#i spent an alarming amount of time picking emojis for this

[gunnerfc]

🎄WOSO FICMAS: Dec. 19 - Stina Blackstenius🎄

Stina Blackstenius x Reader (Arsenal & USWNT) | WC: 751

Dec. 19 prompt - getting snowed in

-> all translations from google!

-> woso ficmas masterlist can be found here!

You were excited to be spending Christmas in Sweden with Stina and her family, having spent the last Christmas in America with your family. The two of you have spent the past two days packing, wanting to make sure you didn’t forget anything essential or anyone’s presents.

You planned to leave for the airport in the morning, wanting to arrive in Sweden a few days before the holiday to have more time to spend in the country. With packing done and bags by the door ready to go bright and early, you and your blonde girlfriend both exhausted from running around all day decided to go to bed a bit earlier, opting to get as much sleep as possible.

It was around 6:30 am when your alarm went off, signaling it was time for you to get up. With a tired groan, you reached for your phone, trying to turn the annoying alarm off. You smiled down at your sleeping girlfriend, hating to have to wake her up.

You lifted your hand to move a piece of blonde hair from her face, leaning down to give her a quick kiss on her forehead before whispering her name a few times. Your smile grew as you watched her eyes finally flutter open.

“god morgon min älskade (good morning, my love),” you whispered, your voice still heavy with sleep.

“god morgon älskling (good morning, darling),” Stina whispered back, sitting up to give you a quick kiss.

The blonde sat up fully to stretch her arms before getting up to go get ready for your day of travel. You watched her the whole time, You're sure you looked like the human version of the heart eyes emoji. When the bathroom door closed, you picked up your phone to double-check your check-in time at the airport. Instead of a flight confirmation, you were met with a cancelation, the reason saying “weather-related cancelation.”

With wide eyes, you shot up from your bed, moving to look out the window. Pulling back the curtains that kept the light out, you were now looking at the ground heavily coated in snow and it continuously falling from the sky with no sign of stopping.

“Babe!” you shouted, eyes still wide in shock over the amount of snow that had fallen while you were asleep. You had checked the weather the night before, not seeing anything about potential snowfall. The bathroom door flew open, your girlfriend’s eyes just as wide as yours.

“Vad?! (what?!)” Stina’s voice full of concern.

“I don’t think we’re going to Sweden,” you mumbled, eyes still trained on the white-covered yard.

You heard your girlfriend mutter a quiet “what” as she walked to the window, coming face to face with the snow. You held up your phone to show her the cancellation of your flights. These fights were found last minute and with no idea of when the snow would be melting, you doubted you would be spending Christmas in Sweden after all.

As you watched your girlfriend’s eyes scan your phone, you saw her bite her lip in an effort to stop tears from forming in her eyes. You pulled the phone from her hands, tossing it on the bed and pulling the blonde into your arms.

“Jag är ledsen, älskling. (I’m sorry, darling/babe.)” you said softly, knowing how much Stina was looking forward to going home for the holidays with you.

Stina pulled away from your body, giving you a small smile and a whispered “it’s okay.”

The Swede moved to get her phone from where it was plugged up on her nightstand, leaving the bedroom to call her family to let them know about the change of plans. You could hear the sadness in her voice as she spoke over the phone. You might not have been able to go to Sweden for Christmas but you were determined to bring ‘Christmas in Sweden’ to London.

You spent the rest of the day googling different Christmas traditions and even texted your other two Swedish Arsenal teammates to get their opinions. You spent the rest of the days leading up to Christmas making sure that your girlfriend felt at home as much as possible. And when Christmas morning rolled around, you made sure to get up first to video call Stina’s family. It wasn't the same as actually being in Sweden but Stina was grateful for the effort you put in to cheer her up. The two of you could always go next year.

[chernobog13]

A CAUTIONARY TALE

Since the exodus from Twitter began awhile ago I have received unsolicited chat messages from people with new blogs here on Tumblr.  Generally the messages come right after the person has started following me.

Invariably, these blogs claim that the owner is a woman, usually in the military, and has a few varied pictures, but never more than a dozen or so.  Typically there are pictures of dogs and/or cats, and pictures of whatever activity the person says they’re into.  Sometimes the blog states the person is looking for “friends.”

The messages always start with just a one word greeting, “hi” or “hello,” or something to that affect.

Trying to be polite, and trying to curb my natural instinct to distrust everyone, I will reply.  The conversation then goes the course of “how are you doing/how is your day?”, then “what do you do?” and “why are you on Tumblr?”

The next step is the person wants  a picture of you, and are very insistent when you decline to share.

Usually for me, the conversation ends when I politely but firmly decline to send a photo.  Almost immediately that the person is no longer following me, and the blog has disappeared from Tumblr.

A couple of days ago I received a message from a new follower.  I decided to play along this time to see how far the person on the other end would go.

We chatted a bit on Tumblr, but soon the other person said it was easier for them to use Google Chat.  After they sent their contact info we switched over there.  I noticed later that the person was no longer following me, and that their blog was gone from Tumblr.

I was bored and looking for a distraction, so I continued chatting on Google.  Soon came the first unsolicited photo of an attractive woman.  However, I immediately noticed that the setting she was in had a heavy Southwestern design motif, even though she said she lived in Georgetown in Washington DC.  Well, maybe it’s not a red flag; it might be that she likes that stuff.  She later stated that she had been stationed in Austin, Texas, so that might explain it.

Another thing I noticed was that, even though she stated that she was an officer in the US military, that her English wasn’t great; some very odd phrasing here and there.  She said that she was born and raised in Germany, but I spent a few years in Germany and spoke to plenty of Germans who had English as a second language.  Her phrasing didn’t seem like theirs, which also made me suspicious.

One other detail I picked up on is that she seemed to be in more than one conversation on Chat.  She seemed to forget what I had just written, or would respond like we hadn’t just been chatting for the last five minutes.  I realize that by itself this might not be so alarming; I listen to my sister-in-law (she has a home office) engage in multiple conversation online and on the phone all the time.

As the chat continued she quickly went into super-flattery mode (I ended up sending her a terrible picture of me - not that there’s any other kind - to see what would happen).  She also started using all sorts of heart and kissy face emojis.

Believe you me, folks, I am under no illusion as to my appearance (which is part of the reason I don’t share - or even have - any pictures of myself).  I have been told I look like Brendan Gleeson’s older, uglier brother, and the person who told me that was being charitable.  And I’m not kidding when I say my appearance has made children, animals, and women scream in terror.

So if somebody, especially a woman, starts telling me how good looking I am my suspicions are immediate raised.  Either the person is lying, or mentally unbalanced, or both.

Anyhoo, the person soon made the conversation sexual, although not in a raunchy, Letters to Penthouse sort of way.  They kept that up, and increased the amount and frequency of the heart and kissy face emojis.  Told me what they were looking for in a relationship and partner, and then started addressing me as “my king,” “my love,” “my dearest one!”  Laying it on thick.

Then came another photo.  Same woman, but this time she was outside on a patio.  The building was adobe style, the type seen all over the Southwest, with cactus plants in the background, and she was in a light shirt.  Except, I truly doubt there is a building like that in Georgetown.  And even if there is, the weather in DC yesterday was cloudy and in the low 40s.  More suspicions raised.

Later she (if it really was a woman) revealed that she did not know who Uncle Sam was.  I’m sorry, but there is no way you can be in the military (at least ten years, according to her) and not know Uncle Sam.

Still, I let it continue, despite the suspicions and alarm bells going off in my head.  Like I said, I was bored, and this was, at the least, entertaining.

Then this morning the kicker finally came.  She stated that she was sad that her subscription to Apple music had expired.  And, and by the way, could I send her an Apple gift card so she could renew her subscription?

Bye!  Thanks for playing!  

I’m actually surprised they waited that long, but I guess they wanted to string me along to get the hook in me good.

Needless to say, that was the end of that.  I feel sorry for whoever the poor lady is whose photos were hijacked by the scammers. 

Anyway, just a lengthy tale of caution, folks.  Beware of this stuff.  If it sounds or seems too good to be true, that’s because it is.

Man, I ‘m hoping now that Muskrat is letting Tangerine 45 and the rest of the miscreants back on Twitter that these scammers will follow suit.

[multi-fandom-imagines-stuff]

Smaller Than This

Pairings: Natasha Romanoff/daughter!reader, Peter Parker/platonic!reader, Wanda Maximoff/reader

Description: The reader is Natasha Romanoff’s daughter, best friend of Peter Parker, and girlfriend of Wanda Maximoff. Growing up in the spotlight is hard enough, but things cross a line when people start commenting on the reader’s weight.

Warnings: eating disorder, swearing, threats of violence

Word count: 3,282

A/N: I know it’s not easy to deal with eating disorders, but please know that you are beautiful and amazing and you don’t deserve to have to suffer through that. Please, if you are struggling with this, reach out for help. <3

✩❀✩❀✩

Black Widow’s daughter spotted in Central Park with new best friend Scarlet Witch and Stark Industry intern Peter Parker! Could Parker be y/n’s new boyfriend?

You laughed and rolled your eyes as you clicked on the tweet. Stalking paparazzi twitter accounts had to be one of your favorite pastimes, simply because the so-called facts they were giving out were false 99% of the time. For instance, this situation? You had gone out for a picnic with Peter and Wanda when those photos were taken, and the paparazzi completely twisted things. Peter wasn’t your boyfriend, he was just your best friend. And Wanda wasn’t your best friend, she was your girlfriend. You chose to ignore the false headline as you went immediately for the replies.

‘Do you see the way y/n’s looking at Wanda? It seems more like there’s something going on between them than there is between y/n and Peter’

You smiled and liked that tweet. You liked messing with people just a bit. Whenever someone would tweet about there possibly being a relationship between you and Wanda, you liked the tweet. It wasn’t enough information to actually confirm the relationship as true, but it was enough to keep people speculating.

You scrolled through several more replies. Most of them were people using the heart eyes emoji or saying how much they loved your mom, but there were a few in there that stuck out more than the rest. That was because they were harsh and hurtful.

‘I don’t understand how someone can live with the Avengers and still look like that. Does she ever even exercise?’

‘She could stand to lose some weight. Instead of going out for a picnic, she should try to skip a few meals’

You read through replies for a few more minutes. Similar comments would pop up now and then, and while there wasn’t an overwhelming amount, there was still enough to make you close down the app and shut off your phone, averting all your attention toward not crying. 

“Miss y/n, dinner has been called,” F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice rang through your room.

Pushing the thoughts to the back of your mind, you got off your bed and made your way to the dining room. There, Peter and Wanda were setting the table while Steve and Bucky carried out the food.

You walked up behind your girlfriend and wrapped your arms around her waist, resting your chin on her shoulder. You felt her jump slightly before she realized it was you and relaxed into your touch. You placed a kiss on her cheek.

“I love you,” You whispered in her ear.

“Hey! What did we talk about?” Tony directed at you, raising an eyebrow at you and causing you to roll your eyes.

“No lovey-dovey shit at the dinner table,” You mumbled.

“Language!” Steve scolded you as Clint joined the conversation.

“Oh, come on, Tony,” He said. “It’s young love. It’s harmless and adorable.”

“It makes me want to hurl,” Tony retorted.

To onlookers, it may have sounded like Tony was being a real dick, but you knew he was just teasing you. He’d never admit it, but secretly he loved how happy you and Wanda made each other.

“Watch it, Stark,” Your mom shot him a glare. “That’s my kid you’re talking about.”

Your head whipped up at your mom’s voice. She had been on a mission for the past week and wasn’t supposed to get home for another three days.

“Mom!” You yelled as you ran toward her, wrapping your arms around her as you squeezed her tight.

“Hey, kiddo! I’ve missed you!” She said, hugging you back and kissing you lightly on the forehead.

“I’ve missed you, too!”

“As much as I hate to break up this reunion,” Bucky said, causing you to pull away from your mom. “Steve and I slaved over dinner and it’s getting cold, so let’s eat.”

You took your seat at the table—in between Peter and Wanda—and filled your plate with the spaghetti and garlic bread Steve and Bucky made. Everyone was silent as you all dug into your food and, you had to admit, it tasted amazing. 

When Steve and Bucky first moved in, neither of them were allowed near a stove without supervision. They had started too many accidental fires. But after lots and lots of practice, the two of them easily became the best cooks in the tower.

After dinner, you excused yourself to your room. Your phone was still lying face down on the bed, so you grabbed it and opened it up. Right away, you noticed several notifications from twitter. Upon further investigation, you found that the rude comments people were saying about you had extended to your messages. Now, you had complete strangers messaging you about how you needed to ‘lose weight’, or ‘eat less’, or ‘exercise more’. A few of the messages even called you a ‘disappointment to the Avengers’.

You deactivated your account and deleted the app from your phone, but the damage was already done and you knew it. So you came up with a plan and decided to set it into motion the next morning.

✩❀✩❀✩

You woke up in the morning to your alarm blaring. Checking the time, you saw it was 4:30, and you wondered why your alarm was going off so early before you remembered the plan you had made the night before.

You got out of bed and quickly dressed in athletic attire before running out of your room. You knew Steve liked to run in the mornings, so you sat in the kitchen waiting for him.

When he finally sauntered in at 5:00, he was more than surprised to see you sitting there.

“Y/n?” He asked. “What’re you doing up so early?”

“Can I run with you today, Uncle Steve?” You asked him, a pleading look on your face that you knew he couldn’t say no to.

“Yeah, sure,” He said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be sleeping?”

You nodded. 

“I want to start running. My mile time in P.E. class has been slacking lately and I don’t want to fail the class.”

You were surprised yet proud of how quickly you were able to come up with that lie, and you were happy to see that Steve believed every word of it.

So that’s how you spent your morning: running laps with Steve.

The two of you finally called it quits around 6:15 and parted ways. Steve went off to do whatever he did during the days, and you went off to squeeze in a quick shower before school.

By the time you were done with your shower, it was nearly 7:00, which meant you had to rush to get dressed. You finally made it to the kitchen, where Wanda was already waiting for you. The two of you yelled a quick ‘bye’ to whoever was listening before you started the quick walk to the bus stop.

You felt Wanda’s hand interlock with yours and a smile arose on your face as you squeezed her hand. You two didn’t want to publicly disclose your relationship yet, so you knew the minute you reached the bus stop you’d have to let go.

✩❀✩❀✩

At lunch, you sat at a table with Wanda, Peter, MJ, and Ned. You skipped the food line and instead opted to sip at a bottle of water.

“What’s wrong, y/n?” Peter asked you.

“What do you mean?” You shot back, not quite sure what he was getting at.

“You’re not eating.”

Shit. You had to think of a lie, and you had to be extra careful since your girlfriend could read minds. She promised you she’d never read your mind without your consent, but you were still wary.

“Uh...I’m just not feeling well,” You said. “My stomach is feeling a little flip-floppy and I don’t want to push it.”

To your luck, they nodded it off and changed the topic, not questioning you again for the rest of the day.

That night at dinner, you pushed the food around on your plate, eating a few bites here and there. It wasn’t hard to pretend you had eaten, especially since your family was so big. Everyone seemed to be so caught up in conversations with other people that they didn’t notice when you got up and scraped your food into the trash.

✩❀✩❀✩

These habits carried on for a few more weeks. You’d wake up every morning to run with Steve, make up some excuse for why you didn’t eat lunch, and you’d have a few bites of dinner before sneakily trashing it. On most weekends, you chose to spend your time training with your mom. You claimed it was so that you could stay sharp with your self-defense skills, and while that wasn’t necessarily a lie, it wasn’t the full truth, either. But your mom never questioned it, and you were glad.

You seemed to fly under the radar, until one Sunday afternoon.

You walked into your room after training with your mom to find Peter and Wanda waiting for you.

“Hey, guys,” You greeted, throwing yourself into a chair and downing half a bottle of water. “What’s up?” 

“We know,” Wanda said, a stern yet concerned look on her face.

“Know what?” You asked her, although you could feel your heart rate rising. You knew what she was talking about.

“That you haven’t been eating,” Peter joined in.

“What’re you talking about? Of course I’ve been eating.”

That was a lie. Your stomach hadn’t been properly filled in weeks and you couldn’t remember the last time it wasn’t rumbling. But that wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that you were finally losing weight. There’s no way you could stop now.

“Cut the crap, y/n,” Peter said, catching you by surprise. “We’ve been watching you. I can’t even remember the last time you bought a school lunch.”

“And you pick at your food at dinner every night,” Wanda added. “I haven’t seen you eat more than three bites. You think no one notices, but you’re wrong. And I can feel you, love. You feel...empty.”

Wanda rested her hand on your knee as you tried to process what was happening. You had been so good at hiding this, how had they found out?

“You guys, I’m—” You started before Peter cut you off.

“Don’t say you’re fine, because you’re not. We know it, and you know it, so please stop lying to us, y/n. We just want to help.”

“I have it under control, I don’t need help,” You protested. “Just...please don’t tell my mom.”

“Y/n—”

“Wanda, please,” You begged. “My mom has enough to worry about as it is. I don’t need to add this to her stress as well. I promise, I have it under control. I’m alright.”

Wanda and Peter shared a look before turning back to you. 

“We’ll keep this between us for now,” Peter said, and you felt like a weight was lifted off your shoulders.

“But, if things get any worse, we won’t hesitate to bring your mom into this,” Wanda warned.

You nodded and the two of them left, Wanda kissing you quickly before walking out of the room. 

‘I just need to hide it better’ you thought to yourself. ‘This is all my fault for being too obvious about things. I need to do better.’

Wanda and Peter had dropped the topic for the time being, until a week later, things took a turn for the worse when your P.E. teacher announced that your class was running the mile that day.

Thanks to training with Steve, your mile time had improved and you were one of the fastest in the class. However, due to malnutrition, any sort of exercise made you extremely lightheaded. 

You ignored the part of your brain that was telling you to make up some excuse to sit out. You convinced yourself you just weren’t drinking enough water so you drank an entire water bottle and went to class.

You were about halfway done with your mile when the corners of your vision turned black. You blinked a few times, trying to edge it away, but it was no use. By now, you heard a loud ringing in your ears and the world started spinning around you. You slowed down a bit, trying to regain your composure when you felt your knees buckle underneath you, and you were plunged into a world of darkness, not feeling it when you hit the ground.

✩❀✩❀✩

When you awoke, you were still laying on the field, your entire class swarming around you. You were trying to sit up when you felt something attached to your hand. 

You looked to the right and saw Wanda sitting there, looking scared as hell.

“Miss Maximoff, Mr. Parker, please escort Miss Romanoff to the nurse’s office,” Your teacher ordered.

You felt Wanda help lift you to a standing position and once you were up, you felt the world start spinning again. You shut your eyes tight as two arms, you assumed they belonged to Wanda and Peter, wrapped around either side of your waist. Soon enough, the dizziness ceased and you opened your eyes, signaling for Peter and Wanda to start walking with you.

You made it to the nurse’s station where you saw your mom already waiting.

“Mom?” You asked, wondering how she had gotten to your school so quickly.

“Peter called me the second he saw you fall,” She explained.

You, Wanda, and Peter were dismissed from school early, and your mom led you all back to her car. You sat in the passenger seat while Peter and Wanda sat in the back.

“What happened?” Your mom demanded.

The tone of her voice scared you a little bit, but you knew it was filled more with concern than it was with anger.

“I must’ve just gotten overheated or something,” You lied, knowing exactly why you passed out. “I was doing fine one second, and then the next I was on the ground.”

“That’s not true, Ms. Romanoff,” Peter interjected.

You whipped your head around to him and shook your head, silently pleading him to not tell her.

“What do you mean?” She asked. “Do you know something I don’t?”

“Peter, stop,” You said, panicking at what was about to be said.

“Y/n hasn’t eaten a proper meal in a month,” Wanda admitted.

You shot your girlfriend a look of betrayal before turning back around to face forward.

“You, what?!” Your mom blared. “Y/n, is this true?”

Your silence was enough of an answer for her to understand that yes, it was true.

“Y/n, baby, why?” Your mom said.

You could tell she was trying to be strong, but her voice was cracking.

“Because I’m not like you guys, okay?!” You finally snapped, letting loose all of your pent-up emotions. “I don’t have a super-human metabolism like Peter, and I don’t have a perfectly in-shape body. I’m not an avenger and it sure as hell shows. Even people I don’t even know were making comments about it on twitter.”

“Is that why you disabled your account?” Peter asked, realization hitting him.

You nodded and looked down at your fingers, not wanting to make eye contact with any of them.

By now, you had reached the tower and your mom put the car into park, turning to face you.

“Y/n, I know it’s been hard for you to grow up in the spotlight, constantly being compared to us but this isn’t healthy,” She said, cupping your chin and lightly pulling your head up to meet her gaze. “If I had known all of this, I never would have let you do all those extra training sessions with me. It’s not safe for you to keep exercising like this when you’re not giving your body proper nourishment.”

“I can’t—” You sniffed. “I can’t stop. I need help.”

You felt a tear roll down your cheek as your mom brushed it away, pulling you in for a hug before the four of you got out of the car.

Once inside, your mom told you to sit down in the living room while she left for a few minutes. When she returned, she had the rest of the team with her and you could only assume she had given them the run-down on your situation. 

You were slightly hurt that she had shared your personal life like that, but you knew it was for the best.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Your mom said once everyone was settled. “Y/n, you’re going to help with dinner every night. I know it can be hard once you’ve developed a food phobia, but when you’re in control of what we eat every night it makes things a little easier. No more throwing your food in the trash, okay? As for school, I’ll be making you a homemade lunch each day, and Peter and Wanda will be keeping an eye on you and will be reporting back to me. First thing tomorrow, I’ll call and set you up an appointment with a therapist. Bottling up your emotions will only make things worse, trust me. You need to talk to someone, and a therapist will help to give you healthier coping mechanisms.”

You listened as your mom laid out these new rules before telling you to go lie down. As you got up to leave, you were bombarded with your family hugging you and telling you they were there for you. You honestly had never felt more loved and supported in your life.

You finally made your way to your room, lying down in bed. A few minutes later, you heard a knock at your door.

“Come in,” You said weakly.

The handle turned and Wanda walked in, using her powers to levitate a tray behind her. You sat up and she put the tray down in your lap. On the tray, you saw there was a plate of cheese and crackers.

You looked down at the tray before looking up at your girlfriend. You forced yourself to pick up one of the crackers and take a bite, your mind screaming at you the entire time. But you were sick. You knew this. You wanted to get better.

“I’m sorry for telling your mother,” Wanda spoke. “You were slowly killing yourself and I couldn’t stand by and watch it happen. I’m so sorry, y/n. Can you forgive me?”

“I don’t blame you, Wan,” You told her. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I never should have forced you and Peter to keep this a secret.”

Wanda wrapped you into her arms, squeezing tightly. The two of you stayed like that for a long time before you pulled away and, bite by bite, finished the snack she had brought you.

✩❀✩❀✩

You had been in recovery for about a month now, and while things were far from easy, you knew you could do it. Your family was your support system and they were right there by your side every step of the way.

You were sitting on the couch with Peter and Wanda, you and your girlfriend tangled in each other’s arms as you watched your mom on tv. She was finishing up a press conference.

“Oh, and one last thing before I go,” She spoke toward the camera and the audience. “Whoever decided to make awful comments about my daughter online, I am a trained assassin and I will find you.”

[beca-mitchell]

The Birthday Gift (1/1)

Word count: 2,974

Summary: Beca receives a sex doll as a joke for her birthday. Rated M/E for smut towards the end. And of course reference to a sex doll.

From a prompt from anonymous: Stacie gifts Beca with a sex doll as a prank and dares her to use it. Beca jokes that the doll looks like her very hot dancer ex-gf. Chloe blows her top, dismembers the doll, and confesses her love for Bec. Smut follows of course.

Apologies for violence against sex dolls. I took some liberties! Hope that’s okay!

*posted as separate post because the ask was glitching BADLY*

Read below or on AO3.

* * * * *

She blames Stacie.

Every year, she tells Stacie (and subsequently, every other Bella) to stop sending her gag gifts because they always end up backfiring or malfunctioning in some way. She can list a whole host of horrible things that have happened with the obnoxious gifts that seem to amuse her wonderful friends more than her.

Notably, singing telegrams—or rather, an extremely excited group of singers who had been sent directly to her house and promptly tripped over themselves to try and harass her for photos. That had been Cynthia-Rose.

Or that time Fat Amy had sent her a whole host of inflatable microphones which ended up looking like a small mountain of vibrators when Beca had first opened the box, ultimately dropping them all over the ground in front of her apartment and receiving extremely judgmental glares from her passing neighbours.

Or that time, through a collective effort, the Bellas (minus Chloe, for reasons that will be immediately apparent) had sent Beca a shockingly high-quality cardboard cut-out of Chloe herself. It would have perhaps been funny if Beca had been alone, but she had unfortunately been with Chloe herself who had flown out to Los Angeles to see her for her birthday.

Admittedly that gift wasn’t the worst. In fact, Beca will never admit it, but it ended up being quite the matchmaker (ironic that a cut-out of Chloe had been their personal catalyst) that weekend. Chloe had probably blushed as much as Beca did upon first seeing it when she followed Beca to the front door.

The rest is history.

* * * * *

The short story is that Beca hadn’t been entirely prepared that weekend—or rather, she hadn’t anticipated—kissing Chloe let alone all the other incredibly fun activities transpired, largely with Beca on her back, hands tangled in Chloe’s hair and an aching need between her legs.

The short story is pretty great. The long story is even better with all the wonderful, steamy details.

But for Beca, there is no story better than the one she gets to experience right now, with Chloe by her side like she knows they were meant to be.

…Even if it kind of took her a ridiculously long time to figure out, plus the help of their nosy, crazy friends.

* * * * *

But to return to why Beca blames Stacie at all—

The day actually starts off kind of normal. Beca doesn’t have to go into the studio, she gets to wake up late, wrapped up in her favorite comforter and Chloe’s arms.

It’s the second birthday Beca has spent in Chloe’s arms, waking up to her kisses. So she kind of assumes that she’s about to have a really great day.

That is, until she drags her feet to the front door after hearing incessant knocking. Chloe laughs at Beca’s grumbling, pushing her out of the kitchen (not like Beca was really helping…unless the slow and steady progress she had been making on pulling Chloe’s shirt off is considered helping) as she bustles around, intent on throwing together some kind of brunch. Maybe even lunch since they stayed in bed well past appropriate breakfast hours.

Beca actually kind of forgets about the Bellas’ yearly tradition until she sees a delivery person in her doorway.

And the incredibly large box by his side. It’s more of a crate, really.

“Um—” Beca says.

“Beca Mitchell?”

Beca has half a mind to say no. “Yes,” she says warily, nearly exasperated as she reaches out to sign for the package.

Chloe rounds the corner, eyes widening in surprise when she sees the box. “Oh, is that—”

Beca peers at the packing slip that the delivery person drops off in her hand. “Stacie’s gift,” she sighs.

Chloe’s eyes brighten even more. “We have to open it.” She nudges Beca’s shoulder. “Remember last year’s?”

“How could I forget,” Beca asks dryly.

It’s kind of a fond memory.

* * * * *

Upon struggling with pulling the surprisingly heavy box through the entryway and front hall (read: Beca pushes very gently while Chloe does most of the work), Beca finally gets the box open.

Her first instinct is to scream when she is greeted with soulless eyes—doll eyes—and her second instinct is to, well, scream, which she does, jumping back right into Chloe’s arms.

“Holy fuck,” Beca gasps. “I hate them so much. I hate Stacie so much. What the fuck is this?”

Chloe continues pulling at the plastic wrapping surrounding the second box in which the doll is encased. She shoots Beca a playful glance. “It’s a sex doll, babe. Have you never seen one before?”

Beca crosses her arms. “Have you?”

“I like watching educational videos,” Chloe shrugs.

Beca pauses. “Educational—? About what? What could you possibly—hey, wait. Don’t try to distract me.” Chloe giggles. “Chloe! They literally sent us a sex doll!”

“They sent you a sex doll,” Chloe corrects. She tilts her head, taking in the red hair, the casual shorts and t-shirt, and the general make-up of the doll itself. “I think it—”

Beca takes a cautious step closer, finally stepping around Chloe’s side. “Hey, she kind of reminds me of Marley.”

Chloe’s eyes whip towards Beca with lightning speed. Beca can almost hear a bone crack somewhere. “Who?” Chloe asks, entirely too casually.

“Just this—” Beca swallows, suddenly taking in the intensity of Chloe’s eyes. “A…dancer who was with me on my last tour.”

She knows Chloe must remember her. Beca had never been anything more than friends with the people she went on tour with, but there had been the occasional flirtation that might have gone somewhere. Chloe had been one of the first people to really notice and pick up on those behaviours one time while she had been hanging with Beca backstage.

Beca hadn’t realized it was jealousy until well, much, much later. Like a literal year later when Chloe was suddenly kissing her in her living room.

“I remember,” Chloe finally says.

“Oh,” Beca says. She tilts her head. “Well, she kind of—”

“It’s a sex doll,” Chloe says shortly.

Beca laughs. “You were all over her earlier, what’s going on?” Beca realizes it is the entirely wrong thing to say when Chloe tenses up next to her. “I—wait—”

“Well, let’s get her out of there then,” Chloe says shortly, moving to fully pull the offending sex doll from the box.

Beca is alarmed. “Why? Let’s just leave her in there.”

“I mean, if you think she looks like…” Chloe trails off, shrugging nonchalantly, but Beca recognizes the tension in her shoulders. “Might as well take her out to really get a look at her.”

Jesus Christ.

Beca closes her eyes.

She loves Chloe, she really does—the whole being in love thing and all—but Chloe’s short fuse and disposition to immediately assume the worst things possible sometimes grinds on Beca's emotions in an annoying way. Annoyingly cute, is how Beca would describe it. Except when it rears its head as something that makes Beca want to pull her own hair out. This part of Chloe's personality is something that clashes spectacularly with Beca’s own short fuse, but they’ve made it work so far and their friendship even prior to their romantic relationship has survived far worse.

Beca refuses to fight over a sex doll. Christ.

By the time they maneuver the doll out of the box, they find a typed note from Stacie with an embarrassing amount of emojis and a heavy-handed implication that she thinks Beca and Chloe need some help spicing up their sex life. It is quite frankly offensive that Stacie thinks Beca needs any help in the bedroom department.

Beca is still grumbling about the note and considering where she can shred it and dispose of it when Chloe pushes the doll onto the couch. Beca watches her with a small measure of amusement, enjoying the way Chloe crosses her arms, literally sizing up an inanimate sex doll.

She kind of wants to comment that Chloe would totally win in a fight against the doll—or something equally dumb and lighthearted, but there is something about Chloe’s stance that is revitalizing Beca’s previous appetite. One that had nothing to do with breakfast or any kind of literal food.

“Chloe,” she begins.

Chloe sighs, heavily, like she is immensely burdened by the weight of her own thoughts. “Beca, this is obviously supposed to be me.”

Beyond the burden in Chloe’s voice, there is a certain, additional clipped tone to Chloe’s voice that Beca picks up on right away. It is a run-off from Chloe’s entire demeanor and ongoing attitude about this whole situation after Beca made that comment about her dancer. After dating Chloe for a year now and knowing her for much longer, Beca likes to think that she’s pretty good at picking up on these things. Like a good girlfriend and an even better friend.

“What’s wrong?” Beca asks immediately. “Talk to me, Chlo.”

“Like, it’s obviously supposed to be me,” Chloe repeats, brow furrowing.

“I mean—” Beca turns back to look at the sex doll, tilting her head. She moves to stand next to Chloe so they can both observe the object now occupying Beca’s couch.

Chloe frowns, poking her shoulder. “Stop staring so hard at it.”

Beca purposefully turns to look at the side of Chloe’s face, noting the flush on Chloe’s neck and cheeks. A slow, knowing smile creeps across Beca’s lips. She had known earlier, but it is even more apparent now. “Are you jealous?”

“I’m not jealous,” Chloe says in a tone that indicates she is in fact, jelly, as Chloe herself would say. Beca loves it.

“You are,” Beca goads. She loves when Chloe is the one who gets flustered. “Oh, you’re a hundred percent jealous. Of a sex doll.”

“It’s a dumb gift,” Chloe says, suddenly pushing Beca back against the couch. Beca collapses, trying not to smirk up at her girlfriend for fear that Chloe will want to teach her a lesson or something that she really would rather not hear about. “You really don’t think it looks like me?” Chloe asks, eyes blinking slowly and owlishly at Beca as she slowly sits on her lap.

Beca cuts a glance to the sex doll next to them, sitting almost too innocently. “I mean, it wasn’t the first thing I thought of,” Beca admits, jerking her attention back to Chloe as Chloe weaves her fingers through her hair.

“Right,” Chloe drawls, leaning down to nip at Beca’s jaw and neck. “But you think it looks like Marie—”

“—Marley,” Beca corrects before she can help herself.

Chloe’s grip tightens in her hair. Beca moans unwittingly, eyes slipping shut at the display of dominance Chloe is exerting over her. “Sorry,” she mumbles quickly. “Sorry—” she chases after Chloe’s lips, gasping out against Chloe’s mouth when Chloe’s hand comes up to grip her breast tightly through her shirt. “It was the hair—” Chloe hums against her throat. Beca struggles to correct herself. “Yours is so much nicer, baby,” she implores. “Please,” she whispers.

Chloe finally releases the hold she has on Beca’s hair and her chest and lifts her arms to pull off her shirt instead. Beca blinks at the expanse of skin on display, unable to help the smirk that really does spread across her face.

“You’re so hot,” she says as innocently as she can. “But you’re also so pretty.” Chloe stares down at her. “I love you?” Beca tries. Her eyes flick down to Chloe’s chest. “I promise you that I’m not looking at the sex doll.”

Chloe unhooks her bra, raising an eyebrow. “I hope so.”

They make out for a little while longer, Beca eagerly groping at Chloe’s chest as they do so. She likes eliciting small sounds from Chloe—a groan, a grunt, a whimper—with each tug of a stiff, pebbled nipple. Chloe shifts ever so slightly, indicating that she wants to push Beca across the couch horizontally. Beca pulls away from the kiss quickly, when her foot kicks against an offending object.

She had forgotten about that damn doll. “Wait,” she says quickly. “I’m not like…looking at it or anything but it’s…it’s touching my foot,” Beca explains. Beca glances at the doll in question over Chloe’s shoulder. “Maybe we should move it. Or like…go to bed—” Beca watches the expressions change on Chloe’s face. “Or we can do whatever you want,” she says sweetly, trying to lean up to capture Chloe’s lips once more.

Chloe raises her eyebrow and in a flash, she is leaving Beca’s lap, leaving Beca feeling cold and empty as she feels usually whenever Chloe leaves their bed too early in the morning or when Chloe pulls away from a hug too soon. “Good idea,” Chloe drawls, picking the doll up bodily (Beca’s eyes zero in on the expanse of muscles rippling on Chloe’s back and arms as she does so) and proceeding to bring it over to her balcony.

Beca briefly protests Chloe’s state of near-nudity but she figures that nobody can really see into her apartment anyway. She watches in amazement as Chloe heaves the doll and throws—literally throws—it past the sliding glass doors.

Beca winces as the head of the doll glances roughly off the railing and literally detaches from the body of the doll, rolling off down onto the quad in Beca’s apartment complex. Likely for some poor unsuspecting soul to find.

Chloe grins back at Beca who continues to watch her with a mildly awed, mildly terrified expression. She shuts the door calmly, moving back to straddle Beca on the couch. “What?” she asks lightly, suddenly in a much better mood.

“That wasn’t very feminist of you,” Beca comments, sliding her hands up Chloe’s thighs to the edge of the underwear she continues to wear.  

Chloe pouts. “Let me make it up to you, then.” She moves her hands back to Beca’s hair, pulling her in for a searing kiss, teeth and all. Beca moans softly, meeting Chloe kiss for kiss as Chloe’s hips slowly begin to grind down in her lap.

It takes Beca a moment to respond. A moment to catch her breath. She blinks, looking up at Chloe with so much love in her chest that it makes her ache momentarily. “We should…” Her throat dries when Chloe shifts in her lap. “We should clean that up.”

“Beca,” Chloe murmurs, pulling her back to the present; back to the present time with no sex dolls, no stupid gifts, and just Chloe in her arms on her damn birthday. “Tell me what you want me to do.” She trails her lips up to Beca’s ear, flicking her tongue out against the piercing she finds there.

“Um,” Beca says articulately. Chloe kisses her again.

It’s a good birthday, all things considered.

“Where were we?” Chloe asks, breath hot against Beca’s lips.

Beca licks her lips, leaning up for another kiss before she finally responds, a bit more breathless than before. “Right here. Exactly where I want to be,” Beca mumbles, this time smiling so widely that it makes her cheeks hurt. Chloe giggles against her mouth, responding in kind as she slides her hands down Beca’s chest, grabbing at the material of her shirt.

Beca scrambles to help, tugging at her shirt and then pushing at the fabric of Chloe’s underwear. Chloe sighs into her mouth and lifts herself momentarily to help pull her underwear down. As she does so, however, she slides off Beca’s lap to kneel at her feet and pull Beca’s shorts down her legs. Beca bites her lip, eyes drawn to how swollen Chloe’s lips are. She whimpers when Chloe spreads her knees, pulling at her calves so Beca slides down couch just a little bit more.

“Wait, I want to—” Beca grunts, a small high-pitched sound, when Chloe’s lips kiss a messy trail up her inner thigh towards her dripping center before Beca feels Chloe’s lips wrap around her clit without much preamble. Her hand flies down to wrap in Chloe’s hair, keeping her in place. She hisses, long and low when Chloe continues to relentlessly kiss and suck at the wet flesh between her legs.

Her cunt aches, already desperate for Chloe all over again. She’s so fucking easy. Beca likes to think they both are.

Chloe glances up at her, momentarily stopping her ministrations. “Yes?” She smiles then, lips and chin shiny—fucking shiny—with Beca’s wetness.

Beca groans, her chin dropping down so she can meet Chloe’s gaze head-on. “Don’t stop,” she pleads. “Please, Chlo."

Chloe hums, fingers pressing more firmly into Beca’s thighs. "Watch me,” she commands softly. “Eyes on me, Bec. Or I’ll stop."

Beca obeys, knowing exactly why Chloe is asking this of her, but she is helpless to do anything more than give in, especially when Chloe makes it feel so fucking good.

"You’re so hot when you’re jealous,” Beca comments in a strangled voice. It’s a jab and she knows it, but she loves the fire she can practically feel coursing through Chloe’s veins. It crackles in the air between them, manifesting in the sharp look Chloe gives her, even as her tongue slices through the growing need. She clenches wantonly around nothing, really, as Chloe’s tongue quickly darts up to flick at her neglected clit. She tugs her lower lip between her teeth when Chloe’s eyes flash up at her dangerously.

“Nothing to be jealous of,” Chloe says in an entirely too-cheerful tone as she brings her fingers to the mix, expertly dipping into Beca with ease and familiarity.

Beca thinks of the poor beheaded doll on her balcony.

She supposes that’s true. It was never a competition anyway.

* * * * *

Beca decides she will send a thank you note to Stacie this time. Just this once.

fin.

[oumiyuki]

do you take short writing prompts? if so, could you write some HonoKoto fluff wherein Honoka ate a bit too much, or something bad, or something, and Kotori has to care for her and rub her tummy and stuff to make her feel better? thanks!!

Author Notes

Do I take short writing prompts? I certainly do!

Is the order a HonoKoto fluff short? XD

May you enjoy~

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Title: My Girlfriend is Cute even when she Eats way too much Ice Cream

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One chocolate ice cream stick.

Two strawberry ice cream cups.

Three honeydew ice cream pops.

Four blueberry ice cream flurries.

And a few scoops here and another few scoops there from the many ice cream tubs she bought for variety and beating the heat. A blissful look with each bite, the gingerhead was feeling good until-

"Ah-"

The teaspoon in Honoka's hand falls to the floor dramatically as the summer cricket's screech replaced the high school girl's Mms and Ahhs mere seconds ago.

"It hurts..." Honoka holds her "injured" stomach as she reached feebly for her phone...to contact the first person that comes to mind.

.

.

.

A few streets down, in a sweet ash-brunette's room, the girl hums softly as she sketched out new costume designs for μ's.

"Ah, and a ribbon here!" Kotori grins at her new creation.

The vibration from her phone steals her attention, it was vibrating really violently. Kotori wonders who is spamming her inbox. Picking her phone up, she's hoping it's from a certain gingerhead she loves.

Honoka: Uuu...

Honoka: I'm suffering...

Honoka: It hurts...

"Honoka-chan!?" Kotori's golden eyes widen at the alarming messages she have received from the girl she was hoping to receive messages from.

I want to get messages from you...but I don't mean for you to be hurt, Honoka-chan!

Honoka: Too much...(ice cream emoji)?

Kotori pauses at the next message before sighing in relief; it was so Honoka-like to have eaten too much ice cream in Summer.

At least it wasn't a big injury.

One more vibration. And Kotori feels her heart grow.

Honoka: I want Kotori-chan

I want to be there for you too, Honoka-chan! To be with you. By your side.

Kotori stands abruptly, ignoring the rough chair sounds on her floor from the sudden movement. And she was quick to pack the essentials before hurrying out her house to get to her girlfriend's.

Kotori: I'm coming, Honoka-chan!

Honoka: (angel emoji)

.

.

.

Kotori enters Honoka's room, face full of worry as she looked over to the gingerhead pouting with teary eyes towards her.

Ahh, Honoka-chan is so cute in bed!

Kotori realizes her own phrasing and blushes.

Cute...always. Not that bed sense, ahhh. Kotori! Away with those thoughts, we need to tend to Honoka-chan's needs first...

Kotori's ears were red and she did her utmost best to ignore it as she crossed the room to reach her girlfriend's side. Taking out a box of stomach medicine as she approached. "Honoka-chan...are you feeling any better? I brought some medicine-"

"I don't need medicine...uuu..." Honoka pulls Kotori's free hand over and places it where her tummy is, big watery eyes looking up at the ash-brunette. "I just need you here."

!!!

Kotori feels her heart skip a beat and face grow hotter. Honoka is so soft and unintentionally romantic when she's not feeling well.

Honoka-chan..!! Ahh, my heart...mmm...

Kotori puts the medicine away and sits in Honoka's bed beside her girlfriend. "Honoka-chan. How painful is it now?"

"Mm...like...this amount of pain?" Honoka's face scrunches up in thought as she raised her left hand to indicate the level of pain with two fingers.

Kotori smiles a lopsided smile. It was vague but Kotori nodded; understanding that the pain was bearable now but it's still there.

Honoka-chan is a strong girl... I'm glad she'll choose to rely on me!

Kotori gazes at Honoka's side profile as she slowly and gently slips her hand under Honoka's shirt, resting her hand right on her tummy and giving it warm caresses.

"K-Kotori-chan?" Honoka's cheeks were an adorable pink that Kotori took pride in causing.

The ash-brunette tries her best to not break out in a huge smile. "This will help you feel better sooner."

Honoka-chan is so cute.

Kotori daringly kisses her girlfriend's cheek.

"K-Kotori-chan!?" Honoka turns; face beet-red. Extra adorable.

Kotori smiles her angelic smile. "It'll help in recovering too~"

Honoka opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish for sometime, the heat rush to her head probably not helping with collecting her thoughts. Finally, she retorts, "You just wanted to kiss me!"

Kotori giggles as she rubbed Honoka's tummy more to get her girlfriend's attention on her touch.

"K-Kotori-chan..." Honoka whines.

"I want to kiss you~ And also believe it helped."

Honoka looks up in time to see Kotori send her a wink. The gingerhead puts her hand over her stomach where Kotori's hand was under her shirt. "Yeah...It helped."

Kotori beams and rests her head on Honoka's shoulder. "I'll keep being of help to you then, Honoka-chan!"

Always...

Honoka rests her head on Kotori's. "Thank you...Kotori-chan..."

Kotori couldn't stop the blissful smile from blooming on her face and the love she felt in her heart thumping constantly. She caresses Honoka's tummy more; loving the feeling of her girlfriend's skin and loving the fact that she was helpful to Honoka.

"Not too much ice cream next time, okay?"

Honoka chuckles guiltily. "I'll share next time."

Kotori nods, "Mmph!"

.

.

.

The whole afternoon was spent with belly rubs and nuzzles and small talk. Then Kotori stayed for dinner with a fully recovered, energetic and smile-full girlfriend she loves to the moon and back.

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Author Notes

This...This two are just so soft and loving!! Ahhhh! I love them so much! SO SO MUCH!! *O*

I hope you who requested this fluffy short and you who have read this story enjoyed it! :D

Leave me a comment if you like~ ^w^ (Kotori and Honoka could read them while snuggling side by side in bed and getting those tummy rubs! :"D)

See you next flufffff!! ^w^//

[sugarmiyu]

Why Do I Keep Doing This to Myself?

Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls / Jougasaki Mika/Ohtsuki Yui 

Summary:  Mika has a well earned day off from being the country's #1 Charisma Gal (tm). But after spending years running from one place to another, she finds there isn't much to do without the chaos of her job. Thankfully, her girlfriend knows how to make every day a little less boring.

Read on ao3 / give me a ko-fi?

Mika couldn’t remember the last time she had a day off.

Rolling onto her side, the weight of the blanket pressed against her body. Rika had left for the office hours ago. She had a gig with Decoration today and Mika had already set up the DVR the night before to record the program. The midday sun shone through the gap between the curtains that adorned her windows. Even without an alarm clock, Mika’s body had instinctively woken her up at 8 a.m. So she lied there, checking her phone and falling in and out of sleep until the clock had lazily spun forward to just past noon. She had shrugged her blanket off her body somewhere during the course of her morning in and traced the cold of the sheets with her toes.

Her stomach let out a low growl and Mika rolled over onto her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows. She picked up her phone, looking at the stream of messages and Snapchats from everyone back at the agency. Opening Snapchat, Mika’s eyes skipped the long line of names until she reached Yui - saved with the name of “My Girl” followed by a multitude of sparkling hearts and a slowly building Snapchat streak. The picture lit up on the screen, Yui taking a selfie in the brightness of the dance studio. Yui held up a peace sign and stuck out her tongue, a tied up cherry stem resting on top of it. It was captioned: “Guess I’m pretty good with my tongue huh babe~ ;)” and decorated with heart emojis.

Mika buried her face in her pillow. If she could cringe, roll her eyes, groan, sigh, pinch the bridge of her nose, and crawl into a hole all at once she would. Instead, she resigned herself to taking a picture of her headboard, feeling too naked without makeup on to send anything close to a selfie. She carefully arranged the face-palm emoji in lines of five before sending it out. Her head was dizzy and she sat up in bed. The picture that Yui had sent was with her back facing the wall-mirrors that lined one side of the studio. They had gone out to choose that tank-top she was wearing together, talking about how chic the practically backless design was. Now, midday with nothing to do, Mika couldn’t keep her mind off the dip of Yui’s back and the outline of her skin against the fabric of the sports bra.

Wow, she really needed to do something else.

Opening the curtains sounded like a good idea. Mika got up, stretching out her stiff arms and reaching over to let the light into her room. It was sunny and she opened the window just enough to let the breeze in. She scooped up the pile of clothes she’d left behind the night before after coming home at some ungodly hour and unceremoniously dumped them in the laundry hamper. Picking up a hoodie and tiny gym shorts, Mika figured a shower was all she needed for now. A bath could wait until later tonight but she could still feel the cling of last night’s perfume and the places where her foundation hadn’t come off completely.

On her way to the bathroom, Mika flipped through the rest of the Snapchats she had ignored earlier in favor of prioritizing her girlfriend. The LiPPS group chat was as unintelligible as ever - though it seemed Kanade, Syuko, and Frederica were currently in a competition to see who could get the most candid shots of Arisu during a Project Krone meeting. Mika sent them a shot of her hallway with a timestamp and was immediately met with messages about how lucky she was to get a day off. She grinned as it generated just the response she expected. Shrugging off her shirt, Mika was nearly ready to get into the shower when her phone buzzed with another snap from Yui.

The picture was of Yui’s hand (Mika noticed she was wearing the bracelets they had picked out together on a date last week) making a peace sign (again?) in front of a vending machine. The rest of Yui’s fingers were precariously holding onto the top of a Pocari Sweat and Mika could barely make out Chinatsu standing off to the side. This one wasn’t captioned but it wasn’t hard to imagine the scene. Yui had probably overdone it during lessons and Chinatsu, ever the responsible guardian over her best friend, had probably gone with her for a much needed hydration sesh.

Mika rolled the options around in her head. If she didn’t respond, she would ruin their streak and Yui would make a big fuss about it like she had the last time it happened. But, there wasn’t much to snap without it being awkward. She was already half-naked and while the giant mirror in her bathroom was usually her pride and joy, it made for an inconvenience when she wanted to take pics without exposing herself. Looking around, the only viable item seemed to be a pile of towels stacked on a shelf by the door into the bath. It was tucked away enough to be free from the voyeurism of the mirror but obviously signaled where she was. She took a quick picture, captioning it with “BRB gotta shower babe - don’t get any weird ideas ♥” before putting her phone on top of her clothes.

When the hot water finally hit her skin and the steam helped clear her mind, Mika spent about half an hour wondering why in the world she had sent that.

~

“Onee-chan! Can you see me?”

Rika’s grinning face took up nearly the entire screen as their Facetime started, “I can see you~ Maybe a little too well. You need to work on choosing the right angles, Rika.”

“Boo! I can totally hit the right angles,” Rika said, the image shifting to a more reasonable distance, “What’cha doin’? Right now, Kirari and Miria are taking pictures together!”

“Hm? Nothing much,” Mika glanced at the dishes she had left in the sink after lunch - she made a pretty damn good seafood pasta. She’d have to make it for Yui some time. “I ate a little bit ago and now I’m not sure what to do. Maybe I’ll play one of your video games.”

“Wha- no fair! You’re gonna clear all the levels before I get to!”

Rika looked adorable with her pouty face and scrunched up eyebrows. Mika wanted to be there in person so she could give her little sister a flick on the forehead. But because technology hadn’t progressed that far yet, she grinned and said, “Fine, fine. I guess I’ll read some magazines or something. We’ll play together some other time.”

“Yay!” Rika grinned, “You know, earlier today, Ranko was talking about…”

After about half an hour of chatting, Rika had to hang up to begin their recording. Mika was proud of her younger sister, but with her days usually so busy with work, they two of them didn’t get much time to spend together. She got up from the couch, walking towards the dishes that had been ignored for a few hours. Feeling the hot water hit her hands, Mika shuddered and looked up towards the clock on the kitchen counter. It was almost four - the day having passed without anything at all having been done. If she had been in the office today, she probably would have finished up one job and would be on transit to the next site. Or maybe, she would be packing up after a hard day’s work to hit her favorite karaoke places with Rina and Yui. Or she would have been trying to fix LiPPS’ newest mess.

Mika shook the water off her hands after placing the last dish on the rack. Checking the clock again, it had only moved forward fifteen minutes. She wiped whatever water was left on her hoodie and picked up her phone, only to be greeted by a screen full of notifications. They were all from Yui and Mika opened up the newest message. It had been sent a minute ago and asked, “Are you home, babe?”

Looking through the previous twenty or so messages - all of them variations of “Mika” and “my beautiful girlfriend” and “i want to see you” - she turned her attention back to the most recent. “Yeah, I’m home” she responded, following up with a sticker of a pink cat with a large question mark.

“Awesome!!!!” Sent with a sticker of a yellow puppy with its tail wagging. No more messages.

Mika could guess what Yui was up to. She made her way upstairs, looking through her closet for something better to wear. Even though she loved her girlfriend, her reputation as a charismatic gyaru was in jeopardy if she ever went out dressed like this. Just as Mika was putting the finishing touches on her makeup, she heard the doorbell ring. It was thirty minutes from when Yui had sent that last message - about the same amount of time it took to get to her house from the office. Adjusting her bangs in the mirror, Mika came downstairs and opened the door to Yui with a big grin on her face.

“Hey, babe!” Yui said, hands totally not suspiciously behind her back, “I thought I’d come surprise you since I finished my work early today. You can, like, totally take in how awesome of an idol your girlfriend is.”

“You’re an awesome idol, but you have some work to do on being awesome at surprises,” Mika smiled and poked Yui’s forehead, “I could tell what you were up to, you little scamp~”

“Aw man, you’re too sharp for me Mika,” Yui knitted her brows together, “And here I thought I was really gonna wow you today. But, if you’re so clever, I guess you won’t need this.” From behind her, Yui brought out a trendy looking cake box. Splashed onto the side was the logo for an extra-famous and extra-trendy cake restaurant from Shibuya that Mika had been dying to go visit for weeks. Mika stared at the box in dumb surprise while Yui opened it up with a smug look of triumph, “One orange mille feuille for you madame~”

“How did you-?”

“Well, me and Rina were picked to be the poster girls for this place’s ‘Take Over Shibuya with Fashion’ campaign so we went to the store today! The producer sweet talked the manager into letting us get away with some of the goods,” Yui’s grin turned sheepish, “I-I know you’ve been eyeing this place so… Yeah… C-Come on, babe, say something.”

Mika grabbed Yui’s wrist, pulling her through the doorway. Closing the door behind her, Mika pulled Yui in for a kiss. The cake box between them prevented it for lasting more than a few seconds but Mika hoped she got her feelings across. She could feel the blush creeping up along her neck - she wasn’t usually the one to initiate affection between them. But this was a happy exception. Yui stood for a second, mouth agape and eyes wide. She spun on her heel, placing the box on top of the cabinet near the door before tackling Mika against the door.

“Mi~ka! I’m happy you like it!” Yui grinned, touching their foreheads together.

“Of course I like it,” Mika said, wrapping her arms around Yui’s waist, “You’re the best girlfriend ever, Yui.”

She brought her girlfriend into another kiss, tasting the remnants of Yui’s lip gloss from earlier that day. Mika felt her blush creep towards her ears as Yui deepened the kiss. Their lips parted for each other and Mika’s head was starting to feel dangerously empty except for the smell of Yui’s perfume and the lingering image of her in that open-backed tank top…

Mika let out a small yell when she felt a hand slip under her shirt, fingers lazily tracing circles around the small of her back. Yui tilted her head to the side, kissing along Mika’s jaw and towards her ear. Another hand slipped under her shirt and Mika’s hips were pushed closer until they were flush with Yui’s. Mika struggled to find the energy to speak, out of breath from their kiss and barely able to manage above a whisper.

“Y-Yui, wait a second,” Mika said, biting her lip as Yui moved down towards her neck, “Y-Yui…!”

“Hn?” Yui looked up, tongue sticking out just past her lips and eyes wide, “O-Oh wait, I went too far again, huh?” Yui drew her hands back, taking a step away from Mika and staring towards the corner where the floor and door frame met, “S-Sorry…”

Mika readjusted her clothes - she loved Yui but her girlfriend was a bit of a hair-trigger. This was why they always had to be careful when they were out together. Who knew who was watching them and Mika wasn’t going to give the tabloids the pleasure of leaking her relationship out to the masses. Yui wrung her hands together and was making tiny circles with the tip of her shoe, like a child that had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Mika smiled, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead.

“It’s okay, Yui. Come on, let’s go eat this cake together since you brought it over,” Mika took the box and walked past Yui, neck still a flushed red, “A-And maybe later we could, um, y’know… Keep going.”

Yui turned her head around at break-neck speed and said, “Y-Yeah! Totally, dude! Babe!” She nearly stumbled over the step from the entrance of Mika’s house up into the hallway as she tried to kick off her shoes. As they walked into the living room, Yui let her hand hover out a few times towards Mika’s waist until the other girl took it and placed it there herself. The two settled down on the couch and took in the pleasing visuals of the cake box. Even the plastic forks they gave out were chic! They took plenty of pictures that they could post later and dug in. Yui got cream from her strawberry shortcake around her mouth and Mika happily wiped it away with a decorated napkin.

After they had eaten the cake, they had sat around and talked about their days until Yui had fallen asleep while Mika was posting the cakes on Instagram. Yui had curled up on one side of the couch, face buried in the crook of her arm. Mika thought she looked like a puppy and decided to make her little comparison a reality. She finally managed to make Snapchat recognize Yui’s face long enough for her to get a picture of her sleeping girlfriend with the dog filter. Sitting back down on the couch, Mika mulled over what she could caption a picture like this. Writing anything out seemed too sappy and just the thought of it made her cheeks warm. Eventually she decided to just put a sticker of an orange heart in the corner.

“Perfect,” Mika whispered, saving the image onto her phone. But, ultimately Mika was a creature of habit. She had intended to send the picture to Yui - it would have been cute to see her reaction afterwards at the candid after all. However, almost instinctively, Mika’s fingers had tapped several other contacts. Notably: the LiPPS group chat, Rika, the group chat she shared with Yui and Rina, Miho, and her story. When she realized what she had done, she had already pressed send.

A minute after she had sent it/posted it/done that incredibly stupid thing, Mika was hit with a flood of messages from LiPPS. Then came the messages from the others. In response, Rina sent a picture she had taken a while back of a sleeping Takumi with cat ears drawn on it. Miho was surprised that the two of them were so close that Yui came to hang out with them on their day off. The poor, oblivious girl. Rika immediately jumped to complaining about how it wasn’t fair that Yui got to hang out with her sister instead of her. And there were only more people sending her messages because of the post on her story.

For the second time that day, Mika wondered why in the world she had sent something like that.

[cursivesugg]

Jetlag || Joe Sugg

Requests are currently [ OPEN ]

Masterlist can be found [ HERE ]

Word Count: 1.2k+

A/N: it’s been a little while and for that i apologise but nonetheless, i hope you enjoy this lil fluffy imagine that i wrote this evening after realising how long it’d been since i posted. enjoy!!xo

The first day of VidCon, in your opinion, was always the most eventful. From the confusion as to whose hotel rooms were located where, to the mess of YouTuber’s crowding the hallways of the building, all huddled into little groups, catching up with their friends and not realizing the delay they were causing.

You’d arrived a little later than everyone else, seeing as you had prior arrangements at home that made it impossible for you to be in America for the first day of the event; which, honestly, wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It just meant you missed out on all of the chaos.

You arrived at the hotel, avoiding any form of human contact until you’d managed to get your room key and take a shower, an absolute must after a long haul flight. You’d planned ahead, unlike the majority of your friends, and had booked your hotel room way in advance; which gave you the opportunity to choose what style, the size, and the floor that you’d be staying on.

And so, overjoyed with your single room that was the perfect fit for you, you flop down onto the bed, wiping a bead of sweat away from your eyebrow and staring up at the ceiling, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips as you thought about how many of your friends you’d finally be able to catch up with over the weekend.

Rolling onto your stomach, you pick up your phone from the spot on the bed where you’d discarded it the moment you walked through the door, forcing yourself to focus on unpacking and washing up before you’d let anything else distract you.

Taking to Twitter, you decide that your first priority was to let your fans know that you’d landed safely and had arrived back at your hotel, a small tradition you had with them. You send out the tweet, amusing yourself and managing to disgust everyone else at the unnecessary amount of emoji’s you used, and proceed to get lost in your timeline, mindlessly scrolling and not even thinking about the fact that you perhaps should’ve been tracking down your friends and spending every moment you could with them before you inevitably had to leave once again.

It was only when you rolled over once again and your eyes landed on the digital alarm clock, did the amount of time that you’d spent mindlessly browsing your social media apps sink in. You groan, throwing your head back against the sheets and locking your screen, tossing the device to your side and clenching your eyes shut. The jetlag was creeping up on you from every direction, and as much as you forced yourself to deny it, the way your limbs ached and your eyes burned were a dead giveaway.

It was already almost ten pm, and given, you’d landed quite late into the evening and hadn’t expected to be able to do that much with your time, and only really mentally prepared yourself for seeing a few of your friends before retiring to your room and sleeping for as long as humanly possible in a bid to relieve yourself of the horrendous achy feeling that came hand in hand with flying for over twelve hours at a time.

You contemplated your options, really only having a few. Number one, you could just risk it and message everyone whom may have been around the hotel, and then have a small reunion. But you were way too exhausted for that. Second, you could just fall asleep now, and brace the wrath of your friends in the morning, blaming the fact that you hadn’t even said hello to one of them on your insane jetlag.

The third option was tempting, and sounded so much more pleasing than the others. You purse your lips before sitting up, tucking your legs underneath your body and picking up your phone, chewing on your bottom lip and pulling up the text log of the one boy in particular whom you’d been desperate to see for a bloody long time.

The short text message you crafted included your room number, and a few more kisses than normal, but you were so excited to finally be able to see him again. You sit on your legs, nervously shuffling around and waiting for a response, staring down at your screen and watching in anticipation as the ‘delivered’ symbol changed to 'read’.

The message you received back no more than two seconds later, made you smile widely. It was short and straight to the point, telling you that he’d be there in two minutes and he’d bring snacks. The idea of food made you moan in happiness, suddenly thinking back to the last time you’d actually eaten properly, which for sure hadn’t been on the plane.

The plane food incident was a story in itself.

Time flew by, and before you knew it, there were three knocks on the door, and you stared at it for a moment, before hearing a foot bash against the bottom, causing you to unstiffen and grin widely. You stumble up from your position on the bed, running over to the door and swinging it open, throwing yourself into his arms without a second of hesitation, wrapping your arms around his neck and hugging him tighter than you thought was humanly possible.

He swoops you off of your feet, his arms wrapped tightly around you as he hugged you to his chest, only placing you back onto your feet when you’d done a full three-sixty spin in the air. Eyes wide, you look up into his eyes, only managing to do so for a few seconds before you wrapped your arms around his torso, pressing your cheek against his cotton muscle top and mumbling incoherently.

He chuckles, pushing one hand through the length of your hair and using the other to trace random patterns into your arm as you remained pressed up against his chest. “You wanna have some traditional jet-lag cuddles and eat some junk food and then sleep for twelve hours?” He asks, his voice soft as he looks down at you, a small smile on his face.

You pull your head away from his chest, looking up at him sleepily and nodding. “Mhm; yes please.”

“C'mon then, princess.” He mumbles quietly, throwing his arm around your shoulders and tugging you into the hotel room, kicking the door shut and proceeding to spend the rest of the night with his body entwined with yours, his chin resting on the top of your head as you slept.

The way his lips had brushed against yours meant a conversation would be in order; but after a pregnant pause, and your eyes had interlocked with his, in that moment, words weren’t needed. Instead, you sunk back into his arms, and fell asleep within a matter of minutes, mutually deciding that the discussion would wait until the morning.

[vvorldatlarge]

story from 5/17/17

I’m going to scatter notable anecdotes throughout summer like I said, so here’s one that I meant to tell but was too lazy to type up.

I (chris traeger voice) LIT-era-lly have no idea how I write this fucking much. I don’t need all of it where does it come from  , . It’s good in academics, it’s what earned me the language arts and reading awards at graduation among other things, but when I want to convey a simple fufkcing point or tell a story it’s Hell. I do this to L too, guys. I want to say ONE FUCKIN GNF THING to L in an email and he ends up with 5 paragraphs of me rambling in his inbox. Save me

On that day i went to this after school event hosted every year by mainly L and whoever else is the 7th grade Geography teacher in the school (last year, it was only him, but this year there’s one other teacher) called Multi-Cultural Night. Basically, a group of 1-3 kids choose or are assigned a country other than Britain, the US, and Canada, and they have to do a research paper, a poster, and make a cultural dish from that country to bring in to Multi-Cultural Night. Last year when I had to do it, I chose the Philippines because I’m half Filipino. Basically, just imagine a cafeteria FULL of free samples at every table from different cultures. Just thinking about the amount of food that was there brings me to tears. I wanted to go not just to see L, but to eat food and… read the posters. (but that’s kind of a side thing.) When I went, I just had my parents drop me off, so I was kind of alone and the entire time I basically just hung around Miss. Z and one of my friends that had to go because his brother was in 7th. As I entered the room, I immediately tried to look for L, and did find him but couldn’t get him to notice me so I could wave or say hi, so I dropped it until later, when I was heading towards a table to snatch a sample and he greeted me and was like “what’s the best food you’ve had so far?” Okay. Good. The conversation that I’ve been waiting for. What was my response? “I- uhm, well… oh gosh. I forgot.” He nodded and I could not deal. I had to save the short conversation. “BUT it’s all been really good so far!! Ha.. .ha.. .. , , I’m really enjoying it!” Can’t remember exactly, he said “good! C:” and  probably did a little thumbs up and then walked off. It still made me happy that I got to talk to him, but the words “why am i such a fucking social failure” probably crossed my mind afterwards. I also decided that for the rest of the night, I would actually remember what country each sample came from. Like I said before, I spent the rest of the night trailing behind Miss. Z and eating. So much food. It was all so good. I still get emotional thinking about it. I want to show up next year. I think I will. I’ll be like an NPC character in a game series that reappears in every single fucking game even though they serve no purpose to the plot and everyone just accepts they’re immortal. Except I won’t be immortal. I’ll just be eating and only getting older by a year every time.

|||| I also kept sneaking glances at L while eating. If I saw him walking by I wouldn’t be obvious but I’d still stand alert and not look like a fool while eating (which is difficult considering I’m myself). At the same time, though, I’d completely avoid him. It’s fucking weird. Is it a thing connected with social anxiety or general awkwardness to want to see someone, but absolutely avoid them at the same time? Probably. You don’t want to embarrass yourself, so if you really like someone or look up to them you minimize the chance of an embarrassing situation as much as possible. That’s my guess. Makes sense to me. One time, I was hovering near Miss. Z and L walked towards her and started talking, and I quickly finished eating and awkwardly stood around and kinda.. shifted behind her. She noticed as he was doing something else momentarily and she just laughed at me. He then walked away to somewhere behind me and I did that blatant (i did not mean it to be that blatant) glance at him behind his back, not necessarily at his ass (oh dear.. Did i look at his ass and was it obvious? That’s worse. I forgot if I did.) but just at him in general and Miss. Z made an amused sound and clearly noticed. Before I could say anything, someone else talked to her for a little bit and after they left I asked her, “why did you make that sound…?” W, you fool, you knew why she made that sound. She just said “nothing…. Nothing at all…” in a certain voice. I know to some that sounds made-up, but she does that on purpose when she caught you doing something amusing or something you wouldn’t want her to know. (as long as it’s not like. Bad. and she understands it seems that me liking him is harmless as long as I don’t make it get out of hand and have it threaten his career) Like. Scandalous. Essentially, the equivalent of when in certain fanfiction a character knows someone has the hots for another person but acts like they don’t.

|||| Later, after Miss.Z left and I was waiting for my dad to come and pick me up, I was stalling before I actually went and stood outside for my dad because I wanted the right opportunity to say bye to him, so I waiting by the door, which was next to the table that sold the recipe books of the night and water. Because it was fucking hot. I bought a recipe book as soon as I walked in, and I was holding it along with my phone and L noticed me and was like “Did ya’ buy a book yet, W?”. Which confused me. I was literally holding it.. In my hands…??? But you can’t really count on L being too observant (not to be mean, he’s really smart, it’s just he seems to get caught in his thoughts a lot. A lot. He also has a low attention span, is kinda all over the place, fidgets. Trying to stay away from talking about something I don’t have, but to give you an idea, he’s actually mentioned in class that he thinks he has ADHD. Not jokingly. (it’s shitty to joke about anyways js) anyone with ADHD please tell me if I just said something off as a side note) so I guess. But, I said, “Yea” and held it out and he nodded and continued cleaning up the table. I retreated to my spot right next to the door, and checked my phone, and my fuckass dropped it on the floor and he was like “😲W!!!!” (the samsung version of that emoji conveys it better) all jokingly alarmed and that was adorable. But embarrassing. The phone case came off and so did the battery. Or whatever it was. It’s a samsung phone. I think. I’m more of a tablet person idk. It’s actually not my phone. I borrowed it from my mom. The phone came out okay.

|||| Eventually, I figured I needed to stand outside and not spend too much time pointlessly lingering, so I decided to face my fears and walk up to him and actually get his attention directly to say hi. Which took more effort than I thought and kind of killed me because the more I spend talking to people, esp. L, the more energy that leaves me. I said his name once to get his attention and he didn’t notice me, right there, and I repeated it like.. 2 more times and he finally turned to me and I just, now more awkward than before, said “cya” and he was like “oh! C: cya” and I left. Welp. Shit. Also, I found out that night that Miss. Z sent L the history videos by Bill Wurtz-- “the history of the world, I guess” video and the “history of japan” video, which is all I ever needed to know in life. I never brought it up and found out if he watched the latter but Miss. Z told me he watched the former and found it hilarious. Those videos are honestly what I’d expect his train of thought to be like except 10x dorkier (eugh.. Hate calling a real person that when I don’t know them really really well.. It’s weird...) and silly.

WHY DO I RAMBLE TOO MCUH THAT DID NOT NEED TO BE A GODDAMNED ESSAY WHY AM I LIKE THIS

[pongpalace]

The Shark Epidemic

Day One of Charmer Week: Meet-Cute (AU~kinda)

Read on ao3 

It’s a Friday night when Caitlin finally caved to Spencer’s peer pressure and downloaded Tinder onto her phone. Well, less caved into the pressure and more lost the wrestling match and was sat on while Spencer downloaded Tinder onto her phone.

“This is so stupid,” Caitlin said, voice slightly muffled by one of the thousand overstuffed throw pillows that Spencer insisted she needed to sleep with. Somehow they’d started migrating over to Caitlin’s side of their two-bed dorm room.

“You’re stupid,” Spencer replied absently, still tapping on Caitlin’s phone. “I’m just helping you meet people.”

“If I wanted to meet people, I’d be fighting for elbow space at whatever party March and April were talking about,” Caitlin huffed.

All through practice, the volleyball captains had been going on and on about what they were going to wear to the “Haus” that night. It was apparently the place to go for a good time on the weekends, especially before any athletic seasons started. Invitations had been extended to the freshmen through the team group chat after practice, but Caitlin ducked out as soon as it was made this clear that this wasn’t part of the mandatory team bonding that had been taking place throughout the month she’d been at Samwell. She was looking forward to a night in with the new Oceans documentary on Netflix and maybe some popcorn if she decided to brave the walk up to the common room with the microwave. Spencer, her roommate and fellow freshmen setter, had agreed to the night in, but had other plans when the shitty dorm internet made Netflix buffer for too long.

“Jeez, one night off and you get boring,” Spencer tutted, ignoring Caitlin’s groan when she got elbowed as Spencer rolled off Caitlin to lay on her stomach so they could both see the phone screen. “Here, I did all the hard work.”

Caitlin took her phone back and flipped through profile. Her name and age was displayed underneath the same picture she had as her Facebook profile.

“Does Facebook know that I’m on Tinder now?” she asked, flipping through the other three pictures Spencer had chosen to display. Caitlin was lowkey surprised to see that her favourite picture, the one where she stood proudly beside the surfboard her and her mom had spent all summer working on together, made the cut.

Somehow Caitlin both saw and felt Spencer’s eyeroll. “Okay, now I’m surprised that you’ve even heard of Tinder before this. It’s connected to your Facebook, but Facebook won’t post anything.”

“No need to be an asshole.” Caitlin kept scrolling and saw a brief description under her name made almost entirely of emojis. She wasn't sure what the girl flipping her hair emoji meant in this context.

“Oh FYI, I put your preferences as men and women ‘cause I wasn’t sure, but you can totally change it.” Despite Spencer’s flippant tone, she wasn’t looking at Caitlin and was biting at her bottom lip; a tell that Caitlin had come to recognize as nervousness under Spencer’s devil-may-care attitude. Caitlin was sure she’d get sat on again if she brought attention to it though so she just shrugged.

“That’s fine,” she said. 

Sexuality had been an open topic in her house growing up so she’d been able to come to terms with her attraction to both genders and sometimes forgot that not everyone was as lucky. It’d been awhile since she needed to come out to anyone and now, retrospectively, forgotten she hadn’t gotten around to doing that with the volleyball team yet.

“Me too.” Spencer still wasn’t looking at Caitlin and actually looked like she was going chew right through her lip, so despite Caitlin wanting to thank her for trusting her with the moment like her sister turned LGBT counsellor would have, Caitlin just knocked their shoulders together before adding three emoji hearts to her description; pink, purple, and blue. She saved it.

“So how do I use this now?” she asked.

Spencer, no longer chewing on her lip, took the phone back and flipped to a different screen. “Okay. People around close to us are gonna pop up and you swipe right if you like ‘em-” she demonstrated the right swipe on the first picture that loaded: a bright-eyed Asian guy smiling widely in a San Jose Sharks sweatshirt. “-or left if you don’t.” She swiped left on the next picture: a blond guy in wire frame glasses.

“Oh damn, he was cute.” Spencer frowned.

“Aw do they know if I swipe left on them?”

“Nah. You match with someone when you’ve both swiped right on each other.”

“So everyone I’m uh, swiping on has already swiped right on me?”

“No, they’re just everyone in your range. I set that to like a 10 mile radius so you’re most likely just swiping on people from the university by the way.” Spencer tossed Caitlin’s phone back and got up to get hers off the dock where it’d been charging.

“Wait.” Caitlin caught the phone, brow furrowed as she takes in the new picture on the screen: a girl with an insane undercut. She swiped right and a message appeared on the screen informing her that it’s a match and giving her tips on how to start a conversation that she would not be taking. “Then how do I know if they swiped right on me if they haven’t seen my profile yet?”

“You get a notification thing later, kinda. I dunno Farmer, just start swiping, jesus.” Spencer’s attention was already back on her phone, which was also opened to Tinder and the rest of their Friday night passed in a matter of left and right swipes, with the Oceans documentary finally loaded and playing in the background.

Tinder was actually much more enjoyable than Caitlin had originally anticipated; there was something soothing about the repeated swiping. Through trial and error, a couple of accidental right swipes on guys pictured with douchey sunglasses, she figured out that by touching on people’s pictures she could get to their profile pages and read their descriptions.

Surprisingly, some were really fucking funny.  

“Holy shit, Spence, listen to this-” Caitlin pushed Spencer off her stomach so she could sit up, reaching for the spacebar on her laptop to pause Netflix. She cleared her throat to read out the description as dramatically as possible. “‘If murdered, I want a closed-casket funeral. However, towards the end of the service, please have the organist play “Pop Goes The Weasel” over and over, until everyone in attendance is staring at my coffin with mute horrified antici- anticipation.”” Caitlin was laughing so hard by the end that she was pretty sure Spencer couldn't understand her, but Spencer grabbed the phone the read the description herself. She started laughing too.

“Oh my god.” Spencer had tears of laughter streaming down her. “Please tell me you swiped right! No, let me find them and swipe right! We’re soulmates!”

Sometime around 11 they restarted the documentary after Caitlin realized they had laughed through most of it as they compared Tinder bios and pictures. She still got distracted by her phone though as messages started coming in along with notifications of new matches. The first message that Caitlin opened was a straight up, literally, dick pic. She yelled and dropped her phone on her face when she opened it.

“Jesus christ, no hello?”

“Welcome to tinder babe.” Spencer patted her shin while stealing Caitlin’s phone with her other hand. “Oh HELLO.”

Caitlin snatched her phone back to look at the other, written, messages she’d gotten. Most were generic hi’s or hello’s, and some were really cheesy pick up lines that had to have been googled. While she was working on a reply to one guy’s piss baby reaction to her not replying to him within five minutes of his first message, another message popped up. She swiped over to it to watch two more messages join the first.

Chris: [(hearteyes emoji)]

Chris: [ur gorgeous]

Chris: [u’re*]

Caitlin tapped into to his profile and saw it was the smiling Asian guy that Spencer had swiped right on for her demonstration. His description was empty so she settled for swiping through his photos, wondering if it was worth replying. Black, turquoise, and sharks of all varieties were prevalent themes in his photos, including the one where he was dressed in full goalie gear; San Jose jersey stretched across his chest and helmet covered in realistic sharks. Other than that photo, he was pictured smiling widely, showing off a mouthful of braces. Caitlin went into the conversation, amused by the guy’s obsession.

Me: [how do you feel about the shark epidemic?]

She pressed send, turned off the screen on the phone and dropped it on the bed, unsure if she expected or wanted a reply. Sure, he wore black and turquoise well, and she was pretty sure he had dimples, but that opening line left something to be desired. Maybe he’d have a sense of humour in his response though.

“Another dick pic?” Spencer asked, craning her neck back to look at Caitlin. She’d moved so she was halfway down the bed, her feet hanging off the edge and probably touching the ground. It couldn’t be comfortable, but she’d been intently swiping at her phone in that position for the last 20 minutes so what did Caitlin know?

“No.”

“Damn.”

“Get your own dick pics.”

“Ew, no thank you. I don’t want that on my phone.”

Caitlin kicked her side, and tilted the laptop screen so she could see the brightly coloured fish better.

*****

Caitlin woke up to a stupid amount of notifications on the Tinder app. Still cuddled under her blankets, she had to laugh as she went through them; the decline of coherent spelling in the messages as the timestamps got later was a hilarious example of everything she hoped university would be. The increase of sexual messages was less so. She had just finished blocking one guy who used their message thread as one might use a void to angrily shout in, when she noticed that she’d missed a reply from Chris in the mess of drunk messages. She went into the thread; jaw actually dropping as she read through it.

Chris: [If by 'epidemic' you mean the alarming rate at which sharks are disappearing from the ocean, I think the culling of sharks is a direct response to the fear mongering of the mainstream media that’s been consistent for the last forty years or so in order to keep beaches 'safer.' That sharks are dying prematurely outside of being killed by humans, is a reflection on how little is being done in terms of controlling global warming as the whole oceanic ecosystem is being disturbed. What little information is available about this in comparison to the widespread articles about sharks attacking humans reflects on the cultural mindset that sharks are 'bad', when in reality sharks are only naturally reacting to their homes be invaded. They were here first after all.]

Chris: [also, I’m so sorry if these messages woke you! It took me a while to type them out (smiley face emoji)]

Chris: [okay, have a good night! (smiley face emoji) (smiley face emoji)]

Caitlin kicked off her blankets, almost tripping when she jumped out of bed and they were still wrapped around her feet. She jumped onto Spencer’s bed, ignoring the groan of protest to dig through the pillow fort that Spencer slept in. After knocking aside the pillows and blankets, Caitlin found Spencer: messy haired and glaring through bleary eyes.  

“What.” The lack of infliction might have been threatening if not for the pillow creases across her face.

“You gotta see this.” Caitlin shoved her phone, screen bright, into Spencer’s face.

“This better be a nice fucking dick pic Farmer,” she said, rubbing her eyes and stretching to grab her glasses off her nightstand. She took the phone to read the message once she could see.

Caitlin sat back, clutching a pillow, watching Spencer’s eyebrows raise as they moved across the screen.

“Better than a dick pic?” Caitlin grinned when she finished. Chris had hit all the points in Caitlin’s own rant about sharks and the ocean. Though she hoped her biology major would focus on deep ocean tidal patterns, Caitlin had a vested interest in all sea life that came from living right next to the ocean for most of her life.

“Way better than a dick pic.” Spencer handed the phone back.

“How do I reply?” Caitlin stared at the screen, thumbs moving over but not touching the keyboard. Honestly, Chris’s reply was better than anything she had expected; she wanted to make her own reply just as good.

“Can you figure it out in your own bed?” Spencer asked, replacing the pillows around her. “Some of us are enjoying the Saturday off.” Her voice came out muffled, under the blankets already, and Caitlin took the hint and knee walked off the bed, only slightly jostling the bed on purpose. She threw her phone onto her own bed, grabbing her toiletry bag to go brush her teeth and wash her face.

She thought about what to say the whole time she brushed her teeth, staring at herself in the badly lit bathroom. She thought about what to say while patted her face dry, wondering what it was that Chris was looking for on Tinder. She thought about it on the walk down the hallway, slippers slapping loudly against her heels. She was still thinking about it when she let herself back into her room, but she still hadn’t thought of anything clever or witty to reply with as she slipped back under her covers. She stared at the blank screen.

The thing was, though she’d joined Tinder under duress of her roommate’s bony ass, Caitlin didn’t necessarily object to the idea of meeting someone, even if it was via a stupid hookup app. Honestly, she wasn’t sure what expectations she had of Tinder, but now, not even 24 full hours after having the damn app, it had somehow both fallen short and exceeded expectations and that in and of itself was annoying. Add in Chris’s well written message and fuck. Caitlin wanted to meet him to see if he’d fall short or not.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Spencer said from under the pillows.

“Shut up.” Caitlin unlocked her phone and went into the message, typing quickly and pressing send before she could think too hard about it.

Me: [any chance you wanna get coffee sometime? (smiley face emoji)]

Yep. That was out in the world now. Caitlin locked the screen; did it seem too forward? Well, if she hadn’t scared Chris off with her shark question, she probably wouldn’t scare him off with the coffee invitation. Probably. Caitlin rolled onto her stomach so she could groan into a pillow without Spencer commenting on it. She took two deep breath and told herself she would not let his response, or lack thereof, ruin her weekend. She still had conditioning tomorrow and that would be what ruined it.

Caitlin’s phone buzzed, once and then twice. She reached back blindly to grab it, rolling over when her arm wasn’t long enough. She unlocked it onto the conversation where two new messages were waiting.

Chris: [oh wow I didn’t think you’d reply--that was a reallllllllllllly long paragraph to get through (nerd smiley face emoji)]

Chris: [also, I’m sorry if the first message was too much. apparently my drunk teammates break into phones for fun (eye roll emoji) I’m glad they did though (blushy face emoji)]

Caitlin huffed a laugh and another message popped up while she was staring at the conversation.

Chris: [coffee would be s’awesome! (grin emoji) (coffee mug emoji)]

“What’d he say?”

Caitlin jumped at Spencer’s voice.

“I thought you were enjoying your Saturday off,” she said, but she chucked her phone across the gap between the beds.

“Your Tinder feels are keeping me up,” Spencer said, smiling and rolling her eyes while she read through. “You’re welcome by the way.” She tossed the phone back, screen still unlocked and Caitlin read two new messages, one of which she apparently wrote.

Me: [is now a good time?]

Chris: [yeah it's great! I haven’t tried Annie’s yet, but hear it has really good (coffee mug emoji) ..?]

“I can set up my own Tinder things,” Caitlin said, glaring. She typed out a confirmation that Annie’s worked and that she’d see Chris there in 20 minutes, before kicking off her blankets for the second time that morning.

“Get dressed, c’mon! You need to look good!”

With a very opinionated commentary from the peanut gallery, Caitlin got pulled on black leggings and an oversized denim shirt, leaving her 18 minutes to get to Annie’s.

“Good thing hipster chic is in,” Spencer said, while Caitlin tried not to stab herself in the eye while doing her mascara.

“I’m not the one who set the time.” Caitlin capped the mascara and considered her hair for a second before pulling it up into an impressively messy bun. She wrapped her scarf around her neck, shrugged on her puffy vest, stepped into her Docs, and turned to Spencer for inspection, arms spread. “Look okay?”

Spencer looked her up and down. “Good enough for a coffee date.”

“Asshole,” Caitlin shook her head, checked her pockets for her phone and cards and left.

“You’re welcome!” Spencer called after her.

She made it to Annie’s with two minutes to spare from when she said she’d meet Chris. He wasn’t there yet. It was still relatively early on a Saturday morning so she had her pick of tables to sit at while she waited. She picked one near the door, smiling at the tired looking student barista behind the counter as she sat and pulled out her phone to double check Chris’s picture to make sure she’d recognize him.

She really shouldn’t have bothered though. Chris was easily recognizable when he walked in exactly two minutes later, dressed in a Sharks hoodie under a plaid button up smiled widely when he caught sight of Caitlin. His braces flashed. Caitlin stood up so he wouldn’t tower over her.

“Oh wow. You’re really beautiful,” he said, cheeks colouring slightly but his smile never wavering.

Caitlin stuck out a hand, finding Chris’s grin contagious. “I’m Caitlin.”

Chris took it. “Chris. It’s s’awesome to meet you.”

*This takes place in the same alternative "Nursey-isn't-on-SMH" universe as this 

[2centsofsilver]

1/27

It’s 2:09 AM- Figured I’d blog! Tomorrow I have a 10-6pm all-day company training as a new employee at BGC. I’m not nervous where I would be with my old job at NR. I don’t know anyone so that’s why I’m not nervous. I have a feeling they don’t waste time with icebreakers or see real value in them. I could be wrong, it’s just a hunch. Today I literally slept all day. I slept through all my alarms, through therapy, all the way up until I had to leave for work. I taught my very last class today for YR and announced to the kids (my favorite school/class/group of kiddos) that it was my last day. They acted disappointed/sad and asked lots of questions. We took pictures and they said, “because you’re going to miss us?!” I wore my new LulaRoe maxi which is gorgeous. It’s the first time I’ve ever worn a skirt in public! This clothing line has brought me such joy and confidence and this teaching job has reduced a large chunk of my fear of public speaking. I’ll miss the parents, the staff, and the kids. I made a friend through work who I hang out with occasionally and talk to on FB all the time. My bosses also live in my hometown which is pretty neat. I taught at a school in Portage, Vicksburg, and Comstock and subbed in Galesburg and Vicksburg as well. Generally speaking, I didn’t really support the way in which they trained us to teach the lessons and I wanted out since Day 1. I don’t believe in “Wine and Canvas” art - the step-by-step “this is how we draw a line,” everyone’s should look the same in the end stuff. I wasn’t supposed to allow the kids to customize their own drawings or I could get in trouble, but I usually found a way to get around that rule. Today the lesson was Emojis. It consisted of 2 faces, a robot, a pizza, a trophy, and a crown. I let the kids choose whatever shapes they wanted for the jewels on the crown and I let them choose their favorite pizza toppings. Yesterday one of the kids I struggle most with ended up adding a tremendous amount of very concerning violent details to his picture. I’ll probably talk to my supervisors about it, but I didn’t really have time to approach the parent yesterday. I didn’t hang it up on the wall though. The new replacement teacher will certainly have his/her hands full! My 21 Day Fix program has sorta been slipping, but I’m trying not to see it that way. It’s really hard to maintain when you have issues sleeping/waking up. I shop at Aldi now and I love how healthy their selection of foods is. I’m able to find super healthy snacks and meals and am no longer struggling to get green and red containers in. For example, my friend from downstairs came over a few days ago and we spent a short hour of her teaching me how to make turkey burgers before we went to the gym. Now I can make turkey burgers and count those as protein. I also make/found healthy vegetable chips at Aldi, steamable off-brand broccoli, and frozen microwaveable kale burgers I can use for green containers and I’m also planning on making health shakes (in addition to Shakeology; or potentially dropping Shakeology all together). The hardest part is giving nutrition AND fitness my all every week. I can give one or the other my all. I’m working on my sleep schedule and working to give both my all. Making mistakes and shooting for “grey scale” (moderated) goals is not my strong suit. I’m hosting my first LulaRoe pop-up party on Sunday alongside my consultant from San Francisco who I’ve grown to become friends with over the last few months. The co-worker friends at BT where my position was eliminated in November introduced me to LR. They don’t talk to me anymore, but I’ve thanked them for introducing me to this amazing clothing line (god I sound like a promoter/marketer/fake ass seller), but it’s true. Anytime I talk to people and tell them how much I love it or invite them to the pop-up I feel like I’m trying to sell it, but that’s not the case. I have never been into shit like this in my life and have always considered it super stupid lol. Example: Jewelry parties, tubberware parties, etc. Not my thing. The first time I ever heard of LR was through an old NR employee and I was very much not interested. But at BT I was able to feel and get a good look at the clothing and then I attended an in-person LR party with those co-workers where I literally tried on just under 50 outfits. That day I spend more than $300 dollars and little did I know, developed a fast-moving addiction. Little did I know, my income would go down to practically nothing and just a few months later I’d be in a financial crisis (from too much LR plus the loss of my steady job leaving only one super part-time job bringing in literally $75 a week with only monthly paychecks).  But so far, I’ve accumulated over 30 LR items: I’ve won 3 pairs of leggings, purchased 3 others, 3-4 Irmas, 3 Cassies, 4 Carlys, 1 Nicole, 1 Ameila, 1 Lola, 2 Lindseys, 1 Randy, 1 Perfect-T, 3-4 Maxis, 1 Joy, and 1 Sarah. With my pop-up this weekend and a handful of friends who have told me they’ll likely buy 1-2 items, I’m hoping to get some free stuff. I plan to pick out some solid color Irmas to go with all these amazing skirts, and a Julia (if possible) to go with my new Lola. In all honesty, I kind of want to gift some free items to some friends. LR has CHANGED MY LIFE for the better in the following ways -INCREASED CONFIDENCE -Leading to INCREASED HAPPINESS -Increased positivity -General feeling good about myself and appearance day-to-day -Finally feel included in something trending -Finally can wear cute clothes everyone else is wearing/can wear -HUGE MOTIVATOR FOR WEIGHT LOSS this year -Realizing I do have a body type capable of beautiful clothes -True self-expression -Developing personal unique style -Able to share that with others without validation -Capable of achieving that style (knowing how I want to look and finding the clothes that fit that) It’s an amazing way for someone who struggles with social anxiety (appearance to others) and inner depression (self-loathing) to increase quality of life and feel good. At first I was concerned that the clothes looked cheap/fake (such as printed leggings; totally not my thing, or striped/bright leggings or shirts with rainbows and animals and stuff on them- yuck). But I’m finding it’s totally possible to find prints that are my own unique style: old-school navy/red/forest green plaid skirts, traditional houndstooth, black and navy checkered shirts/cardigans, super earthy designs (not just plain shirts with printed flowers, but actual earthy natural patterns and fabrics), patchwork designs, vintage, retro, whatever you like really. I’m super drawn right now to the gorgeous bohemian Lola skirts. I can’t get enough! The whole “Catholic school girl” look is something I’m also like shyly obsessed with. I think I’m going to go to bed now. I have all-day company training in the morning and given I slept all day (till work then after work till 10:30pm), I actually woke up at 10:30 thinking it was 10:30am (half-past the time I’m supposed to be to the meeting in Northeast Kzoo tomorrow). I completely flipped my shit, jumped out of bed in my normal “fuck I slept through an obligation” daze, ran to the bathroom, said “I slept in my entire outfit, fine, I’ll just wear this” and “shit, no time to eat, that’s fine, I’ll just starve”) till I realized it was dark outside. I strained my eyes to look at that 10:32 time on my clock. “PM” it said. I closed my eyes, relieved. Heart had been pounding. “What will I say? ‘I’m so sorry! I thought it was at 11′” Lies upon lies had filled my delirious head in a matter of a few seconds. But no, PM. Thank the fictional god for that one. Peace, Love, Happiness, Strong Girl Trying in 2017