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bigjimbopickens · 2 years

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About What Happened From Feb 7-9th

Hey everyone, I’m making another post and I promise it will be the last time I talk about this here, unless there’s a huge update. Since last time it was emotionally driven and I wasn’t in a good headspace I thought I would make another now that I’m in a better mental state and can think more clearly.

For those who don’t want to read this insanely long post, here is a summarized version: February 7th Kevin uploads a sponsored video on Hogwarts Legacy. It brought a lot of transphobia into the community and it turned on each other. On February 9th Kevin wrote an apology on his subreddit and it has a mixed reception.

With that out of the way I would encourage you to read the full post as I go into more detail, analyze Kevin’s post and also touch on the video itself since I did watch it when it was uploaded.

Some trigger warnings will be needed for this.

TW // transphobia and antisemitism mentions, topics on or related to suicide.

Should also mention that I am only trans, not Jewish, so I cannot speak on their behalf. But since HL has heavy antisemitic themes it would be unfair to leave them out of the conversation.

I am documenting this so it is not forgotten and we can learn from it. There may be things I missed and can add if I am informed. This is also all mostly from my perspective as a trans guy who was very active in all sides of the community during this, not just the subreddit or YouTube comments.

A recap of the situation:

- February 7th at 12pm Pacific Standard Time, the video “Being a bad wizard in Hogwarts Legacy” by Call Me Kevin is uploaded. It is a sponsored video.

- Within minutes of the video being posted, the comments become very toxic. People express their concern and/or disappointment that Kevin would promote that game to his audience. People in the replies tell them to off themselves or call them 41%ers, referring to the suicide rate of trans people.

- r/CallMeKevin discusses it in the comments of the bot post and the discussion is mostly respectful.

- The hate then spreads far into the community starting with the subreddit.

- A user wrote an open letter to Kevin about all of this and the comments were horribly transphobic with several upvotes and the thread gets locked.

- People take to twitter to discuss it and fights break out there as well. The amount of tweets covering it makes the situation spread far outside of the community as outsiders also share their thoughts.

- Other subreddits, specifically trans ones, also cover what happened to what was once a safe space for trans people.

- February 8th, 12 hours after the situation begins, Instagram account cmk_things, which is run by three trans admins, makes a statement. The comments on that post also become horribly transphobic, thus spurring on the hate to the CMK Instagram community.

- Allegedly, Anna_Chess is also harassed about this.

- February 9th at 5am PST Kevin makes the subreddit post titled “A letter to the CMK community”. It has a mixed reception with some forgiving him and others not.

- A much smaller scale fight breaks out between the people most affected by this and people calling them soft for not wanting to immediately accept Kevin’s apology.

- By the end of the day things begin to finally calm down. The worst of it has ended.

End of timeline, for now (but I hope it doesn’t continue unless it’s positive).

Needless to say, this entire situation was horrible for everyone involved. I truly don’t want it to happen again and we can all learn something from this, which is why I have documented it. Next I wanted to analyze the post Kevin made to the subreddit.

Kevin’s Apology Post Link to the post if you haven’t seen it: https://www.reddit.com/r/CallMeKevin/comments/10xu9ot/a_letter_to_the_cmk_community/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf In this section I wanted to touch upon this more since the wording of it confused me at first, but now that I am feeling better mentally I can properly comprehend it. This is all coming from the perspective of a trans man who’s been a very active community member for 3 years and an active viewer for 5 (and also was an A+ English student who did these a lot). I am not meaning to defend him or anything, rather just explaining it from how I see it. It starts off with him saying he is sorry and that he wanted to explain it from his side. In the next one he wrote “I'm not sure how this whole thing was covered in other countries but as someone who does not use social media this boycott was pretty much invisible.” I am from Canada and this pretty much wasn’t covered at all except online in places you’d only see it if you were from a minority the game impacts, so I will give him that. However, you’d think a gaming YouTuber would at least try to keep up with what’s going on in the gaming world. Kevin also wrote “I'm surprised that I've not heard any discussion within my recent streams or on my comment section given the scale of it.” There was discussion of it, though it was usually just one or two comments or were in places Kevin wouldn’t have seen it. During the stream on February 5th there was a conversation in the chat about it that did get missed where someone asked if he was going to play it and people started saying that they hope he doesn’t for obvious reasons. Though I understand why it was likely missed, Kevin wasn’t reading the chat much as he was playing with other people when it happened. In the next paragraph Kevin wrote “I had also heard of there being a boycott of some kind on the game but honestly assumed this was not a big thing, every other day I hear of someone/something being a problem and I just don't engage with that news.” So he admits to hearing about the boycott after saying it was invisible to him? Strange. Sometimes these things aren’t huge issues as the internet does like to blow things out of proportion (I mean, just look at this situation haha) but oftentimes it is serious and should be treated as such. I wouldn’t be surprised if he heard about it early on before the weeks leading up to the launch and made an assessment based off of that, but on the other hand, I still find it really strange how he didn’t know about how serious this was. Again, you’d think a gaming YouTuber would keep up with these things. Other ones I watch do, like RTGame and Kwite/Kwote. “When it comes to boycotts in a general sense I would disagree that buying something is endorsing the view of everyone involved.” Is the first line of the next section. To an extent he is right, not the devs’ fault that Rowling is a shitty person. Though giving your support to things like this gives the companies involved more incentive to continue, which is one of the reasons why the boycott happened. The problem also wasn’t entirely the fact he played it, rather it was the fact he was paid to promote it to his audience of viewers who were impacted by the game and how his community turned on itself. There is another line in this part that I pretty much have the same thing to say about so I won’t repeat myself, but it’s along the lines of “but JK Rowling wasn’t involved.” Kevin then addresses the comments. The first two statements have no issues, he is correct. Not everyone is as informed as others are. In the third one he explains that usually when his videos are promoted to an outside audience it does get more hate than usual. That is pretty standard for YouTube. He then explains that this time the hate was amplified by the situation and he disabled the comments on the video, which is good on him. Kevin ends this section essentially saying he doesn’t support people attacking others for who they are along with his community because “from my experience [the community] have been the most kind and supportive group of people.” I do a little gatekeeping here, I always have. I believe that genuine fans of CMK wouldn’t be transphobic or antisemitic. Though a lot of the bigotry came from inside the community with users who were either active subreddit users, had CMK related usernames and/or pfps or were usernames I recognized from previous kind comments I got on my artwork. I guess it was the 1% Kevin left out when he said 99%. Kevin then explains how he can see why someone would be on either side of this situation, which is probably not the best thing to put in an apology letter to your community after alienating them and, albeit unintentionally, enabling transphobia and antisemitism to go on. It’s not really a good idea to be neutral on things like this as one side will assume you’ve taken the other’s side and vice versa. It’s like he doesn’t want to make a definitive statement. I know he probably didn’t mean it like that but the way he worded it makes it sound like such. The final part is about how he doesn’t want to put out any more hate and apologizes about everything. When I first read it I actually started crying about the last line, probably because I was at my lowest during the situation and it was 5am. I didn’t sleep at all during those two days. The last line was “I'm sorry for any hurt I've caused you, I have felt terrible knowing I've hurt a group that have been nothing but nice to me.” I am glad he said something as I was very worried he was just going to remain silent or only apologize in a reply thread on Twitter where only a few would see it (like last time). Part of me wishes he did a bit more but I’m satisfied with this. I never once believed he would endorse this behaviour nor did I think he was transphobic. He made a huge mistake that has ruined his reputation and the trust his community had, he’s going to have to work hard to rebuild that. I’m a huge believer in that you can accept an apology but not forgive anyone for anything they may have done. I personally did accept the apology but haven’t forgiven him yet. He shouldn’t have done this in the first place and this situation could’ve been avoided. Though once more time passes and things calm down more I imagine I will. I am in a position to make that call, I am a transgender man who was targeted during this situation as I was very vocal about it. Though I’ll return to the community soon, I have projects that I started before the situation that I don’t want to scrap. I’m just glad that the worst of it is over, we can only improve from here. If Kevin is somehow reading this then I have this to say to you: I know I seem harsh but I don’t mean to be, though sometimes the truth hurts. I genuinely hope you learn from this and I know you never meant for this to happen in the first place. You’ve never come across as that type of person to me. For a while I’ve relied on your content and community as an escape from the real world that was nothing but harsh to me because I’m not the perfect cishet neurotypical catholic woman my family wanted. I would’ve hated for it to all end over something like this. Please, don’t let it happen again. I don’t want to see you become known as a YouTuber who prioritized money over real human lives instead of fictional. And also, skill issue tbh.

Not sure what else I expected from my favourite clueless cishet. It’s sad how he is the only YouTuber I watch who did apologize for this. All the others doubled down and I had to unsubscribe. Grateful Kevin didn’t go down that path.

My own apology: Now I want to take some time to apologize for the confusion that I have caused. I will admit I was not okay mentally when I wrote all those things and I said things I didn’t mean. I also understand that my words could’ve been easily misinterpreted, which did happen. I reek of undiagnosed bipolar disorder and I also have autism. I usually try to not let that fuel anything I talk about online but sometimes it gets the best of me. I’m not trying to use that as an excuse, rather it’s an explanation to why it happened. I will do my best to not let it happen again. I’m sorry. The video itself: I did actually watch the video. I wanted to so I could see if there was any mention of the controversy and so I wouldn’t make assumptions. I watched it while in a call on a Discord server I’m in. We all shouted “KEVIN NO” when we got the notification and continued to shout that once I said it was sponsored. The video itself doesn’t have many issues, aside from the obvious. It was an unbiased look at the game and didn’t feel any different from other CMK videos. If I am going to be honest, I would rather have Kevin do a video on it than someone who’s very clearly biased and the “I bought this game to own the libs” type. Though I still preferred there to be no video at all. He’s also not the only Irish Lad to do a video, Terroriser and Nogla also have and I’m not surprised. Its a video I won’t ever be watching again though. The first CMK video I actually hated watching.

Addressing comments: During this I have gotten many comments and messages as I was very vocal during this and I’m also a fairly well known user. Even if you’ve never heard of me you’ve likely seen the things I’ve done. I wanted to publicly address them as it offers more insight to the situation. The most common one I’ve gotten were things along the lines of “You should’ve seen this coming” because he’s played the other Harry Potter games. Yes, I did see this coming. I knew he was going to play Hogwarts Legacy and I warned people that it would likely cause a divide. I never thought it would be this bad, I thought it would just be an argument on the subreddit again or something. If it was just a regular video that didn’t cause this mess I probably wouldn’t have cared as much. Another was “but Kevin played the other ones, does that mean those are bad too?” No, in fact I used to recommend Kevin’s videos to people who still wanted to consume Harry Potter content without supporting a TERF. I was never into HP growing up but I still loved his videos on it. Those games are old and you can’t buy them new anymore, so him buying them isn’t supporting J.K Rowling. It also wasn’t entirely about the fact he played the game, it’s the fact he was paid to promote it to a community that is harmed by Rowling’s actions and it turned his once kind community horribly transphobic and antisemitic. That was the issue. “But don’t you have more important issues to focus on?” I see where you’re coming from with this but do you think we have that kind of power? Also, what group of people are making these anti-trans laws? Definitely not trans people. We are doing what we can to tackle those issues too, trust me. There’s only so much we can do. I guess it only becomes an issue when it slightly inconveniences you. “Why are you so soft?” “You can’t hold onto this forever.” “He apologized so get over it.” If you’re not trans and/or Jewish you don’t get to make those calls. When I say “trans” I am using it as an umbrella term, it affected every non-cis person in the cult too. What happened was absolutely fucking horrible and it’s understandable to why we aren’t quick to forgive Kevin and the community. We had our trust completely broken and it takes a while to heal from that. You wouldn’t be quick to forgive someone either if this happened to you. What someone does is not up to you to decide, if some choose to never forgive him then that’s their choice and we have to respect it. “I wish he would take down the video though.” I do too, but since it’s a sponsored video he likely can’t as he’s bound by a contract. If he breaches the contract he can be sued and he’s not winning that lawsuit from Warner Brothers. A situation like this has happened before where he took a sponsor from Activision/Blizzard while they were being sued for allowing sexual harassment to go on, so I hope this doesn’t become a continuous pattern. Hopefully he learns his lesson this time. “But people were harassing him!” Where? Fucking where? I mean sure there may have been a few extreme people but all I saw were people expressing their disappointment and getting called slurs for it. The only people being harassed in this were the people who spoke out. I’ve been sent death threats, told to “join the 41%” and purposely misgendered because people thought I was attacking Kevin. Trans rights, until it means your favourite YouTuber gets criticized for enabling transphobia. “It’s not that big of a deal.” How fucking privileged and/or oblivious are you to see all this happen and go “eh, not a big deal”. As ridiculous as this all was, it was a huge deal. Huge enough to damage Kevin’s reputation online and, well, you know the rest. And these comments weren’t addressed to me but I thought they were funny. Basically people congratulating Kevin for “not going woke”. Like, the existence of his sims and GTA RP series invalidates your entire sentence. You gotta be new to the channel or something or you think Grognak the Destroyer is cis or Jim Pickens is cishet. I also just hate that phrase, woke.

As we reach the end of this really long thing I originally typed up at 8pm on a Friday night on a Google doc, I wanted to take a moment to thank a few people. It was a horrible situation for everyone and it reminded me that the genuine fans were still out there. Thank you to my friends and partners who supported me and came to fight for me. Thank you to everyone who sent me kind messages and/or left nice comments on my posts and art. It gave me the hope I needed. I hope someday we can restore the cult to what it once was, but it won’t be an overnight process nor will it be the same again. Despite everything, I stayed behind and watched everything happen so I could document it. If the cult was coming to an end I wanted to be there for it. I’m glad it didn’t. If you don’t want to come back then that’s completely understandable. I think we need to follow Jim’s rules more with the first one being “Be kind to everyone.” The cult was the only safe space I had for the longest time as I grew up in an extremely conservative area with an unaccepting family. I also sorta grew up watching CMK as well, I discovered him when I was 14 and I turn 20 later this year. His sims series was my first exposure to queer content and it made me feel so validated because I thought I was the only one who thought it was weird that guys can only like girls and vice versa. I would roleplay as Jim once with other members of the community and realize that being referred to as a man felt right. The community would pay to draw the characters in maid outfits and fund part of my legal transition. They would always come to defend me whenever bullshit happened because a few users got offended by a pride flag or a fursuit. CMK is a pretty big part of my life and I was very heartbroken when all this happened. Still am. I cried so hard I pulled a muscle somehow, that was neat. It’s poetic in a way that I made the last post on the subreddit before this shitshow happened. What happens before a storm? A warning, usually. I was the warning for the upcoming storm. My arrival in the cult was a prophecy. That or it was just a massive coincidence, that is more likely. - SnowfallWarning/Big Jimbo Pickens

#call me kevin #callmekevin #cmk

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greyjjoys · 10 months

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jcink rper here - i read your callout. it paints you in a bad light, honestly, the whole thing comes off as friends having a falling out and you airing dms that should have stayed private. towards the end it was clear you were writing your messages for the benefit of an audience, because you knew you were going to screenshot that convo to hell and back. so you ran this person out of your community, fine. can't you give a person room to grow and change? if you don't like or trust them, just block them and move on.

this ask is in reference to this post

meant to answer this sooner but i went to bed and then i was out all day. if this was a falling out ONLY there would not be at least 20 people she has affected. when i wrote that doc i was really pissed off and petty, as a lot of us were but i had many people come to me with similar experiences which i think is telling. they can come forward and share theirs in their own posts or the replies on this one but i also respect if they don't want to out themselves to possibly be harassed or to have to rehash their traumas. this is my experience and i'm not going to share others without permission. if i sounded like a whiney little bitch in my doc or my screenshots then whatever. i was valid in my feelings. i'm always here to give a person room to grow and change but how can you grow and change from something you won't acknowledge ?? growing and changing would mean apologizing and acknowledging your wrongs because that shows evolution of character. i never asked for castor to get death threats, i never wished ill upon her but running away instead of owning up to the bad shit you did is not showing any type of character development. we are all in this community to literally write characters and it seems like most of us can understand that in that context but not in the context of us interacting with each other out of character. as for me wanting an audience, i don't know where you got that from. when i approached castor initially about how she was acting i had already spoken to several people who felt the same. that she inserting herself where she didn't belong and being very hyper-focused on only things that would benefit her or give her attention on top of the insurmountable attention she already got from her followers, members of her servers and the people who paid to access her content. i have like 40 followers on this blog because it's a newer one. anyone that knows me knows i usually make a whole new blog every 1-2 years because it inevitably gets cluttered. i couldn't give less of a damn about followers or any type of audience. i reblog musings and character shit here, thats pretty much it. as for me taking a shitload of screenshots ?? absolutely i do. i've been in this community for 10+ years. i need to be able to back myself up and compile evidence if needed. that's not a crime. i've ran rps, i've adminned, i've modded, i've had people stalk me, share my personal information and turn people on me for no reason other than me cutting them for my own mental health and wellbeing. i've never wished them ill, i've usually left the door open for apologies or for genuine asks for help. i was friends with castor for like two years and we talked every day, she wasn't like this when i met her but that's how it always is when you meet people. they usually seem fine but when you get to know them and they start to get comfortable around you they start to show their true colors. vetting everyone you meet shouldn't have to be a trait that's ingrained into you and it wasn't so thats why i didn't vet her when i met her. again, i shouldn't have to. we should believe we can give people the benefit of the doubt to not be horrible but clearly we cannot.

this was longer than i meant for it to be but i could just block her and move on but i feel like if i can try to shield people in any way from her behavior, then, i should. so again, this is simply a warning. everyone can do whatever they want, i'm not telling anyone what to do. it's only advice.

this ask and one more will be all i'll be posting in the tags regarding this because i won't want to clutter the tags with it.

#rpc #rpt #anonymous

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whatudowhennooneseesyou · 1 year

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Was passing by and smelled a steaming heap of drama lol. Cause I'm like that, I went back and read every single ask about the big discussion to make sure I saw everything.

Not that anyone asked me, but with my psych hat on and having participated in the discussion myself and on the opposing side to you but having thoroughly enjoyed it, here are my takeaways:

1. I communicate a little but similarly to you. I separate emotions from facts and opinion and I feel that most times I should be able to have a brutally logical, articulated debate with someone without worrying about their feelings. However, the topic itself made that a big gamble. It's one of those topics that is deeply emotional and weaved through with layers upon layers of other emotional things like self-worth, values, purpose in life, culture, family, traditions, etc etc etc. A large number of people would simply be unable to have a conversation on this topic without their emotions getting mixed in.

2. But here's the kicker- just because a topic is emotionallt laden doesn't mean that you're responsible for someone taking it personally and running with it. One thing I do agree with, perhaps only tag moots/followers in such things that you know aren't bothered and are not easily triggered. And don't tag anything with "smut" that doesn't actually have explicit sex in it. I know it's tempting, it helps it get more traction but it's not good tagging etiquette. "Clogging the tags" they call it. However, even if you tagged someone in something, it's their choice whether to take it as a personal attack, a simple question, or ignore it altogether. Personally I've not responded to every single thing you've tagged me in or felt obligated to because sometimes I just have no opinion or nothing to say, or maybe I disagree but I'm not in the mood to discuss. No one HAS to respond to anything, it's a choice. They can also choose whether they get into a fight with you or not.

3. Other than that, there are loads of other things that affect how people perceive a topic or your take on a topic in general, and some of those were evident in people's answers. Like their own history, their beliefs about themselves, about the world, about what they think they deserve or what is realistic, what they feel they're entitled to (entitled isn't an outright bad word folks, by the way). Those things can be like an Instagram or Snapchat filter, they can make us see things differently to what they actually are. For anyone that wants to actually learn about this and work on themselves, search "cognitive distortions". There are at least 15 of them, over 15 different ways that our thinking can get wonky and starts being unhelpful to us.

4. We had a lot of discussion and not once did I feel disrespected for holding a different view to you. It's not even about "disagreeing" because it's so personal and subjective. I didn't see you pushing other people to come around to your point of view, I saw you just laying out your personal reasons for choosing not to have children. And plenty of other people who wanted children were perfectly happy to participate in the discussion, give their own reasoning and experiences and weren't disrespected or manipulated by you in any way.

5. This was a broad topic. Tagged or not, if there was no prior history of you discussing it with a particular person or having had heated exchanges with them in the past, then them taking it personally or seeing disrespect in your words is them choosing to take it that way.

Hello my love! @muselin

You're my fave psych moot and I'm so glad you've taken the time to come on here to respond to me! I feel stronger when you're around.

The 'clogging the tags' etiquette is a valid point and i didn't get that its bad etiquette so I'll take the steps as to not do that again.

And thank you for the time to read through every single ask, that would have been a long time and a lot of tea being spilled.

I'm honestly a bit too mentally fatigued to really elaborate more on the important of the post but just know that you have made some very beautiful points that everyone should see because they do add value to the topic that was discussed.

Truly, from the bottom of my heart. I am so grateful to have found you on this app.

#whatudowhennooneseesyou moots #whatudowhennooneseesyou answered asks #whatudowhennooneseesyou hard hours #us Aries gals have to stick together because whew it's brutal out here

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hazmatazz · 1 year

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tell me something heartbreaking about mike

i think it's a mix of his lack of communication and self-endangerment. also, unsurprisingly, this devolved into me killing mike so...it's just easy man

he loves his friend but they probably don't even know how MUCH. he runs to danger and possible death for them. jumping off the cliff, running into danger (think of the mall), just sticking there? he adores them and i think that is likely to be his downfall if he needed to die in s5

and then his lack of communication? his friends don't really know he'd do so much for them. and then he never tells his mom anything so i can just imagine one of the party members sobbing on the phone to her or the dread seeing the police at her door.

and then if the rest of the party didn't know he died then would karen tell them? would karen invite joyce and the party's parents over just to tell them one of their kids' closest friends is gone? the kid they watched grow up along side their's didn't even make it to his twenties?

and then how would the parents tell their kids? how would joyce sit will down and tell him mike is gone? would she feel guilty seeing will freeze up and refuse to believe it? would she cry again when will starts to breakdown?

and how would the sinclair's react to the same thing from lucas? hendersons? joyce and hopper with el?

and how would karen tell nancy and holly that their brother is gone? the brother that they missed a serious opportunity with. would nancy feel bad for how distant they were? would nancy become a closer sister for holly? would karen and maybe ted try harder with their kids? would mike's death bring them closer?

or would nancy blame karen and ted for never keeping track of mike? would she distance herself from the family scared one of them may die?

or, starting from the beginning, would nancy be the one to tell the party first? did the news travel between nancy to jonathan to will? nancy to robin to steve to dustin? will joyce, when she sits will down to talk about mike, learn that he already knew. learn that jonathan had to deal with watching will's first breakdown. same shit for the sinclairs and hendersons

and max. where would she have to hear it from? would she wake up from a coma just to hear about the kid she tried so hard to befriend in middle school had died? would she be informed in the hospital or would the party wait until she got out? would she sit there as lucas or el sobbed to her about it? would one of the older teens take it upon themselves to tell her?

and then back to the start. how i think he would sacrifice himself if he were to due in s5. how would that go? how guilty would the person he saved feel? if there was anyone else around (thinking el specifically) how bad would they feel? would they blame themselves? would, in their grief, another party member blame them? would they fight? would they breakup (without the heart)?

would they have even needed to be informed? what if all of them where there and saw the life drain from mike's eyes. saw how will desperately shook mike to get up. saw how el immediately tried to do something, pushing herself to much. saw how nancy kept yelling at mike that he needed to be ok. saw how dustin froze up, thinking back to eddie. saw how...

and even days, months, years after mike died, will they be reminded of him? will they stop playing d&d with random people just in case they wanted to be a paladin. would they be reminded off what plots mike threw at them when he was dm. what monsters he picked, who the people were, what the setting was.

would will start sketching out mike on his page and freeze when he realizes? would dustin watch will put syrup on his eggs and be reminded of when mike also did? would el find the flowers mike had given her out in the wild? would lucas see the hellfire club in school and only think of mike? would max watch ghostbusters and think about their costumes?

last thing i promise: if lettergate was real what if will got the letters after he died :)?

#yeah didn't mean to ramble #stranger things #mike wheeler #asks #jo yo tag #death mention #character death

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phanfictioncatalogue · 2 years

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Religion (4) Masterlist

part one, part two, part three

Bad boys and Bible verses (ao3) - dansandphils

Summary: Dan has always been a good child. Being raised by a Christian family and his dad being a pastor at the local church Dan was always taught to be a nice boy and never to commit sinful acts. Phil is the kind of person Dan's dad, a pastor at the local church has told Dan to look out for. Dan had always been told if he'd seen someone like Phil not to hang around him. Phil's mom is also very Christian and hates the way her son acts. That's only reason Phil set foot in this church. His mom wants him to have the light of God in his life. Unfortunately he doesn't want that. He just wants a hot boy named Dan to kiss him in the church after hours.

Covet (ao3) - americanphancakes

Summary: The only thing making Dan feel alive is his all-consuming crush on the new deacon.

face the burning heat (ao3) - zugzwang

Summary: love and worship are the same to him. he doesn't mind.

Father, please forgive me (ao3) - Iceprincessvictuuri

Summary: Dan could smell his scent on his skin and it bothered him because it smelt so good and no matter how long and how hard he prayed, his knees digging into the dying oak for a floor, he was still a sinner.

i was born sick (ao3) - waylesssad

Summary: Heaven stands for absolute pleasure; hell means ultimate suffering.

Where Dan stands, Phil hasn’t decided yet.

I'm Ashamed Of The Dark Places I Have Been (ao3) - ellehcorx

Summary: Phil has been punishing himself after a recent break up. He hadn’t slept in days, he’s drunk daily, and he finds himself in strangers’ beds. After stumbling into a church to take shelter from the rain, he meets Dan who helps him decrease his guilt.

It’s You, and Only You (ao3) - Liorisnotonfire

Summary: Dan and Phil are frum (religious) Jews who go to an LGBT Jewish Pesach (Passover) retreat and find moments of community after a year of lockdown due to Covid-19.

A fic about having a unique, delicate, and maybe uncertain religious and queer identity, but finding home in the person you love. Also about loneliness and confusion, and trying to make life better. Featuring the rare insecure Phil

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven... (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Leviticus 18:22 - Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination.

Leviticus 20:13 - If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.

Romans 1:27 - And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

“That's the beauty of the Bible, ladies and gentlemen, we don't need to interpret the word of God, because it's all right here.”

seven (ao3) - yoongioss

Summary: Upon entering your church, the devil won't always appear out of place. Remember, he was once an angel, and still remembers how to sing.

the exorcism of agatha howell (ao3) - iihappydaysii

Summary: After exhausting all other options to help his increasingly erratic wife, Dan turns to a priest named Father Philip for help.

The Serenity Prayer (ao3) - TwistedRocketPower

Summary: Daniel Howell is a Christian vlogger, dedicated to telling the world about God and living a life that pleases Him. When he is invited to a mainstream YouTube convention, he expects it to be an opportunity to speak to a wider audience about God. What he doesn't expect is running into Phil Lester, a man capable of changing his entire world.

They started sayin' if you can't hide, run (and if you can't run, hide) (ao3) - gogystyle

Summary: A summer camp in hell, where the only available activity is repenting for your sins. In the beginning, Dan prayed it wasn't happening to him. By the end, he was angry and seeking vengeance, but along the way, he found something precious, worth holding on for. With memories of something past following his every move, Dan realizes that staying idle is the only way to ensure you never escape.

We'll Make It Through (ao3) - MarriedPhan1234

Summary: A Homeschooled!Phan au where the boys must accept the fact that sometimes parents are just wrong. This story follows them through the years as they deal with abuse, strict parents and church community, and through university. Will they make it through so that they can finally be together?

Welcoming the Shabbos Queen (ao3) - Liorisnotonfire

Summary: Dan and Phil are frum (Orthodox) Jews, celebrating the Sabbath together, in times of quarantine due to covid-19.

Winning Chanukah (ao3) - Kass

Summary: Dan and Phil make a Chanukah video for Gamingmas.

would it be a sin if I can't help falling in love with you? (ao3) - resurrectdead

Summary: “Hey.”

Phil reaches over the counter. Leaning one elbow on it, he puts a finger underneath Dan’s chin, gently tilts his head back up. Dan tries not to tremble. He darts his eyes up and they catch at his lips, stay there as he speaks. (He wants to taste them so bad.)

“I don’t know what kind of people you’re friends with,” he starts, “but if they aren’t nice to you, maybe you should consider switching them out for some that are.”

or: it's 1978, everything is a bad influence, catholicism makes you a bit sad sometimes and dan finds the answer to all his questions

You Are Not (ao3) - yourlocalhipster

Summary: Dan comes out to his father.

#phanfictioncatalogue #phan #phanfic #phanfiction #masterlists #dan and phil #religion #religion tw #religion masterlist

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80s4life · 3 years

Text

Little Dove*

Word Count: 3,949

Status: Not Requested!

A/N: Had a thought lol

Fandom: Karate Kid 1985

Relationship: John Kreese x Student!Female Reader

Summary: You had stayed around throughout all of his bullshit. Throughout the beginning of a forever-long battle with Daniel LaRusso, throughout losing all of his Cobra Kais, going through crippling debt, and now, more than ever, as he tries to put himself together. You’ve been there, the whole time. So why is it, that when a random man from his past appears, all of his problems are fixed without a glance your way? What does this Terry Silver have that you don’t (besides endless money and a history)? It’s unfair. It’s selfish. It’s Kreese.

Taglist: @intersellars-the-alien-of-human @snapessecretdiary

Warnings: smut, teasing, jealousy, age-gap paring, language, Terry being an overprotective cockblock, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it), slight dubcon, daddy/little girl kink, degrading kink

Masterlist Karate Kid Masterlist

{not my gif, credits belong to @atmostories}

I just love how innocent he looks here lol ^

Staring into the window of his office, you make no attempt in engaging in the conversation your peers were having, the people on the other side of the glass proving to be more interesting at the moment. Besides, it’s the same conversation over and over again, “Terry’s so great,” “The money,” “The brawn,” “The elegance,” you snort. All that Terry was anyway was trouble with enough money to pay off his stupidity.

The other man, however, was different. He did not become as fortunate as his younger companion. He went through many hardships that Terry would simply never understand. The proof: you. You had been there, through thick and thin. You can still remember the fights, injuries, and brokenness of a man like a slideshow constantly playing in your head, haunting your dreams. You should’ve left a long time ago, but you didn’t. There were points in your life that made you consider dropping him and everything he was in contact with at one point. But, yet again, you never did. All you did was forgive and forget, most of the time without apologies.

But no matter how much you’ve tried, there was always one outlier that couldn’t be erased.

Holding onto your brothers shoulder, you congratulate him on how well he’d done. He lost the tournament, but it was his heart that shined through it. Johnny was the one who handed LaRusso his trophy even as they were beating each other senseless moments ago. Pulling him in tightly, you whisper, “You did good, Blondie. We’ll get ‘em next year.”

He smiles broadly at this, returning the favor, “You didn’t do too bad yourself, Tiny. Hell, maybe next year, you’ll be the one to beat his ass for me... That, or you’ll be the same height as him,” he ruffles your hair.

“Shut up!” you swat his hands playfully, shouldering his side, then making your way over to the man of the hour. “Congratulations,” you outstretch your hand, “You were tough to beat! I’ll get ya one day though!” you point to him smiling as Johnny pulls you out of the arena with him.

“Thanks...Oh, and I’ll hold you to it!” he yells back, lifting his trophy high above his head. You leave with a sly smirk and playful roll of the eyes, not bad LaRusso.

Walking outside, you smile at Kreese nervously, knowing that he wasn’t going to take the loss lightly. Ignoring you completely, he snatches your brother from your grasp within moments, pinning him the the nearest car in the parking lot. With Johnny under the weight of Kreese, you try to yank him off, no longer in fear of your actions but what could happen if you don’t act fast. Shoving you out of the way with a hard jab of his elbow to your eye, Kreese goes back to harming your brother, switching positions as he goes to tighten his arm around Johnny’s neck.

Tommy, fearing for his life, stands still, on the verge of passing out. Dutch goes to help you up, pulling you away from Kreese’s proximity, but not for long. Full of anger and disappointment, you tear you body away from Dutch’s, giving him a stern look that he acknowledges and respects, stepping back. You run towards Kreese once more, putting more force into your pushes and shoves. He catches your eyes for a moment, anger glazing over his own as he gets a good look at the utter helplessness and determination within your own. He doesn’t loosen up though, tightening his hold even more so as if to test you.

Lunging once more, he blocks you from him and counters with a hard blow to your face. You fall again at Kreese’s feet, Johnny’s purpling face looking down at yours in fear and worry. As you go to make a final attempt, your prayers are answered, a man about your height grabbing Kreese’s fist in a vice grip. In a daze, Johnny is able to slip from his hold to the ground beneath him, falling into your outstretched arms as you lunge, again, to protect his head. Kreese, now turning his fury onto the short man, goes for a punch, missing and smashing the glass beside his target.

As the fight starts to get worse, Dutch gets a hold of Johnny, taking his weight off of yours and dragging him to safety. Jimmy and Bobby, going to help Dutch, leaves Tommy to help you up. Taking his hand gratefully, you are able to see Kreese’s demise clearly, a burning crimson decorating his now busted fists, no doubt shredded and in need of medical care. You turn back just in time for him to look your way, grief washing over your figure as you feel a sense of uncertainty.

The boys get into Johnny’s car quickly, pulling out of the car lot. Tommy, silently turning his calming body to yours, questions you with his eyes. Shaking your head lightly, you signal for him to go with them, your head hazy with the brute force of numerous blows previously clashing with your face. He nods knowingly, smiling weakly, as if questioning your motives or even why you were considering the choice you’d made up. Johnny looks back at you too, but is reassured as the short man, Mr. Miyagi, places a hand on your shoulder. As they peel out of the lot, you sigh and all the strength you’d conjured dropped instantly.

“You need checkup,” the older man states, looking you over.

“Yeah, but I need to take care of him first,” you point at the man.

“Ah. Good heart always forgives. You come by dojo sometime.”

“I’ll think about it,” you answer, kindly excusing yourself as LaRusso runs over to Miyagi, leaving just you and Kreese left in the parking lot.

Slowly, you pace yourself as to not speed too closely, too quickly to the man, walking lightly and quietly. Upon entering a close proximity, he looks up, neutral expression catching you off guard. Blinking once, he looks back down at his continuously bleeding hands, acknowledging your presence but not daring to step the line of communication. He never does.

“Do you...Do you n- ...?” you start, at a loss for words as you try to rephrase the question in a way to still make him feel superior without appearing weak to himself, “Do you want my help?”

He doesn’t say anything as an answer, just simply stares at the reddening hands.

So, following his chosen behavior, you adopt it and act the same. Slowly, you take off your fleece sweater, soft and warm to the touch, and move closer to Kreese. As you move into his personal space, you don’t dare look him in the eyes, and go to rip a piece of the sweater in half. Silently, you carefully take one of his hands in your own, them swallowing yours in turn. Wrapping the now torn cloth around his fists, you slightly tighten the material around the injury to prevent further bleeding, tying off the ends to keep the sweater where you want it. Turning to do the same for the other hand, Kreese never winces, or sucks in a breath, or even grunts in anguish.

As you finish your duty, you step back, parts of your hands and some of your pants now coated in differing amounts of blood from the constant dripping mess he’d left it in for a while. Taking in a deep breath, you look at him directly for the first time of the night, “Get in the car.”

That was the first of many nightmares that litter your mind. You grew into a tough, headstrong, and independent woman not only physically, but mentally as well. You were no longer the child looked down from the tip of Kreese’s nose, and despite your height not making much of a difference, you had filled into your body, soul, and mind. You were a woman nonetheless.

You were understood by Johnny, but to an extent. As you had continued to serve Kreese, it was only right that Johnny distanced himself from him, and with that, came you as well. You accepted this, and knew that you were not at war with him, settling for calls and texts when you missed him most. Johnny still allowed you the time to talk about your problems like you did in high school, and even let you rant about the newest situation with Kreese. Everyday, he worried for you, but he knew that this was what you wanted.

He knew you fell for him before you even had.

After that night, you went through phases with Kreese: sometimes he was happy and nice to you, other times was full of anger, arguments, and nonstop screaming at one another. You were like an old married couple without the ring, matrimony, and age. You didn’t pay any mind to it, the mixture of feelings for him stronger than the will to leave as you’d wanted to in your youth.

But overall was the feeling of betrayal, or at least a form of it. For 4 years, after the night of the failed tournament, you were with Kreese, and finally, when things started to clear themselves out, another problem arose. Although shit out of luck, Kreese was ready to give up the dojo, give it to the owner, and move on in hopes of wiping the slate clean. You were ready to forgive him. And then, Terry Silver, unable to let the past be the past, convinced Kreese to give it a second try.

Now as you sit in a circle with Dennis, Mike, and Snake on the mat of the dojo, doing some stretches before training starts, you couldn’t help but look at the men excluding you from something you had tried to keep alive as long as they had. Longer than Terry at least.

Snapping sounds through your frustrated haze, knocking you back into reality by Snake’s fingers. Scrunching your nose in confusion, you look at him, anger now turned towards him instead. “You keep drooling like that and we’ll all be slipping around and breaking shit. Then how would we be at the tournament?”

“Fuck you, Snake,” you get up, stomping to the office without another word. He just turns a mock-offended expression to the boys who give confused ones in return.

Storming into the small cubicle deemed an office, you turn to the men standing side-by-side. “Aw, what’s the matter sweetheart? The boys not playing fair?” Terry teases, trying to push your buttons.

Face now reddened with anger, you spit, “We don’t pay for you to sit around in your office and play with each other’s dicks. You can do that on your own time.”

“You don’t pay period as far as I’m concerned. And last time I checked, you weren’t of much use here anyways, Shortcake,” Terry rebuttals.

“And last time I checked, you're just here to tie your hair back, paint your nails, torture a kid half your age and an man even older than you.”

“Why you-!”

“Terry!” Kreese warns, a hand placed on his comrades’ chest, “It’s not worth your time, just go get the boys readied up for practice.”

“Sure...sure Johnny, I can do that,” he says eagerly, leaving the room with a side glance your way and elbow to the shoulder as he passes by.

Getting up from the back of the desk, Kreese loops around to close the office door, going back to where he was previously. “Wow, you really have that dog under wraps huh? Ready to bark when you say ‘bark’ or growl when you say ‘growl’?”

“Y/N, not now. You better cut this shit out now or I’ll kick you out,” he warns.

“Oh, so now your protecting him?! You’re going to sit here, right now, and threaten me for what? Because he served with you? Because you saved him?! What a load of shit!”

“Watch your mouth! You have no right to raise your voice to me! What I do with this dojo is none of your damn business, and will certainly never concern you. Ever.”

“Oh yeah! For sure! What did he even do, huh? What’s so great about him that is worth protecting his ass for when he’s never had to do anything in return?! I was there John! I was! I dealt with your shit for 4 years! Not 1! Not 2! Not even fucking 3!”

“I never told you to! No one was stopping you from walking out that damn door when everyone else had! I would’ve done perfectly fine without your ‘help’ when all it did was provide extra shit to take care of!”

“Really?! That’s what it was? Nothing? I dealt with your anger issues, your screaming! The god damn punches, kicks, spits, screams, hell anything you wanted to do in order to harm someone else to make you feel better! But that wasn’t me... No... Of course it wasn’t, right?”

“I’ve got no time for this. Stay in this fucking room and don’t move. You even dare come out into that dojo and you’re out. I have a winner to make and not some little girl to argue with.”

“Fuck you,” you spit, tears pooling at the bottom of your eyelids as the door hides you from view.

For hours, you sit in boredom, listening to the repetitive “hut” or “ah” as blow after blow is thrown into the dummies and punching bags. If only they could do that to me, take me out of my misery for fuck’s sake. But, despite the utter pissed state you were in, you did not move from the desk, even deciding to take a nap. It wasn’t until Dennis’ unusually loud laugh is echoed within the whole dojo do you finally wake back up. Looking through the blinds, you see the boys getting packed up. Doing the same, you walk out of the office just in time for Terry to leave with the boys a few moments later.

Speeding across the length of the mats, you take long strides in order to storm as fast as possible out of the cage that holds the biggest chains around your neck. Going for the door, you are unable to catch yourself as Kreese grabs your hand and flips you onto your back, splaying your body on the mats beneath you.

Groaning, you move to sit up, watching as he goes to lock the door to the dojo, throwing the keys somewhere and closing the blinds of the big glass panes adorning the front wall. Getting up, the harbored anger floods your being once more, “I’m done with your bullshit Kreese. Let me the fuck out so I can leave this place once and for all. You seem to be doing ‘perfectly fine’ with your boyfriend, so let me go!”

Without answering, he grabs you by the neck firmly, but not enough to choke you. The memories of Johnny instantly flood your mind, causing you to grab his hand just as tight, eyes peering straight into his. Noticing your change in demeanor, he loosens his hold a little and pushes your back up against the closest wall to your back. As your back collides with the wall, his lips clasp yours.

Whining in surprise, you go to pull back only for him to pull you closer by the neck. Realization dawns on you after a moment, and within seconds, your leaning into his touch absentmindedly. You only break apart once your lungs beg for more air. “There. Is that what you wanted?” he asks you, voice gravelly.

Ignoring his comment, you grab him by the nape of his neck, pulling him into you once again, tongue battling his own. Your tongue dances around, observing every crevice and tasting every bit of his mouth, grazing his teeth, biting his lips, and even tangling it with his. Taking control back, he shoves your body back into the wall, separating your mouth from his, a trail of saliva the only thing connecting your bodies.

His hand, long forgotten and hanging loose on your neck, tightens the grip back up firmly once again and moves his other to pin your arms above your head. Now basking in dominance, he kisses you once more, pinning his knee between your legs in the most delicious way. Taking advantage of the placement, you attempt to grind your core against his thigh to relieve some tension.

“Ah. Ah. Ah,” he warns, pulling his knee away and moving to unbuckle his belt instead, “On your knees, Slut.”

Obeying instantly, you do as he says and place yourself on your knees. Finally undoing the tie of his gi, he pulls his pants, alongside his underwear, down just enough to let his dick spring free. Gulping in admiration, you take in the view of his girth and length, precum oozing at the tip.

“Looks like your happy to see me,” you joke, loosening your tension in your shoulders.

Stepping closer, Kreese edges closer to your mouth, and, taking the hint, you wrap one hand around the base of his shaft. Your other hand, deciding teasing is the best get-back, wraps itself closer to the tip, thumb grazing the slit. Earning a shudder of pleasure from the man, he goes to move in closer again. Pulling your head away, you squeeze the tip loosely, staring up at Kreese.

At your locked gaze, his cheeks burn bright pink, enabling you to give the man what he wants now that he’s at a loss for words and flustered for you. Taking him into your mouth little by little, you stop just before the barricade of choking. Eyes locked onto his, you place your hands on either side of his hips for support, then take him in as fully as physically possible. Instantly, you are met by struggling moans of relief.

Swirling your tongue around and lapping at his veiny member, he struggles to control himself, the undying need for more consuming him. Pulling away just enough to keep the tip in your mouth, you nod at him, giving him the okay to do as he pleases. That was all he needed to start going, pulling your mouth around his cock again, and tangling his hands in your hair for a better grip. Thrusting into your mouth now, you try your best to breathe as you feel him start twitching, knowing you will be fine in a few minutes.

The closer he gets to ecstasy, the louder he gets, hips thrusting in any possible direction as his pleasure threatens to bubble over. “Look at me,” he orders, looking you in the eyes. Slightly confused, you do as told, looking at him through your eyelashes as he continuously uses your mouth. “That’s it, Good Girl.”

Without warning, he unleashes his load into your mouth, the hot and sticky cum shooting to the back of your throat, forcing you to swallow. Licking up the remains, you make a show of swallowing the contents as well, getting back onto your feet with a help of his hand. Pulling your body into his, he kisses you deeply, tasting himself.

You whine as you are still left in uncomfortable need for him, having not gotten your share just yet, the feeling of being filled a painful reminder. “Don’t worry, Daddy’ll take care of you.” And that, he does, getting to work on untying your gi and throwing the long-sleeved shirt over you head. Doing the same to him, you match his enthusiasm, pulling his shirt off and throwing it somewhere in the room.

Playing with your clothed breasts, Kreese slips a hand under your bra to pinch your nipples, twisting them between his middle and fore fingers. Moaning, you pull him into your chest nibbling his ear. Gliding his hands down your sides and to your waist, he slowly edges his fingers slightly underneath your pants, pushing them down with your panties. As he busies himself with your clothes, you move your hands behind your back to unclasp your bra, breasts springing free and instantly hardening at the new temperature of the room.

Fingers, teasing your entrance, catches you off-guard, moaning again at the first shocks of pleasure. “Kreese,” you start breathlessly, “Enough is enough. Mgh... Stop teasing me,” you try to order, impatient and horny.

“As you wish, Princess.”

Lifting up one of your legs and wrapping it around his hipbone, he lines himself up with your entrance, entering slowly. Together, you sigh in ease simultaneously. Nodding once, you lean your forehead underneath his chin, starting to thrust slowly. Knowing this isn’t the pace he prefers, and body adjusting to his shape, you pull him in closer, whispering in his ear, “Faster, Daddy.”

Jolting at the name, he fastens the pace, grinding in rougher strokes, rubbing every part of you body in the best way possible. No one’s ever filled you the way he is now, and it leaves you stunned in a trance of utter euphoria. Tapping your other leg, you hop up to warp both legs around Kreese. At the new angle, he thrusts upwards, the overstimulation causing you to shake in a new sensation.

Squeezing his dick tightly, you try to hold your orgasm off for as long as possible, but the building want of release causes you to topple over the edge quickly, spilling all over the body still within your own. Without faltering, Kreese continues his assault on your body, causing you to scream out in the fury of pleasure being all too much for you. Shaking harder, you struggle to keep yourself around his body for long.

Seeing this, Kreese keeps himself sheathed in your cunt, laying you on your back against the mats of the flooring. Grabbing your legs, Kreese bends them until your thighs meet your chest. Then, thrusting at the same pace as before, Kreese is able to fuck you senseless without further issues. Moaning screams of ecstasy echo throughout the dojo, the combination of yourself and the slapping of skin being the only noises in the room.

As quickly as you’d built up the previous time, your orgasm and need of release forms again, your pussy throbbing in anticipation. “Kreese..” is all you manage, the older man quickly teetering towards the edge with you. Thrusting the hardest he had the whole night, he manages only a few more before you both come at the same time, screaming as you pull him down by the neck and into your chest, your name falling from his tongue in multiples.

Sucking in as much air as possible, Kreese and you stay in the same position panting before he unsheathes himself and collapses next to you. Catching your breath, you cuddle into his side in a naked heap of sweat and satisfaction. “Are you still jealous of Terry now?”

“It depends, am I still as useless as before?”

“I don’t believe so,” Kreese giggles, “but if you pull another crazy stunt like that, I will really have to give you a good beating. Huh, Babydoll?”

“I like the sound of that,” you say, going to straddle his hips as he lays on his back, “How about round two and I’ll consider not ripping his throat out?”

“Deal.”

#john kreese x reader #john kreese imagine #john kreese #martin kove #martin kove x reader #martin kove imagine #terry silver #tig #thomas ian griffith #mike barnes #sean kanan #kk3 #kk1 #kk #karate kid #karate kid imagine #karate kid 1 #karate kid 3

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littlemisslipbalm · 4 years

Text

“it’s not that important”

Summary: Y/N is in Harry’s band and one night they have a drunken hook up. One thing leads to another and they find themselves engaging in a friend’s with benefits type of situation. spoiler: it is important

AKA: A friends with benefits to lovers story :) with some angst in there

This is for @stylesharrys fallinharry10k celebration so my trope is friends with benefits! prompt is “you have no goddamn idea what you do to me. when i’m around you, i have no control of my emotions or my thoughts” and the tenth picture ^ i kinda just used it in the beginning to descripe what he was wearing - i got really carried away with this story but the prompt is in there !! lol, not proofread tho but would love your feedback !!!! :) love y’all very much

oh boy i’ve had this done for agesss but i hadn’t written the smut until today so now we’re here i dont even remember what happens - i vaguely remember not loving the end but I hope yall enjoy

Word Count: 15.4k (longest fic to date) | Warnings: smut, angst, fluff, alcohol consumption? i dont remember but i dont think theres anything too heavy in here.

“Hey Harold!” You smile as you easily hop over the side of the couch and settle beside your bandmate.

Harry groans, yet can’t keep the small smile off of his face when he sees it’s you. “How many times have I told you to never call me that?”

Your eyes narrow at his faux glare. “And how many times have I told you, I simply do not care?”

You reach a hand out and tousle his already disheveled, unstyled brown hair. Despite his lack of styling, his hair still looked perfect. His chestnut hair fell into a middle part when he did nothing to it and you found it endearing. It made him look far younger than he truly was, like a boy you might have pursued when you were in your early days at college. The waves slightly framed his prominent cheekbones and chiseled jaw that was sporting a tiny amount of stubble.

He moves his arm from around the back of the couch to pat at his hair, trying to put it back in its nondescript position you had just messed with. After he’s satisfied, he uses the same hand to push up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. They’re chestnut brown Gucci frames that match the natural highlights in his hair. You can safely assume that’s why he bought them. The lenses are clear, but you know they don’t hold any prescription. He looks incredulously at you from behind them still.

“Nice glasses,” you mention offhandedly as you reach out to the coffee table to grab the drink you had left there earlier.

Before Harry had arrived, you had been taking up residence on the couch, in the spot he had actually taken up. You had ventured to the restroom for a moment and gotten held up in a conversation when asked your preference for the Beatles. Having to defend your staunch stance for the Beatles and against the Rolling Stones, you had gotten swept up into an argument with Adam. He believed that because the Rolling Stones toured for longer warranted them the title of best rock band. While you countered that despite their long touring and production of music, the Stones had a rotation of members. The Beatles maintained the four of them and held such a large impact even though they were barely together for a decade. They were one of a kind, or at least the first of their kind, you’d allow. You weren’t really in the mood for intellectual conversation tonight, so upon seeing Harry taking up your seat, you had told Adam you’d continue the discussion at a later date and returned to your spot.

“Thanks,” Harry mumbles as his gaze flits around the room. He wasn’t sure if you were actually complimenting him, but he would take it as one either way.

The rest of your friends are all up and about, drinking, talking, dancing. It was the usual house party scene: a relatively intimate gathering, music you all actually liked, some friends of friends feeling slightly out of place. There was no pressure in this type of gathering but still Harry wasn’t necessarily in the party mood tonight. Usually, Harry was the one instigating these types of get-togethers with his friends and bandmates. He liked to be the life of the party, but as the tour loomed closer and closer, he felt some tinge of longing for quiet and solitude. He knew he wouldn’t have much quiet while on the road, which mostly didn’t scare him. He loved the stage and the high he received from performing and the gratification he felt from all the people in the room being there to see him. But there was also that other part of him that liked the quiet, the privacy. As the lack of alone time nudged itself around the corner, he had been hoping to enjoy solitude, or at the very least peace before he was on the road. Some sort of blissful state before technical chaos ensued. When Charlotte, the host of tonight’s soiree, had texted their group chat about tonight, Harry had politely declined. Then came the slew of private texts from Charlotte giving him all the reasons he should come tonight. He tried to say no again, but had shown up after the continued begging from her.

His appearance mirrored his expression, choosing a not perfectly fitted white t-shirt and random trousers rather than picking something he really loved, like usual. You could tell something was up and as his friend you were wondering what was wrong with him.

“Don’t sound so excited, Harry, someone might mistake you for somebody who’s happy to be here.” You stick your tongue into the side of your cheek, gauging his reaction.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re not very funny?” He quips, green eyes flashing to meet yours.

Your banter is probably how the pair of you communicated the best, never really falling into the whole serious side of friendship. You never shared those late night talks about the future or your fears. It was a fun friendship, so you didn’t fancy yourself one of his closest confidants. When it came to music, you and Harry were a bit more serious which formed a sort of paradox because the music you would share with each other gave a far greater insight into your souls than you probably realized. As a member of his band, you would discuss his music and what was going on with that sort of business part. But the sharing and discussion of other music that you did was part of your friendship, even if you didn’t see it like that. Because of the countless albums you had recommended to each other and the specific songs you had made note of, Harry and you knew each other much better than you thought you did. Music connects to something deep inside yourself and you have to like it enough and know the other person well enough to believe that they will also enjoy it to recommend it. As much tongue and cheek that you partook in with Harry, deep down, unbeknownst to either of you, you were that friend he shared his hopes and fears with, through the way he knew best, music.

“No, most people find me hilarious...”

You take a sip of your drink, trying to cover up the sting that his remark actually left. Most of the time you were great at keeping up with anyone’s banter, especially Harry’s, but tonight you weren’t feeling it. His tone had sounded so harsh it almost sounded like he meant it. His features soften when he sees the way your face falls, despite your sarcastic tone.

“‘M sorry. I’m just not in the best mood tonight. Didn’t want to come, but Charlotte…” He shifts to face you, arm retracting slightly around the couch, landing his hand at the edge of your shoulder. His fingers fiddle with themselves absentmindedly, he turns his rings around his fingers and they ever so slightly brush against your shoulder. You don’t mind, you know its his nervous tick that he did whenever he didn’t have something to clink them against.

“Yeah, same here, actually.” Your tuck an out of place hair behind your ear, returning your gaze to Harry, who’s tilting his head at you curiously. “But might as well make the most of it, though. After all, this is our last week before tour starts.” You raise your glass and tilt it towards him before taking a sip.

You really didn’t have a plan, you were just trying to make him feel a little better. It was seldom you saw him so solemn at this type of gathering. He usually was the one bouncing from group to group, entertaining everyone with his dazzling charm and quick wit. Sometimes he would bring a date and spend the night with them in the corner, but that was usually at bigger parties than this. At these types of gatherings you often found yourself talking with Charlotte for most of the night. You were both new additions in the band and you had clicked immediately. You would travel in a pair between different groups and talk with everyone. Sometimes you would tell a humorous anecdote about your life and everyone would laugh wholeheartedly. Your ability to retell a story and make it hilarious every time seemed to be your secret talent. You could make any experience into a ten-minute retelling and it always sounds like the funniest moment of your life. It ranged from your embarrassing audition for Grease as a tween to your supermarket run in with an old acquaintance or B-list celebrity the day before. It didn’t matter what it was, it just always had the entire circle of people laughing and wiping their eyes with joy. You’d laugh a little with themselves, but usually you just had a triumphant smile on your lips for the rest of the night.

He nods, sipping his own drink for the first time since you had settled down beside him. “Well, I’m all ears.”

“What?”

“Give me your suggestions on how to make the most of tonight.”

“Drinking, mostly, was my plan,” you laugh nervously as Harry continues to stare at you intently.

“Mostly?”

“I mean, what do you want me to say? I didn’t think to pack my bouncy castle, my bad.”

He bites back a laugh but lets some air escape his defined nose, before staring with a deadpan face at you.

You like to tease him. You simply liked him. Harry was different from other men you knew. You were pretty sure most people could say that though. Harry was just different. It seemed like no one could not have some sort of affection for him. With the playful friendship the pair of you had, you always skirted the edge of flirtation. But you also didn’t particularly ever want to cross any lines with him. He was the employer of you, technically. He had brought you into his backing band and you wouldn’t do anything to harm that position. As well, at the end of the day you knew Harry. His tendencies and the choices he made.

When you were around him at parties like this, you had to try really hard to keep him at an arm’s length. Because on one hand, you would drink and suddenly the boundaries you put up didn’t seem that important, instead his lips started to look rather inviting, but on the other, you knew that he was extremely emotionally closed off to any relationship that was more than either friendship or a one night stand.

Harry doesn’t give you a response, just swings back his drink. The pair of you sit and drink in silence. Before you know it, Harry and you are five drinks in, finally talking after the second. The pair of you decide to move to the balcony outside and continue your conversation there after the third. After the fourth, you're getting really handsy and by the end of the fifth, Harry’s arm is wrapped tightly around your waist and you're laughing breathlessly into his neck. It looks like he’s just shielding you from the cold night air, but both of you seemed to be enjoying each other’s embrace for other reasons.

Finally catching your breath, you lean back and pant softly as you meet eyes with Harry. His pupils have blown out from the alcohol and dark light. The emerald green barely surrounds the black and you swear there’s flecks of gold or maybe brown in them. Your brows scrunch at the revelation and Harry asks what you’re thinking. You don’t respond, too entranced and drunk to even hear him.

“Oi,” he bops your nose, “What is goin’ on in there, little lady?”

Your hand reaches up and widens Harry’s eye manually. His inebriated state has no qualms about you doing such an odd thing. “Why’s your green not actually green?”

“What?” He asks before moving your hand away from his face, it instead falls to his chest. The pair of you shift until your caged between his body and the balcony’s ledge. You pout as you stare up at him. His skin looks soft and taught over every inch of his face and neck. The urge to kiss him keeps nagging at the back of your mind. The idea keeps creeping up closer and closer and the drunker you are the less likely you are to suppress it.

“Do you want to fuck me?” You blurt out.

“Sure.” Harry isn’t taken aback. He had been thinking about asking for a while, so he was glad you had asked first, made it easier for him.

“Okay, let’s go.”

He takes you back to your place, the pair of you catching a cab the short distance between yours and Charlotte’s flats. No one blinks an eye at the pair of you leaving together. Everyone watched the pair of you sulk all night about being there and only enjoying the other’s company, so they weren’t keen on either of you staying. Charlotte was simply glad the pair of you had stayed for as long as you did.

The two of you walk casually until you’re inside your bedroom. Once inside, Harry throws you on the bed and fucks you. Hard. He’s got you spread out in more ways than you had ever thought possible. He’s got you saying things you had never even dreamed of saying. And he’s got you cumming and screaming more than you could have ever wanted. He enjoys himself as well. He loves the way you feel around him and the way your eyes look up at him while he fucks you straight into the bed. He loves the way you sound whispering dirty things and screaming his name. He loves the feel of your soft skin all over your body as he pushes deep inside you. He loves the way you’re able to rip a guttural moan from him every time he cums. And he cums three times that night. While it wasn’t quiet, he did find that blissful state he had been in desperate need of.

After the third round, Harry feels spent. He brings himself into a sitting position, legs hanging off the edge of your bed. You’re lying in your bed, completely overstimulated, cumming at least twice as many times as Harry. He scratches at the top of his head, his bicep bulging as he folds his arms around himself.

“That was fucking good, Y/N. Just what I needed.”

You can only hum in response.

Then he takes your blanket and lays it over you. After that he begins to stand up, getting ready to grab his things and go.

“You don’t have to go…” your voice raises when you realize what he’s doing.

“Yeah, I do. This was just a one time thing, yeah? I enjoyed it, but you know...”

“Erm, I guess?” You rolled to fully look at him, he was pulling his t-shirt back on now, his marked chest disappearing beneath the white fabric. “Do you really not stay over at your one night stands?”

He thinks about it as he begins with his shoes and his glasses at the same time. “Yes? Usually I don’t know the person and I don’t particularly want to sign an autograph when I leave in the morning. Best to leave immediately afterwards.”

“That was exactly why I wanted you to stay...Shit! No chance you’ll give me an autograph now? Could sign my tit, right next to your hickies.”

He laughs, automatically in a better mood after the catharsis of having sex. It was also a relief for him that you didn’t seem to be weird about the hook up. “Shut up!”

“You’re a twat, Harold.” He groans instinctively at the annoying nickname, not caring about the ‘twat’ part. “But be my guest, you can freeze your arse off while waiting for your cab outside at this hour.”

“Rude..” He mutters, standing in your doorway now. “You wouldn’t actually make your employer stand out in the cold at this time of night. I haven’t even got a jumper. Could get a cold and ruin my voice. ”

“You’re the one who says it’s best to leave immediately. Get on it, mister.”

Your hand makes a shooing movement, but he doesn’t budge. You sigh as he makes a puppy dog face - eyes wide and a puckered pout with his flushed cheeks and lips - playing into your actual kindness, that he knows is somewhere. Your sweetness that you were keeping hidden from Harry right now. Nothing was serious between you so it made sense that you were trying not to let your innate ability to care show as he’s about to walk out on you.

“Ugh, fine. Stop looking at me like that. Just grab one of my coats from the bottom right, they’re all oversized so one should fit.” He doesn’t relent on the face. “And you can stay inside until your cab comes.” You sigh and throw one of your pillows at him. He catches it easily and throws it back, much softer than your throw. “Also never pull the employer card on me again when I’m naked in the bed you just fucked me in,” you call as he looks through your closet.

Returning with a patchwork coat you had thrifted tight over his shoulders, he looks at you seriously, “Yeah sorry about that part. Definitely wasn’t trying to exert my power over you, it sounded better in my head. Meant more like you could ruin my voice and both of our jobs.”

You nod and chuckle slightly, finding how inarticulate Harry could be as an endearing trait. His explanation didn’t actually make it sound better. “The jacket fits.” You say, choosing to move forward from Harry’s weirdness, knowing he didn’t mean any harm from his initial statement.

“Yeah, thanks. I think my cab is here,” He glances at his phone, “So I’ll go...See you?”

“I’m sure.” You smile, “We do in fact work together and will soon be touring the world. Would be a bit weird if I didn’t see you.”

“Right.” He nods and adds a peace sign before he walks out of your sight. You know he’s gone when you hear the door click shut. What an interesting night.

Love on Tour had just started and Harry couldn’t lie. He couldn’t keep his mind off of you. You were both his most recent partner and the best he had had in a while. He found himself rubbing over the spots on his neck and clavicle that you had given particular attention to during the night you had shared together. When he went to bed it was your body he pictured to get himself off. So, after the first show he’s beelining to you at the beginning of the after party. He’s got an adrenaline high and he needs a release. You’re the solution. He’s whispering in your ear, asking if you’d like to meet him in his dressing room. Your eyes study his face when he pulls back and they widen slightly when the realization of what he’s implying dawns on you. Then you’re nodding and excusing yourself from a random conversation five minutes later.

Inside Harry’s dressing room, you find Harry already unbuttoning his shirt. He grabs your face and shoves his lips onto yours once you lock the door. As he kisses you he tries to make one thing very clear, “This doesn’t mean anything.”

“Got it.” You begin to finish Harry’s job of taking off his shirt.

He pulls back to look you in the eye, “Are you okay with that?”

“Jesus fuck, yes, Harry, just shut up and fuck me senseless again!”

He listens to you and begins to kiss down your jaw and neck. His open-mouth kisses leave a searing trail across your skin. He settles on a spot at the base of your neck and begins to suck and nip at it with vigor. You set to work on finishing his job of unbuttoning his shirt. Then you pull off your own shirt, reaching behind you to untie the bows at the back. The new skin exposed grabs Harry’s attention and he moves down to suck over the cleavage of your tits. He’s happy to be back with his ‘bosom friends’. You smack his head when he says it and he chuckles darkly, only sucking harder on them causing you to moan louder than you would like.

Once you’re both in only your underwear, you find your back pressed up against the mirror behind the dressing room counter. Harry’s body is nestled between your spread legs as he kisses down your skin. His fingers dance along the line of your thong as he looks up from beneath his lashes for position, you only push his head closer to your heat in response. He laughs mischievously before tugging them down off your hips.

“Missed this pretty little cunt...All I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout,” He mutters as he begins to latch onto your dripping core.

Your brows shoot up at the thought that Harry’s mind has been stuck on you for the past week. You definitely had thought about your drunken hook up a bit, but hadn’t thought it had left a lasting impression on Harry, you assumed he had that lovely of a night with every person he chose to spend intimate time with. These thoughts are forgotten when Harry’s warm tongue is lapping at your swollen bud. You’re already panting for Harry and now you’re heaving with moans and whimpers leaving your mouth with every lick and nip of his expert mouth.

“Fuck Harry, feels so good,” you whine as his tongue travels down your folds and swirls and dips into your hole.

He moans at your words and the way your legs squeeze at his head. His hands move to spread you open wide to maintain his control and he smirks at the way your body rolls due to the friction of his voice against your pussy.

“Be a good girl f’me,” he growls still pressed against your wet heat.

Your body rolls again as you get closer and closer to your first release. Your bite your lip trying to contain all of the sounds that are trying to escape your mouth. Harry notices the new silence and glances up seeing how you’re trying to behave. As much as he likes you obeying his words, he also wanted to hear how he was pleasuring you.

“Tell me how you feel, princess,” he demands.

“So-so good,” you hiccup as his fingers caress over your folds now as he looks you in the eyes, his lips wet with your slick. He kisses you hard, his tongue diving into your mouth and you kiss back passionately, loving your taste on his tongue.

He pulls back and your hands trail down his chest, swirling around his familiar tattoos and hair that grace his lower torso as you move. He grins, enjoying the feeling of you on him and how he was affecting you.

Soon enough, his cock is finding its way back to your glistening folds, wet with your own liquids as well as his saliva. His mouth waters at the sight. He only pushes into you a few times like this. Then he catches sight of himself in the mirror in front of him and can’t resist. He pulls out and flips you over, your squeal leaving your mouth before you can stop yourself. His dick finds your entrance once again, not wanting to be without the wonderful warmth for any longer than he must.

“Ahhh,” Harry groans when he slips back inside.

Your head throws back on your neck, the feeling of him as well as the sight of him gripping your hair in one hand and your fleshy hip in the other. His rings dig into the skin as he’s able to slam more forcefully in this position. You gasp and whine at his motions. The sounds coming from between your legs are turning you on even more and they seem to make Harry happy too. He picks up the pace and drops the grasp of your hair for a second. Your head falls down as you try to keep yourself up on your elbows.

Gripping both of your hips, Harry growls, “Look at me while I fuck you. C’mon now.”

You moan in response and tear your eyes open to see your reflections in the mirror. One hand goes up to hold onto the mirror to give yourself more traction, causing your back to arch even more. The new position has Harry’s cock slamming into you deeper.

“Fuck!” Harry practically yells and can’t keep himself from landing a harsh slap on your ass. You jump forward at the sting but his other hand keeps the pace steady. He keeps burying himself into you all the way to his base, his balls slapping at your now slick spread thighs. He rubs over the red handprint he had just left on your ass. You whimper and bite your lip, truly enjoying the sensation.

Still staring into the mirror as Harry commanded, your eyes water slightly and Harry makes eye contact with you through the mirror. You smile widely and he grins back. “This feels so fucking good. Your pussy takes me so well. Fuck…” Harry babbles, still pistoning into you. You had noticed how vocal he was the first time you had fucked, but thought it had just been the alcohol. Apparently not. But you didn’t mind, you much preferred it to partners who barely spoke or didn’t even moan. Like how were you supposed to know what was going on in their minds? With Harry, you knew he was having a good time.

A few more heavy thrusts and you felt yourself nearing the edge. Your panting was getting faster, exceeding the speed of Harry’s thrusts and he could also feel you were close. Your cunt began squeezing him tighter so he hooked a hand under your knee and brought it onto the table. He hunched over you slightly and snaked his hand to your clit. “C’mon darling, I know you're close. Can feel that little cunt putting a choke hold on my cock.” He rubs at your clit with the vigor of strumming a quick paced song on the guitar. It’s enough to overtake your senses and the laugh that had bubbled from his words turns into your orgasm moan. You try to muffle it into the arm that is holding you against the mirror to avoid a full on scream because it feels that good. You felt like you were having your first ever orgasm, it felt that new to you.

A few more thrusts and you’ve come down from it, but Harry still hasn’t finished. It’s your turn to be the partner coaxing the other to get off. “Faster, Har. Want you to cum too.” He grunts, picking back up the pace. He had slowed to let you ride out your stay. “That’s it...want you to cum in me. Your cock feels so fucking good.” You whine, meaning every word. He smiles again at you and closes his eyes, focusing on chasing his high. You watch as his smile widens to that open mouth grin, “Fuck,” he almost whispers. And there it is. There’s a twitch in his hips that mirrors his expression and then he’s pulling out and cumming on your back. His voice is now even lower and raspier than before as he babbles how good that was and how tight your pussy was. It was sweet nothings, but extremely explicit and you sighed heavily, feeling a small orgasm wash over you again. His final thrusts and voice pushing you off the cliff again easily.

The two of you take a minute to bring your breathing back to normal and Harry goes to clean your back off.

“So..how do you feel about maybe doing this regularly?” Harry asks sheepishly as he begins to pull his pants back on.

“Like a friends with benefits kind of thing? Or bandmates with benefits, rather.” You laugh breathlessly at your not really funny joke, but you’re now truly exhausted. From the show and the fuck, you felt thouroughly worked out.

“I guess that’s what it is, yeah.”

“Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”

“You’re honestly so chill, Y/N. It’s fuckin’ hot.”

You laugh and flip your hair dramatically. You’re only in your bra and panties right now and Harry licks his lips, finding your playfulness to be a turn on. “What can I say?” You laugh.

“But like I said before...it’s just sex.” He’s buttoning up his shirt and looking at your reflection through the mirror now. He watches you slip the pants you had been wearing back on.

“Oh, Harold, I know.” On cue, he groans and turns around to face you after fixing his mused hair in the mirror. Interrupting yourself, you turn your back to Harry, “Can you tie this, sorry it’s hard for me to get the -” Harry walks to you without any hesitation and begins tying the silk ribbons on the back of your shirt. “Thanks. Anyway,” you turn to face him when he’s finished and you place both of your palms on his chest. “Trust me, I know you’ve got your issues and I’m not looking to be the girl that tries to change you. I know what this is. I only ask that you let me know when you sleep with other people, because once you do, you won’t need me.” Harry nods and you pat your hands against him. You both smile and go your separate ways when you leave the dressing room.

Harry and you fucked almost every night on tour. Sometimes it was right after, on the counter in his dressing rooms. Sometimes it was later in the evening in his hotel room or yours. He stopped leaving immediately after your hook ups. He never kicked you out of his room so he decided it was fine for him to stay in yours. Especially because you weren’t a stranger who would be weird with him in the morning. He also didn’t like trekking through the hotel halls late at night.

The first few times you stayed in the same bed, the two of you stayed on opposite sides of the bed, not touching after you were finished engaging in your sexual endeavours. Rigid bodies against the edges of the mattress. Then one particularly long night, filled with multiple rounds, Harry was so exhausted from his performance on stage and off that he collapsed on top of you. He fell asleep there and you didn’t particularly mind. It felt nice to be slightly compressed and held. He shifted in his sleep and when he woke up he wasn’t upset to find you nestled into his side with his arms wrapped around you. After that, cuddling sort of became part of the routine. After you were done having sex, Harry or you would get up to clean up and bring back waters. Then you would settle in his arms. Sometimes in a spooning position and sometimes you cradled softly into his chest. You didn’t talk about it, it just happened.

One night it was your head directly on top of his butterfly tattoo, one leg thrown over his lower torso and your arm snuggly wrapped around his middle. He liked to pet your hair when you laid against his chest in that way. His fingers would fiddle with the strands and you liked it because he usually took off his rings before he would do it and his hands felt so soft and delicate against you. Harry liked the way he felt when he would hold you afterwards. It was calming to fall asleep against your soft skin and feel your fingertips trace lyrics to songs he wasn’t sure the name of against his own.

No one knew about how your friendship with Harry worked. To the rest of the world, you seemed to be someone who had become another close friend in the band. You were similar to Mitch in many respects. Except for when Harry winked at you during a show, it wasn’t a friendly wink, it was a ‘this song makes me horny and I can’t wait to relieve the pressure by fucking you later’ kind of wink. You knew this because Harry had gone over and whispered it in your ear during a quick break, when you had only looked at him weirdly after he did it.

Before the show tonight, you pulled Harry aside, “So what are we thinking tonight? I feel like I might want to ride you...Haven’t been on top in a while.” In the darkness of the backstage, you crane your neck to take Harry’s earlobe between your teeth. He groans softly and grips your hips to guide them against his for a second. “Sounds fuckin’ fantastic, love.” You twitch back, releasing him immediately at the word. You always told him not to call you that and he tried to reason with you, that it was just something he called people. But you disliked it a lot, adding it to the growing list of rules the pair of you had for the do’s and don'ts of being friends with benefits with each other.

“Harold,” you groan and he steps back at that pet name. While he hated this, you refused to let him put it on the list because it didn’t cross any lines with your physical arrangement. Not that there was any physical list to put it on, it was more of a theoretical list that the two of you would speak of occasionally.

“Sorry.” He says eventually, “Didn’t mean it.” You both laugh.

You think about how other relationships were sometimes desperate to hear their partner express their love for them and you believe you’re grateful for the simplicity of your arrangement. The term relationship regarding what you and Harry were doing was also in the ‘don’t’ category on the list. If either of you were being honest, there should be no need for a list and you should be questioning yourselves why you felt the need to set boundaries if one part of it was physical and the other part was your friendship and job. If it truly was just physical why were boundaries constantly needing to be set and followed? But right now honesty was not in the cards.

After the show Harry gets delayed with press or fans or something that you don’t really care about. You barely read the text that he sends, only caring about the ‘sorry got held up’ and the ‘be there in thirty’.

You let yourself into his room and wait on the bed, flipping through your phone, completely unbothered by the rest of the world. When you hear a knock on the door, you don’t think twice about getting up and opening the door. You only realize your terrible mistake when it’s Mitch and not Harry standing at what you’re also just realizing isn’t your door, but instead Harry’s.

“Shit!” you say under your breath as Mitch looks at you confused.

The room is dark behind you because Harry would have just entered and gotten down to business. He might turn on a side lamp, but you hadn’t felt the need to have light on while you waited. Forgetting all of that, you had just gone to the door and opened it.

Mitch tucks some of his hair behind his ear as he stares at you. “Is Harry here?”

“Er..No?” It comes out as a question. You rub the back of your ankle with your foot, feeling nervous.

“Is he actually not here or?” Mitch trails off, narrowing his eyes at you.

“No, no he’s really not here. I’m waiting for him, too.” You rush your words, but try to remain calm.

“You have a key to his room. And you’re waiting in the dark.” He says. They’re not questions and you’re not sure just how guilty you look.

“Yeah!” You try to come up with a non suspicious response, hoping there’s a way to still salvage your’s and Harry’s secret, “He gave me his key because he wanted to talk about something and I kept it dark because my eyes always hurt after shows. Kind of like a migraine.” You scratch at your head and smile, trying to convince Mitch. He seems to believe you as he nods slowly and opens his eyes more.

There’s a little bit of an awkward silence and Mitch shifts his weight between his feet, looking at you still. Just as you're about to invite Mitch to come wait inside with you, Harry steps out of the elevator and begins to walk down the hall. His key card is already in hand and your eyes widen. Harry’s expression mirrors yours when he realizes Mitch is standing outside of his door and that you are standing with him. “Mitch!” Harry says, placing his hand on Mitch’s shoulder and sliding his key card into his back pocket with the other. Mitch turns to Harry without seeing him put away the other key card and you look at the pair of them.

“I was just telling Mitch how you gave me your key card so we could talk about...that thing.” You interject, flicking the lights on in Harry’s room as casually as possible. Harry shoots you a look about how you couldn’t come up with an actual reason for being there. You shrug your shoulders helplessly.

Mitch looks between the two of you and feels some weird tension and he’s not sure if it's always there and he’s just noticing or if something is going on right now.

“Yeah, well, I came to stop by to talk about the riff in Canyon Moon. Something is wonky with it.”

“Oh! Sure,” Harry nods to Mitch and then glances at you, “Y/N, we can talk about that other thing later. It’s not that important anyway.” His tone is so casual and nonchalant. You stare at him, thinking he can’t be serious. You had been almost sure he would send Mitch away, but instead you were being kicked to the curb. When he doesn’t say sike or anything of the sort, you nod. “Okay,” then you mumble a ‘good luck’ with figuring out the problem with the song. Mitch walks in the door, but Harry’s eyes stay fixed on your figure retreating down the hallway. He watches you disappear and is only pulled from his thoughts when Mitch calls his name from the couch in the room.

After reaching your floor, you key into your room and get ready for bed. Just as you’re about to drift off to sleep, completely alone for once in a long time, there’s another knock. This time you check the peephole, a habit you realized you were going to have to get better at. It’s Harry. You open the door and walk away immediately once he’s entered the room.

“Why are you here?”

“Thought we could still...” He follows you into the room, trying to make out your face in the darkness.

“I’m not in the mood anymore.” Your tone gives away your annoyance. You couldn’t hide that you were mad at Harry for sending you away. It made you feel weird. The way he did it so easily made you feel like you were extremely disposable and unwanted.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs as he lays down beside you. You turn to face him when he places a hand on the small of your back. You’re face to face and your noses are almost brushing. It’s not really possible to see each other’s features, but after months of hooking up you knew each other’s faces pretty well. You could reach out and pinpoint all of Harry’s freckles and moles on his face and neck right now and be correct. He could likely do the same. The theory is proven correct when he reaches out and his hand dances down your cheek. “Just thought it would be less suspicious if I didn’t get rid of him. Couldn’t make him wait either…”

“I know,” your voice is small and soft, just above a whisper, “I forgive you.” You scoot closer to him and Harry instinctively wraps his arm around you, bringing you tightly into him. You sigh into his neck and he shivers at your warm breath on his slightly clammy skin. When you lick your lips, they brush lightly against his skin. He laughs at the feeling, so you decide to press an intentional kiss to the hollow in his neck. In response, he presses a kiss to your hairline, his lips slightly chapped after the concert.

The kisses are tender, filled with that thing neither of you dare attribute to anything the two of you did in the dark. The word you told him time and time again to not call you. So is just about every touch and word that has been exchanged in this room since Harry entered it. You fall asleep wrapped up in his arms, a soft smile resting on both of your faces. Neither of you seem to mind that you didn’t actually have sex tonight or anything even close to it.

When you wake up you feel especially well rested. You shift around and realize your bed is empty besides you. It depended on the day, but it was always a toss up between Harry being there when you woke up or not. However, lately, you had found it was usually the former. You would linger longer and so would Harry in each other’s rooms, lounging in each other’s embrace under the soft glow of the morning light peaking through whatever windows the room had. Today you were cold at his absence. Then you look up and realize you aren’t completely alone. Harry is standing at the end of your bed, staring down at his phone, smiling.

“Hey.”

You wait for his reply, but he doesn’t look up from his phone. “Hey, Harold,” you repeat. His head snaps up, a grimace on his face at the name. He slips his phone in his pocket and ruffles his hair. “Hey.” He finally responds. “I’m gonna head out.”

“Okay.”

Neither of you seem to find it necessary to talk about what happened last night. Harry definitely seemed a little off to you this morning, but you try to shake it from your thoughts. There was no reason to be upset with him being quiet. He didn’t owe you anything, you hadn’t even slept together last night, so if anything it was weird he stayed as long as he did.

It was the second night at the Forum in Los Angeles. This means no travelling necessary. No day off either, tomorrow you’d have a day off before the third and final show at the venue though.

Harry and you were talking normally at the venue, mostly about the setlist - him and Mitch had changed something for whatever reason last night, which was fine. Your banter was to a minimum, but you were trying to convince yourself that nothing was off. Even though it felt like something was different, you couldn’t place your finger on what it was, so you thought it was best to ignore it.

When Harry is about to go out on stage, you don’t pull him aside and when he introduces the members of the band to the audience, he doesn’t say anything fun or silly about you. He doesn’t wink or come up to you at any point in the performance. It’s so unusual the rest of your bandmates are giving you funny looks. Charlotte looks at you from across your keyboard in a way that she’s asking if you’re okay. You shake your head at everyone trying to signal that you’re fine.

Mitch goes over to Harry and whispers in his ear to check in with him, Harry looks at him with a bright smile on his face and says “of course, why wouldn’t I be?” Mitch looks between the pair of you, thinking back to last night and how weird the pair of you were being then. Maybe it dawns on him then what might be going on between the two of you, but if he did, he wouldn’t mention it for a long time.

You falter a bit on your back up vocals tonight. You’re trying to give it your all, like always, but for some reason your voice isn’t sounding the way you want it. About halfway through the show, when your voice comes out the exact opposite of how you would like, Harry finally gives you a second glance. His face practically emotionless, save for the single arched brow. He’s concerned, but not concerned enough where he would go over to you. He just doesn’t understand why you keep missing the right note tonight. You make a shake of your hand to say I don’t know either. He just shrugs and turns back around to continue the show, his lively smile returning while he turns his head.

After the show, Charlotte, Sarah, and you are all checking in, going over what had happened during the show in general. They’re both worried about your voice and you’re simply trying to tell them that it was just an off night. Nothing was wrong. As long as you told everyone else that, then it might turn out to be true.

“It’s fine, maybe I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” you fib, having gotten more sleep last night than most other nights on this tour. They both nod, seeming to take that as a reasonable answer.

Then Charlotte gets quieter as she whispers to the three of you, “Did you guys notice anything weird with Harry? He was super lively, but he barely interacted with you, Y/N, which is so unlike him...”

Sarah nods while you look skeptically on. Sarah adds, “He kept looking up to the boxes, too. More than usual at least. I don’t know though…” She trails off and you cross your arms over your chest, not really enjoying the conversation topic. “I mean, what do you think, Y/N?” Sarah adds.

Your eyes dance between the two women, your fellow bandmates, your friends. You sometimes wished you could share with them what you were doing with Harry. The secret was fun, but it’s also nice to be able to share with your girlfriends about the guy you’re seeing, even if it is a casual thing. The friendly gossip of it all is something fun to share, but sadly that was another thing you couldn’t do. You sigh, “You never really know what’s going on in his mind, y’know. He’s just Harry.” Your response is half-assed at best. You figure they’ll both give you shit for the non-answer you just supplied, but instead someone else speaks for them.

“I am in fact, just Harry.” He says and you swivel around to find yourself almost chest to chest with him. Charlotte laughs while Sarah simply smiles. Your eyes are huge as you stare up at him and you hope your blush doesn’t come out too strongly after being caught talking about Harry by himself. “Enlighten me on when I was being ‘just Harry’ though?” You bite your lip and take a step back from him, forming more of a line with the other women. He shrugs when no one offers a response, laughing lightly.

“Oh and Y/N, I can’t talk about that thing again tonight, I’ve got-”

“A date?” Charlotte asks, trying to understand why Harry was acting a little different tonight still. The part that Sarah had mentioned about him looking up into the boxes had given her the idea that he might have plans with someone after the show. Harry scratches his head, his hair slightly wet with sweat right after the show. He’s taken off his coat so he’s just in the almost completely unbuttoned, sweat soaked shirt he had been wearing underneath. It sticks tight to his skin and you can make out all the muscle lines that hide beneath the fabric that you usually get to caress. Your eyes flit from his body back to his face when he speaks again.

“Erm, I wasn’t going to phrase it like that...but yes, I suppose, it’s a date.” He says finally, he avoids your eye contact and you look at him very confused, trying to hide the hurt. He shoves his hands in his pockets trying to look and sound as casual as possible and ignore the strain he sees on your face. Is that what had held him up yesterday? Making plans with someone else? And he hadn’t told you until now? The past twenty four hours stung a little bit more now that you knew why Harry was being so distant. It simply felt icky finding out this way and it didn’t even seem like he was going to tell you it was a date.

“Okay,” you say simply and walk away. You hear Charlotte asking him details about his date, but you try actively not to hear any of it. Sarah watches you walk away and sees the way you wrap your arms around yourself to comfort you. She feels a twinge of sadness as she watches the scene unfold, seeing something she hadn’t realized was there before.

Harry doesn’t text or call you that night. You hang out with everyone else for a little while in Charlotte’s room before heading to bed, saying you think you need an early night tonight. Before you’re able to walk out of the door, Mitch stops you. “I heard Harry blew off whatever conversation the two of you have been trying to have again. Just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.” You try to smile but it comes out as more of a grimace. There is no conversation Harry is blowing off, it’s simply you. “It’s fine. Like he said yesterday, it’s not important.” Mitch nods, but still looks at you with concern. What he had seen last night, then on stage today, and what Sarah had told him about your interaction after the show it all strung together in his mind. It didn’t seem unimportant at all. But he didn’t know how he could tell you that. He felt like he should talk to Harry about the way you looked when you left Charlotte’s room tonight, but he didn’t know how to bring it up to him either.

You don’t realize you’re crying until you're in the elevator, and it’s slowly rising to your floor of the hotel. You’re only one level up, but it feels like an eternity in there. You already weren’t a fan of elevators, but this ride felt impossibly worse. The walls are all made up of mirrors and you see yourself in the reflection, but you don’t exactly recognize the girl in there. Your eyes are tired from the show, dark circles already formed. Your hands are aching, clenching and unclenching on their own accord. Your body is slumped against the back wall, likely leaving a slight imprint from the smoke residue and dust on your clothes. Worst of all are the tears running down your face, smudging at your makeup, the black mascara you had applied dripping down in sinister raindrops against your skin. The sad girl stares back at you as you sniffle slightly, confused at what you’re seeing. “Why are you crying?” you ask yourself, your voice creaking and then breaking at the end as you struggle to get out the word ‘crying’ before a sob wracks through you. You roll your eyes when your reflection offers no explanation for itself. You laugh at your own patheticness and try to shake the feelings you’re experiencing.

Inside your room now, you flop on the bed and stare straight up at the ceiling. Your arms spread to your sides and your legs lay limply below you. You think about every night before last, every night since the tour started. Every night where you weren’t alone, where you were with Harry. Your mind flits to last night, how Harry’s lips had ghosted over your skin after his apology. How you had told him you forgave him and it had felt so peaceful, so simple. It was all so easy. Thinking about him and the things the two of you did together brought a smile to your face, unbeknownst to you. When you realize it’s there, your face drops immediately, deciding not to think about Harry.

But trying to not think about Harry makes you only think about him more and what you think about him now most definitely doesn’t bring a smile to your face. You’re thinking about him out on his date with some person you chose to learn nothing about. Maybe out of fear of what is happening right now. By knowing nothing about the person, you can’t compare yourself to them. Can’t see what’s different about them that would make Harry go out on a date with them. But it doesn’t matter who they are or what they look like because at the end of it all you know one thing for certain. They’re not you. You correct yourself, you know two things actually, because you also know that Harry chose to be with them instead of you tonight.

You fall asleep with tear stained cheeks that night and absolutely nothing positive on your mind. You want to sleep but know it only brings whatever is bound to happen tomorrow, which doesn’t seem very promising.

It’s noon when you wake up and you wake to a knocking on your door. You grumble and throw a sweatshirt over your body to hide the underwear you slept in. Not remembering your new habit, you swing the door open without any hesitation to find Harry. He looks wide awake and happy, the way he almost always looks, a fresh beautiful flower of a man. You look at him groggily, “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t answering your phone.”

“Because I was asleep?” You tilt your head and look at him incredulously. “What about this,” you gesture to your appearance, “looks like I just went for a 3 mile jog for fun and I love the morning?”

“Can I come in?” He ignores everything you just said and enters the room when you leave the door to get back in bed. You often did that with him, you don’t know why, but when he asked to come in the room it was just simpler to let him in then say anything. He knew what you meant.

He sits at the edge of the bed as you reclaim your spot in the middle of it, tucked slightly under the covers, but still sitting up. “How was your date?” You try to sound nonchalant and it seems to work. Harry doesn’t notice your tense figure, but you notice how he tenses up when you ask.

“Good…Her name was-” You don’t let him finish, you already know the answer to this next question and you don’t need her name in order to ask it, “Did you fuck her?”

He’s silent, green eyes staring straight at you. You meet his gaze, your eyes almost burning holes into him. His eyes are begging you to not make him answer the question, he doesn’t want this to end, even if he also didn’t want the commitment he had felt himself exhibiting the other night.

When he had come to your room the other night after Mitch had almost caught you, he knew he shouldn’t have stayed. He didn’t want you to feel bad so he had come to apologize, but when the pair of you didn’t have sex, he should have left. But he didn’t, he stayed and it wasn’t for you, it was for himself. It was for him to hold you in his arms because he liked to. But when he woke up the next morning he knew he needed to leave. Solely cuddling wasn’t part of your arrangement together. It’s probably on the list of don'ts that the pair of you had. So after he realized the line he had willingly crossed with you, he quickly sent a text to Jeff who had tried to set him up with a model they were acquaintances with the night before - the reason he had gotten held up. Harry had initially declined, not very interested in seeing anyone else but you. But looking back on that choice in the light of day seemed to solidify what this relationship was - a relationship - and Harry didn’t like that. The commitment wasn’t part of the plan, so he told Jeff to set that date up for after the second show at the Forum and give the woman a ticket. That’s why he was smiling at his phone the morning after only cuddling with you, that’s why he didn’t joke around with you during the show, and that’s why he wasn’t in your bed last night.

You watch him expectantly, silently waiting for his answer, your veins cold as ice. He finally starts his answer and he wants to make it clear that it wasn’t as good with the other woman, but he’s not sure how to work that part in. He’s not sure how to explain to you it meant nothing if your arrangement also apparently meant nothing. You barely even let him get in a sentence. “Yes, but it was just a one time-”

“Alright.”

“What?” He doesn’t understand what you mean when you nod your head and cut him off.

“I told you at the beginning, Harry. Tell me when you sleep with someone else because when you do this is over. It doesn’t matter if she’s the love of your life or a one night stand. I will not be a backup plan, so if you’re able to find other people to sleep with, you don’t need to be sleeping with me.”

He sits in silence for a moment, his jaw dropped open slightly. He’s unable to keep it shut as his mind races about what to say. “Are you mad with me?”

“No, I’m fine. This was just sex. Charlotte will be happy that I’ll be going out with her more.”

Harry’s brow furrows as you shift away from him on the bed, grabbing your phone and beginning to flick through it. You feel numb and you’d like to not think about why.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He asks because he does care about you, worry is written all over his face. He just can’t commit, not now.

“What would I be mad about, Harry?” You look up and your eyes widen at him, silently asking him to truthfully say why you should be so upset about this revelation. You always knew it would eventually come to an end, you just hadn’t expected so soon. You hadn’t known the last time would be the last time and it broke your heart even if you knew it shouldn’t.

He shifts to reach his hand out to touch your exposed knee. You move away from him and he sighs, looking exasperated. “I- I don’t know. It just seems like we should talk about this.”

“You didn’t even think it was necessary to tell me you were going on a date last night, so I think it’s best if we just left it at ‘it’s fine, see you around’.”

He spreads his hands out across the sheets, examining his rings and painted nails thoroughly. You’re right, he doesn’t really want to talk about this. Well, more so, he’s conflicted. He would like to talk enough that you want to continue your arrangement but he doesn’t want to talk about feelings or emotions. Even if he has those feelings and emotions, they’re just not part of the things he’d like to talk about. “But-” You set your phone down at his first word, “Were you even going to tell me you fucked someone else today if Charlotte hadn’t asked you if it was a date last night? Would you just have come to my room tonight and acted like nothing had changed?”

“I would have told you.”

“Sure.”

“I swear I would’ve. I would never break a promise to you.”

“But you would make a decision that affects the both of us without telling me until afterwards?” Your voice breaks a little and you beg yourself not to cry right now.

“I thought you said this was just sex?”

You laugh humorlessly, in disbelief, “Of course it’s not, Harry! And it hasn’t been for a long time and that’s why you got scared and went and fucked someone else.” He looks at you blankly, unsure what to say, knowing you’re right. You continue, “But I also told you at the beginning of this, that I wasn’t going to try to change you. So this is me not trying to change you.” You sigh when he still says nothing, his expression completely unreadable, even to you. “Why couldn’t you have left it at ‘it’s fine’?” You say finally, barely above a whisper.

He blinks a few times after your final question. He flexes his hand one more time and then stands up from the bed. He adjusts his clothes and stares at you. You feel helpless, but you’re still trying to look pulled together, even after your outburst. You stare back. A thousand words floating through your heads, all the things you want to say and likely never will.

“I know, I’m…” he pauses, trying to get himself to say it, but he can’t. He can’t admit that he’s completely ruined whatever messed up paradise you had created together. “I’ll see you later.”

The apology or lack there of hangs in the air as he walks silently out your door. You don’t move, you barely even blink, still staring at the spot he had just occupied. Your breath finally escapes you, a large sigh. Then some nervous laughter. It was over...just like that. But things like this, left like this are never really over.

It’s awkward for a good amount of the rest of the tour. You hang out with your bandmates more and Harry rarely ever comes out with them after the shows. He either hangs out with Mitch on his own or is going out with random people he knows on the road. You and him speak, but it’s never a lot or about anything relatively meaningful. It’s not the fun back and forth of before or the fiery heat of sneaking around. You try to be normal with him, act like his casual friend and bandmate.

He does his best to do the same, but it’s difficult for him. He doesn’t know how to talk to you anymore. He misses being with you, but can’t bring himself to fix it. He doesn’t do much to right his wrongs with you. He also doesn’t even know what he would want if he did apologize. It scared him to think about the step that came after ‘sorry’ so he saved himself the trouble and never did that part either. One night he texts you: “I’m trying, it’s just hard.” and that’s it. You don’t give him a response, he doesn’t need one. You know he’s trying and he knows you know.

Near the end of the tour, he comes out with the rest of you for drinks one night. Only Mitch is between the two of you in the booth, so you feel closer to Harry than you’ve felt in a long time. The group of you are chatting and having a good time. You somehow get onto a story from when you were still in college. You explain how you had narrowly avoided getting Chlamydia right before your Christmas break junior year. You act out the conversations you imagined would have happened at all your Christmas events if you had indeed gotten it. Your impressions of your mother, father, and sister have everyone laughing the most. Harry is shaking with laughter from your story and you smile at him in appreciation when he says, “That is the funniest story I’ve heard in a long fucking time.”

The rest of the night goes really well, for the most part. No one bickers or is short with each other. Everyone is laughing and drinks are flowing. Eventually Mitch gets up to go to the bathroom and you feel Harry slide back into the booth closer to you after letting Mitch out. Your hand had taken up residence next to your thigh, resting on the vinyl of the booth. You sense something next to it now and notice Harry’s hand is resting close beside it. He shifts his hand closer when he sees that you’re looking down at it. He’s almost touching you and you look up to his eyes, wondering if he’ll close the distance. He makes an imperceptible shake of his head, but you know what he means. As you’re about to shift your hand so that your pinky connects with his, Mitch returns and your head shoots up to his figure. You instantly remove your hand from the vinyl and shift closer to Charlotte. Harry gets up, but doesn’t sit back down once Mitch is settled. He instead walks off to get another drink, risking one last look at the table where he makes eye contact with you, but he doesn’t come back. Mitch informs everyone that Harry went back to the hotel because “he was tired” after Harry doesn’t return and Mitch gets a text. You roll your eyes, sure that you saw him slip out of the side door with a woman he found at the bar after he had gotten his drink. If that’s what ‘tired’ looked like on Harry, it was fine.

You start to speak to Harry on a more regular basis after that night out. It’s not funny or lighthearted. It’s just ‘I saw this song the other day, thought you might like to listen’. It went back and forth, it wasn’t everyday but it was something. The last text between the two of you before you began sharing songs again was his ‘I’m trying it’s just hard’ text that he had sent randomly one night. Then after one of you would listen, you would see each other at sound check and mention the song and what you thought about it. It can be noted that it was Harry who sent the first song.

For Harryween, Adam couldn’t be there. He has some family emergency the day of and doesn’t come with the rest of you to Madison Square Garden or the hotel you were staying at. Thankfully, Charlotte also plays keys and you can play bass. The band had to shift around some things on stage and make minimal changes to the setlist since you weren’t rehearsed on the covers Harry was doing. You spent the whole day running through the chords of those songs with Mitch, trying to memorize them so you didn’t mess it up during the show.

It was weird because for Harryween the setlist was switched up a little from the regular set for Love On Tour. Harry was playing the entire new album as well as half of the first album, Medicine, some of his other unreleased stuff, and about six covers, including old One Direction songs. It was going to be a long show and a challenge for you.

Before the show, Harry pulls you aside, to a dark corner backstage, and your mind flits back to the last time you had been in this type of position. The last time he had called you ‘love’, the last time you bit his earlobe - which always drove him crazy, the last time he ground his hips against yours, those and more and you had no idea that it was the last. By then you had already had sex with Harry for the last time, kissed his lips for the last time. It made your heart race to be so close to him and so alone once again. But it’s nowhere near the same as it once was. You shake the memories from your mind and look up expectantly at him.

“Have you got this?” He asks seriously, tone concerned. Of course it’s a music question, nothing more. Like it always was now.

“Yeah, of course.” His stare is unwavering and you try not to falter from it.

“I can get someone else to cover tomorrow, it was just such a short notice today. You know bass really well too, it made sense.”

“I’ve got this. Seriously, don’t worry, Harold.” You pat his chest lightly and for once Harry smiles at the sound of your nickname for him. You had stopped using it after the end of your arrangement. It never felt right to use when you were talking about music, and that was about the only time you had been talking. In this moment though, it felt right. His warm, large hands held your upper arms as you stared up into his big eyes. You missed staring into them, the shimmering emerald of his irises were constantly intriguing. You instinctively reach up to move back a curl that has fallen onto his forehead. He doesn’t shy away from your touch and continues to smile down at you.

“Y’haven’t called me that in forever.” He grins, his lips a shiny pink from the lip balm he had on.

“No, I suppose I haven’t. But where was the groan? The whole point is to annoy you.” You smile coyly. He tips his head back and laughs, releasing your arms from his grasp as he laughs wholeheartedly.

Then he does a soft groan, a playful sound, “How was that?”

“Eh. I’ll give you a four out of ten. Not enough emotion behind it.” You slide from the area the two of you have been occupying and make your way onto the stage to start dealing with the bass you would be playing. You hear Harry call out to you, “I think I deserve at least a five, maybe even a six!” You turn back for a second to look at him with an unimpressed expression and shake your head no. He laughs again and you hear him even when you walk out onto the stage. You smile to yourself as you pick up the bass.

When he introduces the band, he waits to talk about you last. “And sadly this evening Mr. Adam Prentergest, our usual fabulous bassist, was unable to attend our fancy dress party! However! Our lovely Y/N L/N is also a superb bassist and was kind enough to step into his place. - Anything to add?” He saunters across the stage to you and you laugh kindly, feeling at ease in this part of the stage even though you were usually on the opposite side and further back from the crowd. You nod at Harry and he leans his portable mic towards your lips. You wet them quickly and eye Harry before turning out to the crowd. “Just please go easy on me if the bass sounds a bit wonky. It wasn’t on the job description that I’d be playing songs I didn’t know, with a few hours notice, on not my main instrument.” You say this in a kind of list format, holding up your fingers as you tick off all the ways that this was out of your comfort zone. You scratch your head dramatically after you’re finished and the whole crowd laughs and cheers. The rest of your bandmates chuckle along and Harry nods and smiles at you.

“You’ll do great, love.” He leans into your ear and says without the microphone. Then he winks and turns to go back to the center of the stage. You press your lips together to contain your smile, both happy and concerned about the flip your stomach just did.

The show is going great. Harry is killing it with the crowd. Everything is electric. You’re entirely focussed on your bass playing, but Harry has been coming over every so often to do something fun or have you tell a joke.

“She’s truly the funniest person I know! And I know a fair amount of people I think.” Harry says as he walks over to you have you tell another joke. Mitch has been looking at you and Harry interacting all night and he’s sure that it isn’t your different position that has him coming over and talking to you so much tonight. Something has definitely changed once again. First the pair of you were always together and having fun, then it was silence and stolen glances that neither of you realized you were taking, now it was back to the beginning.

“That’s because you think puns are part of the top tier levels of comedy.” You say easily, “Here, I can guarantee Harry will love this and the rest of you will likely groan.” Then you stop and act as if you’re thinking for a little, everyone’s waiting expectantly. “Sorry, thinking...Well, I’ve got some skeleton puns I could do, they’re very humerus or y’know classic vampire ones..eh but those ones kind of suck. What do you think, Harry?” You look out at the crowd, face deadpan, as Harry laughs beside you. You roll your eyes playfully and push him back to the center of the stage. Leaning into your own mic now, you say, “I told you.” That’s when everyone laughs. Harry throws another look at you over his shoulder and laughs a little more, his smile wide and eyes bright.

A little over half way through the night, it’s time for ‘to be so lonely’. You already knew the bass chords for it before today and you were confident in yourself by now. It wasn’t as hard a song so you were happy for the little break. This song allowed you to not be looking down at the notes you had stuck to the floor in front of you. Harry’s voice comes in after Mitch’s intro and you watch the way his lips move against his mic. You laugh a little as you watch the crowd yell the first “arrogant son of a bitch” line. You used to not particularly like when people did that, but after it had ended with Harry you had started to enjoy it a bit more. Having those people yell the words you couldn’t, but truly felt about him sometimes, was cathartic. Tonight you weren’t angry with him, but you enjoyed the energy in the room when everyone said it. We’ve all got our own ‘arrogant son of a bitch’ that we want to scream at sometimes. Tonight yours wasn’t Harry for the first time in a long time. The song moves along and Harry takes the microphone off its stand, he walks towards your side of the stage. When the lyrics get to:

“I miss the shape of your lips, your wit, it’s just a trick, this is it so I’m sorry”

Harry isn’t looking at the crowd, he’s looking straight at you. You don’t understand the way he’s looking at you. Or maybe you don’t want to understand it. This song, its lyrics, explains Harry really well. You saw the relationship you had with him in the words. Maybe not precisely, but a part of it was in it. Harry had unknowingly foretold your lives with his words. You know he has trouble connecting and committing, you know his issues, and you accept them. But you knew what had happened between the two of you was far more serious than meaningless sex and you knew Harry couldn’t bring himself to be that serious. He ran off and that was fine, but the face that he couldn’t even apologize hurt you the most. But the song lays it all out for you, he’s not one to be able to apologize quickly. The fact that he looks at you and means the apology he sings in the song for you, it’s a big step, but it’s not enough. The banter, the technical apology, it was all a good start, but it’s just that - the beginning. If Harry wants to make things better with you, a lot more needs to be discussed. So when you sing backing vocals for the following chorus you mean the words for Harry completely.

“Don’t call me baby again, you got your reasons, I know that you’re trying to be friends. I know you mean it, but don’t call me baby again it’s hard for me to go home and be so lonely”

His eyes flick to you again and see your lips moving around the words as you play the bass. He sees the emotion in your face and understands what you’re saying. It’s hard for you to go to your room at night and be alone while he’s out with someone else. It’s hard for him to act like everything’s all fine and perfect, back to normal, because for you it isn’t really. He can’t call you ‘love’ and tell the world you’re funny and expect it to be enough. He can’t sing his sorry that was initially for someone else to you and expect you to accept it. And he knows it, too.

After the show everyone decides they’re exhausted and need to rest before tomorrow. You all planned to celebrate the whole day and you knew it was going to be a wicked Halloween. Knowing this, you’re surprised with the knock on your door after about an hour of being back at the hotel. You’ve given up the habit you had once hoped to cultivate and swing the door open haplessly. Truly having no idea who to expect, you are still surprised to find the man standing before you.

“Mitch.”

“We need to talk.” He stares down at you, his shoulders slumped from tiredness.

“Come in,” you usher him in when you hear the urgency of his voice. He saunters in before you and you close the door. You move to the small couch in the room and sit down. Your hands gesture for him to sit as well, but he shakes his head. He stays standing and brings a hand up to smooth his hair back on the right side. His eyes staying on the floor and flickering up to you every so often.

“What is going on with you and Harry?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh come on Y/N. You’re seemingly best friends with him for a good portion of tour, then you’re barely on speaking terms for the second half, now you’re joking around again. What is going on?”

You sit there in a stunned silence, “I don’t know what to say.” Your arms go to hug your body, feeling anxious about being confronted about this topic.

“Were you seeing each other?” His voice is soft, eyes taking in your body language and knowing it’s a difficult topic.

“I wouldn’t put it like that…”

He holds back the ‘I knew it’ statement because of how sullen you look, b..ut in his mind all of the pieces he had watched unfold came to fit in a perfect puzzle. He decides to sit beside you when you don’t say anything else.

“We were having sex,” it felt weird to say it out loud, no one but you and Harry had actually known, “But it ended. I don’t know what today was...but it felt different than how it’s been.”

“Why are you so sad if it was just sex?” He places a hand on your shoulder and your tear-filled eyes meet his. “Oh…” He knows why.

“I’m sorry, Y/N.” You sob at his apology because he’s not the one who should be at your door apologizing. You sniffle and lean your head into his chest. He takes you into his arms and holds you as your cries become muffled sounds in his shirt.

You cry without words for a few minutes, Mitch coos some soothing words, his voice soft and kind. He was always a good shoulder to cry on for all of your bandmates, he was extremely strong and you made a mental note to thank him thoroughly when you actually were capable of forming coherent thoughts. “I’ve never told anyone before. It feels so weird even saying it out loud,” you say as you pull back from Mitch’s embrace. You're thankful his shirt is black, no tear stains can be made out.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks gently, gauging your reaction. You wipe at your eyes and nod.

Taking a deep breath, you decide to start from the beginning. “Do you remember the party Charlotte had a week before we left for tour?”

Mitch nods and his eyes widen at what you’re saying as he remembers the night. “It started back then?” He’s unable to contain his incredulous question. He had suspected something, but hadn’t thought it had been going on for that long. He was truly astounded. You nod, “Well sort of,” then you go on to recount the last couple of months. All the way up until the Forum shows. “That night, when I opened Harry’s door and it was you standing there...Harry and I didn’t have anything to discuss. It was just…” Mitch nods again. He hadn’t spoken much since you had gotten into the story, wanting to let you be in charge of what you were saying and believing he could probably ask questions at the end. “Then the next night he blew me off for his date with that model and I cried in the elevator because I knew what was going to happen next.”

“So that’s when it ended?” Mitch asks when you don’t speak for a rather extended period of time.

“Yeah, the next morning he came over and I asked if they had sex and he said yes so I told him it was over.”

“But I don’t get why he went out with that model. He had told me she wasn’t his type the night before…” Your eyes shot up and looked at Mitch. His eyes widened when he realized what he said.

“What?”

“When we were talking about Canyon Moon, he mentioned that Jeff had tried to set him up with some woman but he had declined. Said he wasn’t interested. I don’t get what changed between then and the next morning.” He figured it was best to put all the cards out on the table right now. You’d be going your separate ways for a while, now that the tour was over and he had seen how unhappy both you and Harry had been over the last part of the tour.

You shift your leg to have it folded beneath you as you continue to stare at Mitch. “He came over after you and him had your meeting,” you say quietly. Mitch hums, waiting for you to continue this time.

“He apologized for choosing you over me to talk to. Then we slept together, but we didn’t have sex...I think that’s what wigged him. It had felt too real, sleeping in the same bed with me without having sex beforehand made it feel like something more than just two people fulfilling needs.” Mitch nods and sighs heavily. He looks around the room and then back to you, taking in your full appearance. Again he feels terrible for you, how he had felt the second night at the Forum even though he hadn’t known the full story yet. “Now we’re here.”

“Tonight, it felt like he was trying,” Mitch finally said and you smiled sweetly, thinking back to Harry’s behavior. No matter how far from him you were, all those good feelings you associated with him never went away.

“Yeah, it’s been getting better. He texted me once saying he was trying. Then he came out with us one night and it almost seemed like that would be the night he’d apologize, but then he didn’t. Then we started sharing music with each other again. Then tonight… was tonight. It’s just confusing. He’s confusing.”

Mitch smiles sadly and brings you in for another hug and you’re actually so thankful he

showed up at your door. It was your first time telling anyone all of this, because Harry didn’t even know how you felt about some of these things. It felt amazing to be heard and to be told it was okay to be feeling like this.

Pulling back, Mitch says, “He’s definitely different. But his differences are what make him special and that’s why I think he clings to them even if they sometimes can hurt other people. The fact that he’s trying is a good sign. I hope he can find it in himself to make it right between you two because I had never seen either of you happier than when you were apparently together. Especially those few weeks leading up to Los Angeles. Sarah had kept asking me why Harry was so smiley back then. When I had asked him, he had just said “have you ever found something and realized you wanted to keep it with you forever?” I had no idea what he had meant, but I feel like he meant you now.”

Your awestruck at what Mitch has just told you. He was right about the first part about Harry trying to change, but the last bit, that’s what had left you speechless. You turn your body to face the rest of the room and put your chin against your hand as you think.

“Mitch...I have to go.”

He understands what you mean and you walk out of the door with him. He walks down the hall to his room and you walk quickly past the elevator and opt for the stairs. Before you know it you’re running up the stairs, taking two at a time even though you’re not the most athletically inclined. You can’t stand to wait for the elevator and your mind is racing.

You knock on the door that is Harry’s after reaching his floor. It swings open and reveals a confused and sleepy Harry. Thankfully he’s still fully dressed because that would have been a whole other problem you would have if he hadn’t been. You push past him and walk straight into his room without any invitation. He follows behind you, still unsure of why you’ve come here.

“Have you ever found something and realized you want to keep it forever?” You ask him, repeating the words Mitch had just told you.

“Pardon?”

“You told Mitch that about me before we ended things. If that’s how you felt, why didn’t you do what you said?”

Harry sighs as the words register in his mind. The memory of when he had smiled at Mitch so giddily and asked the vague question, his thoughts only of you as he asked it. The shit-eating grin he had plastered on his face after Mitch had looked at him confusedly flitted across his mind. As well as the way he had gone to his dressing room and had a quickie with you after that conversation.

“It’s not that simple…”

“It is, Harry! Why can’t you just be honest with me for once?”

“Okay, fine. You want me to be honest?” you nod at his harsh tone. The two of you standing only a few feet apart. “You have no goddamn idea what you do to me, when I’m around you, I have no control of my emotions or of my thoughts. I pushed you away because I didn’t like feeling out of control. I got out because what had started as a fun time had turned into me longing to be with you every waking hour. I found myself not caring what we did as long as I got to hold you and be around you, but that wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Plans can change, Harry.”

You step closer to him and he meets your eyes. He had left his music playing softly on his phone before he had opened the door so now as the two of you stared at each other, he must have been playing his Etta James playlist because her voice faded out of the song “I’d Rather Go Blind” and straight into “A Sunday Kind of Love”. Harry had shared her At Last album with you over the Christmas holiday of last year and you had decided to listen to her entire discography afterwards, so you knew the songs. The transition was a little too on the nose and you wondered if Spotify ever listened to your conversations.

His emerald eyes examine your face and take inventory of your features, measuring whether anything had changed since he had looked at you this close up. Your hand goes up to cup his cheek and he nuzzles into it, dropping his head closer to you ever so slightly and closing his eyes at the feeling of you.

“I am sorry,” he whispers earnestly as he reopens his eyes.

You can’t take your eyes off of him even if you tried. He looks so soft in the moment, so vulnerable in this light as the music swells in the corner of the room. Etta sings about how she needs a love that is going to last as the pair of you inch yourselves closer together.

“I forgive you, Harry,” you whisper back.

He nudges his head further down and your lips finally press together, slotting back together after months apart. Your lips are eager to press back against their favorite companion. You oblige them, but pull back for a second, just far enough to say, “I will always forgive you, so long as you tell me when you’re scared so we can work through it together.”

He nods, “I promise to never let you go again.” Before taking you back against his lips and gathering your body up in his arms. His lips missing yours just as much.

6K notes · View notes

labomi · 4 years

Text

selfish | two (18+)

Summary: You’re a former coworker of Kento Nanami back when he was just an office worker. You accidentally run into him at a bakery many years later which gives you a second chance at getting to know the man who had always caught your eye.

Pairing: Kento Nanami x f!Reader

Words: 8.6k

Warnings: Explicit sexual content (18+ only), vaginal sex, creampie, explicit language, alcohol

Notes: I’m so happy to get this out finally ajsfdsld thank you for all the lovely comments on the first part! I’m so glad people enjoyed it enough to convince me to write more! This will definitely be the last part for this fic, but I do have plans for more Nanami things in the future. Thanks for reading! It’s also up on my ao3 if you prefer to read it there!

Index: [Part One] [Part Two]

You were moving boxes in the storage room when you heard the chime of the front door opening. With a sudden jolt, you realized you had forgotten to change the sign from “open” to “closed” before cleaning up. Cursing at yourself for the careless mistake, you hoped the customer wouldn’t be too upset that the shop was actually shut down for the night.

“I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” you politely explained, emerging from the back room. But one look at the tall figure by the door caused you to stop in your tracks. A large smile grew on your face when you saw exactly who had entered the shop.

Nanami was still in his normal work attire, but he had left behind his signature blazer and sunglasses. The top few buttons of his blue dress shirt were undone, and the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. You unconsciously licked your lips.

“I can make an exception for you though,” you teased with a wink before walking around the counter to greet your boyfriend.

As you waltzed into his open arms, Nanami leaned down to give you a sweet kiss as a greeting. You sighed happily against his lips. It felt so good to be with him after a long, tiring day. His presence always made you feel safe and warm. Like nothing could ever possibly go wrong as long as you were in his embrace.

Nanami’s hands latched onto your waist as he tried to deepen the kiss, but you reluctantly pulled away with a groan of frustration.

“As much as I’d like to continue, I have to finish closing up shop,” you complained with a pout.

Nanami kissed the top of your head before releasing you. “It’s alright. I’ll wait.”

You changed the sign on the door to “closed” to prevent any unwanted guests from entering the shop. You then wiped down all the counters and properly stored the leftover ingredients. Once finished with all your tasks, you took off your apron and shoved it in your bag.

“I’m ready!” you called out to Nanami as you started to shut off all the lights. The two of you exited the now dark shop before you locked the front door.

Whenever you had a closing shift, Nanami always came to walk you home. You found it absolutely endearing. Even though you didn’t particularly mind traveling alone at night, the walk to your apartment was always more pleasant when the sorcerer was by your side.

It was almost midnight. The normally busy streets were now devoid of both cars and other pedestrians. You loved sharing these quiet moments with Nanami. Just the two of you enjoying each other’s presence with no one else around. Nanami preferred it this way too, especially because he wasn’t a particular fan of PDA.

You were holding onto Nanami’s hand as he quietly walked beside you. “How was work today?” you asked.

Nanami was a little sensitive about discussing his job as a sorcerer with you. He always refused to share the details of his missions, but he begrudgingly answered your general questions about his workday with vague responses.

“It was fine.” He squeezed your hand lightly. “I was able to get off early.”

“Lucky you! I wish I could have finished earlier,” you complained with a huff. “Closing shift is the worst.”

“Did you eat dinner at least?”

You nodded. “I got some takeout during my break.”

“Good.” He knew you had a bad habit of skipping dinner while you were working. You found it more convenient to just eat a granola bar, especially when it was busy. But Nanami always lightly chastised you when you did this, so you had been making more of an effort to eat better.

The two of you finally arrived at your apartment. Once inside, you immediately emptied out of your bag and threw your apron into the laundry hamper. Luckily, you were off of work for the next two days.

“Kento, you’re staying the night, right?” The sorcerer was still standing in your living room.

“I have to report to work early tomorrow. I don’t want to wake you.”

You rolled your eyes at him with a sigh. Nanami was too considerate of you sometimes. “You never wake me up. Plus, I have my 9 am class tomorrow, so I have to be up early anyway.”

Nanami knew you were right. Unlike him, you slept like the dead. Frankly, he was a little jealous. The sorcerer had always been a sensitive sleeper, but he found it much easier to relax in your presence. Since the two of you had started dating, the quality of his sleep remarkably improved.

“I’ll stay.” You grinned smugly. It didn’t take much to convince him to sleep over.

“Good. I’m going to shower.”

The two of you rarely spent the night apart from one another, alternating between each other’s apartments based on the convenience for the night. Nanami had his own toiletries, pajamas, and spare clothes in your apartment, and you had your own set of things at his place as well.

As you took your shower, Nanami changed into his sleepwear and sat on your couch, reading one of many books he left at your place. Once you announced you were done using the bathroom, the sorcerer placed a bookmark and set the book back down on your coffee table. You were already in the bedroom, changing into your pajamas and packing your bag for class tomorrow, knowing you would forget something if you waited until the morning.

You looked up as Nanami entered the room after washing up. You still found it relatively amusing to see him in such casual clothes: a pair of plaid pajama pants and a thin white t-shirt. But you were glad that only you got to see him like this. The man was the perfect example of prim and proper in public, but at home, he found it more appropriate to dress comfortably. And you thought he looked absolutely adorable. Especially with his unstyled hair.

After the lights were turned off, the two you snuggled in bed together and kissed each other goodnight. Within seconds, you were already fast asleep, exhausted from the long day. Nanami listened to the sound of your deep, even breathing. He felt completely at ease with you safely pressed against him. It wasn’t long before he followed you into a deep sleep.

---

Nanami’s life was simple before he met you at that bakery.

He went to work, came back home, read a book, had a glass of scotch, and made some dinner. The cycle repeated nearly every day, but Nanami didn’t particularly mind. He liked having a simple, predictable routine.

Once you reentered his life, things were a bit different. A bit more exciting. He wasn’t complaining.

Instead of only buying groceries for himself, he made sure to also buy your favorite snacks. Instead of making a reservation for one at a restaurant, he asked for a table for two. Instead of placing one set of utensils on his dining table, he always put down two.

Jujutsu sorcerers were a lonely group of people. They often felt isolated from the general population, born with unique abilities that allowed them to see things that most other people could not.

It was a difficult path. Sorcerers faced a life full of constant battle and death. And the only people who could relate to their hardships were the same people dying by their sides.

For this reason, sorcerers rarely interacted with people outside the jujutsu community. They saw themselves as an outsider to the rest of society. A society that was blissfully unaware of the existence of curses.

But it was different with you.

When Nanami was with you, he didn’t feel like an outsider or a jujutsu sorcerer.

He felt like a normal man.

The activities that Nanami once did alone were now the same activities he enjoyed doing together with you. He took you to his favorite bakery to pick out fresh bread every week. He escorted you to well-reviewed restaurants he had been meaning to visit. He even brought you to his beloved local bookstore, the one place he had been visiting for years as a regular customer.

The first time he took you into the shop, the owner couldn’t help but notice the way your hands were intertwined with one another. As you browsed through the shelves on your own, the old woman suggestively waggled her eyebrows at Nanami.

“So you got a lady now?” she asked curiously.

Nanami thought it was a little odd that she was somehow keeping tabs on his relationship status, but he nodded anyway.

“Ah! She’s a pretty one!”

You suddenly reappeared with a tall stack of secondhand books in your arms. “Kento! This place is amazing! I’m going to buy all of these!”

“Oh, definitely a keeper too,” the owner commented.

Nanami found himself agreeing.

He didn’t know if you could be any more perfect.

Nanami had always enjoyed cooking. He loved the process of selecting a recipe, buying fresh ingredients, and turning them into a delicious, home-cooked meal. But he learned that enjoyed cooking even more when it was for you.

The sorcerer was appalled to hear that you hardly ever cooked for yourself. He had surveyed the state of your freezer in utter disgust. It was crammed full of boxes of microwavable meals and several pints of ice cream. You defended yourself vehemently, claiming that you were too busy to cook between classes, work, and study sessions. The microwave was the easiest and quickest appliance to use after all. And sometimes you just wanted ice cream for dinner.

Nanami took it upon himself to make sure you were eating proper, nutritious meals. In his eyes, it was less of a chore and more of a hobby. He enjoyed learning what you liked. He looked forward to hearing your thoughts about a recipe. He loved the way your eyes lit up whenever he presented a new dish. The sorcerer had even subscribed to food magazines and bought some international cookbooks just to try out with you.

Every morning, Nanami packed you a healthy lunch to ensure you wouldn’t just eat a granola bar for the entire day. And whenever the two of you both had a free night, you always ate dinner together.

In particular, Friday nights had become a weekly tradition between the two of you. Nanami would prepare a special dinner with some fancy wine. The two of you would even dress up a little to celebrate the start of the weekend.

You knocked on Nanami’s door one Friday night, wearing a simple yet elegant dress with just a hint of makeup on your face. The door opened and you were instantly greeted by the mouth-watering smell of whatever the man was cooking in the kitchen. But the sight of Nanami was even more distracting. He was wearing an apron over a tight black button-up shirt with gray slacks. You bit your lip softly, eyeing him appreciatively.

While you enjoyed going out to eat in a restaurant, there was something more intimate about Nanami cooking dinner at home just for the two of you. Plus, the atmosphere was always lovely. His apartment was clean, spacious, and well-decorated. Whatever jujutsu sorcerers got paid, it was clearly more than enough.

“It smells good,” you hummed. “What are you making tonight?”

The sorcerer never revealed dinner to you in advance. For some reason, he always wanted to keep it a surprise.

“Homemade linguine with shrimp. I also got some fresh bread to go along with it.”

Your eyes lit up instantly. “Oooh, sounds delicious! I didn’t know you knew how to make pasta from scratch.”

Everything that Nanami prepared was always amazing. There was never a meal he made that you didn’t enjoy. The first time he cooked you dinner, you almost wanted to propose to him right then and there. A man with those looks and proper culinary skills? You felt like the luckiest person in the world.

You always offered to help Nanami while he was cooking but he would gently shoo you out of the kitchen every time. You weren’t sure if it was because he wanted you to sit back and relax or if it was because he thought you would mess things up.

It was probably the latter.

(Most definitely the latter.)

Due to your clear lack of culinary expertise, you were in charge of cleaning all the pots and pans and loading the dishwasher. You couldn’t complain.

Your post-dinner activities were always the same. The two of you would play a movie and then immediately proceed to ignore it for the rest of the night.

Tonight was no different.

You moaned loudly, writhing about on the couch. “Kento, fuck.”

Your dress was hiked up around your hips, underwear already discarded with Nanami’s face in between your legs. You were already shuddering through your second orgasm of the night with Nanami eagerly lapping up your fluids. His strong arms locked your thrashing legs into place as you gripped the edges of the couch, riding out the last few waves of intense pleasure.

You looked up at him through half-lidded eyes as he pulled back, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. “Ready?” he asked in a deep voice. His pupils were blown open in lust. You nodded, still trying to catch your breath. The man gathered you in his arms and headed to the bedroom.

He carefully set you down on unsteady legs as he pulled the zipper down your dress until the garment fell and landed in a heap on the ground. To his pleasant surprise, you were already braless. You turned around and started to slowly unbutton Nanami’s dress shirt, taking your sweet time. His gaze raked over your entire figure, causing your fingers to fumble as you flushed from the intensity of his stare. Eventually, Nanami had enough. He threw you on the bed and quickly shed the rest of his clothes on his own.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, climbing on the bed and hovering over you. His large, calloused hands roamed all over your bare skin while his mouth focused on sucking at the sensitive spots on your neck.

You relished the feel of Nanami’s touch all over you, but one glance at his painfully hard cock had your cunt begging to be filled.

“Kento,” you whined. “I can’t wait. Fuck me, please. I need you inside me, right now.”

Nanami sheathed his entire length inside you with just one sharp thrust. He proceeded to fuck you hard and fast, just the way you liked. Each snap of his hips left you a complete mess underneath him, moaning his name over and over again. It was just barely audible over the lewd, wet sounds of your desperate cunt squeezing around him.

Nanami grabbed one of your hands and interlocked his fingers with yours. A sweet gesture as he roughly pounded you into the bed. The two of you were so worked up that it didn’t take long for the both of you to quickly become undone. You arched your back and tightly gripped Nanami’s hand as uncontrollable pleasure coursed throughout your entire body. Nanami groaned your name as he sloppily thrust into you several more times before flooding your cunt with his cum.

When he finally pulled out, Nanami was satisfied to see his seed trickling out of you.

“Kento,” you called his name, suddenly feeling shy under his intense gaze.

The man adjusted his position so he was now laying next to you. He kissed you sweetly and whispered praises of you as you giggled breathlessly.

“Hmm, I don’t want to get out of bed and clean up yet.”

“Then don’t,” Nanami said with a devious look in his eyes.

It was then that you felt his length hardening once again against your thigh. He suddenly pulled you on top of him as he laid on his back. The movement caused your sensitive folds to inadvertently rub against his dick as you straddled his hips. You gasped at the feeling, clutching at his chest to prop you up.

“I’m not done with you yet,” he growled.

---

It was a slow afternoon when a man entered the boba shop. He wore an all-black outfit and a matching beanie. Tufts of his disheveled brown hair stuck out from underneath.

“Hello!” You greeted him inside as his eyes flickered around the place nervously before walking up to the cash register.

“What would you like to order?”

Instead of browsing the menu, the man’s gaze was focused elsewhere. Specifically, your chest. You stood there uncomfortably, wondering if you should say something or just ignore him. But then you realized the man wasn’t being a creep. He was reading your name tag.

The man said your name out loud hesitantly.

“Yes? That’s me.” You tilted your head slightly, trying to figure out if you knew this man. Nothing about his appearance rang a bell. You then started to worry about whether or not you were supposed to recognize him. Was he a current classmate? A former coworker?

The man’s eyes instantly lit up. “You’re Nanami’s girlfriend, right?”

Your eyes widened in surprise.

Kento? He knows Kento?

“Oh, um, yes I am.” The question had taken you off guard. You weren’t expecting a random customer to mention your boyfriend’s name.

“It’s so nice to meet you!” The man smiled brightly at you, looking extremely excited. “Gojo always mentions how pretty and kind you are, so I couldn’t resist visiting when he told me you worked here.”

Gojo?

If this man knew both Nanami and Gojo, did this mean he was also a sorcerer?

The stranger had piqued your curiosity, and you just couldn’t give up the opportunity to sit down and chat with him. Luckily, it was a slow day and you convinced your coworker to allow you to take your break early. After preparing two drinks, you slipped into a booth in the back of the shop with the man taking a seat across from you.

“I’m Ino Takuma.” The man introduced himself to you.

“So, if you know Gojo and Kento, does that mean you’re a sorcerer?” You kept your voice hushed while asking, just in case your nosy coworkers were trying to listen in on your conversation.

Ino nodded. “Yep, I am.”

You couldn’t help but feel excited to meet another one of Nanami’s colleagues. He purposely tried to shield you from the jujutsu world, but it only made you more curious. Plus, you wanted to know more about what Nanami was like as a sorcerer. He was always so gentle and sweet with you. Well, except for in bed. But it was sometimes hard to imagine that he exorcised curses for a living.

“Do you know Kento well?” you asked curiously.

Ino nodded eagerly. “Yes! I worked with him on a mission once and since then, I’ve really respected him.” He blushed a little, rubbing the back of his head. “Nanami is my role model. I don’t see myself as a particularly smart guy, so whenever I don’t know what to do, I always ask myself what would Nanami do?”

Ino’s words were full of sincerity. In some ways, he reminded you of Itadori. Both of the boys seemed to admire Nanami in a way you would never understand as a non-sorcerer. But it made your heart full knowing that Nanami was a trusted mentor in his workplace.

“Does that mean Kento is strong?” You were a little hesitant to ask the question. As an outsider to the jujutsu world, you didn’t know what made a sorcerer strong. But if another sorcerer told you that Nanami was indeed powerful, you would feel comforted. You knew his job was dangerous, so you obviously worried about his safety, but you tried your best not to show it around him.

“Nanami is super strong!” Ino exclaimed, arms flailing around to emphasize his point. “He’s a Grade 1 sorcerer! That’s practically the best you can be!”

You bit back a sigh of relief. “That’s good to know. Thank you, Ino.”

The two of you continued to chat for the rest of your break, getting to know each other better. Ino even successfully squeezed out of you Nanami’s favorite bakery and favorite bookstore. He claimed he wanted to surprise the man with a gift he would actually appreciate. You encouraged him with a warm smile.

“Thank you for the tea and the conversation,” Ino said, sliding out of the booth. He hovered around you with a light blush dusting his cheeks again. “Um, next time you see Nanami, can you maybe ask him about my recommendation to a Grade 1 sorcerer? If you don’t mind that is!”

“Sure! Will do. It was great meeting you. Thank you for helping to keep Kento safe!”

Ino’s eyes widened at your words. He puffed out his chest proudly. “Of course!”

You waved at him as he exited the shop with a loud farewell.

After your shift, you had returned to your apartment to change and grab some things to spend the night at Nanami’s apartment. When you arrived at his place, the man was already setting the table for dinner. You hugged him from behind with a happy hum as finished his task. Nanami gently removed your arms from around him before turning around and greeting you with a kiss.

“Welcome home.”

“Dinner smells good,” you commented happily. “I’m starving!”

Nanami chuckled lightly. He pulled out a chair for you. “Sit down and I’ll serve you.”

The two of you sat at the table together, plates filled with delicious curry rice.

“How was your day today?” Nanami asked once you both started eating.

“Oh!” You swallowed your bite. “I actually met a coworker of yours. He came to the shop.”

“Who?” Nanami looked rather unhappy, gripping the spoon in his hand forcefully.

“Ino Takuma.”

Nanami sighed, rubbing his forehead in irritation. “I’m sorry. I’ll make sure to tell him to stay away from you. I have no idea how he found your workplace in the first place.”

“Huh? What? No, it’s fine! Ino was very kind and sweet. I enjoyed chatting with him. Also, don’t be too mad at him, Gojo was the one who told him about me.”

Nanami clenched his fist. The next time he saw that white-haired idiot, he was going to kill him.

You furrowed your eyebrows in confusion. “Kento, why are you so against me meeting other jujutsu sorcerers? These people are important to you, no? I want to meet them.”

Nanami refused to meet your gaze. He still wasn’t comfortable with the thought of you interacting with the jujutsu world, sorcerers included. “I’m just trying to prote—”

“Protect me, I know.” You let out a deep sigh. “But I don’t want you to hide your life as a sorcerer from me. It’s a big part of your identity, and I want to learn more about jujutsu so I can understand you, Gojo, Itadori, and everyone better.” You lowered your voice slightly. “I care about you all, you know.”

Nanami reached out across to the table to gently hold your hand. “I know,” he admitted quietly. “I’m sorry.” He knew that shielding you from the jujutsu world as much as possible wasn’t doing you or him any favors. But Nanami didn’t know what else to do. He never imagined he would be dating someone while working as a sorcerer. And he especially never imagined he would be dating a non-sorcerer.

Relationships between sorcerers and non-sorcerers rarely worked out, so Nanami tried to restrict your access to the jujutsu world as much as possible. He refused to talk about his missions with you. He tried to limit the presence of other sorcerers around you. He did this to protect you, but maybe he was doing it to protect himself instead. He didn’t want to lose you or scare you away.

“I do want to share my life as a sorcerer with you.” Nanami was struggling to find the right words. “But it’s difficult for me.” He had always envisioned his personal life and his work life as two separate spheres, but you were beginning to blur those lines. “I promise I’ll do better.”

You smiled softly, appreciating his efforts. “Well, we can take it slow.”

“Thank you.”

You were cleaning the dishes in the sink when Nanami wrapped his arms around your waist and nuzzled his face in your neck. Both of you felt so much lighter after the discussion during dinner.

“Oh!” A sudden realization popped into your mind. “I forgot to mention. Ino asked me to tell you not to forget his Grade 1 sorcerer recommendation.”

Nanami groaned in the crook of your neck. “Of course he did, that impatient kid.”

“What’s a recommendation? Are you not going to do it?”

He sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“Kento,” you whined.

“Alright. I’ll explain it to you after you’re done.”

---

You had just finished class when a text popped up on your phone. It was from Gojo.

Gojo: Hey! Do you want to go to dinner with me, Yuji, and Nanami tonight????

Dinner? You felt a tinge of excitement.

You: Sure! I’m free!

You didn’t know what the occasion was for, but you were grateful for the invite. Gojo often stopped by at your workplace, occasionally accompanied by Itadori, to greet you and grab a sweet drink. But you unfortunately never had the time to properly sit down with him and catch up.

Out of all sorcerers you had met so far, Gojo was the most mysterious. After all, what sort of man wore a blindfold in public? And now that you thought about it, how did he always seem to know when you were working? Especially since your work schedule differed from week to week...

Weird.

Gojo: Great! I’ll send you the time and place later~

You: Thanks! See you then!

You were about to text Nanami and tell him you were looking forward to dinner when one of your classmates called your name.

“Yes?” you asked, looking away from your phone.

“Want to join our study group? We’re heading to the library right now!”

“Yeah, sure! Coming!”

It was only after you left the library several hours later that you realized you had forgotten to text Nanami. But you figured it wasn’t a big deal since you would soon see him at dinner.

Nanami looked at his watch impatiently. It was already past 5 pm. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be back in his apartment, prepping dinner for you. “What are we doing here, Gojo? I need to get home.”

The white-haired calmly rested his arms behind his head with a suspicious smirk on his face. “Relax, Nanami. We’re waiting for a surprise.”

Itadori perked up beside him, looking up at his sensei with wide eyes. “A surprise?! What kind of surprise?”

Gojo chuckled. “The best kind.”

Nanami let out an exasperated sigh. He removed his sunglasses and put them in his pocket. The three sorcerers were standing around in the middle of a busy street filled with pedestrians. “I don’t have time for such frivolities, Gojo. Excuse me, but I’m leavi—”

“Wait!” Gojo exclaimed. He waved at someone in the crowd. “She’s here!”

“She?” Nanami repeated, trying to follow Gojo’s line of sight.

It was easy to spot Gojo, even amongst the giant, moving crowd. The tall man towered over everyone else and his bright, white hair easily stood out in the background. You could see him waving his hand at you, so you waved back.

Squeezing your way through the crowd, you joined up with the three sorcerers with an excited grin. “Hi!”

“Say hello to the surprise,” Gojo announced, waltzing over to your side and wrapping an arm around your shoulder.

Itadori looked thrilled to see you, but as your eyes shifted to Nanami, you immediately sensed something was wrong.

“Gojo, you did tell Kento you invited me, right?” you asked cautiously, looking up at the tall man.

The sorcerer hummed to himself for several seconds before responding. “Nope!”

You blanched. Uh oh. You should have texted him.

Nanami didn’t look too visibly upset, but he was pinching the bridge of his nose with a frown. When would that idiot stop meddling with his personal life behind his back?

“Na-na-mi,” Gojo said in a singsong voice. “Are you excited to see your stunning, beautiful, and gorgeous girlfriend? Shouldn’t you be thanking me for bringing her here?” The white-haired sorcerer pulled you even closer to him. He didn’t miss the way Nanami’s eyes instantly narrowed at him.

Nanami grabbed your wrist and pulled you out of Gojo’s grasp until you were comfortably nestled against his side. He couldn’t stand seeing that man's hands on you. “Don’t let him touch you. His idiocy is contagious.”

You giggled at the comment. Gojo let out a satisfied hum, watching the two of you together. “Alright, lovebirds!” He clapped his hands together. “It’s time for dinner!”

“Dinner?!” Itadori gasped. He started salivating at the thought of food. “Gojo-sensei, what are we eating?”

The tall sorcerer patted the top of Itadori’s head affectionately. “To celebrate Yuji’s last night as a dead man, we’re going to a steakhouse!”

The kid loudly cheered as you looked to Nanami for clarification.

“Itadori is being introduced back to the school tomorrow.”

“Oh, I see.” Gojo had told you before that the Itadori was supposed to be dead and not to mention his existence to anyone. You didn’t understand why and you didn’t ask, but you kept your promise. The young sorcerer bounced around excitedly before hugging Gojo. You couldn’t help but smile at the adorable interaction.

“Let’s hurry up, so we’re not late for our reservation.” Gojo started walking quickly through the crowd with Itadori right by his side. You and Nanami were a little ways behind them as you found it hard to keep up with Gojo’s brisk pace. He pressed a warm hand against your lower back, guiding you through the large crowd.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that Gojo invited me,” you apologized. Even though Nanami said he would be more open about the jujutsu world, you knew he was still sensitive about you spending too much time around other sorcerers. “I was going to text you but then some classmates asked me if I wanted to study with them, and I said yes because you know I need all the help I can get, and then I completely forgot to message you and by the time I left the library and actually remembered I didn’t text you, I thought it wasn’t worth it since I was going to be seeing you at dinner soon, and I, uh, yeah.” You winced, realizing you were rambling yet again.

“It’s not your fault,” he assured you. “That idiot always has something up this sleeve.”

“You’re not upset, right?”

He rubbed his hand up and down your back. It sent a tingle up your spine. “I'm not upset," Nanami replied honestly. "I’m glad you’re here.”

You slid into the booth at the steakhouse. Itadori was already seated across from you. Gojo was about to take the open seat next to you, but Nanami grabbed the back of the man’s uniform and shoved him away.

“Hey!” the sorcerer loudly complained.

Nanami sat down next to you, completely unbothered. “Sit with your student, Gojo.” You tried to stifle your laughter, looking at the two men in complete amusement.

Gojo slid into the booth next to Itadori with a carefree grin. Teasing Nanami was too easy when you were around.

The four of you had a pleasant dinner together. Your only complaint was the way Nanami rubbed your thigh with his left hand the entire time while waiting for the food to arrive. You were wearing a rather short dress which rode up as you sat down, giving him perfect access to your bare skin. It was incredibly distracting.

You were a little surprised that Nanami was doing something like this in public, even though it was mostly hidden from sight. Part of you wondered if it was because Gojo was present. Nanami always acted a little differently with you when the other sorcerer was around.

For some reason, you couldn't shake the feeling that Gojo knew exactly what was happening underneath the table. Even with his blindfold on, you could tell that the sorcerer was looking right at you with a knowing smile on his face. You felt a little flustered, but Nanami seemed completely unperturbed. Perhaps it was just your imagination.

After dinner, you followed Itadori out the front door of the restaurant.

“Ah! I’m so stuffed!” he commented with a satisfied hum, rubbing his belly.

“I hope you still have room for some dessert.”

The two of you turned back to look at Gojo. Nanami was only a couple of steps behind him.

“Oh! Dessert? Don’t worry, Sensei. I always got room for that!” He gave Gojo a thumbs up.

“Great! I happen to know an amazing ice cream shop around the corner!” You blinked in surprise as the white-haired sorcerer wrapped a long arm around your shoulder again and started ushering you towards the destination. “Let’s get going!”

What you didn’t see was the way Gojo turned his head back to send a smug look to his dear friend. Nanami glared at the sorcerer but didn’t intervene. The walk to the shop was short, and you didn’t appear to be uncomfortable, happily chatting away with Itadori about the best and worst ice cream flavors.

It wasn’t until you all arrived at the shop that you pulled away from Gojo and latched onto his arm instead. “What are you going to get?”

“Hmm. I don’t know. What do you want?” he asked.

You looked at the menu, eyes squinting in concentration. “I’m stuck between Peanut Butter Cup and Mint Chocolate Chip.”

“Pick one and I’ll get the other. We can share.”

Your eyes widened. “Really? You don’t have to.”

Nanami smiled softly at that adorable look on your face. He gently tucked a hair away from your face. “I like both of those flavors anyway.”

Itadori and Gojo silently exchanged looks with one another. They were both internally squealing at the cute exchange they just witnessed between the two of you. It was rare to see such a soft side of Nanami in public.

“Nanami,” Gojo cooed, a little jealous. “Do you want to share some ice cream with me too?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Huh? Why not?” the sorcerer whined.

“Because you’ll get the most sickening ice cream flavor of them all.”

Nanami was absolutely correct.

Gojo ordered a large cone of triple chocolate ice cream with chunks of brownies, cookie dough, and fudge mixed with swirls of caramel and marshmallow.

It was a complete abomination.

The four of you sat outside, enjoying the nice weather while indulging in ice cream. You thought it was cute how Itadori’s strawberry cone almost matched the color of his hair. Once everyone finished their dessert, the group finally split up. You waved goodbye at Gojo and Itadori. “Good luck tomorrow, Itadori!” He had shared with you earlier about how excited (and a little nervous) he was to see his classmates again. You hoped the reunion went well.

It was a quiet walk home with Nanami. The two you held hands, enjoying the calm atmosphere now that Gojo and Itadori were both gone.

As soon as you entered Nanami’s apartment, you took off your shoes as Nanami removed his blazer. “I had a good time tonight,” you mused. “Itadori is such a sweetie, and Gojo—”

Your words were cut off with a gasp as Nanami roughly pushed you against the wall. He put a knee in between your legs, and one of his hands began to crawl up your exposed thigh. You instinctively wrapped your arms around his neck, shivering as you felt the pleasant tingle of his touch. He gave you such a heated look that it left you swallowing nervously.

“I don’t want to hear another man’s name out of your mouth tonight,” he growled in your ear.

You looked back at him, both half-amused and half-aroused. “I’m only yours, Kento.”

“Good.”

Nanami whisked you away to the bedroom as you laughed breathily in his arms.

---

Nanami surveyed the numerous body bags in the morgue of Tokyo Jujutsu High.

“Three Grade 2 sorcerers. One Semi-Grade 1 sorcerer. Five Auxiliary Managers. Two storage attendants,” Ijichi listed off the number of casualties.

Nanami clenched his fists. “This is the same curse that Itadori and I fought together, correct?”

“Yes,” the manager replied, pushing up his glasses. “Shoko confirmed that the bodies were all disfigured in the same manner.”

The sorcerer grit his teeth in frustration. He blamed himself. If he had been able to exorcise the curse back then, these innocent lives might have been spared. After all, it was his fault that Mahito had escaped. He hadn’t been quick enough.

“Gojo, can I have a private word with you?”

The white-haired sorcerer had been leaning against the wall the entire time, quiet for once.

“I’ll take my leave,” Ijichi announced, exiting the room.

Nanami broke the silence first.

“If anything happens to me, promise me you’ll take care of her.”

Gojo didn’t respond right away. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked in an unusually serious tone.

“Mahito is still around. My attacks are not effective against him. He seems to have a special interest in me, so there is a high probability we will run into each other again. And I may not be lucky enough to have Itadori by my side then.”

“No.”

“What?!” Nanami whipped around to face the sorcerer. The fury in his eyes was hidden by his sunglasses, but Gojo could sense the anger all the same.

“No, I won’t promise to take care of her.”

“Gojo, you—”

“Stop acting like you’re trying to die.” Nanami stiffened. “Take care of her yourself. You’re strong.”

A tense silence hung in the air.

Nanami let out a deep breath.

“Thank you, Gojo.”

---

The next day, Nanami had just finished a mission when the Kyoto Sister-School Goodwill Event ended. He came back to campus to see all the students in baseball uniforms. Wasn’t the second day dedicated to individual battles?

“Oh, Nanami!” Gojo called out, jogging over to him. He had forgone his blindfold for a pair of sunglasses and wore a simple button-up shirt and pants instead of his normal uniform. “Too bad you missed the game! We won!”

“The game?”

Gojo nodded with a devious look on his face. “Yup! This year, the Goodwill Event winner was determined by a baseball game!” He laughed victoriously.

Nanami shook his head. Only Gojo could successfully pull off a stunt like this in front of both school principals.

“By the way, we’re going out for some drinks tonight. Even Utahime and Mei Mei said they would join. You should come. And bring your girlfriend too.”

“Absolutely not.” There was potentially a traitor among the group, and Gojo thought it was a good idea to bring you into the mix? There was no way he was going to let that happen.

“Too bad. I already invited her.”

“You what?! ” Nanami fumed.

“You mad or something?”

Nanami thought about trying to strangle the white-haired sorcerer when his phone chimed. It was a message from you.

You: Gojo invited me out with you guys tonight. Is that ok?

“Is that her?” Gojo asked, trying to peek at Nanami’s phone screen.

“None of your business.”

He began typing his response.

“I know you won’t say no to her,” Gojo hummed. The other sorcerer ignored him.

Nanami: Yeah, it’s fine. I’ll pick you up and we’ll go together?

You: I have to stay a lil late at work :( someone called out sick so I’ll just meet you all there

Nanami: You sure? I don’t mind waiting for you.

You: Yup it’s fine! See you tonight!

Nanami locked his phone and put it away.

“So?” Gojo asked, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“She’s coming,” Nanami grumbled.

The white-haired sorcerer clapped his hands together excitedly like he hadn’t planned for this to happen from the start. “Great! I’m looking forward to tonight!”

Nanami glared at him in response.

“What? You still mad?”

Nanami tapped his fingers absentmindedly on the table. You still hadn’t arrived yet. Utahime was somehow already drunk, loudly laughing at something Shoko said. Gojo was bothering Ijichi who was sputtering nervously, and Mei Mei was silently sipping on a cocktail she forced Gojo to buy for her. Nanami bit back a sigh. He missed you.

“I heard from a little birdie that you have a girlfriend now, Nanami. And a non-sorcerer one at that,” Mei Mei commented with a sly smile.

Nanami looked at Gojo, knowing exactly who this “little birdie” was, but the white-haired sorcerer turned away with a whistle.

“A girlfriend?!” Utahime gasped. She grabbed Shoko’s shoulders and violently shook her. “Shoko, did you know about this?”

The doctor was completely unfazed. “Yeah. We’ve all met her before except you and Mei Mei.”

Utahime covered her face and made dramatic sobbing noises. “Out of all of us, it’s Nanami who’s dating first?!”

Nanami’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance. What was that supposed to mean?

“Shoko!” Utahime whined. “Will you marry me if I’m still single at 40?”

“I’ll do it!” Gojo quipped.

The Kyoto sorcerer made a disgusted gagging noise. “Like hell I would ever agree to that!”

“I’ll do it for money. How much would you pay me?” Mei Mei asked.

“You guys are all terrible!” Utahime exclaimed. She latched onto Shoko. “Only Shoko is nice to me!”

“But I never said I would marry you,” the doctor pointed out calmly.

The entire table burst into laughter. Nanami quietly sipped on his beer.

“Sorry, I’m late!” Your bright voice finally caught the man’s attention. You waved at the group, heading over. Nanami got up to greet you but a certain white-haired man beat him to it.

Gojo called your name happily, wrapping you into an unexpected bear hug.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Nanami commanded, immediately dragging the sorcerer off of you and kicking him back into his seat.

You chuckled lightly before hugging Nanami too. Hesitating for a little bit, you decided to kiss the man on the cheek. You knew he didn’t like PDA, but you still wanted to greet him affectionately.

“I think you missed,” Gojo pointed out.

Flushing in embarrassment at Gojo's comment, you were about to pull away and take a seat, but Nanami suddenly leaned down and kissed you on the lips deeply. It was so unexpected that you couldn’t suppress the noise of surprise that left your throat. You could vaguely hear the cheering and wolf whistles from the table which only made you blush more. Nanami finally pulled away, leaving you breathless.

“Now that’s more like it,” Gojo commented with a slow clap.

Ijichi covered his face with his hands, unable to believe he witnessed Nanami in such a manner. Utahime’s jaw dropped open in complete shock. Shoko was busy rummaging through her purse for a cigarette. Mei Mei raised her eyebrows, impressed at Nanami’s boldness.

Gojo gestured to you. “Well, say hi to Nanami’s girlfriend, everyone!”

You shyly waved at them. “Hi,” you squeaked, still embarrassed.

Even though you had the day off tomorrow, you hadn’t planned on drinking a lot during the night. But Utahime challenged all the girls to a drink-off and you couldn’t resist participating to get to know the other women better. Mei Mei only agreed to partake once Gojo confirmed he would cover everyone’s tabs.

It turned out that both Shoko and Mei Mei had incredibly high tolerances. You and Utahime on the other hand, not so much.

You groaned, struggling to climb the steps up to Nanami’s apartment. After watching your pitiful attempt, the sorcerer lifted you in his arms and carried you the rest of the way.

“Ugh, I’m sorry,” you mumbled. You felt bad that Nanami had to take care of you, especially because you had not intended to get this drunk.

“Don’t apologize.” He carefully set you down on your feet as he opened his apartment door. Nanami helped you wash up and get changed before joining you in bed once he was done with his own nightly routine.

You were practically laying on top of Nanami while rubbing a hand down his firm chest. When your hand started to wander lower, he gently took it and brought it up to his face to kiss it. “We should go to sleep.”

You pouted a little but mumbled in agreement, rolling off the man and nestling into his side instead. “Good night, Kento. Love you.”

Nanami stiffened, suddenly wide awake after hearing your words. He was filled with such an indescribable emotion that it left him completely speechless. Nanami was worried you would be upset that he hadn’t responded right away, but he was instead greeted by the familiar sound of your slow, deep breaths. You were asleep.

He let out a sigh. Nanami wondered if you would remember your confession in the morning, but he doubted it. Your memory was always spotty when you got this drunk.

Nanami kissed your head, stroking your hair gently.

“I love you too.”

---

“Is something wrong?”

Nanami didn’t even look up from the newspaper he was reading to address the white-haired sorcerer. “Everything is fine. Why are you asking?”

Gojo hummed, tapping a finger on his chin in thought. His sharp eyes took in his friend’s appearance. “You seem a bit tense. You didn’t have a fight with the girlfriend, did you?”

“Nothing of that sort happened. And even if it did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“So you did have a fight!” Gojo exclaimed.

Nanami turned the page. “No, we did not. And just to stop your incessant bothering, I will tell you that she has a very important exam today, so I have not seen her in several days to allow her to focus on studying.”

“Ahh, I see!” It made perfect sense to Gojo now. “You look so tense because you’re sexually frustrated!”

Nanami crumbled the edges of the newspaper in his hands. “I refuse to talk about such things with you.”

“Oh, but you’re not denying it,” Gojo pointed you. “Nanami, there is absolutely no shame in talking about our sex lives. We should be more open about sex to destigmatize it. For example, last week I—”

“I’m leaving,” Nanami suddenly announced. He folded up his newspaper and exited the lounge. He’d rather fight four Grade One curses single-handedly than hear about that man’s sex life.

---

Nanami couldn’t keep his hands off of you. As soon as you walked through his apartment door, cheering that you were finally done with your exam, he immediately pulled you into his arms and kissed you wantonly.

Your absence in the past few days was so striking. He had trouble sleeping and didn’t even feel like cooking without your familiar presence around him. It was so good to have you back again.

You giggled at his eagerness, looking up at him with a knowing smile. “Did you miss me?”

Nanami was already ushering you towards his bedroom.

“Let me show you just how much I missed you.”

The next morning, you stumbled out of Nanami’s bedroom with a loud yawn. You had no class or work for the day, so you were looking forward to lounging around Nanami’s apartment as a reward for suffering through your exam yesterday.

You perked up when you smelled something good in the air. Popping your head in the kitchen, you saw Nanami flipping pancakes.

“Good morning!” You eyed the pancakes with a hungry look.

“Good morning. Breakfast will be ready in a few,” Nanami replied, adding more batter into the pan.

“Okay!” You left to quickly get dressed for the day.

By the time you returned, Nanami was setting down a plate on the table piled high with fluffy blueberry pancakes.

“Thank you for breakfast!” you said with a wide grin, snatching two pancakes and putting them on your own plate.

After eating, Nanami looked at this watch with a small frown. “I have to go.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll clean everything up.” You headed over to the door where Nanami was slipping into his shoes and putting on his blazer. Before he opened the door, you stepped in to fix his tie that was just slightly askew.

“I’ll see you tonight, handsome?”

“Of course.”

For you, Nanami would do everything in his power to make sure he finished work on time and returned home as soon as possible. He used to look forward to the end of the workday because he hated working. But now he looked forward to the end of the workday because he got to see you.

As a jujutsu sorcerer, Nanami knew he couldn’t take anything for granted. Any amount of time spent with you was absolutely precious to him. So he wanted to make sure to maximize that amount of time as much as possible.

Nanami leaned down to kiss you.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

You blinked.

Huh?

Did he say…?

Wait, did you say....?

Your eyes widened in realization as you covered your mouth in shock.

Nanami said he loved you.

And you immediately said you loved him back.

The words had slipped right out of your mouth without you even realizing it.

“Enjoy your day off,” Nanami said nonchalantly before exiting the apartment. The door gently closed shut behind him.

When Nanami arrived at work, a certain white-haired sorcerer knew something was different about his friend.

“What happened with her?”

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

Gojo grabbed his phone and dialed a number quickly. “You owe me money, Mei Mei! I won the bet! I told you they would confess their love to each other before the end of the month.”

Nanami clenched his jaw.

Bet?

The sorcerer menacingly stood over Gojo, sword withdrawn and cursed energy swirling around him angrily. “What bet?”

Gojo removed the phone from his ear. Mei Mei could be heard angrily yelling from the device, clearly upset about losing a large sum of money. “Now, now, Nanami. You’re only this angry at me because I’m correct, right? You two finally confessed to each other?”

Nanami took his tie off and wrapped it around his hand.

The white-haired sorcerer threw his head back with a howl of laughter. “I’ll take that as a yes! But before you try to kill me, just know that a) it’s impossible and b) I only agreed to this bet to prove Mei Mei wrong. She didn’t think you had it in you to confess so soon! But I always had faith in you because I’m such a good friend!”

Nanami took a menacing step forward towards Gojo, but the sound of his phone chiming stopped his advance. Gojo took that as a sign to escape with his loud laughter still echoing in the hallways.

With a sigh, Nanami unlocked his phone to read the text from you.

You: Wanted to say I love you ♡

You: Just in case you didn’t hear earlier

You: But I’m pretty sure you did...

You: I just want to be sure

You: Anyways I’ll see you later :)

You: Miss you already

You: I'll try not to destroy your apartment

You: Ok sorry I'll stop bothering you now

He couldn’t wait to come home to you tonight.

#nanami x reader #kento nanami x reader #nanami smut #kento nanami smut #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #jjk smut #jujutsu kaisen smut #mine #n/sfw

531 notes · View notes

cdroloisms · 3 years

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haha your snippit abt the dispenser got me thinking.

Dream gets let out of prison and he talks constantly, whatever is on his mind. And he's positive all the time. To a fault where people walk over him. And it doesn't make sense because he was tortured right???? But after an incident they find out it's because he hates the sound of silence and needs constant reminders that other people are there. Also he was punished for any negative emotions in the prison so his default is happy now,,,

hi anon !! this concept makes me SO goddamn sad ,, the idea that he Has to be happy bc anything else would mean punishment im so *punches the walls*

this ,, ficlet is honestly. pretty ooc, not really related to the ask at all, and mostly an excuse for me to cry abt c!dream and c!punz for an excessive amount of time (technically the vote on twitter was supposed to have this as c!sapnap pov, but i just wrote one for him so i went for c!punz instead. mostly bc i wanted to write him LMAO). hopefully someone enjoys it despite *gestures vaguely* all of that mess

tw: trauma, disordered eating, implied torture/abuse, blood, injuries, unhealthy coping mechanisms, emotional distress, thoughts of murder/mercy killing, mentioned animal death, dark content

In the end, it’s all rather anticlimactic, the complete opposite of Dream’s vault and the whole fiasco of adrenaline and theatrics that had made up that day. Quackity ended up having one too many drinks, bragged about the wrong thing to the wrong person - Punz doesn’t know the specifics, only knows that one thing has led to another and suddenly Sapnap was screaming at his ex-fiancé, sword pointed at his chest and tears streaming down his eyes in the middle of the Community House floor, everyone else stood around and watching. A look into Quackity’s office said everything he didn’t - the chests and chests of used and new tools, shiny and sharpened and completely rusted over with blood and everything in between. There’s been a balled up shirt in the wastebasket, completely unsalvageable from how saturated it was with blood, more red than white, and perhaps most chilling of all the calendar, marked with X after X in red pen, going back months and speaking to their utter failure to see what had been happening all but right in front of them.

With Quackity down, Sam caved not too long after, and with his input getting into the prison was no challenge at all. The only thing holding them back were bad memories and the tense, worried edge to Sam’s jaw as he led the small group of them - himself and Sapnap, actually entering the facility, Bad and Puffy waiting outside - carrying them through winding corridor after winding corridor and lava pit after lava pit, until they’d come to stand before a chasm filled with flowing lava, slowly draining before the main cell.

“I- I have to warn you,” Sam had muttered, uncharacteristically hesitant, “it looks…pretty bad,” and Punz would’ve questioned him further, but the lava had fallen far enough to reveal the topmost edge of the cell, so they let Sapnap hound the Warden for information as they directed their full attention on the cell itself and holy shit.

Nothing Sam said could’ve possibly have prepared them for the sight - it was a complete fucking bloodbath, crimson painting the walls and smeared over the floor and splattered over every visible surface like some abstract art experiment gone wrong. The stench of iron and burning flesh and viscera was awful, even over the gap marked by the still-draining lava. Punz strained his eyes; at the very back of the cell, huddled, unmoving, was a similarly bloodstained shape that must’ve been Dream. They remember the crack of Sapnap’s knuckles meeting Sam’s face and breaking his nose, remember themselves chucking a pearl and feeling along Dream’s neck desperately for a pulse - everything beyond that became a swirl of voices and panic and crying that makes their head hurt to think about, so they don’t.

Recovery is…messy. The physical side had been bad enough - pulling Dream out of the cell, barely breathing, limp in his arms and far too light, all Punz could think about was a sheep he’d found a year ago, frail and struggling to breathe, one he’d ended up killing - quick and painless - with a sword through the skull because it seemed kinder than letting it suffer. Watching Dream struggle on the bed, laid up in Bad’s mansion because none of them knew if he’d survive going any further, body resisting the potions they’d slowly forced down his throat after being so over-saturated on them, temperature spiking and heat baking into his skin like the lava from the prison had been imprinted onto his body, Punz feels the same strange mixture of pity and unease, wonders if it’d be a hell of a lot kinder if they just put him out of his fucking misery.

Still, because Dream is a stubborn bastard, against all odds, he ends up surviving - his fever breaks, the potions begin taking effect, and a few tireless, aching days later his eyes flutter open, lucid for the first time in a week. Punz isn’t even in the room when he wakes, only knows that it happens because the too-quiet room suddenly erupts in noise and activity, muffled thumps and sounds of a struggle undercutting Bad’s frantic calls for someone to help, anyone, and they run into the room to find Dream thrashing on the bed, wounds reopened and blood dripping onto the sheets, eyes wild and wide as his head whips from side to side so hard Punz is half-afraid that he’ll straight up break his neck. Somehow, worst of all, not a single scream falls from his lips, nothing but muffled whines squeezing past his mouth, clenched shut, and for a singular, awful second they wonder how long it took before he realized that screaming was useless.

Fortunately enough for them, or unfortunately, it’s not like he can tell the fucking difference anymore, the panic and strain end up with Dream passing out altogether, and they trade uneasy glances with Bad before going to clean off the worst of his wounds. If everything they’re doing feels hopeless, dressing up wounds that’ll be torn open hours later when Dream is awake enough to feel fear but not much else because he’s forgotten what it’s like to not be afraid - well, that’s for them to think and everyone else to pretend not to agree with.

Weeks pass along the same vein - Dream wakes up, panics; they try to calm him down, fails; he falls back into unconsciousness, and they move on and pretend that they’re cleaning up wounds from battle and not from someone that’s literally been tortured for months on end. People stop by, occasionally; Puffy spends more time than not inside the mansion, but hardly ever enters the door into Dream’s room, Sapnap and George drop by occasionally with potion brewing supplies that the rest of them can’t go out to get; once, he’d gone out to the front door to find a chest with an enchanted golden apple, sender nowhere in sight. He knows that the server is busy; Quackity’s admission had brought more than a few secrets to light, and from what they understand, the political fallout has been pretty damn messy. Still, he stays in the mansion, and watches.

He doesn’t exactly know why he stays. They’re not a stellar healer, not beyond what they know to dress their own wounds, and spend most of their time doing odd-and-ends tasks for Bad, who looks more tired than ever. Maybe it’s because he’s seen Dream at his worst more than the rest of them, had been there through his entire fall from grace, watched as his eyes became clouded with anger and madness and a single, desperate hope that he’d chased at the cost of his world and himself. Maybe it’s because they have no ties to the rest of the server - not to Las Nevadas, falling apart under the scrutiny of the eyes that now fall upon it, not Snowchester, caught up in the chaos, not the Badlands, half-dissolved after the fiasco of the Egg and with Sam’s actions having just come to light. Maybe it’s because above everything else, he feels guilty.

They’d thought the prison was the answer. It’d seemed too simple, back in that Vault - a perfect answer, because everyone else was perfectly happy to watch Dream die another time and some part of them had clenched painfully at the thought even thought they knew it was for the best. The prison meant that he’d be alive, if angry, and at some point when he had the time or the nerve or the guts he could go and visit, and they would talk, and Dream would be angry but with time maybe he could even understand.

They hadn’t wanted this. He can’t imagine anyone wanting this.

“Punz?” They don’t jump at the voice at their back, they don’t, but Bad still has a tiny, tight-lipped smile when they turn around anyway, eyes creased in the corners and still not as bright as they’d been before the Egg. Bad looks at him knowingly, setting a bowl of soup into his hands. “For Dream, if you can get him to eat.” He shifts a pointed gaze towards the door. “Maybe you two could talk.”

“About what?” The words come out harsher than they intend, and they take a moment to bite back the mostly self-directed anger that Bad doesn’t deserve to receive the brunt of. “I just-” he waves his hand in the air, trying to articulate the mess that is his relationship with Dream without the words to explain it. “I don’t know, man.”

“You don’t have to talk about everything,” Bad says, calm as always, eyes flicking down to the bowl of soup in his hands. “Just start with the soup.”

Punz sighs. “I’ll try.”

He enters the room in a single, fluid motion, mostly because he knows that if he were to stop at the door then he’d never actually make his way in. Dream flinches back when they enter, eyes going wide and stance going rigid, and the familiarity doesn’t make the sight any easier to bear as they wait, as always, for Dream’s eyes to clear enough for him to realize he’s in the mansion and not stuck in that same obsidian hellhole.

“I brought soup,” they say, finally, when Dream looks up. Dream’s lips twitch up in what he probably means as a smile; between the still-healing gashes on his face and the fear that flashes over his expression, still, it comes out as more of a grimace.

“Thanks.” Dream looks away. “I’ll eat it later.”

Liar, Punz thinks tiredly, moving closer to set the bowl down on the nightstand by the bed. They frown as Dream’s expression goes slack and distanced, again, eyes fixed to stare blankly at the wall once again.

“You should have some now,” he tries, careful to keep his words even. “You need the calories.”

“I’m good,” Dream says, automatic, just shy of sincere. “Thank you.”

“Dream,” they don’t quite succeed at keeping a displeased sigh from falling from their lungs, and bite back a curse at themselves when Dream pulls back with a silent flinch. It’s so goddamn hard, to talk to this version of Dream, both of them feeling around the edges of their relationship like walking on goddamn eggshells. A few months ago, he would’ve straight up called Dream out on his bullshit, get it through his thick skull that the whole ‘I’m fine and don’t need anyone’ act was stupid and completely failing to convince him. Here, they bite back another sigh, look forlornly at the bowl of the soup on the nightstand, sure to go uneaten once again, and force themselves to sound completely neutral when they speak again. “Alright. You’ll have to eat at some point, though.”

“Mmhm,” Dream hums noncommittally, once again staring at the wall. Punz stares at his hands. This is so fucking pointless.

“So,” they say after a few seconds, Bad’s words echoing in their head - they can try to make an effort to talk, sure. It’s just that Dream’s not going to cooperate. “How are you, man?”

The words come out stilted, awkward. He looks up to watch Dream’s expression, as the other man begins to gnaw on the inside of his cheek.

“I’m good,” he says, words deliberately light. “You?”

“Dream…”

“I’m fine.” Dream’s voice sharpens suddenly, breath hitching, before he shakes his head and turns his head away. “I’m fine.”

Punz looks at him incredulously. “Are you serious? Do we need to get into exactly how not-fine you are?” They wave a hand in his direction, jaw clenching when he rears back. “Do ‘fine’ people lose their minds from someone waving at them, now?”

“I-” For a second, Dream glares at him, eyes burning with a familiar, irritated fire that Punz knows all-too-well from having it directed at him a few too many times, before it suddenly dies and Dream is swinging his head back to the bedsheets, hands tightening on the cloth as he stammers. “I- What do you want?”

Punz breathes a soft sigh, regret blooming in the center of their chest. “Sorry,” he mumbles, careful to keep their gestures overly-telegraphed and away from the other man’s face. “I’m just- you’re not okay, man. No one’s expecting you to be okay after...all of that.”

“But why?”

Dream’s voice is small, nearly a sob, and Punz directs wide, alarmed eyes to where he’s hunched in over himself, knees pulled to his chest, hands staring at the sheets pulled over them. “Why?” he says, again, quieter, lip trembling slightly.

“Because you were tortured,” Punz begins, words slow as they watch Dream’s expression, trying to pull out the thoughts behind his averted eyes, “Because the cell was inhumane, and nobody deserves to be treated like that. Because you were hurt very, very badly because of what we did, and none of us are expecting you to be fine right after going through months of trauma.” He pauses. “You know that, right?”

“But I’m out,” Dream says, quiet, disbelieving, instead of answering their question. “I’m out of there. It’s over. It’s- everything’s good,” he whispers, more to himself than to them, hands curling into fists and then uncurling. “I’m- they said I would never get out. And I’m outside, and it’s not- not the cell, and I get real food, and Quackity doesn’t visit anymore,” he shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut as his breath catches in his throat. “I’m happy- I should be happy. Right?”

“Oh Dream,” the other man flinches back, breath quickening, and Punz’s hand stops short from where he’d almost let it fall onto the other’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be happy, man. Not- not after all of that. Not if you’re not ready yet.” Dream’s eyes, wide and wet, rise to look at their own, and they feel more than hear the soft, wounded noise that leaves their lips. “It’s ok to be hurt. It’s ok to be scared. No one’s blaming you, alright? No one’s gonna hurt you anymore.”

This, more than anything, seems to be the breaking point, because Dream collapses forward, hands flying up to pull at his tangled hair before Punz manages to ease them away and into his own hands, watching as he grips onto them until his knuckles go white. His breathing shudders, quiet, even his sobs muffled as to make as little noise as possible, and they murmur meaningless croons and hums as he cries into their chest.

“I wanna- I wanna be okay,” he hiccups, and Punz smooths his hair back behind their hand.

“I know,” he swallows around the lump that has risen in his own throat. “I’m sorry.”

#tw trauma #tw disordered eating #tw torture #tw abuse #tw blood #tw injuries #tw unhealthy coping mechanism #tw emotional distress #tw murder #tw animal death #tw dark content #tw unhealthy eating habits #-> my writing #my writing :D #my asks !!#-> my asks

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momsopposed2theoccult · 3 years

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It’s come to my attention that a good majority of people on this website have a really poor understanding of the conflict between Toph and Katara in “The Chase.” As somebody who loves both characters and their friendship, this irritates me. Without further ado, let’s unpack that in what is in theory supposed to be a meta but turned out more like a rant.

“Katara was hostile towards Toph because the fact that she’s a gender non-conforming girl made Katara uncomfortable because Katara is obsessed with gender roles.”

Alright, so right off the bat this is just... completely idiotic and clearly fuelled by an agenda (and likely also a lot of projection). First of all, how is Katara of “I don’t want to heal, I want to fight!” fame “obsessed with gender roles?” There’s an entire episode in Book One dedicated to Katara refusing to conform to societal norms for women in the Northern Water Tribe! Katara routinely calls Sokka out on his misogynistic bullshit! (Mind you I adore Sokka but he could be a little twerp at times and Katara was 100% right to challenge him on it) Katara is the feminist icon of ATLA! The fact that people act like Katara is some sort of conservative tradwife who loves gender roles instead of the outspoken feminist and political activist she is makes me incredibly angry.

Second of all, Katara was extremely kind and welcoming towards Toph at first. She gently encouraged her to join in with the group as they all set up camp together as opposed to setting up her own private camp. It’s only when Toph refuses to comply with her that Katara begins to get irritated. Mind you, Toph has her reasons for this, something I’ll get to in a minute, but from Katara’s perspective (key word here is perspective) she’s just being an annoying little stubborn, selfish, lazy, anti-social, entitled brat. Of course we the audience find out later that this isn’t the case at all (or at least in theory we should find out later but apparently some people on here skipped that part), but for all her many talents Katara is not a mind reader and has no way of knowing what’s going on inside Toph’s head, nor does she know her well enough yet to fully grasp the context behind why Toph acts the way she does. Katara is somebody who greatly values community and believes in teamwork, so Toph turning down her warm welcome in favour of “carrying her own weight” likely felt like a slap in the face. Not to mention that she’s already emotionally exhausted from having to constantly mother Aang and Sokka. If I were Katara, I likely would have reacted the same way.

Oh and I agree that the “the stars look beautiful tonight, too bad you can’t see them, Toph” comment was out of line, but it doesn’t make her a horrible person. It makes her a 14 year old, and 14 year olds can be nasty, especially sleep deprived 14 year olds. Katara is otherwise a very kind and compassionate person. Other characters have said worse than that. Hell, Toph herself has said worse than that. That being said, it was a deeply hurtful comment and I do like to imagine that she apologized for it off-screen.

“Toph is a lazy, entitled, and classist spoiled rich brat who just didn’t want to do chores and expected other people to wait on her.”

This is another one that makes me roll my eyes and ask if they even watched the show. First of all, the presumption that Toph is a lazy or entitled person is just... laughable. I feel like people forget that Toph isn’t actually an earthbending prodigy in the way that Azula is a firebending prodigy (I could say more about Azula and how her belief that she was the unshakeable prodigal daughter ultimately caused her downfall and how by the end of the series Zuko is arguably a better firebender than her but this isn’t a meta about Azula and Zuko, now is it?). Nah. Toph was a sheltered kid who discovered she had the ability to earthbend, was told that she could never become great at it because she was blind, and in response said FUCK THAT and decided to work her ass off until she was not only great but the very greatest all thanks to her crazy, stupid, off-the-charts nerve, drive, grit, ambition, and desire to prove people wrong about her. Does that sound like a lazy person to you? Believe me when I say that you do not achieve that kind of skill level by sitting around on your ass and expecting to have things handed to you. And entitled? Don’t make me laugh. Toph hates having things handed to her, that’s one of her defining characteristics.

As for the implication that she’s classist and enjoys basking in her family’s wealth and being waited on...... are you stupid? Did you even watch the show? Toph absolutely despises everything about her parents’ lifestyle. Growing up like that was traumatizing and restrictive for her. We’re talking about a girl who likes to play around in the mud for fuck’s sake. Toph does not care how much money you have. She never wanted any to begin with. She even says it herself; “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. They gave me everything I could have wanted. But they never gave me what I actually needed - their love.” Not to mention that she easily could have continued to freeload off her parents wealth but instead chose to sneak out of the house and make her own money doing what she did best; disproving people’s assumptions about her earthbending. Oh and I’ve seen someone point this out before but WWE is generally considered a “low brow” activity that “proper” people frown upon and shouldn’t associate themselves with. Toph fucking loved it. I don’t know how seriously people take the comics, as they often miss the mark when it comes to characterization (Toph’s, however, was generally pretty accurate), but there’s a part in The Rift where Sokka asks her when she’s going to start charging people to learn metalbending and she gets all serious and flat out tells him that she will never do such a thing, because money doesn’t matter to her. Sharing her one true passion with the world is what matters to her. Oh and the part where she basically tells a bunch of rich and sleazy businessmen to fuck off and “stop thinking about money and start thinking about people’s lives” is just... *chef’s kiss* Sorry my thoughts here are so incoherent but this take is so piss poor and makes me so angry that I don’t even know where to start. As for “Toph enjoys being waited on” I just- *sigh* Toph has such a visceral and defensive reaction to any implication that she is unable to take care of herself. Like I said earlier, that’s one of her defining characteristics as well as the reason for her behaviour in “The Chase.” Where are people getting these takes?

You wanna know why Toph acted the way she did in The Chase? Well, first let’s recap her life up to this point. Toph was born the blind daughter of one of the wealthiest families in the Earth Kingdom. From day one her parents treated her like glass due to her disability. She was not allowed to leave her house unsupervised, and even then she was only permitted to walk around the gardens of her home. Every day of her life she was pitied, gaslit, babied, ignored, emotionally neglected, and made to feel ashamed of herself. She was not allowed to make any decisions for herself. She was not allowed to do anything for herself. She was not allowed to talk to other children. She had no friends. Other people didn’t even know she existed on account that her parents kept her locked up in her own home and didn’t tell anybody about her because they were so ashamed to have a blind daughter. Flash forward to “The Chase.” Toph begins to set up her own camp separate from the rest of the Gaang. Considering that she flat out was not socialized as a child and hadn’t even interacted with anybody her own age prior to a few days ago, this is understandable. So then Katara comes up to her and asks her why she isn’t setting up camp with the others as if she’s somehow incapable of taking care of herself (again, this is just what happened from her perspective) like she’s her mom or something and it just angers her because she thought she joined this group to get away from all that and she doesn’t understand how friends work because she’s never had one, all she knows is that apparently this girl thinks she isn’t capable of taking care of herself, and that infuriates her because it’s the exact same bullshit she thought she was running away from.

There’s a lot more I could say about this but I’m sick of typing so yeah in conclusion both of these takes are piss poor and I’m sick of having to read them. Stan Toph, Katara, and their friendship.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #katara #toph beifong #nora speaks

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oskarwing · 3 years

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I really wanna talk about the parent child relationships in Midnight Mass

I’m not sure if I’m good at writing this sorta Meta but here goes nothing. Very many spoilers follow.

Let’s start with the adults:

First we have Erin who suffered so much at the hands of her mother and later because of her mother’s abuse. We don’t get much detailed info on Peggy Greene but from what we can gather she was a lot like Beverly Keane, who seemed to idolize her (though that probably got easier for her after Peggy was gone), in her self-righteous over-pious manner. She just happened to be Beverly with an alcohol problem and a daughter who she could take all her anger at life for not working out her way for God loving her just the same as everybody else out. The dove scene is really such a good scene. But Erin was stronger than her mother, stronger than the abuse that was about to repeat itself and when she found out that she would have a child of her own she left and tried her best to give her kid a better life than the one she had. And she found the strength I think with the help of the same God her mother most likely used as legitimation for her abuse (don’t get me wrong I believe it was Erin’s own strength but she also clearly found something in religion that helped her gather it) and it helped her to carve out a path for herself and her unborn child.

Sarah’s relationship to her parents is such an interesting one because we get to see the end of it. The man who she believed to be her father has been dead for a long while and her mother is suffering through the late stages of dementia. And Sarah showed up for it. As a doctor she most likely knew what would be happening as soon as Mildred started to show the first symptombs but she wasn’t going to leave her mother. That kind of care for an elderly parent shows something that is proven in Mildred’s character time and time again: She is a very devoted parent and the love between mother and daughter flows both ways in every scene they are in together, after the birth of her daughter her world turned around Sarah and she loved her with all she had. There are a few scenes that show that Mildred’s understanding of the duty she felt towards her family came from the old values of her time. She wouldn’t have taken off with John and their child not for a lack of love but because in those times, in catholism still at least where I’m from, you can’t just marry a priest. You can’t just have a child with a priest eventhough you’re married and then fuck off with him. As a woman, as a wife and mother you have to stand with your husband, stand with your child and you have to stop running after fantasies I’m sure Mildred had. I’m saying this all from her perspective btw, I don’t necessarily think running away with John, in the way he wished to, would have been good for Sarah but honesty might have been and her old fashioned values were also what kept her from being truly honest with her daughter. To John on the other hand Sarah is a fantasy, a dream he couldn’t reach. His daughter, his baby, so close and yet so far away getting to watch her grow into an adult but never being able to really be her father as in her Dad instead of her priest. And it’s painful to him, he clearly loved Mildred, loved Sarah but he was also kinda selfish in his love that in the end took Sarah away. At first he isolated his child by starring at her giving her the creeps and the feeling that she had done something wrong that he knew she was gay and dissaproved and then he took it upon himself to ‘cure’ Mildred in the same way he was. Sarah wanted to take care of her mother wanted to be there for her in those final months and John decided it was up to him to give Mildred a youth potion to make it so she’d never die. And with that he took away from Sarah what is without doubt a hard but for many people a very important last part of the relationship between child and parent. John was a complicated man and would maybe have been a great Dad he certainly showed a lot of fatherly love for his altar boys but he couldn’t have the family in the way he fantasized about and in the end it was that fantasy that made him act the way he did.

Riley Flynn causes his parents a lot of pain. Him killing that girl in the beginning, his alcoholism, him simply not liking the place, the home they build for themselves through hard work causes the Annie and Ed so much pain and financial loss and you can see how tired they are, how much guilt they feel for failing their son. Ed calls out his own guilt and says that he doesn’t belive it could be Annie’s fault because ‘your mother’s a saint’ but what I truly love about Annie and Ed Flynn is that they both aren’t saints. As a mother Annie is very much overprotective and suffocating, wanting to keep her children on crocket island and hating the notion that they might leave her, even though she is kind and sweet and loving. And while Ed seems rather checked out as a father but he is the more honest parent, never talking down to Riley and telling him as it is, telling him about the pain he caused him while also admitting to the guilt he feels. The Flynns are flawed people even in their religious practice (I think the way Annie speaks about Ali showing up at church when Hassan seemed to be nothing but nice to her spoke very loudly to the fact that Annie is rather misguided sometimes) but they are good people at the core of it and their parenting might have been part of Riley’s way into alcoholism but it wasn’t only them. There were things they couldn’t change and things they had no influence over like his heart being broken by Erin running away, the sort of people he went out on parties with and so many other things... Yes, they may have shaped their son in a way that made him vulnerable to addiction and the party scene of the stock and tech market and brought him to the point where he killed a child but it doesn’t happen through parenting alone and they also shaped him in the good ways. Him not losing himself when Pruitt changes him, him being brave enough to warn Erin, him standing up for what he believes in those things were also shaped by Ed and Annie. They are one of the best example of flawed but good hearted Christians I have seen in recent media and their portrayal was one of the most heartbreaking ones.

Now the kids:

Let’s start with Leeza. Little Leeza Scarborough who before it comes to her wonder gets treated with pity and overprotectiveness from her parents and the island community at large. Leeza was injured by Joe Collie transforming him into the island’s villain and her into the ever present victim. What happened to her is without a doubt horrible and I understand why Wade and Dolly started to become these overprotective parents, why they were so easily sucked in to John’s and Bev’s scheme. Their little girl was almost taken from them eventhough Wade is the mayor, one of the most powerful people on the island he had no influence over what happened to Leeza even was the one who took her out that day and what followed the accident was as we can gather from their conversation with Sarah a lot of pain and financial burden though they say they would have done it all over for Leeza. In fact a lot of places in crockett island are wheelchair accesible and I am sure that Wade as mayor made it so (I can’t really imagine that a small place like the island was very inclusive though I may be wrong). After Leeza is healed they don’t want to question in don’t want to think about what might have been the cause for it. In fact they stop questioning anything after that point, after Leeza walks again they are completely vulnerable to Bev’s manipulation and them letting that happen, them just going along with everything, Wade protecting John after he kills Joe long after Leeza forgave him and with her forgiveness send Joe on a better path is what in the end makes them lose her. Because Leeza isn’t that little victim who needs pity and help, she is a strong minded, strong willed young woman with a lot of wit who similar to Erin finds strength in her faith but in a way that isn’t devotion without question and when the Easter vigil is held she doesn’t follow her parents eventhough she loves them deeply. She forgives them I think, because that’s what Leeza’s character is about in it’s core but her parents were two of the instigators behind what happened on the island, without Wade’s protection John and Bev couldn’t have come as far as they did and they put their trust in them because they loved their daughter so much they didn’t stop to question if maybe what made Leeza walk again was also a bad thing.

Ali and Hassan don’t have it easy and I as a white person really can’t speak much on the racism and religious discrimination they face. I can say this I think: The first line spoken about Ali before we even really get to look at him is “You didn’t invite Aladin” and already sets us up for what both of them know: They are the outsiders. Not only because they just moved to the island but also because in their faith they are different from their peers and religion can often be a community building event for people before it is anything else. Ali starts balming his father a little for that, for not trying to fit in more with the community, for moving after his mother’s death and then not trying to be closer to the people around them and for the pain all the pain the two of them went through before Crockett island. It isn’t oly peer pressure though of course that brings Ali to St Patrick’s. Sure, Ali wanted to be part of the community but also desperately wanted to believe that there was a devine power who could if he just did it (it meaning faith) the right way he might find a way to avoid the pain of his parents. Hassan knew that and he warned him that that wasn’t how it worked. Hassan was a protective Dad and maybe he overdid it from time to time but his worries were never without reason, his need to keep his son safe from a world that hated him for a crime that happened when he wasn’t even born yet never unfounded and him wanting to make sure his kid kept the memory of his mother alive never anything but the wish of a griefing man and loving father. In the end when they pray together there is peace in them. They face their ends with the dignity Ali’s mother would have wished for and they face it as father and son. While Beverly the true religious terrorist of the story burns away without it.

Warren is the youngest Flynn and it is never directly stated yet omnipresent that his coming of age happens in the shadow of his older brother’s mistake. Annie warns him away from drinking when he goes out he in fact doesn’t drink. He never drinks because of what his brother did. Warren would have been 12 when Riley killed that girl and so he would have seen and felt what his brother’s actions did to his parents fully without being yet old enough to maybe see the nuance. Annie and Ed probably try to right the wrong they believe to have done in parenting Riley with Warren and that’s a lot for a kid. I do think it’s pretty usual that parents of multiple children especially when there’s a larger age gap try to do better with the younger children, but that isn’t fair is it? Warren is his own person not a second chance to do it over. And yet seemingly he does what is asked of him. He’s alter boy, he’s charming and helpful and sweet, he doesn’t drink (even when he does smoke pot) and he helps his father where he can with his work. But in the end he feels guilty because he thinks he wasn’t enough and says at that last dinner he would have been different if he had known he wouldn’t see his family again. But Leeza is right they know and they love him and Warren deserved to not be perfect all the time.

Littlefoot saved Erin and Erin payed her back with all the love she had. She was never born but she gave her mother the strength and willpower to leave. In her speech to Joe Leeza said he reached through time and took things from her she didn’t even know she had yet.When Erin left her husband she reached through time and saved Littlefoot from a childhood like hers and when John gave Erin the angel’s vampire’s blood he reached through time and took away her child, a child who would have been loved and cared for. A child with an amazing mother and probably a great step-dad. Littlefoot’s story is tragic because she never got one.

#midnight mass #midnight mass spoilers #parents in midnight mass #I dunno man I just really love how they showed all these examples of parents

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kookiepredictions · 3 years

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Jungkook Twin Flame Reading

A little post in honour of Jungkook’s birthday after which I’ll be taking a break :)

Jungkook Twin Flame Reading

The relationship dynamic between Jungkook and his TF is so interesting to me. To say that they are made for each other is a huge understatement. If human beings have several layers and levels to their being, then it is safe to say that Jungkook and his TF are compatible at every level; that’s how “destined” they are. Even if you take away the spiritual aspect of their connection and just focus on the earthly, physical dimension, they are the type of people who would be instantly drawn to each other. It’s not enough said that they are each other’s type. They could walk into a room full of people and instantly pick the other. Each has the physical appearance that the other finds attractive, the personality that the other admires, and their overall goals and ambitions in life too are very compatible. Whether they hit each other up at the bar, met in a park, hooked up on Tinder, or had an arranged marriage, it doesn’t matter— they would end up together. It’s like in the movie ‘The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, where the protagonists erase each other’s memories repeatedly but still end up falling in love every time they meet again. Now you would say, how nice for them, that must make their TF journey so much easier than others’, but (very) interestingly, no, it makes it just the more difficult.

Since they are so obviously compatible, picking each other is an obvious option. It’s like, I don’t need to be divinely guided to pick you; I’d do it anyway. And this is what makes the connection so confusing because there are literally 2 Levels in this connection: 1, where they can just be together as partners or spouses or whatever other earthly relationship term they want to subscribe to, and 2, where they can show up as the Divine Masculine and Feminine and hence have a higher dimensional connection. The difference between these 2 options is that the 1st, while not terrible, would be a mere earthly connection wherein both operate from their wounded selves and therefore their love has conditions, projections, and therefore hurts and problems. This type of relationships is not very uncommon to find and one might even argue that what’s so bad with that? Every relationship has problems. That’s normal. But then I urge you to ask yourselves, is it normal or it is normalized? Also, it might be commonly seen, but with their potential to be Twin Flames, Jungkook and his DF are not here to have a “normal” connection. And they are definitely not here to subscribe to the normalized version of love as it exists in the world right now. As TF counterparts, they have been given a choice to opt for more, also known in the TF community as creating new relationship templates. This is why I had mentioned in one of my previous posts that simply being born and then meeting your TF counterpart does not automatically make you each other’s Twin Flames— it only makes you “potential” TFs. It’s only when you show up as your most authentic or Divine self that you are actually “being” TFs. This is not a very simple phenomenon to understand and a lot of times, TF counterparts meet each other and are caught up in the earthly, or lower chakra attraction that they feel for each other. This looks like intense sexual attraction, daydreaming and overthinking about each other, and being almost addicted to each other. Is this a very bad thing? No, definitely not. Understand that the lower chakras represent our earthly existence and as such, all experiences stemming from them ground us onto that aspect of life and done right, it’s a beautiful experience. Also, one thing I disagree with a lot of people about is that the TF connection is not romantic. Oh but it is! The TF connection is not a fairytale. Heck yeah it is! But I also understand where they are coming from. I think the problem is in the way the words “romance” and “fairytale” are perceived these days. I don’t know about you, but fairytales to me are all about boy meets girl, fall in love, want to be together but problems arise, misunderstandings happen, third parties interfere, sorrows and tears, breakthrough, problem-solving, maybe even some fights, songs and dances, and finally, union. This don’t look like the TF connection to you? Of course, the TF journey is not so oversimplified, linear or one-dimensional, and doesn’t end in like 1 ½ hours. But that’s still the gist though. As for romance, again, I earnestly think the meaning of romance is so skewed right now, it makes me sad. As far as I have lived (and loved), romance has never been just about wining and dining, flowers and chocolates, singing and dancing (although they are a part of that and a very fun one at that). For me, the TF connection is romance at its peak. If romance is defined as the expression of love and affection, then there can be absolutely nothing more romantic than a person who would stop at NOTHING to be with you, to the point that they would take an axe and strike down their own ego, burn and destroy themselves over and over again to be their most authentic self because they see you and think, you’re worth it. So many people in the world right now would rather replace you with someone else simply because they are too proud to look into themselves and heal their wounds that are stopping them from experiencing true love, and continue living with their masks on. Masked people bringing flowers and diamonds and basically everything else other than their heart has never been a romantic notion for me. But yes, the skewed definition of romance these days does not accommodate such depth of the emotion and expression of love, so it’s limited to being perceived (and executed) as materialistic and surface-level exhibition.

TFs, upon meeting each other for the first time, experience all of these earthly tendencies. In itself, it’s not a bad thing at all. It’s sweet, spicy and exciting because seldom do you find a person that gets your heart racing like that. The “relationship” too, seems within your reach. But just when you reach out for them, the tower moments happen. This is when TFs realize that there is much more than what appears on the surface and you got to dig deeper. With Jungkook and his DF, it just was even more confusing because them being so compatible and an “obvious choice” for each other, the delays and the “ifs” and “buts” just did not make sense. This was especially Jungkook’s energy where he was more focused on the earthly manifestation of this connection because that’s what made sense to him— boy meets girl, fall in love, together bam! (Lol I had to make that joke cuz it’s a special day). He was also focused more on the external manifestations of problems in the connection, for example, he would think, I cannot be with the DF because of X, Y, Z. But the TF journey, like any other spiritual journey, will always teach you to look inward. Any problem and situation in life is always the external manifestation of something that is wrong inside, and therefore that’s where all solutions lie. On the other hand, as DFs are usually initiated into the spiritual journey first and are more concerned with that aspect of the connection (explained in detail in a previous post), his DF kept running away from him because Jungkook’s state of mind was not supportive of her spiritual quests. It’s important to understand that neither of them was consciously doing this; both did what they did because that’s what made sense to them at their level of healing. As the “lead” in this journey though, somehow it all started with the DF. She felt the call to opt for that higher dimension in their connection and to move away from him when he wasn’t in the ready state to even understand, let alone, support that spiritual aspect, which is what is known as the Separation— the part where both parties need to focus on their own healing. However, it’s one thing to know what to do, and quite another to embody that knowledge and act on it with the trust that everything will ultimately work out. So for a while, she too was caught up in her lower dimensional cravings. It’s safe to say that just like Jungkook, she was terrified of losing him because like I said, even in a non-TF way, they seemed so perfect for each other, you just do not want to miss the chance to at least give it a shot. But her soul would be tugging at her to complete the tasks that she had undertaken prior to incarnation, in other words, her soul contract, so she wouldn’t be able to be fully present in this connection either. And so she would do this thing where she would take a step forward towards her destiny and then look back at Jungkook where he was in his journey to see if he would join her. Repeatedly. But this connection IS about your soul journey, her indecision and mental to and fro would energetically keep Jungkook in an indecisive and back and forth state too. It’s like everytime she would look back to see if she was making a mistake, Jungkook would look back to see if he was making a mistake. This was keeping him attached to his karmic situations, which would then drain him, which would make him want his DF more to fill him up, which would create energy drainage for the DF which would ultimately repel the DF and she would want to run far, far away from him. This pushing him away in turn would hurt and confuse Jungkook and he would start doubting the connection and his self worth and start thinking that he doesn’t deserve her and that she is staying away from him because she isn’t interested in him and it’s all in his head, and so he would think of walking away from her before she leaves him. This is the push and pull dynamic in this connection and this was the loop that they were stuck in for a while.

Over time though, his DF has been inching closer and closer to her destined path, trying to find faith in herself, in the connection and in Jungkook and has been looking back less. Recognizing her role as the lead, she has had to make the difficult decision to solely focus on herself and put Jungkook out of her mind— a “whatever happens, happens, I’m not abandoning myself for anyone anymore” kind of a decision. This has been difficult for her because she has always naturally been someone who puts other people’s needs before her own. When she likes someone, it has always made sense for her to almost sacrifice all her needs and wants for the other person’s. However, this energy has never been reciprocated to her in her previous connections, and her life would always eventually turn out to be one where her needs were always in the backburner. As I had said in a previous post, when she first meets Jungkook, the way he treated her was quite different from others. While other men would make these big show of love while ignoring the smallest, most basic things about her, Jungkook was observant of the little subtle things about her and more importantly, always willing and even seeking to do things that felt tailormade for her. While other people made their moves with agenda, Jungkook had this energy of just vibing in the moment, doing little things, making her smile. It was like he had even forgotten to set a purpose or intention of interacting with her; he just did what he did because it made him so happy. This caused her to put down her guard and a connection was made. However, this connection, or specifically, the happiness and bliss in the connection did not last long because both were interacting from a co-dependent place— they were both doing things trying to seek happiness from the other, to fill an empty void in themselves. But as I discussed earlier, when you seek something outside of yourself, it is never enough because that void can only be filled by you. So, what started as a beautiful and fun connection started morphing into a confusing, draining and hurtful one. This was very the signal to start levelling up into a higher dimension of the connection— the connection in itself wasn’t wrong; it was just that it was established in a lower, 3D dimension that was keeping it embroiled in pain and struggle. The DF was the first to recognize this and felt it in her heart to first, individually level up. But as said earlier, she was constantly looking back in doubt, afraid she might just lose him, which, true to the TF connection, kept Jungkook stuck in a fear of losing her. When Jungkook is stuck in the energy of this fear for long enough, external problems would manifest to reflect and amplify that fear, which then, as I said, would make him want to leave her first before she could leave him, because he felt that he loved her too much to ever be able to bear the pain of his heart being broken by her.

In present times, his DF has been a lot more confident in herself and in this connection. This has happened because she has spent considerable amount of time healing her trauma patterns which has immensely increased her faith in the Divine and she is able to see this connection clearly, not just from a knowledge point of view, but also from a deep feeling. In the past, she was stuck in the confusion of “if he is right for me, then how does it make sense to leave him behind?”, the same confusion that Jungkook had. But then again, when she stayed behind, there would be all these differences of opinions between them and problems and hurt would ensue. Both saw each other as their destination and yet, the path each proposed to take was different. Jungkook took the more rational, practical path while his DF was inclined to the more spiritual, “listen to the Divine, have faith and let go” path. Incidentally, the spiritual path is not irrational either. The real, practical problems in their connection did not go unnoticed by the DF. She noticed the co-dependency, the fact that she was constantly putting her own needs behind to try to address his needs and also the fact that even after that, Jungkook was still stuck in fear, doubt, confusion and misery. But more than anything else, she saw the once-beautiful connection deteriorate every day. This was painful to her because from the moment she saw Jungkook, as an intuitive and foresighted woman, she knew he was the one, and that this would be a beautiful and fulfilling connection, and the start had even been that way. The intense attraction, waiting for each other everyday, daydreaming when they were alone, every love song finally making sense— stuff straight out of a movie or a romance novel. But this reality kept slipping off, and it hurt her to see it all go down the drain. So when she realized that this connection needed to be anchored to a higher frequency, she had to make the choice of walking away from him to work on herself. She knew that she wasn’t being her most authentic, divine self, and as such, wouldn’t be able to create an authentic and divine connection. While in the past she was afraid of being judged by him for the choices and decisions she made, more recently she has stepped into the confidence that living her life from her heart is not something she should ever be afraid of, and if Jungkook is the divinely destined partner that she thought he was, he would never stand in the way of her living a life that made her happy. She also knew that unless she heals herself from her own trauma and wounds, she would not be able to love him right either. She isn’t perfect and in the past she has done many a hurtful things to people she loved and she is afraid unhealed, she would do the same to Jungkook. In this energy, she foresees the connection to become riddled with problems and trauma bonding and she would rather leave him and this connection right this instant where it is still relatively peaceful, than create a reality where they hurt each other that much. It’s funny that in her past relationships, whenever she hurt her partner, she would feel guilty for behaving that way more because she feels it was beneath who she is, but on hindsight she will be like, well they still deserved it for being complete jerks to me. But with Jungkook, she feels like she wouldn’t be able to ever willingly hurt him because she believes he doesn’t deserve to ever be treated that way, so it could only mean that in such a state, she would only hurt herself each time and she didn’t want that for herself either, so she feels like she’d rather stay away from him and the connection than cause all that. This is similar to how Jungkook feels about her as well, which is why no matter how tough it gets for him to go on without her, he always reminds himself that he couldn’t possibly with her until he became capable enough to give her all the happiness that she deserves, so that’s where they would mirror each other. And yet, everytime he feels empty, he wants to reach out to her. However, as the DF has started becoming confident in the connection, and stopped looking back in doubt, Jungkook has been feeling confident too. The more she heals, he heals. Now, they are both on their adventures of finding themselves while still recognizing the presence and impact of this connection in their lives. I think they’ve both realized that trying to escape this connection is a lost war. Instead they are embracing it and letting it guide them while still learning to put themselves first. Even after all the doubts and fears, their destination still remains the same, and the path seems to be aligning as well because they are both trying to meet each other halfway. Will there be anymore problems, confusion, doubts, fears, anger, frustration? Maybe, maybe not. But like I always say, that’s not the point of life at all. Nor is that the point of relationships. Problems might still arise but unlike in the past, they won’t be swept into co-dependency. The DF has learnt to listen to her heart every time, even if Jungkook does not agree with her and will address Jungkook’s needs only when she has ensured that her own needs are met first. In return, Jungkook has learnt to trust that his DF’s path will never be separate from his— time and time again, he has seen his DF return to him, never ceasing to love him and he has learnt to trust more in the Divine to give him what he believes belongs to him. Soon enough, they will be whole, complete and happy enough on their own accord and this will create a harmonious and blissful interdependent connection between them with the earthly intense attraction as well as the divine peaceful stability.

Just to avoid an abrupt end, let me share one of my favourite quotes that aptly defines this journey (except add “vice versa”):

“A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.”

― Maya Angelou

Happy 24th birthday Jungkook, I hope you always know and remember that you are well loved, not because the person or the people who love you are good people, but because you deserve to be loved always. What is yours will never pass you by and what you seek, seeks you I promise. You will see, in time. Every single thing in this connection and in this journey might not make sense and it might seem long and dragged out, but if you want the other person to consider your needs, you must consider theirs too. That is true love. And it is yours. You’ve worked for it and you’ve earned it. Your DF wants you as much as you want her. But she won’t give herself to you unless she deems herself as someone you deserve and you deserve the best. She knows you already think she’s perfect but she also knows that you have the biggest, the kindest and the most accommodating heart and you would never make anyone feel lesser than. But she’s adamant lol. She says, Jungkook deserves the best and he will have the best. Please allow her the time and space to do this not just for you but also for herself— allow her to heal her insecurities so she never feels small and insignificant anywhere she goes. Don’t forget that your destination is the same. Allow her to take a different path once in a while if she so pleases, and don’t be afraid to do the same. Do what YOU want to do and what is best for you. Always. If it hurts her ego, best believe that it is HER problem to take care of. If you are meant to be, mistakes and slip ups will never get in the way of that. If you are meant to be, neither of you should ever have to hide any part of yourselves. Trust that being your most authentic selves, no matter how odd, shameful and unforgiving it might seem to you, will always bring you closer. That’s just what unconditional love is. That’s what you are divinely created to have. If you have to hide, pretend and suppress any part of you to please the other, it’s just not love, and believe you me, your connection won’t last that way. I know it’s scary, to show those parts of yourself to another, parts that even you haven’t been able to accept, embrace or forgive, then how are they going to do that? She knows and she fears the same about herself. But know that you both have to show up as who you are, otherwise this connection remains a daydream and an illusion, the bubble of which will burst sooner or later. You both have been given the opportunity to create something that is not just missing but is needed in this world right now. Take it and make the best out of it. At the end of your lives, as you sit on your porch, watching the sunset together, you will get to look back in triumph and gratitude for one hell of an adventure. Happy birthday once again! May this day be the start to the best, happiest, most fun, most exciting, most exotic, most peaceful, most authentic and most soul-ly fulfilling life you have ever wanted.

P.S. I really wanted to make a small and compact post but for some reason I rambled on and also I feel so tired after this I want to go to sleep immediately. I don’t have the energy to see what I’ve written anymore so I hope it all made sense. See you after my break! PPS. :) :) :)

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