#like it you watch closely it happens at least twice pet episode?!?! it's too fucking much!!!!!

[thenobleprincex]

that single tear thing ncuti does when the doctor is overwhelmed.... it hurts and I'm obsessed

[cyhyr]

Summer of Whump Day 24: Stitches

Fandom: Naruto

Rating: T

Pairing: Hatake Kakashi & Umino Iruka; Uzumaki Naruto & Umino Iruka

WC: ~2530

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Notes: Stitches, performed without anesthetic. Dissociation. PTSD. References to past non/dub-con between Mizuki and Iruka.

A/N: Heyyy I did a tiny bit of research, watched a video on how to perform these kinds of emergency stitches, and Have Never gotten stitches before in my life, anesthetic or no. I just wanna hurt the man, is that so bad lol

~

Two days after Mizuki puts a fūma shuriken in his back, showing his true colors and betraying the village, Iruka leaves the hospital because he is sick of laying on his stomach. The medinins refuse to heal him any further, saying that his body needs to help put itself back together without the use of chakra; still, though, they want him to stay for at least a week, so they can keep an eye on his stitches. Iruka knows how to care for stitches. And so, with minimal pain medication and Naruto’s begrudging assistance, Iruka signs his discharge forms and goes home.

The next day he goes back to work at the Mission Desk, as the Academy is on break for another two weeks before the next term starts. The work is physically simple, if stressful in other ways. There really should be refresher courses for shinobi with terrible handwriting.

The problem happens on his way home. And it’s really the dumbest thing.

A stray cat gets underfoot. Iruka stumbles. He twists just enough to catch himself before he falls, and feels some of the threads holding his back together rip.

He’s proud of the fact that he holds back any outward expression of pain. He’s also proud that he makes it the rest of the way home without attracting any attention or getting any odd looks.

Iruka heads straight to the bathroom once he’s home, and is able to shrug off his flak vest easily enough. There’s a spot of blood on the inside, soon to set into a stain. Iruka can’t be bothered. He tries pulling his shirt over his head and grits his teeth at the flash of pain—nope, that’s not happening. Instead, he pulls a pair of scissors from the vanity drawer, sighs for the hopelessness of needing to replace this shirt later, and cuts the fabric off of himself.

Once his shirt is in pieces on the floor, he turns around and looks over his shoulder as best he can to observe the damage. He’s bleeding sluggishly through the ripped threads, and the skin has split again. He should go to the hospital.

He really doesn’t want to go back to the hospital. It’s only been a day.

But he can’t fix this himself; if it were on his arm, or leg, or hell even his chest or stomach, he could do it. In the middle of his back, however? That’s just—

“Iruka-sensei, I’m home! And I brought Kakashi-sensei! He said he was going to have soup for dinner so I invited him! Who has just soup for dinner???”

Oh, shit. He forgot about Naruto coming over. He forgot about giving Naruto a key and teaching him the wards. And of course, Naruto invited his jōnin-sensei—which normally wouldn’t be a problem! But he can’t go out there like this.

Fuck.

Naruto knocks on the door. “Iru-nii?” He’s quiet, which is how Iruka knows that Naruto is worried about him. “Is everything okay?”

His instinct is to say yes, of course I’ll be right there but he doesn’t want to lie to Naruto. He’s not okay, and he won’t be okay if he can’t get his back—

Wait.

Kakashi.

He’s not considering this. He barely knows the man! But then, wouldn’t that make it easier to ask for a clinical, clean, stitch me up please with no weird feelings?

Naruto knocks again. “Iru-nii?” The handle jiggles like he’s about to open it.

“I’m… I—Actually, could you. Um.” He braces his hands against the vanity. He can do this. He gets it all out in one large exhale: “Can you send Kakashi-sensei in here, please?”

Naruto seems to pause—maybe even thoughtfully—outside the door before he runs back to the living room. Iruka whines through his teeth as his back continues to bleed sluggishly. He can hear the two of them talking in the apartment, Naruto’s voice getting louder as he comes back to the bathroom.

“Please, can you just—?”

A soft knock. “Iruka-sensei?” Kakashi’s voice is just as soft.

“Come in, please,” Iruka groans. “Don’t let Naruto in,” he adds quickly.

Kakashi steps through the door and shuts it behind himself. He crosses the bathroom in two steps and stands behind Iruka, examining the wound. He lets out a low hum. “I thought you’d be on bedrest for at least another week, sensei,” Kakashi comments. “I heard this was serious.”

Iruka ignores him. “There’s a suture kit in the cabinet above the toilet,” he says instead. “Is there any chance I can have you—?”

“Why not just go back to the hospital?”

“I… Gods, Kakashi-sensei, I hate it there. It smells wrong and everyone looks at me with either distrust or pity and I. I can’t. Please.”

Kakashi doesn’t respond verbally, but does go to the cabinet and remove the suture kit. He pushes his hands around Iruka, into the sink, and washes up; then he finds a washcloth, wets it, and carefully drags it along the skin around the wound.

“You still may have lost a significant amount of blood, sensei. You should—”

“I’ll take an iron supplement,” Iruka shakes his head. “Just. Close it back up, please.”

“There’s no anesthetic in here.”

“I know,” Iruka says sheepishly. “I used it up last time Mizu—well, I never got around to replenishing it.”

“I don’t know the medical ninjutsu to numb the nerves,” Kakashi warns. “This is going to hurt.”

“I’m aware. Just. Do it.”

He can feel Kakashi prodding softly at his back with the forceps, the metal cool against his skin. He prepares himself for the worst.

~

It’s been at least a year and a half since Kakashi has had to give someone else stitches. He sets the forceps aside, back in the kit, and selects a pair of gloves.

“No latex allergy?” he asks, to confirm.

“I wouldn’t keep them in the house if I had one,” Iruka grumbles.

Kakashi hums and pulls his own gloves off, replacing them with the latex. “Five stitches in total, sensei,” he says, assessing the length of the exposed injury. “You popped four, but I learned a different method of stitching; I’ll need to make five to cover the same distance.”

Iruka nods. “Whatever you need to do.”

“Do you have something to bite?”

Iruka nods, reaches up and pulls his hitai-ate down his face, and back to his mouth. Kakashi notes that he doesn’t put the metal plate in his mouth—either he’s had this done before, or he’s not stupid.

Kakashi loads the needle, picks it up with the driver, and presses the tip of the needle against Iruka’s skin. “Last chance to go to the hospital,” he says.

Iruka groans through his makeshift gag and shakes his head. Once he’s still again, Kakashi drives the needle into his skin, turns his wrist, and pulls the first half of the stitch out of the right side of the wound. Iruka’s curse is muffled, but what Kakashi can determine sounds… creative?

He’s careful in pulling at the wound with the forceps, placing the needle precisely and piercing the flesh. Another turn of his wrist has the needle point rising up through the skin. He shifts the grip and pulls the needle through, letting the suture thread follow.

Iruka is statue-still, but whimpering behind his gag. It’s… gods it’s impressive, how still he holds himself through such biting pain. Then again, he is a shinobi—even if he’s a teacher now, Kakashi remembers pulling field work with Sandaime’s newest pet. Pain is just part of the job.

That doesn’t mean they can turn their nerves off.

Kakashi loops the thread and ties it off, settling the knot on the left. Twice more he knots the thread to keep it from coming loose again. He might not be a medic, but his stitches don’t pop. ANBU was good for something.

“That’s one,” he mutters and readies the driver again on the right. Iruka nods, and he continues the stitching.

As he’s tying off the second stitch, he notices that Iruka’s shoulders are, perhaps, too still. He glances around Iruka’s body (he thought the man would be slight and yes, he’s smaller than Kakashi, but they’re built similarly and that’s not important right now damnit) and notices that Iruka is barely breathing.

He sets his tools down and puts one hand on Iruka’s abdomen. “Breathe,” he orders. Iruka immediately sucks in a breath, pushing on Kakashi’s hand. He nods, saying, “Very good. Keep breathing through it. You’re doing very well.”

He picks back up the forceps and driver, not realizing the effect his words have on Iruka.

~

The needle bites into his back for the third stitch and Iruka breathes deeply through his nose. The pain is sharp and intense and combined with the ache of the rest of the shuriken wound and how recent Mizuki’s betrayal is on his mind… Iruka’s worried that he’s going to slip away like he used to in the last few months of his and Mizuki’s relationship. Before he had threatened Naruto one too many times and Iruka asked him to leave and not come back unless he can respect both of them.

(Mizuki hadn’t come back. He, instead, had gone and gotten engaged. Turns out Asuma-nii-san was right when he’d said that Mizuki was using him.)

(That was over a year ago. He doesn’t cry himself to sleep anymore.)

The needle comes up the other side and Iruka braces for the oddity of thread sliding through his flesh. Then the discomfort of the wound being pulled back together.

Kakashi is good at this, though. He uses even pressure the whole time, so Iruka can be sure exactly how much it’s going to hurt.

“Three done,” he says. “It’ll be over soon. You can take it.”

Mizuki used to say stuff like that.

Just a little more, baby. I know it hurts, but you can take it.

Iruka fights to stay present. The needle goes in, and in, and out and out; thread slides along the way it’s guided.

Aww, ‘Ruka, you gonna cry from a few stitches? I thought you were stronger than that.

He whimpers. He can’t have an episode in front of Naruto’s jōnin-sensei. But this was an unfortunate perfect storm of pain and soft words and harsh action but gentle hands and. And. And.

He breathes in. And out.

“There we go, that’s it,” Kakashi murmurs behind him.

His eyes lose focus. He needs to stay still because Mizu—Kaka—because… The pain is dull compared to the ringing in his head and the throbbing in his teeth. He can feel his heartbeat in his neck.

He tries to get out a warning. That he’s about to slip. He’s dissociating. He’s—

~

“One more knot,” he mutters. “You’ve done very well.”

Kakashi finishes the final knot and snips the thread to size. There are surgical dressings and tape in the box alongside the suture kit; he tapes a large dressing into place over the whole wound, not just the new stitches. The latex gloves come off and fall into the garbage beside the sink.

Iruka hasn’t moved.

He puts his hands on Iruka’s shoulders and turns him around; takes the hitai-ate out of his mouth and lets it rest around his neck. Iruka is… dazed? His breaths are shaky, uneven; what the hell…?

“Are you okay?”

Iruka nods slowly. Maybe the pain made him non-verbal. Kakashi’s known shinobi for whom it’s happened before.

“You took that well. I don’t know many shinobi who would get that many stitches without anesthetic outside of a field situation.”

“Thank you,” Iruka says drowsily.

That wasn’t exactly the answer he was hoping for. Umino Iruka is known for having a smart mouth and a quick wit; this is something else. “You should eat something.”

“Not hungry.”

“Something light, then.” Kakashi tugs him along by his elbows, says, “Your bedroom, out and to the right?” Iruka freezes, for less than a second. It’s enough for Kakashi to notice; he hastens to explain, “You need a fresh shirt, yes?”

Maybe a sense of normalcy will bring him back. Should he treat Iruka differently in this…

Fuck, the man’s not even looking at him. He’s looking at their feet. He’s trembling.

Trauma response, his ANBU training supplies. Fuck.

He takes Iruka’s hands, over-projecting his movements, and says, “Let’s get you dressed, and then you can sit with Naruto for a bit?”

Iruka’s like a doll as he follows along into his room, and sits primly on the edge of the bed. Like he’s ready to slip off at any moment—shit.

Kakashi ducks his head out of the room and yells down the hall. “Naruto? Come over here.”

The door next to his hand opens up and Naruto stands in the doorway, clearly stressed and worried. “Is Iruka-sensei okay? What happened? You guys were in the bathroom forever!”

Kakashi holds up a hand to stop the rambling. “He’s alright, I think. He’s—well, something unrelated to what I—”

Naruto pushes by him and into Iruka’s room. He clearly takes in Iruka’s shirtlessness and position on the bed to mean something else, because he crosses to Iruka and pulls the man into a hug. Then, he glares at Kakashi.

The Fox glares at Kakashi.

“You! I trusted you! How dare you touch him like that—!”

The fury is rising fast, and Kakashi needs to do damage control before real damage becomes a problem. He raises both hands and tries to placate Naruto, explaining, “Iruka asked me to fix his stitches. The trauma response is unrelated to me, I swear. Naruto, I didn’t touch him without his consent.”

The heat in the room settles a little, as it looks like Iruka leans into Naruto and maybe even mutters his name. Naruto looks away from Kakashi, his eyes still exposing the Fox, and he grits, “Second drawer down,” while pointing at a chest of drawers against the wall.

Kakashi moves carefully—he’s not sure yet how much of the Fox is out of the seal’s control and he doesn’t want to risk it. The second drawer has a selection of uniform shirts and also casual tees. Kakashi picks the topmost civvie tee and brings it to Naruto.

“That’s close enough,” Naruto growls when he gets to the end of the bed. He’s three paces away. He’s not positive that it’s far enough to make a clean retreat should Naruto determine him to be a threat. He tosses the shirt the rest of the way, and watches while Naruto helps Iruka into it.

“I’m going to go and find him something light to eat. Stay with him?”

“Of course,” Naruto growls. “You don’t need to ask.”

“Naruto…” he hesitates, not sure he wants to know, but is too curious to not try and ask. “What happened? Who—?”

“You can ask Iruka-sensei when he’s back,” Naruto says.

It’s telling enough that Naruto understands what’s going on, that Iruka is dissociated and not present. Kakashi heads out of the room with a nod. Someone who inspires this much rage from the Fox, and who Naruto is comfortable enough with to call “brother”?

Kakashi absolutely intends to find out everything he can about this man.

[nastybuckybarnes]

Princess of the Elves

Pairing: Geralt X Reader

Summary: As Princess of the Elves, life at the Edge of the World is a little less-than-fun. However when a Witcher and his Bard show up in your brother’s court, your life gets all the more interesting. Or what happens when a young woman follows a Witcher into too much trouble.

Warnings: Language, Smut, Fluff, Violence, Flashbacks, Injuries,

Word Count: 5,2K

A/n: Writing for Geralt is one of my favourite things to do now. If you haven’t seen the Witcher PLEASE go watch it because it’s amazing. This takes place in episode 2 and contains little-to-no spoilers!

THIS WILL HAVE A SECOND PART!!!

MASTERLIST

~*~

"This is the part where we escape," the human says, tugging against his restraints. The white-haired man behind him grunts, struggling to break his bonds.

"This is the part where they kill us!" He snarls. You watch from a dark corner in the room as Toruviel kicks the human in the face.

"Beast!" She snarls in Elder, kicking the white-haired man.

"Elves," he spits, glaring up at her.

"Hey, that's my lute!" You watch with a frown as his lute gets destroyed, all the while his companion is being kicked mercilessly.

"Shut up!" The white-haired man yells.

"No, you shut up!" Toruviel snaps.

"My elder speech is rough. I only got part of that." You can almost hear Toruviel's annoyance. "Humans, shut up!"

The human nods and replies in Elder, "Ah, got it, thanks so much."

"Do you wanna die right now?" She asks, towering over the two men. "As opposed to later?" The pale one demands, spitting out blood. She kicks the human in the stomach and the other man nearly snarls.

"Leave off! He's just a Bard!"

She turns to the pale man, a wave of newfound anger in her eyes as she punches him time after time.

"You don't deserve the air you breathe! Everything you touch, you destroy!" She kicks him in the face twice more and you flinch.

"You hide in your golden palaces. You beat a bound man, too scared to even look him in the eye!" The bard shouts, glaring up at her.

"Do you like my palace? Hmm?" She walks over to the man with the golden eyes and grabs his chin, lifting his face up to her level. "Does it live up to the tales you humans tell?" He slams his face forwards, forehead breaking her nose, and she falls back with a groan before quickly being overtaken by a fit of coughs.

"Yeah! Take that, pointy!" The Bard laughs.

Toruviel wheezes and coughs and the second elf rushes over to her side as two more people enter the room.

"Wait, what's wrong with her?" He asks, suddenly concerned.

"She's sick!" You sigh softly at the sound of your brother's voice.

"Oh? And who's this?"

"He's Filavandrel. King of the Elves." You roll your eyes at the way Torque says it. As if your brother is so majestic.

"Not a King. Not by choice." He offers Toruviel a canteen and she drinks from it, her wheezing slowly ceasing.

"You were stealing for them," the pale man says. Torque looks at him, getting defensive. "I felt for them. They were forced out of Dol Blathanna." You can't help but have a soft spot for the Sylvan. He's so kind and gentle. To you, at least.

"'Forced out'? No, they chose-" you're close to cutting in yourself, but Filavandrel beats you to it.

"Do you know anyone that would choose to leave their home? To starve? To have a Sylvan steal for them?" He turns away from the two bound men.

"Toruviel, no one was supposed to get hurt," Torque says, a frown on his face. She rolls her eyes. "What's two humans in the ground when countless Elves have died?"

"One human!" The pale man specifies, his eyes hard. "And you can let him go." Your brother stands up, scoffing at the idea. "Then Posada will learn that we are stealing. The humans will attack. Many will die... on both sides."

You slowly move from your hiding spot to one where you can see both hostages more clearly, frowning at the sad look on the Bard's face as your brother drones on and on about how elves have been mistreated.

You study the two of them, watching the tiny reactions they have. The way the paler man stays perfectly stoic throughout your brother's speech and the way the Bard flinches every now and then at a few graphic details.

"Like you, Witcher?" This catches your attention. You turn to the two men, intrigued beyond belief.

Could it be true?

"I have learned to live with them. So that I may live." A Witcher. A true Witcher, right in front of you.

You're so in awe that you don't see your brother lifting his dagger up, prepared to kill the Witcher and the Bard. Just as you're about to jump forward and stop him, he cuts through the ropes restraining them.

"Thank you, Filavandrel." The Witcher says. Your brother simply nods, looking away as the two get to their feet.

"You'll leave immediately. Never come back." The two nod, the bard frowning at his broken lute.

"I don't suppose you have any lying around that you're not using?" Your brother purses his lips and walks out of the room. You duck through a crevice in the wall and run down the hallway, catching up with him in no time.

"Fil! I wanna go with them!" You exclaim rather breathlessly. "(Y/n) how many times have I told you not to snoop! You cannot go with the Witcher and his pet. The world is a dangerous place for an elf. Even more dangerous for a female Elf. Most dangerous for a female Elf who travels with a Witcher of all people." You roll your eyes.

"You cannot stop me and you know that. I thought I'd let you know that I'm leaving now." He sighs heavily, "don't say I didn't warn you. I care about you, Sister. But I know I cannot control you." He hugs you softly and you sigh. "I'll be safe. You and I both know I can hold my own." He nods with a soft chuckle.

"Go on then. Be careful out there."

~

"Credit where credit is due. That whole reverse-psychology thing you did on them was brilliant, by the way." The Bard says, walking alongside the Witcher and his horse. "'Kill me. I'm ready.'"

You walk behind them, listening with a smile as the Bard annoys him to no end.

"That's the conclusion. They just let us go, and you give all of Nettly's coin to the elves."

"Filacandrel's lute not gift enough for you?" The Witcher asks. The Bard grabs his new lute, smiling proudly. "Yeah, she is a bit sexy, isn't she?"

The two walk together in silence for a moment before the human speaks again. "I do have respect for Filavandrel. He survived the great cleansing once. Who knows? Maybe he can do it again. Be reborn. Will the elf king head what the witcher entreats? Is history a wheel doomed to repeat?" He sings then stops, shaking his head. "No, that's... that's shit." You stifle a giggle as the Bard talks to mostly himself.

"This is where we part ways, Bard. For good." The Bard shakes his head, "look, I promised to change the publics' tune about you. At least allow me to try."

He strums his lute for a moment then begins singing again.

"When a humble bard graced a ride along with Geralt of Rivia, along came this song... From when the White Wolf fought a silver-tongued devil, his army of elves at his hooves did they travel. They came after me with masterful deceit. Broke down my lute, and they kicked in my teeth. While the devil's horns minced our tender meat, and so cried the witcher, 'he can't be bleat'."

You furrow your brows and the Witcher -Geralt- interrupts. "That's not how it happened. Where's your newfound respect?"

"Respect doesn't make history." He does have a point there.

"Toss a coin to your Witcher, O' valley of plenty, O' valley of plenty, oh-oh-oh," he sings, walking forwards while the Witcher stops, thinking about his words.

The bard sings the whole way back to the village and even then he doesn't stop. His singing doesn't cease until after they've eaten, after Geralt's been approached by many tavern whores, and after he's chosen a room for the night.

"Jaskier if you don't stop singing, I'll cut your tongue out and feed it to you."

You giggle at this. "I quite enjoyed the Bard's song," you chirp. Jaskier spins and stares at you as the two men walk to their respective rooms.

"Who might you be? And see Geralt! A woman with good taste. If you enjoyed the song, there are plenty of other things I could show you that you may very well enjoy." Geralt glances over his shoulder at you.

"She's been following us since Filavandrel let us go. Not a spy though, far too happy to be a spy." Jaskier raises his eyebrows. "You're an elf?" You slap your hand over his mouth in an instant.

"Humans hate Elves more than they hate Witchers. No offence to you." Geralt simply grunts in reply. "Why have you been following us, Princess?" You stand up straighter and smile at the Witcher.

"I want to join the two of you. It sounds like you encounter many adventures. I want to help." He scoffs and enters his room without another word.

Jaskier, on the other hand, pulls away and smiles at you. "I'd love the company. Especially from a woman with such good musical taste." You nod and glance over your shoulder. "Well, I suppose I'll meet you out here in the morning." He swallows hard and glances over your shoulder. "You could... join me?"

You sigh, "Jaskier, I will not fuck you." He seems taken aback by your word choice. "No, of course not. I just thought it might be... more comfortable for you in here with me." You shrug but take him up on his offer, following him into his room for the night.

~

"Jaskier he's getting ready to leave," You say, eyes closed as you meditate. "What?! And he hasn't even come to see if we're awake?" You open your eyes and roll them at the human. "I'll be out with him." Jaskier struggles to get his ducks in a row, and you can't help but laugh at how helpless he sounds.

"Good morning, Witcher. Where are we off to today? What monster needs to be dealt with?" Geralt looks over at you then does a double-take. "Please tell me you didn't-" "I know better than to sleep with a common Bard. I'm not that stupid." He shakes his head and continues getting ready. You walk over to his horse, petting her mane gently.

"Hello, beautiful. My, aren't you an impressive one." She leans into your touch and you smile at her. "A true beauty you are. Strong too, aren't you? You've been through many adventures with your rider, have you not?" Geralt observes silently as you interact with Roach, taking notice of the way she seems automatically drawn to you.

"Geralt! Geralt don't leave!" Jaskier stumbles towards the two of you. You laugh at that, shaking your head at Geralt's grunt of annoyance.

"Now, where are we headed, my friend?" Geralt says nothing, simply takes Roach by the reins and leads her away from the inn.

Jaskier falls into step beside you and smiles. "May I use you as a muse? For a song, I mean. I can already picture the crowds that would want to hear about the enchanting Elf princess."

You scoff, "They'd only listen if it ends with me dead." Geralt snorts at your comment, not showing any other indication that he heard you.

"No! It won't be about you dying! I just... you fill me with inspiration." You look over at him. "Your flattery won't get you any closer to bedding me."

Jaskier frowns but otherwise ignores the comment. "I'm going to make it the best song I've ever sung." You shrug then stop walking, your ears twitching as you sense someone -or something- following you.

"What is it?" Jaskier asks. You close your eyes for a moment then shake your head. "I thought I heard something. Must be nothing."

~

Jaskier talks your ear off for the better part of the day, talking about things that you can't even remember. You understand Geralt's impatience towards the human, but you know he means well.

"We rest here for the night." Geralt says, dropping his stuff by the trees.

"D-do you really think we should be staying in the middle of the forest at night?" Jaskier asks nervously. "Don't worry, Jaskier. The Princess will protect you." You roll your eyes but your hand instinctively goes to one of the swords on your hip.

"You'll be fine, Jaskier. Rest." He nods, looking between you and the Witcher before settling on the ground, his hands holding his lute protectively to his chest. You turn away from the two of them and look up at the trees surrounding the three of you. Picking a nice one, you walk over to it and start climbing.

"Elves," Geralt mumbles under his breath. You roll your eyes and settle into the tree, lying back against the trunk and stretching your legs out on a thick branch. Your eyes flutter closed quickly, exhausted after the day you've had.

~

Your ears twitch and perk, waking you up quickly. Looking around quickly, you assess your surroundings. Geralt and Jaskier are asleep on the ground below and roach is sleeping nearby. You hear more rustling and bounce to your feet, bow in one hand while your other reaches for some arrows.

Low growling pulls your focus to the moving mass, huge and only slightly terrifying. You load two arrows into your bow and aim at the hulking body, exhaling softly before releasing the arrows. They hit the target, a deafening snarl clues you into that, and you quickly load your bow again, firing at the same spot. The monster growls again and you spring from the tree, landing gracefully on your feet at the same time as Geralt rises to his.

"A Kishi," he says, sword in hand. "It's been following us since we left this morning," you whisper, eyes glowing green as the beast steps closer.

"And you didn't think to kill it then?!" He snarls.

You turn your gaze to him. "I didn't think it would be very productive to kill something that hadn't aggravated me. I'm not a monster." He seems taken aback, his surprise rendering him vulnerable, and the Kishi sees that.

With a roar, it dives to the two of you. You grab the two swords on your waist and run at the monster, ignoring Geralt yelling at you to stop. You slide beneath the belly of the two-headed dog, swords raised and slicing right through its abdomen. It yelps and skids to a stop, tumbling onto its side as blood and guts spew out of it.

"That was dangerous! And stupid!" Geralt exclaims, grabbing your arm. You turn to him with a smile. "That was exhilarating. And almost exactly what you would've done. Don't tell me what I can and cannot do. I'm not a child and I won't let anyone, especially you, treat me like one." Your eyes blaze green and he lets go of your arm.

The Kishi whines and whimpers from behind you and you turn to it, kneeling beside one of its heads.

"I am sorry it had to end this way." You raise your sword and thrust it down through the creature's chest, piercing its heart. Its crying ceases and you spend a moment kneeling by its side before standing up and sheathing your swords.

"As for me being able to handle myself, Geralt of Rivia, I've been doing so since I was a child." You walk back to where Jaskier is pacing and toss your bow to the side. "Oh thank heavens you're alright. I was worried that my song about you would, in fact, end in your death. Speaking of..." he reaches into his pack and grabs a quill, a jar of ink, and some paper.

"I would like to know, in detail, what happened when you fought that monster." Geralt walks back, calming Roach down, then lying back down. "Perhaps in the morning. I need to rest." He nods, a pout on his lips. You lie on your back and close your eyes, embarrassed at the way you snapped at Geralt.

~

"Two rooms for the night," Geralt grunts, hood up to shield his identity from the innkeeper. "We've only got one." Geralt sighs heavily but takes the key. Jaskier stands at your side, chatting your ear off and Geralt can't help but crack a half-smile.

"I'm going to the tavern," he announces. You quickly run after him, excusing yourself from Jaskier's story. Geralt tosses him the key to the room and Jaskier sighs.

It's been two weeks since you killed the Kishi. Two weeks since you flipped your shit on Geralt and two weeks of you trying to figure out how to mend things. How to get closer to the emotionless Witcher.

You say nothing, opting to walk beside him in silence.

As soon as you reach the tavern he leaves your side, finding a whore and starting to chat her up. You sigh and head to the bar, flagging down the bartender and ordering a pitcher of ale.

"Hello there, darling." You glance to your left, groaning as a drunk man takes a seat beside you. "What say you and me go out back for a little fun. Huh?" You down the entire glass then get up.

"No. Thank you." He grumbles something under his breath and you roll your eyes, pushing your hair behind your ear instinctually then instantly regretting it as he inhales sharply.

You glance around to make sure no one else noticed then hurry to the tavern doors, ready to get away from this man.

Geralt's eyes follow your figure as you rush out of the Tavern. He's about to return his attention to his female companion when he notices a group of at least a dozen men, each holding a weapon of some kind, following you out.

He walks away from the woman, ignoring the way she curses at him. His hand finds his sword as he leaves the tavern and he's more than glad that he followed you.

The men have gathered around you, two of them restraining you while a third holds a dagger at your left ear.

"You want to lose these? Or will you do as a woman should and open your legs?" He can see the fear in your eyes as they well up with tears, something he hopes he never has to see again.

Fury flashes in his eyes as you let out a soft whimper, your swords on the ground by your feet.

He unsheaths his sword and grabs the man closest to him, throwing him into a nearby building. The men around you freeze, staring in shock as Geralt glares at them.

"Let her go."

The man with the dagger at your ear chuckles. "Does the Witcher have a pet?" He grinds his teeth and swings his sword, slicing through the stomachs of the men closest to him. The men holding you drop you to the floor and the dagger slices your neck and cheek on your way down.

You grab your swords and slash the heels of the man who held the dagger at your ear. He falls to the floor with a scream and you're quick to shove the blade into his throat.

All the while, Geralt has taken care of the other men. You push yourself onto your butt, curling your knees up to your chest and staring blankly at the dead man in front of you.

Geralt sighs and crouches down in front of you.

"Are you alright?" You nod slowly, eyes focusing on his face. He brings one hand up to your cheek, gently running his fingers over the shallow gash.

"Look at me." You comply, looking into his amber eyes.

"You're alright." You simply nod, looking back down as he helps you to your feet.

You're silent, eyes focused on the ground as you walk beside Geralt back to the Inn. He pushes the door to the room open and glances around, scoffing as he sees Jaskier sprawled out on the wooden chaise.

"You can take the bed," Geralt whispers, his eyes warm. You shake your head. "I... I'm going the bathe. I..." You trail off, a distant look in your eyes, and all Geralt can do is nod.

As you're bathing Geralt, wonders why that attack impacted you so much. Why you seem to care so much about what they did, about what happened.

Meanwhile, you're trying not to relive the vivid memories of what men like that did to your family.

~*~

You shuffle into the room, starting to prepare a bed on the floor when Geralt sits up in the bed.

"Come lie with me. There's plenty of room for the two of us." You stare at him for a moment before nodding and climbing into bed beside him. You can feel the heat radiating off of his huge body, and subconsciously shift towards it.

"Thank you. For being there today," you whisper, eyes closed as you try to ignore the embarrassment you feel.

"Why did it affect you so much? You've handled yourself in more dangerous situations before. Why did these men... why?" You exhale deeply and look up at him.

"I... they did that to my mother. My sisters. I saw it. They cut off their ears and raped them. It... it's like I was brought back to that day." He's quiet and you sigh, rolling onto your side and facing away from him.

"I know it's... weak of me. And I hate that I'm still affected by it, but I really can't help it. I promise I'm trying to overcome it, but it's hard sometimes and-" a warmth spreading across your stomach cuts you off and you look down to the source, eyebrows raising as you see that his strong arm is what's warming you.

"I'm sorry for your loss. And sorry that you had to endure such a terrible thing. I swear on my life, no man will ever hurt you like that." You're stiff for a moment, breathing shallowly as Geralt leaves his arm around your waist.

"Sleep now, Princess. You'll be safe." Your eyelids close slowly and you sigh, falling asleep easily in his arms.

~*~

"Geralt can we please rest? We've been walking all day. And, not to be the bearer of bad news, you stink. I stink. Even (Y/n) is starting to stink. The heat isn't doing us any good." You watch Geralt as he contemplates Jaskier's words.

"Wait, I stink?" You ask, lifting your arm and smelling beneath.

"No, not really. I just want Geralt to give us a rest!" Jaskier shouts the last words and Geralt grunts.

"Fine!" He stops walking and turns to glare at Jaskier. "You want to rest so badly? Fine. We'll rest now and travel at night." He walks away, into the woods with Roach following behind. You and Jaskier exchange glances before following him into the thicket of trees.

Instead of finding the Witcher, like you thought you would, instead, you find Roach tied to a tree, munching on some carrots and hay that Geralt must've laid out.

"It sounds like there's a stream nearby. That's probably where he went," Jaskier says, collapsing on the grass next to the horse.

"I'll go talk to him, make sure he's doing alright," you whisper, walking through the woods to where you can hear water bubbling.

It's been a week since Geralt saved you from the men at the Tavern. A week of longing glances, lingering touches, and hidden meanings that Jaskier is definitely starting to pick up on.

You find Geralt in the water, his back towards you as he splashes some of the refreshing-looking water onto his skin.

"Geralt? Are you alright?" He simply grunts in reply and you sigh. An idea strikes you and you stare at him for a moment longer before toeing off your shoes and ridding yourself of your shirt.

He glances over his shoulder at you upon hearing the unmistakable sound of clothing being removed and raises his eyebrows.

"See something you like, Witcher?" You tease, stripping down to nothing then slowly stepping into the water. He looks forward, not replying, but his reaction is enough to let you know that he did indeed see something of interest.

You walk towards him, fingers reaching out and brushing across a long scar on his back.

"Go on. Ask about them. Everyone does." You shake your head and bring your other hand to his shoulder, smoothing them upwards until you reach his shoulders. You step closer until your front is pressed against his back.

"The scars represent the past. The past is something of insignificance now. The present is what matters," you whisper, pressing your lips hesitantly to the skin of his back. He stiffens then relaxes into your touch with a whisper of your name.

You smile slightly then pull away from him, turning around and diving under the water. The cool temperature is beyond refreshing, and you take a moment to enjoy it fully before breaking the surface again.

You push your wet hair behind your ears and glance over your shoulder, gasping as Geralt comes up behind you, hands finding your hips.

"You, Elf, are a tease. And you know it." You bite your bottom lip to hide a grin as he presses his cheek to the top of your head.

"Am I, now, Geralt of Rivia?" He nods, hands slowly circling around to rest on your stomach, fingers splayed and leisurely travelling up up up your abdomen.

His thumbs just graze the undersides of your breasts and you inhale sharply, on hand coming up over your shoulder to tangle in his hair as he ducks his head, pressing a kiss to your shoulder.

"Yes. You are. And it is becoming a... growing problem." You giggle softly. "Growing problem? What on earth do you mean?"

He growls in your ear, nipping at your earlobe. "You know exactly what I’m talking about." He steps even closer to you and you inhale sharply at the feeling of his hard length pressing against your lower back.

"O-oh!" He nods, peppering kisses down the column of your throat.

"What do you plan on doing to... fix this problem?" You ask breathlessly. His right-hand grabs at your breast and you arch into the feeling.

"You're the one who's going to fix this 'problem', Princess." You shiver, a soft sigh leaving your lips at the way his hands feel against your skin.

"Geralt..." He sucks a dark hickey into your throat and you moan, eyes closing as his hands start to wander more.

His left-hand dips below the waterline, fingers gently pressing into your heat.

"You want it too, don't you?" You nod, hips wiggling against him in a desperate attempt to gain friction where you need it most.

He slowly slides his right hand up your body until it rests on your throat, pressing with just enough force to make you feel it.

“Tell me what you want, Princess, and it’s yours.” You whimper softly, thrusting and rocking your hips against his firm hand.

“Please, Geralt. Please fuck me.” He groans against your neck and shifts away from you for just a moment. You whine then moan as he pushes his long, thick cock through your folds. The tip bumps against your clit and you squeeze your eyes shut.

“Please Geralt. I need it. I need you.” That’s all it takes for him to stop teasing you, lifting you by the waist a few inches out of the water with one arm securely around your waist, while using his other hand to guide his impressive length into you.

A long, wanton moan leaves you at the feeling of him stretching your walls, and he groans at the sound. “Fuck... you’re so tight...” You nod, reaching back and grabbing his hair and arching your back. The arm around your waist holds you tightly, keeping you steady while he slowly starts thrusting up into you.

You whimper, holding onto him as he stretches your walls over and over with each and every nearly painful thrust.

“G-Geralt!” He stops thrusting, lifts you off of him effortlessly, and spins you around so you’re facing him. His amber eyes stare right into your soul and he leans down. Your lips crash together in a sloppy and extremely heated kiss, his tongue easily winning the battle for dominance.

He lifts you up by your hips again and pulls you onto his cock once more, your legs up over his arms. The new angle makes your eyes roll back and Geralt chuckles.

“A woman of many words, and now you’re speechless?” His voice is tight and slightly weak as your walls flutter and clench on his cock. He moves you, fingers digging into the soft skin of your waist as he forces you up and down on his cock. You can do nothing but take it, your body pliant for his use.

Your head falls back, neck bared for him, and he scrapes his teeth over the sensitive skin there.

“You take my cock so well. Such a small thing yet you take me like you were made for me.” You whimper at his words.

The water splashes up against the two of you, masking the sound of his hips meeting the underside of your thighs. You moan loudly, scrunching up your face as the coil in your belly tightens.

Geralt’s blunt teeth nip at your pulse point and he soothes the sting with his tongue.

“I-I’m...” you trail off, nails digging into the skin of his forearms. “Yeah?” He asks, voice low and husky and positively sexy.

He pulls your earlobe between his teeth and a jolt goes through you at the feeling. You arch your back again, lips parting in a silent scream of pleasure as you get violently thrust into an earth-shattering orgasm.

The intense clench of your walls around his cock and the blissed-out look of pleasure on your face makes Geralt lose it. He presses his lips to your neck before letting out a nearly feral moan, his thrusts stuttering as he fills you with his cum.

He holds you in his arms for a while as the two of you catch your breath and even once you’re both recovered from your highs, he keeps you against him, his cock softening but staying locked inside you.

Your cunt flutters as you think about what just happened and he groans against you, pulling back to look into your eyes.

“Watch yourself, Princess. I won’t hesitate to fuck you until you can’t walk properly.” You moan and he smirks, lifting you up a bit, just enough for his cock to slide out of you, then lowers you to your feet.

Your legs tremble and Geralt smiles.

“Come on. The Bard will be waiting for us. No doubt writing a song about the two of us.” You giggle and follow him out of the water, not even trying to be discreet about the way your eyes follow his figure.

“Stop staring.” You roll your eyes, giving him a playful glare as his own eyes rake over your figure.

“Stop staring, Geralt.” He pulls his trousers on then walks to you, hands resting surprisingly gently on your waist.

“You’re mine, are you not?” You look up into his eyes and nod helplessly. “Then I’ll stare if I want.” You lean up onto your toes and kiss his lips gently before turning around and pulling your clothes on.

“Geralt of Rivia. Who would’ve thought that an Elf would be your undoing?” He chuckles and shakes his head, pulling his shirt on and buttoning it up as he walks back to where you both know Jaskier has been waiting.

“Finally! I never thought you’d finish! You know, you’re both quite loud. It’s really, very disturbing. I think I’ll have nightmares for months,” the Bard complains.

You and the Witcher only exchange smiles. If only Jaskier knew that this would be just the start of all his problems with the two of you.

[istheresomebodywhocanimagine]

Everybody Knows (SMUT)

tabseus said: Hi :) First of all, I really enjoy reading your fics! Could you maybe write one with ben hardy x reader where they are a couple and have some kind of fight because Ben overheard reader talking with her girls about hers and Ben‘s sex life. Although all the reader is saying is really positive, Ben does not want them to know about it. Could end with smut maybe :)? (a/n: holy SHIT this only took me 5 years. this is the NYM spinoff piece, where it can be read as a separate piece, but I’d really advise you go back and read NYM if you haven’t!!! i’ll link the previous parts below. this baby is almost 11k, so don’t think you’re in for some light reading rn hehe. get ready for angsty ben and eventual makeup smut bc we all love a good makeup smut)

NYM Part 1 | NYM Part 2 | NYM Part 3 | NYM Part 4

"Yeah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck, you got a copy on me? Over."

"The fact that you have the Convoy theme song memorized so clearly is both impressive and troubling," you teased, letting go of the push-to-talk button and waiting for Joe's response as you sat the walkie talkie down on your counter, reaching up above your head to try and retrieve the bag of white cheddar popcorn. You'd stuffed it in the top of the cabinet after grocery shopping this morning, telling yourself you'd save it for a rainy day and not snack on it all the time.  Alas, your attempt to put it out-of-sight, out-of-mind had lasted less than 12 hours before you were scrambling to pull the bag down and devour it all in one go - Joe had just gotten back from an extended filming period and after napping the day away, he convinced you to come over and get fucked up on some shitty liquor while catching him up on the latest NYC happenings. The white cheddar popcorn craving had happened after the fact, as you were coming down from your brief buzz already - the liquor was shitty enough to keep you from drinking much, while Joe was more than happy to pick up your slack. The walkie talkie remained silent, and you furrowed your eyebrows, pausing in your embarrassing struggle for the popcorn to snatch up the small black receiver and press the PTT button again. "Joey? You alive?" More radio silence, then finally a crackling and a slurred response. "You didn't say over. Over."

Staring ahead at the cabinet for a moment, you slowly closed your eyes and started laughing, shaking your head. "You're a fucking dumbass. Over."

"Well, someone's a bitch. Over." "Who is he calling a bitch?" Ben's quiet, gravelly voice suddenly appeared behind you, and you startled a bit as you whirled around to find a very heavy-lidded, scruffy-looking Ben standing there. If you didn't know any better, you'd say he was just sleepy - but he'd also been over at Joe's getting white-girl wasted, and the rosiness of his cheeks betrayed that very fact as he shuffled forward, wrapping his arms around your waist and enveloping you in a warm hug that trapped you between the counter and him. "I thought you were still over there, I was just going to be a second," you murmured, running your hand over the back of his unruly blonde hair and smoothing it down before letting your hand come to rest on the nape of his neck. He shook his head, mumbling something incoherent as he pressed his face into your neck, nuzzling it gently and making you smile. Such a baby. Taking a deep breath, you let out a long exhale before pressing a soft, quick kiss to the side of his head and murmuring, "He was calling me a bitch." Humming in response, he blindly lifted a hand to reach for the walkie talkie, and when he'd clumsily stolen it from your grasp, he lifted his head just enough to speak into the receiver as he held the button down. His chin pressed into your shoulder as he talked, making you smile and turn to press a lingering kiss to his cheek. "Stop bullying my girlfriend or I'll come back over there and wallop you." "You didn't say over either," Joe pointed out snarkily, and you rolled your eyes as Ben chuckled softly and resumed burying his face in your neck, sitting the walkie talkie down. Returning his hand to your back, his thumb ran light circles across your skin just under the hem of your shirt, making a sharp thrill run through your body due to your still-mildly intoxicated state. As much as you wanted to stay there forever and mooch off of Ben's body heat, you remembered the white cheddar popcorn calling your name - so with some difficulty, you managed to start peeling Ben's arms off of you, giggling knowingly when he let out an unhappy groan. "Go back over there. I'll be back in a minute." Pulling away slowly, he didn't look too pleased and grumbled to himself as he shuffled off to Joe's again with his phone charger now in hand. 

“Love you!” you called after him, which he reciprocated only after shooting you a playful glare over his shoulder. Grinning, you watched as he stepped out onto the balcony and blew you a kiss before flipping you off and disappearing around the corner with the smile.

It took climbing on the counter for you to reach the bag of popcorn in the cabinet, but you managed to get it down and not sprain your ankle getting off the counter, so you took a minute to participate in a victory dance that would have surely been mocked if you were over on the other side of that wall separating you and the boys. A pleased smile played at your lips as you pranced back over to Joe's, only tripping once or twice.  Losing your balance? That was another story. You almost biffed it when you rounded Ben's couch, over-calculating the turn and nearly ending up on your ass. Of course, even sober, you were still just getting used to Ben's couch being there instead of yours. His was nice, a grey microfiber sectional - "For the dog," he'd insisted, even though you told him time and time again that it wasn't a pet-friendly apartment and you didn't have a dog. But he'd brought it anyways, and it had replaced your poor, flaky pleather excuses for furniture. In fact, there were a lot of touches of Ben in this apartment now that he'd moved in. It had been a year since you started seeing each other, and around month ten of Ben constantly being over at your or Joe's place (as in, every moment he wasn't filming), his lease was about up and he was apartment hunting again. Then it hit you - why was he going to get another place if he was just staying at yours all the time? You'd felt so blind, you were almost reluctant to bring it up to Ben in fear that his response might be along the lines of 'took you long enough' - but you had conveniently forgotten that Ben was an even more oblivious dumbass than you were.  Instead of a condescending 'oh, you finally put two and two together?', Ben had looked at you, very obviously shocked, then laughed and kissed your head repeatedly between mumblings about you being 'so smart' and 'such a catch.' Humming to yourself, you pulled open the bag of popcorn just as you crossed the threshold into Joe's living room. Ben was sleeping away on the couch while Joe looked one step away from dead, his eyes glossed over as he stared up at an episode of Big Mouth he'd probably seen no less than 5 times already. The dab pen perched neatly on the end table between the two of them said all you needed to know, and you narrowed your eyes a bit as you chomped on the popcorn, Joe slowly turning his bloodshot gaze in your direction and smiling placidly as you spoke. "Wow. You look fucking stoned, dude." "Welcome back.... I see you've decided not to share your snacks with us. Bitch." "I told you to stop calling her a bitch." Ben's voice was muffled - he barely gave the effort to even move his mouth enough to speak clearly, his face squished up against the couch and eyes not even opening an inch as he reached out in your general direction weakly. His fingers did the grabby thing that made your heart do flips as you padded over to the couch, Ben sitting up just long enough for you to get yourself comfortable on the end of the couch, and then his head was plopping down on your lap again. You felt his cheek press a little harder against your thigh as he readjusted so he was comfortable, and then he was back to practically comatose.  Sitting your bag of popcorn to the side, you used one hand to keep feeding yourself while the other ran through Ben's hair repeatedly, his breathing slowing down until he was fast asleep. Joe kept quiet, only snickering at crass Big Mouth jokes occasionally and never letting his eyes leave the screen. It was a serene night, an oddly quiet one shared between the three of you - usually, at least two of you were yelling, so the absence of noise was relaxing. As much as you hated to break it, you had to, because the pen between you and Joe was making you curious. Multiple questions were dancing around your tongue like they were on hot coals, urged out by the slowly-dwindling buzz making your head spin a bit as you reached out for the pen. "Did you suddenly come down with some shit that requires the healing effects of THC?" Picking it up, you rolled it around in your hand for a second before sitting it back down. "Shit looks fancy." "Fancy? And I got it from Tori," Joe answered without looking away from the screen, his jaw still a little slack as he struggled to focus on you and the show. "She went out-of-state for some fancy art curator shit and came back with it. Knocks you on your ass, it does." "Okay, Yoda," you laughed, Joe rolling his eyes back in his head and trying not to smile before scoffing. "Can't you buy them in the city anyway? "Yeah, but can you buy the stuff for it in the city?" he retorted. He had you there, and you gave him a grin and a shrug before he rolled his eyes and continued. "Are you even old enough to be making Star Wars references, kid?" "Oh, shut up," you dismissed, not wanting to get in a fight with cross-faded Joe. Rolling your eyes when he mocked you quietly, you decided to reroute the conversation again. "So when are you just gonna bite the bullet and make it official with your favorite art curator? You were all about preaching just doing it to Ben and I last year, where's that energy now?" "Where's that energy now?" he mimicked, clearly at a loss for comebacks, and you snorted at his childishness, but a lengthy sigh from him made you think it was less of a 'fuck you' and more of an aversion. The question seemed to trouble him, and he was deathly quiet for a minute before speaking. "This may just be high me speaking, but I think I'm in a rut right now and she doesn't even know it. So I don't want to trap her if it's not going to work out... in all aspects." "Uh oh, has erectile dysfunction finally set in? I heard that when you get ancient, things like that happen." Joe's clear annoyance couldn't stifle your laughter as soon as you finished your sentence, but he waited for you quiet down a bit before he spoke over you. "If I didn't feel like I was melted into this chair like the wax dripping off of a fine soy candle right now, I'd come over there with a fifty-five-gallon drum of ass-whooping and pour it all over you." "Jesus, it was a joke!" you laughed, tossing one of his smaller decorative pillows at him playfully and bursting into another round of laughter when he threw it back at you harder, acting like he wasn't in the mood for your games even though the smile plastered on his face said otherwise. "I'm sorry, buddy, I'll be nice now. Why do you think you're in a rut?" "I just... I don't think I'm doing it for her, you know?" he sighed, his fingers curling up on the armrests as he seemed to melt even more into the chair. Then, an amused giggle escaped him, almost like clockwork, and he grinned in spite of his words. "Like she seems into it, but my brain keeps telling me that every time we're having sex that she's wishing she was hooking up with someone a lot... younger. And adventurous. Like a young Steve Irwin. Mister Danger." Though Joe wasn't too shy about his sex life, you were still shocked to hear him being so open about such a vulnerable part of it - usually, your conversations about your respective sex lives were just complaints and laments. So, it warmed your heart to hear that Joe was concerned about his end of the game - as much as your friend's sex life through Steve Irwin metaphors could warm your heart, of course. Looking down at Ben, you smiled a bit and brushed a stray hair back from his face, his nose twitching a bit and lips smacking together lazily. For a moment, you thought he was awake, but his breathing showed no signs of speeding up, so you wrote it off as sleepy twitches and looked back up at Joe, still running your fingers through Ben's hair soothingly. "As much as I hate hearing you use Steve Irwin as a sexual comparison to yourself... why did you start thinking that?" "Well, the other day, she brought up the fact that we're both Virgos. At first, I thought that she called us both virgins, and I laughed, but... not the same thing," he admitted in a small voice, but you didn't even attempt to muffle your amused giggles, much to his chagrin. Sighing and burying his face in his hands for a second, Joe let out a long groan before shaking his head and dropping his hands to his lap again. "And I don't completely know what it has to do with our sex lives at all, but she mentioned our compatibility in passing and I just... I feel bad. She was reading something about how Virgo women like to communicate how they're feeling, and I really don't think we're communicating like we should be. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it. Which she also said-" "Yeah, that's a Virgo thing. She's right," you cut in, already knowing what he was going to say, and he narrowed his eyes a bit before huffing at the fact you were apparently siding with Tori. "Virgos are supposed to be so good at communicating! What's the hold-up, Mister 'Talk to Ben or I'm gonna go nuts"? You were all about talking it out last year." "I don't know, I think my mind's just fucking dumb and manic- wait no, not manicure. Manuscript? Jesus Christ, what's the word? Mani-man.... Manifested! Manifested. My mind manifested this block on its own. Do you ever do that? Like, just worry that you're just not doing enough and they're too scared or too pissed off to say anything about it? But then you're too scared to say anything because talking about... your sex life makes you nervous as shit? Because what if she doesn't actually want to talk about it?" Nodding along as he spoke, you considered your life in the bedroom with Ben. Did you have that concern? It was a valid question, one that made your face screw up in thought for a minute before you finally spoke, your fingers brushing Ben's hair back again. "Not really. Ben's pretty open about what works for him and what doesn't work for him, I think. Maybe we both are? I guess we just communicate more than I'm used to, but it really works in the long run." Joe stared deadpan at you, not seeming as if he understood a single word you said, and you raised an eyebrow in challenge. "What? Are you fucking deaf?" "No, I'm just... not sure I was prepared to hear about your sex life with Big Ben. It's so different when it's... well, him." Rolling your eyes, you prepared to stand up, already done with this conversation, but Joe was quick to raise his hands in surrender and stutter out an apology amidst delirious laughter. "No, no no, sit back down! I'm sorry- shit, I'm sorry, I just had to get that out. Keep going, I'm listening." "You need to talk to Tori," you replied matter-of-factly, and the familiar sentiment echoed in your brain, reminding you of a simpler time - a time when Ben was just Joe's dorky, fit friend who came around sometimes and made you laugh at how awkward he could be. Now, he was your boyfriend waking you up in the morning begging you to make almond flour pancakes with him just so he could cover his hand in flour and smack your ass to leave a handprint. At least you knew the 'talk to them' advice was effective. "I know it sounds hypocritical, but you need to ask her about what she's into and what she isn't into. That way you can know what gets her going and what you need to steer away from." "What, like missionary vs. cowgirl?" Joe asked incredulously, and you had to laugh at the naiveté of assuming that sex positions alone would be enough. Were you shocked that a straight cis man was saying this, though? Not really. (Ben was a surprising exception, and you were eternally grateful for it.) "Good god, she- oh my god, I'm sorry I'm laughing. I don't mean to be an asshole, it just happens," you giggled, moving your hand to Ben's back and rubbing relaxing circles into it when he twitched in his sleep again. "You're going to have to get real comfortable here because the only way I know how to explain this is to talk about blondie here." "Fuck, hold on," Joe grimaced, looking straight forward out of the balcony door for a second. His expressions incredibly exaggerated from how high he was at the moment, you could see every step in his process of compartmentalizing all the inner turmoil hearing about his friend's sex life was going to cause before finally nodding slowly, not losing the grimace. "Okay, go." "I think first you need to see if she likes to be in control. Like, dominate." "Um, I don't think so? No, she isn't the dominant one in bed," Joe observed, his words slow as he thought-extra hard, probably just to make sure he was right and not just so high he was imagining things. "But I guess I don't know for sure. What do you mean?" "So like, when Ben and I have sex, I'm the dom-" "Hold on!" Joe interrupted, pretending to gag as he lurched forward dramatically, hamming it up while you watched in unamused silence. When he'd finished his dramatics, he waved for you to continue. "Alright, got that out of my system. You're the dominant one?" "Yeah?" you drawled out slowly, unsure how that wasn't the most obvious thing in the world right now. Ben's face was smooshed up against your thigh, his lips slightly parted as his shallow breathing continued. He was unnervingly beautiful like this, a sweet little soft boy aura to him that always carried over into the bedroom very smoothly - his suave, strong-armed facade hardly held up behind closed doors. Smiling a bit in awe of how precious he looked undisturbed, you stopped rubbing his back and reached for your phone, pulling up Chrome. In the meantime, Joe had narrowed his eyes, still dubious and harboring doubts over whether you were just bullshitting him right now or not. "What's not clicking? Are you forgetting that I literally had to make the first move?" "Yeah, but I figured it was just because he was being shy... like, how does he not dominate when he could easily sit on you and suffocate you with his muscles?" Joe flexed for emphasis, but it did little to drive his point home as you were already laughing at his blissful ignorance, pausing in clicking on a Google link about Virgos and compatibility. In the midst of your fit of laughter, though, he gasped and let out a strangled shriek as he sat up a bit. "Does that mean you peg him?" "No!" You almost choked on the ensuing laughter, feeling like your face was red hot from the exertion of trying to catch your breath, and Joe let out an audible, very exaggerated sigh of relief as he sunk back into the chair. "Why would you even ask that if you knew you wouldn't like the other answer?" "Just.... if you ever peg him, don't tell me. Please," he begged, and with a laugh, you agreed.  "Promise. Although I can't promise you I won't suffocate him when I sit on his f-" "Stop! It's gone too far!" Joe shrieked, trying to stand up, but he came to the realization that he was rooted in his place. His eyes widened with absolute fear that his limbs were essentially jello from the concentrated THC ravaging his nervous system at the moment, and you almost couldn't contain your delight as you stifled laugh after laugh. "Oh my God. Oh my Godddd. Fuck. This is my worst nightmare. I'm stuck here listening to you talk about pegging my poor friend." "I'm not pegging Ben, dude!" you refuted, giggling incredulously and pressing your hands to your face in mild exasperation. "I've already told you that. I just... I don't get crazy, but you know, take charge! I subtly control the situation. He's totally a bitch when it comes down to it... and I love it so much! It's not a bad thing." Joe groaned as he sunk deeper into the chair, looking like he wished it would swallow him whole before he reluctantly continued. "So I need to figure out what dynamics she likes." "Yeah, that's the word!" you cheered, feeling Ben stir on your lap a little, and you wondered if Joe's mini-heart attack had awoken him. "Start with that, and then work from there. This website says 'The Virgo male-Virgo female compatibility will include a great love life, if and only if, there is no gap in their communication aspect.'" Pursing your lips, you paused before reading down a little bit and continuing to read out loud. "The Virgo couple has to make sure that they, do not overthink about their problems, are more relaxed, and that they communicate their problems by sharing and accepting each other the way they are.' See? It all comes a lot easier- sex comes a lot easier when you can communicate and be honest about what tickles your fancy." "Please stop talking about tickling anything." Joe's pleading tone was worth a laugh, but you held it back for his sake as you shook your head and grinned widely. "I'll talk to her," he finally resigned, and you felt vindication as you brushed a hand back over Ben's hair, hearing him let out a quiet, happy noise at the feeling. "Damn, this must have been what you felt like when he and I finally got over ourselves last year," you noted, and Joe, though he clearly hated every second of it, nodded slowly. Looking down, you caught Ben just in time to see his eyes open blearily, the glaze over them still evident as he turned on his back to look up at you, blinking slowly. "Hello, Sleeping Beauty." "Hi," he croaked, his voice still gravelly as he offered a smile, and you smiled back before patting his cheek gently, lifting your thigh a bit to coax him into getting up. After stretching a bit, he obliged, sitting up and steadying himself on the back of the couch while you stood up and reached out a hand for him. Helping him to his feet, you let him start shuffling back to your apartment while you turned to give Joe a pointed look. "You better talk to her." "I will!" he whined, crossing his arms grumpily and mumbling a snarky goodbye before letting you usher Ben back to bed, where he passed out quickly, curled up against your side with his head resting on your chest and arm draped across your tummy. A blissful, serene smile was plastered onto his features on into the late morning, where you woke up to find neither of you had moved, and apparently, neither had Joe, according to the texts he'd sent you about an hour ago. jmuzzie: I can't fucking get up from this chair jmuzzie: All I can think about is you pegging Ben jmuzzie: I barely slept. Grinning and shaking your head, you decided to ignore the texts and leave them on your home screen to worry about later, carefully detaching yourself from Ben and crawling out of bed. He grabbed your pillow to snuggle instead, wrapping it up in a tight embrace while you tiptoed to the kitchen to make a quick breakfast - bacon, scrambled eggs, and some coffee to wake up what was sure to be a very sore Ben (which he very much was).  You heard a groan from down the hallway just as you were finishing up the scrambled eggs, and after hearing the bathroom sink faucet run for a moment, Ben appeared in the doorway, his hair sticking up in odd places and clothes frumpy from being slept in. Cooing sympathetically, you put together a plate for him as he somehow managed to pour himself a coffee and sluggishly climb onto a stool at the counter. While you made his plate, he stared off into space, not even giving a simple hello as he seemed to try and will himself to wake up, his cheeks still a bit splotchy and feverish from waking up - he always ran hot, especially during the night. "There you go, princess," you teased, Ben only groaning in thanks when the plate clattered down to the counter in front of him. The noise made him wince, so you decided to keep the conversation minimal while you both finished your breakfast, and you could tell he was already getting sleepy again from the methodical, slow pace he was taking to rinse the dishes off in the sink. "I think I'm just going to stand in the shower for a tick and question my life choices," he finally mumbled once he was wiping his hands off on the dishtowel next to the sink, and with a quick kiss to your cheek, he was off to the bathroom. As he trudged back down the hallway, you elected to pour another cup of coffee to take next door. "Joe said he was up, I'll go check on him real quick. You were both blitzed by bedtime, so I'm sure he's hurting too." Ben answered with an almost inaudible grunt, and you rolled your eyes with a small grin before shifting the mug to your opposite hand and shuffling over to your neighbor's apartment, where you found Joe in the kitchen, apparently over his dramatics from an hour ago. The sliding door squeaked a bit as you shut it behind you, and Joe looked up slowly, his red-rimmed eyes narrowing and lip curling up ever-so-slightly when his eyes adjusted enough to recognize you. "Oh, it's the pegger-" "You really are the worst," you immediately laughed, crossing the living room and holding out the mug of coffee, which he accepted with a grateful noise and sipped in silence while you made yourself at home on his bar stools. "Feeling 10 out of 10 this morning?" "Out of 10? I feel like a Mexican 1." Furrowing your eyebrows, you opened your mouth to question whether that was vaguely racist, but he continued before you could confuse the situation even further. "Because a peso is worth less than a dollar, duh?" "The joke isn't funny if you have to explain it, dumbass." You let out a single, pitying laugh at his poor attempt at humor, though, and reached for your phone only to find that you'd left it over at the apartment. "Shit. Must have left my phone back over there." "I'll text Ben," he sighed melodramatically, pulling out his phone and typing away while you propped your head up on your hand. "He said he's on his way because 'the water won't warm up fast enough.'" When he finally locked his phone and set it back on the counter, you looked at it for a moment before giving him a pointed look, deliberately switching your gaze between him and the phone a few times before he scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Do you have something to say, or are you tweaking right now?... Does your eye have a really bad twitch?" "Sooooo," you drawled out, tilting your head a bit more and shimmying your shoulders playfully before wiggling your eyebrows a bit. He didn't seem to get the hint or want to get the hint, and you let out a huff of annoyance as the skin around his childlike hazel eyes crinkled, taunting you. "Have you talked to her yet?" "At 9 in the morning? Yeah, let me just call her." Picking up his phone, he mimed typing in her number sloppily before raising the phone to his ear, putting on a moronic expression as he did so. "Hey, babe. Yeah, I know it's 9 am, but I was wondering if you want to tie me up and spank me because I've been a naughty little-" "Okay, enough, enough!" you laughed, holding out your hands to shield yourself from the invisible antagonism that practically radiated off of him at this point. "I get it. I was just curious, dickwad." Scoffing again, he gave you an irritatingly condescending look before he reached forward and grabbed the water bottle he'd been most likely nursing since last night, which you assumed from the way a foggy sort of condensation had built up on the inside of the bottle. It went away as he swirled the bottle a bit, then he took the cap off and reluctantly took a swig, wincing at the stale, lukewarm water that he forced himself to swallow. "Ew. How can they say that drinking warm water is better for your health? I think these doctors are a bunch of fucking quacks."  "They probably know a lot more than you do, dummy," you answered in a deadpan, looking around for a moment and furrowing your eyebrows. Ben wasn't there yet, and you wondered what was taking him so long. "He said he was on his way, right?" you asked, and Joe nodded, seemingly unbothered as he carefully examined the bottle he'd just taken a drink out of, his left hand toying with the cap of it absentmindedly and flipping it between his fingers. "Do you think that I could make a bottle flip if I got some practice? I've seen those videos of all the kids doing it from a couple years ago, and I kind of want some good throwback Instagram content." "Joe, you could literally just post a picture with Ben standing in your general vicinity and your Instagram base would lose its fucking marbles." Frowning, you climbed off the bar stool as Joe grunted noncommittally in response, apparently already on one track as he picked up the bottle and weighed his options. As you turned, you heard him let out a strangled cry that barely even registered as you tilted your head a bit, wondering where in the hell your boyfriend was. Had he fallen back asleep? Was he choking on his vomit like that scene from Breaking Bad where Walter watched Jesse's girlfriend die because she apparently had to? Wait, why the fuck would he be throwing up from a weed hangover? "I forgot it was open! Oh my god, oh my god, where's the god damn dish towels?" Joe panicked, and you looked back to see the bottle from before laying sideways on the counter, but your mind was too much of a mess to make sense of why there was a medium-sized puddle of water surrounding it and dripping down to the tiled floor. Joe scrambled around like a chicken with its head cut off and in his panic, you didn't even have to ask - he blurted it out anyway. "I fucking try to do a bottle flip once and this is what I get!"

"Um, Joe, you have fun with that, buddy," you hummed nervously, worry setting in as you decided you'd come back for the mug later - not that he'd give it back anyway, but you'd try. Joe was too busy cleaning up his mistake to pay attention to you already being halfway out the door, hurrying over just to find Ben sitting on the bar stool with his back to you, sipping coffee and appearing to be fine. Letting out a sigh of relief, you padded back into the kitchen where you picked up the now mostly empty kettle of coffee, feeling Ben's eyes on you as you poured yourself another mug. It was quiet, still like last night, but there was an eerie quality to this silence that made a nearly-paralyzing chill trickle down your spine as you poured the last tiny bit of the coffee down the drain, starting to rinse it out. Ben made no attempt to speak even when you peeked over at him to see him very calmly watching you. He wasn't smiling, though, and there was a distant look in his eyes that you recognized immediately. He wasn't daydreaming, no sir. Something had pissed him off royally - you'd seen this look before on rare occasions, and angry Ben was never a treat. He was a true Capricorn if you'd ever seen one, a calculated son of a bitch who could build up a wall within seconds and take days to bring it back down. If you called him out on one single minute flaw in his argument, he'd also obsess over it for hours, either bricking himself in and giving you the silent treatment or snapping immediately and trading in his cool rationale to show you a temper to be reckoned with; a force you'd never seen before. He was never violent - far from it, actually, but if you stirred the sleeping dragon, you were in for one hell of an argument. There was never an argument you hadn't worked through, though, and you weren't about to lose that streak today. So, you turned around and leaned your hip against the counter, crossing your arms as you took a sip of the coffee. "What's up? Joe said you were on your way, what gives?" Ben nodded, sitting down his mug and licking his lips before pressing them together and shrugging. "Changed my mind." "What changed your mind?" you prodded, his body language telling you everything he wasn't saying as he crossed his arms in front of him and leaned over the counter, his shoulders hunching up a bit after he shrugged again. "Ben, come on, don't do this. What's bothering you? I'm not fucking dumb, you know, you're clearly upset about something." "I never said you were dumb," he responded, and the calm, unwavering tone of voice infuriated you so much you lost your taste for the coffee, sitting your mug down on the counter as well and crossing your arms again.  "So are you just going to avoid my question? I really want to know what's upsetting you, bubs, I can't just sit here and guess until you say 'Oh, you got it! Clever girl.' You're acting like I microwaved your tea water, for Christ’s sake!" Ben scoffed, tracing a fingertip around the rim of his mug and shaking his head a bit as you heard the muffled sound of Joe's TV turning on just on the other side of the wall. Your phone vibrated from the counter next to Ben, but you couldn't bring yourself to walk over and go grab it as Ben's annoyingly nonchalant nature perplexed you. "Why do I have to be upset? Can't I just drink coffee in silence with my girlfriend?" "Ben, I live with you, I know your 'looks' like the back of my hand. Can we please just talk about this?" "Talk about what?" Tapping the screen of your phone, which had just locked automatically again, his eyes scanned through the notifications for a second before he smiled sardonically. "Ah, there it is. Yeah, let's talk about it. I get a text from Joe saying you forgot your phone, so I go to grab it and I get to see these beauties. 'I can't fucking get up from this chair, all I can think about is you pegging Ben, I barely slept.'" Leaning forward on his arms again, he gave you a bitter smile and propped his elbow up on the counter, resting his chin in his hand. "Fascinating stuff, really. Apparently, my girlfriend's pegged me and I wasn't even aware of it, and then she's gone and bragged about it to our best friend." Laughing in disbelief, you tilted your head to the side and gave him an incredulous look. "Are you serious right now? You're just going to take that out of context and not even think for a second, 'Hey, maybe there's an explanation to why Joe's-" "Why have you told Joe that you pegged me? You think it's funny? Where do you get off?" "Excuse me?" you choked out incredulously, baffled that he'd even assume that you got a laugh out of this wildly-exaggerated situation as you crossed your arms around yourself, feeling unbearably small underneath his gaze. He was slowly simmering, a single vein in his forehead just barely protruding from the taut reddish skin on his forehead. But there was such a level-headed manner to him it drove you nuts, making you huff softly and press the heels of your hands into your eyes, then shake your head a few more times. "I can't believe this is happening right now, this is ridiculous." "That's fucking rich, considering I'm the one who 'got pegged' and joked about in this situation." Ben's voice was venomous, even, and you shivered again at how easily he spit it back at you, unafraid of whatever he'd say next. "You like telling our friends that I take it in the arse? That really make you laugh, huh? Why are you lying to Joe about our sex life, which is supposed to be private-" "Oh, don't fucking start with me about private sex lives!" you quickly retorted, cutting him off mid-sentence in an impulsive moment of rage. "I've heard you drunk and blabbering on to your fucking 'mates' back in London over the phone about us, don't even start with me!"  Oh. You'd done it now - calling him out on something insignificant was one thing, but accusing him of blatant hypocrisy? You could practically see the steam shooting out of his ears. Something flashed in his eyes, and then he rocketed out of the stool he'd just previously been seated so still on. You followed him as he stormed down the hallway - he yelled over his shoulder as he went. "At least I don't tell my mates that I make you take it in the arse, yeah? Fuck you, Y/N. It's bloody different, especially when it's Joe and you've lied to him about something personal!" "Will you just let me explain?" you called after him, exasperated and ready to pull your hair out as he threw open the door to the bedroom, stalking over to the bed before starting to pace in front of it. He looked caged as he walked back and forth, both of his hands running back through his hair in obvious frustration before he finally let out a loud groan and sat back on the bed, looking at you and trying to mask the anger he clearly felt right now with a forced apathetic expression. "Okay, go on. I'm dying to hear how you'll talk your way out of this one." Recoiling a bit at how unwilling he was to even hear your side of the story, you felt tears welling up in your eyes a bit but you blinked them away, refusing to let him win with such a biting comeback. "Seems like whatever I say, you're not going to care anyways. Is this even worth my time, explaining it to you?" He didn't have a response, and that irritated you even more, making you choke up a bit as you continued. "You're like this every time, Ben, you fucking get this idea of what happened in your head and you refuse to even accept the idea that maybe my side of the story is as valid as yours." "What if I did do that?" He paused and let it sink in, as he was always the actor, and then he was on a roll again. "What if I accepted your side every time, and then you took advantage of that? I'm not a toy and I'm not here to be played with, or used for bragging rights when you're talking to your friends- our friends about our sex life, Y/N, I have feelings too! I'm allowed to feel this way too, and right now, I feel like you're just using me as a- fuck, I don’t know, a talking point or something!" As far as the validity of his feelings, he did have a point (as much as you hated to cede to that), but you still pressed your lips into a thin line and persisted, not letting the subject drop. "I'm not going to take advantage of you, Ben! Stop saying that! Not everyone is out to get you, especially not me, and I hate when you're like this, 'protecting yourself'. You think that by being mean to me, it will get your problems to go away so you can keep this wall between you and the issue, but I'm not going to let you shut me out again. You don't have to shut down every time something goes haywire, damn it!" "I'm not shutting you out or being mean to you!" he yelled back, but you only scoffed and crossed your arms in disbelief. "Then what are you doing?" Your question was warranted, and Ben found himself at a loss for words as he stared at you guardedly. The gears were turning in his head, and you could see from the confusion in his eyes that he was starting to question himself now.  "I- I'm just tryin' to-" "To protect yourself, yeah, I get it!" you interrupted, Ben's jaw tightening as he snapped his mouth shut once again. The tension in his jaw remained unrelieved as you continued. "I get that you want to protect yourself, Ben, but you don't have to be so shitty to me for no reason when you do it! It's fucking mean and it hurts my feelings that you won't even let me explain myself!" That rendered him fully speechless, so you only let up for a moment before pressing one last time. "Can I explain now? Please." Dead silence hung in the air for a moment as the gravity of your words weighed heavy on both of you, Ben's teeth grinding together for a moment as he considered the accusations against him. "Fine," he muttered, yielding to you despite the conflict still going on behind closed doors in his mind.  You could tell it was a raging dumpster fire in there as you approached the bed, tentatively, sitting next to him and wiping away the tears that had failed to escape from your eyes. Between awkward shifts and intermittent sniffles, you explained everything you'd talked to Joe about last night, from Joe's Virgo woes to his mistaken assumption about pegging, Ben, and you. By the end of your story, you'd tucked one leg underneath you and let the other dangle off of the edge of the bed, facing Ben with your hands in your lap despite the fact that they were itching to be running through his hair right now.  You wanted desperately to comfort him, but there wasn't much to be done as you finally quieted to let him process all of this new information, his gaze trained on his legs which were just barely crossed over each other at the ankle, one foot shaking back and forth anxiously. It drove you mad as you hyper-focused on it too, so anxious to know what he was thinking that you nearly didn't register when he uncrossed them. Your head lifted as he stood up off the bed and walked over to the other side of the room quickly, your anxious feelings multiplying when his back stayed turned to you and he came to rest in front of the dresser. However, you vowed not to let it be known how utterly freaked out you were at the moment, so you scooted back on the bed and sat criss-cross as you brought his pillow into your lap, needing something of comfort to latch on to. It seemed like eons before he finally spoke, but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes, and his quiet, gentle words were like music to your ears. "So you didn't tell Joe you pegged me?" "No," you almost laughed in relief, though the situation certainly didn't call for it, and you could see his shoulders relax a bit, though his back stayed turned to you. "I actually told him I never had - multiple times, if I'm not wrong." "He was just joking?" he asked a bit louder, elaborating on his previous question, and you could feel the anxiety crumbling away as he turned to you with a genuinely relieved expression on his face. When you nodded, you could see an incredibly guilty look come over his face, and a little whine escaped your lips as you moved his pillow out of your lap and reached out for him. He gratefully obliged, climbing into bed with you, and you scooted over to make a bit more room as he practically laid on top of you, taking you down with him. "I'm such a dickhead, 'm sorry," was all he had to say, and that's all he had to do to make you start laughing before he began to pepper you with soft kisses anywhere he could. It was hard to breathe as he smothered you in wordless attention, and it took several tries for you to communicate that between breathless laughter and attempts to wriggle out from underneath him before he got the message.  As he turned on his side and let you breathe again, you tried to make sense of what had just happened. So many questions swirled through your head. When had it clicked? Why were you letting this slide? Why was he so defensive about this? But no matter how long you stared at your boyfriend and tried to make sense of it all, it proved fruitless to try and pin down exactly where he had finally got off of his one-track madness. So, you just smiled and saved that deconstruction for later. Right now, you wanted to savor the fact that things had been worked out, and you watched as Ben took your hand so he could kiss your knuckles, offering one more wordless apology with his eyes. His lips sent another thrill down your spine and you marveled at the effect he had on you even when you were both sober and incredibly sleep-worn. Despite him making you incredibly mad at moments, it was so hard not to love this man and everything about him. His green eyes flickered with an apprehensive yet curious look when you smiled widely, squeezing his hand. “Love you, bubs.” A smile spread across his lips, and he kissed your knuckles once more before murmuring his response.

“Love you too. Thanks for calling me out on my shit.” Laughing, you played with his fingers and shook your head, debating your response for a minute. It was your job, after all, but sometimes it was hard, especially when he was a dick about it like today. But Ben seemed to read your mind, and he continued on, relieving you the responsibility of somehow starting another tiff. “I know I suck sometimes, but I’m glad you and Joe can be mean right back to me if I need it. It makes it a lot easier to see when I’m being a knobhead.”

"Speaking of Joe-” Ben groaned before you even got the second part of your sentence out, and you had to laugh at him before you continued. It was like he knew you were about to poke fun at him. “He did say something about being surprised that you haven't smothered me yet," you teased, and Ben reluctantly took the bait, lacing his fingers into yours as he quirked an eyebrow curiously. "Yeah, no, he said something like 'How is he not the dominant one when he could just suffocate you with those muscles?' I think he has a crush on your muscles."  "First off, your Joe imitation is surprisingly poor for having lived next to him all these years," Ben joked right back, albeit in a soft voice. He seemed almost afraid of ticking you off at this point, but he had to roll his eyes when you gasped in mock offense. "Second of all, I'm not surprised that he wishes he could be this fit. And third off, I can be dominant, so I don't know what you were going on about with Joe." "Are you serious?" you laughed, and his attempt at looking dead serious only made you laugh harder as you hid your face behind the hand that was intertwined in his. "Oh, fuck, you're pulling my leg right now! You have to be, right?" The little noise of shock that he let out was genuine, and he moved your hand away from your face as he very obviously tried not to laugh at how hard you were laughing. "Why is it so hilarious? I can be dominant. I've been dominant with you loads of times." "Name one!" you choked out between fits of giggles, and he furrowed his eyebrows as he fell silent at the prompt. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, and then 20 seconds passed with no answer, which made you laugh even harder. "See?" "That doesn't mean that it can't happen!" he offered, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, but you were still too distracted coming down off of the end of your incredulous laughing fit, so he just whined and gently pressed his lips to your jaw. His kisses were soft and quick as he tried to get your full, undivided attention so he could plead his case, but all that did was make you giggle again, so he laughed with you before rolling on top of you again, one of his legs resting between yours as he continued to trail kisses down to your neck.  His swollen bottom lip dragged over the skin as you snickered one more time, still amused at the thought of Ben genuinely thinking he wasn't the biggest baby when it came down to the wire, and you gave voice to your thoughts. He keened at the impression of your fingers running over his scalp and dragging through his hair, pausing in his kisses for just a moment when he finally heard you speak. "I hate to say it, but I have my doubts. Sue me." You felt a quick puff of air hit your neck as he audibly scoffed, and then he resumed his kisses without any more delay. And really, you had to say that these kisses paired with his roaming hand that had just came to rest on your thigh - it was beginning to do something for you, so you let him continue as you toyed with the hair at the nape of his neck. You could tell from the way his hips rolled against yours subtly that he was getting just as much from this as you were. When he finally pulled away just enough to look at you, for a second you saw Ben in his true form - all smiles and cosmetic charisma, but still just as rosy-cheeked and painfully unsuspecting as the day you'd met.  And he thought he was going to come out the one on top? "As if," you murmured with a shit-eating grin, and then you pulled him into a kiss by the nape of his neck, his lips meeting yours with an eagerness only Ben could fail to contain. For a moment, he'd convinced himself that maybe he could be the one in control, but the way he submitted easily as you rolled on top of him, your thigh brushing up between his legs, said otherwise. You hand snuck up to his jaw, your thumb just casually resting on his chin and brushing over a hint of stubble - it was a subtle move, but nonetheless an effective reminder of who was in charge as it subconsciously prompted him to tilt his head forward eagerly and deepen the kiss. Reaching down with your free hand, you just barely brushed your fingers over the front of his shorts before cupping him through the admittedly-scratchy fabric. His breathing hitched, and then he let out what sounded like the sweetest whimper you'd ever heard as he grinded up against your touch, already desperate for friction and just as predictable as he ever was. Smiling widely against his lips, you broke the kiss and moved your hand away so it was resting just below his navel instead. He groaned unhappily against your lips at the loss, one of his hands finding your hip, and he murmured, "What? What?" as if he didn't want to think about how needy he'd been just moments ago. Letting out a soft laugh, you kissed him deeply once more and roped him right back in, moaning softly in unison with him when you straddled his hips and inadvertently grinded against his growing bulge,  Though it wasn't unwelcome by any means, you bit down on the inside of your cheek as your instincts coaxed you into rolling your hips lazily - suddenly, you were struggling to silence every blazing reminder in your head that you were trying to show him that you loved to love him and wanted to treat him like he deserved, and if that meant dominating the fuck out of him, then so be it! But it was too hard to ignore the desire beginning to course through your veins and cloud your judgment - before you knew it, you weren't only chasing that satisfaction of proving your point. Taking his hand, you wordlessly moved it to the front of your pajama shorts and hummed in appreciation when he took the hint immediately, slipping his hand in between fabric and skin so he could rub circles into your clit. Moaning his name at the feeling, you could sense his pace quicken at bit at the positive reaction, and you rutted against his hand with a serene smile decorating your face.  "Fuck, this never gets old," you murmured, Ben letting out a grunt of agreement, and your eyebrows furrowed in pleasure as he applied more pressure. Managing to pull your shirt off despite barely being able to focus on anything besides his fingers, you hummed in pleasure when you immediately felt Ben's mouth on your chest, kissing and sucking on every inch of skin he could reach. Meanwhile, he slid his fingers through your slick heat, eliciting quiet moans from both of you at how soaked you were. All of your touches and actions became more fervent as things intensified, kisses getting sloppier, hands roaming even further, and clothes coming off in rapid succession until you were completely naked and yanking Ben's shorts to his ankles as you relished in the fact that he'd conveniently forgotten to wear boxers or even compression shorts underneath.  His cheeks were as flushed as ever, and he squirmed a bit impatiently, muscles shifting underneath his skin with each movement and making him look like a marble statue underneath the pale light filtering in from behind the curtains. Proving a point be damned, your boyfriend was hot - and he was very much putty in your hands. Kneeling between his legs, you started to reach out to help him, but he was already there before you could, his hand stroking his cock as he ogled your body and let out short, sharp breaths. When your eyes met his and you raised an eyebrow in question, his hand slowed down almost automatically, his cock twitching in his grasp. The pure lust in his eyes paired with the uneven rise and fall of his chest evoked a visceral reaction, one that made you nearly bite down on your tongue as you fought back the instinctive urge to inhale sharply. Fuck, he was pretty. "I couldn't help it," he admitted weakly, and the appreciation that flickered to life in your eyes only encouraged him as he offered a weak smile, getting himself off as you crawled back up to capture his lips in a quick kiss. Replacing his hand with yours, you continued to pleasure him slowly, each stroke setting off a tremble in his abdomen that betrayed everything you were doing to him despite how hard he was working not to moan into your mouth every other second. "You sound so pretty when you moan like that, baby," you cooed as you straddled his hips, starting to grind down on him again, and he let out a slightly broken noise of delight at your praise while his hands found purchase on your hips. "You like that?" "Yes, yes. Can't wait anymore. Need to fuck you, please," he begged in very obviously fragmented sentences. His head fell back against the pillows in a mixture of frustration and pleasure when you just grinned and traced a finger down the center of his chest, grinding down against him painfully slow.  "Then fuck me." You felt a shiver run up your spine when Ben openly groaned, and you fought the urge to just keep rutting against him until one of you got off - as tempting as it was, you instead let him guide himself until the tip of his cock was pressing against your entrance. "Raw?" he asked incredulously as if he hadn't already done it multiple times before, and you nodded slowly as he began to groan and cover his face with his arm, his head sinking back into the pillow. "I'm going to fucking bust before I even get in," he lamented, muffled by his elbow, and you had to grin knowingly before you finally sank down onto him with a soft gasp, marveling as he filled you up slowly. Fuck, fuck, fuck, that was good. You weren’t sure if you’d said that out loud, but no matter how many times you slept together, it still felt like the first time every time you did it. He bottomed out with a loud groan as you rested your hands on his torso, pausing a moment to adjust. When you finally looked down, his eyes were screwed shut in a desperate attempt to keep himself away from the edge as long as he could. "Baby, look at me," you whispered, and he peeked open an eye only to squeeze it shut as soon as he opened it. Letting out a small huff, he began to curse under his breath until you quieted him with a gentle hum and a quick kiss. "I love you." "I love you so much," he choked out softly, his fingers digging into your hips as you started rolling them tentatively. Humming in euphoria, you finally began to ride him, and he helped as much as he could to guide your hips against his between sweet, yet sinful moans. The two of you moved in unison, pornographic sounds of skin on skin intertwining with mumbled curses and breathless moans.  At some point you couldn't discern in the chaos, Ben had started to meet your efforts in the middle and began thrusting up into you with a wild abandon. If your upstairs or downstairs neighbors hadn't woke yet, they were sure to have by that point - it was no holds barred as you both neared your climaxes, and nothing was off the table at that point. "Oh fuck, fuck, fuck!" Ben gasped when you began to slow down and roll your hips more deliberately, his hips stuttering as he tried to stave off the inevitable. "Keep doing that, please, I'm so fucking close- Shit!" When you circled your hips a certain way, his cock brushed up against your walls at an angle that made your thighs nearly falter from the wave of pleasure it sent rolling through your body. Goosebumps broke out on your skin, and you cursed under your breath as you repeated the motion with a satisfied gasp. "You that close, baby? You want to cum in me?" you asked breathily, the rhetorical question hanging in the air while Ben's fingers dug into your hips as he tried to meet you halfway with sloppy thrusts, his abdomen trembling with the effort. He looked close to tears as you took one of his hands and moved it to your chest, murmuring some breathless command to play with your tits.  Obliging eagerly, he watched with cloudy, lust-filled eyes as you reached down to rub your clit in rapid circles that matched your quickly-deteriorating pace. A fuzziness entered your vision as a combination of touch, sensation, and just the sight of Ben going slack-jawed in his efforts to consciously avoid a surely-close orgasm. "Just let go," you managed to moan out, and holy fuck, did he let out the prettiest sound. His voice cracked as he choked out something between a sob and a groan - it was a noise fit for a porn star, the feeling of him emptying inside of you only that much hotter coupled with the visual of his eyelids fluttering closed. So overwhelmed with sensations, he could barely form a coherent thought as he came. His breaths came out in gasps, hips pressing flush to you as he spilled inside you. It was a mess, a hot one, and the sound that it made as he pulled out with a whimper was downright filthy, but you were too caught up in chasing your own high to think about anything other than the way the last drops of his cum were painting his stomach, his cock twitching as it finally gave way to the last of his orgasm. "God- you're so fucking hot- I'm-" Ben was still struggling for complete sentences when you finally pressed hard on your clit and then you were coming, your head falling back in pure ecstasy as waves of relief crashed over you, cleansing your body of every curse word that came flying out of your mouth following your climax. Ben was there, and then his lips were on yours as you started to come down from the high, a messy kiss silencing any further sins you could have vocalized. His hands slid to your thighs again, and he didn't loosen his grip until you pulled away from the obscenely long kiss, both of you very out of breath and very content with what had just taken place.  After a chorus of ragged breathing from the both of you, you let a sly grin peek at the corner of your lips before you rolled off of him, silently cursing the fact that you'd be washing these sheets ASAP so the cum dripping out of you wouldn't irreversibly stain the fabric. A few tissues you snatched from the nightstand temporarily alleviated the situation, buying you enough time to pad over to the bathroom and grab a towel for the both of you. You could barely catch your breath as you did so, and you wondered if you were getting out of shape recently - the brief thought of going to the gym with Ben more often passed by, and you huffed as you reluctantly considered it. When you returned and tossed the towel to Ben, who was still sprawled out on the bed and pushing a few stray hairs back out of his eyes, you had to smirk. "So what was that about you being dom-" You didn't even get the chance to finish your sentence before Ben was laughing out an answer, catching the towel as he sat up to clean himself off. "Fuck right off, you're just gloating at this point." "You're right," you teased, silently preening at your own sexual prowess as you cleaned yourself up and slipped on some old, oversized t-shirt, ignoring the sweat that gave your skin a light sheen. Looking over, you ogled shamelessly as he threw his legs over the edge of the bed, picking up a haphazard pair of shorts from the dirty laundry nearby. His muscles shifted underneath his skin with the effort, and you noted that he looked just as sweaty as you, causing you to let out an inward sigh of relief. Maybe you weren't as out of shape as you thought you were - the sex was just that good. "Such a show-off," he mumbled, but you could hear the smile in his voice as you looked at yourself in the mirror to fix your hair, and it brought a proud smile to your own face. When you finally crawled back into bed with him, he'd pulled some shorts back on and stripped the dirtied sheets off, leaving just the comforter underneath the two of you. Snuggling up together, he rested his head on your tummy and gave it a gentle kiss as you felt his eyelashes flutter closed, the feather-like sensation against your skin coaxing a quiet giggle out of you. "What's so funny?" he asked curiously, though his voice was barely above a mumble, clearly exhausted from the events of the morning. "Nothing," you answered honestly, running your hand back through his mussy, slightly-sweaty hair before grinning and back-tracking. "Actually, I was thinking about how fucking funny I was in the kitchen earlier. What would you do if I microwaved your tea water?" Ben groaned at the thought, and you dissolved into a fit of giggles as he buried his face into your stomach, shaking his head slightly at your clear amusement with yourself. As you laughed, you could feel a small huff against your skin, and then he grumbled in response. "You're sick, y'know. Truly sick." "I think someone's being a little dramatic," you teased, but Ben only scoffed once more before getting himself comfortable and dozing off into a peaceful mid-morning nap, the soothing warmth and methodical rise and fall of his chest eventually lulling you back to sleep as well. A final thought of 'God, I hope Joe had his TV loud enough' brought a mischievous smile to your face just before you were both out like a light. - taglist - @crosmopolitan @just-ladyme @rogerfxckingtaylor @fourmisfitz @shae-is-not-ok @moreinfinite @fruityfreddie @poachedhazontoast @strawberryfields-forever @imladrs @psychoticobsession @killer-queen-xo @rebelrebelyourefaceisamess @destiel-stucky4ever-loki-queen @brownhardyho @stardvstial @iminlovewith-rogers-car @benyeehawdy @mercurys-bike @mazzelloplots @beaaatle @sunshine112​ @wonderless-screwup @rogers-sweatbands @whowaits4everanyway @sunflower-borhap-boys @bitemerog​ @jennyggggrrr​ @bensrhapsody​ @xiaoqueencava​ @discodeacygotmorerhythm​ @reedusteinrambles​ @extrovertedwallflower @the-next-one​ @nouvveau​ @storiesfrommirkwood​ @spunky-town @brianprobablywill​ @elizabwrites NYM taglist - @aridrowse @radiob-l-a-hblah​ @caborhapch​ @xtrabroll​ @myguardianmailman @ultrunning​ @onceuponadetectivedemigod​ @neckfruit​ @borhapbxtch​ @ixchel-9275​ @mamaskillerqueen​ @queentrashcanfics​ @sam-mercurry-sixx @kimmietea​ @whenthe-smokeisinyoureyes​ @rogmeddows​ @deacyspatronusisacheesetoastie​ @woaholland​ @a-kind-of-magik​ @darling-egg​ @ramibaby​ @orchideax​ @jazzman-19​ @bloomingbetty​ @hannafuckingsucks​ @theprettyfandom @the-run-n-gogh​ @omgitsearly​ @killerqueenunderpressure​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​ @zyanmaik​ @wehavetofearignorance​ @itsryn​ @multisuperbananas​ @stephanie-everlasting @dancingstan @mercurycrowley​ @awkwardangelshezza​ @deadlyaffairs​ @ken-yee-not​ @crazylittlethingcalledobsession @loveandbeloved29​ @devin-marie​ @lieblingsmenzch @standing-onthe-edge @annabananawastakenx2 message me/reply to this to be added to the permanent taglist! REQUESTS CLOSED. if your name is crossed out, i can’t find you/tag you!

[xxmisty]

My Big Humiliating Torchwood Confession - Part 1 :P

Warning: this will be a LONG post, and i’m sorry about that! 

Lucy is sat opposite me asking me repeatedly if I’ve started typing yet because she knows how desperately i’m putting off making this post!!1

This is awful, this is.... probably the most embarrassingly intimate confession i’ll have made since the day I opened up about my fetish way back at the start of 2013. And on the surface of it it probably doesn’t seem like that big of a deal but IT IS TO ME! And a big chunk of the trauma i’m about to express is tongue in cheek but it’s genuinely been - and continues to be - a huge bundle of DISTRESS AND HUMILIATION AND UTTER RESENTMENT!!! Because this year has been.... one hell of a personal journey and i don’t even mean anything to do with the pandemic.

It all started on New Year’s Day. I was feeling horrendously ill; the miraculous medication that had started to give me my life back had run out and thanks to the festive postal delays my new lot hadn’t arrived yet. I was in agony, I had a horrible headache, I felt sick and I could hardly move. We spent the day watching a bunch of muppet stuff, and that night we watched the first ep of season 12 of Doctor Who and, y’know, it was a pretty damn good episode (plus thirteen in the suit.... fuuckkk) 

So afterwards we started having a discussion about Chris Chibnall - we’ve long held criticisms about some of his writing (not all of it, but it’s a mixed bag) and Lucy told me I still hadn’t seen his worst writing because that was for Torchwood...

Which I had never seen. Which I had been desperately trying not to see, although I didn’t know why. I just always had this vibe like a big “NO ENTRY!” sign at the idea of ever watching it. It’s not as though I had a logical reason for it, it’s not like I’d read up about it and thought, ‘naahhhhhh, I don’t fancy watching that’. I just had a big WARNING sign in my head, telling me not to go there. 

Several years ago Lucy made me watch the first episode (after i’d been avoiding her threats of showing it to me for like 2 years) and like... it wasn’t horrible? It wasn’t... great either... but it didn’t kill me. Then a couple of years ago she showed me Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang because we were having a big Runaways phase so she wanted to show me an episode with James Marsters in. Again, it didn’t kill me. It wasn’t horrible. But I still had those big NO ENTRY!!! signs up in my head. I was still trying desperately to avoid actually being shown Torchwood as a show.

And the the new year happened and I was too WEAK AND DEFENCELESS to know what was happening when Lucy and I cuddled up in bed that night. I was too sick to really comprehend what she was doing or to fight back when she announced she was going to show me the very worst of Chris Chibnall’s writing... and put on Day One followed by Cyberwoman.

Oh. My. God.

All day I had been in a state of physical agony. Suddenly my mental and emotional state was far, FAR worse!!! The sex gas alien was bad enough, then by the time she put on Cyberwoman my brain was trying to shut down. I used to suffer blackouts and, god, I kept blacking out all the way through it, and instead of being her usual loving, wonderful self she KEPT FORCING ME TO COME ROUND TO WATCH IT!!!

By this point it was gone midnight and I was in a state of utter distress!! This was the worst double helping of tv I had ever sat through in my life and I sat up and let forth a tirade of absolute distress! This, I decided, had to be the reason I’d been avoiding Torchwood. Because it was more like.... Torurewood :P 

Yep, that had to be it. Couldn’t possibly be anything worse, could it? 

At least now lucy had shown me those two terrible Chibnall eps I would NEVER EVER HAVE TO WATCH THEM AGAIN. Or ANY Torchwood episodes. Yes, my ordeal was over. Had to be.

Nope. We went back to bed and she put on Out if Time. And i’ll admit, the story was much stronger but goddddd I had issues with the endings! And my level of despair started to rise even higher. I HATED Torchwood! This was the most distressing night’s viewing ever and I just wanted to go to sleep and be done with it all! Lucy put one more episode on afterwards: They Keep Killing Suzie. And that was much better but halfway through we finally fell asleep - so surely my trauma was over with.

Nope.

I had horrible nightmares of a very thirsty Gwen coming onto me all night, over and over again and it was HORRIBLE!!! Like, you have no idea how distressed I was! And when I woke up I blamed lucy whole-heartedly and she very sympathetically laughed at my plight!

But yeah. My trauma was over. No more Torchwood. I’d suffered the night from hell. Now it was time to pick up the pieces of my shattered life and move on! My medication arrived that day, I started work on some new pet portraits and life went back to normal.

Until that night, when I saw the telltale sign of Lucy putting a video on and turning her iPad around and then there they were - the opening titles of Torchwood - and I wanted to jump out the boat and into the canal and swim as far away as possible!!!

But the episode she put on was Fragments. She said she wanted to show me Chris Chibnall’s finest episode. And y’know what? It was really pretty fucking good. And god, I was fURIOUS about that!!! When we went to bed she pulled a real double whammy though by putting on Adam - which became instantly one of my favourite episodes of ANYTHING, EVER. And I looked at my wife, shook my head, sighed and told her, ‘nice save, Lucy... nice save...’

Over the next couple of weeks we also had a major Doctor Who rewatch and revisited most of the New Who era, and - to my mixed feelings - she dotted various other episodes of Torchwood in around them. I was conflicted - after the Adam and Fragments double bill I was no longer in brain-screamy hatred territory. I did however keep having flashbacks to that godawful night. Plus i’d had several further nightmares about a thirsty Gwen and I did NOT like it! But by a couple of weeks into January I’d seen a fair bit of Torchwood. Some of them twice. 

Around this same time I’d started back in testosterone after not being able to afford it for the last 3 years. And then I started to notice I was getting some..... urghhhhhh..... unusual... and very uncomfortable feelings... about certain.... things... and characters.

And I started falling headlong into a great big gay panic :P

And here’s where the whole story becomes a HELL of a lot more embarrassing so i’m going to put it under a read more :P

Did ya click on that read more? Wh-why? there’s nothing to see here... especially not a long tale of shame and distress :P ugggghhhhhhh ok, FINE;

Basically there were two things happening at the same time. One was that I started to feel something I hadn’t felt in two decades. When I was a kid/teen we didn’t have the phrase ‘hyperfixation’ so I just called them obsessions. I always had obsessions, at any given point there was always this ONE THING that was my entire life. i lived it, breathed it, became it. It was my whole world, my whole personality, my focus, my lifeline. 9 times out of 10 it would be a tv show. Between the ages of 12 and 15 I would generally change my obsession about once a month. There were several ‘usual suspects’ that would cycle around over and over - Red Dwarf, The Brittas Empire, Sonic the Hedgehog, Halfway Across the Galaxy, Parallel 9, Out of this World... 

late in 1995 I became obsessed with The X Files and - bizarrely - that obsession just ran and ran. I was so used to my obsession changing around once every month that it was bizarre to still be absolutely hyperfixated on it almost 9 months later. And then, in June 1996, my longest ever obsession took its place, a little known uk fantasy show called Bugs. 

That... was my longest running obsession. And oh my god, was I ever obsessed with it. I have no idea how that one obsession kept going for 3 years. i’m sorry this is particularly wordy but this is kind of personal and I want to explain this right.

If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll probably known that one of the most defining moments of my life happened in the summer of ‘98. My cousin’s husband sexually assaulted me and my life spiralled into total despair. While that night was bad enough, the slow breakdown I went through over the course of the year that followed was harder to recover from. And eventually I came out the other side to some degree but i’d lost my love of three things that made me the person I was: writing, drawing and being obsessed. All three were so closely entangled with that night and surviving afterwards that it changed something that had always been a fundamental part of me.

I was no longer able to feel obsession. To hyperfixate the way I previously had. It was like something was broken inside me. And that was like a loss unto itself. It was SUCH a big part of me. It had been the only way i’d survived years of depression when I was young. My obsessions were what kept me afloat. 

In the last decade there are a few things that I called ‘obsessions’ and I thought were as close as I would ever get to the way I used to feel. I thought maybe it was because i’d ‘grown up’ (pah). That’s not to say that i wasn't thoroughly into Ashes to Ashes, FNAF and Homestuck, for example, because of course I was! I even called them obsessions, but there was something that just... wasn’t the same, no matter what I did.

And over time, I got back the other things I’d lost. I started writing my A2A fics in 2010 and Lucy helped me to start drawing again in 2018 and god, both times it was like finally having a piece of myself returned after so long! As for my ‘obsessions’, I just thought I wasn't able to feel the way I used to because I wasn’t a kid any more.

But then, I thought that about Christmas Eve too, and then lucy came into my life <3

Still, the last thing I was expecting was... for *those* feelings to start sneaking back in my life. Feelings I hadn’t been able to experience since the summer of 1998-9. And to my further distress I discovered that they were relating to a certain show that I’d had a traumatising introduction to on new year’s day...

Suddenly it was all I could think about; TORCHWOOD! TORCHWOOD! Aargghhhhh and yet I still hated it! It was still awful! And yet... at the same time... it was so goooooooood.... arghhhhh, every time we watched an episode there was a  knife twisting in my guts, reminding me that I hadn’t even felt these feelings over things we’d been HUGELY into... the fandoms we’d met through, the fandoms we discovered together. Nope. It was Torchwood that brought back my ability to hyperfixate! And I have SO MANY ANGRY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS!!!! Grrrrrrrrr!!

And believe me, I kept thinking it was going to stop and go away BUT IT HASN’T! It’s only gotten worse! And as of yesterday Torchwood officially became my second  longest obsession ever!!!

I. AM. FURIOUS!!!

It’s... urrghhhh I hate this fact but it’s almost like I have a crush on the *show*??!!! I... can’t explain it better than that??? It’s like, if I could throw Torchwood on the bed and make sweet, sweet love to it I would :P and yeah, i’m saying all of this tongue in cheek but i’ve had a fucking sky high libido ever since I went back on T (ohhhhh and believe me I am LOVING it!!! 💙💙💙) But it’s like... there are elements of Torchwood itself that are so fucking hot that I get.... reactions that I am SO FUCKING EMBARRASSED ABOUT for so many reasons deidjdhdggjhaaahhhhhhhhh

Lucy literally only has to say ‘Torchwood’ at me and I end up in a gibbering heap half the time - I am not even kidding!!!

This, however, is NOT the worst thing that happened as a result of Lucy making me watch this god damned show.

But honestly this post has gone on WAY too long already so i’m going to save that for part 2.

Oh god... my shame.... my total and utter shame....

To be continued :P

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #313

“i’m your turbo lover  /  tell me there’s no other”

Where are you located at this moment? In my bed. What if you found out your ex was having a child with someone else? If it was Sara, I'm finding out who the fuck I'm flying up there to punch his face in. If it was Jason, I'd either faint or be in the bathroom vomiting. Or both. I can almost promise you at least one or the other while I have an absolute emotional breakdown. I'm not at the point in my recovery where I can hear that and be entirely okay. I'd be happy for any of the others. At what age do you think you'll be ready to have children? Never. When was the last time you couldn't stop laughing? Why? I don't recall. Which of your friends do your parents get along best with? I guess Girt, since he's known my mom the longest of the friends I still have. I don't know about Dad; he barely knows any of my friends seeing as I don't live with him and see him rarely. Is there anyone in your friendship group that your parents don't like? No. Can you recall the last time you were extremely disappointed? I surprisingly can't remember, even though I know it was recent. Who was the last person to un-friend you on Facebook? I don't know, it's not like I go hunting people down if I notice the number has dropped, lol. Do you know why he/she decided to un-friend you? I'm certain it would've been something political. Are there any food wrappings, boxes, containers etc. in your room? No. Do you know anyone who does have cancer? I don't think anyone who currently has it, no. I may know someone via association, but idk. What is the worst medicine you've ever taken? There are two that very strongly stand out: the first one was in middle school, and the second sometime last year. I was put on an antidepressant that made me absolutely love life in the morning, like I would practically prance through school, but come afternoon, I was a fucking demon. Mom took me off that shit so fast. Most recently, my birth control was changed to have more estrogen for some reason I can't recall (maybe it had to do with mood?? idk), and it made me... I'm just gonna say I was a ~mess~. I slammed on breaks with it so fuckin fast. Safe to say I returned to my normal pill. Has your house or where you stayed ever flooded? My childhood home came very close during Hurricane Floyd. Thankfully the water never got actually inside the house, but it was an absolute lake outside. What was the last event or special occasion you participated in? My niece's birthday was actually a couple days ago, so we celebrated at my sister's house. What do you find yourself reminiscing about the most? I'll give you one guess. Do you have a favorite pianist? No. Song you listened to last is...? I have "Turbo Lover" by Judas Priest on right now. What's the last type of cookie you ate? Uhhh I would assume chocolate chip. Do you have your own computer? I have my own laptop, and I'm possibly getting an actual computer come May?? One of my WoW friends knows the hell I've been through with this laptop, and she and her husband are getting new computers then, so she's basically pushed her husband's old one on me, lol. Apparently it works just fine, he just wants something better. I've told her again and again to make some money off of it, but she's pretty much giving me no choice lmao. I appreciate it a whole lot, though. It'd be pretty nice to separate games onto an actual, capable desktop versus making my laptop sound like it's screaming for God's mercy if I boot something up. Describe your computer chair? I don't have one. Well, there's an old one in the extra room I'm going to end up using, but all I know is it's black. I've never paid closer attention to it. Do you sleep with your door open or closed? Open. I feel too isolated with it closed. Are you going to keep your last name when you get married? God no, it's very unlikely. I hate my last name, take it away. Does it bother you when people beg? Why are they begging, and how insistently? It depends. Do you have any weird rings? I have two, but neither I consider weird, at least. Well, I suppose the one with "bitch" carved on the inside would confuse non-Supernatural fans, haha. Are you anything like your siblings? Not really, no. At least, my two immediate sisters. Mom says I'm extremely similar to her eldest daughter though and wishes we'd talk more, but yeah, I just don't have anything to talk about with her. I'm so bad at initiating conversation. When was the last time you shaved your legs? October for when I was doing that witchy photoshoot with a friend. I absolutely hate shaving my legs and pretty much only do if anyone else whose opinion would affect me may see them. What would be the best surprise you could receive right now? Uhhh I guess all the "upgrades" I want to make to Venus' enclosure: a 40g tank and a nice, accurate hygrometer and thermometer, as well as the proper kind of lamp for her. I feel like such a "bad snake mom" still having her in her current terrarium because, while it's perfectly liveable and not dangerous, it's too small for her. It's pretty much always on my mind to some degree nowadays, so just like, dropping the terrarium and extra tools off would be a massive weight off my shoulders. Did you ever skip a grade or get held back a grade? No, but I was able to skip the intro Writing course the last time I was in college; I just started in Writing II. Who took your profile pic? Anywhere where it's a picture of myself, odds are me. I hate getting pictures taken, but if it's gonna happen, it'll be through myself, knowing my "good" angle and such, lol. Have you ever been fishing? Do you know anyone who likes fishing as a hobby? I've been fishing many times, especially as a kid with my dad. There are pleeeenty of people I know who enjoy it. I don't anymore. Do you own any cats? What color are their eyes? Yes; his are a light blue. Is there a rose bush in your garden? What color are its roses? We don't have a garden. When was the last time you spent over $100 in one transaction? What did you buy? Over $100 with my own cash, a plane ticket. My recent tattoo deposit was exactly a hundred. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? Would you judge a grown adult for doing so? No; Roman would NEVER allow me to cuddle anything else, and I am not even remotely kidding. I couldn't care less if any adult does, though. Would you rather read an erotic novel or watch an erotic film? Ew, neither, but I guess a book would be better just so my eyes weren't forever scarred. What’s your favorite way to make your home smell good? Do you spend a lot of money on making this happen? INCENSE!!!! God, I love incense burners. I don't light it anymore though because Venus' terrarium is also in my room, and it's not good for snakes. What are the main two colors in the room you’re currently in? Did you pick these colors out yourself? Just... white. That's it. Well, my furniture is brown. I didn't pick either. How often do you wake up in the night needing to pee? Usually once, sometimes not at all anymore. I guess my bladder actually grew a pair. If you live in a household with pets, who is responsible for their care - both in terms of finance and the physical tasks involved? As far as the physical care, me. Mom does help me do a full clean of Venus' cage sometimes, though, because I don't trust myself to both keep her around my neck while I scrub the tank, hide, bowl, etc., with a cat that is my absolute shadow. I don't want to be bent over the tub and Roman tries to do something; he's shown very little interest in Venus, but still, I'm one hell of a paranoid snake mom that doesn't want to risk her life. Full cleans only happen like twice a year, so I don't mind too much asking my mother for some help. I should point out that Mom doesn't want to hold her, so we can't reverse roles. Do you have anything hanging from your ceiling apart from lights? Not anymore, no. At my old house and the one before, I had lots of Pyramid Head gift tags hanging, but our landlord doesn't want me to do that here. Would you describe yourself as neat, messy or somewhere in-between? I'm in-between. If you have pets, when was the last time one of them needed to go the vets? Venus had to go to the vet about a year into me having her because she was showing symptoms of an RI in strange breathing episodes, which can be fatal to a snake. Thank God, nature, whatever, that she didn't. There were warning signs, but closer watch over her humidity saved her. Roman, meanwhile, was taken to the vet like a year ago to be neutered. When the pandemic is over, what is one thing you can’t wait to do again? I barely ever left the house beforehand, so... I guess go to the movies. What’s one thing (aside from essentials) that you spend the most money on each month? Has anyone ever told you you’re obsessed or addicted with it? N/A What’s your favourite genre of TV show to watch? What’s your favourite show that’s not from that genre? If I had to pick, uhhh... yeah, idk, due to the whole "not into TV much to begin with" thing. Would you rather be employed or self-employed? Why? Self-employed, though taking care of all business matters yourself is/would suck. I just really want to be my own boss for the sake of photographing whatever I want. IIs your hair naturally curly, straight or somewhere in between? Do you wish it was different? It's straight, but on the wavy side, and I wish it wasn't. Do you ever play online games with your friends? Which one(s)? Just WoW. In the last week, have you had any alcoholic beverages? Which? No. Do you ever wear accessories in your hair? Which ones? No. Do you feel free to post your views on social media? Yep. I honestly don't care who it pisses off. What is your favorite work of historical fiction? Well, I don't really know what you consider truly "historical" in age... That, and I'm bad at dates to begin with. There are lots and lots of older books and movies I adore, though. Old Yeller is one of my favorite books ever, for one. The Boy In The Striped Pajamas makes me sob, too. What cartoon character looks like you? I remember when Hotel Transylvania came out, my ex's mob pointed out how much she thought I looked like the daughter, especially when my hair was dyed black. Do you have hope for the future? Some days I do, some days I don't. Do you believe in yourself? Ehhhh... debatable, idk. Do you have trouble letting go of your past? Oh yes. Were you happy in high school? It's funny, I was very depressed in HS, but due to Jason and friends, it's one of my most cherished time periods. Were you ever a teacher's favorite? I mean it modestly, but I was almost always pretty obviously one of the teachers' favorites. I was a good student. Are you popular? I wasn't. If you won a title in the senior class polls, what was it? I didn't. Have you ever had a medical condition that made you unable to work? My social anxiety is so debilitating that it's made it questionable. It ruined my very short-lived previous jobs. What makes your life worth living? My future goals, family, friends... What is your favorite Bible verse? I don't have one. List five careers you've considered. Paleontologist, vet, game designer, author, and wildlife biologist are all past ones. Do you have any unusual talents? If so, what? No. What do you get compliments on? My hair and my art, mostly. What have people told you you should be? I've heard "a vet" most in my life. What is holding you back? My (mostly social) anxiety and extreme fear of judgment. Do you have anyone purely evil in your life? Hell no, I wouldn't allow that person to stay in my life. Have you ever felt threatened for your life? I've felt scared for it, yes. While riding my bike once, I ran into a guy in my old neighborhood who had a criminal history, including assault, just asking what I was listening to on my iPod. I stopped because I was scared to keep going, and he wound up asking for my Facebook, but guess who didn't accept THAT friend request. List ten positive words that describe you. That's too much thinking, man. List ten negative words that [you feel] describe you. And that's too much negativity to fish in. Are you a good person or a bad person? I mean, I try to be a good one. Have you ever contemplated being a bad person? I've done bad things, but I've certainly never deliberated tried to be an overall bad person. Have you ever resorted to vandalism because you didn't have a voice? No. Have you ever egged someone's house? Wow, no. Do you want to egg someone's house? Also no because I'm a fucking adult. Have you ever seen a piece of graffiti that you are thankful for? What an odd question. I mean, no? Name three people who hurt you and didn't care. I am quite positive Colleen doesn't care about the many times she did considering she's always right. Was your first crush sexual, or no? No, I was just a kid. What would you do if you got pregnant right now? I honestly can't say I know. If I was God forbid raped, I'd probably have an abortion because I psychologically could not handle that without being scarred for life. If it was by my own stupidity, I feel I'd probably have the baby but give it up for adoption. I just can't raise a kid. Do you have a medical condition that you are embarrassed or ashamed to tell people you have? No, I don't think so. What do you get asked the most? Hm. OH, WAIT, THAT'S EASY. I get asked a lot if my lip piercing hurt. Have you ever stood up for someone else who was being bullied? I know I have before, but I don't remember the occasion. What tragic news stories that you've heard has touched you the most? Man, that's a lot to think about. You see news articles on Facebook all the time, and a whole lot of them touch me, so I dunno. What is your favorite thing to order at Taco Bell? I like the cheese quesadillas, and whatever those cinnamon bites are called are really good. I'm still tilted they got rid of the fiesta potatoes, because I adored those. Where do you have cutting scars (if you have any)? I only ever had them on my wrist, but you can't see them anymore. Do you like cotton candy? Not very, but I mean, I can have a bite or two. It's way too sweet to eat a lot of it. What's the best piece of graffiti you've ever seen? I'm unsure, but I've definitely seen beautiful work, especially online. Do you like tattoos? "Like" is a colossal understatement. Do you like piercings? Yep yep yep. Have you ever made someone so mad that they broke something? No. Those are not people I hang around with. Who is the last person you slow-danced with? Slow-danced? I don't think I've done that since Jason.

[gemder]

a bubbline wip, featuring a dissociative episode by our fave punk rock vamp. set shortly after Stakes.

She doesn't know how long she's been hovering over the couch like this, with her gaze trained on the bumps and dips on the ceiling and her bass planted in her arms. How many times has she sung that old song, so old and resilient it survived the death and rebirth of the world (and the both of hers twice over, now) just by hiding in the corner of her mind she doesn't like to visit? She can't see the sun or moon rise through the entrance to her hideaway from this part of the house, and the cave-imposed darkness tells her nothing of the time or how much of it has passed.

She doesn't dare budge from her spot. She's been turned twice now; she knows from experience that any sudden action, anything to startle her base thought process, could spark that bloodlust from last time. That was some ugly biz, if she remembers correctly. It's been a while, but something like an uncontrollable urge to drain the lifeforce of every living creature within 30 miles sticks to you. She's just going to have to wait it out, until the itch in the back of her throat dies down and she doesn't worry it'll become an insatiable burning for hot blood, no matter how long it takes.

Marceline has had an excessive amount of time to learn how to be alone; 1003 years, in fact. So why does it never get any easier? Why does being left never hurt any less? Why does she seem to be so completely destined for eternal loneliness? What asshat decided she deserved to spend the entirety of her neverending life without a single constant presence?

Mom went out with promises of keeping safe and finding food and I love you so much, sweetie, that alone is strong enough to bring me back to you. It took two weeks before little Marcy came to the conclusion that her mom wasn't coming back with food or supplies, or even returning empty handed. Simon let a stupid magical crown take over every single cell of his brain and wrote a bunch of scattered letters about it while it happened instead of, you know, telling the frightened 7 year old she was going to be left soon. Dad just up and left to go back to running the Nightosphere after a few weeks, with nary a parting word nor any notice. Her post-apocalyptic comrades had no choice but to flee from an otherwise inevitable extinction. Bonnie had to go and grow up, and in the process decide that her 900-something year old girlfriend wasn't mature enough.

(She checked that old, busted up camper as often as she could over the following months. There was never another life in that thing after she hopped down the little steps and let the screen door slam back with the carelessness of a 6 year old.)

(She found a decomposed corpse months later that just happened to be wearing some torn up rags that looked like her mom’s old sweater and jeans. It must have just been a coincidence, though; there were a lot of recently dead back then, and even more moth-eaten sweaters in the world.)

(“I’m trying to save you, but who's going to save me?” ‘I don't know, old man, maybe you could have saved yourself? You could have not purposely used the magical relic that was making you go bananas?’ If a 7 year old could make it through the apocalypse without magic then so could a fully grown man.)

(He left her to survive on her own in the name of being executive manager of hell and he still wonders why she wants nothing to do with him, why she used to have such a hard time so much as calling him “dad” when he’s never been anything like what she was lead to believe dads were supposed to be like.)

(She’s 1000 years old, how in the name of the nightosphere could she not be mature enough?)

(Over the years she’s replaced the world “hell” with “Nightosphere” the same way the being once referred to as “God,” back when even she was young, is now called by their proper name of Glob. The Nightosphere really is hell, so it fits.)

(Sometimes she takes the time to think about how she's the heir apparent to the actual, literal, real life hell, and how she's one of the oldest beings around these days, maybe the oldest to still really be sane, but still a messed up teen.)

(She doesn't know how old she was when she was turned; years and months and all that are hard to keep track of when the species that invented it is all but extinct. Is she old enough to drive? Probably. She does and can regardless, because screw the old ways. Old enough to drink, smoke, vote? Debatable. The point is that she’s 1000 years old but actually, like, 18. What the fuck.)

She drifts, both mentally and physically. She's had plenty of time and isolation to ponder the Big Things about life and the world and why and how things happened the way they did, and what it means. She will have an abundance of opportunities in the future to think about these things, too. Some day she'll reflect on this part of her life in the far away, nostalgia-filtered sepia tones she currently thinks of her childhood and adolescence. She'll remember when Finn and Jake were the heroes of Ooo, when Simon used to chase after princesses who will have long since passed, when she couldn't get over her ex-girlfriend who happened to be sentient candy. It will be distant and she will miss it terribly, the same way she misses her mother, and Simon when he was Simon, and fries in a long-abandoned diner. But it will be a wound long since closed and numbed, like the deep scar she got on her calf sometime in her early teens that still exists today, preserved in her immortality and a sentimentality that prevented her from insta-healing it away, sting and blood long gone.

She has forever to reminisce, but only right now to live in the present. She makes mental patterns in the bumps on the ceiling, and slowly loses grip on her body. She is a million miles upwards, where the sky holds no oxygen and the stars are still pinpricks in a sea of indigo construction paper. Like a kid poking holes in the top of a jar of lightning bugs, equipped with a fork and enthusiasm at being able to destroy something for the sake of encapturing something else. She is, at the same time, hovering above her uncomfortably hard couch. One of her hands slips from its place atop her bass, and Shwabl licks it from his spot next to her on the dusty carpet.

She doesn't hear the knock at the door. She is right there, but she is centuries back and in a different part of the continent entirely. She doesn't hear Bonnie getting increasingly agitated, trying and failing not to raise her voice at her through the door. She doesn't notice when Bonnie lets herself in regardless of Marceline’s lack of response, or when Shwabl jumps up to attention at the guest.

It's the “Marceline, what -” that breaks her dissociative spell. That tone of exasperation in that particular voice is a very familiar one, especially within the last decade. She comes to to find that there are fresh tears in the corner of one eye and the words to a song as old as her youth on her lips.

“Oh, hey Bombòn. How goes it girl?” Marceline has had a millennium to convince the world that she's chill and totally not a big mess, and it shows in the lilt to her voice that screams ‘I'm just chillin’’ and not ‘I've been dissociating and crying and probably singing for who-knows-how-long and I'm really messed up’. She still doesn't dare move from her spot, because moving around could still trigger what she's trying to wait out.

“It's been three weeks, Marcy. Three weeks, and all that heavy biz, and no one's heard from you since. Doesn't that seem even a little bit irresponsible to you? Didn't you think people would worry? Or even wonder ‘hey, what happened to that girl who saved all our butts and got revampified?’”

“Dude, I've just been chilling. You know how it is; jams, games, pets, it keeps a girl busy. It’s cool. Ice cold, in fact.”

Bonnie sighs. Marceline has heard that sigh a million and three times over by now, and she's learned to like that particular sound from the pink girl; it's the one thing about herself that she can't manage to sweeten to the point of oversaturation, until it (like the rest of her) is practically dripping sugar. Marceline likes to deal with the authentic rather than the idealized versions of people, because the latter rarely ever means anything good is coming her way.

(She rationalizes that the Ice King component of Simon, while not idealized, is not authentic in the least; the products of full humans getting mixed up with magic seldom are. The authentic Simon Petrikov is the one who found a 6 year old girl in the ruins of a suburban New Mexico town and still had enough selflessness in the aftermath of the apocalypse to comfort her and take care of her.)

The sigh doesn't lead to the reprimanding the vampire expects. Instead, she watches as Bonnie leans down in her peripheral vision to pet Shwabl, expression focused intently on the dog. She's doing that same schooled neutrality shit she used to do during those globawful trade meetings - the ones Marcy used to steal her away from the go gallivanting through the rock candy mines.

“What kind of sweet tunes have you whipped up, then? Lay it on me girl.”

Marceline lets her face adopt a smirk - the expression has become a reflexive habit after centuries of being a bitter undead loner - even as something in her stomach drops. Bonnie rarely asks about her music because she knows so much of it is personal, and that which isn't is vulgar or morbid and prone to being shared regardless, not to mention the fact that Bonnie’s interests definitely don't lie in the arts, or punk rock music, or most of the uglier parts of Marceline.

“You know my latest album is the epitome of personal mush, Bons. It's so personal I'd have to kill you if you heard any of it. But, I do have a new demo about a fisherman.”

Bonnibel definitely wants something out of her; she has that smile she reserves for Cinnamon Bun and Finn when he's going on about dumb 13 year old boy things, the one that's polite and reservedly encouraging, the one that Marcy has always found to be condescending although it always looks as sweet as its wearer who is literally made out of candy, almost as sweet as the girl’s public persona.

The thing about being 1000 years old and also a teenage girl is that you spend forever being a socially-minded person on some level or another, because back in the day that's how girls were socialized to be - social-driven creatures who cared more about what Allyson wore on Tuesday or what Theresa said about Serena in math class than anything practical. So Marceline has had a long time to notice the tells and ticks of the select few she surrounds herself with often enough to care about. PB smiles like her kindergarten teacher used to on particularly trying days when she thinks the people she's with are idiots but can't call them out for it. Her eyebrows droop when she's so tired that sheer willpower will no longer keep them up. She plays with her hands when she's nervous. She used to chew on her hair when she was younger and in the process of creating her kingdom, when stress was a new feeling she hadn't yet made a feedback loop out of.

This is totally, completely because of the sexist socialization of the old world, and nothing else. Totally not because they dated for a good chunk of time, or because one or the other might, maybe be having rose-coloured thoughts about the other again.

“Everyone and their granny has heard that one, Marcy. If you've had all this time to do nothing but groove and game then I wanna hear some tunes! Don't be a butt about it.” She's trying to gode the older girl, but Marceline is itching to get out of this particular conversation. Somewhere in her cursed, mostly re-dried blood she knows this is a test.

“I don't bust into your lab and start interrogating you about your experiments - can you just lay off, man?” she says it more harshly than she had meant to, but being yanked back to reality and immediately questioned over every move will do that to a person. “Tell me what's been going on in Candyland. You finally get all the earwax off of your junk?”

“You know if you did ask about my science experiments I would be happy to tell you all about them - well, the ones that aren't classified. It's called caring, Marce, it's a thing that friends do.”

A tense silence follows as Marceline thinks of something biting (but not petty!) to throw back at her.

“And yeah, actually, I did. The dingus left a huge mess but there's nothing my purple cleaner can't get rid of.”

Bonnie can't leave a single box unticked, can she?

“Glob, that stuff is nasty. The fumes make me gag, and I don't even need to breathe!”

The princess raises a brow at her. The queen furrows both of hers in frustration and fixes her gaze back on the bumps on the ceiling. When she was younger she used to make images out of the dips and dots in the kindergarten room ceiling; the RV’s was smoothed and didn't allow that particular part of her imagination to play around.

“And I think the expression you're looking for is sharing is caring, Bubs. It's a thing they used to say waaaaaaaay back in the day whenever the old people got tired of little kids fighting over toys.”

*******

this was gonna be a longfic feat. mutual pining by our fave disaster gays and more references to marcy’s life pre- and during the apocalypse bc i have a lot of feelings about Stakes. might come back to it, who knows!!!

[medea10]

My Review of My Roommate is a Cat

[purplesurveys]

482

How many...

How many times have you skipped class? Too many. I only started doing it in college but since then I’ve done it a lot. The class I skipped the most would probably be chemistry or psychology lmao. How many times have you kissed the last person you kissed? I’ve been with her for technically five years so that number’s going to be huge. How many years have you known your second closest friend? I’ve been familiar with her for 17 years, but I’ve been friends with her for only seven. How many alarm clocks are in the house? Technically, four. All our phones have alarms but we don’t have actual alarm clocks. How many people have you argued with? Your questions ask stuff that are very difficult to count lmao. I can be a bit of a war freak so I’m guessing the number’s also risen to be a lot.

How many times have you watched your favortie movie? Probably in the 80s-100s range. There was a time I watched Two for the Road every day for several months, and I still watch it several times a year. How many people do you live with? I live with my family. With my dad working abroad, sometimes I’ll live with four people but most times I live with three. How many pairs of boots do you own? None. It’s too hot to wear boots. How many people have told you they're in love with you? Just one. How many times have you cried over the opposite sex? Maybe twice, and not because of romantic reasons. The first was because my grandfather died; the second time was when my dad dropped the bomb on me that he wouldn’t be able to watch my high school graduation. How many people have been in your house at one time? .......Huh? How many stuffed animals are in your room? None. I was never a fan. How many cellphones have you went through? Eight. How many pets do you have? I have a dog, but I’ve had several other pets in the past.

What would you do if...

What would you do if you could never listen to music again? I think I’ll be alright for the most part since I don’t rely on music as much as others do, but I’ll definitely grow restless at some point, especially if I have to drive in silence. What would you do if your current bf/gf cheated on you? I’d imagine wanting a few days or weeks to myself to think about what was just done to me and using that time to take care of myself and see my other friends. I don’t actually know what to do following that; I just never entertain that thought so I never think of it lmao. What would you do if you could never wear jeans again? Be so fucking stoked. I hate jeans. What would you do if your dad became president? Teach him about key political and social issues...and maybe be glad that he doesn’t have to work abroad now. What would you do if you lost your most important possesion? That would be my dog. I would be broken; I’ve never lost a dog before. What would you do if your house burned down? Grab my dog, put my phone and laptop in a bag, and jump off my room’s window. What would you do if your best friend didn't want to be friends anymore? I’d be really confused and hurt. I would probably talk to Hans to get to the bottom of it. What would you do if you had to move to a different state/province? Asked to be left behind. I’m not gonna have my relationship that I’ve worked so hard on adjust to my family’s (very) delayed migration-ish plans if this happens.   What would you do if someone shaved your head? Hope I get paid for it, lmao. What would you do if Jesus came to your front door? I work with a Jesus. I’d invite him in, get him a light snack, and ask him why he visited. I don’t recognize any other Jesuses. What would you do if your house was robbed? Scream at the top of my lungs. What would you do if your sister/brother got married? Well first I’d be envious that they went first, but I’d otherwise be excited that I get to go to a party hahaha What would you do if dogs became extinct? Hate humanity forever. What would you do if the last person you kissed proposed to you? Think she’s insane, and I’ll have to turn it down. I’m sure she doesn’t want it this early too.

Have you ever...

Have you ever broke a body part? I’ve sprained an ankle, but other than that no. Have you ever broke someone else's body part? Oh gosh that’s terrible. I don’t think so. Have you ever changed for a guy/girl? Only if I knew it was for my betterment to change. Tried to jump on a celebrity but been stopped by the security guards? Uh no, but a little close. I was exiting a mall at the same time Greyson Chance walked in, and my system just shut down and did the first thing it thought of: get my phone out and start taking photos. He was like, 2 feet away at this point so his bodyguards kinda told me to get out of the way, which I deserved. To this day I still don’t understand why I did something as stupidly fangirly as that, and I can’t even name one of his songs. Have you ever complained about the last person you spoke to? Never. Kate’s my homie. Have you ever cried on your mom's shoulder? No. We’re not close like that, and it’s more than likely that she’d just tell me to pray if I ever decide to confide in her. Have you ever dialed 911 as a prank? I haven’t. Have you ever won a talent show? No. I’ve won a quiz bee though, haha. Have you ever spilled a drink on a expensive electronic item and ruined it? No. I didn’t spill a drink, but I did let my old iPhone 5S be soaked when I was walking under the rain once without an umbrella. I just kinda thought my phone would be durable enough to resist the raindrops, but that was the start of the end for it.   Have you ever fainted when someone told you shocking news? No. I’ve only fainted from hunger + heat. Have you ever swooned over the Jonas Brothers? Yes, when I was 10. Have you ever bought a piece of makeup that cost over $100? No and I don’t think I would ever do that. Have you ever been cheated on by someone who claimed to love you? I’ve never been cheated on. Have you ever got food free because the waiter thought you were hot? No.

Do you...

Do you have someone who will always be there for you? I’d like to think so. My best friends are my ride or dies. My Daydrinkers group (that’s what we call ourselves because we used to go to this local bar in the early afternoon) are also trustworthy. Do you have a membership at a gym? Nah, I’m too lazy to go to the gym. Do you act dumb to get guys/girls to like you? No...does that still even work these days? Do you know anyone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day? No. And if I did I would stay away from them. Do you follow the rules? Most of the time. I don’t enjoy getting reprimanded :/ Do you have a friend who secretly really annoys you? No. I wouldn’t count them as a friend if they did annoy me. Do you always have Pepsi at your house? Nope. Only our parents drink softdrinks and they’re not always at home, so we seldom have soda around the house. Do you flirt with anything that moves? ??? No ??? Do you watch SpongeBob? Still do, yep. I just watched it yesterday. The comedy of the older episodes is timeless. Do you count sheep when you can't sleep? No. I tried to do that as a kid since it’s what I saw in cartoons and in a Mr. Bean episode but it never worked. Do you sweat easily? No. I sweat slower than most people. Do you like pineapple? I hate it. Do you refuse to wear something that's out of style? Typically, yes. Do you type 'u' or 'you'? Depends. I’ll type depending on who I’m talking to and my mood.

What is...

What is your best friend's name?Gabie. Or Angela. I have two best friends.What is your first girlfriend/boyfriend's name?Gabie.What is your neighbour's name?I never talk to the neighbors and have no idea who any of them are.What is your least favorite swear word?Cunt.What is the best and most romantic way to propose to someone?I don’t think there’s a singular best way to propose. That differs for everyone.What is something that always makes you laugh?FRIENDSWhat is the name of your hometown?Sampaloc, Manila.What is the most gentle way to turn someone down?I guess just be straightforward about it? I wouldn’t like to be put under mind games or mixed signals if I was the one being turned down.What is the ugliest girl name?I don’t think there’s an ugly girl name, just ones I’m not fond of. I don’t really like old-fashioned ones like Barbara, Linda, and Gertrude.What is the most boring thing to do?Waiting.What is the funnest kind of question to answer?If you’re talking about surveys, questions about my day or my experiences are always nice to answer.What is the most useless thing you know?I wouldn’t call it useless but I can recognize flags and the capital cities of a number of countries. I collected Kids’ Almanacs every year growing up and they always had a section on geography so that’s why I got to memorize those trivia.What is your favorite pair of pants?My white Mango ones, because they’re super stylish and can be casual or smart casual depending on what I pair it with.What is the best flavour of ice cream?Cookies and cream is my favorite flavor.

[venus-says]

Symphogear G Episodes 05-08

So now I’ll run forward, staying true to myself.

Boy. Today was rough. I’m not in the best mood and I don’t know if I should be doing this right now but let’s go. Hopefully, some girls singing and battling will lift up my mood.

Episode 5 is a very solid episode. It would work better if, like I said last time, all of the festival stuff had happened in a single episode instead of scattered around 4. But I must give credit when needed and at least for this time the festival didn’t feel like it’s out of place. And even though I like Zwei Wings’ version better, it’s still nice to see Orbital Beat, my favorite symphogear song of all time, being properly used as an insert song and matching to the action very well too.

I really like the focus they gave for the FIS girls in this episode, it makes the trio feel more human and now it’s even more clear that the three of them are being manipulated and this results in more empathy towards them. I don’t really know what the intention of showing Serena’s flashback at this moment was, but I like knowing more of the whole story and I think it serves as a good base to build up Maria’s character even more. The way Shirabe cares for Maria is very endearing and that little moment when they’re all reunited and sharing a group hug is just lovely.

And to top it all off we finally got an inside in the villains' motives and we finally get to know that the moon is falling in a Majora’s Mask kind of fashion. That moment loses strength to me because I don’t like Ver, but I since we get such an amazing cliffhanger as we did I’m more than okay with his existence for today. 

Episode 6 is heavy. There’s no victory for neither of the sides. And somehow it still manages to end in a high note. It is very impressive.

You know you’re in for a treat when Hibiki gets out of control and the treat this time was bittersweet as hell. The fight with Nephilim was absurdly great and seeing Ver’s despair as Hibiki steamrolled over his little pet was just priceless. Sadly, as an outcome of that, we know that gungnir is fusing even more with Hibiki and now she’s very close to death and this sets a very gloomy atmosphere that remains for the rest of the episode. The way Tsubasa deals with the whole situation out of fear of losing another partner also doesn’t help and we have both a feeling of sadness and indignation as she says to Hibiki to fuck off.

And then there’s that flashback of Hibiki after the noise attack at the Zwei Wing concert that is so heartbreaking, it just makes you appreciate Hibiki even more and jump inside the screen and go hug her.

This episode would be perfect if Ver didn’t come out alive from Hibiki’s outburst, or if he didn’t have found Nephilim’s heart, but oh well we’re just half-way through the season, we can’t kill the main villain yet. At least we got that great scene at the end I guess.

I don’t have a lot to say about Episode 7. I have to be honest, I never liked this episode before and I think my opinion on it will remain the same.

Again the fight portion is nice, and I like seeing how it seems that Hibiki is finally reaching Shirabe since I believe they’re parallels to each other when it comes to morals. Also, Tsubasa in her motorcycle is dope as fuck.

But other than that...

Again I absolutely despise Dr. Ver and I just wanna see him die already. Genjuuro telling Miku to protect Hibiki is probably the dumbest decision of all times since Hibiki wouldn’t think twice before putting her gear to protect Miku so in the end this attempt to save Hibiki would be useless. And of course, this episode starts the “who’s actually the new Finé” confusion and yall have no idea how much I H A T E this plot. It’s been years and I still don’t understand this thing and I have no idea why is this even a thing.

Thanks, I hate it. Next!

I can’t believe I’ve managed to watch all 4 episodes scheduled for today, THANK GOD.

Okay, Episode 8! Episode 8 is confusing. I don’t know if it is the tiredness finally catching up to me and is making my brain less effective, but there’s a lot of elements in this episode that just don’t make sense to me.

First, that simulation, was that in the present? Was that in the past? Why would their training routine be composed of fighting Noises if they have control over them?

Did no one either on Section 2 or the government didn’t caught any readings from the FIS trying to break the Frontier’s seal?

Then that meeting with US representatives, what was the point? How was that even arranged? Were all those soldiers there exclusively to try to execute Maria and Natassja? Or were they there for something else? Why did Maria have a breakdown about not being Finé here? Is she feeling guilty or is she just angry?

This episode has nice elements, but there are just way too many questions about things happening here that makes this episode less enjoyable. But hey, at least they made Hibiki transform again just to prove that my point from the last episode was 100% correct so I think I’ll be going to bed happy today and hopefully have nice dreams so when I come back tomorrow to wrap up G I’ll be in a better mood. XD

[altaieu]

please refrain from reb/0gging

as im watching the dark skies shift to blues, the sun is rising on a household with one less kitten in it today. i can see no stars out.

amber died yesterday.

we took her home on friday, neck tube in and accompanied by medicine, after a 9 day stay in the hospital. we were going to try our hardest to help her get get better. we’d been making plans the entire time what we’d do with her when she was healthy again; that we’d definitely let them out next more next summer and make certain the garden had no places for pests, that i’d play with them even more than i did now, that we’d get them all health insurance. we bought her the cat bed we’d been lingering over at the store to make sure she had a very comfy spot to recover in. i’d woken up late on friday but i helped my sister with feeding her, giving her medicine. i was prepared to stay up all day saturday to help.

but she hadn’t closed here eyes since she’d come home, and what my sister thought was her sleeping - nictitating membranes half closed, paws twitching like she was dreaming - maybe have been a seizure in retrospect. though she took everything well, at 7 am she was having breathing problems. she was laying sideways on the floor with her little tongue sticking out, eyes half closed. we woke everyone up. we rushed her back to the hospital immediately. we talked about putting her down, and i’m sad we didn’t in retrospect, but we had never lost a cat before and we were so hopeful she could still turn around - twice while she was at the hospital she’d perked up and looked for all intents and purposes that she was recovering. she was such a strong, healthy cat before all this happened, it was hard to think she could just go like that, but as it happened it was just complication after complication that hit her. so we held off to give her the weekend, said if she didn’t look better, we’d be back to sign the papers.

it was not even 5 hours after we’d left her there that we got the call, around 1:30 pm. she’d nosedived suddenly and they tried to resuscitate her to no success - something my sister had said yes to out of reflex, but was going to phone tomorrow to say not to do, to just let her go. we went back and saw her little body. my sister cradled her in her arms, and every time she shifted in her seat amber’s fuzzy ears swayed just a bit and i kept expecting her to shake it off, wake up, blink up at us with those big, warm, adoring eyes she always had. her head was as cold as the wind outside when i pet her and i feel as if the chill hasn’t left my hand.

now my brain keeps playing that still face against those late night/early morning memories of her jumping up on my bed and my desk, smiling at me with that big wide happy mouth, bumping her head against mine and against the curtain until i’d open it and she could look out and she’d wiggle her big fluffy butt right between me and my monitor. her tail would always be straight up as she watched the shifting shadows beyond the glass and she purred like an orchestra. then she’d sit on my lap and make the cutest face at me, and i’d pet her a little, but because she always seemed to do this when i was absorbed in writing or art i’d pat her butt until she got annoyed and leapt off, skittering out of my room and down the stairs with the noise of a horse. i’d always felt a little guilty after that, and last time, in damn november, i’d made the promise to myself that next time she came to visit i’d let her sit on me and cuddle up as long as she wanted. it’s been barely 15 hours and already i miss seeing that fuzzy face pop up from behind my desk, that fluffy butt jogging out of my room. amber, i’m so sorry i booted you away when you were lonely in the mornings and just wanted to give and receive love from me.

there’s so many things i wish we did in retrospect (in retrospect, in retrospect). i wish i had pushed harder for a vet appointment when i first saw her so listless, but i always differ to my sister and she said she had no money for it. i wish we’d gotten all our cats health insurance so it wouldn’t have been as big of a cost as it was, that we wouldn’t have been so hesitant about a vet appointment in the first place. i wish i had convinced my sis to put her down when we were there in the mornning so she could have passed away in the arms of someone she loved surrounded by people she cared about instead of laying her head against the side of a small metal cage because we were too scared to let go of her. i’m so sorry amber, we did you so wrong.

when we were there in the morning a man came in after us, an old old man who looked to be in his eighties or so. he was there about a cremation for his african grey parrot who’d passed away the night before. he had a south african accent, and i heard him talking about how he’d been with the bird for forty seven years, that he’d found it abandoned by someone else. i saw him and an old woman bawling in the parking lot afterwards. looking back i should have taken it as an omen.

when we got back to the house the first time, around 11:30 in the morning, the cats were going crazy. all three were trying to get into my room. i wanted nora to stay out so she could comfort my sister, but maggie stood on my desk for 15 minutes staring with that kitty love face and headbutting me before she fell asleep on the bed by my feet. sassy, meanwhile, was absolutely losing it, running around the house and yelling with her unique, loud “mryow” sounding vocalization, eyes wide. should have taken it as an omen.

its weird to wake up at 3 am today to three cats. a time in the morning when i know amber would’ve come to visit, given her health back. its weird to walk down and not see her stretch her big fuzzy yellow belly into a croissant shape. i miss running around the house with the knotted shoelace and having her run after me at top speed, catching it and then running along with me as its in her mouth. i miss her closing eyes as you brushed her mane. i miss that little orange spot she wore on her head like a jewel.

i don’t think i can do anything downstairs without getting choked up about how she’d lie across my legs as i did anything. i don’t think i can get back to playing spyro or watching xfiles since she was there like that the whole time for those. i don’t think i can pick up arkham knight or aco again since i’d sit out in the middle of the floor for those and she’d come up behind me and bump my back, sit on my blanket, lay across one of my legs as i played.

i worry about my sister who cannot even lie in her bed without remembering amber there, sleeping on a pillow beside her, hugging her with all her legs. that cat got her through an abusive relationship and countless depressive episodes and the inherent trauma of being trans in a world that really doesn’t want you to live.

but like whether she’s in kitty heaven as my parents would prefer to think, or she’s my sister’s little spirit guardian now, or if there’s a kitten born on this day that might cross our paths again and bump our legs and look up, i hope she’s doing good. she deserves that at least, she was the sweetest cat i ever met and she should have got more than we could give her.

i feel bad for the hospital staff too. in her stay there she charmed everyone who crossed her path and they were all rooting so hard for her to pull through. one of the vets had her out in her office walking around for exercise on one of the days she was very perky, seemingly recovering. the one we interacted with yesterday was too kind, waiving the fees for the resuscitation attempts and refunding us the 700 we put down for the next few days of care that wouldn’t come to pass. i mean, we’d already dropped 9k on her and were fully prepared to spend 1k more for that fighting chance of a weekend - and of all the things we regret that is not one of them, even if i know a thousand people who’d call us fucking idiots for it. no cent spent trying to keep her alive was a waste. between all of us, even if we had to go into debt, it was the least we could do. we put aside those hopeful dreams of actually owning a house for her, and all my daydreams of introducing them to the new place.

but that 9k could have been reduced to 4.5k (over the 8 years, putting into it each month) if we’d had health insurance on her. as much as that is, it’s tiny compared to what we just spent and would have given us the reassurance to take her to the vet the moment she got sick instead of worrying about money. please, if you have pets you care about, get them health insurance. here it’s 50 a month but that is nothing compared to the cost of vet bills even for routine checkups which it will cover 90% of, and it will give you the peace of mind that you can go to the vet whenever. the moment a pet starts acting unusual you should take them. even if its nothing, its better safe than sorry. complications can hit so fast and pile up.

i’ll be watching the other cats much more closely after this and - after i have my energy back, hopefully - i’ll follow through on that promise and pay them even more attention and get them even more toys. we’re gping to get them health insurance in january and we’re gonna spent the spring cleaning up the backyard to make it safer for the cats, just in case. when they get into the backyard in the summer, oh, its gonna be real fuckin strange not to see amber’s cute sandy coloured face under the lilac tree by the little pond. i still have photos of her from last summer and remember vividly making myself stupid in the grass to get those upward shots of her.

goodnight little lion. you had all the colours of the desert in you and all the love of the sweetest little earth angel, eager to share it. i wish we could have given you so many more years of care, eight was not enough and eleven is much too young for a kitty to go, but i hope you are warm and basking in sunlight wherever you are.

i could see no stars out until i looked behind the house. there, despite the heavy cloud cover on this overcast day, there is a single star shining brighter than i’ve ever seen before, right above us, right at the door.

[ask-the-demonic-child]

C: *She hugs him too* Will do, Wally. *She pets Lil-Ben before joining Michael. He is sitting against a wall, not really looking at her. She sighs and sits by his side* Hey.

Michael: Hey.

*They both remain in awkward silence. Michael is the one to interrupt it*

Michael: So… You still using that stupid-ass nickname?

C: *She chuckles* And who’s fault is that?

Michael: Yours if you thought anything I suggested when I was six years old made any fucking sense.

C: … It was cute.

Michael: It was dumb.

*They fall silent once more, but it doesn’t feel as tense as before*

Michael: We’re going to need one hell of an excuse to tell mom and dad for why we went missing. We can’t even write.

C: *She strokes between Lil-Ben’s horns* … How are they?

Michael: Huh? *He frowns and actually looks at her* What do you mean?

C: Mom and Dad.

Michael: People don’t change that much in a month, Cynthia. They’re fine.

C: *She shrinks a little before speaking* I haven’t talked to them. For a while. Even before I got here…

Michael: … I thought they believed you. When you told them you didn’t know, I mean.

C: I think- It’s not that- I think- they do. Or maybe they want to. But… Maybe they don’t actually. They haven’t tried to reach out for a long time. I… tried to. But, I guess whether they believe me or not doesn’t matter if I’m still the cause you’re trapped under that woman’s watch. … I don’t think they really want to see me… *She can’t hide the sadness in her voice*

Michael: …Well, we’re gonna have to have a shitty family reunion when we get out then. *He hesitates, but puts his hand on her shoulder in what he hopes is a comforting manner* Sooooooo, six lawyers, huh?

C: … Yeah.

Michael: That must have been a shit ton of money.

C: Yeah… At least triple what she sent.

Michael: …

C: … I haven’t touched it, you know? It’s still there. *She rubs a bit at her eyes. She didn’t want to get emotional right now* It just doesn’t feel right to use it.

Michael: Not even for the lawyers? *He raises an eyebrow*

C: Ha, no. Specially not for those.

Michael: … *He doesn’t look at her. He’s taken his hand back*

C: Michael, I swear on my life I didn’t know. Anything that I could have gained, even if I had meant for it to happen, is not even close to all the awful stuff that actually happened! *She grabs him by the arm, with a pleading look* Michael, that woman tricked me. And if you want me to say it, fine! I’ll say it a million times! You were right, I was wrong! I didn’t like her either, but I thought because her experience that we could trust her! But it all backfired! Before I knew it you were trapped, and she had sent that fucking letter! The only address I ever gave her was yours! Why would I expect a letter like that if I knew it would arrive at your place?! And I’m-

Michael: *He grabs her by the shoulders* Hey! Calm down! … Just breathe.

C: *She does as he tells her, her breathing slowly returning to a normal pace and for a while no one says anything*

Michael: Cynthia. Why did you really come here? You’re not so fucking stupid to just enter private property for being bored or whatever.

C: … I was having a bad day. I felt alone. *She hugs Lil-Ben closer* I was remembering the day we had the fight… I missed my little brother…

Michael: …

C: I thought since they said the studio was abandoned, nobody would care if I just stepped in for five minutes. You were the reason I watch so many of the episodes. I wanted to stop thinking about how you hated me, and instead think of when you refused to watch Bendy’s show without me, because you loved it so much that you wanted to share it with me. *This time she can’t bite back the tears* I thought maybe I’d find an Alice Angel doll, to give to you if I ever got you to talk to me again. Ha… I didn’t actually think it would happen. And the rest well… *She briefly explains the situation of the studio*

C: And then I saw you here. And now you’re stuck and in danger because of me. Fuck. You don’t even have your body anymore… *She covers her face* And I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry!

Michael: Cynthia…

C: I’ll never be able to fix anything and I’m sorry! I’m so, so, sor-

Michael: Cynthia! *He looks at her with an unreadable expression* Stop apologizing. You don’t need to anymore…

C: *She blinks in confusion* Eh?

Michael: … I forgive you. *The harsh cold face he’s reserved for talking with her for the past years melt and a sad, exhausted one replaced it* And I’m sorry too. For everything… *He opens his arms and looks away*

C: *Her eyes widen, and she covers her mouth, not really believing what she’s hearing*

Michael: Come on, sis. Don’t leave me hanging. I’m gonna look ridiculous if I keep my arms like this.

C: *She doesn’t need to be told twice. She launches forward and hugs him as tightly as she can, like she fears if she lets go, she’ll lose her brother once again*

*Michael hugs her the same, almost getting teary eyed as well. They stay like that for while*

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

*Lil-Ben doesn’t interrupt them in that moment. A peaceful silence falls over the corner they are in.*

((How could you rip my heart out like this??? I love it tho, every second of it gahhhhh))

[amaralanegra]

Into the Abyss (and back into you)

ao3 link

Chapter 1:  First Day

Pairings: A LOT

Warnings: none atm

Summary: After being rescued, child soldier survivor Bucky Barnes tries his hardest to have a normal, ordinary high school life despite the terrors that still haunt him. One day, he receives an email that he thought would never come -- the private investigator he had hired found his mother. He has to make a plan and act quick if he doesn't want to lose her again. Sam Wilson, aspiring therapist, loves his family and his friends. After his best friend Bucky cuts off communication from their friend group, his sister goes missing. A hashtag, a social media movement, a nationwide search. But there's no trace of her. After finishing high school, Bucky contacts him once more, telling him that he knows where to find his sister. With the help of his friends, they all travel throughout the United States to find Sam's sister and Bucky's mother. And perhaps love in the way, too.

A/N: DONT FORGET TO LIKE COMMENT AND SUBSCRIBE

Steve♢ is online

Erik ( ಠ ಠ) is online

Bucky ( ˘-___-) is online

Sammy is online

 Steve ♢: first day of school o(*^▽^*)o

Steve ♢: you guys excited?

Erik ( ಠ ಠ): of course

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): i cant wait to finally step into that hellhole we call school

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): and die.

Bucky ( ˘-__-): ^

Sammy: facts

Steve ♢: you guys…

Steve ♢: we only have this year together!

Steve ♢: we gotta enjoy it!

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): oh ill enjoy it alright

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): im always happy whenever i get home from school u know

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): its a good change from the crippling depression i feel whenever i step into those shitty gates of hell

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): did i also mention i get diabetes type fuck-school whenever i enter school

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): its life-threatening steve

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): i could die

Sammy: tick tock then bitch

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): shut up sam

Steve ♢: come ooooon

Steve ♢: you'll be ok! You have me, Sam and Bucky!

Steve ♢: i honestly think this year will be great! Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): yeah

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): i hope so too

Sammy: Alright Steve we'll see you at school

Sammy: I’m about to start driving now

Steve ♢: ok, see you guys! Bucky ( ˘-___-): Oh hey btw

Bucky ( ˘-___-): Don't forget to eat

Bucky ( ˘-___-): You always skip breakfast...

Bucky ( ˘-___-): At least drink orange juice

Bucky ( ˘-___-): That should help a bit

Steve ♢: yep!

Steve ♢: i won’t forget (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ

Bucky ( ˘-___-): Good!

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): gay

Bucky ( ˘-___-): I meant that in the most heterosexual way possible

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): when do you ever

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): remember that time you pulled down Steve’s pants while we were at the pool high af

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): because i do

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): and his ass...

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): it haunts me

Steve ♢: i tend to have that effect on people.

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): i haven’t been able to sleep since then Steve

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): you monster

Bucky ( ˘-___-): Erik hurry up we’re already waiting outside

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): dont you fucking try to change the subject

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): remember that time you pole danced and strip teased when you were drunk out of your mind

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): because i do

Steve ♢: but that happened last month

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): and yet it feels like an eternity

Bucky ( ˘-___-): Why can’t you guys forget the embarrassing shit I do for like once in your lives.

Sammy: cuz it was fucking hilarious thats why LMFAO I think I still have those polaroid pics somewhere

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): n cuz that’s what friends do

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): and apparently for you friendship is also traumatizing me with steves bare ass and your slutty pole dancing

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): i’ve had night terrors ever since

Steve ♢: lol

Bucky ( ˘-___-): Erik. hurry up. before I go in there. and beat you. in the face and ass.

Bucky ( ˘-___-): We’re already late. Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): aw

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): come on you know that my hair takes long

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): shit i should be a model for l'oreal

Sammy: we’re leaving

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): okokokok im going out

Steve ♢: lol be careful

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): we will try

Bucky ( ˘-___-): See you Steve!

Steve ♢: byeee

 Steve ♢ is offline

Bucky ( ˘-___-) is offline

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ) is offline

Sammy is offline

 “About time,” Bucky says as he reclines in his seat and pulls down his beanie with a huff, almost fully covering his eyebrows. Sam looks at the backseat through the rearview mirror as Erik lazily opens the door and sits on the middle of the backseat with a groan, his black hoodie still pulled up and hiding half his face.

“Sorry.” Erik says, sounding annoyed and not sorry at all. Both boys can hear the loud trap music coming from one bud of his gold earphones while the other hangs low down his neck. He leans back and closes his eyes, already looking drained of energy before the day even starts. “There was a problem.”

Sam starts his car while keeping both of his hands on the steering wheel, “What happened?” he asks.

“Is Valentina okay?” Bucky also asks, peeking at him over his shoulder.

Erik rolls his eyes at him. “The goddamn cat is fine.” He sighs and sinks further into his seat. “Nah. Do y'all remember my cousin?” Erik taps Bucky’s shoulder to make him fully turn around, as though he wants him to see the pain in his eyes as he speaks. “The one in Wakanda? Annoying, quiet, and thinks he’s better than everybody else?”

Bucky wrinkles his nose in confusion and looks to the side as he tries to remember, but comes up empty. He shrugs.

“Ah,” Sam says, nodding. “Yes, I remember you fondly telling us about him.”

“Well,” Erik says, putting extra emphasis on the word by rolling his eyes once again. “He moved here. Has been at my house all summer. And I have to share my room with him.”

Bucky nods in silent understanding and Sam keeps driving in silence, expecting Erik to continue talking about how his life is full of struggles. But instead Erik sits there with his arms crossed, his eyebrows knitted together and his lips forming a pout like a child. Bucky would call him cute, but starting his morning with a black eye isn’t on his to-do list.

“And um,” Bucky starts, uncertainty in his voice. “That's it?”

“That is it.” Erik scoffs, sliding further into his seat. “I don't want to share my room with him. Shit, I don't want to share it with anyone! Both him and my little cousin, Shuri, are here. They are filthy fucking rich, I don’t get why they gotta live with us.”

Bucky frowns and nods, trying to understand his unique situation. Sam instead feels the need to nervously scratch the back of his neck, but he doesn't want to let go of the steering wheel thanks to his road anxiety preventing him from even looking away. They know that Erik’s mom has been in a… feud of sorts with Erik’s paternal uncle. Erik wasn’t too specific of course, but they remember it made him upset enough to cry. And while they know he’s a soft guy under all the tough facade he puts on – he can’t say he doesn’t cry when watching the pet adoption commercials (“they are all alone, and sad, and the music doesn’t help, you assholes! Stop laughing!”) or that he doesn’t sing his heart out to the opening of his favorite anime – they also know that Erik loves his father, and he loves his mother, but one of them is gone and he has been too overprotective over the only one left. Erik’s hatred for his uncle has not stopped growing since that fight with his mom.

Remembering this, both boys feel an ache in their chest for their friend, wanting nothing more but to make him smile again.

Bucky is not much of a touchy person, so when he stretches to place his hand on Erik’s knee and shakes it in silent comfort, it doesn’t go overlooked. Erik smiles at him, and when he looks to the side of Bucky he sees Sam looking at him intensely.

“What?” He spats out on impulse under the sharp scrutiny.

Sam blinks once, twice, and finally he speaks. “You’re a better person than that old man is, you know.” He slowly says in that therapeutic, soothing voice of his, causing Erik to pause. “You’re a better person than your cousin, who didn’t stand up for you or your dad. You're kind, and you care so much. You— you're not afraid to fight for what's right. You’re way better than them, Erik, don’t you forget that, okay?”

Looking at him with wide eyes, Erik then slowly smiles, thankful for his best friend’s words. It might not fix it all, but it helps, even if just a little bit. He will be caught dead before he ever admits that, though, so instead he says ‘that’s kinda gay’ and laughs when Sam tells him to get the hell out of his car.

“We're here anyways!” He yells out, laughter still present in his voice.

Sam frantically locks his car and rushes to catch up with Erik and Bucky as both argue excitedly about an anime episode that streamed the night before. “Can one of y’all speak English, please?” He pushes them apart to be in the middle of them. “Or Patwah? Me kno ou to speak dat at least.”

Erik playfully elbows him and answers him with that smugness his teachers hate. “Amabini anokudlala oko umdlalo, uyazi,” he answers back, which makes Sam smile brightly and whisper ‘alright, okay, alright’ while elbowing him back.

Bucky, though, smiles and just watches their friendly bickering, finally feeling at home. He missed this feeling. He missed them both so much.

Somehow, they're already in front of their lockers, all three of them stopping together in order starting from Bucky to Sam to Erik. In fact, that’s how they met in middle school. They happened to have been assigned lockers right next to each other when school first started; Erik arrived first and mistook his locker for Sam’s, and when Sam got there Erik wouldn’t let him get close to it. They almost got into a fistfight until they both saw Bucky trying to open the locker they were both fighting for.

Of course, after all three of them were sent to the principal's office, they’ve been best friends ever since.

Erik starts to fumble with his lock, reciting the combination under his breath like he always does with important things he has to remember, until he hears Bucky whisper to Sam to turn around and look.

“Okoye! Koko!” The voice of some girl catches their attention. They turn their eyes to the row of lockers in front of them to see Okoye ‘Koko’ Milaje turn to her girlfriend just in time to catch her as she throws herself at her. Her girlfriend, Nakia, excitedly throws her arms around her middle, burying her face in her girlfriend’s chest. She says something that only Okoye can hear because she laughs brightly, leans down, and presses a kiss to her forehead.

Sam smiles at Bucky, who smiles back at him and says “girls” as though that explains everything and turns to focus on opening his locker. From the corner of his eye he quickly realizes that only two people stop to stare at the couple, and only one looks like they’re disgusted… though they don’t do anything about it, instead opting to turn away from them. Good, Sam thinks. He doesn't have the time for that bullshit so early in the morning. He turns to mention it to Erik, and his friend’s expression is not the annoyed one he expected for witnessing the kiss since he says to hate ‘corny romantic bullshit’ (which is a lie, because he once caught him intensely watching a telenovela in the middle of history class) but instead his expression is just one of...pain.

Sam frowns, confused. Pain...?

“So that’s why he’s here…” Erik whispers, looking away from them.

Bucky peeks over his shoulder and turns to Erik while Sam orderly puts his belongings inside his locker, who is still looking at Erik from the corner of his eye. “Who?” Bucky asks.

“Huh?” Erik stops harshly throwing his books inside his locker to look at him askew. He comes back to himself soon enough though, and he quickly closes his eyes, shaking his head with a sigh. “No, nothing. I was just talking to myself.”

Both Bucky and Sam look at each other, and suddenly, they feel the need to ask him about it again because the troubled look on their friend’s face bothers them, but the ring of the school bell interrupts before either of them can say anything.

“Well, gotta go.” Erik sighs irritably, slamming his locker door closed. “See y’all later – ah, wait. Both of you have art first period, right? With, uh, Ms. Minako?” He asks.

Sam nods. “Yeah, why?”

“Okay, so, my cousin.” Erik says, adding an eyeroll for extra measure. “He’s coming to our school.” Sam and Bucky both raise their eyebrows in surprise, and Erik nods. “Yeah, he’s gonna come to school here, sadly. For some fucking reason. Anyways, he’s probably going to be late since his dumb ass didn’t wake up on time ‘cuz he was busy moping around and I wasn't going to wait for him. He’s in the same class as y’all, I believe, so if y'all could, you know, show him around… or whatever… I’d be… uh,” he coughs into his fist. “I, uh, I’d appreciate it. Seriously.” His voice turns quieter and softer as he finishes, eyes cast away. He leans from one side to another on his heels like he always does when he’s impatient or nervous.

Bucky raises an eyebrow and decides to tease him. “Hold up,” he quickly leans over him, causing Erik to step back. “You’re asking us for a favor?”

“And does that mean you actually care about your cousin?” Sam asks, wrapping his arm around Erik’s shoulder to join in on teasing him too.

Of course, it’s a trick question. Both Bucky and Sam already know that Erik cares a lot about his family (except for his uncle) and that includes his so called ‘frigid ass cousin’, despite… current events. Erik is simply not an openly affectionate person and he would never admit that he’s not the ‘cold-hearted ass bitch’ he claims to be. He would rather dump all of his anime-inspired clothing than admit to having any sort of normal human feelings whatsoever.

“Fuck off!” He yells, pushing Sam off him as Sam laughs at his little tantrum, and Erik is suddenly thankful that his brown skin masks the heat rising to his cheeks. “Just – will you do it or not?!”

“Sure,” Bucky smiles. “He’s uh, quiet—”

“Full of himself—” Sam adds.

“Aaaand he’s annoying. Not hard to spot.” Erik scoffs.

Sam laughs and waves him goodbye. “Okay, you should go before you’re late.”

The smaller teen nods and turns around to head to his class, the sound of his boot heels echoing in the empty halls. While they walk towards their art class, Sam wonders what kind of person Erik’s cousin is and if he's as much of a jerk as Erik makes him out to be. Is he just as grumpy as Erik? Just as smart? Does he also say what’s on his mind without a filter? Does he smile? Is he just as direct? Does he care as deeply, but doesn’t show it? Is he just as soft when he wants to be?

… And is he straight?

“Good morning, Sam! Hello, James!” Ms. Minako welcomes them as they enter her room. “You guys are late.” She’s sitting on the same table as the rest of the students there, with a bunch of different colorful objects laid on it.

“Good morning, ma’am.” Sam greets her, Bucky greeting her too with a wave of his own as they make their way to the farthest seats at the other end of the table. Sam sets his backpack to his right with a pleased hum, while his best friend sits to his left and he takes comfort in the fact that nobody will sit by his right side. There’s plenty of other empty seats around so maybe he’ll have some peace of mind this year (last year he had the misfortune of being seated next to Tony fucking Stark). Besides, it’s not like anyone would decide to sit next to Bucky either, because last year the girl that did so ended up being his designated art partner… and let’s just say… not that many people can handle Bucky’s emotional outbursts. So, it’s a win-win that he gets to be with his best friend. Bucky can be a little weird, he won’t lie. But he knows his friend, he knows who he is, he knows his life and he knows what really happened during those years (news media be damned), so he's more than happy to deal with this so called 'trouble kid’ of the school. They don't know him like he does.

Ms. Minako checks them off the attendance list with a smile and counts the class again. It seems there’s students missing, judging from her confused face and her nervous pencil tapping. “Well, I guess most of you are here. Only two students are absent—”

As if on cue there’s a knock on the door, suddenly halting all talk.

“Oh! Must be the new student!” Ms. Minako declares cheerfully. Sam twists anxiously in his seat, leaning over to see who it is. Is it him…? “Open the door for him, please.”

One of the students next to her stands up and opens the door, returning to her seat quietly. From his spot, Sam can see him stride in.

The first thing he notices is his hair, his short fro perfectly shaped and adorning his face like a crown. His clothes look like they are from a quality brand -- elegant, but simple. Sam’s eyes go back up to his face and he finds warm brown eyes staring right back at him. He jumps slightly in his seat and feels his face warm up at getting caught staring, but Erik’s cousin doesn’t seem to mind because he smiles instead, winking at Sam with a tilt of his head.

Sam swiftly turns his eyes to his lap, repeating in his mind ‘STARE AT THE TABLE STARE AT THE TABLE STARE AT THE TABLE’ as he fidgets with a strand of his shirt. This definitely wasn’t on his to-do list either.

He winked at me?!

“Yo,” Bucky whispers to him. “Was it just me or did he wink at me?”

Sam blinks. “I thought he winked at me,” he whispers back.

“... Maybe at both of us? Probably you, though. I’m a mess.” He sighs, laying his head down on the table.

Sam snickers, playfully dragging Bucky’s long wavy hair to cover his face. “You wouldn’t look a mess if you used a damn brush, you lightskin 2-b Rapunzel.”

Bucky flips him off.

From across their seats he hears a couple of girls commenting on the new student’s appearance, one in particular making colorful comments in Spanish to her twin. Sam can recognize her voice without looking. Her name’s Chal, and her sister’s name is Ime. They all hang out together occasionally since their mom is good friends with his mom. They usually play video games when good ones come out and sometimes decide to have some impromptu language classes – the twins teach him Spanish, and Sam tries to teach them Patois, and they more or less manage to learn a couple of words since they use most of their learning time laughing hysterically at each other’s accents instead.

“El diablo,” Chal whispers to Ime. “Papasito… que guapo, no?”

Handsome. Sam hates that he understood that. Seems like those Spanish classes they gave him paid off.

Ime laughs and nods, saying something else to her sister’s ear. Chal giggles in response, patting Ime’s puffy hair bun until her sister pushes her hands away with a smile. Suddenly, Sam wishes he had a close relationship like that with his own sister, but he shakes the thought off as soon as the teacher speaks. Let’s not start the day with a gloomy thought.

“Hi!” Ms. Minako says. “You’re T.… challa... Uda… koh…?”

“T’Challa Udaku.” T'Challa smiles. “It’s okay.  Just T’Challa is fine.”

“T’Challa?” Ms. Minako tries again, with a concentrated face.

T'Challa smiles again, and nods. “That’s right.”

Chal elbows her sister, whispering loud enough for Sam to hear. “Suena Africano, no? O quizás del caribe?”

“Africano, me parece.” Ime whispers back.

“Nah, es caribeño.” Chal shakes her head.

“Africano.”

“Caribeño, coño.”

“You have a slight accent.” Ms. Minako asks T'Challa, interested. “Where are you from?”

“I am from Wakanda.” He answers.

A tiny ‘fuck!’ is heard from Chal, but only Ime and Sam seem to notice. He tries not to laugh as Ime elbows her sister in the stomach. These girls.

“New to the country or the town?”

“Both.” T'Challa laughs. “It’s a lovely town.”

If only you knew, Sam thinks, you wouldn’t be saying that. But he shakes the thought off, again, trying not to be negative… again. It’s hard to not to be a pessimist. But enough is enough. He wants to be a therapist when he grows up, goddamn it, so he needs to get it together.

“Well, T'Challa, welcome to the country! Come on, choose a seat. Let’s start the class!” Ms. Minako gestures towards all the empty seats as she checks him off the attendance sheet. T'Challa turns over where a group of loud white boys are seated together, but his eyes pass right over them. He looks at the seat next to Ime and Chal (the latter batting her eyelashes dramatically, making T'Challa smile) and considers it, until he looks over at the end of the table where Sam is.

There’s one empty seat right next to his.

He looks decided then, walking past everyone and stopping right next to Sam with a click of his heels. Not quite believing what’s happening, Sam can only stare at his own hands and ask to whichever god is listening to make T'Challa sit somewhere else. Next to Bucky, even. He’ll do anything. Hell, he’ll stop eating his gran’s mac and cheese! But please, god, don’t let him sit next to him. T'Challa’s too… too…

“Is this seat taken?” T'Challa’s soft voice comes from his right, and Sam makes the mistake of turning his head towards him.

… Too pretty.

T'Challa’s eyes shine like the sun, his hand resting on the table. Sam’s breath hitches as dark brown eyes lock on his. His face is a little too close for his comfort, so Sam scoots back. T’Challa tilts his head to one side in confusion, waiting for him to answer but Sam can only focus on those lovely brown eyes of his, not even caring that the silence is getting a little bit too awkward, but he just doesn’t know what to say because T'Challa’s way too close and—

Bucky elbows him in the ribs, bringing him back to earth.

“Are you feeling alright?” T'Challa’s face turns to one of worry, somehow inching even closer to Sam. “You look—”

“I’m okay!” He blurts out, laughing nervously. He looks at Bucky from the corner of his eye and sees the bastard stifling a smile. Fucker.

T'Challa’s eyes widen in surprise, waiting for him to continue. “I’m—um, the seat isn’t taken, so…” Sam's eyes slide down to the empty chair while fake coughing and pressing his lips into a thin line, trying to play it cool. Oh my god this is too embarrassing why am I acting like this.

“Alright, thank you.” T'Challa’s face lights up and Sam can’t help but smile as well, despite how nervous he feels. T'Challa drops his bag to his side and sits down gracefully on the chair with a smile. “Nice to meet you,” he says with a radiant smile, while offering his hand to him like a proper gentleman.

Sam’s brain has the decency to remember to dry his anxiously-damp hand on his jeans before he shakes T’Challa’s with an equally anxious smile. It’s kind of odd, it almost feels like they’re finishing a business meeting. Why yes, sir, I’m glad we’ve come to the mutual agreement that I’m awkward as hell, let’s shake on it. But it could be a Wakandan thing, who knows. T'Challa has a strong grip on his hand as soon as they touch, and he shakes Sam’s hand with confidence, taking Sam by surprise as the strong shake dips him forward. He has no time to be embarrassed because T'Challa smiles at him and the guy giggles as though stumbling into someone else’s personal space is charming. He lets go of Sam and instead rests his face on his hand, two fingers up to support the crown of his head.  

“What’s your name?” T'Challa asks, eyes filled with curiosity.

And it’s at this moment when there’s another knock on the door, catching everyone’s attention.

“Oh!” The teacher exclaims. “Must be the other missing student.” This time it’s her who stands up to open the door, blocking the view of Sam’s eyes to see who it is.

“You’re a bit late, mister.” She reprimands the student. “But it’s the first day, so I’ll let it slide this time, alright?”

“I appreciate it.” Says a deep, and… quite attractive masculine voice.

Ms. Minako stands to the side and shows him the way. “Come on in!”

As soon as the student enters the room he can see exactly who it is. M’Baku walks into the classroom with that confidence Sam is so jealous of, looking as handsome as ever. His dark brown skin glows despite the unflattering light of the classroom, as though M’Baku is the exception to little things like physics. His clothes, of course, always carry a Wakandan theme, showing off the beautiful African patterns and combination of colors.

Sam looks over to the twins and finds Chal fanning herself while looking at M’Baku, who suddenly has a distasteful look on his face when his eyes fall on the only acceptable empty seats in the room. The one next to Bucky, and the one next to the twins. His eyes soon fall on T’Challa, and he falters. He recovers quickly though and walks around the table to sit down right across from him – next to Bucky’s seat.

Sam’s eyes go back to T’Challa, who seems to be… frozen in place while looking at M’Baku. He gets it though. One time, he got to seat behind him in math class and every time the teacher called M’Baku’s name to mark him present, he would stand up and give Sam a great first row view of that—

“So, uh,” Bucky’s voice brings him back to earth. He turns his head towards him and sees him talking to M’Baku, who can’t look less interested. “Guess we’re art partners now, huh?”

M’Baku finally looks at him with a neutral look on his face and says, “I am lactose intolerant.”

Bucky freezes.

Sam completely loses it. He can’t help but laugh out loud, making a spectacle even though he tries his damn best to keep it in. Naturally, he attracts some of his classmates’ eyes, but he just can’t stop. He’s trying so hard, but Jesus. The look on Bucky’s face, he keeps remembering it and can’t help but laugh again.

“Mhm, keep on laughing, man. Just let it all out, you dick.” Bucky tell him as he claps Sam on the back, which only makes it worse.

Ms. Minako finally looks over at him, looking confused and quite annoyed at the noise. “Excuse me, Sam? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, Sam, are you alright?” Bucky repeats, faking the worrying tone in his voice as he scoots closer to Sam to look him right in the eye.

“Y-Yes, miss, I’m— I’m fine,” Sam tries to tell her while desperately trying to ignore Bucky’s stupid face. “Thank you. Sorry about—” and he laughs again.

“Do you need to go to the nurse, Sam?” she asks, sounding annoyed.

“Yeah, Sam, do you need to go to the nurse?” Bucky repeats again with that dumb look on his face and it makes it harder for Sam to stop laughing.

“No! N-No, I’m alright. I’m so sorry, miss, please uh, please carry on.” He coughs and bites his lip, mustering all his energy into having a poker face. It doesn’t work, it just makes him look weird with his bulging eyes, tight lips and puffy cheeks… but the teacher is satisfied enough with it to let it go.

“So, uh,” Sam turns to Bucky, a smile threatening to slip past his lips but still desperately trying to look neutral. “Wanna change seats?”

Bucky licks his lips, also trying not to smile, and nods. “Yeah, that’s— yeah, let’s change seats, man.”

Once they’re at their new seats, Bucky turns to T’Challa. “Soooo, guess we’re—”

“I’m also lactose intolerant.” He tells him with a mastered poker face.

Sam lays his head down and covers his head with his arms to tone down his loud laughter, shaking and softly smacking the table with his first a couple times. Bucky can’t hold it in either, leaning forward on the table and shaking his head as he laughs with Sam. M’Baku joins in with a loud and deep ‘HAH!’ and nothing else. T’Challa smiles ever so slightly, and the sight almost makes Bucky stop, feeling charmed by his smile and the soft crinkles at the corner of his eyes. He couldn’t quite get a look at him at first, but now he understands why Sam froze when T’Challa talked to him.

Sam coughs, and looks towards T’Challa, trying to frown in order to cancel out the dumb smile on his face. “Hey man, um, do you— uh, do you… wanna change seats?” He fake coughs into his fist, and Bucky feel his lips twitch. “Or, uh, or something?” Sam bites his lip again, praying to any god that is listening to make him stop laughing.

“I don’t see why not.” T’Challa calmly answers, picking up his stuff and changing his seat with Sam.

Once they’re finally seated, Sam speaks. “Don’t worry, Buck, I got you man. I, uh, you know, I take them lactaid tablets—”

Bucky whizzes out a small laugh, and nods. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes, sir,” Sam nods as well, patting him on the back. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you ain’t gotta worry about that.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Bucky says, smiling at him. “I know I can always count on you.”

“Nuh-uh, uh!” Sam shakes his finger on his face. “Only as long as I got my lactaid tablets,” he adds, and after a second of dead silence they both laugh loud and hard, Sam leaning on Bucky and Bucky flinching for half a second but relaxing quickly enough against Sam’s warmth.

Sam looks up at him from his shoulder. “Stop making me laugh, man, fuck. My face hurts.”

Bucky shrugs, Sam’s head moving with it. “That’s karma, asshole.”

Sam shakes his head, and closes his eyes, smiling softly. “I hate you.”

Bucky snorts. “And I hate you too, sweetheart.” Sam smacks him for that, whispering ‘gross!’ to which Bucky replies ‘but you like it!’ to which the teacher replies ‘both of you boys better shut up unless you want to be sent to the principal’s office’.

Half way through the class, their phones both vibrate at the same time, and they instantly look at each other. After making sure the teacher isn’t looking at them, they look down to check who texted them from under the table.

 Steve♢ is online

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ) is online

Bucky ( ˘-___-) is online

Sammy is online

 Steve ♢: hey hey hey

Steve ♢: Erik told me about his cousin!

Steve ♢: is he cool?

Sammy: …….maybe

Steve ♢: ヽ(　･∀･)ﾉ i’ll get his number then!

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): steve

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): steve im begging you here

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): please dont fuck my cousin

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): p l e a s e

Steve ♢: you know, i wasn’t thinking about that

Steve ♢: but now that you mention it…

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): steve

Sammy: oh btw Erik your middle school crush is in our class

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): my middle school what now

Bucky ( ˘-___-): M’Baku. or did you forget about him already?

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): fuck off bucks

Steve ♢: wait what

Bucky ( ˘-___-): Erik had like… the biggest crush on him back in middle school

Sammy: it was kinda cute tbh he would like… talk to him about this anime he really liked. which he got m’baku to watch somehow someway

Bucky ( ˘-___-): And there was this couple in the show. Real romantic shit you know? Erik would say how M’Baku is so much like the romantic interest of the hero

Sammy: and also how Erik was so much like the hero himself

Bucky ( ˘-___-): M’Baku never got the hint though. But it was cute to watch. A bit pathetic, sure, but cute!

Sammy: and of course a funny story to tell every person he dates lmao

Steve ♢: aww Erik you sweet thing you!

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): this

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): is the worst day of my life

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): ever

Bucky ( ˘-___-): Hey do you remember that stupid song?

Sammy: which one Sammy: “M’baku and Erik sitting under a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G watching A-N-I-M-E”

Sammy: is it that one

Bucky ( ˘-___-): yeah! cute isn't he?

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): IM BLOCKING YOU

Steve ♢: lol erik that’s so cute

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): IM BLOCKING BOTH OF YOU

Steve ♢: cute cute cute

Sammy: cute lol

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ) is offline

Steve ♢: omg

Sammy: HE ACTUALLY LEFT LMFAOOOO

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ) is online

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): i forgot to say something :)

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ): FUCK YOU ALL

Bucky ( ˘-___-): Damn that’s hot

Steve ♢: i didn't know Erik was this adorable

Sammy: he aight i guess

Erik ( ಠ ಠ ) is offline

 This year is going to be fun.

[the-ash0]

surviving paradise chapter 7

Time

I stare at the sky as I sit, plucking at grass in the Capsule Corp front garden. It is small compared to the back one, so staying here provides me a measure of privacy. Though the Nameks fear me, they need their fresh air too, I suppose. So I have left the back gardens free for them, lest I run into any by mistake. I am trying hard enough as it is not to start trouble.

Today marks the first full week of my stay here on earth, but already my patience is running thin. I have not left Capsule Corp grounds since that first day at the bar. On one hand, I hardly feel like subjecting myself to another degrading episode due to my… inexperience with this world and its customs. On the other, everything I could ever want or need is provided for me right here; right here at my fingertips.

Which is exactly as it should be, of course. I am a prince, after all. And the greatest warrior in the galaxy, now that Frieza and Kakarot have managed to kill each other off. Which is fine; clever, in a way. To get rid of both in this manner. Yep, life is absolutely fucking perfect.

So why do I feel so... tired?  

It must be the routine of this place. The days on this planet are too short to suit me. Though I suppose the schedule I followed in my previous life —a cycle of travel in cryo-sleep for months up to years, a purge mission or two lasting a few days, then back in cryo-sleep for a debriefing and an optional few days to restart the process— doesn't really qualify as a rhythm.

Still, the monotone repetition wears on my nerves. I know I should try and adjust; rise and retire with the sun. Yet I spend more time staring at my bedroom ceiling than dreaming, and the morning light does little to rouse me into action. I feel strange: weak without any damage taken. Exhausted without wanting sleep. Numb...

I reach out for another hand of grass to pull up, but find the semicircle around me cropped to the point that I need to dig up roots. I contemplate moving to another spot to restart the process, though picking myself up seems like so much work for nothing.

Why bother at all? I could pluck the whole field bare or move around and make ugly bare circles in the perfectly cut grass. What would that achieve? Well, maybe someone would take offence. I could use someone to scream at, or have scream at me, or talk to... Anything.

A sound from behind brings me back to my senses. I take it back; I really do not wish any form of interaction, and definitely not with the locals.

The grey-haired professor, apparently the man of the house, appears from the door and makes his way towards me with purpose. I groan. The old dolt had stayed clear of me mostly until now, and I had thought him the smartest of the pack for that. Perhaps I was wrong.

He walks into my periphery and clears his throat, pets the weird black creature perched on his shoulder, then stares down at me as if expecting something.

As soon as I realize what he wants, I deign not to give it. Instead, I focus my attention on the clouds overhead. There’s only a few of them, of course. Even the weather on Earth is perfect. Perfect, constant, monotone and boring. Sadly, my studious inattention is not enough to deter old four-eyes from intruding.

The grey human sighs, fidgeting in his pocket for something before sitting down. A decent distance away, but facing the same direction with an unfounded air of camaraderie. The crunch-creak of metal on a lighting stone finally breaks my resolve. “If you dare light that stinking filth in my breathing air I’ll rip your throat out.”

The man blinks at me and puts his lighter away with an apologetic smile, studying the white twig in his other hand as if unsure what to do with it. “Panchy asked me to fetch you,” he offers as appeasement. “Lunch is served.”

Blasted woman and her blasted food.

“Well, she could have just said so herself, could she not?” I grind out, “besides, do you always run to do your woman’s bidding?”

I turn from his blinking four-eyed stare and recline with a sigh. Pathetic as this planet’s gravity is, I am not up to fighting it. “Besides, I am not hungry.”

“And there it is too,” his old voice turns sure, as if I just proved some point. Opting to leave the unlit cigarette in mouth, he frowns down at me. “In answer to your question, Panchy hardly ever asks for anything. So when she does, I do run, even when I do not understand.”

I take a deep breath. “Your wife is a degenerate airhead whose only purpose would be to exemplify the useless stupidity of this planet and its main species!”

To my surprise the man laughs —laughs!— at my comments.

“She does seem like an airhead doesn’t she? Here on Earth, especially in my generation, too much intelligence in a woman was frowned upon; just as my little girl likes to play the damsel in distress, she likes to play airhead.” The man lowers his voice, and I perk up as I finally hear a threatening undertone: “But I would think that a man such as yourself knows not to take all at face value?”

I, the Prince of all Saiyans, snarl and turn on him. “I do not care for you, your planet, or any of your ridiculous mating customs. In fact, I think I’ll blow this whole planet up, right now! And there’s not a damn thing you or anyone here can do about it.”

The old man stares at me intently, before nodding and adjusting his glasses. “Is that what is bothering you?”

“NO!” Yes? Maybe? I deflate, what little energy I had gone again too soon. This man is supposed to be the richest in the world... Can’t he at least get the military to fight me? Maybe if I just blow him and his precious Capsule Corp to pieces, someone worthy will show. Probably. Possibly.

Kakarot’s idiot friends might provide me some challenge, but the old coot just gives me a goofy grin. Unworried. Whatever. Military or stupid Z-gang, no one on this planet is worth my trouble. I can hardly make myself care if they win or lose. I lay back down, place an arm over my eyes, and repeat: “I’m not hungry.”

The old man sucks in his breath, like I had said I was dying or something, then gets up and leaves.

Finally, some peace.

Or as close as I am able to get to it.

I find myself wondering if death would have brought true peace. I was dead before, right? But all I can remember from that time is my fervent, all encompassing wish that someone— preferably Kakarot— kill that filthy Lizard.

I had not wanted to leave and had clung to that battle with all I had. The memories are garbled after death, but I think I still spoke to my fellow Saiyan. Maybe I might have had peace after that. That would have been nice.

Sadly, peace appears to be the one thing not available in this place. I recognise the crunch-step of feet on gravel, and have to stifle a groan. No torture that Hell could have dreamt up would have been as annoying and maddening as this constant string of visitors. It is the blue-haired young woman this time; the old coot’s spawn. Her voice sounds suspiciously friendly and chipper.

“Vegeta? Vegeta dear, will you come and have a look at what I’m fixing?”

I don't care. “Did your father send you?”

She answers a little too fast: “No!”

I can't help but bark a mirthless laugh. Well, I can teach her a thing or two about lying. “Sorry, I am busy.”

Her unamused drawl suggests she is not that stupid, though. “I think you’ve mowed our lawn enough for a while, don't you?”

I move the arm still covering my eyes slightly so I can squint up at her. She stands over me, hands on hips, all wide open eyes and bare shoulders. Her hair is up in a bun, strands fall past her face as she bends over me. She wears a  thin-strapped top over only marginally more practical pants. Yellow working gloves on her fists, an eyeshield dangling from one like an accessory. If not for the dark smudge by her nose, she’d resemble one of those girls on the square movie frame her mother likes to watch.

I can't decide if I’m more offended that she would approach me with so much bare skin to burn off, or that she can’t even be bothered to clean herself up before addressing royalty. Instead of letting my irritation show, I smirk and roll to my side, away from her. “I don't do manual labor. I’m relaxing. And as I can't manage to care about your silly projects, just run along.”

If I was hoping to bait her, I am disappointed. She stretches her arms over head as she straightens, and hums to herself, putting a gloved hand to her cheek. “That is a shame. I had thought to outdo my father’s machine. You know, the one that made Goku’s transition to Super Saiyan possible. But without a Saiyan to test it, I can hardly prove to father I’ve won our bet. Perhaps I should let Yamcha use it instead. Or Krillin. He’s pretty strong. Perhaps he could be super-human. Who knows…?” She trails off and smiles at me triumphantly.

At some point during her speech, I have sat up to scowl at her, but she sees right through my anger to the awakened hunger beneath.“I don't suppose you could just relax inside the spaceship for a while? I kind of need to test the gravity settings before I call this one safe for use, but poor little me will get squashed by anything beyond the 3 ½ setting…”

“Fah! Weak as you are, you’ll probably die at twice Earth's gravity.” Not to mention what would happen at, say, ten times Earth's gravity. But for me, that would be like coming home. Was this Kakarot’s secret to achieving such power?

Kakarot... As I straighten and cross my legs, I cannot help but think of our first battle. Now, that was a fight. I honestly can’t remember the last time I had so much fun. Well, at least up to the point where his bloody friends intervened and cut off my tail. They just have no sense of propriety. But before his friends intervened...I grin at my boots. I was winning, right? Our fight is not yet finished; perhaps a rematch is in order.

Yes, a rematch. The third-class may be dead, but here on this magic little mud-ball called Earth that does not seem to be a problem. And before Namek, before his special training, he was weak compared to me, so… if I use the same methods he did, should I not be able to surpass him? After all, I am the one meant to be a Super Saiyan. Everyone always said so. I effortlessly stand, my attention on my fist as I ball it slowly and remember what I am. Who I am..

“No, no.” The woman’s voice pulls me back to the present, turning as she shakes her head. “The science is in on this. I should be able to take up to 6 gees easily, but I won't be able to stand after 3, 3 ½  tops. That’s useless for my tests though. Father’s machine went up to 100 times Earth’s gee. Mine, once tested, should be able to generate 200 gees! Oh dear,” she walks off pensively, “do you think that might be too much?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I have to run after her to catch up. “You couldn’t build something to hurt me if you tried.”

[mittensmorgul]

My boyfriend admitted yesterday after finally watching 13.1 that Dean and Cas DO love each other. He has no doubt in his mind that if Cas were female, Destiel would have happened. BUT he sees Dean as straight and doesn't believe anything could happen with Cas in Jimmy's body. I told him that this is heteronormative bi erasure and that as a bisexual, I find it offensive that he makes that assumption. What if these sorts of casual viewer opinions keep Destiel from ever happening? I'm losing hope.

Hi there! And congrats to your boyfriend for seeing the love there. :D

First off, no offense to straight dudes, but the straight dude I’ve been married to for 20 years has absolutely no sense of bifi. Or gaydar. I mean, if he sees two dudes kissing at Pride he’d pick up on it (and there are a few famous people who came out that he wasn’t surprised at all about– George Michael, Rob Halford, he was shocked that anyone was shocked…), but when it comes to closeted bisexuals who deliberately do not want to be detected, especially the way Dean performs dudebro heterosexuality as well as Dean does especially in early seasons, he just has no clue.

*insert that gif of Sam telling Dean he’s overcompensating*

The things about Dean that have been screamingly obvious because I relate to them from personal experience just don’t register to a straight dude who has never once questioned his sexuality (like Sam, for instance). To a person who has experienced it first-hand, a lot of Dean’s behavior reads as signal flares as bright as day. If it were only used for the occasional joke, or rare random things that didn’t fit into a much larger pattern, or if it were just enough to make me sit up and notice once or twice a season, I’d assume it was just a coincidence. But… it’s not a rare random occurrence. It’s something we see in nearly every episode, more and more blatantly as the seasons progress.

I tell everyone to read this:

http://destielhiseyesopened.tumblr.com/post/102023741956/slash-and-subtext-series

It’s a lot to read, yes, but it’s incredibly thorough and the sort of thing your neck will be sore from nodding along in agreement the entire time. :P

As for whether or not the show will go there, which NONE of us can say for sure, the one thing I can say for sure is that it will not be casual viewer opinions that will influence Dabb’s storytelling. He’s said it multiple times, that he’s going to tell this story his way, whatever that might mean in the end. Dude’s not telling. I mean, look at him:

So while it’s great to have hope, because we DESERVE representation in blatant and clear terms, there is no guarantee that we will actually GET it. I mean, that is a very real possibility. It’s why I personally don’t watch the show with any expectation for ANYTHING, you know? Then every new hint that they are taking this somewhere is a pleasant surprise. For me, watching from the standpoint that I EXPECT a certain outcome is just not an enjoyable way to live. It’s just too much to stress about.

And as I’ve said over and over again, just like Dabb, I personally couldn’t give a flying fuck with the mysterious “general audience” sees when they watch the show. I watch because of what *I* see in the show, because I like analyzing the story, writing meta (with the friendly reminder that “meta” has exactly zero to do with predicting the future of the story… that’s speculation, and aside from being able to read obvious twists and turns in near-future plot points, or understanding general character development arcs and where they could potentially be headed in vague general ways, I DO NOT ENJOY SPECULATION, especially when it involves the sort of detail that a lot of more casual fans seem to expect of meta writers. I AM TIRED OF FOLKS HAVING THE IMPRESSION THAT SPECULATION AND POSITIVITY FOR THE FUTURE OF THE SERIES AND CHARACTERS IS “”””META”””” BECAUSE IT ABSOLUTELY IS NOT.

Sorry for yelling, I needed to put that out there. Comments of “I love your meta!” when referring to headcanons and speculation about endgame destiel is just… missing the entire point. The meta is the long academic character analysis, the comparisons with the current arc to past canon, the examination of episodes THAT ARE ALREADY PART OF CANON. Looking to the future to make guesses about what COULD happen in the future is SPECULATION. NOT META.

I’m so tired of people who do not understand that giving meta writers hate and dismissing EVERYTHING we’ve written because a “prediction” didn’t come true on the show exactly as someone wrote it… A guess of what will happen in the future that doesn’t quite pan out doesn’t invalidate all the ACTUAL meta we’ve all written over the years. Because just like pr is not showrunning, speculation isn’t meta.

*even when the speculation is attached to the bottom of a really long meta post. The speculation bit isn’t the tl;dr of the post. it’s the interesting and fun little bonus bit after you’ve consumed the factual part of the analysis. It’s the little blop of whipped cream on top of the pie that is the actual important content. It’s mostly decorative and just a bit of fun.*

Thanks, this has been a meta writer PSA.)

The point of all that is that none of us have a crystal ball, none of us have some secret insider information into Andrew Dabb’s brain. Despite the fact that we’ve been watching his storytelling over the last 8+ years (yes, he’s been writing for the show since s4, and has written more episodes of Supernatural than any other writer, so we have A LOT of history to look over, not to mention all of s12 and the back ~third~ at least of s11 after he silently took over the showrunning from Carver to look at when trying to understand his pet themes and how he writes), the best we can do is make educated guesses.

I’m not basing my hope for canon on some ability to read the future, I’m basing it on MY ability to look at the entirety of extant canon and be objectively logical about where the story started, where the story is NOW, and as far as individual character development arcs based on having watched them all evolve over twelve plus seasons already…

Well, let’s just say that for *me,* I can see the characters have been on a logical emotional progression over the course of the entire series (that would be the “meta” part of things). As new canon unfolds, and characters continue to develop and interpersonal storylines continue to evolve… here’s a metaphor. The writers are walking the characters down a long hallway with loads of doorways open to potential future development arcs. As they walk past each doorway and don’t veer off course, it’s like they’re closing off logical possibilities to detour into alternate routes. They’re slamming and locking those doors up forever. The closer we get to the end of canon (in whatever nebulous future that the series will reach its end, and NONE of us know when that will be right now), the fewer doorways are left to walk past, and the less logical any detour from what looks (again, from reading the meta and looking back at the entirety of past canon) like the steady progression of development would be.

Does that make sense? I mean, they’re writing themselves into a corner (or into the end of the hallway where there’s only going to be one last exit door to walk through). But again, as long as there’s still hallway ahead of us, they could take an “easier” route or just decide to stop walking altogether and just sort of set up camp at their current point in character development. It wouldn’t really be sensible for the STORY as it stands right now for them to do either of these things, because if they start backtracking looking for a different door the entire narrative falls apart. Whatever they do, they must keep writing forward.

*stops and scrolls up and cries a lil bit at how much I wrote*

Point is, we just don’t know. I’m hopeful, I feel like we DESERVE to be seen and this love story absolutely DESERVES canon acknowledgement for what it is, and that every sign in past canon and every sign the writers are continuing to carry on down this hallway is pointing to it happening at some distant point in the future… but as of right now none of us have any idea what that eventual resolution will look like. What even is canon?

I mean, your boyfriend said he sees that Dean and Cas love each other. Is that canon? What would “qualify” as being legitimately canon? I love @bluestar86′s spec post about how easy it would be to make Dean’s bisexuality textually canon, but I have no idea if we’d ever get an episode stating it so blatantly. We might, though. We did have Dean asking a gay married couple what it was like settling down with another hunter…

The point is, even trying to speculate on what will happen in the future– especially something so unknowable and distant as “endgame,” is honestly impossible. We have no idea what will happen in canon between now and then in specific terms. In the meantime, I’m perfectly content to point and flail at what is actually happening in canon right now and paying exactly zero attention to what “casual viewers” think they’re watching.

I know exactly what I’m watching, and I love it.

Will they ever make it undeniably obvious and clear in canon? I mean, it is undeniably obvious and clear to *me* but everyone has their own personal biases and wishes and checklists of things they feel must happen, and no matter if the series ends with Dean and Cas getting married there will still always be people who deny it was “enough” to make their relationship obvious, you know? I just… don’t have the energy to deal with that level of denialism. It just stresses me out to worry about what “endgame” might look like specifically when as far as we know, “endgame” isn’t even on the table yet.

So by all means, if you can, take that small step back and try and enjoy the continuing story, and don’t put too much stock in anyone’s opinion of what may or may not happen in the future. But most of all, don’t put much much stock in what random straight dudes in the general audience think. Because Andrew Dabb doesn’t. :P

Wow okay that turned into a treatise…

[yujachachacha]

Get to know me

Tagged by @symphonyalpha​ (I forgot the URL for a second and was like, “Why isn’t Jaewhy showing up when I type it in the user mention???” lol).

Rules: Answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people.

Last: 1. Drink: Barley water, because that’s what my family drinks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 2. Phone call: My grandma, telling me what time she needed me to drive her to her doctor’s appointment. 3. Text message: To my little brother, telling him to STFU because he kept sending me dumb shit on iMessage. 4. Song you listened to: Does SIF count? If so, “Sore wa Bokutachi no Kiseki”. If not, I was headbanging to “Paradise Lost” by Chihara Minori after dropping my grandma off at her friend’s place the other day, lol. 5. Time you cried: tbh I probably teared up a little when I was watching the footage from the Lantis preview of the Aqours 1st Live BD/DVDs ｡ﾟ( ﾟஇωஇﾟ)ﾟ｡

Have you: 6. Dated someone twice: I haven’t even dated someone once :’))) 7. Kissed someone and regretted it: I’ve kissed exactly one person, so...hm. There was a period of time when I had conflicting emotions over what happened, but in the end, I don’t think I regret it. 8. Been cheated on: See #6. 9. Lost someone special: I’ve had a grandfather pass away, and this is probably going to sound bad, but...I really appreciated him, and he was nothing but kind to me. However, since I’d only seen him about three times in my life, the biggest way his death affected me was through my mother. It took her a while to get over my grandfather’s death, so it changed the way I behaved around her during that time. 10. Been depressed: Yes. 11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Exactly once, because I made the mistake of keeping pace with my uncle in Korea who takes soju shots like a champ. This also happened to be the night before Lunar New Year, so I got chewed out by my aunt (older sister of my uncle) once she realized why I was so lethargic during the festivities. _(:3 」∠)_ I don’t regret it though, because before that I had never been hungover before and was wondering what my limit was, haha.

List 3 favorite colors: 12-14. Red, blue, and...uh...other than those two I don’t have any definite faves. I guess the third would be either yellow or purple...? I’ll just go with purple for the sake of completion.

In the last year have you: 15. Made new friends: #TeamONIBE 16. Fallen out of love: That would require me to fall in love with someone first. 17. Laughed until you cried: I think it might have been when Mayushii and King did that disastrous cooking niconama. Like...what the actual fuck, do they seriously not know anything about basic kitchen safety and hygiene??? 18. Found out someone was talking about you: The number of times I’ve gone on to Discord and found out that someone in ONIBE was talkin’ smack about me... (｡･ˇ_ˇ･｡) It’s all in good fun though, haha. 19. Met someone who changed you: See #15. 20. Found out who your friends are: Nothing says "friendship” like screaming your heart out at an anisong concert, eating McNuggets while insanely drunk, sleeping while squished together in a seedy neighborhood, wotaing loudly in a moving vehicle, and other various activities I did with people I had never met in real life. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ AX 2017 was hella great for ONIBE bonding. 21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: I don’t think I’ve even used FB for non-work stuff since 2016 lol

General: 22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: If this means “I’ve actually met them in person and have had a decent conversation with them”, then maybe a few hundred? But if this means that I actually talk to them on a semi-regular basis, then, like...10, maybe. :’) 23. Do you have any pets: See my answer in the previous chain post I did. tl;dr I had a turtle and a dog in elementary school, but after that, no pets. I’d like to have a dog when I get a place of my own, though. 24. Do you want to change your name: Nope. 25. What did you do for your last birthday: Watched LLS Episode 13 in the morning and ate Korean BBQ in the evening. 26. What time did you wake up: Today? I honestly don’t remember. Sometime before 9? 27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Laughing at dumb shit on Twitter and Discord, probably. 28. Name something you can’t wait for: The Delayed Viewing for the 2nd Live for the US! I’m making plans to meet up with ONIBE folks again and it’s gonna be ~L I T~ 29. When was the last time you saw your mom: Early in the morning. She was like “lol get up and lose some weight” while I was still in bed so I groaned back, “You’re one to talk,” and went back to sleep. 30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: I was gonna say “how about eliminating my student loans haha” but I suppose this is supposed to be a more serious question. I guess it’d be nice if I was a neater person. Like, my room is a total mess right now and I’m terrible at keeping track of things I should be working on... 31. Listening right now: Fun fact - I actually only listen to music while I’m driving. Otherwise, it distracts me from what I should be doing. 32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yup, that was the name of my debate coach when I was in junior high. 33. Something that is getting on your nerves: People who hate on LL seiyuu. Like, they’re actual human beings who are working really hard to live up to the expectations of thousands - no, millions of people worldwide. To be quite honest, I invite you to tell me if you legitimately want to shit on any one of them (both µ’s and Aqours), because I have yet to see a single person who has had a good justification for doing so. 34. Most visited website: Probably Tumblr/YouTube/Twitter/Reddit, too lazy to figure out which one of those it is.

Jaewhy put in random questions here because they were missing for some reason, so I guess I’ll continue those: 35. Mole(s): I have a few around my face, but other than the one on my right cheek I don’t think they’re that noticeable? I don’t spend a lot of time in the sun like other Californians. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 36. Mark(s): I have a birthmark on the backside of my right shoulder that I’m sort of self-conscious about. It’s the perfect shape for getting a tattoo of a sunflower around it, so maybe I’ll do that some time in the future? 37. Childhood dream: Lawyer. 38. Hair color: I feel like I’ve answered this in a previous chain post, but it’s black. Duh. Though if you hold it up to the sun, some of the ends are more like dark brown. 39. Long or short: Long. 40. Do you have a crush on someone: See #16. Nope. 41. What do you like about yourself: I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at computers/video games and I still don’t need glasses. :D 42. Piercings: No, but I should probably get my ears pierced at some point? 43. Blood type: O. 44. Nickname: Yujacha, but a lot of people shorten it to “Yuja”. 45. Relationship status: Single. 46. Zodiac: Libra, Dog. 47. Pronouns: I feel like it’s obvious what gender I am, so just go with those. 48. Favorite TV show: I don’t really watch TV these days, but if I’m kicking back with some hot cocoa at like 2am I might watch Criminal Minds or something. 49. Tattoos: Nope, but like I said in #36 I’ve been thinking about it. 50. Right or left hand: Right. 51. Surgery: Wisdom teeth removal is technically dental surgery. 52. Hair dyed in different color: I had highlights in my hair a few years ago, but they faded real quick. I’m vaguely considering dyeing it brown in the distant future...? 53. Sport: It’s fun to watch the occasional match when there’s a World Cup or Olympic thing going on, but otherwise I have no interest. 54. (A question I came up with since #54 was missing) Extracurricular activities: I was a debate kid for most of my school life, and in college I was in the Korean Club and Student Union. 55. Vacation: Does the 2nd Live DV later this year count? 56. Pair of trainers sneakers *American anthem plays in the distance*: I actually need new ones because I’ve tripped while hiking on at least two separate occasions due to my shitty old sneakers.

More general: 57. Eating: Haven’t yet. 58. Drinking: Wasn’t this literally the first question? 59. I’m about to: Eat. 60. (This question was missing so I'll make one up again) Thinking about: What to eat lol 61. Waiting for: 2nd Live DV~ 62. Want: Money tbh 63. Get married: I’d like to at some point, but at the moment I’m kinda tired of hearing about it from every middle-aged woman who talks to me (including my own mother). 64. Career: Working on it.

Which is better: 65. Hugs or kisses: Hugs, because they’re warm and comfy and can be shared by complete strangers. 66. Lips or eyes: I was gonna repeat a previous answer and say “eyesmiles” but since this is “lips or eyes” rather than “smiles or eyes”, I guess my answer would fall more under “eyes”. 67. Shorter or taller: Bruh, if someone’s shorter than me then I’d need to check their ID to make sure they’re not jailbait. Taller. 68. Older or younger: I’ve never dated anyone so I honestly wouldn’t know, but I’d probably look for someone close to my age first? 69. (Lmao why was 69 missing :3c I’ll just make something up again) Outgoing or shy: The former, since I’m lazy. If someone doesn’t drag me to places I’ll just lay in bed all day. 70. Nice arms or stomach: It’s actually really hard for females to have a toned stomach, so any gals with abs are like ooh~ 👀 But I actually like hands! I have smol stubby fingers so I really dig people with nice hands. 71. Sensitive or loud: The former, because I don’t need the entire neighborhood to know when I’m gettin’ laid kthnx 72. Hook up or relationship: Relationship, because sure why not? 73. Troublemaker or hesitant: Maybe the former, but if they’re being too much of a lil’ shit then I’d go for the latter instead. I’ve dealt with friends who take like 20 minutes to decide what to order from a menu so I know that feel. :’)

Have you ever: 74. Kissed a stranger: Nope. 75. Drank hard liquor: Yup. 76. Lost glasses/contact lenses: I’m pretty sure I annoyed half of ONIBE during AX when I went “haha y’all are blind af” after I found out I was pretty much the only one who didn’t have corrected vision. 77. Turned someone down: I was about to say “no” and then I got a sudden flashback to a certain incident in college, wow thanks for making me remember something I had tried to forget...sooo, uh, yup. 78. Sex on the first date: See #6. 79. Broken someone’s heart: IDK if turning someone down counts as breaking their heart. 80. Had your heart broken: ...yes. I think? 81. Been arrested: Nope. 82. Cried when someone died: Do fictional characters count? 83. Fallen for a friend: Uhhhhh...kind of? It was complicated.

Do you believe in: 84. Yourself: I’d like to think that I do. 85. Miracles: KISEKI DA YO~ ...sorry, I had to. Yeah. 86. Love at first sight: Shukashuu is living proof of this. 87. Santa Claus: Nope, sorry Maki!!! 88. Kiss on the first date: Sure.

Other: 90. Current best friend(s) name: IDK if I have one. :’) 91. Eye color: I’m Asian, take a wild guess. 92. Favorite movie: I don’t really have a favorite, but I did like “Kimi no Na wa.” (Your name.) so much that I made it my phone’s lock screen.

Tagging: I've only tagged people the first time I did one of these and I’m gonna try to keep it that way. If anyone who reads this wants to give it a go, feel free~