones with spiders and witches to match our DIY witch.

Ferns and potato vines in our planters add softness to the overall look.

Each fall we carve pumpkins, but if you’re very busy and have a lot going on, The Home Depot has a few already cut, like this one. It is easy to plug in and gave lots of light without the worry of candles.

I also placed a caged raven on an old vintage stool. He talks and is so life-like.

Final Reveal

We enjoyed celebrating Halloween a tad earlier this year. It made it twice as fun!

The fog machine really adds to the ambience. I have a feeling we’re going to be using it a lot leading up to Halloween.

Here’s a look at some nighttime shots our new Halloween décor lit up.

See how eerie it looks at night with the red eyes on the skeleton and gravestone.

Add a little fog.

And DIY lanterns to light the way to lots of treats!

We can’t wait for Halloween now that all our DIY is done! I hope this gave you a few ideas of fun ways you can make your front yard more festive with your kids.

A huge thank you to The Home Depot for inviting me to take part in the Style Challenge. I had so much fun with my boys creating a spooky and classic Halloween front porch. Happy Halloween, everyone!

For more DIY Halloween and harvest ideas, see other articles in our Halloween Style Challenge series, and follow our Halloween Style Challenge board on Pinterest.

Visit The Home Depot’s online Halloween Décor Department for everything you need to decorate your home for Halloween and fall. Check out other scary skeleton decorations at The Home Depot.

The post Family-Friendly & Classic Halloween Décor appeared first on The Home Depot Blog.

Danielle Driscoll