#if formatting is weird blame tumblr

[bluelockednyx]

mind if i brainrot about rin/isarin in your anon asks? sorry, i know of zero other isarin shippers on tumblr 😭 personally, one of the reasons isarin has such a tight grip on me is because of rin himself. i was thinking abt this for a while but now ive got a bigger urge to talk about it cuz of something that the author aparently said about his depiction of his character. his edginess is sorta how he represents rin's apparent attempt at "having to become an adult" which i thought was interesting. the author also said he thinks his desire to grow up is why rin intentionally complicates his relationship with sae. to me, it reads as though rin associates maturity with broody angst. reminds me of a lot of the "friends are stupid, everything sucks" type of faux maturity where ppl think them closing themselves off to healthy emotional support is them being logical. the fact that he's younger than isagi makes a lot of his underlying naivete matter a lot to me and my feelings towards this ship. ig i use isarin as a way to develop rin opening up to love and affection again, and realising that growing up is so much more than just being angsty 24/7 idk if this makes any sense tho. i could just be being dumb lmaoo

I will take any and all opportunities to talk about Isagirin, and yes, there are very few of us, so ask away as many times as you want :D

I'm not surprised Kaneshiro-sensei said that -- referring to his edginess specifically -- about Rin, because he and Nomura-sensei did a really good job showing it in the manga! The sweet, sweet angst of growing up in shonen manga; Rin being all broody about it is so typical teenager but also depicted so well.

The edginess and 'friends are stupid, everything sucks' mentality is a side effect, imo, of being so attached, and then badly hurt by Sae. I would say that it's a bit of a self-defense mechanism too, because if his own brother, whom he adored so much, and he's sure loves him back too, could hurt him this badly, then it's a bit of a no brainer for someone who's not even family, to hurt him too. I'm pretty sure Rin hesitates to let himself get emotionally attached to anyone at this point, and I'm also pretty sure he's not fully aware of this part of his psyche yet.

On growing up and how Rin intentionally complicates his relationship with Sae: I think yes and no, on this. The simple part - they're brothers, and they always will be. Neither of them can erase that even if they wanted to.

On the complicated part - sibling relationships can be very complex, and just because at the end of the day they can interact properly with each other in a civil manner doesn't mean that there hasn't been real damage done in a relationship, and to a person's psyche. Even the dumbest things done without real intention of hurt can cause lasting psychological effects, whether or not the person knows it for themselves.

Kaneshiro-sensei views Rin as intentionally complicating his relationship with Sae. I don't. But YMMV with this: this POV is personal, and there's a ton of cultural aspects to consider which I am definitely not in a position to talk about.

Sae was cruel to Rin in the flashback when they had their 1v1 after Sae came back from Madrid, and Rin never gets the chance to address that issue because he never gets to communicate properly about it with Sae. There's probably a camp out there who says Rin should just get over it, that Sae said it in the heat of the moment, but I'm not part of that camp. I don't believe in sweeping stuff like that under the rug. It's not fair to the person who was hurt. It's also, well, a common tactic in abusive relationships to trivialize the victim's feelings, which sits even less right with me.

We know Sae better because we get an omniscient POV as readers, but from Rin's perspective, Sae stonewalls Rin and never tries to explain or elaborate. While I do agree that trying to talk in the middle of a football match isn't the best place for it, it still doesn't change the fact that they wouldn't be in this situation at all if it weren't for Sae (and also for the sake of compelling plot drama). Sae definitely owes Rin an apology imo, though given what you've just told me about Kaneshiro-sensei's view on Rin intentionally complicating their relationship, I really doubt he's ever going to have that happen in the manga, so :/

And yes!! Rin being younger than Isagi was something that I had suspected back when they were doing the first 3v3 matchup, from just reading the way he spoke. It was confirmed later, I think, in the yoga scene, then the character guides. And yeah, one of Rin's bigger flaws is definitely his lack of close relationships. It severely limits his ability to empathize with other people, and can become a horrible feedback loop in and of itself. Yet, like I said in my meta, if Kaneshiro-sensei wants to develop him into a healthier, more well-rounded character, that's what Rin needs to do -- develop relationships with the rest of the Blue Lock boys as equals, and become actual friends.

I get you!!!! That's what I want for Rin in the Isarin ship too. Just Rin opening up to love and affection again from Isagi, and growing up and realising that he needs friends the other Blue Lock boys that he can count on too. Let's be dumb about fantasizing Isarin with a loving and affectionate Rin together!!!

[smthfunnyhappenedonthewaytor3]

"Please pay attention. I am a reformed monster, which is to say, I am a bundle of suppressed instincts held together with spit and coffee. It would be wrong to say that violent, tearing carnage does not come easily to me. It’s not tearing your throats out that doesn’t come easily to me. Please don’t make it any harder."

Suzaku, after being forced out of hiding as Zero

[sohotthateveryonedied]

Summary:

Dick is suddenly very awake. He bolts upright, staring at the dimly lit figure. “Tim?”

“Hi, Dick,” Tim whispers. He isn’t in uniform for once, instead wearing a pair of sweats and a shirt that Dick recognizes as one of Bruce’s. Dick was wondering where that went.

“Jesus, kid,” Dick exhales, an uncertain mixture of disbelief and bafflement. “What are you doing here?” Tim and Dick are still in a fight of sorts, or are they? Have they made up yet, or is the terrain still cracked? Dick wants so badly to ask, but just having Tim in the same room as him is already more than Dick could have hoped he’d get.

The night’s patrol ended well over three hours ago. Dick has only been asleep for forty-five minutes. It’s one of the many, many drawbacks of inheriting the Batman mantle, right along with cowl sweat and sore throats. Being the head honcho entails all sorts of extra duties that Dick never had to worry about when he was Nightwing. Back in Blüdhaven, Dick could simply climb into his apartment through the fire escape window, strip off his sweaty uniform, and pass out on the mattress until noon the next morning. How he longs for those days now. Being a light sleeper is one of those parts of the job he’s carried with him from the beginning, which is why Dick shocks out of sleep the instant he hears his bedroom door creak. The penthouse’s acoustics aren’t anything like Wayne Manor’s. Every noise has Dick rousing from sleep, so unfamiliar to him. It’s nothing like the home Dick grew up in. Then again, nothing about his life now is as it was. The intrusion, even whilst half-asleep, prompts no alarm from Dick. Damian has been having troublesome nightmares ever since the encounter with Zsasz and some dead children a few weeks ago. Damian never admits to the dreams, but Dick knows they’ve been hard on him. While Damian would never confess to it in the light of day, frequent nights he’ll sleep in Dick’s bed when the nightmares get especially persistent. Dick never mentions it in daylight for the sake of preserving Damian’s white-knuckled pride. They’re still working on that. “Dami?” Dick mumbles, rolling over. “Y’okay?” He reaches out and fumbles for the bedside lamp, flicking the switch on the underside. He squints in the flood of light illuminating the small shape standing in the doorway—a shape that is definitely not Damian.

Dick is suddenly very awake. He bolts upright, staring at the dimly lit figure. “Tim?” “Hi, Dick,” Tim whispers. He isn’t in uniform for once, instead wearing a pair of sweats and a shirt that Dick recognizes as one of Bruce’s. Dick was wondering where that went. “Jesus, kid,” Dick exhales, an uncertain mixture of disbelief and bafflement. “What are you doing here?” Tim and Dick are still in a fight of sorts, or are they? Have they made up yet, or is the terrain still cracked? Dick wants so badly to ask, but just having Tim in the same room as him is already more than Dick could have hoped he’d get. Tim has been AWOL ever since the Black Lantern debacle came, ravaged, and went on its merry way. When the resurrections began, Tim had briefly returned to Gotham at Dick’s request, without a moment’s hesitation. Dick thought at the time that Tim would stick around at least a day or two after so many months abroad, all by himself. It’s what he would have done before. But by the time Alfred woke up to prepare breakfast the next morning, Tim was already gone—without a note, without a single goodbye. He didn’t even stay for Garth’s funeral. Dick foolishly thought that he and Tim had come to some unspoken understanding, some middle ground during the battle against their resurrected loved ones, their past regrets and mistakes whirling back to stare them in the face. Dick had hoped it was a start, but clearly it wasn’t. Clearly there’s no backtracking behind the line he crossed when he took Robin away from Tim. Dick tried to call Tim only once during his search, the day after Tim left Gotham. Straight to voicemail. Sometimes it was all Dick could do to keep from jumping on a plane and heading straight to wherever Tim was to drag him back home by the ear, just so Dick could sleep at night without having to wonder if Tim was safe, or if he was even still alive. Learning that Tim was fighting in Jason’s old Red Robin suit just escalated his fear. When Dick was Tim’s age, all he wanted was space. He sought to step out of Bruce’s shadow and find his own place in the world, and that’s precisely what he did. It’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re a teenager setting out into the world. Dick has been trying to give Tim that freedom, if nothing else. That is why the last person Dick expected to see tonight was Tim Drake in the Wayne penthouse, and not trekking across Europe like Dick thought he was. It’s more habit than anything when Dick does a quick scan, searching for any visible injuries on Tim that would have set him running home for help. There are none that he can see, but he doesn’t disregard the possibility yet. Even in the dim light, Dick can see that Tim’s eyes are bloodshot. He looks thinner than Dick remembers in the weeks they’ve been apart. Tim still hasn’t answered Dick’s question. “Is everything okay?” Dick tries, fighting to keep his voice neutral.

At first, Tim looks like he’s about to say something. Then he gives up, and instead he wordlessly crosses the floor and climbs into Dick’s bed. Dick goes completely still, like he’s trying not to frighten off a wild deer. Tim’s weight beside him is familiar but ghostly. So much and so little has changed. About both of them. Tim is shaking. “Hey. Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?” It’s another habit when Dick runs his fingers through Tim’s hair like he used to when Tim was younger. It’s grown out since then, past his ears and halfway down his neck. Dick has kept tabs on Tim’s adventures abroad the best he could, but it’s hard to detect changes beneath the full-body uniform and cowl. Maybe that was why Tim chose it in the first place. “Can I stay here tonight?” Tim asks, his eyes pleading in the lamplight. “Please?” Dick doesn’t know if Tim means here at the penthouse or here in Dick’s room. The answer would be yes either way. “Of course you can, kiddo. You don’t even have to ask.” Dick can’t remember the last time they did this, it’s been so long. Well before Bruce died—more towards Jack Drake’s death, probably. When Bruce took Dick and Tim on that year-long trip around the globe, it wasn’t uncommon for Tim to turn to Dick for comfort when he was plagued by dreams of razor boomerangs and his father’s blood on his hands.

Tim was smaller then, pocket-sized, but he’s grown since then. He’s grown a great deal over these past months alone. Dick wishes he could have been there to see it. How many more scars does Tim have now? How many will Dick never know the story about? He’s had more than enough time to accumulate a new tapestry of pain in the months since the night everything fell apart—since Tim left Gotham, maybe for good, and Dick wasn’t sure how many brothers he had left who still loved him. Dick pulls the covers back up, tucking them around Tim who’s settled onto the pillow beside Dick’s. They lie facing each other, the glow from the bedside lamp illuminating their faces and casting forlorn shadows on the wall. Dick should ask where Tim has been all this time, or why he chose now to return. How long has Tim been back in Gotham without telling anyone? Has he been eating enough? When was the last time he slept? Is he okay? Is he okay? Is he okay? “Do you need to talk?” Dick tries instead, at a loss for how to handle this. It used to be so easy with Tim. Half the time, Dick wouldn’t even have to pry; Tim willingly parceled out every worry, every insecurity, and every fear he had, trusting that Dick would keep them safe. They used to be brothers. “I miss Bruce.” Tim states it like a fact, which it is. Maybe even a universal one. Bruce is missed. Bruce will always be missed. Dick’s heart throbs with that familiar ache that resurfaces every time he hears Bruce’s name, or sees his face, or smells his cologne sticking to the fibers of Wayne Manor like his ghost has seared itself into the very walls. “Yeah,” Dick sighs. “Me too.” “I’m sorry,” Tim says, timidly meeting Dick’s eyes. “For leaving. For all of it.”

“It’s okay, Tim.” Of course Tim knows it’s okay. Of course he knows that there isn’t anything in the world he could do that wouldn’t be okay. As if Dick wouldn’t forgive him for murder. “I don’t hate you,” Tim continues, like he’s had the words queued up for a long time. “When I—the night I left. The things I said. I didn’t mean them.” Dick will never stop regretting that night. There were so many better ways he could have handled the situation. He just—he got overwhelmed, desperate. Jason was already a lost cause, and Damian lived on the edge of following him. Dick couldn’t lose Tim too. That night, Dick told Tim that Bruce wasn’t a god or an immortal legend, which was true. Bruce was just a man, and men die. There was no vestige of Bruce for Tim to rescue. It was supposed to be a comfort at the time—some small reassurance that their lives don’t have to revolve around following Bruce’s lead. That they’re allowed to breathe without him giving them the air. Unfortunately for himself, Dick knows better than to fall for his own fallacies: Bruce was never just a man to them. Even now, Dick can feel Bruce’s eyes on his back every time he puts on the cowl. Batman is bigger than all of them. “I’m sorry, too,” Dick says. It’s long overdue. “I thought you wanted space. I didn’t mean to run you off.” The angle of the lamplight on Tim’s face makes the shadows smudged under his eyes look even darker. “You were doing your best. I was being a dick.” The corner of Tim’s mouth lifts slightly at the pun. “You’re a good Batman. You’re doing better than any of us could.”

Then, because the words have weighed him down like rocks in his throat: “I shouldn’t have given Robin to Damian,” Dick says. “Not without asking.” He’s run it over in his head a million times. All the ways he could have done it better, could have kept Tim from leaving and kept Damian in check at the same time. It was just so hard picking up all the pieces Bruce left behind. Making Damian Robin was an easy fix—it kept Damian under Dick’s wing, gave him something of his own he could be proud of, and allowed Dick to teach him in a controlled environment. Tim just…he fell through the cracks. Dick didn’t stop to think about how Tim would take the news until it was too late. When Dick was Tim’s age, all he wanted was to go out and become his own man. He left Gotham and carved himself his own spot in the hero community with the Titans, and in turn, he experienced some of the best years of his life. Leaving Robin for Nightwing was a crucial turning point in Dick’s life—an inevitability that led him to discover who he was and where he was going. Baby birds all need to leave the nest eventually. Dick just wishes that Tim hadn’t jumped to die and had instead jumped to soar. “Did it help?” Dick ventures to ask. “Going out there?” He doesn’t ask if Tim found anything. He doesn’t ask if Tim’s impossible mission has borne any fruit. Dick won’t risk losing this tenuous ceasefire. Tim shrugs, his eyes fixed on an ancient chocolate syrup stain on Dick’s pillowcase. “Learned a lot. Did a lot.” Dick wants so badly to ask what a lot is supposed to mean. He wants to know what prompted Tim to come back. He wants to know if he’s allowed to get used to it, or if he needs to prepare himself for another swift departure. “But I missed home,” Tim says.

A risk: Dick reaches across the uncertainty between them to put his hand on Tim’s shoulder, smiling thinly. “I’m glad you came back.” “I’m still going to find him, Dick. I haven’t quit.” Tim swallows, meeting Dick’s eyes in the darkness. “I know you think I’m crazy. I should probably be mad at you for it, but I’m sick of losing people. I don’t want to do it anymore.” It’s a punch in the gut Dick knows he deserves. “I never thought you were crazy,” Dick offers, and it’s mostly the truth. “Not once.” Tim’s eyes have taken on a glassy sheen. He blinks in an effort to disrupt it. “I think…I think maybe I am crazy? Was. Might still be. I don’t know.” Tim closes his eyes, swallowing thickly. “I’m tired of running, Dick.” “Yeah. I know.” Dick squeezes Tim’s arm. “I really am glad to see you, Tim. It’s been lonely around here since you left.” Tim looks doubtful, his brows deprecatingly furrowed. “You have Damian now. You don’t need me.” The certainty in Tim’s voice breaks Dick’s heart. “I’m allowed to love more than one little brother at a time, you know. It’s not a very exclusive club. Even Jason qualifies sometimes if he’s behaving.” Tim doesn’t laugh, but he smiles softly. “I really missed you, Dick.” Dick ruffles Tim’s overgrown hair, presses a kiss to the side of his head. “Missed you too, kiddo.”

[chromehearted]

☎ for bianca/killian and xander/kailani 😘

BIANCA & KILLIAN,

name: killian 'pain in the ass' knox ringtone: he's literally muted unless she has to bother him about work lol picture: 

last text received: killian → just fill me in later i'm busy rn last text sent: bianca → you're so fucking irritating i hope you choke on a pile of nails

XANDER & KAILANI,

name: k 🌶️  ringtone: aleyuh by chase atlantic picture: 

last text received: kailani → go hang out with your lil girlfriend last text sent: xander → c'mon don’t be like that xander → you give way better head

[cuippedtea]

Rot

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Third piece with a little fic attached hehe

Part 1 - Trickster

Part 2 - Sheep Stare

Part 3 is here!

Cw potentially for Character death? it feels like it

[phone dial tone]

[pause]

[hesitant inhale]

Hello again! It’s, uh, it’s Martyn. Sorry for the radio silence, the last couple of months have been… a bit rough. I’m not sure you’ll be able to reach me after this, since I think I’m done squattin’ at this ol house.

[forced laughter]

I’ve… encountered something strange, and I think I need to disconnect for a while. But I *need* to tell someone this. I can’t tell Scott, or Lizzie, or even Joel about what I’ve seen; they’d probably go make the same mistake I did, whether out of morbid curiosity or even desperation to see our friend again.

At least… well I think that was him, anyway. I’ve got a good gut feeling about it.

…

Even the word “gut” takes me back. That… horrid smell. 

I guess I should provide context, or something of the sort.

It happened around last year, when our friend Jimmy disappeared. Just… disappeared. I didn’t want to think about if he actually died. I wanted to have some hope. It’s easier to get through life that way, at least for me. 

It was just supposed to be a nice afternoon trip down to the beach before it got too cold. 

The beach was a bit chilly, but that was perfect weather to take more of the beach for yourself, yknow? The waters were calm, with it’s usual salty smell. Salty but… clean. 

[Pause]

[Soft sniff, barely audible]

[Another pause]

[forced cough]

Erm, anyway, we did tease Jim a good bit on the way there, because he left his bag of all the usual beach-y stuff at his flat, so all he had was his trunks and a sort of long sleeved swim shirt. I never saw him wear it before.

It was just the usual teasing, but it seemed to affect him more… genuinely. Like, he was snippy about it. Less so the words, and more the playful jabs. I feel like it’s important to mention his sudden aversion to touch, but I can’t quite put into words why I have that feeling. 

Scott had noticed this and later asked why, but Jim just rattled off some mumbled reasoning of having sunburn, or something. No one believed him entirely but we didn’t press. I mean, with his luck, getting sunburnt during the recent cloudy days didn’t seem to impossible, because this was Jimmy we were talking about. 

Another thing that seemed strange was his features. It was brought up when Joel challenged us to try to compliment Jimmy, and Grian hummed and hawed for a bit before commenting on his teeth. As if to prove it, Jimmy flashed a wide smile. No one mentioned it, and maybe I was just seeing things, but…

I swear they were sharper. 

Soon enough it was disregarded and we carried on. We waded around while Lizzie and Jimmy submerged themselves immediately, though Jim was more urging to get in. A pair of swimmers, yknow? Born for the waters. It was shocking how long he was able to hold his breath for, ‘almost lost the guy to the cloudy waters. 

At some point, we hung out and chatted on the rocks, farther away from the more populated sections of the beach.

Then, Jimmy let out a gasp, and we all looked into the waters. It was a… fairly large fish swimming quite close. It was about, say, only a just under the length of a meter, with a decent width, too. Jim said it was a cod, Joel and Grian tried to find a way to prove him wrong and the got into a squabble over it, something about the fish being too large for a cod. For some reason, as if to prove himself, Jimmy just… scooped up the fish. He pointed out specific features of a cod while we stared in silence. I joked to myself that even the fish was too stunned to even squirm in his grip. 

[nervous laughter]

Did you know cod have teeth? 

I don’t think anyone there did, because we all weren’t too paranoid about this fish until it twisted around to tear at Jimmy’s neck and flopped out of his grip. It’s tiny teeth ripped away a good piece of his swim shirt, as well as scraping across skin.

I… think, at least.

Jim didn’t seem to react out of pain, but the gashes under folded skin didn’t prove that he was alright. 

I uh, think they were gashes anyway. 

He swam after it, for some reason. I think he was trying to capture it again. Started with splashing through the water, pushing against the rocks to propel himself forward. Then, the fish swam farther and deeper into the sea; Jimmy dove after it.

All of us went after him. No one was too panicked at the time, so I believe we just joined in trying to recapture the fish. It was all good and fun, at the time.

Under the water it was… very murky. Very green. After swimming under for a while, all of us popped up for air. 

Well… all of us except Jimmy. Lizzie dove after him again, since she was more adjusted to the freezing water and had more endurance.

She stay underwater for long enough that Joel started biting his nails. I think we all believed that she wouldn’t come up again either, like jimmy did.

After year-long minutes, she resurfaced. I think if it weren’t for being submerged, there’d be tears streaking down her face.

Jimmy and Lizzie were as close as siblings. Not blood related, but for how long they’ve known each other, they deserve the title.

We uh, didn’t see Jimmy again after that. There was nothing left of him, but Lizzie looked… almost haunted. She was furiously rinsing her hands through the water. She… had a thin coat of what looked like slime on her palms.

They kinda reminded me of hagfish. Jimmy told me about them once. He uh

[soft chuckle]

He started really getting into marine type stuff before he disappeared. I only remember because of that. Hagfish are these weird… slimy things. Long bodies, like eels or something. Ugly little things. 

After a couple hours, we submitted a missing persons report. Damn cops probably thought we were playing a prank, because even as we told em they had this look that said “Ha Ha, nice story.” They took the report but didn’t do shit about it, so it’s not like it even… fuckin’ matters. 

[scoff]

[pause]

Lizzie uh… she told me about what Jimmy had been up to the days leading up to the incident. I think in the past month before then Jimmy had a bit of a beach kick. Lizzie said that he’d been heading down to the sea every day or so. It’s like he was practicing for something. Maybe even testing something out? I’m just… throwing out theories. It’s hard to balance out rational ideas and the… weird, almost paranormal ones. 

Lizzie went down a couple times with him. She never indicated that anything weird happened there, besides that he had started wearing that swim shirt. Which… is a bit odd considering it was a good bit warmer at that time. There’s not really a need for a shirt that early, unless a new found insecurity cropped up. 

[pause]

…A couple days ago I went back to that beach, on my own. I didn’t go any time after Jimmy’s disappearance… and I think it was good that I didn’t.

It was the anniversary of that day, and I guess I was just feeling sentimental. It was at sunset too, so I was ready to get *real* emotional.

[light chuckle]

The smell of the beach was… different this time. Still salty, but… there was a stench of rot. I didn’t catch it until I got closer to the rocks we had once crowded around. 

I looked out to the sea. Stared for a bit as I thought for a while. Then I saw a sort of… silhouette in the water. It got me curious, maybe I could try to identify some creatures Jim told me about. Something in memory of him, yknow?

I balanced over this sort of peninsula-like island of rocks that branched off the coast of the beach. I climbed to the end and took a seat, looking over into the water. The smell of rot went away, for a while at least. It was… calming.  It was like the sea was singing. It was… almost like I could hear Jimmy singing again. 

He would burst out into song a lot. It was less of that soft quiet singing, and more loud and abrupt, that decrescendo-ed into excited humming. I think I preferred that over any soft singing, it was fun. The crashing waves reminded me of that. Loud then rushing quiet. 

I guess I was really focusing on that and thinking ‘bout him, because eventually it was like blue midnight and the beach became scarce. Which was… strange because there’s was always some people wandering about when they thought no one else would be there. Or maybe it was too dark- well actually- [softer] there was a lighthouse so I couldn’t have been that dark… either way it was weird.

The water was silent too. No more waves crashed against the rocks nor the coast; it was simply idle. Too still and calm.

The emptiness was pretty overwhelming, so the sudden presence of *rot* made itself *very* apparent. There was another thing mixed in with the stench, and I think it was fish.  

There was… uhm, there was a silhouette in the water. I realized it was a tail right as I felt something warm on my neck. I went still, then quickly felt the back of my neck to… see what it was.

[heavy sigh]

It was… the same sort of green slime that Lizzie’s hand was coated in that day. 

I felt more of it drip down my head and neck. I whipped around and… well, it’s difficult *not* to forget what that damned thing looked like. It’s… face, mostly, is what’s burned into my brain.

It reminded me of a hagfish. Long and eel-like, with stringy, green slime dripping out of its skin and mouth. It’s… awful smelling mouth. It was close enough to me—with an unhinged jaw— that I knew where that awful rotting stench was from. The fishy part was obvious.

It’s jaw was unhinged so far that the flesh at corners of its mouth ripped apart showing tissue. It’s mouth was full of small yet pointy teeth.

[deep inhale] 

The main thing I remember, among all of that, was the few actual “fish scales” it had. I don’t know why it was the scales of all things, however, under its milky white eyes, there was a good patch of golden scales. It stood out against the creatures muddy brown and green colors. It seemed about the exact shade of the dusty, golden blonde of Jimmy’s hair. 

I’m probably… just reaching too far, maybe… since my mind was mostly about Jimmy and what had happened.

…but…

It just *can’t* be a coincidence that the one thing that attached itself to that creatures scalp was that…

[uneven breathing]

That… DAMNED cod fish. It was the same size and every thing, with its teeth clasped into the creatures head. It was definitely dead, indicative of half its body revealing ribbed bone, as well as its dead, rotting eyes.

There can’t be multiple of that size of cod, right? Near this beach during the beginning of fall? There’s too many similarities. 

…I think during that moment after I turned, my shock caused me to fall backwards into the cold waters. I was lucky enough not to hit my head on the rock and die, but when I struggled back to the surface, Ji-…that thing- it was gone. It’s smell still lingered, and small drops of slime remained on the rock. 

I had to quickly get back to shore, because the sea decided to get restless again and I didn’t want to get pulled out too far.

[pause]

I wish I was just seeing things out of mourning for him, but… I *know* what I saw. Maybe it was just some fuckin- random ass Nessy that made itself known on these shores. The experience reminded me too much of Jimmy to disregard it.

I… think I’m gonna visit Lizzie before I leave. I won’t tell her about the experience, but it’d be especially good to check up on her.

[pause]

[sniff]

[soft mumbling]

…I think I understand why she washes her hands so much.

[click]

[randomrandy]

Random post: “reblog if you *thing I agree with”

My brain: if you reblog this you’re a virtue sighing whore who just wants internet clout. If you don’t reblog this you’re a heartless monster who should be shot in the street. Kys

Me: wtf

[bottomhaztoplou]

Tabby's Writing Game: Day 11

Talk Less Thursday!!

So, once again, this is an existing work -- well, part of one. This is chapter 11 of the ficlet collection I wrote for my wonderful friend @hershelsue's birthday this year, and since it has no dialogue, it works with today's prompt. Hope you like it!

xi. Some hearts understand each other, even in silence. -- Yasmin Mogahed Louis woke to a head of curls pillowed on his tummy. He held back a giggle at Harry’s uncommon choice of cuddling position to avoid waking him. He smiled down at his omega and petted at those curls, feeling Harry start purring at his touch even in his sleep. The day turned out to be one of those days where getting out of bed to do things seemed so not worth the lost hours of cuddling and warmth. Harry eventually woke up on his own and joined Louis on his pillow, sharing it with him as they also shared sleepy, slow, closed-mouthed kisses.  Once he’d gotten his fill, Harry shuffled down a bit to nose his way into Louis’ scent glands, purring sweetly again. Louis rumbled back for him and let his eyes fall closed as his omega scented him. Harry melted into him, sleepily lapping at Louis’ scent glands. Louis sighed softly under his omega and continued rumbling back to him.  They cuddled and scented each other late into the morning, trading lazy touches and syrupy slow kisses. Harry eventually pulled away from Louis and got out of bed, stretching languidly in Louis’ oversized tee and exposing his bare bum. Louis couldn’t help staring, even if he wasn’t particularly in the mood, and why wouldn’t he? His mate was gorgeous. Harry headed downstairs after pulling on a cute little pair of lavender panties with moons, stars and clouds printed on them. Louis followed him a few minutes later once he could make himself get out of bed and leave their den. He kissed Harry in thanks for breakfast, earning a smile in return as they sat down to eat. Louis did the washing up. It wasn’t his favourite activity, but he’d do anything to make his omega smile. He found Harry curled up on the couch under the thin quilt they kept on the back of the couch during the summer. Harry loved being covered up, cosy under some kind of blanket, but he didn’t like getting too hot. Louis cuddled up next to him and Harry pressed play on the film he’d picked out while Louis did the dishes.  As the film played quietly on the telly, Louis soon found himself on his back with his omega spread over him with his quilt, covering Louis’ slightly smaller body with his own and nuzzling in. Harry purred softly in his ear and Louis rumbled back, perfectly in time with Harry after a moment’s adjustment.

Dozing away the day with his mate was the best way he could spend his time, Louis thought as he petted Harry’s still sleep-messy curls and lazily scented him. Where else could he possibly want to be other than right here? Perhaps their bed, or in Harry’s nest, but he could be just about anywhere with his boy and be this content.  He smelled the rain coming through the open living room windows about an hour before it arrived. When it did come in the form of a summer storm that afternoon, the two of them got up to close the windows throughout the house. Harry disappeared afterward, but Louis had a good idea of where his omega had snuck off to.  As he’d expected, Louis found Harry curled up inside his nest in their home library. He had already gathered their current reads and fussed with his nest a little to make it look inviting and cosy for them to weather out the storm together. Good thing he had made them tea before coming in, Louis thought to himself. Harry smiled at him and took his offered cuppa, sipping carefully at it and humming happily when he found that it wasn’t too hot. He smiled and patted his nest to invite Louis in and Louis took it, settling down next to his omega. He pecked Harry’s soft mouth and picked up his novel. The light breeze sent raindrops pattering against the windows and thunder rumbled lowly in the distance. The dimness created by the clouds outside was offset by warm golden light from two lamps on opposite sides of the room. Their scents, pooled in Harry’s carefully crafted nest, had them both feeling a little hazy, but pleasantly so, just enough to keep the drear outside from touching them in any way. Pages flipped and tea was sipped until their cups ran dry. Louis had always loved a quiet day in with his mate. He pressed a quick kiss to the top of Harry’s head and turned back to his book.

[noodle-tries-to-write]

I have just hit 32k words on my book (it's slow going at the moment, but any work is good work!). so. should you like to read a section from it on this fine morning, you can find it under the cut

tw for OCD-related things (violent intrusive thoughts)

context is that Riley is at a dinner with Asher, Cara, and Asher's parents. this is for complicated plot reasons you don't need to know

I look across at Riley, and xe actually looks like xer smiling. Huh. I guess xe has some gene or something that makes adults talking about their jobs seem interesting. A gene that I am clearly lacking – I still don’t really know what my dad does after all these years (beyond his job title) because I clock off whenever he starts to talk about it.

“Anyway, enough of that! Riley, do you do much in the way of extracurricular activities?”

I’m about to intervene when Cara decides to do the hard work for me.

“Muuum, do you really have to be such a… mum?”

“Oh I see, I’m not cool enough for you, huh? What is it that cool mums ask their daughter’s friends?”

Cara just shrugs, and goes back to looking down at her plate.

“It’s okay, Mrs Harker. I actually used to play rugby before I started college. After that, everything got a bit tough, and now school is my number one priority.”

“Oh that’s a shame.” Mum glances at me for a second, and I’m suddenly filled with a mix of dread and a desire to escape. “I don’t know if Ash told you, but she actually –”

I pull back my chair and stand up. 

“I need some air. I’m going for a walk around the block.”

I don’t know what it is about my mum that gets on my nerves so much these days, but I’m sick of it. If you can believe it, we actually used to have a pretty decent mother-child bond. Yeah, we pissed each other off from time to time, but we mostly got along. I was a good kid, so we were pretty much always either on the same team or willing to cooperate our way to an agreement. It was all fine. Then last year happened, and now… the more she obsesses over my well-being, the more I want to run to the hills and never talk to her again.

It’s because you’re a horrible no good person who can’t even act grateful towards their own mother. It’s because you’re a demon in disguise who is finally showing their true colours. Just you wait. One day they’ll see how evil you truly are, and you’ll be wishing to have the sympathy back. Ungrateful shithead.

I shake my head, trying to force the thoughts out. Trying to push them out of my head and onto the pavement. 

You don’t want to face up to these thoughts because you know they’re true. A good person wouldn’t have these kinds of doubts, and you know it.

Ah. My brain’s favourite trap. If I accept that I’m a bad person, that means that I truly am a bad person. If I deny that I’m a bad person, that means I’m in denial, which means I’m one of the worst kinds of bad people. 

Look at you. Even trying to manipulate yourself. Trying to work out the correct response to a series of thoughts that wouldn’t matter so much to you if you weren’t such a horrible person. You couldn’t stop manipulating people if you tried.

I return to the previous strategy of trying to shake all the thoughts away. This time, I even tap the sides of my head while I’m doing it. And then I’m counting the shakes and the taps, trying to work some kind of rhythm. Using almost everything in my arsenal to get it all to stop.

Evil piece of shit. Shake. Tap. One. Absolutely fucked up. Shake. Tap. Two. Your family secretly hates you, and you deserve that. Shake. Tap. Three. You’re going to end up hurting them one day, mark my words, you awful shit. Shake. Tap. Four. 

I pause. I wait a moment, checking to see if something has worked. Making sure that the thoughts are truly gone. 

I hear a quiet little thought at the back of my mind. I take a deep breath. And I choose to ignore it. It’s only a little thought. I’ve gotten rid of enough of the big ones that maybe it’s time for me to go back to the restaurant. Maybe it’s time to go back to being normal. Time to thank my lucky stars that nobody walked out here and saw me in all my insane glory.

Except, judging by the way Cara looks at me when I sit back down, I think she definitely knows what just happened. I don’t look at my mum or Riley. I don’t want to know what they’re thinking or feeling. I don’t want to check whether they’re angry or sympathetic. I just want to get through this dinner without having to think about any of it for one more second.

[wheelsupin-five]

@eddiessluttytanktop hiiii,, sorry i lost your ask bc appearly tumblr wont let me save them as drafts <//3  but you requested enemies to lover am i right or opperation dont tell bobby (thank you sm !!!) and I will be humbly presenting you with both <3

Enemies to lovers am I right (also posted last WIP wednesday):

Buck does everything he can to avoid Eddie. He sits in the bunks. He does a stock take in the kitchen. He cleans the trucks. But there’s nothing he can do when the bell rings and they’re all crammed into the back of the ladder truck and the best he can do is take the seat diagonally across from him.  

He looks even better with the sun hitting his face as opposed to the fluorescent bathroom lights that washed the warmth out of his skin. His smile creases at his eyes when he laughs at something Chim says. Buck’s too busy sulking to catch it. He shouldn’t be blending into the team so seamlessly like that. He is supposed to earn his place like Buck did. Like he still is.

“Does anyone ever call you Diaz?” The words are out of his mouth before he even knows what he’s saying. Eddie’s eyes flick over to him and there’s something them that Buck can’t decipher, but the rest of his face remains perfectly neutral. 

“Not if they want me to respond.”

“Well something’s gotta give. We Buck, Bobby, Hen, and Chim, we can’t just call you Eddie.” It’s the first time he’s said his name out loud and he doesn’t like the way it feels in his mouth. Like it’s familiar. 

“I don’t know if he’s being serious or not.”

“I like to live under the assumption that nothing Buck says is serious,” Chimney says. Eddie laughs. 

He hates him, he hates him he hates him. 

Buck turns his attention ou the window like it doesn’t burn.

Operation dont tell bobby:

The bunk room is dark, empty, and cold. He opts for stealing a spare blanket in the corner of the room over turning on the heater that would just make anyone else who might come in overheat. 

He kicks off his shoes, haphazardly pushing them partially under the bunk, and crawls into the familiar mattress. The blankets have the smell to them Buck can never place that he’s only ever found here at the firehouse, and the pillow is a little flatter than Eddie’s, but it’s somehow still welcoming.

He wriggles around for a minute — something Eddie always complains about — to warm up the space before settling in and curling up, letting his eyes close.

He must have fallen asleep because when he opens them again Eddie’s climbing over him and plastering himself to his back; these bunks were not made with fitting two full-grown men into them in mind. 

“At work?” Buck asks, still half asleep.

Eddie slips his arms around his waist and Buck relaxes into him. “They just started a game of monopoly. We have time.”

Buck hums in agreement, letting himself melt against Eddie.

send me a title of a WIP

[bubblesreplies]

The Middle

Max Brinly X Female Reader

Oneshot

APPARENTLY IF YOU’RE READING THIS IN ANY DARK COLORED FORMAT ON TUMBLR (LIKE NIGHT MODE) IT LOOKS FUCKING WEIRD AND IDK HOW TO FIX IT I’M SO SORRY.

A/N: No, I'm not neglecting my other fics to write a random oneshot? Why would you even suggest---fuck it here it is besties. Anyways, this product of procrastination is dedicated and written for my bestie @house-of-kolchek, who loves Max as much as I do.

WARNINGS AND TAGS: NSFW 18+ ONLY, this is unedited and might be awful, Reader is Jacob's cousin, manipulative!Emma but like in a good way, BFF!Emma, Emma/Jacob, Abi/Nick, making Emma cooler than she is, sweetheart!Max, unrequited love (assumably), forced proximity, sex jokes, unsafe seating situations while driving DO NOT DO THIS PLEASE, lap-sitting, erections, staring down your shirt, teasing, love confessions, very very cheesy and idc anymore

Word Count: 8k

Main Masterlist

“EMMA, that is the stupidest idea in seriously the entire world.”

You meant it, too; you already thought that this little impromptu camping trip was an awful idea; the last time that the group of you were out in the woods, it ended with werewolves, so, could anybody really be blamed for not wanting to tempt fate? And now hearing Emma’s latest plan, you couldn’t help but say fuck this whole entire trip and its mom, too. 

“Oh—come on!” Emma insisted with a pout across her face, leaning across her oversized suitcase—who in the world needed all of that space for a weekend camping trip? “Babes, you are my wing-woman here—my ultimate girl. Come on, please—Jacob won’t even look at me when we hang out. I really need your help with this!”

You sighed; a year ago, when the ten of you—eight, if you considered the fact that you hadn’t actually met two of the camp counselors until the end of the summer—worked at Hackett’s Quarry and endured that shitshow of a summer, you hadn’t even liked Emma. You didn’t like how she had your cousin, Jacob, mooning all over her like she owned the whole fucking Earth. You didn’t like the way that the nicest girl you’d ever met seemed to think she walked on water, too, and you did not appreciate the fact that she thought she was entitled to tell you all the ways that you were doing your makeup all wrong. 

But then, that night happened. The night of the full moon, when your idiot cousin sabotaged the van just to get another night with the woman he’d fallen in love with who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about him. The night where the ten of you had miraculously survived werewolves, and a crazy-ass family trying to kill you all night. That night was what changed everything. 

You’d gotten stranded with Emma running through the woods, and somehow landed yourself in a heated battle with Jacob—who had apparently been bitten by one of those things because he was now one of those things. He, obviously, tried to kill the two of you and Emma thought fast, using a piece of silver jewelry to save both of your lives and buy you enough time to get the hell out of there. 

And then, you’d been locked in a room with her and Abi, the three of you not knowing if you would survive the night, and something just…changed. You began to see her differently, and from that point on, throughout this entire past year, the three of you had been best friends. 

More you and Emma, if you were being honest, because Abi and Nick had just gotten engaged three months ago and most of her free time went to him.

Not that it hurt your feelings. If you somehow managed to bag the man of your dreams, you’d be spending every free moment with him, too. 

“Jacob just…needs time,” you informed her with a groan, throwing your tennis shoes across the room as you frantically looked for your favorite pair of leggings. “He’s still hurt, you know? You can’t just tell him you didn’t mean any of it and then expect him to forgive you and jump back into your arms, Emma.”

“Which is why I need you to get me into his cabin this weekend,” Emma pleaded, getting up from her place on your bed and digging through your drawers as she pulled out the very clothes you were looking for. You swore that sometimes, it was literally like she could read your mind. “All we have to do is fake a fight; I will refuse to sleep in the same cabin as you, and then the boys will offer to switch with us. I’ll get a whole night—and a whole, isolated cabin—with Jacob; and you? Well, let’s not pretend that you aren’t benefitting from my little plan.”

You snorted, shimmying out of your jeans and pulling your leggings up over your legs, smiling as Emma nodded towards your ass in approval. If she thought that you looked good, you could rest assured that you damn well did.

“And how will I benefit from getting into a fake fight with you and causing a scene?” You questioned, your head cocked as Emma passed you your shoes and you eagerly slipped them on. The rest of your group would be here at any minute, and you didn’t want to keep them waiting. 

“Because if I end up in Jacob’s cabin, you know who ends up in yours? Max.”

You whipped around and shot Emma a glare, shaking your head like you couldn’t believe that she would just mention his name all casually like that. You’d made her swear to never bring up your pathetic, unrequited crush on Max Brinly ever again, since the day she’d first found out that it even existed in the first place. 

You first met Max when the sun came up after that hellish night at Hackett’s Quarry. You and Emma had run back to the island to see if Jacob was there and if he was alive, and you ended up running into Max instead. After lots of screaming and confusion, the two of you finally allowed him to explain just how in the fuck he had gotten there and who he was, which is when you learned that your one night of hell had lasted two months for him and his girlfriend. 

Emma had found Jacob and ran after him, but you stayed behind with Max, talking and laughing at his jokes, attempting not to swoon at the adorableness that was his laugh. You had hoped, at the beginning of the summer, to find somebody just like him and have a summer romance. Somebody who was cute, who could make you laugh, and seemed to understand you instantly.

It didn’t work out that way, obviously���seeing as the summer had been over and Max Brinly had a girlfriend. 

Laura eventually came back for him and you parted ways, assuming that this would be the last time that you would ever see Max Brinly, attributing your budding feelings for him as some sort of trauma response to the night that you had just been through. 

Imagine your surprise when, a month after Hackett’s Quarry, the new co-worker that you were assigned to train at the coffee shop was none other than Max Brinly. You assumed right away that he wouldn’t even remember you—why would he?---but you were wrong. He knew exactly and immediately who you were, and the two of you hit it off just as well as you did the first time you had ever spoken to him. It wasn’t long before you were hanging out with him every single day, and he had slowly become your best friend. 

You went to movies together, you got dinner, he came to all of the track and field competitions you ran in at your local university, you helped him study hard enough to get into a new graduate school—literally, anything that you could think of, the two of you did it together.  You even stayed the night at each other’s apartments on occasion, both of you knowing what the other’s couch felt like pretty intimately. 

In fact, the only time the two of you weren’t together was when Laura came to town to visit her boyfriend. Before she dumped him, at least.

It was nearly a month and a half ago now, that you had sat on this very bed with Max as he sobbed, asking you just to hold him and not ask any questions when he told you that he and Laura had broken up. 

“Max isn’t into me, so that really doesn’t help your case,” you grumbled, your pissy mood only continuing to sour the more that you thought about it. After Max and Laura, you thought that you might actually stand a chance with him. After all, he spent all of his free time with you, and you knew that nobody in this world knew him as well as you did—and vice versa. But after the night that he’d sobbed with you, fallen asleep in your bed, and told you how he felt like years of his life were wasted with Laura, nothing ever happened. 

He just went right on back to being the same old Max, your friend.

“Do you seriously still think that that boy has no feelings for you whatsoever?” Emma shrieked, watching as Jacob’s car pulled up from the window, hurriedly throwing her hair up into a sexily-tossed messy bun. “‘Cause, if you do, you’re so wrong that it isn’t even funny anymore.”

“Em, if he had feelings for me, then why didn’t anything change after he and Laura broke up?!” You interjected, a frown pulling at your lips as you grabbed your tiny duffel bag and hiked it up over your shoulder. “And also, why would he date Laura for so long if he actually, secretly liked me instead? Your logic isn’t logic-ing,” you insisted, and Emma smirked.

“You are so naive that it’s actually kind of cute,” she responded, rolling her eyes as Jacob opted to honk instead of being a gentleman and coming to the door. Emma sauntered over to you, playing with the ends of your hoodie and eyeing it suspiciously. “Look, just—help me with this plan, and you’ll see, okay? And change into that sexy little top I bought you last month for the car ride.”

“Emma!”

“Just trust me!” Emma insisted, pulling the hoodie up and over your head for you and tossing you the lacey black crop top she’d bought you last month. “Put it on—good, yes, I would so bang you—oh, and just in case you find out that Max also wants to bang you, I snuck condoms into your bag.”

“You have got to be kidding me, Emma!” You shrieked, although it was with a large smile on your face as you were, once again, blown away by the antics of your friend. 

Emma only laughed as the two of you rushed down to the car, you having to help Emma with one half of her bag since she’d brought such a gigantic one. You’d barely made it to the door before there was a knock on it—apparently Jacob had decided to be a gentleman after all. Or he’d simply gotten impatient, which was the better bet of the two options.

“Keep your pants on cuz, we’re coming,” you hissed out, lowering your end of Emma’s bag to the ground as you ripped open the door to your apartment. Your annoyed glare dropped and your mouth fell open as you saw Max standing there, his cheeks red and running a hand through his freshly-cut red hair. “Max! I, uh, thought you were Jacob?”

Fuck, why did you sound so fucking awkward?! Your conversation with Emma had you paranoid and upset, and if you kept acting this way, Max would definitely notice. The two of you had crossed the awkward barrier a long time ago.

“Ah, nah,” Max answered, his signature smile flashing across his face and warming you up from the inside out. “Jake’s too possessive over that steering wheel to get his ass over to the door honestly.”

“That and he doesn’t want to have to speak to me,” Emma sighed, lugging her bag forward and hitting Max in the chest with it. You suppressed a giggle as he let out an “Oomph!”, but he caught your smile and playfully sneered at you. “Oh, what a gentleman! And damn, Max, I’ve never noticed how strong you are. Have you, Y/n?! Have you ever noticed those biceps?” 

“Cut it out, Emma,” you hissed under your breath, grateful that Max had already turned around and was heaving her oversized bag to the trunk of the car. “I know what you’re doing, and it isn’t going to work on me.”

“What am I doing?” Emma asked with faux innocence, batting her eyelashes heavily down at you before she winked. “Just use it as fuel for our fake fire, if you want, babes. Besides—would it really kill you to admit in front of him that he looks good?! Give the boy a win, Y/n!”

“He does not think of me that way—”

“Hey, um, Emma?” Max called out as you were locking your front door behind you, and you turned and ran over to where he was pursing his lips behind the trunk. “Maybe we should’ve brought a bigger car, but, your bag is not going to fit back here.”

Emma turned to look and her lips, too, were pursed. 

“Well, where’s everyone sitting?” She asked, peering her head into the car to check out the situation. 

“Well, uh, Jacob’s driving—obviously—Abi and Nick are in the row of two seats behind him, and then he wants you to sit back in the last row with me while Y/n takes the passenger seat,” Max explained, using his hands to gesture to each person. Abi turned around to look at you from her place in the car, Nick’s head in her lap as he slept, and she waved. You waved back, grimacing at the large bag that was seated at your feet. 

“Hmm, no, that won’t do,” Emma insisted with a wave of her hand, using all of her strength to heave her bag up and over the full trunk of the car and into the last row of seats. “It’s going to have to go here—and oh, I really didn’t sleep well last night, so if I don’t sit in the passenger seat, I’ll get sick.” 

Max’s jaw dropped and he scoffed lightly, looking between the two of you as you held in a large groan. 

“I don’t really see how that makes any sense?” He questioned.

“So Y/n will have to sit in the back, with you!” Emma finished with a gleeful squeal, hurrying to shut the trunk and turning to make her way to the passenger seat of the car. 

“Um—hold on a minute, just where the fuck in the back will I sit?!” You barked out, gesturing incredulously to the monstrosity that was her luggage all over the back seat of the car. “Your bag is taking up the entire row—all but one seat, Em! And it’s way too fucking big to go down at our feet!” 

Emma put a daintly little finger to her chin, and you could tell that she was only pretending to think about the predicament.

“Well, it’s only about a forty-five minute drive,” she informed you, a wicked smile pushing its way onto her lips. “It’s not that long, so, just sit on Max’s lap?”

Your eyes widened and you felt sweat beading on the back of your neck, your heart beating at an intensely quick pace just at the mere thought of having to sit on Max. One look at Max’s face showed he heard her suggestion, too, because it was unnaturally blank and pale. 

You walked closer to Emma, pulling her into you as you said, “You better be fucking for real with your next suggestion, or we will get in an actual fight, Emma,” you warned her, your voice low enough that Max couldn’t hear it. You noticed that he was already ushering Nick and Abi out of the car, hurrying to his seat in the back, and the three of them were just waiting on you. 

“Oh my g—will you just trust me, for once in your life?!” Emma begged dramatically, clinging onto your arm and giving you a little push towards Max. “Thank me later, hoe.”

Oh no, I will not be thanking you later, you sneaky little she-devil, you thought to yourself, climbing over Abi’s seat and landing ungracefully into Max’s lap. He caught you much more elegantly than you fell, luckily, and he helped you right yourself so that your back was facing his chest. 

You turned your face towards him despite the fact that it was burning, and you brushed a strand of hair back behind your ear. 

“You know, I could always just sit on her bag instead of on you,” you offered, geturing weakly over to the big problem that Emma had handed over to the two of you with a private sneer at her back. “That way I won’t crush your legs into tiny pieces of ash.”

Max actually laughed out loud at that and your heart swelled with a feeling of accomplishment; Max was funny, he had probably always been funny, and anytime that you had gotten him to laugh, you took it as a personal achievement. 

“Please sweetheart, as if you could,” Max retorted, winding an arm around your waist as he pulled your back flush against his chest, leaving his arm to rest across your stomach and his fingers splayed across your hipbone. You closed your eyes, holding in a sigh as you prayed that he couldn’t see the way that your face had reddened from this angle. “Besides, this is probably the…safer option of the two.”

You heartily disagreed with that. 

Still, you positioned yourself against him, awkwardly playing with your fingers on your lap as you had no idea where to rest your hands. You and Max were close, yes, but you had never physically been close, aside from a few silly moments of teasing tickles, accidentally falling asleep on his shoulder, or him resting his legs on your lap as the two of you watched a movie together. This was entirely new territory, and you had no idea what to do with it, and you knew that if Emma hadn’t forced this to happen, that Max wouldn’t have chosen to even be in this situation with you. Probably. 

“Jacob, the drive is forty-five minutes?” You called up to him, wincing as you watched your cousin’s teeth grit in the rearview mirror as he attempted to ignore Emma completely.

“An hour, if traffic’s bad,” Jacob called back and you groaned, your leg shaking furiously in your nervousness. As if Max could sense that you were on edge—fuck, with the way that you were bouncing around he probably could feel it—his other hand landed on your thigh, rubbing calming circles around as he successfully got it to stop shaking.

“Sorry, I don’t know why I’m so anxious today,” you sighed, rubbing a hand down your face and leaning back into Max. You could hear his groan and you winced, assuming you had hurt him, as you instantly tried to reposition yourself to take some of the weight off of him.

After a few minutes of frantic wiggling, Max’s hands harshly gripped onto your waist, his fingernails digging into you as he held you tightly into place and you froze, your eyes wide and breath held. 

“Y/n, please—stop.” Max’s voice was incredibly hoarse, coming out in a groan and you winced again, mortified that you had hurt him enough to elicit this sort of response. 

“Oh shit, Max! I am so sorry—I was trying not to hurt you and then I did hurt you and—”

“Y/n!” Max interrupted, clearing his throat so that his voice sounded a lot more normal and less husky. “Honey, you’re not hurting me, just—don’t wiggle around right—there.”

Your eyebrows raised in confusion at his words and your brain couldn’t process what the hell he was saying, so you just opted to nod, leaning forward as far as you could and beginning a conversation with Abi as you tried with every ounce of your being to not put much weight on Max. It took every ounce of concentration that you had to not think about the fact that you were touching the love of your life and focus on Abi’s words about wedding planning, but somehow, you did it. 

“Hey, uh, Jake?” Max suddenly called out, and you noticed that his voice had gone hoarse again and that his tone was tight and clipped. Higher than normal. You frowned; in your conversation with Abi, you had slipped a little further backwards than you’d realized, back into his lap. “How much longer?”

“Thirty minutes,” Jacob growled, and you noticed Emma looking a little offput herself. “It’s looking closer to an hour total at this point.”

“Alright then, we need to stop,” Max insisted and you stifled a pathetic whine, embarrassed that you were this hard to bear just sitting on his lap. It probably didn’t help that you were still actively avoiding any and all contact with him, practically leaving him here in the backseat to talk to himself as you ignored him, anxious and letting Emma’s words get to your head.

You needed to stop. You and Max were friends. Good friends, and you were being absolutely ridiculous about this whole thing. 

Three minutes later, Jacob pulled off at a reststop and you lifted off of Max instantly, watching him scamper out of the car after Abi and Nick and hurrying into the men’s restroom. With everyone out of the car but you and Emma, you climbed over the seats and sat between her seat and the driver’s seat, staring at her with wide eyes.

“So,” you started out, pointedly ignoring the tears in her eyes, knowing she wouldn’t want to talk about it right now. “Your plan to make me sit on Max is not working; I can barely say two words to the guy, and his poor legs are getting crushed by me. He probably can’t think of anything but leg cramps!” 

“Oh, please,” Emma scoffed, dabbing at her eyes with a tissued and waving your worries away with a flick of her hand. “Look at him, and look at you; there must be some other reason he needs a break.”

“Oh yeah?” You fought back, crossing your arms over your chest as you frowned at your friend. “Like what, exactly? It’s not working Emma, you’re miserable up here, and I am back there; we should just switch places. You’re smaller than me.”

“I am not,” Emma sighed.

“All I know is one minute, I can’t sit still, and the next minute, he’s grabbing my hips and telling me to stop wiggling around,” you continued on, as if Emma hadn’t even interjected. “What else could it be if not that I was—”

You instantly stopped talking as Emma looked over to you, mouth opened and eyes glinting with excitement. 

“You poor naive little thing!” She giggled, pulling your arms so that you were practically sitting on her lap. “Y/n, you aren’t hurting him—you’re turning him on and he doesn’t want you to feel it!” 

You felt pinpricks across your face as the entire thing turned white, and you were suddenly feeling a little nauseous. 

“What?” You questioned, shaking your head lutching nervously at your hair. “What? I—no, Max isn’t—he wasn’t—”

“Oh, yes, yes he was,” Emma argued, and there was a light in her eyes that replaced whatever sadness she had been feeling before you came up there to talk to her. “Okay, do exactly as I say; when Max comes back out to the car, sit back on him just like you were that first time. Wiggle around a bit again—”

“What? No!”

“Just trust me—wiggle around a little bit again, then ask him if he wants to watch something with you on your phone. When you turn it on, lean back against him so that your back is arched and he gets a good, full view down your—”

“Okay, and this is where I officially stop you, you are crazy,” you intoned, shaking your head and leaning away from your friend. “Max is not into me—in case you managed to forget about that, babes—and besides, I can’t just show him my boobs, Emma! They’re my—boobs. They’re, like, private.”

“Holy fuck, how are you not a virgin,” Emma groaned, shoving you back towards your seat as she pointed eagerly out of the car. “Okay, babes, here he comes—just trust me, okay?! Do it!” 

You opened your mouth to argue again, but the words fell from your lips as the car door opened and Max poked his head inside, grinning over at you as his eyes darted back and forth between you and Emma. 

“What, uh, what’s going on here?” He asked, and you shot a glare at Emma as she giggled, hiding her face in her shirt and sending an ominous wink your way. You tried as well as you could to tell her to shut up with your eyes, but she ignored you in typical Emma fashion. 

“Nothing,” you replied, shaking your head and sending him a smile. “I was just feeling nervous about getting away this weekend and Emma was talking me down. That’s it.”

“Ah,” Max yawned, heading back to his seat and patting his lap for you to join him. You blushed. “Is that why you’re acting so weird? You haven’t spoken to me for the last, like twenty-five minutes.”

“Yeah, sorry, just nervous,” you insisted, climbing back over Abi’s seat and settling yourself on top of Max’s lap. As you looked up after readjusting, your eyes met Emma’s in the rearview mirror and she nodded, looking from you to Max’s…well…yeah. 

You cleared your throat, feeling the burn of your phone in your pocket as you stared widely back at her, conveying that she was being way too obvious, here. Regardless, a part of you was…curious, now, and with Laura out of the picture and Max completely single, it’s not like a little testing of the waters was inappropriate anymore. What could it hurt, really? Max was too nice to reject you, so if he wasn’t into it, he just wouldn’t say anything and you’d let it go forever. But, if he really was into it—

Well that was the best-case scenario, wasn’t it?

So, you shifted; nothing crazy and nowhere close to grinding—just a small, flick of the hips that brushed right up against his crotch. Max’s breath hitched and you froze, wondering if you’d truly heard that right, completely distracted from the fact that Abi and Nick were re-entering the car and that Jacob was starting it again, getting ready to head on the road once more. 

A hitch of a breath wasn’t enough of a confirmation for you, so you shifted once again, and then again and then again, and this time Max’s hands lifted back up to your hips, grasping for dear life as you settled your ass back down to his crotch, turning your head to watch as his eyes shut tight and he bit his lip.

“Y/n—”

“Do you want to watch part of a movie with me?” You interrupted, watching as Max’s eyes flashed open, a glint of pain underneath them that had you second-guessing what had just happened. Max smiled down at you, though—that brilliant smile that God had blessed him with—and nodded.

You had no idea what you were going to watch, but your fingers worked anyway, hurriedly typing some stupid TikTok compilation that you hoped he wouldn’t get too distracted by. Max laid his chin on your shoulder, his hands that were gripping your waist winding around your front and interlocking as he held you, his face snuggling slightly into your neck.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, your mind reiterated as you slowly breathed out, your heart pounding wildly in your chest as you silently prayed that Max couldn’t hear it, and that he couldn’t feel the way that your skin had suddenly heated up and become sweaty. It wasn’t even that cuddling with Max was anything new—as a person, he was a fucking lapdog—but it was the fact that you had never sat on his fucking lap before while cuddling. Never had intentions to turn him on, never gave him this much of a glance down your lowcut shirt—

Y/n, don’t be a pussy, your inner Emma chastised and you shut your eyes tight and sucked in a breath, desperately trying to convince yourself not to go through with this. But damn it—you sort of wanted to and, so far, Max hadn’t shown a single sign that he’d wanted you to sit anywhere else. 

It was halfway through the video that you forgot the rest of the people in the car and arched backward without a minute to second guess yourself, pretending to stretch your arms above your head as you knew you were, successfully, letting Max have a perfect show of your black lacy bra underneath your shirt, and under that, the perfectly rounded mounds of breasts that it pushed up.

You heard a sharp inhale and dared a look at his face; he was as white as a ghost, and even his perfectly placed freckles had gone impossibly paler—and yet his eyes, those gorgeously sea-colored orbs, were still staring down your shirt, transfixed, as he studied your figure. 

“Alright, everybody out!” Jacob suddenly called out, and the two of you jumped, Max’s eyes meeting yours as he was brought back to reality. His eyes, no longer clouded over with lust, widened and a blush spread unevenly across his face as he realized that he’d been caught watching you. “We’re here!”

“Y/n,” Max breathed out, whipping his arms away from you and running nervous hands through his newly cut hair. “Shit, Y/n, I’m so sorry, I—I wasn’t—I mean I was but…” You smiled as he stuttered along, a giggle framing your mouth and escaping out of your lip, causing Max’s gaze to whip back onto you. You couldn’t help it; he was always so damn cute when he was flustered.

“Does it make it any less creepy if I’m aware that staring down your shirt is creepy?” Max asked, equal parts timid and teasing. You laughed aloud at that, the two of you lingering in the backseat of the car while the rest of the party headed out. 

“It’s fine, Max,” you insisted with a shrug and a wink, conveying in every way possible that you weren’t completely innocent here either. “No one wears a bra like this for it not to be seen, sweetheart.” 

The words coming out of your mouth shocked even you, and Max’s entire jaw fell open as he stared at you in complete and utter disbelief. 

“Whoa, Y/n,” he reared away from you, just to get a better look at your face, testing to see if you were saying what he thought that you were saying. His hands found their way to your waist again and he touched you softly, his thumbs running up and down the curves of your hipbones as he stared in wonder down at you. “Are you saying that you wanted me to—”

“Are you two gonna get out of the car, or do you plan on freezing your little asses off all night?!” Jacob called out as he forced open the trunk of the car, staring in disbelief at the two of you still sitting there. You both jumped, eyes turning to Jacob with guilty blushes, and you didn’t waste another second climbing off of Max and over the seats, pushing your way past Jacob and onto the dirt-clodded driveway. 

Taking your bag from your cousin and asking a hurried, “Where’s our cabin again?” You received directions and hurried off in the direction of the cabin that you and Emma were supposed to share, attempting to outrun Max so that he couldn’t question you any further.

What the hell had you been thinking?! You hadn’t, obviously, and you’d let Emma’s skewed opinion get to you. Now, you had to come up with a solution for some serious damage control before Max got to you with his, What’s gotten into you today? And his, Look, I know you must have been kidding, or his I’m sorry Y/n, I’m just not attracted to you that way—

“Fuck,” you muttered to yourself, throwing open the door to the cabin and chucking your suitcase onto the empty bed. Emma was standing on the other side of the room, facing the bathrooms, but she jumped and turned around when she heard the slam of the front door. “Fuck this whole plan, Emma, and fuck my stupid self too. I can’t believe that I actually let myself believe that Max was really into me and I—holy shit, are you crying?!?”

Emma’s pretty hazel eyes were red-rimmed, but the telltale giveaway that she’d been sobbing was the tear tracks of black mascara spreading down her cheeks and clumping up near her pointy chin.

Once her mind had registered your question, she began sobbing once again, her hands coming up to cover her eyes and you ran to her, throwing your arms around her neck and feeling her own arms go around your waist as she sobbed into your neck heartily. 

“Honey, what happened?” You asked, but your voice was muffled by your much taller friend’s collarbone. You pulled away from her and sat her down on her bed, sitting down next to her and taking her hand in yours. “Emma, what did my idiot cousin say to you? You know that big dummy acts completely on emotions, so whatever he said, I’m sure it was just in the heat of the—”

“He meant it,” Emma interrupted you, pulling her hand out of yours and using it to wipe her eyes. “But I don’t even want to talk about it right now, so—tell me what happened with Max.” You opened your mouth to protest but she shot you her “Emma” look—the look that told you that arguing would quite literally be pointless. So, you sighed, letting yourself fall backward onto the bed and groaning as your head hit the awfully lumpy mattress she’d been provided tonight.

“I don’t know what happened, Emma,” you admitted with a whine, feeling her lay down beside you and cuddle her head into yours comfortingly. “It was like I had this sudden, insane boost of confidence and I was like…grinding on him and giving him a full show of my boobs—”

“You do have great boobs—”

“And then when he noticed that I caught him staring at my breasts, I kindofsortofmaybe insinuated that I wanted him to look down my shirt and then he was about to ask me if I really meant that I wanted him to see me naked and then Jacob interrupted us and I freaked out and ran away.”

Emma just stared back at you, blinking occasionally, as if she were really confused.

“Why?” She finally asked, staring down at you in confusion. You blinked back at her, shaking your head bewilderedly. 

“Wait, why what?”

“Why did you run away, you fucking dumbass!” Emma insulted, but it was loving and the two of you laughed as she pushed you off the bed and you squealed. “Seriously, Y/n, what the fuck? You ran away? After doing all of that you just ran?”

“I was scared!” You defend your actions with a hiss, pulling yourself up off of the floor and planting down next to her again. “Fuck, Emma, Max is my best friend. I cannot risk freaking him out and losing him, okay? I just…can’t, okay, he means…he means everything to me, Emma, he’s the most important person in the whole world. He’s my best friend.”

“Ouch,” Emma responded, but there was a fond smile on her face and a happy gleam in her eyes as she gazed down at you. “Babes, you know that you’re the most important thing in the world to him too, right? Even if he didn’t feel the same way about you, he wouldn’t let this ruin your friendship. You know that, right?” 

You shrugged and looked away from her, playing with your hands as you avoided the question. Did you know that? No, not really. Yeah, the two of you were really close, and yeah, he spent most of his free time with you, but that didn’t mean that this wasn’t something that would freak him out enough to ghost you.

“Shit, if I was going to do something as fucking ridiculous as this, I should have just bit the and told him how I felt,” you finally responded with a sigh, pushing yourself off of the bed and shuffling your feet over the cold, hardwood floor. “But you know, maybe this way, there’s some way that I can play it off?”

“Okay babes, I’m just going to say this once and I’m going to say it outright,” Emma cut you off, standing in front of you and forcing your chin up to look your much taller friend in the eyes. “I know why they broke up, Y/n. The real reason, and if you just fucking ask me I will tell you right here, right now.”

The offer was, obviously, tempting; and two or three years ago you’d probably be a lesser person and taken that offer. As it was, though, you valued Max and his privacy, and if he’d wanted you to know, he would have told you himself. 

“No, I don’t want to know,” you insisted, pursing your lips and pulling away from Emma. “It isn’t any of my business, and Max made that abundantly clear by not telling me inthe first place.”

“Of fucking course,” Emma groaned with a shake of her head, rolling her eyes at you and then fixing you with a glare. “The two of you are both so stupid.”

“Gee, thanks Em.” Your words fell flat as you shot her your own sharp look and she gulped, having the common decency to at least look like she felt bad for saying what she did. “Besides, why do you even know the reason Laura dumped him?”

“Laura didn’t dump Max—Max dumped Laura,” Emma clarified and your heart dropped into your stomach. The piece of news, realistically, probably should have made you feel better, but it didn’t. It only made you feel worse, like your heart had been stomped on and used up. Because—if that was true—if Max had dumped Laura—then why had he been so upset that night when he came over to your house? And why the fuck had he lied to you about it?

“What?” You asked, your voice tiny and fragile, and Emma looked back at you, confused. 

“Max broke up with Laura,” Emma repeated, and was somehow completely missing the broken, wounded look that was written all over your face. “He dumped her, because he wasn’t in love with her, Y/n, he realized that he was—”

“Emma.” 

Jacob’s voice pierced through the air, and the two of you jumped towards the sound, to where your cousin was currently glaring daggers towards your best friend. Emma immediately shut up, shooting you a guilty look as she moved farther away from you and towards Jacob. 

“Y/n, can you please give us a moment?” Jacob asked, his throat froggy and having to clear it as he continued staring at Emma. When you saw the raw, heated look pass between them you excused yourself quickly, knowing that whatever feud they were having was about to be made up in tenfold. You forgot to bring your suitcase with you—not even thinking that you’d effectively be kicked out of your cabin for the night—as you ran outside, outside to the nothingness that awaited you.

No, seriously.

There was not a soul out here, Abi and Nick notably missing and Max even nowhere to be seen—not that you even wanted to see him right now anyways. Your heart was barely beating in your chest at the revelation that he’d lied to you—you, supposedly his closest friend—about something that was so huge. Then again, maybe he had no idea how huge it was to you. He didn’t at all, actually, because he had no idea that you were so annoyingly and stupidly in love with him. 

“Fuck this day, and fuck everyone else,” you groaned to yourself as you plopped down on a metal bench under a canopy, covering your eyes with your hands as you whined. 

“That an invitation?” 

Max’s voice sent your blood running cold and you jumped, shocked, turning yourself towards him as he stood slightly behind you, watching you warily. His face was red, but he was smiling at you, and he made his way over and sat at the bench opposite you slowly. 

The two of you stared at each other for a while—one of you, optimistically nervous, and the other of you having had your heart shattered into a million little pieces just ten minutes ago. Neither of you said anything, unsure of what exactly you should say, for a long time until finally, Max broke the silence.

“Y/n,” Max spoke, clearing his throat from the nervousness that threatened to choke and overtake him. “About what you said in the car—”

“You lied to me.” 

You hadn’t intended for it to come out like that, but there it was, and there was no taking it back now. 

Max reared back, astonishment registering across his perfect features. 

“I—what?” He shook his head back and forth, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what you were saying. “I lied about—about the car?”

“No Max, not about the fucking car!” You swore, rising from your seat in your anger. Max followed quickly, a gentle hand on your elbow that you quickly ripped out of his grasp. “You lied to me about—about Laura! You told me that she—that she broke up with you, Max! You were heartbroken, you were crying, you lied!” 

You thought that there were tears streaming down your face but you couldn’t really tell at the moment. All you could feel was the adrenaline that was being fueled by your anger, and all you could see was the shock that hadn’t left Max’s face since you’d first spoken. 

“Who told you that?” Max questioned, and the fact that he wasn’t denying it made you even more upset and you huffed, turning around on one heel and heading towards—fuck, you had absolutely nowhere to go.

“Does it matter?” You answered, turning back around and accepting the fact that the only way you were going to get to be alone was if Max went back to his cabin and left you here and, knowing him, that wasn’t likely to happen. “You lied, Max. And I’m pissed about it. That’s the only thing that you should care about.”

You still hadn’t turned around to face him, so he made his way in front of you instead, placing tentative hands on both of your arms and levelling his face with yours. 

“Sweetheart, please look at me.” Fuck; you were weak anytime that Max called you sweetheart and you knew that he knew it, too. Hating yourself just a little bit more for it, you looked up at him, unaware of how your big, sad eyes caused every cell in his body to melt. 

“Why did you lie to me?” The question slipped through your lips without your consent and Max sighed, releasing your arms and pressing a hand into your hip so that you couldn’t get away again. 

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Max answered simply and you reared back, out of his touch, away from his hold, as you scoffed in response.

“You didn’t want to hurt me?” You shrieked, pulling farther away from him and pushing your hands out in front of you to stop him when he tried to reach out for you again. “What the fuck—how the fuck would that have hurt me, Max?”

Max winced, running a nervous hand through his hair, and inspected his surroundings, as if he wished somebody else would come out any minute now. 

“Y/n, you are my best friend,” Max pleaded, and you could see the desperation in his eyes but you had no idea why he was so upset. “You know me better than anybody else in this entire world, honey, please—can you give me the benefit of the doubt on this one? Can you let me tell you when I’m ready?”

“No, Max, obviously I cannot do that because obviously it has something to do with me!” You retorted sharply, angry tears burning hot at the corners of your eyes, hotter than normal, devastated tears. “Like—what is going on, Max? I hae this feeling that everybody’s in on this secret, everybody but me—and I should know it, I should know what’s going on with you—”

“Y/n, sweetheart!” Max interrupted again, and this time, he successfully gathered your hands into his. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry that I lied—really I am, but—why is it so important to you?” You glared back at him, pulling your hands out of his grasp and beginning to walk away from him. “Why is it such a big deal that I didn’t tell you the whole truth?”

“Because I’m in love with you, you idiot!” You screamed back at him, your body turning back around on its own accord as the screech left your mouth. You both heard the words echo against a canyon somewhere, and you blanched, unaware of what you’d actually said and the weight of them until they hit you in the chest on the reverb.

Max’s mouth had dropped open and he stepped away from you in shock, his hands coming up to frame his cheeks, never making actual physical contact with his face. He stared back at you, his eyes wide and full of wonder, as if he were seeing you for the first time, all over again. 

“You’re—” Max gulped, but he took a step closer to you, a smile adorning his freckled cheeks. “You’re in love with me? Really?”

Your heart sunk again when he spoke and you shook your head, backing away from him and pressing two fingers to the bridge of your nose as you suddenly felt an oncoming migraine. 

“I’m sorry Max,” you apologized, feeling a bout of nausea spring up in your stomach as you realized that you’d just past the point of no return. “Shit, I’m so sorry, I should have never even said anything—I should have let it go—”

“I broke up with Laura because I’m in love with you.”

The words came out quickly, like Max was afraid that if he hadn’t said them as quickly as he did that he wouldn’t say them at all. You reaction was surprisingly slow compared to everything else you’d done in haste tonight, and you dropped your hands from your face and gazed up at the man in front of you, who was staring back at you with awe. 

“W—what?”

“I love you,” Max repeated, taking another step towards you with his light, airy chuckle that you loved so damn much. “And I didn’t tell you that night I broke up with Laura because I thought that you’d think I was lying, or that you were a rebound, and you’re not, Y/n. You’re absolutely not—I’ve loved you for a long enough time that I’m a total asshole for letting it go on with Laura for as long as I did.”

“Then why—why did you—”

“I lied because I didn’t want you to think that any of this was your fault,” Max continued, and he was so close now that his arms were winding around your waist and his forehead was pressed to yours. “I just—I knew, the second I saw you again in that coffee shop, that it was fate. And I lied to myself, hoping that my relationship would just fizzle out on its own and that I wouldn’t have to hurt anyone but—fuck, I would break Laura’s heart a thousand times over if it meant that I might get to be with you in the end,” Max finished, and you were stunned silent, unaware of how to speak anymore. 

“Do I—” Max took a sharp inhale of breath and a step back to assess your face. “Do I get you in the end?”

You smiled back at him before pressing your lips so tightly to his, wrapping your body so hard around his own, that the two of you could barely breathe in anything that wasn’t lingering on each other’s bodies. 

“You had me,” you answered in between breathless kisses, in between promises, in between hopeful smiles. “You had me at the beginning.”

if you liked this cheesy shit, check out my multichapters!

if you'd like to join any of my taglists, dm me!

FOREVER TAGLIST:

@house-of-kolchek @lorebite @yeslieutenant @kassiekolchek22 @buttermykolchek @kawaiiwitch224 @ageofbajabule

[noel-levine-fan]

imagining how this conversation went down the first time

ashe: you could have a motive to kill sirius because 12 years ago dorothy killed your father and since he worships dorothy he could have had a hand in that murder and you would want revenge

noel: CHOKING AND DYING

ashe: are you ok

noel: you do realize sirius was 10 back then right

ashe: well. i knew that but was hoping nobody would think about it hard enough to bring it up he could have still been convinced to assist and even if he wasn't revenge isn't exactly a rational motive so you could've blamed him anyway on the basis that he worships dorothy-

alternatively:

wilardo: did you kill sirius as revenge for your dad

noel: CHOKING AND DYING

wilardo: did i touch a nerve or smth

noel: you do realize sirius was 10 back then right

wilardo: oh am i that out of touch with time im going to fucking kill myself

[sorry for the weird formatting i didn't want there to be paragraph breaks between each sentence but i didn't know how to make tumblr Not do that other than to go into the editor and i didn't feel like it]

[sanestnoel]

For All Time | Lovebrush Chronicles; “Hereinafter”

Even in dreams, you think of him.

a/n: the extremely late valentine’s entry for the discord event orz im so sorry chise, you can blame school, but you can blame me too :') its been so long since i made a tumblr post pls so sorry if the formatting is weird

(You might convince yourself you were past the point of being human, but what emotions you thought you had destroyed were merely buried behind ice and snow. You were half-human, so you found existence dull.

How long has it been since you were born? Centuries have passed, millennia perhaps and how you measure time was by the routine flip of a calendar and the decadent feasts you hear the capital throwing despite the withering world beyond its walls. Your skin retains its unwrinkled state, your hair remains its length, you were only going through the motions of following the river of time. You were the most truthful to yourself and you could tell that you were following this river alone and it seemed it would stay that way until you ceased to exist.

Perhaps a change was in your speech, you understand more of magic runes than the machinations of human language. You understand even less of how to describe the hollow feeling in your body. Your desire to live was what kept you alive, but could this be living? Choose life, they had said, please choose life.

You hardly remember what it means to choose life, like how you can barely remember their voice as they say it, their appearance. Had their hair been as pale as snow? Or as dark as the ebony nobles cherished as their desks? Were their eyes as stormy as the overcast skies? Or as bright as forget-me-nots?

It did not matter, when you would rather etch into memory for as long as eternity, the way their warmth seeps into your monstrous bones.

They hold your hand, gently. With only five fingers, a small hand, this is what steals your lonely heart. It holds your palm like it was wrapping around the ice surrounding your heart, its warmth melts it until it is skin to beating muscle. One finger sinks in, the other caresses and the remaining three fill you. You were a cold, cold man whose feelings were crushed under the weight of the world, but they held you gently. It was not that you were in love, you know less of that than you do of happiness, but how could you describe it? You only know that your heart lives within another, and you doubt they shall ever return what they have unknowingly taken.)

You wake up to the chill of dewy mornings after the rain. Past your window, you catch the sight of a raindrop falling from the tips of leaves, beyond it is a slightly foggy expanse.

You squeeze your hands, it’s cold, he had said that it was incredibly warm, but perhaps he only thinks that because his hands were even colder.

Beanie comes to lick your fingers, his warm tongue over the numb ends, when you look to your left you see the clock ticking back at you. It was close to the time you feed Beanie, which explains the seemingly affectionate behaviour. You scratch his chin absently as you notice that the pot of fake flowers on your bedside table has been shifted—and wedged underneath was a fraying letter.

Something in you wants to leave Godheim behind for good, but the larger half pushes your hand to stretch and delicately slide the letter out. It’s sealed with wax and the paper is extremely old to the point of fragile. The insignia of the green wax is, you recognise, as Alkaid’s seal.

You pry the wax seal open with a nail.

“Dear friend,

I hope this letter finds you well. I was unsure if the letter would arrive safely and intact since you had described that the flow of time between our worlds is significantly different from one another.

Godheim is recovering smoothly if you are worrying, most would not know of your deeds but trust that everything we do to rebuild our home shows our gratitude. We will not take you and Archmage Clayden’s sacrifices lightly.

Speaking of the Archmage, I wish to write a biography about him. Since you had been witness and part of what the Archmage has done for Godheim, I wanted to inquire if you could perhaps send a letter detailing your shared experiences. The Archmage is still largely known with an infamous reputation, but I wish for others to know the side you have seen, too and for others to remember the Archmage as incredibly...

You stop reading. Distantly, you can feel the rough paper slip from your hands. The mention of him has you reassessing the dream you had. You can barely remember the contents of it, but the visceral loneliness is embedded into you.

What had been a dream for you... was a memory for him.

[smthfunnyhappenedonthewaytor3]

C.C.: Hold it! There’s something we’d better sort before this goes any further! Kallen: Yeah? C.C.: Yes. We’re both wearing nothing, we’re standing in what, you may have noticed, is increasingly turning into mud, and we’re squaring up to fight. Okay. But there’s something missing, yes? Kallen: And that is? C.C.: A paying audience? We could make a fortune.

[coentinim]

Okay @subiysu-chan for some reason I can't answer normally because your ask formats in a weird way and I can't read it.

It's gonna be loong

1. Honestly, that really depends on the feminist. The most marketable to social media is of course the "decinstruct everything" type of leftism, but actually most people don't think like that irl. My country is considered conservative, though there's at least 5 (prob more) lgbtq people in my class and a lot of young people hold leftist beliefs, and almost all of them treat the deconstruction/anarchism/communism/kink as memes and don't take it seriously. We're 17-18 for reference.

And yes, feminism is depressing. I consider myself someone with feminist views (though not a feminist bcs I'm not an activist), and learning about rape, domestic violence, pay gap, abortions of baby girls and the lack of female body autonomy is very depressing. I wish I can have the strength to fight it one day. I don't think deconstructing family values is a core trait of feminism, but I do think it's a byproduct, since a big chunk female oppression relays on marriage. That's why divorce laws, financial independence, men knowing that marriage doesn't equal always consenting to sex, etc... are so important. So a byproduct of that will be less marriages, less kids. I know you're particularly against total sexual liberation, and I agree that it can be harmful sometimes, especially by making nsfw available to little kids. Above 15-16 I think it doesn't do much harm, unless it's like degrading porn, but I've heard of 12 year old boys who watch torture porn, so that's definitely fucked up. But that's not the goal of feminism, that's probably what leftist men think it is since they get more access to women by making sex only a commodity. Tbh I think sex buyers, especially those who actually pay to rape people, should be castrated lmao but that's a bit unrelated. I agree that complete deconstruction shouldn't happen, and it won't. It's just that... the past was very prudish, so now there's a pushback against that in the form of the sexual revolution. People are confused and often experience a Madonna-whore complex, too, so they rebel more by being more out there with the sexuality.

Stuff like homosexual attraction have been villainized, and instead of going "sex with and attraction to and love towards the same sex are morally neutral", they go "yeah suck my d conservatives i am the degenerate!!" which is very cathartic (I went through that phase on the internet help), but ultimately unhelpful. Same with bringing kink to pride parades?? Like no one wants to see your bare ass and cat ears, dude?? There are minors and people who don't wanna see your kinks. It's not fighting the Madonna-whore distinction, it's just choosing to be the whore instead of Madonna. I'm gonna blame social media and people who want to sow discord for political gains.

2. I'd love to read that and I don't see anything inappropriate with it. If you mean like aftermath of torture, there's a lot of it on tumblr already and people of all ages and backgrounds write that stuff. Unless there's something inappropriate I'm unaware of. But tbh, torture itself is very nsfw. Has a bad vibe. I mean, a naked man, tied up, being all vulnerable to another man... or maybe I just romanticize violence, again. But yeah, it's easy to misinterpret as kink content, but anyone with common sense should know it's not for kink as long as you don't describe them doing... well, sex.

3. I will but in a separate post since this one got quite political.

[faejilly]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @shadoedseptmbr ages and ages ago

tagging uh... i have no fucking clue. anyone who writes! no pressure! please blame me! @fancytrinkets @la-muerta @leahazel @jadesabre301 & ?!?!?

1: How many works do you have on AO3?

178 fics, since this is a fic writer meme.

2: What's your total AO3 wordcount?

1,193,590, with the caveat that that includes a collab fic of 190,409 words of which I was primarily writing only one of three POV characters. (And also one other shorter collab and the minimal amount of words required to describe the podfic/fanmixes.)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mostly Shadowhunters (TV) atm, a lot of BioWare Games (especially Dragon Age 2) and then a truly random smattering of smaller games and tiny!fandom prompts back when askbox games were more common here plus Yuletide/Fic Exchange Matches On Unexpected Things. (I think I've broken 20 fandoms on AO3, depending on how one counts the various DA sub-fandoms.)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

These are all Shadowhunters and Malec fics. The first three are complete, the last two are WIPs.

two are halves of one

My only posted 5+1 fic, a series of outsider perspectives on Alec & Magnus & their very long day of denied cuddles/alone time. 😅

i cannot touch because they are too near

Parabatai Feels & Magic Lore! I wrote this for a Season 3B countdown event, and it's Magnus Being A Nerd and trying to figure out how this parabatai thing works. I snuck Jace and Michael Wayland feels in there kind of sideways too. I do think it's one of the most self-indulgent things I've ever written (epistolary! melancholy comfort! No Plot!) with many thanks to @rutherinahobbit because she helped me land the ending.

with an if in its soul

So I killed Alec off-screen right before the fic starts, and proceeded to keep poor Magnus very upset about it for the following 22k words. (It gets better! I promise! No one stays dead!) I got many angry and wailing comments, I have never been so proud. (This one suffered from very dramatic scope creep while I was trying to write it, which amused tumblr a lot, and this time I have to thank @poemsfromthealley for helping to make it work. And also the blurb, because I just could not figure out how to post it for ages.)

i am for you

Epistolary!Fluff Fic that was supposed to be a bit of a missed connection thing for @pameluke but Alec instead proposed to Magnus on first sight and I just kind of went with that instead. /I am not in charge of the voices in my head

It is the first fic I ever had really break containment and get a lot of engagement/comments/subs/etc. It has been out-kudosed now, obviously as it's #4 on this list, but that's only because I killed the momentum and never finished it. 😅😅😅 ISTFG I am going to finish it some day though!

if broken hearts were whole

From a soulmates/massage combined prompt meme thing ALSO for @pameluke. I got stuck on this one largely because I had three different prequel/s1 retellings in my head at the same time and I kind of tangled them all up too much to get any of them done. I will eventually figure this one out too, but I may have to finish one of the other things to sort of clean my brain out, and I haven't managed that either.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

In theory? I got hung up on a comment from an FTH bidder the year I failed to finish my FTH fic, and didn't want to reply to their comment 'til I wrote their fic?

which doesn't make much sense, but brains are weird, so there we are

someday I'll answer the backlong. it's only like two or three years at this point? 😅😭🤣

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

so about uh... five years ago? there was a really popular gifset format from an Elizabeth Hewer poem called in one timeline and I haven't the faintest idea how to gifset so I wrote a fic for Malec instead. [ao3]

I have written other things which Have Angst, but for me I tend to ease the ending... this is one of the few where I didn't.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Everything Else! (Almost)

I think, as an exercise in the true form of Happily Ever After, I'd have to go with Fine Feathers, which is an epilogue to a Georgette Heyer Regency Romance novel I did for Yuletide 2016.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

Not usually. I don't even get people yelling at me to update on my WIPs, which may be hateful but isn't the same thing 😅

/and I'm certainly not complaining about either of these things, but I wish I knew how I avoided The Discourse™️so I could do it on purpose

9. Do you write smut?

I used to pretty regularly. I was even known as a smut!fic writer when Dragon Age Fandom and I were mutually more active together. Not so much (on either the writing quantity or the requests for more smut) for Shadowhunters.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Mostly no? I did two very short ficlets for Bingo Squares. I do still believe that Leverage is the Fix-It Fandom that fits everywhere and thus only kind-of counts as a crossover, plus I wrote a Shadowhunters / Inception bit with Ariadne as a Warlock.

I do also enjoy a good fusion fic, aka using a different canon as an AU setting, rather than combining characters from two settings.

For example: Shadowhunters Characters as BAU Agents from Criminal Minds!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of? I've seen it happen to co-authors though, and other friends

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! I am still stunned and amazed and delighted by this!

Batty_Blue translated several of my Shadowhunters fics into Russian:

a flower of always i cannot touch because they are too near trust your heart ashes of angels / ashes of roses

And Pomyluna translated 'First Choice' into Polish

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yes!

Only once successfully (aka one and done and finished and posted), and that was entirely thanks to my co-author Raph. 😅 (Against All Odds for @galedekarios back when I knew her as Chignon on an actual forum prior to tumblr. She's who got me onto tumblr, so if you met me here? That's her fault. 🥰)

I have started things with people a few times that never got posted, and there's a massive Mass Effect retelling on potentially permanent hiatus, though all three of us do hold out hope that someday our lives will align again. (Persephone Rising)

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

Me & Sleep

(Sorry, can't do it, can't choose. Beware My Armada. With a couple ancient ship leviathans which can raise themselves from the deep with the slightest provocation.)

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Every thing I have ever posted (except for 12 Moons) is something that I do in fact hold out hope I will eventually finish.

Things I have not started posting are too numerous to count and/or list. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they are fertilizer for other things that will be written later.

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Dialogue and hopeful melancholy? I get a lot of compliments on emotion/mood, and I do feel like I am usually pleased with the, idk, vibes of most of what I write.

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

Plot & structure! What is? How do? What do you mean I have to have things happen rather than just reacting all the time?!?

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I have done it with mixed success and there are definitely ways to do it more accessibly than I did. It can add a lot, but you do have to think about the execution.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Uh. I think Lois & Clark back when I was a teen!jilly. Either that or Sailormoon when I was a slightly older teen!jilly?

In terms of posting in public, it was Bioware something, either Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Origins back around when Thing 2 was born. And he's 14 now, so... 😅

Orion's Belt, I think? I didn't originally post it on AO3, and then I deleted myself off the internet for awhile, and then I re-uploaded everything, and I'm bad at time in the best of circumstances, which that clearly was not, so it might not have been that one specifically but it was close.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

I CAN'T CHOSE JUST ONE WTF

As a formative event/process, I have a certain enduring fondness for Lost for Words, which was like the first fic I really wrote while in fandom... I was social about it and posted while I was writing and finished (eventually) and it is still the longest single story I have ever written. (Tho I am for you will beat it out when I finish that.)

It's not particuarly good from the perspective of who I am as a writer some dozen years later, but it's sincerely meant cotton candy, at least. 🤣

[gemstarstarlight]

TAGLIST THINGIE

@taketwoinink tagged me in this and it was so long I thought I would start a new one

nicknames » Little Plant is my newest (and definitely favorite 😍 ). But my family is weird about nicknames, so I don’t…think I have any outside of tumblr???

zodiac sign » …Libra? Idk I don’t know anything about zodiacs so I think that’s it.

favourite musicians » I DON’T KNOW THIS QUESTION TORURES ME like if we’re talking musicians formational to my sense of taste and vibe, that’s very different to what I listen to as of right now. I don’t know!!!! Everyone is really talented and I am STRUGGLING. I tend to vibe with indie pop rn? Which I fully blame the Heartstopper soundtrack for. But right now I listen to Steffany Gretzinger, Taylor Swift, and…most genres that are kinda…akdjhskka *stops rambling and forces herself to the next question*

favourite sports team » nope.

sports i watch » absolutely not.

other blogs » don’t have any rn.

do i get asks » VERY RARELY I WANT MORE

PLEASE. Make me not have to think of content by asking me things lol.

how many blogs do i follow » 4

tumblr crushes » I only follow people I really like, so I guess I have tumblr crushes on all 4 people I follow? Idk Im too aroace for this.

lucky numbers » 3. It’s the magic number of comedic timing.

what am i wearing » black oversized T-shirt and blue jeans and a black cap and an oversized blue sweatshirt (it’s got Midoriya’s color scheme because I got it at an anime convention).

dream vacation » Idk…either Japan or Europe. Tbh I love traveling so I’ll go anywhere with anyone, especially if it’s somewhere I’ve never been before.

dream car » Gross. Next question.

favourite food » kimchi jiggae! It’s a spicy Korean stew and it’s delicious and comforting. I have really good memories surrounding it.

favourite drink » probably ginger ale. Or a peppermint mocha.

instruments » piano, and production! Producing music is one of my favorite things to do.

languages » I can order coffee in Korean but otherwise I speak English only.

celebrity crush » …probably Kit Connor rn? I have HARDCORE talent crushes/deep admiration for really artistically talented people. Actually…now that I think about it…anyone I ever had a celebrity crush on was always someone that was Insanely Talented at something and I deeply admired them.

tagging » @skyisverybored @9-circles-of-l @venusqq