#i’m fucking dying because he was super confused and i just doubled down on the bit of how i don’t eat lunch

[rainbowinbeigeboots]

had a customer at work today try and ask me out to lunch, but because i was so focused on trying to fix another customer’s account before i forgot i replied with “oh no, i don’t eat lunch”

[brendaaaa]

Best Summer Ever (Max Mayfield x fem!Reader)

“This is gonna be the best summer ever!“ Lucas pumped his fist into the air.

He let out a whoop and cannon-balled into the pool, screaming as he went.

“Oh god,” Will covered his eyes. “He’s going to kill himself.”

“Ah, don’t worry, Will the wise,” Mike set a hand on the shorter boy’s shoulder. “He’s fine.”

You peered over the edge, into the pool. “It looks pretty deep.”

You hated deep water. It was pretty much an irrational fear. There was nothing that was going to get you in that water.

You looked over at your girlfriend, Maxine. She was looking hot as ever, with her long red hair in a messy bun and her freckles sprinkled across her sun kissed face. She wore a red bikini, a good look on her, you had to admit.

You look back at the water. It was dark blue, intimidating.

The party was situated in the backyard of Kimmy Taylor, Robin’s super cool (and rich) girlfriend. She absolutely loved the ‘children’ when Robin introduced them, and because Kimmy would be working, she had generously offered her pool to the kids for the summer.

It was pretty awesome, except for the fact that you were scared silly of deep water.

“Hey, El!” Dustin called out, running over to pick up the brunette girl, “let’s get in the water!”

He ran over to the edge of the pool, Eleven shrieking, pretending to be terrified although anyone could tell she wasn’t really, and jumped.

The two made a huge splash when they entered the water, and you shielded your face, although the rest of your body got soaked.

They came up laughing, and smiling.

You grinned too, as their smiles were the most contagious ever, and watched as Will and Mike jumped in as well.

Lucas, already in the water, came up from behind the two boys and started splashing them.

Everyone in the water started hurling water at the others, and it was actually pretty funny for you to watch.

“Hey love,” a voice said in your ear, and you felt soft arms wrap around your middle.

You blushed, and turned to look at your favorite girl. She rested her head on your shoulder, blue eyes smiling up at you.

“We should get in.”

“Wha-?” You said, not really hearing what she had said. Her beautiful face was too distracting.

“I said,” she crinkled up her nose, “we should get in.”

You paled slightly as you realized what she was talking about.

“Uh, no. I- I can’t,” you looked away, breaking eye contact.

“Aw why not love?” She whined, placing her cold hand on your jaw and turning your head back to face her.

You shivered slightly and looked at the pool. It looked like a blue pit. Deep, dark, and ominous.

“I don’t know…” you mumbled.

“Why not?” She said again. “It’s so hot outside. I mean c’mon y/n, I know you wore that bathing suit just for me…,” she said with a smirk, and you reddened, looking down at your rather skimpy one piece, and she continued, “But you wore it to swim too, right?”

Well, yes. But you didn’t know that the pool was going to be this deep!

Aloud you said, “Yeah...I guess,” not wanting to disappoint Max.

“Alright let’s get in then!” She said cheerily, and shook her flip flops off her feet.

You gulped, eyeing the water suspiciously.

“I- I can’t,” you said nervously.

“Oh sure you can,” Max rolled her eyes, “it’s just water, y/n!”

You opened your mouth to say something, and then closed it. As much as you wanted to please her, you knew that there was absolutely no way you were getting in that pool.

No way. You would stay perfectly nice and dry today, thank you very much.

Ironically, just after that thought, your lovely babe decided it would be fun if she pushed you into the pool.

You screamed, flailing your arms as you tumbled down towards the water.

The party all turned to look, some laughing, some smiling, but none appearing distressed.

You belly flopped in, creating a loud smacking sound as you were submerged in the water.

The water was cold, and even though it was miserably hot outside, it was not refreshing or nice at all.

It was freezing and miserable.

You realized with a jolt of panic that you were sinking to the bottom, like a rock.

Your cheeks puffed outwards, trying to hold your breath in, as well as the scream that was just dying to come out.

You kicked upwards quickly, propelling your arms around, trying to get back up to the surface desperately.

It wasn’t that far to the top, and soon you were gasping and coughing up water. Max plopped into the water next you, and wrapped her arms around you.

She leaned her forehead against yours, a smile tugging at her lips.

“Nice in here, right?”

You shook your head wildly, a few tears slipping down your cheeks.

“No, no. I want to get out. Right now!” You hiccuped, still kicking your legs back and forth aggressively, trying to tread water and stay afloat.

Max frowned, a bit concerned by your reaction, “okay…” she said slowly.

She pulled herself out first, and reached a hand out to help you get out. All of a sudden she stopped, peering at you.

“Y/n, are you scared of water?” She asked.

Well yeah, no shit.

You glared at her, “What do you think?”

“I-“

“Yes!” You cried out. “Yes! Of course I’m scared of water, why do you think I didn’t want to jump in?!”

She stared at you, a little unsure of what to say.

“You pushed me in! Why would you do that?!” You cried.

“Y/n,” she started, hands on her knees.

“Get me out!!!” You screeched. “Right now!!”

“Okay okay,” she grabbed your forearms, and pulled you out of the pool, dripping wet.

“You wanna, um, go inside?”

You nodded, huffing.

“Okay, uh, you can do that then. Um, y/n I’m really sorry,” she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I swear if you’d just told me I would’ve never pushed you in,” she said sincerely.

You wiped your face off with your hand.

“I’m going inside,” you said stiffly, and marched off.

The rest of the party watched open mouthed, confused at the scene that had just unfolded.

You stomped into Kimmy’s house, flopping your wet body onto the couch. You groaned, feeling frustrated at your girlfriend and at yourself.

It was dumb that you got so upset with Max. She didn’t mean to push you in. She wasn’t that type of person.

Ugh. Why didn’t you just tell her that you were scared?! Why did your pride have to get in the way?

You groaned again, and clapped a hand over your forehead, covering your eyes from the light flowing through the window.

You surveyed the room. It was pretty nice, with some expensive furniture. Everyone’s clothes were scattered amongst the floor. Your eyes honed in on Max’s purple sweatshirt and brown shorts.

You smirked, getting an idea.

You pulled yourself off the couch, and closed the blinds on the window.

…..

“Is it just me, or did that pool get warmer as we swam in it?” you heard Dustin’s voice.

You were flopped in an armchair, watching tv and cuddled up in an afghan. It was surprisingly cold in the house, due to the air conditioning working overtime in the hot summer heat.

“You were probably just pissing in the pool,” Max retorted.

“Shut up Max,” Mike said. “We just probably got used to the water,” you heard him say to Dustin.

All of the party had shuffled in at this point. They all looked freezing cold, wrapped up in only their swimsuits and towels, shivering in the ac-blasted house.

“Hi, Y/n,” Max said, rather shyly.

You remembered that she probably thought you were still mad at her.

“Hi,” you said, giving her your warmest smile.

She smiled back, looking down at the ground. At least now she knew that you weren’t mad.

“So, who wants some pizza?” Lucas stretched out his arms, “I’m tired, and hungry as fuck.”

“Me too,” El piped up. “Can we get hawaiian please?” She gave Max her best doe eyes.

“Ah fine,” your girlfriend muttered, walking over to the phone.

She picked it up and started to dial the number. Growing up as a teen in the 80s, it was mandatory that you all had the pizza place’s number memorized. You never knew when you might need some fuel, or a pick-me-up.

Max turned back to look at El as she held the receiver up to her ear, “But don’t get that nasty fruit stuff anywhere near me,” she threatened, twirling the cord.

“I won’t,” Eleven smiled. Everyone knew that Max hated pineapple on pizza with a passion.

Max gave the order, and you, El, and the boys pulled out some board games to keep you busy while waiting on dinner.

The seven of you set up the candyland board.

“Why are we playing this?” Lucas deadpanned.

“Cause it’s fun,” Dustin countered.

“It’s a childhood classic,” Will insisted.

“You can cheat,” Mike smirked.

“Queen Frostine is sexy,” Max shrugged.

“It’s so FUN!” El beamed.

“I dunno,” you said. “But everyone else seems to like it.”

Lucas groaned, “Fine. But I better win,” he grinned, and flipped over the first card.

“Hey,” Will complained. “You don’t get to go first! The youngest always gets to first!”

“Yeah,” you laughed. “That’s me!”

And so the party played a rather uneventful game of candyland. Dustin won.

Knock knock knock.

Everyone looked up.

“Pizzaaaaaa,” Dustin said in a whisper, rubbing his hands together.

“I’ll get it!” You offered, standing up, and letting the afghan fall away from your body.

Max smiled at you, then a double take.

“Uh...y/n, are you? Wait a minute…” she eyed you suspiciously. “Are you wearing my clothes?”

“Caught me!” You laughed, and ran off to go meet the delivery guy.

“Hey!” She hollered. “Don’t think you get away that easy!” She was smiling, shaking her head.

“Get back here y/n!”, she giggled.

You ran, laughing and out of breath, to the door. You opened it up, and smiled at the short brunette pizza guy.

“Uh, three pepperonis and one hawaiian?” He confirmed.

“Ding ding ding,” you winked at him, and set the pizzas on the table right beside the door.

“Gotcha,” you felt Max hug from behind. You turned around, and kissed her cheek. “Hang on, I’m paying this dude.”

“Oh no no,” she said, smiling. “You, you are wearing my clothes! Why?” She touched the tip of her nose to yours, scrunching her nose.

You blushed, “Cause...I want to?”

“You look good, miss girl,” she whispered.

You coughed, and turned to the pizza boy and said, “Pay you back later?” as Max started to kiss you.

“Uh, excuse me-” he was cut off by you slamming the door in his face.

You laughed into Max’s lips, “You know, Lucas really was right.”

“What?” Max asked between kisses.

“This...is gonna be the best summer ever!”

Word Count: 1,877

[candychronicles]

best damn show // h. shinsou

A/N: my take on the bnharem villain/hero swap collab! this was supposed to be super super short but oops...

CHARACTER PAIRING: Shinsou Hitoshi x F!Reader

WORD COUNT: 3,918

WARNINGS: a half-assed sex scene, mentions of toxic coping mechanisms, bad mental health, alcohol and mentions of sex trafficking

SYNOPSIS: a dangerous villain is on the loose and Shinsou will find out who it is no matter what. 

Click here to read more fateful encounters! 

Shinsou turned off the TV with a resounding click, huffing in frustration. he had been there last night, seen the carnage, the chaos and pain that was caused by the villain. he didn’t know who they were, what they looked like, what their plan was, but he sure as hell didn’t want to wait to find out. The Hero Commission had instructed every hero to be on the lookout for suspicious activity but all it created was more chaos and distrust in a time when everyone needed to come together to figure out the issue at hand. being the type of hero that he was, one with a quirk that was not necessarily smiled upon, instantly created problems between himself and his team.

it became quite apparent that he needed to step down for a few days. while everyone claimed that it was for personal health issues, he left because he knew that he was being sussed out and couldn’t be trusted. despite trying his whole life to prove that he was a hero, nobody ever seemed to really see that he was one. even Aizawa thought it was best if he stepped away for the time being as tensions continued to rise between coworkers, friends and acquaintances alike.

to be frank, he was sick of being treated like a dog, someone who was there for entertainment and to do the dirty work of the heroes that wanted to keep their shiny crowns spotless. he was sick of being treated like less than scum on the pond, gum on a shoe or even trash littered on the side of the road. there were very few people in his life that truly believed in him and what he could do and while that was normally enough, it wasn’t today. there was someone truly dangerous on the rise, someone who could destroy entire cities if they wanted to, especially with the influence they had, and he wasn’t going to let them get away.

that’s how he ended up sneaking around the site of the initial attack. there was very little evidence there, everything cleared out from the cops, firemen and cleaning crews, but a little flyer about a bar stuck out like a sore thumb between two dull gray cement blocks. he plucked it out with his fingers and examined the barely held together paper, just managing to make out an address.

fuck it, might as well go. the worst that will happen is i get drunk and Kaminari will have to drag my ass back him, but honestly, he’s put me through worse.

with that thought in mind, he strolled to the bar near where the attack happened. the place was small and cozy and certainly not like anything he was expecting. a few people mingled around, chatting and laughing and nobody batted an eyelash when he walked in with his hood up and hands in his pocket. sliding into a chair, he signaled with one hand for the bartender to come and take his order. in what seemed like an instant, a neat whiskey, double, was placed in front of him with a kind nod.

before he had a chance to sip on his drink, another patron slipped in next to him. you were barely paying attention and apologized profusely when you realized you practically pushed him off his chair.

“i am so so sorry! i slid in here like a chicken with my head cut off. have you ever actually seen that happen before? it’s honestly quite terrifying,” you started, laughing at your own antics before continuing, “let me buy you a drink to make it up to you.”

“are you hitting on me?” was the first thing that came out of his mouth as he quirked an eyebrow at you, studying your flushed face and doey eyed expression.

“well, your hood is up so i can’t really see how cute you are. i’m honestly just half assed drunk and feeling extra nice tonight. no flirting here!”

he chuckled before flipping his hood down, cocking his head towards the bartender as he downed his drink in one gulp. you admired his face, the way it barely scrunched up despite the taste, his adam’s apple bouncing up and down.

“one more please! actually, make that two.”

you and Shinsou spent the whole night laughing about what seemed like the dumbest things: how many vertebrae giraffes had in their neck, how many ice cubes you could each fit in your mouth at one time, how crayons were made, and who could take a shot with a straight face. the latter led you two to being absolutely hammered as you stumbled out of the bar at a crisp three in the morning.

“s’nice meeting you S-shinsou! we should do this a-again sometime,” you stated matter-of-factly, laughing at the confused look on his face.

he spent a few seconds pondering the situation before agreeing to meet you here in a few days, sloppily exchanging numbers and hoping that they were right before he walked you back to your apartment, citing that it wouldn’t be fair as a hero for him to not escort you home to your safe spot.

the next morning resulted in a pounding headache as he sat up groggily from the couch, still dressed in all black from the night before. despite not learning anything about the villain that had caused the attack, he had to admit that his night was still nice.

the next few days before you two were supposed to meet up, Shinsou went full vigilante. he spent hours scouring any database he could for underground information about the villain. they were calling themselves “nightcrawler” and they were an internet sensation, spewing opinions about The Hero Commission, how villainous and cruel they were, how people and their quirks were being suppressed by this glamorized shit show. he snorted at the opinions, half agreeing with what they were saying but not so much on the way they were going about the situation.

every lead led him to a dead end. people knew of them but not who they were, what they looked like and certainly not where they were. he was able to gather some minor information from lackeys that claimed a man at an underground fighting ring might know something about nightcrawler but nothing was set in stone.

before he knew it, he was meeting you again at the bar, feeling guiltier than ever for acting like some righteous hero when he was a borderline vigilante at this point. you didn’t seem to care who he was, what kind of job he had or what his boring routine was like. you wanted to hit deep, spilling dark secrets to each other, like how depressed you felt sometimes living a boring life behind a desk, how he felt like he wasn’t really a hero, how you drank to cope with the pain sometimes, how he was doing exactly the same. eventually, he spilled to you how he was technically still a hero but doing some not so legal digging on the side as he got benched due to the distrust because of his quirk.

you frowned as you watched him confess how he felt, emotion after emotion rolling over him in waves, from sadness to anger to confusion to defeat. you sympathized with every word that came out of his mouth, not understanding what it was like to be a hero but hurting with every word nonetheless.

“well, what’s your next move?” you finally asked after a few moments, watching the gears turn in his head as he processed your words.

“i heard through the grapevine that a certain shady underground fighting ring might have some more information on the whereabouts of nightcrawler.”

you prodded him for all the details, grinning in delight when he mentioned the name of where he wanted to go. without saying another word, you yanked him off his feet, throwing cash down on the bar to pay for your drinks as you dragged him out of the place and down only a few blocks. he spent the whole time bewildered and confused but judging by your determined stance and wicked smile, he figured he knew where you were taking him.

the entrance wasn’t anything spectacular. in fact, it was quite dingy, a cellar amongst garbage. you kicked the trash bags out of the way and pulled the doors open, motioning for Shinsou to follow you, pulling the cellar shut tight behind you as you walked down the dimly lit path to another metal door.

knocking twice and then once more, a man eyed you and Shinsou up and down, asking for the password, which you gleefully cheered out. the man grunted then opened the door fully, telling you to enjoy your time. Shinsou jumped when the clang of metal sounded out but was instantly pulled in towards the scene in front of him. there were people all over the place shouting and cheering as two burly men fought in the ring in front of him. none of the people looked like they should’ve been there. people with bright green dyed hair, women in business suits, men lounging around in sweatpants and holey t-shirts, people of all races and ethnicities gathered together to watch.

it was like a scene out of a movie, the chaos and confusion almost being enough to stun a person where they stood, but Shinsou was trained to react to anxiety inducing situations and quickly began scanning around to find the man that might have known what was going on with nightcrawler.

murmuring a quick “stay here,” Shinsou delved into the crowd, spotting the man in charge quite easily, watching the way he cockily examined the fight and all its inhabitants like he owned them.

“hey, we need to have a little chat,” he stated, staring the man directly in the eyes.

“buddy, i don’t know-” the man was cut off as he became enraptured in Shinsou’s quirk.

it took only a few moments before the man was a blubbering mess, but he still wouldn’t crack on who nightcrawler was.

“listen man, she’ll kill me if she finds out i said anything,” he cried.

that was enough information for him to go off and with one final nod, he slipped back into the shadows to find you eagerly cheering on the fight, shoulder to shoulder with a pretty girl with red hair as you two chatted animatedly about what was happening.

“ready to go princess?” he questioned, watching you flush a bright pink underneath the harsh stage lights before you abruptly turned around to smash your lips against his own.

he stood there shocked for a few moments but before you could fully pull away, his lips were back on yours, this time fervent in worship.

the walk back to your apartment was excruciating, kisses being exchanged as Shinsou kept a watchful eye out for any seedy people, especially since you were so close to the latest villain attacks.

when you finally entered your apartment, it was all teeth gnashing together, clothes being practically torn off one another as you explored every inch of your bodies. his hands on your hips, trailing up to tweak your nipples, swallowing your moans with his mouth. your hands tangled in his messy hair, down to the back of his neck to pull him impossibly closer to you, not wanting to miss a moment of him. you didn’t know what he was going through or what possessed him to call you that nickname but you weren’t going to pretend that you weren’t absolutely infatuated with him.

to him, the nickname just slipped. you were so cheesy, so angelic and innocent and yet badass and strong at the same time. the things you went through in life, how you persevered despite it all, made his heart burst out of his chest. it was as if you almost understood him at an atomic level despite only knowing him for a few days. you shared the same morales, the same commonalities, what you wanted to do with your life, how you could change the world if you wanted to. he drank it all up with deep passion, whispering sweet nothings in your ear as he bottomed out inside of you, desperate to hear your moans and whines, to feel you melt underneath his touch.

after what felt like hours and seconds all at once, you collapsed on his chest, drunk off of sex, sweat clinging to your skin like a sheet. you absentmindedly traced your fingers up and down his chest, admiring the swirl of purple hair tufting from his pecs.

“Shinsou,” you started, waiting for his drowsy hum before continuing, “if you could really change the world for the better, would you do it? no holds barred?”

he contemplated you for a moment before responding, “i don’t think i’m cut out to change the world, especially if it means hurting people in the process.”

you hummed in thought before softly whispering, “i think out of any of the heroes, you’d be the one to really change the world. i mean, you’re the one who’s sitting here, kicked out all because the people who you’re supposed to trust with your life can’t even look you in the eye. you’ve suffered so much, struggled so much and yet here you are fighting to catch this villain.”

you paused to collect your thoughts before starting again, “i mean, i don’t know if i could do the whole killing thing. it seems like killing just leads to more killing, and then when will it end? but i don’t think causing a little chaos to get someone’s attention is so bad. property damage to the capitalistic animals that run this country, to the politicians who can look a depressed person in the eye and tell them they should just die, to the people who turn blind eyes to the injustices of this world. i mean, would that be so bad? would that ever really solve anything?”

Shinsou blinked once, twice, three times before shrugging his shoulders.

“i don’t really know if i can disagree with you on that one. i don’t know if i’d ever be able to go against something like The Hero Commission but if i could, i probably would. it doesn’t really matter now though. I’ll probably get kicked out after i find her anyways.”

“her?”

“nightcrawler. the man said she was a woman. it’s not much but it’s a start.”

you hummed in agreement, snuggling up into his side as you began to drift off into sleep, feeling safer than ever in his arms.

the next morning, Shinsou woke up to find out that the man he talked to the night before was dead. you were nowhere to be found and he began panicking before he heard the shower running and you humming to yourself, clearly happy and satisfied with the previous night's actions.

“hey, princess?” he questioned, knocking on the door and opening it to peek inside, watching the steam billow out.

“what’s up?” you asked, peering from around the curtain.

“i’ve got to check something out. i’ll swing by later, yeah?”

you pouted but nodded, blowing him a kiss before closing the curtain to continue your routine.

the walk to the underground club was much shorter than the night before now that his head was clear. there were police swarming the scene but one flash of his hero license and he was let on premises.

a few questions later and he was able to get all the information he needed. nightcrawler apparently found out the man slipped up and sent a lackey to dispose of him. turns out he was also in the sex trafficking business and used the shady underground fight club to hide the even shadier business of women and children. it turned his stomach to hear what was going on but couldn’t help but feel satisfied a sick man like him was no longer around to live.

he spent the rest of the day combing over clues as to who she may be. according to the police, she was there the night he was murdered. rumors spread that she had been planning her next attack as was using the man for intel. how they managed to get that much information but still didn’t know anything about her threw him off more than he could imagine.

before he had a chance to swing back to your apartment, he got a call from the head of his agency asking for a meeting. he swallowed thickly, wondering if they knew what he was doing behind the scenes. a quick ride and he was standing in front of the agencies shiny glass building trying not to throw up.

“Shinsou, good to see you! please, have a seat,” the corporate man stated, motioning for him to sit down across the desk.

he took two large strides and firmly planted himself down, staring the man in the eyes before nodding.

“now, Shinsou, we really appreciate everything you’ve done for this organization, but with the recent rampant villain attacks, we feel it best to place you on temporary leave until things blow over. that may be a few weeks or a few months but we can’t have our agency tarnished by representing someone who is so…”

“villainous?”

“sure, that word could work. i was going to say odd, but nonetheless. all we need you to do is sign right here saying you understand and we’ll make sure to get the checks sent out to you to cover your pay while you’re away.”

he stared at the paper for a few moments before delicately picking it up with his hands and proceeding to rip it in half. he wasn’t sure what caused him to do that but he didn’t care. at that point, he was done being treated like some villain when he was only trying to be the best hero he could be. with a small chuckle at the man’s stunned face, he muttered an “i quit” before walking out of the office with his head held high.

by the time he arrived at your apartment door late that night, he was absolutely panicking. how could he just quit his job as a hero so easily? he fought tooth and nail to be the best version of himself and it seemed to never be enough. he was in near tears when you opened the door, a confused look on your face before you motioned for him to come in and sit down on your couch, offering him a glass of water as you sat waiting for him to speak.

“Shinsou, what’s wrong?” you finally asked with a sigh, placing your hand on his knee to stop it from bouncing up and down.

“i-i quit my job, i just did it. i don’t know what came over me but they wanted to put me on leave and sign some dumb non-disclosure agreement and i just couldn’t do it. they fucked me over so bad and i just didn’t want to be their lackey anymore.”

you signed once more, flopping back into the couch before abruptly sitting up straight, looking him dead in the eye.

“Shinsou, i need to tell you something, okay? and i need you to listen to the whole story before you freak out on me.”

he nodded and that was the only confirmation you needed to continue.

“i’m nightcrawler. before, i was a hero and a damn good one at that. i was trained by The Hero Commission personally to be a faceless assassin. i did their bidding for the greater good, or so i told myself, but the killing became too much for me when they ordered me to kill children. i just couldn’t do it. and so they began framing me, creating me to be the bad guy that they always wanted. they’ve attempted to kill me before but they created a monster instead, someone who can fight and survive even when the odds are stacked against her. that attack that’s being blamed on me? it was them who attempted to frame me. they killed innocent people all to bring me down. the man at the nightclub? i didn’t kill him. i’ve stayed silent for awhile but i’ve been slowly building up my own army, trying to get people to join my side and my cause to fight against the injustices that are being forced upon us. Shinsou, i understand if you hate me for the rest of your life, but i also know you better than i think i should, and i know that you deep down would want to fight with me and for my cause, for the fall of The Hero Commission and the rise of something that would actually put everyone and their quirks first.”

Shinsou stared at you with a blank look in his eyes. you couldn’t tell what he was thinking or what was going on but you waited for him to respond. you would understand if he turned you in, understand if he killed you on the spot, but you secretly hoped that somewhere, deep down, he felt the same way that you did, fed up with being treated like a criminal, thrown to the streets like wild dogs, hunted and chased for sport.

after a few moments, you put your hands out, wrists up and pushed together as you waited for him to restrain you and take you away. he looked at you once again, this time eyes squinted together as if he was trying to figure out what you were doing.

“you can take me in. i wouldn’t be mad.”

“i’m not turning you in.”

you blinked owlishly at him, unsure of where this was going, but before you were able to speak again, he put one finger up to hush you.

“i get where you’re coming from and honestly, your ideas, your plans, they all make sense, but i don’t think i could ever be a part of that. i don’t think i’m the person that ever gets to make change. i’ll always be some outcast, and that’s okay with me.”

“Shinsou,” you started, not sure how to broach the topic, “you’re exactly what we need. a hero who fought so hard to be the best only to get shunned only when you were trying to help. i left the clue about the bar hoping someone would take notice, someone like you, that wanted to fight for a cause that meant something and now here you are. broken, confused, scarred but still strong enough to fight. we need you Shinsou. i need you.”

you held your hand out for him, waiting. you truly didn’t know if he was going to join, if he wanted to become something that he swore he never was, but they pushed him, treated him like scum and it was time for him to fight back. if he joined you, you would make sure he would never be treated that way again. instead, you would make sure he was someone who would always be included, someone who’s opinions and thoughts matter, someone who mattered.

he took a deep breath, fear and determination etched in his face before he clasped your hand in his own, squeezing firmly and looking you in the eye.

“if they want to paint us as villains, let's give them the best damn show we can.”

[achliegh]

Golden

Yeehaw Leo… it's all because this song came on one day (I don’t even really listen to country anymore so it really is fate). Leo is based off that song, each chapter is going to be based off a yeehaw song too.

Characters belong to @lumosinlove

Beta: @the-most-slyterin-hufflepuff & @punkkkboi

TW/CW: Smut, terrible yeehaw sayings and jokes, injuries, mentions of past death/suicide, minor character death, underage drinking, mentions of past arrests, cringe

Chapter Songs (listening in order is recommended):

Chapter 15:

Thomas was sleeping, he was having a peaceful slumber until he felt the back of a hand across his face. Waking up startled he sits up. He goes to ask what's wrong but his face is grabbed by Noelle who drags him into an extra spicy kiss. He takes a sharp breath in through his nose and cups the back of her head. Kissing back but still confused. He looks for Clay who sleeps on the other side of Noelle, he seems to be missing.

Then he notices the lump under the covers…. Then it all clicks.

Thomas closes his eyes and smirks into the kiss with Noelle as she whines into his mouth and unintentionally yanks on the hair at the side and back of his head. Thomas blindly starts feeling around for the edge of the covers, when he finds then he tosses them back.

“So cold!” Noelle mumbles on his lips, Thomas pulls away a bit to look down at Clay who looks like he is being suffocated between Noelle's thighs. It was a beautiful sight. “Thomas, please kiss me-” Her breath hitched and her legs twitched for a moment before her ankles locked behind Clay’s head. “I’m so close!”

Thomas doesn't want this to end yet and he knows Noelle has gotten to the point where she can’t get off unless she is being stimulated in more than one place. Trying to make this moment last longer, Thomas would lean in to kiss her but swerve away to kiss her cheek or her neck. Just to tease her. His hand that wasn’t supporting his body was cupping her jaw so she had to look at him.

He was acting like he wasn’t hard as a fucking rock.

Eventually, Noelle's hips were canting up like she didn’t have control anymore. Clay’s arms were wrapped under her legs and he was gripping her hips to hold on for dear life. She grabs Thomas’ face and shoves her tongue in his mouth aggressively. Thomas folds and kisses her back. She climaxes, her mouth falling open, her hands gripping her boys almost too tight, and her legs snap shut but Clay doesn’t mind.

Once she finishes her body goes completely limp and her eyes close because they are rolling in different directions because her body is so relaxed. Thomas is petting her hair, not paying attention at all. Just soaking in just how beautiful she is in her afterglow.

A shocked moan jumps out of his throat as he feels a tight wet heat around his almost painfully hard cock. His hand jumps to Clay’s hair and he looks down to see him looking back up at him with his iconic puppy dog eyes. Thomas tips his head back as he catches his breath from when he was surprised.

Noelle comes back too and sees her boys, she turns on her side so her head is resting on Thoams’ shoulder, she reaches down to pat through Clay’s wild curls, messed up from sleeping. Clay opens his eyes from when they slipped closed after Thomas looked away. He sees the way Noelle is looking at him and he starts grinding against the bed.

He wanted to show his lovers how much he loves and appreciates them, he’s never experienced love and trust like this. He has a thing for being praised by Noelle and he knows this head petting is a way she does that without words.

Thomas on the other hand.

“Clay- fuck you’re suck a slut aren’t you. Got Noelle off and couldn’t help yourself.” Clay immediately flushes bright red and pinches his eyebrows together as the mixture of the silent praise from Noelle and the degrading talk that Thomas throws at him. Clay is being pushed closer to his own edge. He has never came untouched before but he wouldn’t be surprised if they could do that to him. So he doubles down on Thomas as he grinds against the bed harder.

He knows Thomas is close by the way his voice has turned into a whisper. Clay pulls off just in time to get a face full of Thomas. He blinks a couple of times before he is tossed on his back.

“I always knew you were a cum slut but I never thought you’d purposely make me cum on your face.” Thomas gives Clay a tight pull after spitting in his hand and Clay moans louder than he meant to. He flushes again from embarrassment.

“Always so pretty for us, Doll.” Noelle has moved to be kneeling next to Clay’s side, lightly touching his smooth stomach up to his chest and looking at him. “So gorgeous.”

“I’m gonna-” Thomas gives Clay exactly three pulls before he is spilling over his hand and his own stomach. Noelle leaned over and is peppering his neck and shoulders in little kisses before getting up to grab their designated sex towel. It had Daffy duck on it and Clay brought it with him as a joke.

They all get cleaned up and sprawl out on the fresh sheets together.

“I’m going to order food because I’m so hungry I feel my stomach digesting itself.” Thomas is typing on his phone their normal orders from a deli just down the street from them. Clay smiles and laughs a bit from how dramatic Thomas always gets. Eventually the food is out for delivery and the tallest of the bunch gets up and pulls on some sweats.

Clay rolls over to his side and shoves his face into Noelle's boobs because they are his favorite things. Noelle absentmindedly starts scratching his scalp because she feels like it. Thomas comes back and see’s Clay’s face looking way too similar to his O face just from her scratching his scalp.

“Nope, if you do that I’m going to get all hot and horny again. We need to eat, Noelle leaves in five hours.” He sits on the bed and tosses them their sandwiches.

“What are you two going to do while I’m gone?” Noelle unwraps her sandwich and takes a bite while she checks her phone for her flight information. Her, Logan, Finn and Leo are all going to Canada to spend the holiday with her parents. Logan plans to tell their parents about Leo and she knows it won’t go well.

Her parent adore Finn and most likely only accepted Logan for being bisexual because of Finn. He was the perfect all-american boy who was successful… and white. Her parents have come to terms with her dating Thomas but they still bad mouth him in front of her with wild accusations.

She also knows that she is the favorite child from how her parents treat her versus her sisters and Logan. So she gets away with a lot more. But she knows if they knew about Clay they would freak the fuck out.

She doesn’t think this is going to go as well as Logan hopes but she will support him no matter what. So will Sydney and Aubrey. They have had to support each other for their entire lives. Their family dynamic was one of those, you act all friendly and nice when you are with your parents but once you are away from them you can actually be yourself. Oh, and talk shit on the parents because they always think they are right.

“If you want we can go visit my parents, they have been dying to meet you. Yes my mom talked to you when the team was down at Leo’s but they didn’t get to know you.” Clay is already done with his food because the bitch eats fast. “I have a pilot friend who could take us.”

“Really?” Thomas was halfway through his sandwich with his mouth full of food.

“Yeah, he was friends with Wyatt in the air force and flies us to Brazil every year. He’s a good family friend. Super funny too, I think he’d be a good comedian.” Clay smiles and takes the trash from their food, tossing it in the trash before going to get dressed for the day in his normal at home shorts, skipping a shirt and putting on socks because the wood floors are cold. “Want me to call him?”

“Yeah why not, I’d love to meet your parents.” Thomas has a soft smile as he takes another bite. He has met Noelle’s parents but knows they don’t like him no matter what he does so he plans to charm the pants off Clay’s parents.

Clay leaves to the living room to go call, Noelle gets up to get dressed for the day but before she can get off the bed Thomas pulls her into his lap. Just holding her and smooching his face into her neck.

“Worried?”

“What would I need to be worried about?” Thomas kissed her cheek and gave her a squeeze. “Well, I take that back, I guess Leo is going with you guys and I don’t see Maurice taking that very well.” Noelle nods and sighs.

“I’m worried too, I don’t think it’s a good idea but Logan tries so hard to impress Maman and Papa that it doesn’t surprise me that he is bringing Leo. I mean, Leo is rich, respectful, kind and American so he is everything they have ever wanted…. But with him having a criminal record and tattoo’s and the same sense of challenge that Clay has, I don’t expect them to take him in like they did Finn. Also, his teeth are still fucked from when Aubrey dumped him out of the car and he doesn’t really care about it, so it makes him seem like he doesn’t care about appearances. Which they do.” She flops her head on his shoulder and groans annoyed. “I guess I’ll give you updates about how it's going.”

“I’d appreciate that, sweet thang.” He gives her one last smooch before she gets up to get dressed. Clay walks back in as she is leaving, Noelle smacks his ass as she passes causing him to jump and look back as she disappears into the closet.

“He said he could take us tomorrow, he needs to call the airport and set up a take off and landing schedule.” He flops on the bed and narrows his eyes at the ceiling. “There are so many crumbs on the bed.”

Leo had never been on a commercial plane; it was kinda stuffy. It was also cramped, but he was between his boys so he didn’t really mind. Logan had his headphones on and Finn was sleeping with his head resting back on the seat. Leo was very squished, maybe a bit too tall for the seats. He only needed to be squished for about an hour and a half so he would survive.

As they landed Logan took off his headphones and started texting his parents, Noelle was a seat or two behind them so they were all being picked up by their mother, Leo thinks her name is Mary… honestly Logan barely talks about his parents unless he wants to show them an achievement of his so Leo really didn’t know anything about them besides they don’t like a lot of tattoos on a person so Noelle and Logan are both just wearing long sleeves the whole time to hide their newest additions while Leo is wearing his selling black turtles neck.

Saying he was nervous was a bit of an understatement.

They grabbed their bags from the claim and made their way outside, a large white SUV pulled up and Noelle started heading towards it, Logan following next to Finn and Leo trailing behind.

It was cold.

A short woman with a paisley pattern blue scarf covering her hair got out of the large car and ran up to Noelle and engulfed her into a tight hug, speaking quick French to her as Noelle took a second to hug back. Logan was bouncing on his toes a little behind her waiting for his hug. Leo watched as Logan deflated when his mother, Leo was guessing that's who it is, skips over him to hug Finn just as tight as Noelle. Leo stood to the side awkwardly waiting to see how she reacts to him.

He knows she has looked his way because he saw his reflection in her dark sunglasses. He acts like he is dusting stuff off of him as he looks down at his nice jeans, belt and boots that he wore today trying to make a good first impression. But judging from how Mary is dressed in an expensive dress, coat and shoes, he thinks he chose the wrong outfit.

She eventually pulls away from Finn after kissing his cheeks, leaving Finn an adorable shade of red, she helps him get his bags in the car. Leaving everyone else to put their own in by themselves. Glancing at Logan he notices he has his ‘I’m upset but will try to look neutral’ face on. Leo wants to reach out and comfort him but he knows now isn’t a good time.

The car ride was short, into the heart of the city to a nice sized house surrounded by even bigger houses that are almost the size of the ranch. It was a pale blue color with a red door that was glossy and wooden. Leo expected it to be heavy but he wasn’t expecting it to be shut on him before he even entered the house. He opens the door to find a man in a Police uniform hugging Noelle and laughing with Finn while Logan holds Finn’s hand.

He suddenly felt very uneasy being in the house, so he decided to stay standing by the door. Pretending he was invisible, standing with his luggage in front of him. Logan looks at him and raises an eyebrow until he sees Leo flick his eyes from Logan to the man. Logan nods and mouths an apology. Sending a shaky smile back Leo’s attention is turned to the two older siblings walking over to him.

“Hey guys.” He smiles tightly and accepts hugs from both of them.

“How are your teeth?” Aubrey asks light heartedly, as she sips on her glass of plum colored wine.

“Still broken.” He smiles with his teeth this time, already feeling more relaxed now that the sisters were joking with him.

“Don’t they hurt?” Sydney leans forward a little to examine them. “I work at a dentist. I could get them fixed for you.” Leo remembers Logan mentioning how Sydney was a dental assistant and Aubrey was a lawyer. A very successful family: Lawyer, Dental Assistant, Marine biologist, and a Pro-Hockey Player. He shakes his head no when he looks past them to see Logan finally getting some form of affection from his parents, his father is patting him on the shoulder as Noelle follows her mother into the kitchen and Finn goes to take Logan and his bags to Logan’s room. Maybe he should take his bags too.

“Papa, this is Leo.” Logan gestures to Leo and he takes that as his queue to go over to them. He walks over, trying to calm his nerves. Standing next to Logan he holds out his hand to shake his fathers. “I thought it would be nice to bring him along.” Logan doesn’t plan to tell his parents they are dating until after the first dinner together. His father looks Leo up and down with his intense green eyes taking in every flaw of his. Eventually he takes his hand and shakes it, a bit harder than Leo was expecting.

“You a manual labor worker? Your hands are quite rough.” Leo tries to pretend he didn’t see Logan’s dad wipe his hand on his trousers.

“I sell horses down in Louisiana, my family owns a ranch.”

“Your accent is quite thick, ever thought of speech therapy so people can understand you better?” Leo furrows his brows and shakes his head slightly in surprise. No one has ever been that blunt to him before. “It might be better for your… business.” Logan clears his throat.

“He is living with Finn right now in Gryffindor.” Logan notices how his dad's expression becomes one of suspicion and untrust. Swallowing his worry he continues on. “He is a Professional Bull Rider during the summer.” His father slowly nods as he takes in the information given.

“Explains the dirty boots on my floor. Dinner is in an hour.” He turns away from them and starts walking as Leo is looking down at his freshly polished boots, they were his formal boots that rarely ever get worn. “Oh, and I hope you have another place to stay, we don’t have room in the house for you.” Leo looks up to see Logan’s dad staring at him seriously before he starts walking again. Logan is just as confused as Leo and the sister behind them. Before Logan can go after his dad Leo grabs his arm.

“Hey it’s okay, I saw a hotel just down the street I can stay at. I don’t want you to fight with your parents over me.” Logan is looking like he is going to argue back but then he sighs in defeat and nods. Leo looks back at his bags for a second before following Logan down the stairs, following a long hall into Logan’s room. It was quite small, the walls were a boring cream color that doesn’t scream Logan. Wild and vibrant Logan. The bedspread was dark burgundy and the bed was twin mattresses on a queen frame put together. Leo could see them under the short duvet. There was a lot of hand-me-down furniture in the room. Or Leo was guessing it was from how old and beat up it is, all mismatching colors and textures. The carpet was a dull brown and there was a broken closet door.

As he was taking in the room around him, which barely had enough room for them to move around, he noticed the door hinges looked as though they had been taken off and put back on a few times. He didn’t ask about it. He knew family was a sensitive subject for Logan.

“I’m sorry, he doesn’t really know how to be subtle about things.” Logan hugs Leo after closing the door that doesn’t quite shut properly. “I’ve never seen him so mean to a stranger before.”

“Is he mean to people he knows? Like you?” Logan shakes his head and Leo relaxes a bit. “This isn’t really what I expected your room to look like, it’s very” He looks around as he rubs Logan’s back and Finn is still trying to find a spot to put their bags. “Bland.”

“I was never allowed to decorate how I wanted because my parents told me it would be harder to sell when they retire and move to France where the rest of the family is. It used to be my dad’s office space before I was born. They didn’t really plan for me, but they love me and that's all I need.” Logan pulls away and flops on his bed.

“Aha!” Finn has found a place to fit their bags and looks at Leo. “Where are your bags? I found a place for all three to fit.” He smiles so proud of himself. “I tell you, playing Tetris has really helped me in my life.” Plopping his hands on his hips and leaning a little to the side he notices how quiet Leo and Logan both are. Logan is picking at his bedspread and Leo has his arms crossed leaning against the wall. “Did I miss something?”

“I’m getting a hotel room, I don’t think Logan’s dad likes me much.” Leo smiles at him, watching as Finn’s face goes from his smile to a confused frown.

“But I thought they said he could stay over the phone.”

“Papa shook his hand and told him he can’t stay, I think it's because I told him that Leo is living with you.” Logan is looking rather guilty when he looks up at them.

“Lo, babe. It wasn’t anything you said, I just have that effect on people, especially older people.” Leo takes the two sets front he door to the bed to lean down and kiss his forehead. “And I don’t mind, really it's okay.”

“I can stay with you.” Finn sits next to Logan as he speaks, jostling the bed, causing it to squeak.

“I don’t think that's a good idea. You better stay here, plus I think Lo needs you.” he smooches Finn’s forehead as well and pulls out his phone to call the hotel down the street for a reservation.

Dinner smelled amazing, walking up the stairs Leo followed the other two. The kitchen was rustic but sleek, lots of bright whites and khaki. A table is set to the right of the large granite island where all the food is set out. Leo is told to sit while Finn and Logan get a plate of food for him. Logan's parents are sitting on either side of him, his dad has changed out of his uniform to some lounge pants and a t- shirt. His mother was still in full makeup and the fancy dress and shoes from earlier. Leo knew their dynamic immediately. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair as the parents speak to each other in French not knowing that he can understand them.

“C'est un criminel, j'ai regardé son casier.” Leo acts like he isn’t listening but he can’t help but grip his pant leg under the table.

“Il essaie également de corrompre Finn. Vivre avec lui ne me semble pas bien.” It appears the parents have been gossiping about him. Sydney and Aubrey Place plates of food in front of the parents and go to sit across them side by side. Leaving two spaces open next to them.

“Les filles, éloignez-vous de lui. c'est un méchant.” Logan’s dad said, whose name Leo learned from Finn, is Maurice. He waits for Logan and Finn to sit before he relaxes, Logan setting a plate of food in front of him.

What was left he was guessing. There definitely isn’t southern hospitality up here.

“Logan, pourquoi amenez-vous ce... Mec ici. Dans notre maison.” Finn looks around confused and shares a look with Leo, who hasn’t touched his food and is looking rather upset.

“Il parle français, maman…” Logan is looking at his parents with a completely baffled look, how could they be this bold and this rude. Noelle was still missing from the table, her place already having food at it, yet she wasn't there. “Where is Noelle?”

“I’m here! Sorry I was talking to some friends.” Noelle is red in the face as she sits down at her spot, looking rather glowy… Logan cringes at the thought of what she was doing. “Dinner looks lovely Maman.”

Her mothers face completely lights up and she starts rambling on about how she made dinner. While everyone was eating, it was mostly silent. Maurice suddenly turns to Leo.

“Tell us about your family? I would like to know you better before I figure out if I want you around Finn and Logan.”

“Well… my mom works on the ranch selling the horses with me, she was a beauty queen when she was younger.” Leo notices Mary roll her eyes out of the corner of his own. It was irritating. “ My dad was an AirForce pilot but passed away a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Aubrey sends him a sad smile and Sydney nods in agreement.

“If you don’t mind me asking. How did your father pass?” Maurice wipes his face with his napkin and looks at him sincerely for the first time that night. Logan gives Leo a look that tells him to tread lightly. Leo thinks for a moment before answering, taking a bite of food so it doesn’t seem like he is stalling.

“He died from a gunshot wound, Sir.” The table goes silent for a moment but Leo just keeps eating so as to not make the awkwardness even worse. “We planted a tree for him, a Weeping Willow by the pond he loved.”

“That's very sweet.” Mary says as she lightly pats his forearm in what is supposed to be a comforting way. Leo knows she doesn’t mean anything bad so he stuffs the irritation he feels down.

“Any siblings?” Sydney tries to move the conversation along from the morbid topic of death. Her plate was finished and her napkin was covering it as she took a drink of water.

“I have a best friend Clayton, he's basically my brother.” Leo notices how Noelle stops and sees the slight alarm in her eyes, he knows better than to throw her under the bus like that so of course he won’t mention their relationship.

“Can we see a picture of him?” Sydney smiles genuinely and it makes Leo relax a bit. Talking about Clay was easy, they had so many stories. He could definitely twist them to be more appropriate. Leo nods and pulls out his phone, trying to find a good picture. He lands on one of them in their rodeo grab from last year right after Leo had his face smashed into the poll of Canadian Mist. “Oh he’s a cutie!” She smiles at the picture and Leo gives her his phone to take a better look, she leans over to show Aubrey.

“You have a good looking family.” She passed the phone to Noelle whose eyes softened at the picture but her face stayed neutral, nodding in agreement she passed the phone to Maurice. He sat there for a moment just looking at the picture, Leo wasn’t sure what he was staring at until his mouth opened.

“So it appears your mother was rather unfaithful. Obviously, you are white and I’m guessing your parents are white… yet one of her sons is black.” Leo, Finn and the siblings all sit there in shock, Mary doesn’t even flinch and just finishes her meal. That was the last straw for dinner, Leo stands up quickly snatching his phone from Maurice who was scrolling through his photos, his chair squeaks but he doesn’t care as he walks off towards the basement bathroom that he remembers passing on the way up from Logan's room. Stomping down the stairs and quietly closing the door.

“Papa! He said he was his BEST FRIEND! Someone LIKE his brother! Not his actual brother, ugh you are so mean sometimes!” Logan gets up and follows Leo, Finn is about to join him but he is asked to help with the dishes and is too afraid to say no. Logan bounds down the stairs and looks in his room first, not finding his cowboy there he heads towards the bathroom. He sees the light is on under the door and he knocks. “Leo? Sunshine? It’s Logan, can I come in?”

“One second.” He hears a slight crack in Leo’s voice and his heart just breaks, he hears a bit of shuffling and then the door is slightly opened. Leo had reached from where he was sitting on the closed toilet seat to open the door. “I didn’t mean to storm out like that, I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing? What he was was fucking cruel and you know it.” Logan kneels down on the cold linoleum between Leo’s legs so he can look him in the eyes. Placing his hands on his thighs he dips his head a bit to look at Leo’s downturned face. “I’m sorry he said that and I understand if you want to go home.”

“This is important to you, Sweet Pea. I won’t leave.” Leo looks up at him, his eyes are brighter than normal and Logan is guessing it's because he was either crying or tearing up before he knocked on the door.

“Leo you do so much already-”

“I’m staying Lo, I’m staying because I promised and I don’t break promises.” Leo smiles a little at him and Logans sighs. Leo is so stubborn sometimes, but Logan loves that about him. Defeated he sits back on his heels and rests his head on Leo’s thigh.

“Can I at least make you feel better?” He has an idea of what to do, running his hand up and down the long inner thigh that belongs to the beautiful man in front of him. Leo’s breath hitches for a second. Looking away from where his hand is tracing the seam of Leo’s jeans to see a blush across the blonde boy's nose. “Please?” His hand moves to palm Leo’s slowly growing tent in his jeans and smiles when he sees a nod. Getting comfortable Logan sits on his butt with his legs on either side of the base of the toilet, Leo’s feet set behind his hips.

Logan leans forward and undoes Leo’s belt and jeans pulling them down just enough that they rest on his upper thighs. He can’t help but smile at Leo’s underwear being Canadian themed. Pulling the waistband down he is just about hit in the nose but Leo’s full erection. Looking up to Leo who has his hand over his mouth to keep him from laughing he smiles.

Licking just beneath the head he watched Leo's expression change. Knowing at this angle he won’t be able to take all of Leo in his mouth he grips the base and takes the red tip into his mouth, sucking just enough to make Leo’s eyes scrunch shut as he keeps himself from making a sound. Running his tongue up the large vein on Leo’s cock he feels a hand in his hair and knows he is doing well. He finally takes as much of Leo into his mouth as he can and sucks hard in a way that would be painful to most but he knows that pain just makes it better for Leo.

After a good couple of minutes of this Leo felt like he was teetering on the edge when there was a knock on the door, not knowing if Logan hears it, he tugs his hair lightly in a way he wouldn’t durring sex to catch Logan’s attention. Logan pulls off and is about to ask what is wrong when the door handle turns, luckily for them Logan has a habit of locking the bathroom door.

“Logan? Are you in there?” It was his dad. Logan looks at Leo and gives him a quiet gesture with his finger to his lips as he uses his other hand to continue working Leo who threw his head back and covers his mouth tightly so he doesn’t make a sound. “Logan.”

“Yeah?” His voice is a bit dodgy, like he has been crying, but really it was from having a dick in his throat... but his dad didn’t need to know that.

“Are you crying? I raised you better than that, you need to be a man and come talk to me.” Maurice stomps off back up the stairs. Logan just goes back to what he was doing. Sucking Leo back do to his knuckles where his fist is holding the rest of Leo. It takes about two more minutes before Leo is cumming down his throat. After swallowing it all Logan stands up and settles himself in Leo’s lap kissing him passionately. Leo cups his cock through his pants and lets Logan grind down on his hand until he finishes into his pants. Leo is peppering Logan’s neck in kisses as he is coming down from his high.

Walking back upstairs to a rather quiet house was eerie, Leo and Logan actually find Finn and Noelle outside on the back porch by the heater just detoxing from dinner. Logan walks out first, sitting between them and sighing loudly. He is now wearing Finn’s sweatpants which are much too long on him but are slightly tight on his thighs. Leo follows after he pats down his pockets making sure he has his cigarettes and lighter because a smoke sounds amazing at the very moment.

Walking outside with his cigarette in between his lips he lights it and takes a long drag, moving to sit next to Noelle since there are only two benches outside and they both fit two people.

“You alright?” Noelle looks up from her phone. He was texting her boys and letting them know how everything went with dinner. She looks up to see Leo just staring off into the distance and decides its best not to press. “So, do you think telling Maman and Papa is a good idea after all that?” She turns her gaze to Logan who is resting his head on Finn’s shoulder with the red head's arm around his own.

“I still want to tell them, they need to know that I am happy with the loves of my life.” Leo blinks out of his disassociating stare to look at them. Logan doesn’t seem phased by calling him a ‘love of his life’ but they haven’t said the big three words to each other yet.

“Mind if we join?” Sydney and Aubrey walk over to them on the porch and perch themselves on the arms of the benches.

“Perfect timing, I actually want to tell you something.” Logan shares a glance at Leo, who nods knowing what he is going to tell them, Leo likes all the Tremblay siblings so he doesn’t mind them knowing. He knows they will support them. “You know how Finn and I are dating?”

“Yeeaaah?” They both say it at the same time and in the same way that it's almost freaky.

“We are also dating Leo.” It was silent for a few seconds before the sisters broke into giant grins.

“I told you!” Sydney shouts at Aubrey who is looking shocked but happy. “I knew the second you were getting the yeux de mort from our baby brother after you broke Leo’s teeth!” Sydney laughs a bit as Aubrey turns red.

“I didn’t mean too! Also, I’m happy for you three. You should know I’m bad at reading relationships by now.” They chat from a few seconds before the slamming of the door to the porch brings them out of their delightful bubble. Maurice is standing outside of the door looking like he is about to kill. His eyes are dangerously sharp and his breathing is fast. Walking over to the group pointing to the window behind them… that's open. Logan goes pale and Finn looks down at his hands trying to act like he isn’t there. Noelle, Sydney and Aubrey all just look at each other and decide it's best to leave. Walking towards the door giving each other worried glances.

“What! Did I just hear! You are dating this- this- this lowlife criminal?! Just because he has money does not mean he loves you Logan! He is a leech! He is dirty and will trick you into doing things for his own pleasure!” Storming over to Leo he grabs the collar of his turtle neck and yanks him forward on the bench.

Nose to nose.

“Sir I-”

“I don’t care what you have to say! You stay away from my son and his boyfriend, you whore! You are not good enough for them and will never be good enough for them… You. Are. Scum.”

“Papa! Stop it! He has never done anything to hurt us, and I know he never would! He is not ‘buying’ our love! Stop treating him so poorly, we want him just like we want each other!” Logan stands up and tries to get his dad's hand to let go of Leo’s shirt but just ends up getting pushed away.

“Logan. Stay out of this, I am protecting you because you apparently don’t know how to.” Maurice glances down at Leo’s neck where his tattoo is now exposed from Murice holding the neck of his shirt. “I bet you are covered in tattoos! I should have you arrested for trespassing on my property.” Leo’s eyes go wide and he doesn’t know what to do, he knows if he opens his mouth this will all get worse. So he stays silent. “He doesn’t even have the guts to protect himself.” He roughly lets go of Leo’s collar and turns to face Logan. “He will never be allowed in my house again after this trip, after tomorrow he will be gone and never come back.”

“Then I will never come back.” Logan and Maurice look strikingly similar, nostrils flared, hair curling wildly, cheeks flushed from anger. There was no doubt they were father and son.

“You will come back, because you are family. He is not and never will be.” He doesn’t let Logan respond before he starts stalking back towards the door, footsteps heavy making Leo’s ears ring with every step he takes.

“Leo? Can you hear me?” He blinks a couple times, finding Finn sitting next to him and holding his hand tightly. Logan is gone, probably following his dad to keep arguing. Leo didn’t want Logan to argue with his family over him. “Hey, look at me.” Leo is brought back from his thoughts once again, looking into those copper colored eyes he loves so much.

“I’m okay.” His answer was short and his hands were slightly shaking but he grips Finn's hand tighter. “I don’t want to come in between Logan’s family like this…”

“Baby, it’s going to be okay. Him and his dad's relationship has always been rocky.”

“But… They love you.” Leo is about to continue but receives a rather annoyed look from Finn.

“They only like me because… honestly I really don’t know because I have made Logan do lots of stupid stuff in college they wouldn’t approve of.” Finn gives him a soft smile and kisses his forehead. “Leo, we aren’t going anywhere. I promise.”

“I think I’m going to head to the hotel for the night, I need some alone time after that. If that's okay.” Leo stands up and tugs Finn’s hand to make him stand as well.

“Of course it’s okay, but if you need something you better call or else I’ll bury you alive.”

“Bit morbid.”

“With hugs and kisses.” Finn winks at him causing Leo to laugh a bit as they walk towards the door, Leo is checking his phone for Ubers nearby to take him to the hotel and books one. Not sparing the Tremblay parents another glance, he kisses Logan goodbye after telling him he is going to the hotel. Waving goodbye to the sisters hiding in the hallway eavesdropping on the argument in the kitchen, he takes his bags and walks out the front door.

The next morning Logan is waiting eagerly for Leo to show up for breakfast. When he does, boy oh boy does he make an entrance. Walking in the door with his arms full of shopping bags from the local stores. He is smiling wide and seems to be in a much better mood. He has gifts for all the siblings and of course his boys.

“What's this?” Maurice asks as soon as he sees the mountain of bags under their Christmas tree, they were here for the holidays after all. There were separate piles for everyone and Leo was in the middle of setting up Finn’s pile when the devil himself walked in the room.

“You said I buy love, so I bought things… with love.” Leo smirks at him and Logan tries to hide his amused smile behind his hand, walking over to Leo and gluing himself to his side. Leo looks down at him and wraps his arm around Logan, giving him a squeeze before they share a kiss much to Maurice's dismay.

“Can I have one?” Finn walks over to them with the rare shy smile on his face, Leo leans forward to give him a kiss as well. The rest of the day went rocky but better than yesterday, with Maurice staying out of the way and Logan being stuck to Leo all day with Finn occasionally joining when he isn’t dragged off to do something by the rest of the Tremblay’s. Leo went back to the hotel that night feeling much lighter. Calling his mother to wish her and the Bruss', where apparently Clayton and Thomas were, happy holidays.

They fly home tomorrow and Leo was excited. Home means he will be watching the Dumias kids with Logan, while Pascal and Celeste go off on a date trip for the weekend and Finn has to fly to Florida for a wedding.

[morizoras-cave]

Robbed (Request)

Jake Gyllenhaal x gn!teen!co-star!reader, Tom Holland x gn!teen!co-star!reader

Genre: angst, fluff

Request Description: hi! I'm absolutely IN LOVE with your work and was wondering if you could write a Tom Holland x teen!costar!reader and Jake Gyllenhaal x teen!costar!reader. Whilst hanging out together, the reader chooses to go out alone at night to buy food and ends up getting mugged. She doesn't come back for a while, so Tom and Jake leave the hotel to find her crying on the side walk. They take care of her and are super protective and there's just a lot of fluff. Tysm!

Warnings: robbing, violence, threatening, language

(A/N): hey so reader doesnt buy food but rather pads for their friend :) 

“Come on, Harley! Whaddya doing?” 

Yes, not even two minutes into the mobster movie you were watching, had Jake decided to put on his Italian accent and yell hopelessly at the character. Thirty minutes later and he was, unsurprisingly, still doing it. You and Tom exchanged glances and laughed at him, because although it was mildly annoying, it was also viciously funny. 

“Wait, no! They can’t kill Harley?” Tom complained, looking up from his phone to realise Harley was, in fact, dying. 

“I know. I’m so bummed out,” You sighed and stuck your hand in your bag of sour gummies. 

You, Jake and Tom, being the leads for a new movie, had been working together for several months. Over the course of filming, you’d gotten into the habit of hanging out every Friday (which was originally a way to stop you from going out and being irresponsible).

It was one of those hangouts you now found yourself in. Just relaxing after a hard day of work with your pals. 

“Man, this movie sucks, dude,” Jake said, this time uncloaking his voice of the Italian mobster accent. You and Tom both nodded. You were about to suggest playing some board games, when your alarm, that traumatising and reality crushing tune that woke you up every morning, blared throughout the room. 

Your brows furrowed and you picked it up. The message that was displayed on the screen, was put so eloquently: ‘you need to go buy pads for lily. im like 100% sure you fucking forgot, you idiot’

“Nya, shit,” you mumbled and quickly turned off the alarm. 

“What’s up?” Jake asked, shuffling in his chair. You sighed and started gathering your things and your jacket. 

“I’ve gotta go buy stuff for my friend,” you said vaguely. You never thought of periods as embarrassing, but you knew Lily, your best friend, was a very private person, and she probably wouldn’t appreciate you telling two of the biggest Hollywood stars on the planet, that she was at home bleeding to her death. 

“Buy stuff?” 

You rolled your eyes, “It’s female-friend stuff. It’ll take me, like, 20 minutes to buy it and bring it to her. Don’t worry about it.” 

Jake and Tom exchanged glances, chewing on the idea. “Alright, but be back quick, because I think we should play Monopoly instead of watching the only good character in this movie die.”

“Done deal!” you said and with that you were out the door. 

At first, everything went just as you expected it to. You went to the store that was 5 minutes away and bought some pads (and some chocolate because you’re a nice person) for Lily. You exited the store, and decided to walk behind the store to get Lily’s house faster. 

“Don’t fucking move, dipshit.” 

Admittedly, a pathetic opening line of a robbery. That didn’t make the knife you felt being pressed into your side any less scary. Looking to your right, a man, your attacker, was standing. 

He was pale and skinny and had a long beard. His eyes were crazy, wide open and twitching. He was smiling, too. He pressed the knife a little harder, causing a whimper to escape your lips. 

“I just want your money. That’s all I want,” he was trying very hard to look into your eyes, but you couldn’t stand his. You chewed your lip, wondering what to say. 

“I- I don’t have any-”

Given the situation you found yourself in, maybe you shouldn’t have been so shocked at this, but the slap and the sound and the rippling pain that all came at once, sent a gasp and tears spilling over your eyes. 

“Wrong, bitch! Give me your fucking money!” he pressed the knife harder, you swore it was drawing blood. You tried shying away from it, but he had a firm grip on your shoulder. 

“Okay,” you whispered, shaking hands reaching into your pockets to pull out your wallet. “Okay, okay, here.. Here..”

You pulled out any and all cash you had, probably all summing up to be about 35 dollars. 

“Good, kid,” he patted your head like he was your uncle, like you were old friends, and then removed the knife from your side. You heard him running away, but you couldn’t be bothered to look where. Your legs wobbled and you collapsed right there on the side walk, doubling over and starting to cry.

Meanwhile in the Gyllenhaal household, Jake and Tom were growing pretty impatient. 20 minutes had passed. They’d set up the Monopoly game and even picked the characters. Now, they just sat and waited.

21, 22, 23, 24, 25 minutes passed, and they just waited. 

“This isn’t like them,” Tom finally spoke up. He’d been resting his head on the wooden table and blowing air on his shoe-character, trying to make it fall over. 

“I know! I’m trying to text them, but they’re not answering. Should I call?” 

They looked at each other. Then the time. 30 minutes had passed. “Yeah, call them.”

Unsurprisingly, you didn’t answer (seeing as you were crying on the sidewalk with a small cut in your side and a slapped face). 

“Something’s wrong,” Jake decided. Tom nodded too. 

That was how they decided to go out and look for you, going to the nearest grocery store in their coats and sunglasses and scarves. You were nowhere to be seen inside the store (although, Tom did confuse you for an old lady for a moment). They went outside. 

An unnerved feeling churned in their stomachs. Tom led them to the path near the road, but the crunch of their steps on the asphalt was halted. Jake heard a sniffle. It was so faint, he wasn’t sure he was right, so he grabbed Tom’s shoulder harshly and halted him. 

Sure enough. Sniffles and sobs. And so the boys jogged behind the building, and heart beating nervously, they saw you there on the side walk, crying and shaking alone. 

“Y/n!” 

You snapped your head up. Your face was puffy and eyes shiny. You wiped them furiously, but only making yourself cry even more.

“What happened, holy shit, are you okay?” 

And you fell into Tom’s arms, whilst Jake rubbed your back comfortingly. You retold the shaky story of how this man had mugged you, and how he’d had the knife in your side, and hit you. And how scared you were.

When you first said you’d been mugged, Tom’s eyes widened in shock. He leaned back to look at you. His arms tightened and his jaw clenched. You felt Jake stop rubbing your back for a moment. You turned your head and saw him pulling out his phone. 

“It’s okay now, N/n. It’s okay. You’re safe now, we got you. He can’t hurt you, alright?” Tom whispered lovingly. Jake had left your side to call the police. You had calmed down then, terror still roaming you skull hauntingly, but you were no longer crying, and your heartbeat was steadying. 

“I was just so scared. He could’ve done anything..” You whispered and shook your head. Trying to shake the feeling. 

“I know, I know. It’s okay to feel scared. But I’ll protect you now, Jake too. He won’t hurt you. He can’t.”

You nodded. 

The police arrived shortly after and you told them exactly what had happened. Jake, being the oldest and most responsible of the two, helped you with each question and each part of the process. 

Turns out, the police knew the guy. It wasn’t the first time he’d done something like that to teenagers. He was caught pretty quickly. 

Still, even though the fucker was in jail, you couldn’t help but feel scared. Tom and Jake never let you go to the store alone anymore. Not even in the daytime. But you liked that. You were pretty sure if they weren’t constantly going with you, you wouldn’t have gone at all. 

You had nightmares every once in a while. But Jake always came to your hotel room to comfort you. And when you felt like you were being overdramatic, he’d always convince you, you weren’t. 

You got over it (mostly) eventually, but you knew you wouldn’t have been able to without Tom and Jake. It felt good to know that they were willing to do so much for you without getting nothing in return. It felt good to have friends. And you’d return the favour any day for them. 

___________________________

Tag List:

@hera-the-writer @marvel-madness @40srogcrs @whatthefuckimbisexual @snarky–starky @garbage-potato @lozzypoz321 @allthecreativeonesaretaken @missamericana713 @rororo06 @shady80smusicsingercolor @ireadfanficforfun @deephideoutmilkshake @rae-is-typing @sophs-library @herecomesthewriterwitch @alicedanganh @eviemarvel @idk123906​ @xiumin-girl99​ @frostedgiant

[tooruluv]

Tooru Oikawa x F!Reader ( part 5 )

❝ my love for him is much like winter, a skeleton for the world to see. too bad he never liked the cold. ❞

description: being the neighbor and lifelong best friend of tooru oikawa definitely had it’s perks. you were never an outcast, always had a seat at lunch, got into volleyball games for free. the problem was, however, that being in love with him outweighed those perks. you would never tell him that, though, even if it hurt like hell.

genre: best friends to lovers, angst, unrequited love, fluff if you squint hard enough

word count: 1,916

warnings/notes: what if i just said “fuck the schedule”? anyway this one is a bit shorter so i’ve decided to post it early! some warnings: underage drinking (per usual), angst (per usual), and strong language (are we surprised?). enjoy, my loves.

tag list: @afuckingunicornn​ @maii-flowers​ @clandestinerays​ @brownandchill​ @readeretal​ @wedojustbevibin​ @shigarakiskitten​ @shittykawaa​

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For the first time ever, you didn’t meet the boys in the back after the game. For the first time ever, you just gave them a wave from the bleachers and left. For the first time ever, you didn’t congratulate them on a win.

It felt off. Oikawa never sent you a look, either; never stole a glance.

Sana met you outside (she was one of the girls who crowded the boys on the court after). She was smiling and cheerful and bright, as usual.

“That game was amazing!” She exclaimed as you began walking. “You wore the jersey! I didn’t find you in the crowd, I really tried! I only found you after the game ended.” She paused, but didn’t stop walking beside you. “Where are we going? Don’t you live next to Tooru..?”

“We’re getting alcohol.” You told her. “I’m not feeling myself tonight and would love to get a drink.”

“Oh, even better.”

The Sakanoshita Store was still open, neon lights still burning in the setting sun. It wasn’t too far, just a little out of the way, and Sana never complained once.

“Hello, my darling Keishin!” You greeted the man behind the counter.

“You brought a friend this time.” He stated simply. His paper was still high in front of his face, the smoke of his cigarette hovering above it.

“I did. She’s cool, don’t worry.” You placed a pack of wine coolers, hard lemonade, and a bottle of vodka on the counter. “We’re having girls’ night.”

“Looks like it.”

He set the paper down as he placed your drinks in a black bag and took your money. Always with the fast exchanges. You grabbed the bag.

“Now get out.”

“Adore you too!”

It was you who linked your arm through Sana’s, this time, as you left.

You had Tetsurou Kuroo’s number.

He offered it to you, along with his friendship, at the game as he scratched the back of his neck and did his best to pretend he flirted with girls all the time. You thought it was cute.

“Here’s my number. Text or call it sometime.” He had told you confidently, but then let the façade fall. “Or not. That’s fine too. Also, please don’t call me. I don’t answer calls from numbers I don’t know.”

You chuckled, and finally sat up from your slouched position on the bleacher. “Are you sure you want to give your number to a girl from a school you’re up against?”

“Yes, I’m sure. She happens to be cool.”

You raised a brow. “You don’t know her that well.”

“I know that she’s still talking to me while she’s pissed as fuck. And that she’s funny, and that she didn’t care that I was scouting from another school.” He told you. “I say that’s pretty cool.”

“She might have to text you, then.”

But as you walked with Sana to your house, you didn’t know if you were going to. You didn’t want him to expect a relationship, not when your heart clearly belonged to someone else. But if he was only looking for a friend.. maybe. You didn’t know. You were confused.

It scrambled your mind as you just focused on getting home and hanging out with the girl who was dating the man you love.

Iwaizumi hadn’t expected you to be waiting in your normal spot after the game. He knew that you mainly did that to walk home with Oikawa. Still, it was odd to come out to emptiness.

He was adjusting his bag on his shoulder when Oikawa came out of the door. Iwaizumi noticed that he looked disappointed for a moment, just a flash of emotion across his best friend’s face that he wouldn’t have caught if he didn’t know him as well as he did.

They started walking in silence.

Until, “Hey, Iwa.”

“Hi.”

“Is she mad at me?”

A pause. They didn’t need to define who “she” was.

“I’m not the one who needs to answer that.” Iwaizumi didn’t look at him, frustration heavy on his shoulders. “You almost kissed her and then told her that there was nothing to talk about.”

“She told you about that?”

“She tells me everything.”

“Oh.”

Oikawa sounded sad. Or defeated, to use a better term. Iwaizumi almost felt bad for him. He had no idea. Oikawa had no idea how hurt you had been, how much love you held for that man. He had no idea how much the little things he did affected you.

“She isn’t mad at you.” Iwaizumi finally told him, catching Oikawa’s attention. “She just… she just doesn’t understand. Why you’re not talking to her, keeping secrets. It never used to be like that between you two before.”

Another pause. “I couldn’t tell her.”

“Hm?” He didn’t hear Oikawa, his response nearly a mumble.

“I couldn’t tell her. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t tell her. About me and Sana.” Oikawa was staring at the stars, like they would give him some answer that he was searching for. “I only got together with Sana at the party, made it official or whatever. I was going to tell her that morning, but then I almost fucking kissed her. And now whenever I see her I think of the fact that I was so close to kissing her, and I can’t bring it up to Sana because what asshole makes it official with his girlfriend and then almost kisses another girl the next morning?” He took a breath.

“You’re not an asshole.” Iwaizumi looked at the boy beside him. “But ignoring your best friend because of something that didn’t even happen is a dick move. She misses you.”

A sarcastic laugh.

“I’m being serious.” He stopped in front of Oikawa’s house. “You’re confused, and that’s fine, but she’s even more confused. She’s not mad at you.”

“Are you dating?”

The question was so out of nowhere, Iwaizumi had to look around to figure out where it came from.

“Oh, you brilliant asshole.”

“You guys have been spending so much time together, and I always feel like I’m interrupting something whenever you two are talking, and…”

“I’m going to stop you there.” He placed a hand on Oikawa’s shoulder. “Me and her? Never dated, not dating, and never going to date. She’s not my type.”

God, he wanted to just scream from the rooftops at the two of them. Wanted to just tell him that you were in love with him, wanted him to know why you were as broken by this as you were. Hajime Iwaizumi was a lot of things, but being a dick was not one of them. He would never.

“Not your type..?”

He took his hand off of his shoulder, patting it twice before turning to walk towards his house. “She’s not my type. Besides, I’ve been dating Matsukawa for months.”

Six shots in and three wine coolers, and you were laying upside down on your desk chair. Sana sat on your bed, back against the wall and a giggling mess. The entire night had consisted of telling stories, asking each other questions, and getting to know each other. It was extremely fun.

“I met a boy tonight.” You spilled to her, giggling a little.

“A boy?” Sana leaned forward, cup still in hand and intrigue in her eyes. “You met a boy? Did you get his number?”

“Yeah, but..”

“You have to go for it!”

“I don’t know, it’s weird.”

“Oh no, was he weird?”

“No, he was super cool.” You smiled at the thought. “And super smart too. Came scouting from another school. The thing is, I’ve kind of had a thing for another guy for a while, and it’s weird to think of someone else in that way.”

 Subtle. You didn’t care.

 “The guy you’ve had a thing for, does he have a thing for you?” Sana didn’t ask you who, or pressure it. You liked her.

“No.”

“Then go for the boy you met today! You deserve a boy who likes you like you like him. Besides,” she motions to you. “You’re sexy as fuck. Any man who doesn’t have a thing for you is crazy.”

“I know you’re not the one telling me that.”

“Hand me your phone.”

You spun in the chair to sit upright, giving her your phone. She sat her cup on the floor as her glossy eyes scanned the device.

“The boy in question’s name?”

“Kuroo.”

“Mm, spell it.” Sana started typing as you told her the characters. A final tap. “There you go. The start of something new.”

She handed your phone back to you, and you looked at what she did. A simple text to Kuroo, a simple “hey! it’s the cute girl from the game ;D”.

Sana chugged the rest of her drink. “Oh! Oh my god, if you guys end up becoming a couple you can go on double dates with me and Tooru!! Oh, please let that happen I’ve been dying…”

You didn’t really pay attention as you watched the three little dots pop up. Kuroo was typing.

You never got hangovers. It was something you pride yourself in. Turns out, neither did Sana. Which is how you ended up where you were: fully dressed, hair and a little bit of makeup on (curtesy of Sana), and two bags in your arms at the mall before noon.

“Did he text? Did he?” Sana begged, head over your shoulder.

Kuroo and you had texted the majority of the night. Some of which were blurry, as you were pretty drunk for most of it (and he knew that, and reminded you to drink water but only if that doesn’t consist of walking down stairs).

And, this morning, decided to accept your invitation to join you and your friend (yes, you and Sana were considered friends now) at the mall.

You spotted him, sending him a wave to know where you were. He caught your eye and waved back as he navigated through the human traffic. Kuroo was wearing just black jeans and a random red shirt, and you’ve decided that red looks good on him.

“That’s him, the one in the red and the dark hair.” You told Sana.

“Mhm, that’s a man for sure.” She joked, bumping you with her hip when he finally was close enough to talk to.

“Hello, Tetsurou Kuroo.”

“Helllo, cool girl.” He greeted.

“Hope you don’t mind my friend came with me. This is Sana.”

You could’ve sworn that his eyes never left yours until that moment, like you were the only person he could see, and he hadn’t noticed the tall and pretty girl next to you until you brought her up. It made your insides swirl.

He shook his head before greeting her as well. “Hi, Sana. Nice to meet you.”

“Actually, I think I’m going to go shopping at Victoria’s Secret for a minute. I’ll leave you two to it.” She turned to you, sending you a small wink. “Meet me in the food court later?”

“I.. You’re sure?”

She pulled you closer by your arm, whispering into your ear just loud enough for you to hear. “I’m telling you right now that I would rather stare at a brick wall than third wheel for the rest of the day; I can feel his attraction towards you burning in the air. We can hang out tomorrow at school and you can tell me all about it.”

She pulled back, smiling as though she just told you something completely normal. “Nice to meet you, Kuroo. Take care of my girly, okay?”

Kuroo held up his right hand. “I solemnly swear.”

[the-final-sif]

For the anons that wanted to know about my “dabi actually makes progress on converting Katsuki into a villain” thoughts, here you go!

As these things often start, Katsuki gets kidnapped for a second time by the  LOV. Only, this time the league has a lot more power and influence to keep things covered up, making it nearly impossible for the heroes to get him back. All that they have going for them (although they don’t know it), is that Hawks is successfully embedded in the league as a double agent.

Katsuki still has no interest in joining the LOV. He's not even willing to lie about it, despite lacking any escape options. Tomura is upset and has plans of his own that he is about to discuss with the other members of the league, but Dabi cuts in, asking for a month or two with Katsuki to see if he can't change his tune. It’s certainly a bit odd, because out of all of them, Dabi has been the most certain Katsuki wouldn’t join them. Still, Tomura considers it and since he trusts Dabi, he accepts. Which leaves Hawks, whose been dying inside throughout this entire meeting, Morally Torn.

Hawks can't break his cover to get Katsuki out, but he's not okay with letting the kid get tortured either. So he tags along with Dabi, trying to figure out what his plan is, and trying to gauge what Dabi would be willing to do in the first place. While he’s gotten the vibe that Dabi has a soft spot for kids, and he’s not willing to do too much damage to one, particularly outside of a fair fight, he can’t be sure. Dabi’s too unpredictable to count on that.

Even though he tries to keep his questions casual, Dabi realizes what he's hinting at and laughs at Hawks, telling him he's been watching way too many movies. You don't get people on your side by torturing them. Hell, you can’t even get good info out of someone by torturing them. That shit doesn't actually work in the real world. It’s just something Hollywood clings onto because it makes for good dramatic tension.

It’s certainly reassuring to hear Dabi’s not going to torture the kid, but now Hawks is confused as to what Dabi is planning to do. Clearly, just talking to Katsuki won’t do shit. The kid is way too stubborn for that. He questions Dabi more directly, asking what his master plan in, and Dabi rolls his eyes.

“If you’re so curious, you can watch and learn.”

He means it too, as he leads Hawks to one of the security rooms, setting it up so it’s keeping watch over Katsuki’s cell. Dabi sends out a handful of texts, checks a few things, then tells Hawks if he decides he wants to stop watching to let Dabi know before he leaves the room, since risking Katsuki seeing him would be extremely dumb.

Then, with a concerning amount of confidence, Dabi walks out and waltzes down to Katsuki’s room, only stopping to grab some food for the kid. The food is offered when he enters, but is rejected. Just like Hawks expected. Dabi leaves it off to the side anyways, so Katsuki can have it later if he changes his mind. Then he settles down, sitting on the ground just like Katsuki is, and starts talking with the kid.

At first Katsuki doesn’t want anything to do with him, but Dabi manages to coax him into an argument, shifting their conversation carefully until he can talk about the positive values of the league, highlighting one in particular, the freedom to do what they want.

Katsuki gives him an incredulous look at that one.

“Oh yeah, this is exactly what fucking freedom looks like. Even if I signed up with you fuckers there’d be no goddamn ‘freedom’, it’d just be me doing whatever you assholes wanted.”

“Well now, that’s just untrue. If you were a proper member of the league then you could do what you want. That’s what most of us are here for.”

He gets an eyeroll as Katsuki tries to call his bluff,

"Okay, then what if what I want to do is kill you? Then what, huh?"

Dabi merely shrugs in reply, although Hawks catches a glint to his eyes which tells him that somehow, this is what Dabi wanted all along.

"You'd be welcome to try, kid."

And then he lays out an offer for Katsuki. If what he wants is to try to kill him, then he’ll give him a chance. Hand to hand combat. No quirks allowed, since their quirk match up is really bad (even Katsuki has to admit, TNT vs a matchstick is just asking for trouble). Other than that, once the match starts, anything goes.

Katsuki is 99% sure this is a trap. Hawks can see it in how it takes almost thirty seconds of silence before he gets out an answer, in how the kid’s eyes are darting every which way, and how his answer is oddly hesitant. Still, he agrees. What does he have to lose?

To his surprise, Dabi takes his restraints off (minus some sort of quirk nullification), and unlocks the cell door, holding it open for him. Katsuki just stares blankly for a few long seconds, before Dabi raises an eyebrow at him.

“You backing out already?”

Slowly, carefully, Katsuki shuffles his way out of the cell. Still watching Dabi  closely.

“You seem pretty fucking confident that I’m not just gonna run for it.”

It’s a challenge, but it’s also Katsuki trying to figure out why Dabi is so confident he won’t run. He knows there has to be something.

"You're in an enemy base, you don't have your quirk, and you don't know the way out. We’ve got people keeping an eye on us, and more than enough security that even if you killed me, you wouldn’t make it out. I know you’re smart enough to know you can’t win, and I know you can control yourself.” He pauses, shrugging again. “If you really want, I can go grab some chains to drag you around in, but it seems like a lotta of extra work for no reason."

Dabi's right too, Katsuki is smart enough not to make a move. He’s at a heavy disadvantage, but he’s also curious about what’s going to happen next. It’s enough to keep him walking by Dabi’s side, taking in as much of layout of the base as he can.

They walk to a decently large training room which Dabi locks behind them, leading Katsuki to the center before he starts talking.

“Alright kid, ground rules. I’m not going to make this easy for you, but I’m not going to retaliate. If you try to kill someone else, or try to escape, then I can’t promise there won’t be consequences, but anything you do in this room is fair game. You’ve got one hour, then I’ve got other shit to do. Got it?”

Very hesitantly, Katsuki nods, dropping into a fighting stance. Dabi looks it over for a moment, and then reaches into one of his pockets, pulling out a knife. Hawks’ heart almost stopped, but the knife is left folded and tossed over. Katsuki barely catches it, eyes wide as he looks between Dabi and the blade. Waiting for the trap to spring.

“Figured we ought to make this a bit more interesting. That’s yours, you can use it if you want. Or don’t. It’s your choice. Anyways, your time starts now.”

It takes a few seconds for Katsuki to realize that this is really a thing that is happening, but soon enough he makes a move and before he knows it, he’s getting into the fight.

The problem is, Dabi’s got way more experience in hand to hand and knife fighting than Katsuki does. Even with Dabi only dodging, he can't get a blow in.

For the first half the session Dabi lets him go at it, and then he starts giving Katsuki hints. Telling him to loosen his posture more, not look where he's about to slash, etc. Katsuki is super weirded out by it, but he tries the advice and it actually works, so he keeps listening.

Eventually, the hour is up and Dabi leads Katsuki back. Katsuki is so weirded out by the whole experience that he’s more complacent than he’s been since he got here. He even tries to return the knife when he’s back in his cell, but Dabi tells him to keep it.

“If you can get anyone with it, then they deserve it for not paying more attention.”

Hawks is totally baffled watching this entire scene play out, and he can't understand what Dabi's doing.

Yet the next day, Dabi goes back and repeats the process. And the day after that. And the day after that. Katsuki starts eating properly because he wants to keep his energy up for the combat sessions, and after a few days, they've become thinly veiled training sessions instead of pure combat. Katsuki's still trying to stab Dabi, but most of his time is spent improving his various combat skills.

They keep going for nearly a week, Hawks going out of his way to make sure he can watch each and even session, until on day 8, it hits him.

Katsuki has started responding positively to Dabi's presence, perking up when he enters his cell, looking to him after he's finished learning a new move, and when Dabi walks him to and from the arena, Katsuki's way more focused on the combat session then he is on escaping. He’s hardly even studying the base anymore since he’s so determined to win. Even in his cell, Katsuki’s attempts to get out are less frequent and have a lot less effort put into them, with him now spending most of his time practicing what he’s learned.

It leaves Hawks baffled, and he ends up asking Dabi directly how the fuck he managed to pull that off. The kid was- is- stubborn as hell, and Hawks  assumed that he’d be nearly impossible to win over.

Dabi laughs at him, just like he did at the start of all this, and says that couldn’t be further from the truth; Katsuki is damn near perfect for conversion. There’s only two real issues, namely, Katsuki’s attachment to the title of “hero”, and his bonds with his teachers/classmates. Outside of that, Katsuki is a kid who has no real emotional connection to his parents, he's completely attention/affection-starved and desperately wants to reach an impossible goal of perfection. He’s faced constant negative media attention, having been basically typecast as a future villain by UA during the sports festival, and it all leaves him very vulnerable.

If anything, Katsuki is the easiest kid in the world to work. All you need to do is know what you’re doing and take the time to do it right, which Dabi has been.

By letting Katsuki have freedom and go after something he actually wants (in this case, fighting Dabi), he got positive associations started right off the bat.

Katsuki has no idea how deal with affection/attention from a parental figure, but he does understand teacher-student relationships, and so far in his life, those have been just about his only positive relationships with adults. Teachers liked Katsuki, and as such, Dabi pivoting himself into a mentor position allowed Katsuki to be far more comfortable with him.

By giving Katsuki a lot of trust right off the bat, like letting him walk back and forth from the arena without any restraints, letting him keep the knife so he can defend himself, and letting him do what he wants in the arena, Dabi not only made him feel like he had freedom, but the thing that was stopping Katsuki from taking advantage of that freedom was himself. Katsuki is smart enough to not want to lose that freedom, and as such he became his own limiting factor.

He also gave Katsuki a goal to works towards to keep himself occupied, because Katsuki needs to be making progress towards something in order to be happy. By changing his goal from ‘escape’ to ‘beat Dabi in a fight’, it means Katsuki is spending a lot less time and energy trying to escape, and on some level it reduces his actual desire to escape, because escaping means he didn't actually ‘win’.

Not only that, but because Katsuki is really attention/affection-starved, he's a lot more affected by getting positive attention from an adult figure than he likes to let on. Katsuki doesn't like unearned positive attention, he doesn't understand how to accept affection/attention from people normally, all because he's been starved of it most his life. It makes him get angry and hostile quickly. So Dabi's been very careful to only give him limited amounts of earned positive attention, slowly increasing the amounts but focusing on quality rather than quantity. It makes Katsuki’s positive associations that much stronger, and leaves him craving more.

Hawks is blown away by how much thought Dabi put into this and how much sense it makes. Everything he’s doing adds up to that same goal of winning Katsuki over, and from the looks of it, it’s actually working.

By week two, Katsuki is tolerating hair ruffles and gentle teasing from Dabi without protest, he walks closer to Dabi, he nearly instantly looks to Dabi for directions in unfamiliar circumstances, and despite Katsuki's best efforts, it's clear Dabi has become a positive figure in his life. Hawks is left watching all of this with a morbid fascination because he's known this kid and tried to interact with him on the heroes side of things for months now without any success, and even the Katsuki's teachers haven’t been able to make so much progress with him in such a short span of time.

At some point in week two, Katsuki and Dabi are walking in the hallways. Previously, Katsuki has encountered a few other people passing by in the hallways. All of them keep their distance, and Katsuki's always reserved and watchful, trying to remember as many faces as he can, but not interacting with any of them.

That day shouldn't have been any different, but the guy who passed by them is a low-level guy in with a chip on his shoulder. He sees Katsuki watching him and tries to pick a fight with him about it. Katsuki is instantly nervous, but he doesn’t let it show. Still, he doesn’t have a quirk, the guy is about three times his size, fighting anyone other than Dabi will likely get him in trouble, and Katsuki has very limited room to maneuver. Doesn't mean he's not going to tell the guy to fuck off, but he also knows he's probably about to get beat up for it.

Or, he would've, except Dabi intervenes, stepping between the two and backing Katsuki up in telling the guy to fuck off. He forces the guy back and makes it very clear that if he comes near Katsuki again, then Dabi will kill him, no questions asked. The guy recognizes Dabi as a higher rank, and someone who could actually make good on that threat, and so he steps the hell off.

Dabi waits until he's gone before he tells Katsuki next time, if someone starts shit with him like that, he's allowed to use his knife to make them fuck off, and Dabi will back him up. Hawks has been watching this whole exchange, and he can see instantly how much that strengthens Katsuki's attachment. It's starting to really worry him now.

Luckily, Katsuki gets rescued not too long after the incident. The heroes finally find out where he is and they get him out of there, no worse for wear. Hawks is able to drop some hints so they identify that he's got some level of Stockholm Syndrome, and he ends up breaking out of the mindset that Dabi was slowly luring him into.

Only, even after Katsuki is rescued, Hawks can't forget all the stuff Dabi said. He starts noticing how Katsuki doesn't really trust the adults around him, doesn't know how to handle real positive attention, how the media has only gotten worse, and the list goes on and on. Before he was able to laugh it off, but now... he finds himself actually taking several pages out of Dabi's book.

Hawks feels guilty about it, but Katsuki responds to it wonderfully. Dabi already laid a lot of groundwork for him, and it makes so easy for Hawks to slip into the role of a mentor figure. He's not trying to do it for any nefarious purposes, he just hates seeing the kid unhappy after all the shit he's been through while Hawks sat back and watched.

Before long, Katsuki is going so far as to reluctantly ask Hawks for advice. First about heroics stuff, and then about personal stuff. He’s the first person Katsuki opens up to about struggling with lingering positive thoughts about Dabi. Hawks is allowed to rest a hand on Katsuki’s shoulder and sooner than he thought, Katsuki will lean into it. He’s able to give the kid a hug and it isn’t unwelcome, and after one extremely long day, Katsuki even ends up falling asleep on him.

Katsuki’s doing better with other people too, with Hawks’ encouragement. He’s gotten much less aggressive with civilians, his rescue is improving, and he’s gotten better about talking things out with other people.

Just about everyone else around Katsuki is baffled as to how Hawks of all people somehow got through to the kid, and Hawks has to play dumb. He laughs them off, pretending it’s all just luck while dropping a few hints to try to encourage other people to take similar steps, only to get frustrated when nobody picks up on them. People just keep going on and on about how he’s done the impossible, and it’s grating to listen to because holy shit, it's really not that complicated.

Why was it that Dabi somehow got all of this in five minutes and knew just how to handle this kid, while it seems every other adult in Katsuki’s life is clueless? It’s super frustrating, but he can’t say shit without blowing his cover, so he keeps quiet and just does his best to help Katsuki as he can.

[aficwhore]

As I Lay Dying...(Part One)

Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader, Team x Reader

Warnings: violence, language, near death experience, reader injury, slight fluff

Word Count: 2,655

Summary: After having a dry spell the team go on a case, the unsub is kidnapping and killing women around the reader’s age and appearance. As she goes undercover the plan falls through, will she survive? (slow burn, sort of?)

A/N: So I wrote the first half of this and it was super long, like way too long, so I decided to split this into parts! Please let me know if you liked it and if I should post the last parts as well! Feedback please!!!! <3

Reader POV:

My neck started to strain as I intensely stared at my computer screen. Deciding to take a break from my paperwork and reports, I shove my chair back with a huff.

“Anyone else need more coffee?” I asked as I made my way from the bullpen to our small kitchenette, earning a few no’s and hums from the team.

I rinsed my mug of my coffee leftovers. I reached to pull the fresh brewed coffee pot, pouring most of it into my cup and adding a small dash of creamer and sugar. as I leaned against the counter, sipping my caffeine, Penelope struts in, “Hey baby cakes!”

“Hey,” I smile sheepishly, taking another swig of my drink.

“What’s with the gloomy energy? Did something happen, love?” The blonde questioned sincerely.

I shrugged, “We haven’t had a case in a while, not that it’s a bad thing, but I’m sick of sitting and staring at a screen all day.” I explained as I pulled myself up onto the counter.

She laughed, “Darlin’ I do that everyday! But u know you’re not used to it, so i hope you get a case soon, wait, no-“

We both burst into giggles, knowing what she meant. “Woah what’s so funny in here?!” Emily inquired, while stepping into the room.

“Pen here just said how she HOPES we get a case soon.” I chuckled.

“Oh god, i hate to say it, but me - fucking - too.” Emily chimed in. She walked over, taking the last of coffee into her cup, leaving it black. “Y/n, you better get back to your desk before Mr. Boss Man sees you goofing around,” she smirked, leaving Penelope and I alone again.

I rolled my eyes as I slid off the countertop. “Well thanks for the horrible wish Garcia,” I snickered, nudging her side as I passed by, heading to my dreaded workspace. I walked by Spencer’s desk, he leaned back in his chair, feet propped up. I took the opportunity to smack the back of his head lightly earning a quiet yelp from the genius.

“What was that for?!” Boy wonder squealed. I shrugged hearing Morgan snicker. With a loud sigh, I threw myself in my rolling chair, causing it to spin me around. Already stricken with boredom I started bouncing my leg, leading to my chair to start squeaking. I ignored the noise, struggling to focus on my report I was supposed to be writing. Just when I began typing someone yanked my chair and I away from my desk.

“Baby girl, we get it, you’re bored, but damn you’re annoying,” Morgan spoke, his voice laced with laughter.

Blushing slightly, I complained, “I’m sorry! i can’t take another day of paperwork! I just can’t! how do you all manage it?!”

“We are just as irritated Y/n, we'll get a case soon, ask Hotch to take a break and go walk around or something. Just please stop the noise.” Derek said, patting my shoulder. When I stood up, Hotch rushed into the room.

“Conference room in 5, we got a case.” Aaron huffed.

I excitedly jump up, “YES! FINALLY!” Earning stifled giggles from Emily, Spencer, and Derek.

We all rushed to the conference room, files and pens in hand, eager to get out of the bullpen for a little while. “Okay, so we have a case in Arlington, Texas. Three women were found dead in several construction sites, gagged and tied with burn marks across their chest. Two other women were reported missing two days ago, possibly taken by our unsub.” Rossi explains with a hardened look making its way to his face. 

“Okay team, wheels up in 30.” Aaron chimes in, breaking up our silence. 

As a whole we head to the desks and grab our to-go bags., tidying up our workspaces, to be ready for our reports when we get back. “Y/n, can you sit with me on the jet, I want to sleep and you’re the only one who really lets me sleep on their shoulder and keeps me warm.” Spencer asks with a quiet voice. 

“Of course pretty boy, anytime for you,” I answer with a smile. The both of us walk to the jet side by side, hand brushing against each other, his skin soft and cold compared to my warm one. We stayed quiet the whole time, until we made it into the jet, situating our bags and settling in. Spencer takes a window seat at one of the tables, I sit next to him as Hotch makes his way across from us. 

Once everyone is settled and ready to go, the jet starts us on our journey. Soon after Spencer begins to snore while his head lay on my shoulder. “What book are you reading now, Y/n?” Hotch questioned, nodding his head towards the novel in my hands. 

Lifting it to reveal the title, “Full Dark, No Stars, by Stephen King.” He raised his brow in examination. “It’s a novel composed of four different stories. They’re about murder, love affairs, such and such.” I slightly giggled.

Aaron chuckled, “Don’t you get enough of that stuff everyday? On the job?”

“The writing fascinates me, I don’t know why, maybe the same way romance novels entice ‘normal’ people.” I claim as I shake my head, shrugging a little.

“You’re something else,” the dark haired man added, going back to the newspaper in front of him. I turn my attention back to my book, getting lost in the pages. Spencer shifted in his sleep, laying down in my lap, tucking one of his arms underneath my legs, pulling me closer. Just like instinct, I used my free hand to play with his beautiful long hair. He began to softly hum from relaxation.  It seemed like hours, with Spencer contently asleep on my thighs and my hand tracing shapes on his chest. 

I felt a light tap on my shoulder, “Pretty boy still asleep?” Morgan examined from the couch next to us on the other side of the aircraft. I nodded. “Good, because we need to discuss the issue at hand.” I slowly closed my book with a confused look, placing it gently on the table. “The unsub is after women like you, about the same age, same height, same hair color. We don’t want you to feel pressured to do anything but-” 

“I’ll do it,” I cut Derek off. I looked at Aaron who was now listening.

He cleared his throat, “Are you sure? We knew Spencer would disagree if we asked while he was awake. If you are comfortable with this, we can brief you on our plan.”

I bowed my head in agreement. “Can we just keep it from this one?” motioning to the doctor snoring in my lap. Both men nodded, leaving the conversation at that. The jet filling with silence again as everyone, but us three, slept.

A bell rang above us, letting us know that we’d be landing in a few. I mildly shook Reid awake. His darting his eyes open and making eye contact with me.“Are we there?” he asked groggily. 

“Yea, sleep good babe?” The nickname causing him to blush, the nickname was platonic, or used to be until recently, now you called him it because you began to fall for the young man, hoping he would pick up what you were putting down. Though you made several attempts to make your flirting noticeable, Spencer seemed to dismiss them, or maybe not pay attention to them. 

“Y-yeah, I slept good, I was warm the whole time, thank you.” He spoke, patting you on your leg where he slept previously. 

Emily stood up and stretched with a yawn. “Damn my back hurts, JJ took up most of the couch.” she grumbled. 

“Okay? You kept twitching in your sleep!” JJ countered with a groan. The two girls gather their things. Rossi remained quiet, putting his papers into his satchel and packing up. 

“Alright, we’ll head to the hotel, get a few hours of sleep and get to work first thing in the morning.” Hotch explained as he exited the aircraft, Spencer and I trailing behind. The short ride to the hotel was very quiet, everyone was already half asleep. As we arrived, Hotch spoke sleepily “Okay same as usual, double up, the rooms should have two beds, so Morgan and I, JJ and Emily, Spencer and Y/n.” He handed us our keys and made his way to his room.

JJ stretched and yawned out “Yep, definitely headed straight to bed.” Emily giggled and nodded, the two of them leaving us behind with a ‘goodnight’.

“I’m not tired so I think I’m going to head to the bar for a little bit,” Derek shrugged, picking up his go bag and waving at us as he left the lobby.

“Looks like it’s just you and me Boy Wonder,” I gleamed.

All Spencer responded with was a warm smile and leading the way to our shared room. We didn’t talk the whole walk, it was a comfortable silence. Once we reached the door, Spencer stepped back to let me use my key on the lock. With a content sigh I threw the door open to reveal a single bed and a tiny bathroom. No words were spoken as we settled in, each getting into our pajamas, and doing our nightly routines. He was the first to finish and dive underneath the covers of the squeaky bed without hesitation. We had shared a bed tons of times, but only for me recently, it made me a little nervous.

“Spence, can you maybe scoot over more?” I ask quietly.

“I’m on my half, there's plenty enough room for you still.” The genius spoke into the darkness of the room.

“Oh, okay, I just wanted to make sure we both had space.” I lied, queasy at the fact that I was going to sleep close to my best friend who I was in love with. Walking over and slightly pulling the cover back, I slid into the sheets, careful to avoid Spence.

“If you’re cold, you can come closer, I know how you like to sleep warm.” He suggested, lightly turning to his side for you to cuddle up to him.

Clearing my throat, “N-no, I’m okay. Thanks though, goodnight.”

He stayed hushed for a second, he seemed to be taken back by my response. “Oh...Okay.” He then rolled over, facing his back to me.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't, especially with my current situation. I didn’t want him to know that I love him, well I did, but I was afraid of what he would think. Does he love me back? Is this all just in my head? What should I do- and just like that, my rambling had put me to sleep.

The next morning I awoke to a light breath fanning across my face. Confused, I open my eyes to reveal a sleeping Spencer, pulling me tight against his chest, with my head in the crook of his neck. It was nice and serene. But it came to an end when I finally realized that I was cuddling him. I got up as quickly and as quietly as possible, careful not to wake the doctor. I rushed to the bathroom to get dressed and get the hell out of there.

But as soon as I attempted a run for the door, “Y/n? What time is it? Are we late?” Reid asks groggily.

“Nope! I just promised the girls I’d meet them downstairs for coffee!” I mislead, hurrying out the door and towards JJ and Emily’s room. Banging on the door I pleaded, “Please tell me you’re awake! I need you to open the door!”

The door swung open, “Woah woah! Slow down? What happened?!” Em questioned as you stepped inside to see that both her and JJ were up and ready.

“I don’t want to talk about it, can we just go get coffee or breakfast? Please?” I panicked.

The girls exchanged a look but nodded and followed me down to the small cafe the hotel had.

The walk down was quick, no one spoke. That was until we sat at a small table after ordering our coffees.

“So, you want to tell us what that was about?” JJ raises an eyebrow at me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I forced a smile.

“Oh you mean the fact that she’s in love with a pretty boy and has been trying to avoid her feelings?” Emily questions, knowingly, causing me to choke on my coffee.

Trying to dab the spilled coffee off my blouse I ask, “How do you know that?! I mean- what?”

The two girls giggle at me. “Just a hunch,” the brunette quirks. “Relax, it’s obvious he feels the same. He’s absolutely crass about you. Someone can barely say your name and the boy blushes.”

JJ nods in agreement as she sips her mocha. “You can’t avoid it forever Y/n, what's the worst that can happen?”

“Yea, I guess you’re right, I just don’t want things to change between us.” I explain.

“The only reason why they have right now, is because you’ve been making it weird! Stop that!” Emily states while waving her hand in the air to make her point stick.

“Okay okay. I’ll stop.” I lauroll my eyes with amusement. “But today, I have to focus on going undercover. Especially behind Spencer’s back for the most part.” I spoke, furrowing my eyebrows in worry.

“Y/n, it will be okay. All you have to do is dress up, walk a few street corners, and we’ll get the unsub. It’ll be done and over with and Spencer would have nothing to worry about. You’re a strong woman who can fend for herself.” JJ told me, in hopes to alleviate my stress.

I nodded, trying to ignore the growing pit of nervousness in my stomach.

“Hey pretty ladies, nice to know you didn’t give us the option of coffee and gossip this morning.” Derek claims as he makes his way to the table with Hotch and Spencer following shortly behind him.

Spencer caught my eye. He seems pissed off, a mean look splayed across his face. “Y/n, we need to talk.”

In shock I look at the faces which surrounded me at the table, “Um yea, let’s go out into the lobby.”

Spencer quickly left me behind as I timidly arose from my seat and chased him.

“When were you going to tell me?!” He forcefully asked.

“Tell you what?” I attempted to answer.

“That you were going undercover! That you were going to put yourself in harm's way?!” He slightly shouted.

This angered me, “I didn’t realize that I had to run my OWN decisions by YOU! Last time I checked, I was a grown woman. This is for the better, to stop this murderer! You are NOT my father, you are NOT my owner, and last time i checked, you are NOT my boyfriend!” I exclaimed back.

Spencer seemed taken back, his face showed shock and dismay. He was speechless, a hint of sadness in his eyes.

“What? NOW you don’t say something? Unbelievable Spencer.” I exaggerate, turning on my heel and leaving him to himself in the hotel lobby.

To Be Continued...

[violexides]

The DreamSMP Explained (By Someone Who Has Never Watched Any DreamSMP Stream)

cracks knuckles. okay, fucking FINALLY doing this. ahem. 

Couple things to preface with, will keep this brief. 

This isn’t entirely blind. One of my best friends has helped out in places, just because I wanted to hit on everything (accurate or not), and I know mutuals/friends who post and write about DreamSMP (though how much of that is AU or canon-typical, I can’t say. I can’t tell). I’ve never seen a single stream, but I’ve seen a few clips. So, my understanding is a bit more than the title may imply, but still not a lot. Sorry.

Also, this will be very, very long (near 2k words). All under the cut, will TW this with themes of abuse, death, manipulation, unreality, hallucinations, and me having an abrasive sense of humor where I revel in the glee of calling these guys European twinks. Though, speaking of. This is ALL about the actual characters, not the people. I don’t know anything about most of these actual streamers, so, no hate to them. In fact, I think they’re pretty cool for having come up with a… somewhat coherent… narrative, all through using Minecraft as a medium. Anyway.

Sigh. Without further ado, 

So. There’s this place. Made by Philza, AKA God, AKA one of like six different gods. Philza, born from the womb acting like someone’s 43 year old uncle, has three kids. Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo. There are other people here, with some scattered ancestry that raises some questions, but I don’t really care who fucked an Enderman and had an 8’0 tall kid (Ranboo DNI).

There are also places! Sometimes! On a good day, there are actual, intact locations. We’ve got hits like “The Badlands”, which I think was taken from about three different dystopian novels I read in third grade, “El Rapids” (Quackity, Subpoena (autocorrect wins this round), and Karl made this one), “Pogtopia”, no comment on this one, and “L’Manberg”, which Wilbur made. 

Only one of these is going to be important.

So, might be a good time to say this: I don’t know what the inciting incident of DreamSMP is? I don’t know what was the catalyst for all this shit, but I’m going to take a guess and say Wilbur blowing up L’Manberg had something to do with it.

… That’s going to be a pattern, by the way. Just. Stick with me here. 

So, Wilbur is an older child who read the Hamlet parts in literature class and can only cope by ripping down the very creations he has and taking the entire world down with him to hell. Which is to say, he throws a pity party after Jschlatt (some bitch who abused Quackity, that’s another trend, yippee) wins an election and decides to blow up the fucking kingdom and kill Jschlatt.

Little does Wilbur know, the devil may work fast, but Jschlatt getting a fucking stroke and dying out of nowhere works faster. 

I’m not kidding. He gets a stroke, he dies, and Tubbo takes over. I’ve tried to puzzle out the government structure of DreamSMP for a while and have drawn zero conclusions. In any case, Wilbur also tells Philza, his… father…, to kill him. And Philza fucking does? For some reason, like, holy shit.

Anyway. Wilbur is now a ghost. So is Jschlatt. The… life system, on this server, is really strange and I don’t know how to fully explain it. Just know that nothing has permanence here. 

I’m going to throw this out here because I don’t know when it’s relevant, but I wrote down something about Karl being in a place called the In Between. I don’t know how the hell he got there or what the hell he’s doing. This might be where the discs are? I can’t explain the discs. I… think they are fighting over the discs? Don’t know why, Wilbur makes music himself, I feel like you have enough to go around.

(Stream Saline Solution it reminds me of my best friend only if you want okay thx)

L’Manberg gets blown up again. This time, Techno did it. He did it just after giving this speech about Theseus, which, jokes aside-- the writing of DreamSMP is actually really good. That was all done on improv, and I did watch an animatic with some of the audio from it, and damn. I’m a whore for metaphor and I love this for him.

This happens, and Ranboo and Tommy decide to do a little hehe and burn down George’s house. Who is George? Good question: a king. Of what? Good question: call me the antithesis of a Ranboo kinnie and get me some discs because I hear no answers.

Dream gets pissed off by this (who gave him authority, I don’t know) and builds a wall. He for some reason decides that if Tommy, and only Tommy, breaks some rules, the wall will stay up forever. So, naturally, Tommy immediately yells at him, and Tubbo gets pissed (what happened to the whole, who are you without me, yourself, thing?). Dream exiles him, which is bad enough, but then Dream burns down his house, so now he’s double exiled.

Dream kins Julius Caesar but Julius Caesar does not kin Dream and I think that’s important. 

(It had to be important enough for me to literally go back and edit this in, for no reason, because I think I’m really fucking hilarious.) 

Techno takes in Tommy and shows him his super secret cave of evil, which Tommy promptly screams at. Philza and Ranboo visit sometimes, but mostly Tommy just sits there. Dream says “fuck you” to Techno, but Techno decides to wage war on L’Manberg, so Quackity and co. come over to try and kill Techno, but Techno kills Quackity with a pickaxe, but Quackity has three lives for some reason, and then Dream blames Ranboo for blowing something up for literally zero reason, and can you tell how tired I am.

Ranboo sees a smiley face in his notebook and zones the fuck out while Dream tries to kill… Tommy? No, Tubbo. No, fuck, no it was Tommy. I don’t know why people suddenly care about it n- NO, NO IT WAS TUBBO, he is TRYING to kill TUBBO. 

I hate Europeans. 

Ahem. Dream goes to jail, but he has books in jail, which is a horrible idea. Everyone knows that if you give a war criminal some novels he’ll accidentally haunt someone else’s dreams and launch psychological warfare with the prison guard, Sam, who has zero idea what he’s doing because he probably didn’t sign up for this.

Also, I’m gonna say this here because I don’t know when it will fit in. There’s this place. Called… the Egg. Now, I don’t know what goes on in the Egg. I don’t know what the Egg is. I don’t know who decided to name all these fucking things, because I think the Egg is just a box made of bedrock. I think Ranboo hallucinates about it, but Ranboo hallucinates about everything so I’m not really sure. I’m going to call it here and say that this is probably a bad sign.

People are trying to talk to Dream. First BadBoyHalo, who gives Ranboo this little note from Dream with a smiley face. Or maybe that was SapNap. Either way, Ranboo hallucinates seeing Dream, and then actually sees Dream but he thinks he’s hallucinating? I don’t know. 

Then we get Tommy. Basically he kind of comes in here and Sam, being a good prison guard, allows Dream to beat Tommy to death and then revive him (don’t ask about the revivals just pretend it makes sense please). He tells Tommy he’s also going to revive Wilbur which Tommy isn’t a big fan of, considering that Wilbur, uh. Vague hand gestures. You get the schtick. Hopefully. I don’t know.

Anyway. Uh. Quackity loses his shit, also.

As in he talks to Jschlatt, the ghost of his abusive husband. Makes a deal-- if Quackity here loses, he revives Jschlatt. I don’t know what the winning conditions are, but, thankfully, they don’t matter because Quackity loses damn near instantly. 

So he goes to Dream and Sam gives him really powerful gear for no reason. Dream is a bit terrified by this situation, and Quackity is like “give me the fucking book”, and then we never find out what happens because Quackity ends up covered in blood about to blow up El Rapids. I hadn’t expected to mark Quackity off on the demolitionist bingo, but hey, all’s fair I guess. My next bets are on Tubbo or whichever bitch became god of the sea. 

(I also made a joke to my friend about me kinning Quackity (the character not the streamer could you fucking imagine), to which they said “you’d torture someone for information”? So. I guess Dream, uh. Hm. That explains why Quackity was bloodied. Uh. Oops. Don’t know why he’s playing Poker, though.)

So, for my sanity, as we come to a close, I’m going to start listing lore details that I don’t know nearly enough about but are probably important. Just… bullet point them. Might be a bit tacky of me but I have shit to do, dammit. By that I mean, I don’t have shit to do, but I’ve had this doc open for literally 1-2 weeks and I just want to be freed.

List Of Other Shit That Happened:

Ranboo started an arg, so there’s a character named Z now. Can’t believe the kid I knew in middle school who didn’t know where the Middle East  was made it into the dreamSMP omg! 

Tubbo did something immoral, and we still don’t know who his dad is. By we, I mean me. 

Eret exists. That’s all I’ve got for this one. They’re important. Probably.

Karl hallucinated six versions of himself and left the In Between to go to hell. (Lil Nas X girlboss gaslight gatekeep in this motherfucker!!!)

Ranboo and Tubbo got married because taxes exist </3

More on this last point: they opened a hotel, despite Tubbo being a king, and Tommy got mad at them for getting engaged without his permission. But Tommy was literally dead when they had the wedding so I’m not exactly sure what he was expecting. Either way, he’s fine with it now.

Kids getting adopted oh shit oh fuck. Also, mpreg is canotical. Make this what you will. 

DreamXD is a god now. I don’t know who DreamXD is. I don’t think anybody else does either.

I’m like 60% sure George is dead. 

I’m like 60% sure Philza is immortal.

Going through my ‘notes’ to make sure I didn’t miss anything and I’m just getting more confused, so I think I’m going to call it here. Props to everyone in the dreamSMP for creating kickass lore, I would not summarize any of it ever again if you held me at fucking gunpoint, and thanks to my mutuals/friends for letting me ask a lot of really stupid questions as I try to puzzle this out. And also, another thanks to you all for reading this. I hope to God this was funny. 

I really, really, really fucking hope that Tumblr doesn’t cut this off for a long character count. This is longer than some of my fucking oneshots. My God. This was so fun, don’t get me wrong, but I also want a hit of a candy cigarette. Make it two, actually. Or three. All at once. 

Anyway. Drink some water, stay safe, and remember that statistically speaking, 100% of people with a name starting with “T” need to put down the Greek mythology books and learn about the ethics behind pyromania. Goodbye, Theseus. 

[idnek83]

ok so i have a long standing trans souda headcanon that i think about daily i know i’m late but i feel like i have to do this still, i just think about him being like a year into his transition, open about it if he’s really close with someone like just about the only person that knows at first is hajime and he only found out beacuse souda needed help with his t shots because he gets too freaked out to do them himself sometimes, and i just think about how he’d come out because it makes me feel better about the idea of coming out, so here’s how i think it’s go down :) he would do it so casually, like so casually you don’t even think anyhting of it he’s just makes a joke about it and eveyone would be like haha weird joke bro and he just assumes they know after that but here’s the thing they don’t, because it wasn’t at all obvious so like a whole year passes and he keeps making jokes and people are starting to think it’s weird and than one day he isn’t in class and like sonia and gundham want to know what happened but the only person that knows where he went is hajime who just says he’s getting surgery and they both literally think he has a terminal illness or he like had an accident when fixing up cars so they demand to know if he’s ok and hajime is like i was gonna go check on him tomorrow if you want you can come so they do, still thinking he like almsot died and than they go visit him and he’s kinda off his ass on pain meds and they ask what happens and he very proudly tells them “i got my titties cut off” and that’s when the finally piece it all togther :)

Oof relatable. I tried to do the ‘casually come out about my sexuality through jokes’ thing with one of my friend groups and... pretty much this lol. I thought they knew, but they didn’t catch on to shit for almost a year lol (Wow, I’m just realizing one guy knew before hand too, and didn’t say shit to anyone else. Anon, you pulled this situation right out of my life? Just with gender instead? How?).

Moving on lol.

Soda literally makes jokes about being trans all the time, but it usually just goes over people’s heads, or they’re just like ‘haha, that cis guy sure did make a funny trans joke. Anyways-’ lol (A few people probably at least kind of catch on, but no one says anything)

And I’m trying to think of good set ups for him to make jokes, but this is literally the only one I can think of:

Mondo is having bike troubles and shows up to Soda’s on campus garage to get it looked at. Soda’s just kind of chilling, tinkering with stuff and chatting with Hajime, so he’s happy to look at Mondo’s bike right away. He asks him if he knows what’s wrong and Mondo’s like ‘pretty sure its the transmission.’ Hajime rolls his eyes cus he knows what’s coming and Soda just smirks and is like “Then fixing your transmission is my trans mission!” and starts laughing. Hajime is choking in the corner and dying, because that joke was just too bad, and Mondo’s just standing there like ‘??? Does that mean you’ll fix it? What are you guys laughing at?’ lol

Hajime knew Soda was trans for a good chunk of time before he started T, so Soda calls him up the first time he’s trying to give himself a shot and is just like “Hajime, I need you to come over and stab me.” Hajime has no idea what he’s talking about but he’s just like “Cool.” and shows up at Soda’s dorm like 5 minutes later lol. He’s used to Soda being over dramatic, so when he shows up he’s expecting to hear about some dumb shit Soda did, thinking ‘stab me’ was Soda’s way of saying ‘end me for being cringe’ lol. When Soda shows him the needle and explains what’s going on, Hajime’s just like “Wow, I didn’t think I’d actually get to stab you” and Soda’s like “Wait, what do you mean ‘get to’? Hajime? HAJIME, PUT DOWN THE NEEDLE!” lol (Hajime is very careful about giving him the shot, he just had to fuck with him first lol)

By the time Soda’s top surgery date rolls around, he’s kind of gotten over the whole simping for Sonia thing, and they’re starting to actually become friends. He’s also been spending a lot more time with Gundham, since he’s one of Sonia’s best friends. He’s been dropping hints that he’s into Gundham, but they’ve been going about as well as the hints that he’s trans lol (Although Gundham has definitely been flirting with him a little too, Soda just doesn’t realize cus he’s hopeless lol).

He probably actually announces that he won’t be in class for a while, but it’s like after a really confusing lesson so when he’s like ‘cool, see you guys in a week, I’ll be in the hospital recovering if you need me.’ they think he’s just making a joke about how hard the lesson was lol.

The next day, everyone’s a little confused when he actually doesn’t show up, but they all just figure he’s sick. When lunch rolls around, Sonia and Gundham decide to ask Hajime where he is and Hajime is like ‘he literally said yesterday he was going to be in the hospital for a while?’ and they both start freaking out and asking if he’s okay and which hospital he’s in and what happened and Hajime’s just like ‘Guys he’s fine, he had his surgery this morning and he’s just recovering now.’ and they’re like ‘SURGERY?!?!?!!’ and that’s when Hajime realizes all of his classmates are just as dense as Soda. He’s like ‘I’m going to see him after school, if you guys wanna come, I’m sure he’ll explain the details to you himself.’ and they both agree and use the rest of their lunch to go buy Soda some ‘get well soon’ gifts.

When they get to the room where Soda’s recovering, Hajime goes in first to see if he’s okay with Sonia and Gundham being there (He already told him in text, but he want’s to double check). Soda’s more than happy to see them and when they walk in he’s just ecstatic (and high off his ass lol). He’s like ‘Wow, look at all these beautiful people coming to see me’ and he reaches out and kisses Sonia’s hand then does the same to Gundham’s, but then he just... keeps holding it after haha (Gundham just accepts it and enters gay panic mode lol). Sonia shows him the little stuffed bear and card they got him (which he cannot currently read but still claims to love lol), and then gestures to the flowers Gundham’s holding. Soda looks at Gundham, holding his hand and offering him flowers and he’s just so in love lol. He turns to Hajime and he’s like ‘Look!! He brought me flowers! That’s so romantic, I told you he’d be a good boyfriend! I’m probably right about him being good in bed too!’ and everyone who isn’t Soda starts blushing super hard cus Jesus. Soda immediately forgets what he said and just reaches for the flowers, but ends up hurting himself cus lifting your arms after top surgery is a big no-no. 

That snaps everyone out of their embarrassment and they’re all hovering around him asking if he’s alright and Gundham is holding his hand a little tighter. After he assures them he’s fine, Sonia finally asks him what kind of surgery he had. His eyes get big and he’s just like ‘Whaaat? You don’t knooow??’ and he’s smiling super big and Hajime is moving closer cus he knows exactly what the idiot is about to try to do. 

“I GOT MY TITTIES CHOPPED OFF!!”

Hajime just manages to stop him from trying to rip his hospital gown off and hurting himself again, reminding him that all Sonia and Gundham would see is bandages anyways lol.

Sonia and Gundham both take a moment to figure out what the fuck he’s talking about while he argues with Hajime about his ‘glorious, flat chest’ and then it clicks and they both realize that they definitely should have figured it out way earlier from all of Soda’s jokes lol. They both congratulate him and he finally stops trying to take off his gown lol.

They spend a few hours just hanging out and chatting in Soda’s hospital room after that.

Gundham holds his hand the whole time. 

[min-youngis]

Leave The Bourbon On The Shelf

gif not mine (i can't look away, though)

leave the bourbon on the shelf / and i'll drink it by myself / and i love you endlessly / darling don't you see / i'm not satisfied - Leave The Bourbon On The Shelf, The Killers

~ Pairing : Park Jimin x Reader

~ Genre : Fluff, Humour

~ Rating : PG-13 (¿)

~ Summary/Excerpt : You may not have the real thing for the next few months, but as you take in the way his neck moves with every sip, the crinkle of his eyes as he laughs at something you say, the angle at which the dim, yellow hotel room night light falls on his face and the languid, relaxed stoop of his shoulders as they occasionally shake with giggles, you think you’ll do just fine with this temporary, pixelated substitute.

Established Relationship

~ Word Count : 2,243

~ Warnings : swearing, alcohol, one mention of s*x

~ A/N : 'a writer's greatest resource is wikihow' - me, 2020. jimin has a very pretty neck and eyes and hair and hands and face and laugh and smile and personality.

i'd love to hear feedback! spread the love!

masterlist in my description.

~~~

You unlock the front door and step into the musty house, slipping off your sandals in the foyer. Consulting the list on your phone, you make your way to the living room, at the corner of which there’s a large, deeply thrumming fish tank.

Feed Nemo and Dory.

Snorting softly, you look at the two Koi fish, swimming around in the water, that look nothing like their namesakes. With an amused shake of your head, you dutifully pick up the aquarium fish feed bottle that’s stood next to the lit up tank and undo the lid, shaking it over the water so the flakes fall in, bidding the fish to rush towards the food.

Satisfied, you move on to item number two on the list.

Clean sides of tank with algae pad. Remember to turn off the filter.

You look up, wondering where on earth the algae pad could be and if this is a good enough reason to call him. Giving a cursory glance around the room, just so you can feel like you’ve searched at least a little bit, your stomach gives a sad little flop as you notice it sitting right there on the shelf next to the tank.

Shaking off the irrational disappointment, you turn off the filter, strongly reminded of an afternoon the previous week, when he had wagged a finger in your face, pinning you to the couch with his stern gaze, explaining his fish tank cleaning instructions for the third time before he finally sent the house sitting list to you. You don’t remember much of the lecture, but you do remember the way his freshly dyed pink hair had lain on his forehead and the way his bracelets had jingled a little bit every time he wildly demonstrated his technique.

You’ve always had a short attention span, so it really is his fault for drawing out the explanation for as long as he did and spending ten minutes talking about how you should open the front door, despite the fact that you’ve done it countless times before.

Slipping on the rubber gloves that are next to the pad, you gently scrub the sides of the tank, trying to emulate the method that you’d seen him use. You ignore the weird, squelchy feeling as water slips into your glove, and once you see an actual difference in the glass, you pull your hand out, making sure to switch the filter on again.

Item number three.

Tell them they look pretty today.

You look doubtfully at the fish swimming around, done with their food and looking stupidly blank. Small? Yes. Fast when they want to be? Probably. But pretty? Decidedly not.

Feeling incredibly foolish, you bend down to fish eye level and mutter, “You both look very...orange today.”

Determining that this is good enough for Jimin and his excessively demanding Koi, you proceed to the next point.

Make sure they’re happy before moving on to next point.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Feeling increasingly frustrated, you bend back down, making eye contact with one dumbly floating fish. You don’t know what to expect, how to determine a fish's happiness.

“Here, fishy fishy fishy,” you mumble in a faux, high pitched voice, sounding shockingly like Jimin when he whines for something. Vaguely, you think of the energy meter on top of the puffles in Club Penguin, and wonder whether the Kois’ would increase, if they had one.

The fish you’re looking at gives no acknowledgement, simply turning away and swimming in the opposite direction in the spacious tank. Figuring that you’ll have better luck with the other one (Nemo? Dory? How on earth does he tell the difference?), you look at it, only for your heart to veritably stop beating for a second as you take in its stationary, close eyed form.

With your pulse in your ears, you gingerly let your finger dip into the tank, moving to tap the body. “Oh, don’t be dead, don’t be dead. I promise, you look very pretty today, please don’t be dead, Jimin will kill me – Oh, hello.”

The moment your index finger touches its scales, its eyes shoot open and it darts away from you after casting what you’re sure is a glare in your direction. Feeling half rueful that you woke it up from a nap and half relieved that it’s at least moving, you wipe your finger on your jeans, deciding that Jimin will have to settle for Koi that are alive, if not particularly pleased.

You simply ignore the next point on the word document he had sent you (‘Are you absolutely sure they’re happy?’), and move on to Water the plants. Use the green can. Do not use the blue can. I will know if you do.

Not taking very kindly to his tone, you obstinately stalk over to the utility counter and purposefully pick up the blue can, pointedly ignoring the green one that’s sitting next to it.

“Fuck you,” you mutter, taking a quick video as you fill it with water from the kitchen tap before moving to the balcony and sending the file to Jimin before pouring the right amount of water into each of the five pots. This step also had long, winding instructions. You clearly remember him from a week ago, drawing you out into the balcony one night under the guise of ‘A date under the stars, Y/N, it'll be romantic!’ only to royally screw you over and start explaining how much water his mini lotuses and peace lilies required. It had almost made you revoke your offer to house sit when he was away.

Once you’ve finished, you move on to the next item, absentmindedly placing the empty can back up on the shelf and drying your hands on a kitchen towel.

Reassure them that they’re loved and that daddy will be back soon.

Unable to stop yourself, you laugh out loud into the empty house at the wording, knowing that Jimin must have had a field day while typing that. You make your way to the balcony double doors that you’ve already locked shut. Too lazy to unlock them, you press your nose to the glass and look straight at the plants as the afternoon sunlight falls on them, feeling like you’re about to give a sermon to a comatose audience of five.

“You’re all, uh, very loved and daddy will be back soon,” you say, giggling through your words.

Calming yourself, you move to the next point.

Read the whole list again, but this time replace ‘they’ with ‘you'

Confused, you scroll back up, letting your eyes roam over the words. The first two points don’t make a lot of sense but at the third, a small grin replaces your quizzical frown.

You look pretty today.

Make sure you’re happy before moving on to next point.

Are you absolutely sure you’re happy?

Your dopey smile gives way to a chortle at You’re loved and daddy will be back soon, and as if on cue, your phone begins to vibrate with a video call from Jimin.

You eagerly accept, still chuckling, and say to his grainy, tired but happy face without preamble, “In what universe are you my daddy?”

His grin grows and he lets out a little giggle. His eyes are twinkling with mirth as he replies, “So you went, then?”

“I’m here right now,” you say, moving your phone farther away so he can see that you’re standing in his living room in front of the television.

“Did you finish the list?” he asks, running a hand through his hair, and you greedily take in the way the strands fall back down gracefully. You can make out a headboard and hotel room wallpaper behind him, a weirdly mundane backdrop to his shining, post concert face, still alight with excitement and adrenaline.

“Almost. I’ve just finished the super romantic eighth point.”

“Are Nemo and Dory happy?” he asks, smugly grinning at your comment.

With a roll of your eyes, you reply, “Yes, yes, Nemo and Dory are very happy.”

“And my lotuses?”

“You haven’t named them?”

“I don’t want them to feel restricted in their growth.”

Scoffing, you answer again, “Your plants are also very happy. Very, uh, green and such.”

Satisfied, he leans back on the headboard, taking his phone along with him so you’re given a lovely view of the insides of his nostrils as he adjusts himself into a comfortable position.

“How was the show?” you ask once he’s stopped shuffling around and you’re looking at his much more pleasing visage.

“It was awesome! The new army bomb changes colours now, it looked beautiful in the dark.”

You hum in reply, feeling a warm glow as you watch him continue talking about the concert. Tour means distance but more importantly, tour means performing every night, meeting new fans, and travel and different food. And it’s always fun reuniting when he’s back. In the non biblical sense.

It doesn’t mean you don’t miss him, because it’s only been a week but you feel like it’s been months since you last held his positively tiny hand, but you’ve successfully talked yourself into being mature and rational about this.

“You should read the last few points on the list,” he says abruptly at the end of his rant.

Switching apps, you threateningly warn, “Jimin, I swear if it involves telling your dumb fish-"

“Don’t call Nemo and Dory dumb!”

“-that they look pretty one more time, I’m hanging up on you.”

“Just read it, will you?”

Open liquor cabinet

“Why, you’ve got a pet spider in there that needs some tender loving care?”

Snorting, he impatiently flaps an arm at you to get you going, and you get up from your comfortable position on the couch, muttering about being made to move.

Mostly empty, the shelf has an expensive looking bottle of whiskey sitting in the front with a post it stuck on top of the label that reads ‘FOR TOUR'.

“Did you forget to carry the bottle with you or something? Can you even get alcohol past customs, how does that work?”

At the end of your sentence, you look back at your phone screen only to see Jimin with a wide grin on his face, one hand proudly holding up his own, similar glass bottle by the neck.

“It’s for you! So we can drink together!”

Slightly disbelieving, with a raised eyebrow, you ask, “So your solution for a temporarily long distance relationship is...alcoholism?” There’s no real bite in your words, though. You can see the wisdom in the plan. Wisdom that has strong root in the fact that you would never be able to afford a bottle that fancy.

“Look, I might be here and you might be there-"

“No, really?”

“-but we can still drink together!” he continues, ignoring your snarky interruption.

“Why can’t we eat together? Or watch a movie together?”

Raising his eyebrow and giving you a long, dramatic sigh, he slowly brings his own bottle down. “Okay, if you don’t want to, I guess I could just drink this very pricey, very imported bottle all by myself.”

“How can something be very imported?”

“Listen, do you want to drink or not?” he impatiently bursts, sternly looking at you through the screen. The effect is a little muted, due to the fact that his video gets stuck at that exact instant, eyebrows scrunched and lips stuck in a petulant pout, but it serves its purpose as you rush to bring the bottle down from the shelf while rapidly saying, “Okay, okay, yes, I want to drink with you.”

With a momentary painful screech of static, Jimin’s face resumes movement, morphing into content self-satisfaction.

Setting the phone down, you twist open the crystal cap of the bottle, proceeding to pour it into a glass.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep? You seem pretty tired.”

He waves away your concern as he gets his own glass from the hotel room kitchenette. “We've got a free morning tomorrow, I can sleep in. You’ve got a ride back?”

“Oh, am I not taking this bottle home and drinking it there?” you tease.

“I want to spend some quality time with my plants, I miss them.”

Giggling, as you settle into your previous position on the couch, now cross legged with a glass full of whiskey in your hand, you reply, “I can call Hyejin, no problem.”

“Lovely,” he says with a grin as pleased as punch spreading across his face as he similarly sits down on an arm chair at the corner of his room. Behind him, you can make out the beige blinds that are so typical to the fancy hotels in which the company books them rooms. “Now, tell me, Y/N. How are your side hoes doing?”

“Peachy,” you reply, taking a sip of your drink as you indulgently watch Jimin do the same through his phone that’s perched on the coffee table in front of him.

You may not have the real thing for the next few months, but as you take in the way his neck moves with every sip, the crinkle of his eyes as he laughs at something you say, the angle at which the dim, yellow hotel room night light falls on his face and the languid, relaxed stoop of his shoulders as they occasionally shake with giggles, you think you’ll do just fine with this temporary, pixelated substitute.

~

[saltytyrus]

hi, ariana! if the losers were a superhero group what would their powers be and how would they have gotten together? would they be popular as heroes or would they be considered vigilantes/menaces?

Hi!!! I had a lot of fun with this, thank you for sending it in Jack! 🤗 

Powers - I honestly kinda struggled here and couldn't choose just one for some (also warning, some are about to be very unoriginal :') 

Bill - Super strength (imo it's very useful but also... kinda basic??? it just feels right 😂) + force field generation

Ben - Invisibility

Bev - Pyrokinesis + telepathy

Eddie - Super speed

Mike - Memory manipulation + Panmnesia 

Stan - Zoolingualism (?? basically just the ability to communicate with animals bec!! imagine him with an army of loyal crows! he would always have a friend, this reddit thread is literally Stan living his best life :')

on top of that, just mind reading in general. He'd probably have a never again rule set in place after making the mistake of reading Richie's once. the material for that is endless 👌

ALSO, I'm being greedy but I'd love for him to have serenity inducement (here's to hoping that I'm getting all these powers/words right 😂)  

Richie - Telekinesis + Teleportation (he would have so much fun with it) 

Popular as heros or as vigilantes / menaces?

I think out of all of them Bill would definitely be a popular hero. I can see him actively and constantly seeking out situations where he can help people. 

While for the other losers, I can see them just trying to lead normal lives. I don't think they would be all that interested in being put on a pedestal or in a spotlight (of any kind). And it's not to say that they wouldn't use their powers to help someone out if need be, just that they wouldn't go out of their way with a purpose of finding something/someone to save. 

But also!!! because of Bill, they would find themselves often tagging along to make sure his dumbass doesn't die 😂 like one week it could be bill, richie & bev, and another just bill & eddie or ben etc depending on whatever he's trying to accomplish

Apart from that I think they all could easily end up being seen as vigilantes/menaces at some point. They would 100% set out to change/fix a system that they see actively harming people instead of helping, and because of that it would be a toss up on who sees them as a hero or vigilante/menace.

How they came together: 

This is where I both blanked and somehow ended up over complicating it 😭 

my brain refused to imagine them ever being separate and unaware of each other, so I was going to stick with them being school/childhood friends

but then I thought of a sky high situation where powers (if any at all) come in randomly throughout teenage years

So for this version powers would come in from age 17-20. The losers would be completely unaware of each other & Georgie still would've died as a kid, but instead by getting hit by a car while out playing. Bill would have a constant need to try and save people and it would later on be a double edged sword because: 

I thought it would be fun to bring Pennywise into this. The losers would each have a neibolt version of themselves that would come out once their powers came in. They'd mirror their abilities, but would only be as strong as the individual loser based on however much they'd use/practice their power. 

(I would probably have to change Stan's power to shape shifting for this to justify the random spider head running around town 😂)

Every single loser would end up being viewed (/framed) as a vigilante/menace of varying extents at some point. And because of Bill's power usage, Neibolt Bill would end up on top- both with being the strongest and fucking up the most shit around town 😭

The neibolt crimes would start out extremely small, like barely even punishable or noticeable aside from those around to actually witness it due to the losers themselves newly having powers.

But as it would add up the losers would begin to receive more and more dirty looks from peers & strangers and rumors would eventually follow. The losers would get so used to being accused of shit at a certain point that it would just roll off their backs. They'd probably chalk it up to bullies targeting them. 

For Richie maybe it would even result in a cop visit to his house- but with nothing more coming of it due to having a solid alibi.

It would be annoying but bearable up until the moment that the rumors got swapped out for video evidence as the crimes became more and more frequent + serious.

I feel like Ben, Mike, and Stan wouldn't surpass the rumor phase while Bill, Richie, Bev and Eddie's neibolt half would definitely land themselves on tape due to their excessive power usage in comparison. 

I love Eddie, he's my favorite character but the idea of him being the first of them to end up on tape is sending me. And it wouldn't even necessarily be over anything crime related, but something extremely embarrassing. Like imagine his neibolt self being found casually lounging in a dumpster on trash day and making the news over it. Just a story along the lines of "halted trash collections earlier this morning due to grimy teenager (Derry news would be that shitty imo 😂) found asleep in a dumpster. We're told that workers had to forcibly remove him after twenty minutes of refusal to leave" 

And with his powers, Neibolt Eddie would've zipped away as soon as he was set on the ground before anyone could've even done anything with him or offered to take him somewhere. 

...I am once again making a disclaimer that I love Eddie dearly, because what if the night before that he had done a little act of rebellion against Sonia & dyed his hair blonde, which in turn just ended up making him look even more guilty 😭

Okay, now for how they actually end up meeting:

For everything to work Bill would probably have to be one of the last to get powers (otherwise he'd end up on the news within months due to his usage & it wouldn't work for how I want it to play out)

Bev and Richie would definitely be one of the first two to get their powers & meet. Richie would randomly teleport into the convenience store she was working at, all out of breath and crouching behind some shelves. Initially she'd be spooked by his random pop in but would take pity, whether it was out of boredom or curiosity, and offer him a hiding space behind the counter (which he'd immediately accept & hop over for some reason despite probably being able to teleport behind it). After some small talk and Richie telling her that he was being chased by Bowers over some shit he didn't do, they'd come to find the common ground of being the brunt end of recent Derry high rumors and from there they'd stick together.

They would later track down the others (minus bill & eddie) by following frequent rumors with the goal of seeing if the same shit was happening to them as well. 

6/7 losers would only realize that everything probably wasn't exactly a rumor once the crimes start getting recorded/aired. They would have Eddie's experience on the news to support the "devil duplicate" theory they'd come to after seeing Bill Denbrough, Derry's beloved hero and now apparent villain make the news. From there they'd set out to track down Bill to find out wtf is happening.

_

my brain is absolutely f r i e d, but I'm jumping back to go over how they found Eddie as a treat for myself  :')

there are 2 versions, not all that different from each other, but one just really highlights Eddie's (knowingly or not) continuous pining over Richie. It 100% follows his neibolt dumpster news report & unfortunate hair-dying-timing.  

Scenario #1 is Richie and Bev walking into the theater to see a (much cleaner!) blonde Eddie. Beverly would manage to keep Richie from immediately running up into his row, but would find her efforts useless five minutes into the previews when he teleports himself into a seat next to Eddie, nearly scaring him half to death. He'd playfully lean on the arm rest with a dopey smile like

"I personally favor the dumpsters up in Bangor but hey, I'm all for going local if you'd like to show me around sometime."

(??idk.idk.idk 😂 originally his opener was just "hey, weren't you on the news recently?" but eh). So anyways, Eddie would be a mess, nearly popping a blood vessel but would later find himself near tears of laughter due to Richie's commentary throughout the movie. Bonus if he tried holding in his laughter out of spite to the point that he broke with a full on snort and turned to see Richie staring straight ahead at the screen, red cheeked & beaming, already preparing his next joke.

Scenario #2 is that Richie works at the Aladdin for the concession stand and recognizes Eddie as he steps up to pay. Opening with "I dig the new look" (referring to his hair that's now growing brown at the roots) and Eddie's confused because he's 98% sure that he's never seen this person before but it clicks immediately as Eddie watches the shit eating grin grow on Richie's face. Eddie, wanting nothing more than to run away again, simply stays put and mumbles out that it wasn't him

And the last response he ever expects to hear is an "okay", sounding just genuine enough for him to look up and see a much softer smile.

It would catch him off guard, having someone finally believe him, or at least not openly fight him on it (even if he's sure that Richie is just humoring him) that he'd often find himself showing up to the theater thirty minutes before his movie, just hovering over the stands by Richie. Clinging to the excuse that it was just someone to talk to while he waited away from the harsh summer weather and the grips of his mother.

Panic wouldn't set in until the day that Richie asks him what movie he's waiting for and completely blanks, not having the slightest clue until peeking down at his ticket.

[thanksjro]

Dark Cybertron Chapter 7: Simon Furman and His Lack of a Relationship with the Singular They

The Lost Light is still being attacked by Ammonites, like it has been for the last few issues. Hound’s taken over as acting field commander and is calling all the shots. Chromedome uses his stupid beefy arms to punch things. Trailcutter is screaming. Swerve’s got his My First Blaster™ strapped to the top of his alt, and saves Crosscut.

Crosscut is our toy tie-in character for this issue. He’s a senator, and drafts play scripts. Arguably one of the more interesting tie-in guys, at least in theory. In practice, all he’s doing is forgetting Swerve’s name, which isn’t going to help the guy with his through-the-floor self esteem.

Crosscut points out that Swerve’s communicator is flashing, and while he’s checking his voicemail, all the Ammonites seemingly vanish… at least, until the gang realizes that they’re instead heading for Metroplex.

Inside, it would appear that the Rod Pod Squad aren’t actually dead, though their ride is probably toast. Before everything went to hell, a wall slammed down from the ceiling, protecting everyone from being utterly destroyed. Skids has figured out what all the arrow graffiti is about, earning himself a BOMP from Getaway. Looks like the internal structure of Metroplex has been shifting, and that’s why they got the runaround last issue. Also, Whirl’s gone missing, but we don’t have time to worry about that, because Swerve just called back with some bad news: the admium flakes they saw earlier mean that Metroplex has an alchemical virus.

Don’t you look at me like that, I’m getting to the explanation.

Alchemical viruses turn the metal of the body into admium, a rare, incredibly soft metal that will break down very easily and also kill you. It’s pretty bad to have. Also, contagious. Fellas better get outta there, posthaste.

The Ammonites are also storming Metroplex, so that’s an additional issue. God, it just never stops, does it?

Over in the Dead Universe-

Is

Is that a fortress of evil in the shape of Nova Prime’s head?

Is that a goddamned fortress-

Anyway, the center of Nova Prime’s universe is Kup, who was the guy who got oh-so-dramatically revealed at the end of the last issue. Unfortunately, Orion Pax also considers Kup to be very near and dear to his heart, and the whole “being turned into a space bridge” thing is going to be an issue.

This is the weirdest love triangle I’ve ever seen.

How the hell did Kup even get here? Well, in order to know that, you’ve have to had read Infestation, the bullshit zombie crossover comic miniseries that ran in 2011.

But I’m not going to do that.

Because I don’t want to.

After a bit of showboating, Nova Prime orders Nightbeat to take Team -Imus to their cell.

Over on Cybertron, Shockwave is getting real sick of Galvatron’s shit, but Galvatron is too busy posing dramatically to notice. Waspinator, Metalhawk, and Dreadwing float in the air. I’m not sure what they’re up to, but I’m sure it’s important. Jhiaxus shows up with a gaggle of goons, one of which seems to have forgotten his face in the jar by the door.

Galvatron gets shamed for tearing Megatron in half, since that sort of broke the space bridge in his torso, but he’s too busy being classist to care. Waspinator floats in the background. What are you doing back there, pal?

Shockwave orders Waspinator to carry Megatron to his quarters, but Galvatron’s decided that he’s going to be an asshole about everything today, even when he’s being helpful.

…Okay, Boomer.

Waspinator still ends up hauling Megatron’s ass away, and Shockwave and Jhiaxus have a little chat.

Back in the dead universe, Team -Imus are in their cell, as Nightbeat double-checks the locks or some shit, I dunno. They’re gonna get their sparks ripped out later in the day, so that the space bridge Kup’s got running in his torso finally has enough juice to actually friggin’ work.

Then Rodimus flashes his mystery hand at Nightbeat and makes him fall down. In order for the whole brainwashing thing to work, Nightbeat’s true nature had to be suppressed; however, whenever Rodimus shows off his mystery hand, it makes his brain kickstart back on, messing up the brainwashing.

Well, you know what, Cyclonus? That’s not my fucking fault. Blame Roberts and Barber. I certainly do.

ORION PLEASE.

We finally get a look at what Rodimus’ hand mystery is, and if you read Eugenesis, you might know where this is going. It would seem Nightbeat has not- which is for the best, really, given what happens to him in it- but he’s still a pretty smart cookie and can suss it out through the power of deductive reasoning. Here’s what he’s working with:

After a moment’s deliberation, he asks Rodimus, who he knows to be the captain of a ship, how many folks are riding around in the space yacht. Rodimus tells him 190, and shows off that he’s got his lipgloss on, and it would seem that Nightbeat’s a free man again. He lets everyone out of the cell, and they gear up to go pick up Kup. Orion Pax is confused as to what the hell just happened here, and Rodimus promises to explain why he’s carved a division problem into his palm once they aren’t in immediate danger.

Back on Cybertron, Galvatron and Waspinator are dragging Megatron’s halves towards Shockwave’s quarters, when Bumblebee pops out of nowhere with a gun and a mouth full of swears. He’s here for Megatron, and he’s not taking “no” for an answer. Galvatron thinks that this is super fucking funny, and tosses Megatron like an empty soda can into the wall so he can squash a bug.

It looks pretty grim for ol’ Bumblebee, but suddenly Galvatron realizes he left the oven on that Megatron’s gone missing.

Oh, there he is!

Megatron blasts Galvatron in the torso, then- in a surprisingly polite manner, at least for him- tells Bumblebee to grab his legs so they can get out of here. As the two of them traverse the burned-out husk that is Cybertron, Megatron decides to be a complete bastard, as he smiles at the idea of Starscream suffering. Like, dude, I know he kept you in weird hamster ball jail and spouted soliloquies in your general direction every single day you were there, but folks are dying right now.

Speaking of Starscream, he’s having a moment, as he sits on his knees and stares at the sky in abject horror while the world burns around him. Scoop comes by to yell at him for being a harbinger of death, and generally being a less than stellar leader, and Starscream halfway calls himself a dumpster fire.

Back inside Metroplex, the Rod Pod Squad are fortifying their defenses against the Ammonites, even though they really need to be getting the hell out of there before they get turned into talcum powder through the power of alchemy. Whirl shows back up, the Ammonite hanger-on in his grasp, and we get the skinny on why the hell the Ammonites are involved with this whole debacle anyway.

The answer is Shockwave.

The answer is always Shockwave.

Then the little dude explodes. It’s fine, they do that sometimes.

Before he went kablooey, little dude uttered the phrase, “if the dead are not enough.” We’ll get to what all that’s about later. Right now there are far more important things going on.

LIKE MOTHERFUCKING LADY ROBOTS.

But why is this such a big deal? Why is it that non-male coded robots who aren’t Arcee haven’t been seen up until this point? What’s up with that, huh?

Well, in order to understand IDW’s complicated relationship with gender, we’re going to have to do some digging into the history of Transformers as a franchise.

We’re going to have to talk about Simon Furman.

We're going to have to talk about Prime's Rib.

And we’re going to have to talk about Spotlight: Arcee.

Simon Furman wrote a lot of Transformers. You cannot get away from Simon Furman, because the man is so ingrained in the franchise. He was there for Marvel UK, he was there for the back half of Marvel US, he wrote for several other publication runs of Transformers, he worked on the Earth Wars mobile game-

-and, of course, IDW publishing.

Because Furman is so very well established and known in the industry, he gets the benefit of not being questioned on a lot of the calls he makes.

Which is a problem, because the man is a massive misogynist.

In 1989, Marvel UK #234 came out, containing the story entitled “Prime’s Rib!” in which the Autobots built Arcee in order to appease a group of strawmen feminists. Of course, one female Transformer isn’t enough for them, and they yell at poor Optimus Prime for trying his best. This is the point where Hot Rod is used as a writer avatar to try to smooth things over with the reader, because you see, the Transformers don’t even know what sexual dimorphism and gender identity even is, so of course they wouldn’t have female members of their race! Jazz is used for a breast joke. Arcee acts like a massive, stereotypical bitch the whole time, despite not having been written like that at all in the other issues. It’s a bad comic with hideous ideology leaking out of it, and I'm halfway sorry I read it, so I’ll just give you the essence of this nightmare.

Oh, those big, mean, scary feminists are bullying the robots for living their lives, huh Furman? Life is just so goddamned unfair when a woman exists in your fucking line of sight.

Furman has gone on record saying that he doesn’t see the point in including the concept of gender in a race of non-sexually reproducing robots. He sees them as “genderless.” Which, if that statement existed in a vacuum, I could perhaps see where he’s coming from.

But Simon Furman does not exist in a vacuum. He exists in a world where sexism exists, something that he’s willingly participated in.

Let me back up that little tidbit with a bit of a disclaimer: I’m not in any way an expert on gender. I didn’t study it in school, I’ve not read an obscene amount of pieces on the topic. I’m not even sure about it on a personal level.

Maybe some of y’all have noticed the whole other set of pronouns I slapped into the bio in the last month or so. It doesn’t really matter, 90% of people don’t read the FAQ/About, I know that, and then 95% of those people only read it once, and this has been a relatively new self-revelation.

BUT ANYWAY.

Let’s be… fair about this. 1989 was a while ago, a lot of research on the concept of gender has taken place, maybe he’s ch-

Oh, what’s that?

Misogyny?

Transphobia?

Transmisogyny?

Treating women as an aberration being forced on Transformers as a whole?

And the writing is clunky and overstuffed?

Well, that’s just fucking fantastic, Furman, thanks so much.

This was in 2008. Because Furman established that female Transformers weren’t something natural, but rather made, and forcibly at that, and nobody fucking smacked his little hands away from this terrible idea, AND nobody tried to fix it for years, there was a lack of gender diversity within IDW until 2014, with the release of Dark Cybertron Chapter 7. Because we waited six years to fix this nightmare, things couldn’t be done quite the way that Roberts had been hoping, in that he intended for our female robots to not have the whole… fembot build happening. IDW wanted them immediately clockable, because this was very clearly a problem that needed rectifying.

So, in short: because of boys’ club mentality and a lack of understanding of what gender means or why it’s important for roughly 50% of the world’s population to have representation in media, Nautica and Chromia are here now.

And despite the convoluted road they had to take, I love them very much.

[fanpom-imagines]

Being Spider-woman and being part of the Titans whilst also having a rivalry with Jason.

Masterlist

Fandom: Titans

Words: 2192

Warnings: like two cuss words

(Female Reader)

I swung my legs back and forth as I sat on one of the many billboards in the city. With my mask pulled up just up to my nose I took another bite of the burger I was eating. Looking across the streets I gave out a happy sigh and took another bite. As I was about to take another I stopped as I felt my senses tingle.

“Enjoying the food?” Came a voice from behind me.

Turning around a spot a man in a black and blue suit covering him head to shoulders with his eyes covered with a domino mask. I finally mask eye contact with the stranger and take another bite of my burger and hold eye contact with him as I finish chewing and swallow.

“Who are you?” I ask him as I bring my hands down, with the burger, to rest in my lap.

“Nightwing.”

“Spider-woman,” I said before turning back my eyes to the view and picking up my milkshake, taking another sip from it.

“I’ve seen what you do, and what you can do with your abilities,” Nightwing started as he came to sit down next to me, “and I’ve gotta say I’m impressed.”

“Thank you, I guess,” I told him as I gave him a sceptical side eye.

“Look I’m not here to fight you or anything, I’m actually here with an offer.” My ears perked up at that and I looked over to him encouraging him to continue.

“I have this team, of sorts, a lot of times they’re more like family to be honest, but anyways they have abilities, like you. And I’m guessing that you know that society and people with abilities that seem to defy logic don’t really mix well,” I have out a small puff of air at that and took another sip of my shake, “and so I help them. Not just with their abilities, but to have a better life than the one they’re living and to give them a chance to help people.”

“You asking me to join?” I ask him, looking at him once again.

“Yeah, I am,” Nightwing said as we made eye contact. Well more eye contact on my side as you couldn’t make out my eyes through my mask.

I pondered over the offer for a second as I broke eye contact and looked forward staring off. Still feeling Nightwing’s eyes on me my thoughts start to run. Thinking of the benefits of having a team, and the downsides rushing in and out creating a tally system.

“If it doesn’t work out can I leave?” I asked him after a few minutes of contemplation.

“Door will always be open for you to leave or join,” he said simply.

“Ok,” I said, “I’ll take your one week free trial.”

“Good to hear,” he said getting up and making his way to the edge of the billboard. Not getting up I still keep sitting and finishing my meal. Realizing this Nightwing turns around to look at me.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Let me finish my food first.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Guys, this is (F/N) (L/N) a.k.a. Spider-woman,” Nightwing, or Dick Grayson, as he later introduced himself told the rest of his team.

“Hello,” I gave a slight wave to the group of four standing in front of me.

In front of me stood four other teens or young adults. One was a boy probably in his late teens or early twenty giving me an awkward, friendly grin as he gave me a slight wave. He also had green hair which oddly did not seem dyed or look like a wig. There was a pale girl standing next to him who also had the same hair situation, but hers was purple. There was also this red gem in the middle of her forehead, but she also seemed kind as she gave a kind smile. Next came a boy who seemed to be in his early twenties with brown hair sticking out in different directions and his arms crossed over his chest as his eyes studied me, as if trying to analyze my weaknesses. Then last was another boy who also seemed to be the same age as the other two, he was the tallest of the four and hand a red Superman symbol on the chest of his black shirt, but other than that he seemed to be normal. To be fair tho I don’t look out of the ordinary either and I can stick to walls.

“Oh my God, I’ve seen you on YouTube!” The green haired male said in excitement as he took a few steps to stand in front of me and greet me. “Hi I’m Garfield, but just call me Gar,” he greeted as he gave out his arm for me to shake it which I gladly did.

“Hi Gar,” I reply.

“That’s Rachel,” He turns to point at the girl.

“Gar I can introduce myself,” the girl says playfully rolling her eyes as she comes up to me and shakes hands with me. “Hey, (Y/N), I’m Rachel, good to finally have another girl on the team. The testosterone levels were getting too high in this place,” she jokes as I chuckle a bit.

“How do we know we can trust her?” Came the voice of the one with the brown hair as he still didn’t take his eyes off me.

“Jason, I know that what happened with Rose may make this hard, but we need to learn to accept others onto our team. We can’t let one bad experience automatically disqualify anyone new from joining,” Dick replied as Jason scoffed and left the room.

“That’s Jason, there was a girl who joined our team awhile back who ended up-“ Rachel was cut off by Dick.

“Rachel,” Dick told her in warning.

“Anyways,” Gar continued as he motioned for the boy with the Superman symbols to come closer. “That’s Conner, but he’s like a newborn...kinda,” Gar trailed off trying to look for the right words.

“What?” I asked as I looked from Conner to Gar in confusion.

“We’ll explain later,” Rachel said as she grabbed onto my arm and rugged me out of the room. “Now come on let me give you a tour.”

“Let us give you a tour,” Gar said as him and Conner followed.

“Yeah, whatever,” Rachel replies.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s been almost a year of being part of the Titans, and honestly it was amazing. I have been looking for a place to live to finally move out of Aunt May’s, though she says I can live with her as long as she wants. I wanted to relieve her of having to take care of two rather than just herself. So now having the opportunity to live in this place with the rest of my team who also double as my roommates is a pretty good deal, plus it’s not too far away from home. So I’ve been able to sling by Aunt May’s a couple of times for a visit.

Being with the Titans has been great. Dick’s been like a father always looking out for me and the rest of the Titans. He also cooks for us a lot which is honestly great because all I can really make are eggs.

Rachel has been like a sister slash best friend. Her and I have hung out a lot and I could see she was glad to finally have someone who was a little more alike to her, not just in gender, but in experience. As both of us struggled at controlling our abilities at first and both have negatively affected our family members, though hers is a bit more extreme than mine.

Gar and I have been binge playing video games staying late up just smashing away at buttons. Good thing I brought over my Xbox as ten two of us played online with each other as we screamed into the microphone at one another.

Conner was sweet and I learned that he was actually a clone, a fucking clone! Honestly to me that was super cool which he didn’t seem to understand, but appreciated nonetheless and I’ve enjoyed showing and teaching him new things.

Jason on the other hand, well he had to warm up to me. Apparently the last new recruit actually ended up betraying them and Jason had a thing for her, so his slight hostility and distrust in me was completely understandable. Yet, overtime as we became closer he warmed up to me and we became friends of sorts. Although, him and I have this playful rivalry going. We literally made everything between each other into a competition. Who can take down the most bad guys? Challenge accepted. Who can get back to the tower the fastest? Challenge accepted. Who can do more pull ups? Challenge accepted. Who can fold their laundry faster? Challenge ducking accepted. But with this friendly competitive relationship between the two of us also came some attraction towards the newest Robin, and honestly I don’t really know how to deal with it so I’ve just been keeping my emotions on lock down till by some miracle he reciprocated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I grinned to myself as I crawled on the ceiling looking down at Jason. Slowly I made my way closer and closer to where he was training with his metal staff as he swung again as he let out another breath. As he faces away from me giving me time to jump down silently onto the ground behind him and jab at his right knee pit causing his leg to bend and for him to fall forward.

“What the hell?” Jason yells as he ends up falling into a kneeling position as he has one hand on the floor. He uses it to push himself back up and turn around to swing at me.

Blocking one of Jason’s blows with my hand I move to jab my fist into his abdomen to push him onto the mat. Not expecting it, the new Robin fell to the floor with a loud thud. I gasped out thinking I may have used my super strength to knock him back and made my way to him to make sure he was okay. However, in a sudden movement Jason took the staff and put it behind my neck to trap me to the mat with him.

“Where are your Spidey senses now?” He grinned up at me as he flipped us over on the floor with him on top with both hands still wrapped around the cool metal of the staff.

“Shut up,” I groaned, punching his side lightly. He chuckled at my “attempt” of getting out of his hold.

“You know you’ve been getting the upper hand in this rivalry of ours at every corner, but it seems like for once I’ve got the upper hand. I think I deserve a reward,” he grinned down at me cheekily.

“Oh, and what would your reward be?” I questioned him with a raised brow.

“This,” right as the words left his lips he leaned down to capture his lips with mine. My eyes widened for a millisecond before I smiled into the kiss and closed my eyes whilst pushing my lips back on his. Jason let go of the metal staff and instead led his hands up my throat to hold my face as he deepened the kiss. Biting my bottom lip he swiped his tongue on it right afterwards and I groaned in response before opening my mouth to allow him entrance with his tongue. I in turn had my arms trail from his side one fisting his shirt to pull him closer while the other going up into his hair to slightly tug at it, eliciting a groan from him.

“Are you two serious?” We heard a voice coming from my right and his left. The two of us pull apart, me panting on the floor and him sitting up straddling me whilst also trying to catch his breath, and we both whip our heads to the voice to see Gar standing there with his arms crossed. “Jason you literally asked me to come and train with you.”

“Whoops,” Jason said as he looked back at him giving me a wink before standing up and offering me his hand. Gladly accepting it I grab onto his hand and he pulls me up. “Sorry Gar, kinda loses track of time,” Jason told him, not even taking his eyes off of me.

“I’m sorry ‘bout this Gar,” I said turning to the green haired boy and giving him an apologetic smile. “I’ll see you guys later then,” I told the two before walking out of the entrance opposite of where Garfield entered from.

“Really dude? Why did you have to come in? It was just getting good,” I heard Jason complain at his friend before hearing him pick up the staff and take a whack at Gar which in turn solicited a yelp from the other boy.

“Ow, what the hell, Jason?” I heard from Gar followed by another whacking sound and another yelp from Gar.

[clansayeed]

Hey Jack! I wanted to know what your thoughts are on Rheya. Was she really a villain to you? Were her motives justifiable? Was she a good villain? Did you think she deserved to have a redemption arc in chapter 16? What could have been written to make her have a better character story? Any thoughts at all about Rheya!

FOREWARNING: Anon... I accidentally wrote you a 2500 word essay. I shit you not this thing is 2,528 words long. So... I don’t know whether to say you’re welcome or I’m sorry. Just letting you know in advance.

ADD-ON POST-POSTING: I’m fully aware this is an app game. A three book series written with sexying vampires in mind. Where the medium is limited both size and content-wise, where you can’t go into much detail because they can only have so many panels in a chapter, etc. Still thinking what I think though. And if you get paid to create content professionally the least you can do for your own paycheck is go back and double-check your work.

Actually this ask came at a good time since I have to work on some character motivations for her for my series... and I always break down the in-canon versions before working on my own. So anon, let’s talk... are you a mind reader?

Kidding! mostly

So. Rheya.

I actually just finished my first replay of book 2 and at the moment I’ve only ever played book 3 the once. I played it as it was releasing so there were some memory gaps in some places and needed-refreshers in others. But on a whole I have similar thoughts about Rheya as I do Xenocrates, and you can find those thoughts here.

Overall she was a solid setup, good design and potential, and PB pretty much wasted her execution.

I wanna start with a genuine question to the fandom since I’ve never actually been able to ask this... but y’all like... totally saw the Bloodkeeper being related to her coming, right? Like I was so convinced of it that when it was revealed in some big dramatic point at the end I was like “yeah... they told us this...?” and it turns out they fuckin didn’t??? Like I could not understand the people who were like super into her sprite like yes she looks good but here I was thinking she was our ancestor from the get-go so I was... confused to say the least.

Not gonna lie when they started pushing in snippets of Rheya’s past trauma in book 2 (things like her yelling “you know what they did to me/took from me” which is paraphrased but you know what I mean) I really hoped they weren’t gonna do what they did. So of course they did it.

But I wish they’d like... just given her the kid. Just give her Iola and leave the weird suddenly random husband out of it. At this point we know Gaius has an unhealthy idolatry for her, we know Xenocrates adored her in his own way in his youth... but we know fuckall about Demetrius up to and including his existence until literally book 3. Sloppy, IMO. They took something not being mentioned and used it to put in a plot device when the omission should have been strategical.

TBH I thought the whole “you know what they did to me” was gonna get hella dark RE: Rheya and King Kaelisus’ obsession with her. That’s as far as I’ll go there.

But you have a Priestess, a known Priestess, who was definitely faithful enough not to stray even when she thought she was walking to her own death. It’s pretty easy to assume (as I did ngl) that she would be completely devoted to Phampira, including romantically/sexually. It would have been a good setup to explain why she never gave Gaius the goods if anything.

And there’s nothing wrong with having said Priestess have her own family while still being devoted. I just wish PB would have used some fucking forethought and hinted at that earlier on than they did. Because they didn’t hint. They dropped this random fisherman-something husband on us and told us she cared enough about his opinion to make him part of her advisory board but not... to like... mention him in any of her conversations in any of the flashbacks... including those in which he would have been alive.

On that note the whole timeline there is really messy, they obviously threw him and Iola in later on after some things were established/couldn’t be taken back. I’ve studied this shit extensively and it’s really muddled exactly how long Rheya ruled, when shit went down with her family, how much time had passed when Xenocrates staked her, etc.

I would have loved for Iola’s father not to have been there. Give me a strong woman, a strong single mother, who would burn the world for the loss of her daughter. Doesn’t matter who did the deed, Iola was hers and the Sons/Order took that from her and the world would have to pay the price.

If I had been given that I would end all of my complaints right here. I would, genuinely. Because then her descent into madness, her paranoia, her megalomania would all have been explained. And they still technically are but -- maybe it’s just me -- there’s something about her having to factor in Demetrius that just... takes me out of it. IDK.

I didn’t mind the guy... though him being a talking tree of doom was a little much for me... though by that point I had accepted the plot was off the goddamn rails and just kept nodding and going with it. But his presence made the story okay when his absence could have made the story impactful and powerful and emotional. That’s just my thoughts. Which you asked for. You did this.

No takesies-backsies.

Was she a villain? Hells to the yes.

It’s a classic case of obtaining ultimate power and abusing it; of crossing the line between justice and vengeance. Not that she wasn’t justified in her freak-out over the death of her family. But everything after up to and including her fatal feeding schedule was totally unnecessary. For a villain, yes necessary. 

For a vampire goddess who could have easily used Gaius’ influence over the vampires of the modern world to form a cult following around herself with an open dialogue about her big ass appetite and probably would have ended up with swaths of willing adorers ready to lend their blood to her cause thus eliminating the need for secrecy and subsequent feeling of betrayal...

You tell me.

I feel like she was definitely more than a little hyped up though. Not even going into my whole-ass issue with the entire Unchained plot and thus the first like 4-5 chapters of book 3, she was hyped up in myth and kind of a let down in person. She could FLY. Walk in the SUN. Heal the DYING. She’s vampire JESUS.

*ADDED IN LATER: She took out THE ENTIRE ORDER OF THE DAWN, WHO HAVE RAVAGED THE VAMPIRE POPULATION FOR LITERALLY 3000 YEARS since they were around in her time after all IN LIKE A THREE-MOVE COMBO BREAK. ALL THIS SHIT THEY HYPED WITH THE ORDER and their entire ERADICATION isn’t even an ON-SCREEN THING. Unless you pay.

Dude if they had kept Xenocrates and the Order and used the two of them against each other; the Order’s long-standing influence on the modern world versus the new world Rheya wanted to create with the human populations not knowing the history behind their hatred, where like the first half of the book is Rheya and MC and gang taking out the Order and Xenocrates only to find out in the middle point that she’s been doing it for selfish reasons and they were on the wrong team the whole time and THEN Rheya becomes the big bad... I would have enjoyed the shit out of that.

Anyway. “She’s vampire JESUS...” and her big evil plan is to... suck face on national television? IDK. It didn’t play the mood right for me. I can see from a writer’s perspective how they kind of played out all of their options and went with a quick and easy solution... but it didn’t work for me. That’s a no from me dawg.

Do I think she deserved a redemption arc? I don’t think anybody deserved a god damn redemption arc, unless they are done with extreme care and attention to detail before/during/after said arc they go horribly, and overall tend to be the plot device pick of lazy writers.

And I take nothing back. No like I think I might have gone into how much I fucking hated Gaius’ “reDEmPtiON aRc” before or at least I have somewhere and to someone. Probably Sofia... no most definitely Sofia. But anyway. They spend TWO GOD DAMN BOOKS hyping Gaius as this ultimately irredeemable bad guy. 

OMG I was literally playing the book 2 finale and got a quote hold on... HERE. Adrian literally says about Gaius in 2.16 “It’s like there’s no humanity left.” And that’s just one actual example of the tons of times they make him out to be devoted to Rheya of his own volition, the ultimate example of the line between believing in something and being blinded to everything by it, etc. Like a huge chunk of Kamilah’s and Adrian’s arcs RE: Gaius are about how he was definitely a monster, he turns the people around him into monsters, and while they have worked their asses off to be good and right their wrongs he has not, will not, and would not ever do such a thing.

Then suddenly he’s brainwashed, tried to turn Rheya down and was made into a loony toon because of it, and everything he made MC’s loved ones do that they blamed themselves for but needed to blame him for is suddenly Rheya’s fault and now we should blame her for.

Mmmmmkay sweetie. I’m good, thanks.

But really -- that was the last straw for me when it came to both Gaius and Rheya. There’s a difference between giving the villain something they see as a just cause (ex. Rheya avenging her family) and giving the villain a cop-out that absolves them of guilt (ex. Gaius and... everything about him). Like yes I know MC didn’t have to forgive him, I know Kamilah didn’t really forgive him, but it’s pretty fuckin obvious from how it was put out into the world story that the writers were trying to lean you towards blaming Rheya and letting Gaius off the hook.

I mean... making him save Lula for real when Rheya saved her for fake earlier on in the book, using Lula as a stand-in metaphor for her own child daughter that she finds out she was the cause of her death for, etc? That symbolism is so transparent I could put it in the asset database.

And I’ll only briefly touch on this since I could write a whole other essay on the matter RE: PB and their fucking constant repetition of this, but “let’s give both bad guys similar moral quandaries but suddenly reveal it was a consent issue and the woman is wholly to blame and now gets the man’s crimes piled on with her own” is super common in fiction and hella. fucking. sexist.

But that isn’t to say all of this is necessarily bad.

When done right, everything I’ve complained about above can be a part of a really good story. What “done right” means is different for everyone, everyone has a different example and different thoughts on it. These are mine. I think the better term would be done well. It was not done WELL.

But given things like PB’s weird obsession with redeeming the attractive (apparently) bad guy, PB’s history with narrowing a woman down to one trait or part of her (ex. Rheya’s power corruption centered around her role as a wife and mother and not... a super all powerful vampire goddess...), their obvious lack of attention to detail and overall lack of vision when it comes to the big picture* and more, I personally don’t think they knew what the fuck they wanted by book 3 and were already well into transitioning into whatever adultery-obsessed lingerie shenanery they’re fixated on now; so much so that it’s almost a disservice to the writing done in earlier book 1 and a decent chunk of book 2 when calling it a whole series.

*I keep bringing this up only because it means I can back up stuff like this with real examples of theirs: these guys did not write the plot of this series as a cohesive story. I get that, as a writer writing a big series myself I get the fuck out of that. But you have to solidify some things early on in the development process in order to avoid writing yourself into a hole or, like with this, having to result in trope-y plot devices that work in theory but on paper don’t give the story the full-circle fulfillment it deserves. 

Their timelines are out of whack, they contradict themselves in quite a few places, constantly wishy-washy their own lore, and definitely didn’t go back and double check if they’d said something already... and that’s not including where they focused on the details of one unimportant thing and left another more important thing to just be “and this is the way it is moving on.”

I literally have no way/idea how to summarize any of this bullshittery going on in this ask. Did I like Rheya? The character personality, design, and overall idea as this big ass badass power/hungry goddess demanding fealty was pretty cool. Did I like Rheya when they narrowed her story down to her grief over her family (which, again, is valid, but just seemed really disjointed and rushed when compared to everything else they had given about her/shown of her by the beginning of book 3)? Not... as much.

I think they wanted her to seem like she could be redeemed. I mean FFS in the “big battle” she literally just stands there and lets you do the thing. 3000 years imprisoned and however many centuries before that spent taking the power that she was denied all because some bad dudes in masks killed the mortal husband and daughter you would have eventually lost to old age anyway...? And she just stands there??? 

Even knowing she was really behind Iola’s death they could have stuck with the “madness consumed” plotline and had her be like well... what’s done is done back to taking over now thank you.

But sometimes a bad guy just has to be a bad guy. Rourke from ES, mister capitalism -- can’t remember them trying to redeem him. If they had I don’t think I would have liked it so much. Who else... UGH. Thomas in NB. Crazy zombie man wants all monsters dead because one killed his family (can we stop using dead families for grief porn please and thanks...) another example of a useless villain. Hence why I removed him from my NB rewrite don’t even get me going...

What’s his face in TCATF! Luther! You join up with him and he still tries to kill you in the end! Now that was fucking classic. Hex, who suddenly is forgiven for the literal enslavement of a race of people and the thoughtless murder of a civilization that didn’t agree with her.. and all because she was ‘like a mother’ to the kid genius? Not so much.

I could go on and on and go search out tons of examples but in the end the one thing you can say PB does well is that they stay consistent in their ideas of redemption, of who deserves it and who isn’t, and just how far they’re willing to stretch the fucking story to forgive a character if 1. the sprite is hot or 2. the sprite had a little sprite family somewhere in there.

legit just talk to me about bb/nb

[spookypalace]

worship the flame - chapter seven

Jo peaks a look at him once or twice as he’s ordering a list of drinks, she’s certain he catches her as pink lips curve into a smirk. Brown eyes meet for a final time before he steps away, and she wonders—maybe her dry spell would end.

—

Or the one where Jo meets Alex in a bar, during her final year of med school.

(if you would rather read on ao3, you can do here)

Their final week off before the remainder of med-school had gone by in a blur, after the horrific dinner with Lexie’s parents, both Jo and Lexie decided the rest of their week would be low-key. Whilst Steph and Leah had preferred the idea of spending their evenings and mornings in the clubs of Seattle, Jo just really didn’t have the energy or the money to get dressed up and throw money at an overpriced bar. So, the two girls spent most of the time back at their apartment, a few nights at Joe’s. There was once or twice Jo ventured over to Alex’s, but only when Lexie was at Jacksons—the apartment felt lonely without them.

For Jo, what had been surprising, is the new-found friendship that had begun between Jackson and Alex. It almost made her laugh. Since the dinner with Thatcher, the two men had seemingly found that they got on pretty well. In fact, if Alex wasn’t at work or with Jo—he was with Jackson. Popping out to the grocery store and coming back to find them sat on the couch, cold beer in hands and some game of football blaring on the old television, had initially been a shock for her. But now it was a regular occurrence.

Honestly, she hadn’t realized how much of an effect seeing him so comfortable in her space had on her until every time she looked at Alex, she felt her stomach do a somersault and warmth to spread up her neck and across her cheeks. And that was just by gazing at him. Jo found herself looking towards Alex when she knew he was in the room and smiling whenever he did the same or when she heard his laugh. Within less than a handful of days, her feelings for Alex had gone from platonic and purely physical to something a lot more that she was way too hesitant on properly identifying. She was still trying to figure out how the hell this transpired.

How had it happened so fast? In the blink of an eye, it felt like. One moment Jo and Alex are promising they will not have feelings for one another and the next she’s willing her erratic heart to calm the hell down at the mere sight of Alex. It was crazy how feelings for someone snuck up on you and how hard they hit you, and the realization Jo had that she liked Alex as more than just a sex … friend had left her breathless. Although, she’s unsure if it’s the good or bad kind because while Alex had become one of the best guys she knew, he was also unavailable. He’d told her that much at the very beginning. And she had promised it was not a problem. Until it was.

God, Jo felt pathetic.

What was just as bad is now that she was painfully aware of her not-so-platonic feelings for Alex, she found herself subtly and as discreetly as she could manage avoiding any one-on-one time with him—unless they were, of course, having sex. She had grown to love hanging out with Alex, but now she can’t help but be super conscious of how she acted around him and had this fear that she’ll somehow let it slip that she’s attracted to him, and she couldn’t have that. Although it was hard, Alex had been spending an increasing amount of time at her place and with Jackson—just lounging on her couch or in her bed. All plans, unless they didn’t require clothing, now always accompanied Lexie and Jackson, with the odd appearance of Steph and Leah.

“Hey, you wanna go to the movies in a few?” Jo’s shoulders tensed ever so slightly at the sound of Alex’s voice, glancing at him over her shoulder from where she stood by the counter in the kitchen preparing a Nutella sandwich. He was popping his head in from behind the entryway wall, upper half curling into the kitchen as his gaze remained on her. “Jackson and Lexie want to go see that film that you guys were talking about the other day, I know you said you wanted to see it. We can leave now and catch all of the trailers,” he added, after hearing of Jo’s love of wanting to see every preview before the movies.

Oh, God, that sounded a lot like a real double date. Or maybe Jo was just overreacting, as always, but she didn’t want to risk it. Knowing Jackson and Lexie, they’d be wrapped up in each other during the movie leaving Jo and Alex by themselves, and that totally went against her poorly thought-out, dumb plan of keeping a some-what distance from him. Even if she really did want to watch the movie.

“Oh, um,” she blinked, neck tensing at the expectant raise of Alex’s eyebrows. “I would but I’m really tied. I was actually gonna’ take a nap after eating this,” she lied, gesturing to the sandwich as she quickly turned around and put the two pieces of bread together and capped the jar of Nutella.

Alex glanced at her sandwich, eyebrows lowering into a slight frown as a confused chuckle escaped him and he stepped around the wall to lean against it. “Seriously? Lexie said you’ve been dying to see that movie since the trailer came out.”

“Yeah, I’ll just watch it online or something, I still have some studying ...” Jo shrugged nonchalantly her words dying on her lips, dropping the dirty knife in the sink with a clang. “But you have fun.”

“Have fun?” Alex scoffed, a smile tugging at his lips as he shot me a look. “I’m gonna’ be third wheeling with your friends.” When his lower lip jutted out slightly, the action instantly drawing her gaze to his mouth, Jo’s stomach clenched as Alex prodded, “Are you sure you don’t wanna’ come?”

Jo inhaled quietly, pressing her lips together in an apologetic smile as she moved to walk out of the kitchen, having to walk towards Alex since he was right at the entryway. “Sorry, Alex,” she responded, sandwich in hand. “Take one of your roommates.”

When she was right next to him, Alex turned his head to look down at her, eyes light with mirth as he told her, “They’re not nearly as fun as you.”

Oh, fucking hell. Even if he was joking around, that wasn’t helpful at all in Jo’s plan of at least trying to hide her feelings for him. Ignoring the heat rising in her cheeks, Jo quickly said, “Don’t let them hear you say that. Have fun at the movies.”

Instead of waiting for a reply, Jo offered a brief smile before hastily going to her room and shutting the door behind her, letting out a deep slow breath as she dropped herself on the bed. Taking a rather violent bite of her sandwich, Jo felt her shoulders sink in defeat. If the smallest of comments from Alex had her body going into a frenzy and her breath catching, how was she at all going to be successful in keeping her feelings for him at bay? This wasn’t going to be easy.

“You know you’re about as subtle as a neon sign.”

Jo blinked up at Jackson, frowning behind the shield of her book as the boy sat down on the couch next to her, having returned from the movies just ten minutes earlier. Alex had headed off to work and Lexie had hopped into the shower. “Huh?”

Jackson chuckled lowly, “tell me, Jo,” he spoke up once again, bringing his legs up onto the coffee table and resting his arms on the couch arms. “Do you have a thing for Alex?”

“Obviously.”

“Huh?”

“We’re sleeping together.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

What the hell?

Jo’s jaw loosened at Jackson’s inquiry, eyes widening behind her book and heart jumping into her throat. His eyes were on hers and Jo’s shoulders tensed, taking in a sharp breath as Jackson waited for an answer. But she was too stunned and taken aback to say anything, to confirm or deny, because of course Jackson would sense something is up—he’d been spending a ridiculous amount of time around them both. He may be the quiet one of the four—at least, when he’s sober—but he’s definitely the most observant; he’s always watching people, dissecting them with his eyes and mind and figuring them out like the world’s easiest math equation. Jackson seemed to read people so easily, and Jo should’ve known better than to think she would be able to hide anything from him. She spent half her time wondering how she was keeping this from Lexie.

When she didn’t say anything for a few moments too long, his lips twitched as he shrugged and assured, “It’s okay if you do.”

“No, it’s not,” she blurted, not even bothering to deny anything. All the air expelled from her lungs as Jackson quirked a brow, silently prodding her to continue as she threw the book down and looked ahead. Jo’s eyebrows lowered in a distressed frown. “He’s—I can’t ... he doesn’t want that. I feel like I’m, like, betraying myself or something.”

“Because you didn’t want a boyfriend.” His words were more of a statement than a question, yet Jo nodded anyway as she sat up, crossing her legs and picking at her unpainted nails. Jackson sighed, “you can’t help who you have feelings for, Jo. So what? You didn’t want a boyfriend, but that was before you met the guy.”

“It’s not that—relationships are messy already and then you add me into the situation and I—I mess everything good in my life up.”

“That’s not true,” Jackson instantly retorted matter-of-factly, effectively clamping Jo’s mouth shut as she looked at him almost helplessly. He sighed as he took in the brunette’s expression, shifting so he was sitting face her with his own legs crossed. “You and Lexie have been friends for years, she loves you—trust me, she talks about you like you’re her favorite person. It almost makes me jealous.” Jo smiles, shaking her head with a small laugh, “does this have something to do with … that Jason guy?”

“Maybe,” she countered, tilting her head challengingly. “Everyone said he was such a nice guy, I mean he was charming and funny—no one had a bad word to say about him. But then he’s with me and he turns into someone else, he’s a cheater and manipulative and he—”

“Jo, that has nothing to do with you. That’s him. That’s who he really is, behind the facade.” Jackson cuts her off, frowning.

With a huff, Jo changes the conversation back to Alex, “what if I told Alex I liked him more than that? What if, hypothetically, he liked me back and we wanted to date? I’m not saying that’ll happen, because I very much doubt it, but if it did—who's to say it wouldn’t end in disaster. That we’d end up hating one another when we might be working together in a few months' time.”

Jo saw Jackson’s eyes widen as his eyebrows shot up his forehead, full lips parting in surprise before asking, “that’s what it’s all about, taking risks. It would be nice to see how things panned out before getting yourself into something, but half the fun is doing it for yourself.”

Jo scoffed, raspingly and a bit bitterly. “You just like having another guy around,” she joked afterwards, regretting the way she was treating him in this moment. Jo was just coming to terms with the fact that she was developing feelings for Alex, so the idea of actually being with him was still out there—just a hopeful imagination running wild without having to deal with the consequences of sharing them with anyone. Until now, with Jackson.

Jackson’s gaze returned to her as he leaned closer, deep voice dropping low as he looked at her over his sunglasses. “I get you’re scared,” he told her. “But it’s about you and how you feel, okay? If you like Alex and you want something out of it, let him know. Forget about all the what-ifs for a second—what’s the worst that could happen if you tell Alex you like him?”

Jo blinked, staring at Jackson in slight incredulity, surprised that he was pushing her on this. Honestly, she was kind of glad she had someone she could talk to this about. Jackson would never be her first choice, it would always be Lexie, she’d found recently that he was very easy to talk to; he was quiet, but he always listened and if you were one of the people he opened up to, then something about that made the person feel special. There have been lots of moments since they finally met one another all those weeks ago, some when they were drunk off of wine, where Jackson would let Jo know all of his thoughts and feelings and dreams, and it was a time she welcomed wholeheartedly.

But once his question settled in her mind, Jo let out an unladylike snort and pointed out, “He might not feel the same way and totally reject me.”

Much to her surprise, a smirk curled at Jackson’s lips as he leaned away from her, humming out in a tone that told her he knew more than he was letting on, “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Jo’s heart thudded against her chest in a particularly hard beat, eyes widening as she stared at his blue-eyes in startlement as her stomach did an anticipated flip-flop. What the hell did that mean? The look on Jackson’s face told her he knew something that he wasn’t revealing, and that sent her curiosity skyrocketing. “What’re you talking about?”

To her chagrin, Jackson merely shrugged as he hopped to his feet, ignoring her protesting exclaims as he smirked and walked towards the bathroom, hearing the shower turn off. “Wha—Jackson! Come back!” she shouted, briefly frozen in her spot on the couch. He wasn’t sure about Alex rejecting her feelings for him? What? “Jackson! Don’t think I’m letting this go!”

When he neared the bathroom door, rich laughter escaping him as he did so, Jo let out a frustrated sigh before throwing herself up off the couch, practically running towards the much taller male as she tried to catch up to him. Even when Jo caught up to him and jumped on his back, sending them both falling around the small hallway with laughter, it did nothing to get Jackson to spill whatever secrets he was holding.

“What the hell is going on?” Lexie shrieked as she threw open the bathroom door, frowning with curiosity down at the pair with a towel wrapped around her slim frame. When all she was met with was laughter, she stepped over the pair and towards her bedroom with a sigh and a smile.

Jo was convinced the best way to torture someone was by telling them they know something but not actually letting them know what that something is, leaving their imagination and thoughts to run rampant with wild curiosity. That’s exactly what Jackson was doing to her since he dropped some sort of hint the other day on her couch, and even when Jo tried to drown him in questions, he didn’t budge on telling her what he meant. But Jackson just smirked and laughed and said nothing. Asshole.

Why did Jackson have to say I wouldn’t be so sure about that when Jo said that Alex wouldn’t feel the same way about her as she did about him? The potential answer to that invited the excited fluttering in her stomach to increase tenfold and heart to pick up its pace, but she wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions without having a solid answer—which Jackson was being ridiculously secretive about. Why say something so vague? Pretty sadistic of him, in Jo’s opinion.

Every time he looked at her, Jo narrowed her eyes at him in a glare lacking any real anger or maliciousness and he merely smirked in response, knowing exactly what he was doing to her. Alex and Lexie had caught the interaction at one point, but Jo quickly looked away and didn’t give them any room to question.  

Tonight, after being back in school for a week, the weekend rolled around and Jo was hoping to get her mind off of her raging curiosity by joining everyone in going to a club, for once, that was only a five minute drive from the bar. But since no one was completely dedicated to being a designated driver, they split two Ubers and arrived at the club after pregaming for a bit at the bar—where Jo would have happily stayed but Stephanie had other ideas.

As expected, the club was throbbing with life at this time of night, music playing at a deafening volume as people gathered in the middle to dance to the live DJ, off on the right to lounge on the couches and tables, or to the left where almost the entire side was taken up by the bar. There were people upstairs too, the second floor only making up the perimeter of the room as the back spilled out onto a large back deck with more couches so people could enjoy the outside weather while hearing the music from inside. Since it was on the beach, people were either hanging out on the deck or going towards the beach.

As soon as they got inside, Jo and her friends gravitated towards the bar and she was pressed between Lexie and Steph’s newish boyfriend, Kyle, as Jackson got one of the bartender’s attention and requested a round of shots. The bass of the remixed music thrummed in Jo’s ears as everyone’s chatter mingled altogether, laughter erupted from them all following some remark Leah made trying to convince them on how playing hard to get was the perfect way to bag an older man. It was funnier because he looked so serious talking about it. Jo had to fight turning her gaze over to Alex the entire conversation.

The vodka burned down Jo’s throat once they tossed the glasses back, not even pausing as two more rounds were brought in front of them as they took those as well. As the boys ordered some drinks for themselves, Steph grabbed Jo’s and Lexie’s hands before dragging them towards the center of the room, pulling them in the midst of the dancing crowd so they could move amongst the somewhat sweaty bodies that were already rubbing up against them. But the couple of shots of vodka, plus the few drinks Jo had taken before coming here, were already mixing with her blood and she felt good, so dancing with her friends was exactly what she was going to do. Even though her long hair was loose, her sleeveless bodysuit and shorts didn’t let her feel too hot despite the stuffy atmosphere.

The song was some Migos remix, though everyone was yelling out the lyrics as they moved to the beat and white lights flashed to the rhythm. They must have danced to two more songs before Jo broke away from the crowd and went back to the bar at Steph’s request of getting more drinks. The guys were right where they had left them, backs against the bars and glasses in their hands as they talked and sipped while the three of them shoved themselves between the boys.

“Whoa, whoa, none for us?” Jackson demanded over the music, an amused grin spreading on his lips at the girls after they downed the first round.

Lexie smiled that flirtatious smile she only reserved for Jackson, left hand on her chest as she pulled him towards her and teased, “Only if you join me on the dance floor, babe.”

His grin widened as he pulled her closer, which at this point Jo looked away to reach for another shot glass and downed the green apple flavored liquid. Her throat no longer burned as the drink went down, placing the glass upside down on the wooden bar top. She gestured for the bartender to bring another round, wondering just how wasted she could get by the end of the night.

“You know Alex’s been wanting to dance with you all night,” Jackson’s voice spoke in Jo’s ear, when he returns from the dancefloor, low yet she could hear him clearly despite the loud music. “Avoiding him is just gonna’ make him think you hate him or want to end whatever is going on between you or … something.”

Automatically, Jo’s eyes wandered around to find the brunette, landing on Alex towards the right as he stood leaning against one of the pillars. This wasn’t really his type of music, but he was smiling and chatting away to Kyle, watching them actually enjoy themselves was amusing to Jo. “You know I don’t hate him,” she mumbled, tone dejected and drunkenly slow as she leaned her head against Jackson’s shoulder.

They were sitting on one of the couches on the right side of the room, right under the second-floor landing where people above and around them were dancing and having a good time. Lexie and Steph were lost somewhere in the crowd. “Then tell him that, Jo,” Jackson responded, twirling the glass he held with long fingers as the ice inside clinked around. “Just because you realized you like Alex as more than a friend-with-benefits, doesn’t mean you have to stop acting like his friend, you know? Don’t push him away because you’re scared of the possibility of having more.”

Jo wasn’t nearly as drunk as she’d like to be to be having this conversation, and not for the first time did Jo curse her ability to hold her alcohol well. She didn’t know how many drinks she’s downed so far, but the most she was feeling was a little heaviness in her head and mild sluggishness. She was still painfully aware of every word she said and every thought she processed.

Which is why Jackson’s words were settled in her mind like wet cement; sinking and hardening as she realized he was right. Jo was being dumb by trying to push Alex away just because she was scared—not scared of telling Alex, but scared of finding out how he felt, of feeling like she was betraying Charlotte. Seriously, what kind of friend went after their friend’s ex, knowing they have some unresolved issues with them? But try as she might, Jo couldn’t kill the butterflies that erupted when Alex smiled or relax the quickening of her heart when his eyes met hers. There was no stopping any of that, and it dizzied her how fast her feelings intensified over the past few days.

“How do you know he wants to dance with me?” she found herself asking, hoping her tone was quiet enough for only Jackson to hear, which wasn’t a problem since Alex was a few feet away and the music was deafeningly loud.

“You kidding?” Jackson chortled deeply in mild amusement after taking a sip of his drink, his shaking shoulders causing Jo’s head to move right along with them. “He couldn’t keep his eyes off of you when you were on the dance floor. He was watching your every move. You guys have been doing this thing for quite a few weeks now, so I know, and you know it’s not just lust.”

Jo’s mouth dried at that, feeling the familiar quickening of her heart as her eyes flickered over to Alex. He was talking to Kyle, a grin on his face as they remained shadows of two men due to the pillar they were against, the flashing white lights in the center not reaching them. He was watching her? Oh, my God—he was watching me? What did that mean? Fuck, she sounded like a teenage girl.

As if reading her thoughts, Jackson mused, “You wanna’ know why I said what I said that day after the movies?”

This time her heart jumped in her throat, causing Jo to croak out an instant, “Yes.”

He took a breath, chest expanding as she kept her head against his shoulder, not daring to move until she heard him reply. The music seemed like nothing but background noise, an irritating sound Jo wished she could drown out. Finally, Jackson confessed, “Because he told me, a few days after dinner at Thatcher’s, about how he feels about you.”

His words had Jo immediately lifting her head and leaning away from Jackson, staring at him with widened eyes as she remained frozen where she sat. He merely looked back at her, brown eyes glinting against the light, raising his eyebrows as if to say I said what I said while Jo just sat with an expression of confused shock etched across her face. Alex told Jackson how he feels about her? What does he feel? Also, how does a friendship between two guys develop that fast? Once again, as if reading her thoughts, Jackson smirked and said, “You’re gonna have to find out from him exactly what.”

That snapped Jo out of her incredulity, eyebrows lowering and lips forming a pout as she gripped his arm, shaking it as she whined, “Jackson!”

But the black-haired boy shook his head, smirk widening in delight of withholding information from his friend. “Nope, ask him,” he said, eyes flickering over her shoulder before he jutted his chin. “I’d ask him now, if I were you. Looks like he’s headed out back.”

Jo instantly looked over her shoulder, catching sight of Alex walking away from Ashton and making him way around the crowd towards one of the doors to the back area, and Jo let out a heavy breath at the sight of his broad retreating back. Oh, God—should she ask him? Part of her knew that, judging by Jackson’s expression and words, whatever Alex may have to say would be exactly what she’d want to hear, but the other part of her was terrified of that being true. If Jo told Alex she liked him and he told her he liked her, then what? … would they date? Would that be so horrible?

“Fucking hell, Jo, just go after him,” Jackson groaned pleadingly, making her look back at him with wide eyes as he gestured to the back with his free hand. “Go! Stop overthinking everything and just do it.”

Jo stared at Jackson for a few moments, worry clear on her face as she chewed her lower lip and probably ate off whatever little lipstick she had left. She was overthinking, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. Tipsy or not, Jo had to think this through. Jo knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

But the further and further Alex currently walked away from her, the more rapid Jo’s heart got and increased the desire to run after him. Suddenly she felt completely sober, even if she actually wasn’t, and she quickly said to Jackson, “Don’t tell anyone,” before getting up and following after Alex, not even bothering to wonder if Jackson knew she meant for him not to tell anyone anything about her and Alex. He probably did.

Jo pushed through a bunch of people, muttering out apologies and excuse me’s as she neared the back entryway Alex had disappeared through moments earlier. She was glad she had decided not to wear heels because she probably would’ve tripped over her own feet with how fast she was moving to get to Alex.

It wasn’t hard to spot him when she finally stepped outside, taking in a breath as she welcomed the openness of being outdoors rather than inside the stuffy club as she glanced around, blinking through the mild lethargic heaviness her head felt. It was much more chill out here, people chatting and drinking and lounging on the outdoor patio or walking down the few steps that lead to the beach. Alex was in the front corner, looking out to the beach as the torches that were spread around the porch bannister provided a glowing light to the area.

Jo’s hands weren’t sweaty, but she still rubbed them down her shorts as she began walking over to the tall brunette, ignoring the chill her exposed arms and legs felt as she swallowed nervously, weaving around a few lingering people until she reached him. “Hey,” Jo greeted, sneaking up to his left as her hands gripped the metal railing.

The ice in his glass of vodka on the rocks clinked as he lowered it from his mouth, looking over at her in mild surprise. Alex was leaning forward, arms resting on the railing as his lips curled upwards slightly. “Hey.” He glanced around the area, raising an eyebrow. “Needed a breather?”

“Yeah,” Jo answered with an airy laugh, leaning with her left arm on the railing, body towards Alex yet looking out towards the beach. The sound of the waves was distant over the music, the smell of the salty sea mingling with the alcohol making for a sharp, pungent scent. “Way too stuffy inside—isn’t that why you’re out here?”

A lazy smile curled at the corner of Alex’s lips, shrugging one shoulder as he vaguely answered, “More or less.”  

Jo hummed, side against the railing as she folded her arms in attempt to hug herself to shield her body from a particularly chilly breeze that blew against them, her straightened hair flying slightly. Wearing a deep cut, sleeveless bodysuit and shorts wasn’t as good of an idea if she was outside, fighting against the wind. As if sensing her discomfort, Alex glanced over at her, taking in her stance before resting his glass on the railing and pulling back his arms to shrug off the black jacket he was wearing, he held it behind Jo and draped it over her shoulders.

Her gaze flickered up to him, breathing stilled at the newfound proximity as his fingers drifted down to grip the front of the jacket, head bent slightly to look down at Jo thanks to his above average height. He was swaying ever so faintly with the wind as his dark eyes met Jo’s brown, and she knew she had to breathe again but with him looking at her so intensely, the action seemed impossible. But she managed to, inhaling softly as Alex’s familiarly pleasant coconut and aftershave scent engulfed her, a welcome change from the alcohol she had been smelling inside.

Alex didn’t pull away from her, standing close. “Are you sure that’s the only reason you came out here?” he finally asked, deep voice a raspy murmur as he didn’t dare break their gaze. “Because it’s too stuffy inside?”

His words had a meaningful, purposeful tilt into them raising a pointed eyebrow as his fingers remained gripping the jacket to keep her in place. Jo rolled her lower lip into her mouth, unable to break her gaze from Alex’s paralyzing one. The embers of the small fires on the tiki torches danced in his light eyes, golden against them and melting Jo on the spot. She was so focused on his gaze that she barely registered his question and when she did, Jo felt herself swallowing inaudibly in attempt to loosen the tightness in her chest.  

Obviously, that wasn’t the only reason she was out here—honestly it wasn’t even a reason. The sole objective was to get to Alex, to talk to him and hopefully muster up the nerve to tell him how she felt, just like Jackson had been urging. Maybe the alcohol she had drank throughout the night would provide for some liquid courage, but the way Alex’s gaze was fixated on Jo had her brain short circuiting and proving it difficult to form words.

“I—No, that’s not—I’m not—” Fucking smooth, Jo. She was stumbling like an idiot over her words because the way Alex was looking at her truly was messing her up, feeling the heat rise up her neck and spread across her cheeks. The sleeves of his jacket were long on her arms, hiding the way her fingers of both hands were picking at her newly yellow painted nails in anxious nerves. Just tell him. Stop freezing yourself with worry over everything else—just tell him. Speak now and worry later.

Apparently, Alex found her stammering amusing as a boyish, lower-lip-biting grin took over his face, showing off his dimples and effectively stealing Jo’s breath. She wondered if Alex knew how handsome he was and how his smile could maybe, possibly end all wars.

He was getting closer, she could feel it, along with the fact that his hands were now sliding up and holding the sides of her neck in a gentle touch, the metals of his rings cool against her heated skin as his fingers slid slightly into her hair. The sounds of people chattering, and music playing was taken over by the thundering of her heart, breath unsteady as barely an inch remained between Alex and Jo, his nose brushing against hers once he leaned in, his own uneven breathing mingling with her own. Was he as nervous, anticipating the next few moments as she was? The ends of some of his curls were tickling Jo’s cheek as Alex surprised her by whispering, “I need you to say it, Jo.”

His gaze was practically impaling her and she found herself glancing down at his lips—pink and soft looking and full—as she swallowed and muttered breathlessly, “Say what?”

The pads of Alex’s thumbs brushed against Jo’s cheekbones. Was the music still playing? Neither of them could hear it, attention solely on each other. His gaze flickered to her lips, mirroring her action. “You know what.”

Jo’s hands, which had been nervously at her sides, finally moved as she lightly fisted the front of his black tee, and she spoke the first three words that popped in her head. “Kiss me, Alex.”

He didn’t have to be told twice because the second those words escaped Jo, Alex leaned towards her and she met him in the middle, eyes shutting at the first touch of his lips against hers. Honest to God, it felt like she was exploding as Alex’s lips moved surprisingly slowly, softly against her own. Suddenly it wasn’t just Jo’s sense of smell that was taken captive by Alex—he had taken over everything. She felt the languid movements of his lips and the tender touch of his hands against her cheeks and in her hair, the taste of vodka welcome only because it was coming from Alex.

It was a slow, sucking kiss that tightened Jo’s grip on his shirt but ended way too quickly with Alex pulling away. But he didn’t put much distance between the two as Jo’s eyes dazedly opened, staring up at him with a parted mouth and slightly widened eyes. Alex’s blue eyes were looking at her; like he was taking in every feature on her face for the first time as his gaze flickered all over, and for a moment Jo felt a bit unsure of herself because of the pure intensity of his staring, which was doing the exact opposite of slowing her heart rate down.  

Jo felt light on her feet, the heaviness in her head dissipating after that kiss because, shit, it was everything she could’ve hoped for and more. Alex’s lips were softer than she imagined, the touch of his hands cupping her cheeks gentle and comforting, so much so that she didn’t want him to let go.

Then Alex’s lips curled upwards in a smile that showed off his teeth and dimples and Jo instantly mirrored it an automatic response. Elated gaze once again meeting his, she felt the air rush back into her lungs in time for Alex to press his lips against hers in a kiss of much more fervor, like he was putting every ounce of his feelings into it.