#my fav 30 year old white man

[datapancakes]

oh also brett :D

[tequiilasunriise]

Being in fandoms where the characters are clearly based on other pieces of media/famous figures is so much fun because then some of my ships look like this:

Parentified Goldilocks who is also The Beast x Avoidance attachment Beauty who is ALSO also The Beast, one of my fav moments with them is when they off the Minotaur together who is ALSO also also The Beast

Little Red Riding Hood if she was also the Wolf and has galloons of repressed trauma x Snow White but she’s heavily knight coded and the poster child of daddy issues

Edgar Allen Poe’s Lenore x Annabel Lee but they’re in gay ghost love

The poem ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ x Odin’s raven Huginn but they’re exes still in love in a milf yuri divorce that ends super mega tragically and domino effects mommy issues out the ass

Historical figures Cleopatra x Frida Kahlo with the most chef’s kiss height difference you’ve ever seen

A polycule with Joan of Arc x Mulan x Thor x Achilles but they’re all genderbent/trans

The Velveteen Rabbit x fashion icon Coco Chanel if she was a lesbian with a gun

Frankenstein’s monster x a different sapphic Cleopatra bc baby gays <3333

Okay okay that black cat from Poe’s, well, The Black Cat x Poe’s Eulalie is cute yes

But I actually really REALLY love Poe’s Eulalie x Poe’s Berenice bc they’re “me and the bad bitch I pulled by being autistic” personified

The Snow Queen with mega daddy issues x Robin Hood if he was a socialist lesbian I SAIDDDD ITTTT

Imma say it historical figures JFK x Confucius were adorable bros

Aesop’s Fisherman x Odin’s other bird Munin you will always be famous my tragic old man yaoi <////3

Y’all will really have to hear me out here when I say Cinderella if she fucken snapped x ice cream Mad Hatter because couples who are terrible to each other but in a “only I’m allowed to be a horrid to them” way can be so funny

And I could go o n fer ages but the point is imagine explaining these ships to someone like 30 years ago with ZERO context their heads would explode and it’d be so funny

[coyote-kiddo]

i was re-tagging some of my old posts and found this, so i figured i'd re-do it!!! (all at once because i do NOT have the memory to do it over 30 days)

i found petdre first via the aesthetic "babycore", and then slowly got more and more into agedre!! i also found out a while later that i had been involuntarily age regressing for years and hadnt noticed

my age when im small is kinda hard to pinpoint, but i would say somewhere between 3-5 most of the time!!

i dont have one, and i dont plan on getting one until im an adult (for safety purposes), but i have a few fictional cgs!! (stolas, toriel, and alastor are my biggest ones :3)

hm, i would say a day with one of my fictional cgs!! getting to play with the toys ive been wanting, color and draw, wear clothes that feel comfortable on my body, use teethers, bottles, diaps and pacis and watch my favorite shows without being judged or being embarrassed abt it :3 plus a nice warm bubble bath, baba of warm almond milk and a lullaby before bed!!

i have loads of sippies, a few bottles, a few teethers, a paci and one disposable diap as of right now, but i really really want a babyyourdoll classic round paci!! and also pull ups, mostly js for comfort :33 i would also like more silicon teethers bc they feel nicer than gel/water teethers heheh

i pet dream occasionally, not as often as i used to but still occasionally!! i petdre to an afghan hound, a kitty, a fox, and im considering trying wolf pup, fruit/vampire bat and deer :3

when i age dream, im not too much different from when im big bc my headspace doesnt change as much- im just a bit more childish and less embarrassed about stuff!! regressed me is wayy different though bc my regression is almost always negative- im typically more emotional, childish, clingy, and annoying.

i prefer drawing!!! i like to color also but drawing just feels so freeing to me :3

my moots!!! too shy to tag but i love them sm /p /gen

regression is almost always invol for me because of anxiety and trauma, its also usually negative which is kinda sucky

yepp!!

not that i can remember, ive used regression gear in dreams before but never regressed

this one is kinda tricky- im gonna say probably either apple slice or salteens!! i also really love juice, chocolate, graham crackers and cheese and crackers :3

yes!! i never really grew out of them, even before i started to age dream ive collected them :3

just my stepmom and my dad, i dont really think they remember though

bubs, kiddo, buddy, and little guy are my favs!! masc nicknames are sooo gender affirming to me as a fem-presenting trans man :,3

my regression is usually negative and involuntary, but nothing usually makes me "instantly regress"- its kinda a coin flip- but something that makes me feel smaller when i age dream is fuzzy socks!!

nope 😭 even if im able to buckle down and have small time after ive been involuntarily regressed it just kinda fades away

its okay, i cant really speak on it much bc i have most people i dont feel comfortable with blocked and i dont have any other socials. though i do hate when people stereotype and gatekeep it, or water it down to "fem, pastel, cute way of coping for skinny white girls only"

not a lot, but if i stumble upon one in the tags i might read it :3c

yeah, but i dont really feel comfortable being tickled

stolas goetia from helluva boss!!!! he is literally my dada guys /silly

my preference changes constantly, but it would definitely have a crib that can be converted into a toddler/big kid bed w a canopy and mobile, a sensory tent, a bouncer, a play area and a deer rocker!!!

not really, it makes it harder for me to stay small sometimes

i regress because of trauma and anxiety, i age dream as a coping mechanism for stress, gender dysphoria and missing out on my childhood :3

i almost always have to be listening to music when small, regressed or age dreaming, and my music taste jus kinda stays the same

just boundaries i set for myself- dont intentionally seek out my triggers, dont stay up too late, eat when im hungry, etc

when i regress, i get very very clingy and sad and scared, so i come off as very needy and kinda annoying (+ blunt because i kinda forget how social rules work), when i age dream im basically the same as when im big, just gigglier and more childish

maybe!! i havent tried out caregiving before but i would like to!!

im in the process of learning italian, so i sometimes watch kids' shows in italian to help practice and to make myself feel smaller!!

[allisoooon]

omfg can i say i love your viktor & allison takes so much

it’s been so frustrating being in the tua fandom having both viktor & allison as my top faves where too many people completely woobify viktor & demonize allison to hell and back

it’s kind of frustrating with viktor especially because you can at least blame the audience take away of allison in s3 on the writers doing stuff like focusing on a drunk five montage instead of allison’s pov but s1 is right there and apparently so many people’s take aways from it was “viktor is poor baby that must be protected” despite the fact that he is a 30 year old grown man tht was very clearly being an ass

and it’s confusing to me like, 1) what drew me to viktor and made him my fav was the fact that he’s kind of an ass, like I can’t remember if it was the cabin scene or the viktor bringing down the mansion scene but i saw that and was like “holy shit he’s an asshole, i have to watch this for him”

2) premise of tua is literally dysfunctional asshole siblings are dysfunctional because of their trauma but that’s no excuse esp because their actions are literally causing apocalypses and they have to learn to heal both individually as a family and once they do so the apocalypses will stop (probably)

I think for some people that when they strongly identify with a character, their natural self-serving bias pops up and wants to protect the character because they feel like they're protecting themselves. So I get where it comes from. People have been sanitizing their faves and bashing anyone remotely mean to them for as long as fandom has been around, probably.

Klaus compares Viktor to Carrie White in s3. Whether that was the inspiration for Viktor or not (which would make a ton of sense--Vanya in the comics is far more actively complicit in the end of the world, whereas Viktor seems to kind of go into a trance the way Sissy Spacek's Carrie does), it's extremely apt.

I've heard it said Stephen King has become so iconic because most of the "monsters" in his books are humans. As much as you feel for Carrie and want her to have a better lot in life, at the end of the day, she is the monster of this horror story. Her mother and her bullies are all more evil than she is, but they didn't massacre pretty much everyone at a high school dance. Especially with Spacek's portrayal, you almost feel like it wasn't Carrie's fault. It was out of character for her, and after everything she's endured, it makes sense if she got a power rush and literally burned everything to the ground.

Viktor is similarly the monster, or in this genre the supervillain, of s1. It's done incredibly well, too. By the time you've fully followed his arc up to when he snaps, it makes so much sense for him to lose it that it doesn't really even feel like mass murder. Like with Carrie, you've identified with this character's pain so much, you're kind of rooting for a cathartic power trip. The writing is so good that when a character does something unforgivable, you forgive it almost before it happens.

So it really does feel like a disservice to the character when people sanitize Viktor. As if you can only justify identifying with this character if they are a good person. Identifying with the monster doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, it was the writer's goal. Fighting it means you're not getting as much out of the story as you could be, and the message the author is trying to convey won't hit as hard. Viktor has a very real dark side, and it's always going to be a threat to the people around him. And yet he is gentle and soft-spoken, and tries to be a good person. These two things exist in the same character, which is how it happens in real life. When it happens in fiction, the audience can safely explore their own dark side. That's damn good writing.

[angelisverba]

thinkin’ bout you

in which harry owns a flower shop and has a major crush on a girl who comes in to buy flowers every once in a while (and he’s too shy to ask for her number) 

word count: 17.3k

paring: florist!h and y/n

warnings: just some pinning and lustful yearning. m for mature...

author’s note: i’ve been working on this forever. not to pick fav’s but i think florist!h comes second to sl23... hes just so.......well, you’ll see!!

*    *    *    *    *    *

When Harry was given the option to go on a playdate with his car-loving and dirty-nailed schoolmates or spending the weekend at his nan’s house, he would often pick the latter. 

He preferred to spend his afternoons frolicking with her Siamese kitty in her wild-flower filled garden, sunbathing in the open grass, or napping on a quilted blanket under the large, round oak tree, with the kitty nestled into his tummy, keeping him warm. When he woke in the arms of his nan as she carried him inside the house for a glass of cool lemonade, he bore a band of pink sunburn over his button nose, and the blue and white striped Mickey shirt was sticking to the areas where his furry friend had provided an extra heat. 

So, it was safe to say that from the start, Harry’s tastes weren’t what could be considered ‘average’ or ‘normal’ or ‘straight’ for a heterosexual male of his age in current society. 

Not that he ever valued those opinions, but their impressions rang in the back of his loving head when the women who he brought to the comfort of his home made hurtful ‘joking’ comments on how ‘peculiar’  his choice of decor was or giving him prolonged strange looks before shaking their heads and yanking their clothes off so that they landed in a forgotten heap in some unimportant corner of his room. 

Granted, he still got a good shag, but it wasn’t enough to fulfill his desires regarding any actions associated with relationships. He wanted someone warm and soft and kind. Someone who wouldn’t judge his home, his music choices, his clothing, or anything else about him. A girlfriend, not a fuck. 

Long ago, he’d stopped caring about what others said about him. Adopting this mindset had given him some of the happiest and healthiest moments of his life (albeit occasionally, doubts merged with the ghastly shadows of his loneliness). Business at his flower shop increased as his charm increased with positivity, and a new life within him bloomed like a baby rose bud when he accepted that being single was okay. The ribbons of his bouquets bouncing with an added umf and the mist that landed on his skin when he changed the water in the flower buckets only enhanced the golden hue of his skin. 

Harry even took to renovating his home a bit. 

 Coincidentally, his apartment was located on the floor above his flower stop, and contained a significant amount of singular flowers in vases or bouquets in empty corners to prove it. An array of pastel colors smeared on the once blank walls. Bambi pink in his bedroom, sage green in his kitchen, and a French blue in his living room. The couch was a suede papaya three-seater with black and white checkered pillows, and the coffee table was an emerald-tiled piece standing on top of a geometric lavender carpet, a soft contrast against the dark oak of his floorboards. Harry’s taste in pop-culture, art, and literature was displayed on the frames hanging off his walls. Pictures and posters of his favorite pieces like Matisse’s Blue Nudes and Goldfish and The Dance II. An enhanced, enlarged photo of maraschino cherries and a raven haired pin-up girl. Another glass table by the end of the couch held a silver candlestick and a small statue.

Sometimes, the miniature Greek statue he bought at a thrift store of a man with his nakedness pure and unobscured to the viewers' eyes made his dick bloat against the seams of his pants. If he stared at it for too long, his eyes drawn to the softened cock between thighs that looked so flesh-like even though it was carved out of some clay or ceramic material, his mind would travel to sensual, honey-red places that he hadn’t been in so long. Harry’s imagination explored- as cheesy as it sounds- the sexual aspects of the male genitalia, and therefore his own sexual expeditions and how much he missed giving or receiving a good fuck. More often than not, he ended up with himself in his fist, forehead sparkling with perspiration under the candle lights in his room as his thighs and abdomen clenched with every buck of his yearning hips. 

The doorknob of his room was in the shape of an eye, the iris colored a brilliant blue. His king bed- no, frame, just a minimalist white base, pushed up against the wall with two tables on either side, both of them loaded articulately with vintage trinkets and ceramic ring trays shaped like seashells to hold his jewelry. His bedsheets were a stylish combination of pastel colors; lilac comforter, mint and sky pillows. Previously, they had been snow white sheets with strawberry print, but a woman he brought over said they looked like the sheets her five-year-old niece had. 

He changed them the week after that.

On the windowsill, a pot in the shape of a white, blue-eyed kitty with vines of string of hearts kissing the floor. A mirror in the shape of a heart with a pink trim besides the lightswitch, above his brown dresser. In the corner, a bookshelf stuffed with books that spilled over the seams, and perpendicular to it, the home of his pet chameleon, Owen (he wanted a cat, but when he went to the pet store and saw the dehydrated creature, he couldn’t leave him there). A 16 x 16 x 30 inch tank filled with a branch that cut across halfway. It was full of all the things he might need, maybe even too much of it, but it didn’t matter because when Harry was home Owen spent most of his time hanging off the collars of his shirts or snuggled in the ruffles of his hooded sweatshirt on his shoulder. The small, color changing friend adored his owner, and only morphed into a mild red color when Harry didn’t feed him more mango. 

The renovations occurred in his bathroom; a cherry-red covering the walls because it looked boring before (at least in his opinion).  The gold piping of the sink accentuated nicely with the darker color, and the sun seemed brighter when it streamed in through the window above his ceramic claw-footed tub. Owen particularly liked the misty showerhead stall in the corner, and as long as he kept his eyes to himself, Harry didn’t mind it if his green friend wrapped around the showerhead and enjoyed the mimicked tropical atmosphere. 

For awhile now, it had been just him and his chameleon (and maybe his mum’s cat if she was going out of town and needed a sitter) but he didn’t mind it. 

He got to meet new people everyday within the parameters of H’s Garden, and they all tended to overshare when it came to buying a bouquet. ‘My wife just had our son, want to see a picture?’ or ‘my boyfriend and I have our anniversary on Saturday’ and even ‘my sister had plastic surgery so me and my dad need something that says ‘congrats you look like Kim Kardashain now’ how ‘bout it?’ 

Stories ranged from sweet, to grotesque, to sad, to funny, and sometimes even evil- Harry didn’t like customers that gave flowers as a ‘fuck you’. He thought it was a waste of beauty and sacrifice. Flowers were living things that had their lives cut short in order to provide momentary satisfaction and life long memories to the receiver, not bitter feelings of revenge. Although it was still business, it pained him that such a pretty arrangement be misused. It was one of the cons of his work. He created what he considered to be masterpieces, and had no control over where they would end up, whether it be as a centerpiece for a candlelit dinner, or in the trash after the apology for a strong argument hadn’t been enough. 

However, Harry couldn’t deny that he didn’t love his job, because he did. 

When he turned 16, he’d determined that he wanted a peaceful life with a job that wouldn’t bore him. He wanted to be as stress free as possible, with his spirituality as a prominent highlight in his lifestyle. When he turned 18, he had determined that he wanted to be a florist, and began to save up to open his own shop with the occasional help of his friends and sister. He refused to take anything from his mother because he wanted to be the one giving her gifts and money and everything good after all of her sacrifices in raising him. Call him a momma’s boy. Harry loved his mother. 

Online seminars and college classes became his best friend, teaching him everything he needed to know about accounting, stocks, and how to keep his business going. He was a businessman first, florist second. During the slow seasons (the start of winter and an awkward half-week between summer and spring) he relied on his investments to triple-ensure that he had enough money to stay afloat. 

On his 22nd birthday, as a gift to himself, he signed the lease to the building that housed all of the pretty plants in temporary buckets full of flower food and water, and hired a graphic designer to design the cursive, golden letters that spelled out the name of his shop above the front door. 

 Now, three years later, he lived as happy as can be. 

And he wasn’t lonely anymore. 

Well, if you wanted to be technical, his relationship status was still a checkmark over the box labeled ‘single’, but his heart couldn’t be fluttering any harder at the sight of one of his regular customers, and she was there, creeping around in his brain to keep him company. 

She was the complete opposite of every girl he’d ever been with. She was sweet, kind, funny, and didn’t judge him for the way he dressed, or his profession. In fact, they bonded over things that previous women had… slyly berated him for. The color of his nails, the lace of his collar, the pattern of his flared pants,  and even the sheep on his baby blue sweater vest.  

She stole his heart the moment she walked through his door with a soft smile on her face, a sparkling gleam in her warm eyes, and placed it in her pocket the moment she said, “it smells lovely in here!”

Harry, awestruck and blushing because well, she was pretty and wore a shade of purple that somehow made her hair look so soft. Two strands of hair were pinned at the back of her head, essentially keeping the rest of it away from her face save for the few baby wisps that rested gently against her cheeks like a lover’s caress. The stuttering, stumbling cupid’s-bow-struck fool replied with, “thank you. It would be my pleasure to help you with anything you’d like,” and that had been his name, signed on the dotted line of a soul contract. Only she was not the devil. She was an angel. 

But even then, it wouldn’t matter. If she was the devil, if she was an angel, something in between or something new entirely he wouldn’t care because he was half gone for her already. 

“In that case,” she smiled, and Harry’s heart sang a melody it never had before. It was like the sun beamed from the spaces between her teeth and tickled the fuzzy spot beneath his earlobe. She had the most amazing voice, tranquil and clear and ethereal. “I just moved into a new apartment and wanted the place to feel like home. I thought maybe flowers would give it a little life.” 

He vividly remembers that the color of her cheeks changed to that of what is called a ‘blush’, but he didn’t know if it was a trick under the light, or a product of his wistful imagination. Her fingers gently skimmed the petals of a rose from it’s bucket near her hip, and one of the straps of the tote bag on her shoulder disrespectfully dropped away from her shoulder. He wanted to simultaneously rush over and fix it for her, and yell at the inanimate object for not being grateful of the fact that it had the opportunity to cling to her shoulder.

But, before either of these inner-conflicts met a sound resolve, her delicate fingers righted what was once wrong, and Harry cleared his throat, embarrassed because he’d stared for a little too long. He wanted so badly to ask for her name and how she liked her eggs in the morning, but instead he said, “there’s nothing like a bit of something pretty to brighten your day. Did you have something specific in mind?”

He hoped that the meaning of his words wasn’t caught on her, or that would be totally embarrassing and ‘loser’-like. 

When she walked out the door with a content smile on her lips, his own heart was beating faster than the flapping of a hummingbird’s tender wings. He was sure that he had never laid eyes on a pair of lips like hers, neither the feeling that blossomed in his chest at the thought that she might be smiling just for him to see and enjoy. 

Of course, it was a silly crush. One that clawed and gripped onto his sweaty palms with no sign of letting go. Maybe, Harry thought, it was because he hadn’t wet his wick in so long, and the interaction he’d had with her had sparked irrational, poem-inspiring feelings within the love cavern of his ribs. Because how could he fall head over heels with someone he didn’t even know? Surely, the swarm of hormone-pumped butterflies in his stomach was the beginning of a dead-end infatuation. 

Right? 

Harry went that entire day, appalled at the apparent angel he had the fortune of being in the presence of in her short fall from the tender heavens. He wondered where she placed the flowers she bought (an arrangement he was particularly proud of, full of lilac, delicate stems of lavender, and puffs of baby’s breath wrapped with a white bow) and where that tiny extension of him was. At the entrance of her home, right below the place she rested her hand against as she tugged her shoes off? At the center of her table? Maybe besides her bed? Where she would see the purple petals and white of him as he wrapped it every time she woke up or went to bed? He hoped- as much as it was a romantic thought- that it wasn’t the last one. He’s been so awkward, so pink. A blush on his cheeks he hadn’t remembered being there since the time he yelped, startled, at the unexpected pain of a tattoo needle, the artist pointedly peeved. Acting like such a boy. 

Right before crawling up the steps of his apartment, heart still bleeding with love-blood from the deadly tip of Cupid’s arrows, he made himself a mini version of the bouquet he’d made her, and placed it at the center of his tiled coffee table. 

*********

A few days trickled by, and the memory of her face drifted in and out of his mind like a giant sway of fabric slowly billowing in the wind. He was just so… struck by a slab of awe, stunned by her kind of beauty. Natural, the kind that hooks you in it’s purity, like the golden beams streaming in through transparent curtains on a warm spring afternoon. 

Her strawberry lips curved elegantly under her nose, and displayed a smile that leaked some sort of heady drug into the air because the air was sweet when he breathed it in. And when he handed the bundle of flowers over to her, the pads of her delicate fingers skimmed the rough ridges of his knuckles. He wondered immediately what kind of moisturizer she used, and if it smelled like honey or lavender or peaches. She smelled sweet. Sweeter than all of the flowers in his colorful soul shop put together. The colors that belong to her, on her person and worn by her, were more captivating than any of the tones that painted the petals on his plants. 

Owen got a kick out of this whole ordeal, though. Harry’s passionate mood had him divulging in munching and nibbling on things that tasted the way he felt; ambrosial, fresh and pure. It resulted in the purchasing of endless amounts of fruit, with many bites given to the tiny chameleon. Mangoes, strawberries, oranges, grapes, pears (Asian pears, if the store carried them, they were Harry’s favorite), peaches and guavas. The sudden craving for fruit might be explained as just a casual craving, but deep deep down inside, Harry knew that it was because he wanted to replicate the feeling that coursed through his golden veins when she giggled at something she happened to find funny. 

He wished that he had caught her name. The girl had paid in cash (and left a five dollar tip Harry fawned over), so he couldn’t have read it on her card, and he was halfway between charming and awkward that he didn’t even think of asking for it until the minute the door closed behind her, bells tinkling in announcement of her exit. He wished for a hundred different things, but he was not the type to live in regret. Not anymore. So after about a week of floundering in her memory, he meditated for an hour, tropical incense on one of his bedside tables, and cleared his mind as best he could. 

The next morning, he did the same thing. Woke up with heavy limbs, plopped himself down on his blue mat and stretched in various positions, his white boxers hanging low on his hips. His lips and eyes were sticky with sleep, and the back of his nose ached with cold air that he must’ve breathed in throughout the night after forgetting to close the window (again) but the pleasurable twinge of stretching aches between his joints were the perfect way to start his day. They urged his mind to transform into the still surface of water, clear and collected from any unproductive-pinning thoughts towards a girl he would most likely never see again. 

Even his clothes reflected his refreshed mindset.

Harry donned his favorite pair of flared  trousers in an earthy brown color, nestled snugly on his slender hips and around his thighs. The tight fit accentuated the way his back tapered into his waist, glutes shapely and sculpted. A maroon sweater vest that had a teddy bear embroidered on the middle of his chest, the small latte-toned stuffed animal seemingly childish, but on him it only directed attention to the spotlight daze of the velvety heart sheltered underneath his breathless plate. Underneath, a mustard long-sleeve shirt with tiny cherries printed on them. Some straight, some tilted or lopsided. His shoulders and biceps were hidden in the floofy bunches of cloth, anonymity given to the true thickness of his ink slathered skin. 

He looked like a corduroy dream. A thick milkshake of patterns and colors, but he managed to pull it off.

A tiny gold hoop on his right ear gleamed under the morning sun coming in through the windows and a pearl necklace rested against the downy skin of his throat. Slender fingered tipped with a coat of pure white, with his ring fingers accented in a shimmery pink. Chunky rings adorning the base of his digits; a silver rose, a band of dancing teddy bears (a running theme with him), two gold rings with his initials H and S on one hand, and a simple ruby stud from his graduating class. 

He looked good, he knew that he looked good, and was ready to begin a bright, healthy, non-pretty-girl-thought-polluted day. Even the old woman had pinched his cheek whom he had been assisting- a regular-had said he looked like a proper ‘nice boy’ along with ‘when are you going to her a lovely girl to help you run this place, Harry?’. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had momentarily sworn off women until his broken sentiments healed, and they had a long way to go. 

In the middle of wrapping a smashing set of tulips and fern stems with a cherry red bow, the bells adorning the top of the door frame dinges, announcing the entrance of another pleasant customer and giving passage to a gust of chilly air. Harry looked up to greet the customer with his usual pleasantries of ‘welcome! I’ll be with you in a moment!’, but the words died on his throat in a desperate hussle, just as the little mermaid had given up her voice to meet her gallant prince.  

It was his own personal little slice of heaven presented to him on the black and white checkered floors of his shop. Hair loose against her shoulders again, eyes cast downwards to inspect a bucket of fresh daisies that tickled the space above her bare knees. How she could wear a skirt in this biting weather, he didn’t know, and it partially prevented him from continuing his pursuit of admiring her because the first thought his caring mind jumped too was, ‘is she cold? And if so, does she need a sweater? Because I will gladly give her one.’ His second thought, however, was ‘how could someone be that beautiful?’. The third was something along the lines of ‘all my yoga has gone to shit, and I’m okay with that’. 

He cleared his throat, tightened the bow around the stems of the flowers in his hands and said, “I’ll be with you in a moment, love!” His head bowed, looking at his work because he wasn’t sure he could afford the medicals for the paralysis that was sure to take over his meek self if they made eye contact so soon. Harry needed a moment of homeostasis, his soul adjusting to her dulcet presence. 

The woman he was assisting, Edna, spoke, drawing him out of his daze, but he had been so deeply in thought that he had not heard what she said. 

“What was that?” He asked her. He grabbed Kraft paper from the roll by the register to wrap up her arrangement. 

“The girl. You like her?” She was smiling at him, wagging a finger the way his nan used to do when she caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. “Don’t lie to me, I recognize that look. I’ve given and received that look many times throughout my life.” 

The woman was not wrong. With age, comes wisdom, Harry thought, smiling to himself at being caught. A dimple carves itself into his cheek, nestling onto the space above the corner of his mouth as if he had no choice in the matter. The apples of his cheeks were shadowed with a dusky pink, and the tip of his nose was twitching like a rabbit when it stood on its rear and sniffed the air, only he was coy after just being caught and wanted to avoid the question as much as possible. 

“I’ve got no idea what y’talking about,” he chuckled, keeping his voice low so that the intriguing stranger in the store didn’t hear that their topic of discussion was her. He moved over to the register to ring her up, and even slid in a discount he applied to customers he liked. 

“Next time I come in,” Edna said, passing Harry her debit card, “I hope to hear that you got her number, dear. Don’t let these opportunities pass you up. Life is short. And who knows? She could be the one.” Harry gave her the card back after charging her, and handed her the flowers, too. All the while Edna was grinning at him, shaking her head like she knew something he didn’t. 

“Take care, Edna. And don’t forget to change the water every 2 days with the flower packets I placed at the stems,” he reminded her, sweetly wiggling his red-lacquered nails at her retreating woman as butterflies awakened in his stomach in a furious flood of nerves. The girl was looking around, her hands hovering over the up-turned faces of a bundle of lively sunflowers, browsing and quietly humming to herself as she waited. 

There was no backing out of this, even if he wanted to. And he didn’t! He didn’t want to back out. The girl was a customer, and he would have to approach her no matter what. But she was so pretty it was also intimidating. He doesn’t remember ever being this nervous while approaching someone, especially one he harbored feelings for. His heart was pounding so loud, he was sure it was audible. 

“Hello,” he wanted so badly to add ‘love’ at the end of his greeting. “Are y’finding everything a’right?” He asked her, his hands wringing themselves, palms moist with sweat from his unyielding need to impress her. The pink tip of his tongue poked out to swipe across his full bottom lip, and soon after that his teeth sunk down into it, nibbling with uncertainty. Harry made sure that he was standing straight, body aligned to face hers because in that psychology course he took once, he learned that it was a subconscious tactic to engage interest and pleasant replies to attempts at wooing another. 

At the sound of his voice, the girl jumped, startled at the sudden vibrations of Harry’s husky voice. Her delicate feet, he noticed, skittered on the floor from her tiny jump, and her doe eyes widened, shouldered rising and falling at a quicker pace than before from the new rush of light fear. When she realizes that it’s just him her hand flattered over the base of her neck and her collarbone in attempts to soothe her racing heart. 

“M’s sorry,” he whispers, his hand clamping over his mouth, and then lowering to his chin when he speaks again, “didn’t mean to scare y’love.” This time he can’t restrict himself. It comes so naturally, like the endearment was meant for her, and when a flush covers the bridge of her nose his first instinct is to coo at her for looking so cute. The second is a surge of guilt for having scared her to such an extent. 

“It’s okay,” she says, a little out of breath. The blush on her face was partly because she was embarrassed at her own reaction, while the other was that she had let herself act so freely and uncoordinated in front of someone that looked like him. Handsome and sweet and eyes so green they refreshed you upon first glance. Like the cool burn of water going into a mouth that had just chewed a stick of minty gum. “I want to buy these flowers.” 

God help him. Her voice alone was enough to make him melt. The lilts and melodies of her voice swarming all four of the ventricles in his heart with warmth, and every blood cell that passed contained a glowing heat, buzzing with her energy. 

She points to the sunflowers, her gaze lingering on them with longing. A soft smile toying on her mouth, and Harry could see the tendons in her throat stretch as she inhaled to add another thought to her sentence, “Do you sell vases by any chance?” The girl looked at him shyly, her eyelashes almost twinkling as she blinked, and his heart soared, “I had a really nice one in the shape of a big Coca-Cola bottle, and I accidentally knocked it over, so now I have nothing to put them in.” 

Harry is incredibly enamoured by subconscious gestures that take over her hands as she speaks, fiddling as if the vase she spoke about was in her hands, all in one piece before it was broken. He’s quiet throughout her tiny ramble, listening and taking note of her enticing antics. She’s looking down at the floor or the flowers or her hands, and when her eyes dance over to his steady gaze, “I’m rambling aren’t I?” she murmurs bashfully. 

“No, no it’s a’right. I can look in the back for something if y’like?” He suggested, arrowing a thumb to the ‘back’ he mentioned. “Did y’want anything in particular?”  

“Oh, I don’t wanna be a troubling customer!” She squeaked, concerned with becoming a nuisance she didn’t want to be. 

“Y’not a bother, love. M’promise. I’ll go look f’you. What color did y’have in mind?” He asked her, tone calm and soothing to reiterate his sentiment. She was not a bother. The only thing about her that bothered him was the fact that he did not know her name, and even that was his own fault for not asking her. 

His hands rest on his hips, tattooed cross momentarily hidden by the bunch of his sweater vest  as he waits for her to respond, his eyes locked on her mouth, her own tongue subtly licks her lips, adding a sparkly sheen to it that only drove him crazy. Ever the jilted fool, his mind jumps to what it would feel like to kiss her, or what it would feel like if she kissed him in other places. What fruits she tasted like, and what kind of kisser she was. A timid one? With a patient mouth waiting to be broken open with the force of his own? Frugal? Opening her mouth and giving him everything she had to offer. 

“Something pink, please. If you have it.” That smile again. One that told a million apologies it didn’t owe, with her eyes pinching at the corners with whatever nonsense culpability she felt. Her voice was sweet, Harry thought, like wind chimes on a summer morning. 

Feeling guilty for allowing such dirty thoughts to gallop through his mind when she was so… so pure. Like an angel. Even her way of presenting herself was shy and sweet, yet he was thinking about kissing her. Was that perverted? She was a customer he had seen twice, and his mind was already running wild with luscious assumptions; a sunday topped with a red cherry of sensuality. How awfully dirty of him. 

But! But those were not the only thoughts he had. He wanted to ask her what happened to cause her to drop her vase, and where she had bought it. If it was vintage, considering it was a Coca-cola bottle, and if she had any accidents while cleaning up the mess of broken glass. He wanted to hear her thoughts. No, better yet, he just wanted to hear her talk. He wanted to get to know her. To know if she was as nice as she looked. 

“‘Course,” he mumbled, his eyes shamefully downcast to the floor. “Be righ’ back.”

Harry stalked off to ‘the back of the store’. Truth was, there was no back of the store containing vases. There was only a small closet with boxes of items he might need around the store, like flower food, rubber bands, and decorative paper for the bouquets. A crate of bottled water for when he got too lazy to climb up the back stairs and into his home. 

His home. 

Plucking the keys from his pocket, a ring that held a ceramic swan his closest friend Mitch had gifted him with a humble admission of ‘saw this at a thrift store and thought about you, H, I had to buy it’, and five keys: one to the front door of his shop, one to the cash box in the register, one to the mailbox, another to the front door of his apartment, and one to his car. The one to his front door was painted at the head with pastel pink nail polish, so it was easy for him to pick out when he was dead tired after a long day of being on his feet (spunky shoes that he liked to wear sometimes didn’t help ease the ache on his back, and neither did his posture). 

The back door that led to the stairs had locks on both the inside and the outside. A deadbolt and chain on matching sides of the door to ensure comfortable sleep at night, and peaceful work time during the day. Not having to worry about curious children opening doors or nosy customers relieved him. It was a little amatuer, but the door made a loud noise when opened because it wasn’t quite level, and he had a tiny key so he could lock it from the outside, too. 

A loud shucking noise resonated through the store as he pulled the door open, and then again when he closed it behind him. The delicacy of his dainty yet large hands were nearly comical around the tiny golden pin stud that hung from the chain, almost slipping from his hands with nerves as he slid it in place. Harry didn’t think that she was nosy or anything like that, bit if he was going up to give her a vase of his own personal collection, he didn’t want her to find out and feel even more intrusive that she already did. 

He was a huge giver, and upon hearing her say that she broke her flower pot, his mind was already thinking about the perfect one to replace it. It just so happened to be sitting on his shelf with a bundle of dying lavender. Climbing up the stairs (the ache in his thighs was a mere twinge compared to what it was when he first moved here), Harry huffed and thought to himself all the ways he could ask for her name and number. 

Listen, I really like y’and would like to have y’number?”

Do y’wanna have my number so we can go out sometime if y’feel like it?”

“Is it alright if I get y’number so we can go out sometime?”

“Hey, love. What’s y’name?”

Nothing’s making sense to him. The pick up lines he had stored in his head for the rare times he would flirt with a girl were slipping from him. None of them seemed worded right to use with her. Too abrupt or too brisk. Not sweet enough. He wanted to treat her gently and to be worthwhile of her time. Plus, it also had to be smooth enough that it made her forget she was paying him for flowers or it would be awkward. He was a twenty-six man for crying out loud, not a twenty-one year old smile at the bar looking for a good time. This wasn’t a ‘good time’. This was… a courting. An inquiry to a relationship. A rose rose in a candlelit room. 

Harry opened his front door and moved in a quick jog to a table besides his hi-fi that held a translucent pale pink glass, fat at the base before twirling and widening a few inches at the lip. An image of a nude mermaid puffing out at the front like an engraving. Cuddling it into his breast, he grabbed the lavender, speed walked back to his kitchen where his toe banged against the metal of the trashcan as he pressed on the lever to open it. He hissed fuck under his breath and shucked the dead lavender into the bag before turning back to his door, closing it behind him, but not locking it because he didn’t want to keep her waiting. His feet moved quickly down the stairs, the one hand not holding onto the vase cupping a hand over the side of his hips that held his keys so they didn’t make much noise. 

The button on the chain slipped from his fingers a few times from their repeated clamminess, and when he was ready to finally twist the knob, he paused to take a breath and collect himself. Harry ran a hand through his hair, fixed his collar, and dusted off his pants legs. He wanted to look perfect for her. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he murmured to himself. He had a good feeling about this. About her. And if he messed this up because he looked bad or said something weird he would kick himself into a muddy ditch. 

Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and calmly walked back, “I’ve got the last one,” he said, tapping the tip of the vase with his pointer finger. It was a lie, right through his teeth, but he was happy to tell it in return for the way she was looking at him in that moment. His eyes rounded out as he approached her, like the curves of hearts that made up the heart-eye emoji, or the puppy-dog face. Just another physical display of his growing affinity towards her. 

“Oh my god!” She said,  “It's so pretty!” The trapped crystals in her irises twinkled with bewilderment at the treasure Harry’s presented her with.  She’s got a smile on her face, and he can’t help but think, ‘wow, she looks like a freshly bloomed white lily’. 

There’s a vintage print hanging in his corridor, a ‘flower language chart’ with different types of flowers and a sentence beneath them describing the messages they send. For example, red carnations= my heart aches for you. The description beneath white lilies reads ‘my love is pure’. 

She asked him if it wasn’t too pricey, and he made up some fake sale he had going on about a hybrid BOGO in which if she bought an arrangement she would get a vase included in her purchase (he added “I’ve got a shipment of new ones coming in an I need the space cleared out before they get here” just to make sure his fib is believable.) And he explains this so shyly. Harry can’t keep his eyes locked on hers because she’s staring at him with an intensity that lets him know she's really listening, and it makes him squirm.  The tips of his fingers tap against the vase, and he’s tripping over his tongue, which is ridiculous because he already talks so slow. 

“I guess I was right in waiting then,” she said casually, waiting for Harry to finish ringing her up. 

His finger froze over the touch screen of the sleek, modern device (he wanted nothing but the best for his store) and listened to the exciting roar of blood through his eardrums at her words. I guess I was right in waiting then? What did that mean? That she was planning on coming back to see him and didn’t? Of course, it could also mean that she was going to buy something else somewhere else, but he couldn’t stop the vine of ripe hope that swelled around his chest. And she looked so apprehensive while saying it. As if she was walking on glass and was looking for cracks as she stepped. As if she was waiting on him to catch on to something.

Harry cleared his throat and looked at her through the corner of his eye, trying to be as discreet as possible as his fingers continued their deliberate work on the screen, “What d’you mean, love?”

“I was going to stop by sooner, but I just got in my head about it,” the girl shrugged, and adjusted the ends of her cardigan so they wrapped around her torso. She had a different bag this time, one of those reusable market bags that was made up of holes, and it was filled with two books and a can of green tea from the vegan store down the street. Harry thinks he can make out one of the titles on one of the spines, which looks suspiciously similar to something that he has on his own shelf. 

“Why would y’get in y’own head about coming to m’flower shop, hmm? It’s hardly that intimidating,” he chuckles to play off the dashes of pink and red that are painting themselves across the bridge of his twitching nose, “I don’t bite, either.” 

And he hopes that his wistfulness isn’t meddling with his vision because he swears that he can see a matching reaction on her own doll face. “I know! I know, it’s just that I can’t help it sometimes. Talking to other people makes me nervous.” 

Harry could coo at her right now. He doesn’t, though. He nods and smiles at her before reading her total out to her, “That I get, too. But y’doing just fine with me, love.” 

Waiting patiently as she digs through her bag for cash, he tries to not stare. However, it’s impossible. His eyes had a mind of their own dragging against the forces of his will to feast on her image again. Her hands and the tip of her nose. The base of her neck and gentle swell of her clavicles. The swoops of hair that hung in a curtain from her shoulder as her head tilted in search, and the how her teeth bit down into her lip in concentration. Harry counted the amount of times her eyelashes met her waterline in those few seconds of comfortable silence. Three. 

“I thought I had cash on me today,” something in her bag clicks, and she pulls out the rectangular card Harry’s become familiar with, holding it out to him between two deft fingers, painted with red hearts on a white base. “I guess I used my last twenty at the organic food store down the street,” she said. 

“It is pretty easy to get lost in there, isn’t it?” He took her card from her, and tried not to make it obvious that he was eager to read her name off of it as he inserted it into the machine. The embossed letters into the plastic read y/n y/l/n, and when he turns back to look at her, he can’t help the smile that spreads across his boyish features.

Y/n. 

Y/n, y/n, y/n.

This is what it must feel to be let in on a secret that’s worth millions of dollars. It must, because Harry’s heart is soaring with a closure he didn’t know he needed. Y/n, y/n. Her name tickled him. Stroked him. Lathered him with the honey smoothness of the beeswax shampoo he bought at that fateful organic store. It was a fitting name. Sometimes, one could tell a person ‘you know, I actually thought you were a Amy or a Jessica’, because their looks and style just didn’t match the strength or modesty of their name. But not y/n. It fit her like a glove. There was no other way to make sense of the way Harry’s brain was thinking. The name was her. 

“What?” Her lips quirk up into a smile and her eyebrows dip in confusion. Why was he looking at her like that? Did she have something on her face? Here she was, opening up to a cute stranger and she had something on her face? This, she thought to herself, is humiliating. Her finger dusted off non-existent crumbs from the corners of her mouth, “do I have something on my face?”

“No! No, no.” Harry’s careful beam simmered down from it’s previous brightness, and his hand nervously filed through the swoop of chocolate curls sitting on his head like a cinnamon roll. “I just think y’name is pretty thas’ all.” 

He murmured the last part so that it was practically incoherent, and lowered his gaze as a searing heat stretching like saran wrap around his head and the divot on the nape of his neck.  Oh, God. He was fucking blushing. Great Harry. A normally favorite among the ladies had been reduced to murmurs and thick, uncoordinated movements. 

Like dropping her card when she piped up again. 

Voice as small and quaint as his had been, "you think my name is pretty?” Her fingers are wrapped around the frail straps of her bag, tight enough that her knuckles were white and Harry was scared that she’d bury her fingernails into her palm. 

“I think y’very pretty.” He whispered back. He can’t even bear to look at her in fear that he’s totally fucked himself over once and for all. His logic was this: what girl wants to be told by the guy they’re buying flowers that they’re pretty after he reads her name from her debit card? Especially one who (if outside female sources are to be believed) dresses “the way my mother did when she was a girl in the seventies”? Jesus, fuck. He must’ve looked ridiculous. 

Harry opened his mouth to backtrack and apologize for being so unorthodox in his workspace, a breath sitting on his tongue with words ready to spew out, but the bell began to chime and it yanks his head from the register to the front and instead he said, “welcome! I’ll be with you in a moment.” 

Flustered and full of regret, the flower connoisseur returned his wired gaze back to y/n, who… was smiling at him? The kind of smile that said ‘oh my god, I can’t believe you just said that. Now please say it again’? Was he… dreaming? Did he have to pinch himself in order to verify that he wasn-

“Thank you... what’s your name?” Y/n looked at the card from his hands and sunk her hand- carefully, as to not get her fingers stuck in any of the tiny holes- and there was another clicking noise before she took her hand back out. That angel-like smear of girlish happiness was still on her, decadently radiating positivity and secret affection. Goodness leaked from the seams of her bones; through the cracks of her breastplate, radiating from her chest to Harry’s. He could feel it now. He could feel that his previous assumptions about her nature were true. She was altruistic and tender, like the inside of a bird’s wing. 

“Harry. M’name’s Harry.” This time, he didn’t hide his happiness. Even his eyes shone with a heightened, clear and sparkly shade of liquid evergreen. The joy that bounced inside of him like ricocheting metal balls in a pin game machine. His slender hand, fawn-skinned and graceful like the legs of a deer, stretched out between them. His mother had taught him that along with the first introduction of his name, a handshake must be present, always. Dipping his head slightly, and his words spongy with love-ditz, Harry rumbled, “Nice to meet you, y/n.”  

She placed her hand in his, and was practically swallowed by only his palm. He curled his fingers around her, thumb and middle finger overlapping around the clammy center of hers. So she was nervous, just as he was. Y/n was trained on their embracing limbs, and he could feel a spot on his neck where the skin palpated from the rush of blood as she observed their entwined digits. Their hands moved up and down, up and down between them for longer than necessary until her chin twitched back up to meet his, and she blinked mawkishly, slowly, like the videos of rehabilitated barn owls Harry sees on his Instagram. 

Then, suddenly, as if she remembered she was not the only one present, y/n jolts upright and shakes her head dazedly. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Harry. I like your nail color,” she added. 

He’s cheesing. A shit-eating grin too big for his face and it carves dimples into the flesh of his cheeks. His name on her tongue had never sounded so appealing, like it was made for her and only her to say. Not even the turtle-doves that cooed outside his window in the mornings sounded as beautiful as she did saying his name. And she complimented her nails! She hadn’t scrutinized him like others had, instead, she displayed her admiration for them. No one- well, actually he can’t say that without offending Mitch- no female of his age had ever received him with such open-mindedness as hers. If he didn’t have any self-restraint, he would giggle. Instead, Harry pulled his hand back so that their perfect moment wasn’t sullied with bouts of bad timing, “thank y’love. I like yours, too. You’ll have t’come over sometime and paint mine, yeah?” 

Y/n laughed, and he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been too bold, “I’d love too!” With glee frozen on her, she turned to look over her shoulder at the customer who was browsing the flowers Harry had in buckets, “I don’t want to hold you back from a customer for so long. I’ll stop by again soon, Harry. Thank you so much for your help.” 

The moment her hands reached for the wrapped bundle of sunflowers and the mermaid vase, a metaphorical grey cloud of rain and thunder manifested in the space above his head, and blocked all of the sunshine from spanning across his toned, lithe body. Did she really have to go? He wanted to whine. Maybe even wrap himself around her ankles like a child that refused to leave the park. They were only just getting to a mutual spot of comfort! Forget the other customer, he wanted to shout. Harry would kick them out and flip the sign to ‘closed’ if it meant only a few more minutes in the presence of her candy-coated charisma. 

But he knows that’s unrealistic, and settles with, “it was my pleasure, y/n,” a flirty wink (at least he hopes it is), “I’ll be waiting f’your next visit.” His taffy lips wrapping effortlessly around his smooth words, fueled by her welcoming receptiveness to his advances. It would be easy to be himself in the future, a little smoother and eloquent in his language and feeling. He was usually clear with what he wanted from anyone, and made it a pleasurable experience in all aspects for both parties involved (once it was three). Harry wanted to sweep her off her feet, and he wanted it to be an enjoyable experience for the both of them. Revel in that feeling of blooming emotions in a new relationship. A healthy one, in which he wasn’t receiving back-handed compliments all the time. 

He wasn’t superficial enough to push anyone off the table based on looks alone, but it did help that y/n had the disposition of an angel. An ethereal voice, supple lips that looked so silky and soft they had to feel that way, too, and hands that felt so tender in his. Perfect for holding on a late night stroll, or over the center console of his car when -if they go out on dates. 

What really hooked, reeled, and sinked him, though, was the fact that she was so nice to him. From the start, she’d been nothing but polite and sweet with him. Don’t even get him started on the way he swooned at the tone of her voice when he said that her name was pretty! So quiet and velvety, careful and calculated like she wanted him to know that it was okay. That she wasn’t thrown off by his comment. He nearly toppled over, clutching his heart with his legs jutting straight up into the air like a frightened goat. 

It wasn’t until the bells stopped ringing the sad notice of her exit that Harry realized he passed up the perfect opportunity to ask for her number, and as he kicked himself over it, he walked with the perfect customer service face he could muster to help the other person in his store. 

***

Harry was having a shitty morning. 

Not the kind of morning where every aspect of his routine is a terrible mishap, but like the water being too cold and the stove not working or the bottle of oat milk in the fridge being empty so he couldn’t make coffee. No, everything was fine and rolling smoothly, as it should. 

His water was the perfect temperature and ran down the toned bumps and divots of his muscles like the relaxing thrums of a lover’s caress in the midst of prowling heat. As soon as it hit his back, he released a sigh of contentment, his shoulders hunching and head rolling back and his hands roamed his shoulders and the back of his neck, rubbing away any aches that existed. The branch of eucalyptus that hung from the golden pipe of his showerhead fused a thick minty scent into the steam that fogged the glass wall, and the calming aroma helped the tendons loosen like the deflating limpness of untied shoelaces. He spent a few minutes just standing there, inhaling and exhaling deeply and feeling his lungs open and stretch beneath his rib cage. 

It almost made him wish that he’d opted to use his tub for a hot bath instead. 

He was able to cook an egg just fine on his stove, with dashes of Everything Bagel Seasoning with a side of avocado and a slice of toasted cranberry walnut bread, the same thing he had every morning. The carton of oat milk was brand new from his trip to the market the day before, and his coffee tasted the same as it always did. But… he was just... sad. An melancholy soreness that eroded against the insides of his body, consuming him slowly but surely and leaving him with a lost feeling of emptiness and unimportance. 

He thinks he might know why he’s feeling this way. 

While he’s stirring his scrambled eggs, he’s wondering how y/n likes hers. Over easy? Sunny-side up? Scrambled, like him? Did she even like eggs in the morning? What did she eat in the morning? He knows that some people ‘aren’t hungry’ in the mornings, though that’s only because they’ve gone hungry in the mornings before for an extended time period, and after so long of not feeding their growling stomachs, their brain discontinues the signals of hunger. Harry hopes that isn’t the case with y/n, and that she’s eating the proper three meals a day every day. 

And while he dipped a mini vegan chocolate croissant that he got at Whole Foods, he also wonders what she likes to dip chocolate croissants into, or if she even likes chocolate croissants. If she was a person who likes sweet treats, like strawberry tarts with powdered sugar over them or something lighter, like fruit cut into small squares in a bowl. When Harry was younger and would visit his nan on the weekends, she would pick fresh strawberries from her garden and cut them up for him when he’d woken from his nap. Sometimes, she would even sprinkle half a tablespoon of sugar over them. He wonders if she’d ever eaten strawberries like that. 

It’s been a week and a half, he still hasn’t seen her, and his heart is yearning. 

Harry knows he’s not in the correct headspace to assist other people with a cheery disposition about an hour before opening time, and decides it’s best if he writes a note on the door about how the shop wouldn’t open that day because he didn’t want to taint the reputation of his business by snapping at a customer for the only bundle of sunflowers he had, or dissolve into a puddle of love-sick tears in the middle of ringing someone up. Though really the notice just says ‘H’s Garden will not be opening today. Sorry for the inconvenience!’ followed by a frowning face and a lopsided, filled-in heart. 

Harry drags his feet back up the stairs, his lower lip jutting out in a discreet but depressing pout, and grabs Owen from his tank so that the chameleon could curl into the shoulder of Harry’s hoodie while he moped on the couch to sappy rom-coms that would only make him think about her more. At least there was someone there with him, even if his small green friend only used him for mangoes and papaya. They sit together for the entirety of Romeo + Juliet, and when it’s over, Harry’s sniffly and standing up to return Owen to his enclosure and to clean because the riotous emotions that whirl within him are too much to process while sitting down. 

Cleaning wouldn’t help him solve his problems, but it would help him cram all of his worries into a tight corner at the back of his mind- sort of like when dirty laundry began to overflow in the hamper and it requires extra force to shove it all in, only to come all back out like a memory sponge. His tormented thoughts on y/n could be compared to a dramatic inner monologue, very similar to how Romeo feels about his Juliet. But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and y/n is the sun. Harry has the play on his book shelf (the one with the side-to-side modern English translation because he was never quite gifted in the English department) and as he reaches for a bandana to tie his hair back, he finds himself resonating with a particular line: parting is such a sweet sorrow.

There was no need to change any of his clothing, since he was already dressed in one of his more impromptu outfits; grey sweats and a white t-shirt that read ‘women are smarter’ in black across his chest. He tied the red bandana into a knot at the back of his head, and lifted it over his chin so that it settled on his forehead, sweeping his hair back with a final push back. It doesn’t get in his way when he crouches to clean his various tables, spraying cleaning products with his shirt pulled over his nose, another organic product that’s supposed to be less harmful and smells like cinnamon and sandalwood. His shoulder blades begin to ache because he’s being a little more aggressive than he has to be, but the green tiles were sparkling so he was content. 

He washes the dishes, mops the kitchen floor, vacuums the carpets, cleans Owen’s habitat, and tidies the mail that piled up on the table when he finally calls it quits. Scouring his brain for something to do, to keep him busy- his brain busy, Harry settles on the floor with his back to the edge of his bed. He’s shirtless now, and is in need of another shower but he’d rather not because he knows he might end up crying over the possibility that he’s scared y/n off. There’s a book in his hands and a Frank Ocean record playing softly in the background that mentions something about ‘I've been thinkin' 'bout you, do you think about me still?’ and it’s not helping his case at all.    

It’s no use. 

There’s a plague of darkness buzzing like cicadas in his ears. He fears rejection and criticism. That maybe, she was only pretending in order to make the situation more pleasant so it ended sooner. Most of all, he feared that it would always be this way. That he would never find someone who embraces who he is as a person. Always met with mean side-eye glances or second looks of displeasure and confusion. It isn’t always that way, though, because then that would mean he gets absolutely no action, and that isn’t true. 

Harry is very… well-educated in matters that concerned sexual intercourse, but it was always a one-night stand ordeal. It was never ‘I really like you we should go out sometime’. In fact, he noticed that only time his approaches were well received were those in which he was dressed in a calmer manner. Simple, solid colors with sneakers or a t-shirt. Girls would flirt back, make good conversation, allow him to buy them a few drinks, and when he’d take them to his apartment they’d ask why he lived on top of a flower-shop, and if it was his sister or female-friend’s palace that he was crashing. Sex would ensue, but his heart wouldn’t be as present and engaged as he wanted it to be. 

Wrong. It was always so fucking wrong, and God, if he didn’t get out of this apartment he’s going to breakdown and cry and there’s no one to call to come over because Mitch is on a trip with his girlfriend, Sarah, and his other friend Jeff is on his honeymoon in Sweden. They were the only two on his mental speed dial list during the rare occasions he had a crisis, as they were the two that Harry had ever really opened up to. Mitch was a bit closer to his heart. They’ve known each other since their school days and practically grew up together (at one point they had small crushes on each other, which were confessed years down the line). Jeff was the owner of Winsome where… where y/n had mentioned spending her last twenty dollar bill. He didn’t have an issue opening up to them. He liked opening up to them, but he didn’t understand why they were the only two that ever truly opened their arms to him. 

A walk, he decided, would help him… air out his brain. Calm down. Breathe a little deeper, a little easier. 

He threw his white shirt back on, and a forest green sweatshirt that donned the emblem of the school he went to earn his business degree that fit him wide around the shoulders and felt like a marshmallow. Putting on a pair of beat up shoes, he shoved his keys into his pocket, hobbling and nearly losing his balance because he was moving way too fast. The door closed behind him with a slam, and even though he was still wearing the bandana around his head, wispy stray curls framing his face in a wild mane, his distress palpable through his appearance, but he doesn’t care. He just needs to get out and feel the cool air against his skin. 

There’s a backdoor behind the stairs that will take him to a small alleyway that leads to a back parking lot where other shop owners that live at the top of their stores on the same side of his street parked their cars. He unlocks it from the inside, and throws his shoulder into it, desperate to her out. When it shuts behind him, he doesn’t turn back because it’s the kind to lock from the outside when closed. His fingers curl into the ends of his sleeve so that the tips of his fingers (nails now changed to a sparkling silver color) are the only parts of his hands visible. 

Rounding the corner, he whistled the cheeriest tune he can muster. His lips are puckered and his cheekbones high with the extension of his mouth. He’s not very happy on the inside, though he remembers reading something somewhere that if you pretend to be something long enough, you’ll eventually become it. If he pretends to be happy, then he’ll actually be happy. 

Right?

Harry rounds the corner of the parking lot and turns on to the main street. It’s only two in the afternoon, so there's people crawling in and out of shops anywhere. He even sees a man and a woman peeking into the window of his store, and he would feel bad if he wasn’t in a shitty mood already. He’s so out of it, that he nearly yells ‘get your hands off my windows!’. He doesn’t though, because for a moment the woman becomes y/n and the man becomes him, wrapping a ringed hand around her waist and whispering in her downy ear ‘they’re closed, darling, let’s go somewhere else’ and she straightens dejectedly, pouting playfully and standing up and her tippy toes so that she could press a quick kiss to his lips. 

That image fades though, and the couple continues with their stroll, hand in hand, and his heart is wrenching, writhing and trying to yank itself free from it’s place in his chest because it hurts too much to stay. 

Cars whizz past, and he skirts in and out of people on the sidewalk, keeping his pace fast and focused. There’s no intended destination, he’s just moving with the intent to forget the pretty girl who haunts him. Her voice is all he can hear. Her smile is all she can picture. And the rest of her is all he can imagine, which is exactly what hurts the most. Imagination only goes so far, fulfils so much with uncertainty of what the truth was and what wasn’t. Harry could imagine her with her feet up on the lip of a bubble filled tub, a glass of wine in her hands, but then…what kind of wine did she like? Or did she even like wine? And did she even have a bathtub to stretch out in after a long day? 

He curses the crimes he may have committed in past lives to deserve this torture. This unbearable pain that felt like he was being dunked in a slow-acting acid. He can do nothing about it but keep walking with labored will power. He passed his shop, and a bakery and a small thrift store that sells used clothing for way too much money. At the propped open double-doors of Jeff’s Winsome, he decides to talk in and browse. There’s so many items that smell good and taste good, that it was fun to just walk in and look. 

“Back again so soon, H?” 

Spinning on his heel, Harry comes face to face with Niall, a brunette, fit, Irish bloke with a chummy smile and a killer sense of humor. The two have brokered a sort of friendship, considering the amount of time (and money) that Harry spends there. Niall has even started calling him ‘H’ in silent homage to his flower shop. 

“Y’know I can’t stay away,” Harry attempted to joke, his lips pulling up in a weak smile, “plus, I think I needed s’more of the peppermint essential oils f’my diffuser.” 

“‘Course ya do! You're worse than the bloody vegan mums that come in asking for gluten free baby powder!” Niall cups a hand over his mouth and loudly whispers to so that only Harry catches his verbiage. There was a woman in the back of the store, looking through soaps in the limited kid’s section, the same exact kind that Niall was speaking about. “Go on and look around then, I’ll be here when you’re finished.” He said. 

Harry only nodded his acknowledgement, and moved in between wooden walnut shelves. The entire store had a caramel brown color scheme, with only the inventory adding color to it. Macramé potted succulents and plants added to the natural, outdoorsy feel. Winsome had an interesting mix of smells from all of the aromatherapy based products it housed, but it only added to the appeal. 

Currently, he held a packet of four lip balms that advertised to be ‘100% all naturally derived ingredients with no artificial additives' infused with ‘healing power of crystals’, two of them ‘citrine cherry' flavored, and the remaining ‘garnet guava’. The brand name is something in Italian that he can’t read, packaging thick and a triangle made of arrows in the corner signaling it can be decomposed and/or recycled. He had the same exact ones at home, only they were all misplaced and- 

“Harry?”

A small, timid voice called his name from behind him, and he froze. He knew that voice. It was the same one he had repeated over and over in his head for the past week, waiting for her promised arrival with a hopeful heart. 

His eyes go wide with recognition, body still and stiff like a deer caught in headlights. His heart begins to rump at a furious speed, loud in his ears like a million stampeding hooves. The packaged products in his hands shake, and then she speaks again, “Harry, is that you?” 

Is this really happening right now? He’s embarrassed at having been caught with lipstick in his hands of all things, but he can’t put them back now. It was too late for that. He lets them hang at his side, and turns around. He hopes there isn’t perspiration dripping from his temples because all of a sudden he wants to yank his sweater off. 

Harry turned, slowly. He feared that if he moved too fast she would fly away like a startled dove. 

“Y/n…” He’s breathless, but he manages a pitiful quirk of the corner of his mouth, which he licks over right after, “hi.” 

She’s wearing a dress this time, frilly at the hem which fell just above her knees. It’s pink and covered and lined with blood red trim at her forearms. A string of pearls glistens at the base of her throat, and her lips are covered in a sheen of lipstick. Her hair, however, is a tousled mess, pieces of it framing her face and untucked from her bun as if she had been jostling around. Her cheeks are flushed with the cold, and clearly that thin beige cardigan hanging off her elbows is doing nothing to keep her warm.

Y/n smiles at him, with the same shakiness, “f-for a second I thought I was talking to the wrong p-person.” 

 It’s quiet again, and they’re both fidgeting. Y/n’s knees knock together as she shifts her weight from foot to food, and Harry idly rubs his finger under his nose and sniffs boogies that aren’t there. She’s staring at the ground and rocking back and forth on her heels and he can’t think of anything to say because he’s so paralyzed by the fact that she’s actually standing in front of him, and looks as gorgeous as ever. Had he somehow manifested her presence? 

While she’s hiking up the ends of her sweater so that they’re situated properly on her shoulders, he says the first thing that comes to his mind. “Aren’t y’cold?”

Her head snaps up and she peeks at him from under her lashes while flattening a hand at her thigh, “a little bit.” 

Harry watches her tuck her hair behind her ears and wonders if she came walking from her apartment again. In the cold. Dress as she was. Not that he had a problem with the way that she was dressed! He understood that sometimes when people grew bored they used the smallest occasions to dress up and have some fun and get out of their homes. He did it too, sometimes. To clear his head. Hell, isn’t that what he was doing now?

“D’you need a ride home?” He stumbled over his tongue to backtrack, not wanting her to think that he was a wierdo or anything like that, “t-that is if y’walking, I wouldn’t want you to get sick or anything like that. S’bit chilly out today.” 

Y/n smiles shyly at him, a blush on the highest points of her cheeks, and rubs the side of her face against the fabric of her cardigan, “thank you, for the offer, but uhm… it’s my friend’s baby-shower-gender-reveal thing today and I came with my other friend to some last minute gifts and some flowers. I was going to buy some stuff from here because she’s crazy about the whole ‘no preservatives’ and all but, and I was also going to stop by your shop to buy some flowers, but I saw you were closed so I…I’m rambling again.” She sputtered out the last bit, and pressed the tips of her three middle fingers to her lips to stop the words from coming out. 

Harry smirked at her antics, but it’s more of a repressed smile, and the rest of his humor gleamed in the sea-glass of his eyes like a message in a bottle. 

“S’alright, love.” He’s still holding the lip balms in his hand, and he can feel the moisture that’s collecting on his palms dampening the Kraft like material as he gestured to her dress with the tip of his chin. “Y’wearing pink. I take it y’want the baby to be a girl?”

“Actually, I know it’s a girl. She told me,” y/n pips, shrugging smugly. 

Harry laughs at her this time, “Did you finish with all your purchases here? I can make an exception and open up f’you.”

“Oh, Harry, I don’t wanna bother you! Because if this was your day off then-”

He lifts a hand to get her to stop, and uses the opportunity to twist around and put back what he had in his hands. The conversation is flowing so smoothly now, that all of his previous worries are gone. He can only focus on her and the way her eyelashes fluttered and the crystalline sparkly in her voice. 

“Y/n, it’s fine. D’ya finish here? We can head over to the shop now if you’d like.” Harry points a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door. 

“Uh, no. I just got here so I still have to go grab some things,” she said, pushing her hair past her ears again. He thinks that she can probably tell the disheveled state her hair was in, because she begins to pop off a pin in her hair to readjust it. He doesn’t mind it, though. He thinks she looks cute. Angel-like. 

He nods, rolling his hands into fists within his sleeves so that the cuffs hang over his knuckles, and tries not to trip over his legs as he backs away. “A’right. I’ll wait f’you in the front, then. Take y’time, love.” 

“‘Kay,” she gleams at him, biting down on her bottom lip, and Harry turns away fully before he starts whining about how cute she is or before there’s a dent in the heather grey fabric of his sweatpants.  

At the front, Niall has his chin at the palm of his hand, and as he gets closer, Harry lifts his head to see that the brunette is wiggling his eyebrows mischievously. There's a shit-eating grin on his face that clearly points to a mountain of teasing in the near distance. 

“A little love-struck, mate?” He said, as soon as Harry was within hearing distance. At least he had the decency to keep his voice down, he thought. 

Harry flips him off, “oh, bug off.” 

Silver glitter sparkling on his nails, and his gaze strays to the floor, bashful of how clear his affection was. He turns to rest his bum against the counter and pulls out his phone to appear busy as he waits for y/n, mindlessly opening Instagram to have something to do (and to stop him from glancing at her ever two seconds).    

“Yup. I knew it. Have y’asked her out yet?” Niall doesn’t stop to let Harry refute his question, “y’know she comes in sometimes, after stopping by your place? And she just will not stop talking about how nice yeh were to her.”

Harry’s head snaps up from his screen so fast, something at the back of his neck creaks with the force. Instagram is long forgotten.

“What? Are you fuckin’ with me right now?” He doesn’t mean for his words to come as aggressive as they do, but the thought of her speaking to someone else about him is… well, it’s thrilling. 

Alarmed, Niall’s hands come up near his face in the motion of surrender, “no, man! Dead serious. Think she likes yeh, honestly.”

He can only say: “Fuck me.”

Niall is about to respond when a quiet voice breaks their stares, “I’m all finished.” 

“Already, babe? I’ll rig ya up, then!” 

He’s quick to slide the few products over the scanning square, and y/n and Harry stand beside each other silently, their height difference laughable. Niall’s gaze flickered between them with no commentary, and his lips pucker with a wiggling smile when he finally announces her total. A bit too much for a small changing blanket, oatmeal-based baby lotion, pacifiers with a lavender infused towel attached to ‘aid with goodnight night’s sleep’, and a bamboo hairbrush with a tuft of soft bristles. 

Nonetheless, she provides the money with a pleasant smile. Harry can see a bit of tightness around her eyes that suggests discomfort, but he doesn’t say anything. Niall hands her a paper bag with her purchase, “there yeh go! Have a good day now, y/n! And be good, to Harry!” 

Harry’s eyes widen at Niall’s last comment, and it takes every bit of self-restraint in him to not reach the other counter and whack him in the back of the head. Instead, he shakes and ducks his head in near shame.

Y/n, however, quips back with “I’ll be nice only if you’re nice,” and bumps her shoulder against his before walking towards the door, looking over her shoulder at Harry who’s smiling wide now, and trailing after her with no regard to Niall at all. 

He shouts something after them about being rude lovebirds, but Harry doesn’t care. He’s floating after this heaven-sent like cartoon characters being led to a freshly baked pie with their nose on the scent. His rump high in the air like the Lorax disappearing into the light in the clouds, utterly ignorant to everything else. 

When they’ve both stepped outside, they speak at the same time, 

“Let me just-”

“Do y’wanna put-” 

Harry and y/n giggle at each other, 

“You go first.” 

“Y’speak first.” 

And then they laugh again. Harry pretends to zip his lips and throws away the key, and she says radiantly, “I’ll drop this off in my friend’s car really fast and we can walk to your flower shop.” 

Watching her approach a car parked two spots away, a girl with blue, pink, and brown hair leans over to the passenger side, seat belt straining against her throat and when she sees Harry, she waves and it makes y/n push her back to her spot behind the driver’s  side. Whoever this girl is, she and Niall have to meet, seeing as they can’t mind their own business. He chuckled and waved back, that girl laughing along with him and it made y/n cover her face with her cardigan covered hands. 

“I’m sorry about Charlotte,” she said when she got back, “she doesn’t know how to mind her own.”

“A bit like Niall, it seems.” Harry said. He waits for her to catch up before beginning to walk down the street. Side to side, shoulder to shoulder. They’re so close, Harry can feel the warmth of her body heat through the fleece of his sweatshirt. It’s cold, and she’s still this warm? 

“Maybe,” her eyebrows raise, and her head tilts towards him, “they should meet.” 

“Tha’s exactly what I was thinkin’!” His voice rises with his excited agreement, and the tip of his nose wiggles as he scrunches his nose. 

As they get closer, to H’s Garden, Harry reaches into his pocket for his keys, fingering through them so that they wouldn’t have to stand in the cold for so long. He didn’t want her to get sick. 

“I’m sorry, Harry. I feel really bad about this,” she whispered beside him, looking up at him with doe eyes as she worried her lip between her teeth, the sheen of gloss adding an extra allure to her image at that moment. “It’s your day off, and I’m bugging you.” 

They stood in front of the door now, underneath the green umbrella cover that extended from the top of the door and down the side of the window. Harry waited for her to step into the little alcove created by the indent of the door before stepping in after her and jiggling the key into the lock. He resisted the urge to pull his lips down into a cooing frown at the look on her face. She really was worried about disturbing him. If only she knew that he spent the entire day moping (and nearly crying) over her. 

He sucked on his teeth, “oh, love, please worryin’ about it. Don’t wanna see that frown on y’pretty face anymore okay?” His confidence was slowly coming back, “s’not my day off, I just didn’t feel like speaking to customers today.” 

Shrugging, he opened the door, and took a step back to allow her to step through first. Y/n ducked her head as she passed him with a murmured ‘oh, okay’, and he followed right after her, wanting to get away from the cold too because he knew that his nose was probably pink at that moment, but what he didn’t anticipate was for y/n to stop right after breaching the threshold, and bend over at the waist to pick something up from the floor, causing Harry to bump into her at such an awkwardly sexual angle with all of his momentum. 

Considering he was half twisted away from her and in the middle of pulling out the key from it’s slot, the amount of force in Harry’s push from behind was enough to cause her to nearly fall forward, a surprised whimper slipping from her lips. Harry, determined not to see her fall, lets go of the key and reaches out just in time to grasp her hips on either side, pulling her back towards him mid-fall so that she doesn't collapse on her face. 

However, in the midst of all of this Harry forgets himself and uses a bit too much force. Not to mention, the implications of their position makes him hyper aware of every single place their bodies touched, her small frame against his lithe, tattooed body. 

This moment only lasts for a few seconds, but he can feel everything. 

He can feel the easy give of the skin of her hips underneath each finger that touched her, the softness of the flesh on her thighs against his sturdy knees. The fabric of his sweatpants is suddenly non-existent, and it’s almost as if he felt every taught tendon of her legs, frozen with efforts of helping catch or brace herself. The heat of her groin is flush against his, and it makes him want to scream with a sudden sensitivity. Her ass is practically seated on him, full and malleable against the points of his laurel covered hip bones. Harry’s semi-hunched, as her weight also pushed him back, and the position is doing nothing to help his frenzied mind settle. He feels like shit because he’s being a horny, pubescent kid instead of asking her if she’s okay, but then y/n moves back into him to straighten fully and their centers grind. Her dress is semi-bunched at the halfway point of her bum, and he can feel heat emanating from her, radiating back on his bloating cock. He has to stifle a moan when she pushes herself up with the tips of her fingers. 

Just as quickly as it started, it’s over. Y/n is dusting her bum off so that her dress falls and covers her modesty, and she’s beet red in the face, not looking at him. Which was fine by him, he was too ashamed to look into her eyes. 

He clears his throat (something he’s doing a lot around her) and asks if she’s okay. 

“Yes. Yes, I’m okay. This was on the floor,” she squeaked, holding up a neon yellow notice sheet in her hand. That damned thing was what caused all of this?

It’s a notice from the delivery men that said, ‘sorry! We missed you!’ with a time and date messily scrawled on the dotted lines. Harry had forgotten that he was getting a shipment of several plants that morning. 

Cursing, he takes it from her, “t-thank you. Now how ‘bout those flowers?”

It’s awkward, obviously, but y/n is severely silent. Harry’s still stuffy in his pants, but he ignores it and doesn’t add any fuel to the fire because there’s more pressing matters at hand than a boner. Y/n is the most quiet she’s ever been around him, considering all of her word vomits and ramblings, and he’s suffering. Definitely beating himself up in his head for having ruined the moment. He held onto her for a second too long, frozen. She must feel so embarrassed, and he was self-endulging like a fucking asshole. 

Harry asks her questions on what flowers she’d like, and she answers by pointing or bringing a stem to him, laying it on the counter without a word. A mixture of dahlias and baby’s breath with a handful of feverfew to make the pink in the dahlia’s stand out. He lays them out on his work table, cutting the ends at an angle where they need to be cutted and laying them out on a sheet of clear, dusty rose paper. Three packets of flower food are strewn at the corner, and y/n busies herself by fidgeting with them. He grows concerned when he makes a comment on the kinds of ribbons he had stored and she doesn’t say anything. Not even a nod or a hum. 

Eventually, he decides he’s had enough of her neglect, and pauses his work to devote her some attention.  

“Love, I’m sorry about what happened,” he said softly, trying to catch her eyes, “I know it probably made y’uncomfortable, and I didn’t do much to make the situation better, but I just didn’t wanna see y��fall.”

Y/n’s head is already dipped, so he can’t see her face, but when her shoulders begin to shake, he knows he’s utterly fucked. She starts to sniffle, and his eyes go wide. The paper crinkled as he set down the baby’s breath he’s holding in his hands. He hates seeing people cry, not because he didn’t know how to deal with it, but because he often ended up crying along with them. Also, he just didn’t want to see her cry. Harry wanted her to be happy, glowing, and smiling. Not dull with dollops of woeful distress in liquid form.

He rounds the corner and spares a look out to the street, wanting to make sure that there is no strange onlooker eavesdropping on their interaction. His hand reaches out to stroke her back or shoulder comfortingly, but he thinks better of it and drops his arm. She most likely would not like to be touched, considering what just happened between them. He drops his head, seeking face-to-face interaction, and speaks as gently as he can, “y/n, what’s wrong?” 

She avoids his search, and turns the other way while sniffling, “you probably think I’m weird now or something after that.” 

“No!” Harry exclaimed, jerking his head back as if he’d been struck, and her words practically had. He can’t believe that she would think that and even go as far as verbalizing her thoughts when he worshipped the ground she walked on and didn’t even know her that well, yet. “No, no. I don’t think that. Y’tripped, that’s all. Happens to everyone. If anythin’ I’m the weirdo for grabbin’ y’the way I did, and I’m really sorry about it.”

Y/n dig the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, “that was so embarrassing, I should’ve told you I was gonna stop or something. I always embarrass myself in front of cute boys and I never know what to do. I just-” 

Harry interrupts before she can dig herself further another hole. He highlights a segment of her words, dropping everything else in hopes of changing the conversation and taking her discomfort away, and mostly because he was bursting with relief and happiness. She had said that she thought he was cute, just how he thought that she was adorable, and nice, and everything good. They were on the same level, their minds in sync. Did that mean…

His voice is airy and light because of what she had just admitted, “y’think I’m cute?”

She stills with awareness of what she’s just said, and a puppy-like noise seeps from the back of the throat before her hands sink further into her eyes, embarrassed. Harry tenderly wraps his fingers around her small wrists and pulls her hands away from her face, murmuring about ‘don’t rub y’eyes anymore, love, y’gonna hurt’ with nothing but kindness. A millisecond of distraction speeds through his mind at the softness on the inside of her wrists. 

There’s a trickle of blubbering in her part, her bitten lips bumping against each other as she attempts to backtrack, “I mean- I- I-”

Harry decides that it’s now or never. It was a bit inconvenient, perhaps, but with her revelation his confidence soared and he was more prepared now to ask than he ever had been. So, he goes for it, “can I have y’number?” 

A moment of semi-uncomfortable silence as the unknown tips the scale. Would she say yes? Would she say no? His head was spinning and he hoped his nose didn’t start bleeding or something because y/n nods slowly, smiling, and then, “okay.” 

He’s elated. He was the polar opposite of what he had been that morning. If only Owen could see him then. He doesn’t waste any time reaching into his back pocket and handing her his unlocked phone. They don’t share any words, only coy glances and flirty quirks of the lips as the tips of her fingers move on his screen. Harry can’t believe that he’s finally getting her number, after nearly a month of pinning. 

When she’s finished, she clicks it off and sets it next to him with an added pat to the back of his suspiciously clean white phone case while he’s tying the flowers together with a loose rubber band at the ends to attach the food packets. He’s fine with working in silence now that she's not crying anymore. He throws occasional glances in her direction, and catches her watching his hands while fiddling with her own. Her brows were furrowed and her mouth was twitching. 

“Will you text me?” She asked him. 

He’s careful not to bruise any of the petals as he sets them down again, pausing with his ministrations to pick up his phone. He wiggles his eyebrows at her and types a quick ‘Hi. It’s Harry :)’. He hits send, “until you’re sick of me.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” She shakes her head, and Harry’s reminded Rachel McAdams in The Notebook while she’s in complete denial of her feelings for Noah. The comparison makes his heart flutter, considering the romance of the onscreen couple. “How much do I owe you?” 

Harry waves her off, “it’s on the house.” She begins to argue, but Harry stops her before she starts rambling again, “y’better go or you’ll be late, love.” He holds out the arrangement to her, tufts of baby’s breath poking out from between the vibrant dahlias like fluffy clouds, the feverfew looking like miniature white daisies in the center. 

She looks at it, and back at him before huffing, “fine, but you’ll have to let me return the favor.”

“Of course,” he smirks, “with dinner, maybe?” 

They’re both gleaming at each other now, “okay.” Y/n takes a step back, her body half twisted as she walks away, but it remains like that for a moment as her eyes rake him up and down, a murmur following, “bye, Harry.” 

His veins charge with electricity, and his dark taffy lips part at her actions. Had she just checked him out? He doesn’t recover quick enough to return her goodbye because the previous swirl of arousal in his navel was bristling back to life at the implications of that look. Calm, slow, steady, and her eyes remained doe-like and innocent. 

She had to have known exactly what she was doing, whispering his name the way she had, looking over her shoulder and under her eyelashes the way she did. Deviously provoking his thoughts to begin a new with a reinspired fervor. The space in his underwear was growing tighter by the second, a blissful ache swelling. 

Before any other customer stepped in after her, Harry locked the door, and jogged up the stairs to prepare himself a nice, hot bath, simultaneously cursing and thanking the stupid fucking delivery men.  

********

Harry can’t stop thinking. 

Obviously, this is a huge issue for him. He was constantly thinking, and well, who wasn’t? The process of thoughts wisping around in his brain was one that he often put an unnecessary amount of energy into because he had no one to filter these thoughts onto, releasing them through a conversation to prevent the exhaustion of his brain and heart. A prime example of these mishaps being the depressing slump that occupied his demeanor that very morning. 

This?

This was different.

As soon as the apartment door was shut behind him, Harry pulled the suffocating sweatshirt off of his upper body, fingers hooking in at the collar and yanking it off with a swift tug. It landed somewhere on his kitchen floor, and he didn’t stop to take note of its final destination. Instead, his legs instinctively took him to his bathroom. 

Chest heaving, Harry walked to the small window leaking sunlight and rolled the stick between his fingers to close the blinds. His thumb dipped into the waistband of his boxes and dragged them down lopsidedly, the tiger tattoo roaring as it became exposed. When the blinds are fully closed, the white extension clangs against the shutters from his aggressive release. His body was slowly being consumed by a raging fire stoked by the illicit images his brain conjured of the innocent, unsuspecting y/n.

His inner turmoil consisted of guilt for using her image that way and justification from the conspiring rake of her eyes along the upper half of him that was visible behind the counter. He was so fixated by her, that her look alone felt like a tempting caress along his skin. And it all happened in a matter of fucking seconds. That’s how gone he was. That’s how fucking gone he was. Harry guesses that the easy excitement also had to do with the fact that he hadn’t gotten laid in a while (he only ever gets lucky when he goes out to the bars with Mitch or Jeff, and they’d been gone for a significant amount of time) and the strong affinity he had for the girl who bought flowers from him.  

Explanation or not, he had to do something about the problem in his pants. He was painfully hard, and when he shucked his pants off fully, his underwear dragged with the movement and pressed against the tip of his swollen prick. A darkened patch of moisture bloomed where the head was, and he saw stars at the short pressure. He wouldn’t take his pants off just then, though. He liked to stall his pleasure as much as he could so that when he finally did cum, his stomach muscles contracted and his toes remained curled for more than ten seconds. 

He twisted the golden knobs of his tub so that the water would come rushing out at a borderline scalding temperature, and opened the small cabinet above the toilet for a bottle of almond and coconut shea butter bubbles. He uncapped it and bent over the edge of the tip, the cool, porcelain lip touching his crotch and provoking a choked whimper to leave him. Jerking his hips back, he poured the soapy liquid into the spot where the water cascaded, and retracted his hand when the beginning of froth formed along the surface. 

The heady sweet smell permeated the air with the rising levels of bubbles, and Harry couldn’t wait any longer. Because he liked to torture himself, he closed his eyes and slowly dragged the hell of his hand over the outline of his cock, a groan ripping though the silence. It’s so painfully good, that he does it one more time, and he jolts forward. He removes his hand, slips his thumbs underneath the waistband of his boxers, and lugs the fabric down his hips at an excruciatingly slow pace. The head of his member smearing precum all along as he moves and when he gets caught in the ripples of his boxers the muscles in his thighs flex at the ripple of pleasure that zips into his nerves. 

“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath. His mind was a spinning vintage reel of slideshow images of y/n. Y/n on bruised knees, her mouth wide open and her own drool on her tits, the tip of his cock flat on her tongue as she pleads with weepy eyes for him to cum down her throat. When he finally springs free of his underwear, a hefty slap rings out as his dick collides against his abdomen, right on the space underneath his belly button. 

There’s a stripe of liquid on the trail left by the mushroom head of his prick, and Harry’s eyes roll to the back of his head, throat straining as he hovers over the bathtub. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s ever been this hard over a girl before, and it’s driving him crazy. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to last as long as he usually does. As he swings a leg over the edge of the tub, the hot water encasing his calf, he’s thinking about how soft she is. The inside of her wrist and the palm of her hand. If she’s that soft on an external part of her body that’s used everyday, he can only wither away at the idea of what the inside of her thighs feel like. 

Bubbles are swarming up now, swathing his thighs and buttocks as he sinks into the sloshing water. When he’s completely seated and satisfied with the belly-button level of water, he clumsily throws a hand in the direction of the knobs to shut them off, and reclined his head against the curved end of the tub with his eyes shut. 

He hikes up his knees so that they’re resting against the porcelain walls, and mindlessly ruts up into the water at the filthy images he’s picturing, white foam collecting in sparse clouds over the math on his chest. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. It’s as if his body is being transported back to the moment his hips clashed with y/n’s. At the recollection, his mouth drops and his eyebrows pinch in a silent moan. The feel of her flesh underneath his fingertips has him bobbing in the water, and the next ideation has him gripping the base of his cock. 

Vividly, he pictured her on all fours, keening back onto him as her pussy enveloped him in warmth, a warmth that is almost replicated by the temperature of the water, dripping and making a mess of him but what’s turning him on most of all is the easy flushness of their bodies. He had felt the way her bum gave way under his hold, and he imagined the bounce of her flesh as he thrusted into her. 

He moaned a broken call of her name with his eyes still shut, and heard the trickling of water as his fist rolled up his stiff prick, squeezing at the tip so that a few more droplets of precum dribbled out. With his thumb, he rubbed over the red mushroom head and lathered it in slow, leisurely circles, a throb pulsating with the beat of his heart as he returned to flicking his wrist over himself. 

The way that he looked at him and the sound of his name on her lips seared into his memory. Airy and willowy, similar to it resonated in his brain with the fantasy of sinking into her for the first time, stretching her and having her preen and arch with desperate whimpers of his name for more. Harry considered himself to be ‘well-endowed’ and his size was a factor of what sent him careening over the edge as girls mewled over his size after he’d bottomed out. He wanted y/n to mewl under him, both of them falling apart at the seams at the mutual pleasures because if Harry’s this broken over just the thought of her, then he’s sure he’s going to lose himself beyond recognition after he’s buried himself into her velvety walls, slick with her arousal and so fucking warm. 

Just as she had been earlier that day. There had been two layers between them- the fabric of Harry’s pants and her panties- yet, he was still able to feel an immense heat from the apex of her thighs against his cock. He needed more than this. He needed her, not just his hand driving him closer to the edge. 

His jaw clenched as he bit back on a particularly loud moan, for no reason other than he enjoyed self-sabotage from time to time, and the speed of his jerking hand increased. His other hand gripped the side of the tub, and his legs flexed as he began to thrust up into his own fist, a trail of bubbles sticking to the tanned muscles. The cut rectangles of muscles of his abdomen glistened like freshly chopped cubes of apricot with the droplets of water that remained clinging to him. His breath came in labored, strained puffs as the palm of his hand twisted, tightening at the tip and loosening at the base. 

For a moment, he paused and cupped his balls, massaging them as the fantasy in his head continued. His mouth wrapping around y/n’s nipples, her eyes glazed over from previous orgasm that he wanted so badly to give her. She’d whine something soft and quiet to match her personality, ‘please, Harry, please I want more. Need another Harry, please’, and he’d speed up the movement of his hips, driving deep into her and cooing into her ear about, ‘c’mon, darling. Give m’another then. Y’want it so bad, yeah? Give me a’fucking ‘nother’, and she’d release a peircing moan that explodes in his eardrums while arching into him. She’d squeeze impossible tight around him, gushing with her own cum. 

The water in Harry’s tub sloshes around his ankles, and the muscles of his abdomen clench so that he’s closing in on himself, sputtering on an outrageously loud cry that he can’t contain and his hand increases the speed of his filthy ministrations because he’s right on the edge. He’s about to fucking cum and the back of his eyelids burns with the possible variances of y/n’s face in ecstasy provided by him with his nose deep in her cunt, lapping at the sweet honey that spills with every whimper of, ‘please let me cum, Harry. I’ll do anything, I’ll be good, please let me cum. 

He tensed violently, his face contorted painfully as white ropes spurt from the tip of his cock over his fist and onto his chest, blending with the white almond foam. His feet are braced against the edge of the tub and his head falls back and his stomach tenses even further, the final leaks of his cum dribbling out. 

With the fuzziness that comes after an orgasm, his body melts back into the water that’s still warm, and his jerks with a pant as he allows his softening prick to sink into the water. The head on his hair is matted in a chocolate smear across his forehead, and his lips are a raging heart of cherry blossoms, parted with arduous gasps of recovery breath. His hands fall into the water at his sides, and with the lapping movement of the liquid against his sensitive member, he ruts into nothing again. 

Reclined with his eyes closed and heartbeat slowing, Harry murmurs a final, “fuck me,” at the extreme sensations that had raked through his body. 

Somewhere in the muffled distance, his phone dings with the notification of a text message, and with a tired noise of resentment, he sits up and reaches for his sweatpants that lay in a messy puddle besides the tub. His fingers drip darkening spots onto the grey material as he rummages for his phone, and then he finally clicks it on...

It’s her name, lighting up his screen, and the text reads: 

y/n <3 : so… dinner? 

Harry doesn’t think he’s ever crushed on a girl this hard before because even though he’s just completely physically spent himself, there’s something stirring in the depths of his tummy just at seeing the heart she put next to her name. 

He couldn’t be happier. 

*    *    *    *    *    *

and here he is!! what do you guys think?? pls pls pls leave your feedback in my askbox! i’d love to hear your thoughts! and if you really really loved it, don’t be afraid to press that reblog button <3333

[voidmadisonrecs]

chris evans recs

these are more for me then anyone else but here are my fav chris evans (and co.) fics, blurbs, headcanons, etc.

feel free to message or comment with suggestions that i should read and make sure to check out these writers other works because they are all amazing <3

Chris Evans

butterflies - @chanelfaerie

chris has got butterflies for you—do you feel the same?

pop the questions - @angelkurenai

you are costars and in a relationship with Chris and while on the set of ‘Gifted’, you are very clingy. when Chris sees you interact with your youngest costar, he realizes you would make a great mother

white - @agentofbarnes

chris can’t seem to function while seeing you in a white dress

ask me properly - @twittytelly

while spending time with his family, chris realizes that it's the perfect time to put his 'plan' into action

red carpet w/ chris - @avenging-fandoms

your chris’s costar with Chris and you’re both tipsy in a red carpet interview and giggling together, making no sense but just being all happy and sparking dating rumours

happy goddamn new year - @fluffymisha97

the morning after your new year with the evans’ which doesn’t go all that smooth

sweet creature - @buckyhoney

domestic shit

ass man headcanon - @agentofbarnes

chris evans sure does love ass

and then he came along - @teebarnes

you haven't had the best record when it comes to relationships, you thought you couldn't be loved. until one day as you sat on the beach shivering, everything changed when chris came along

granola bar and lots of love - @planetofawe

with the kids away, you and chris have more than enough time to practice some aftercare (smut)

claim - @cloudystevie

your husband puts a baby in you (smut)

beer gut - @violetlilysunshine

chris gets self conscious after gaining a little bit of weight and not working out as hard as he used to during his Marvel days (smut)

dumb - @agentofbarnes

chris evans makes you dumb and you are a little touchstarved (smut)

red, white, blue’s in the sky, summer’s in the air, baby heaven’s in your eyes - @cloudystevie

sunday’s are for football games and attention (smut)

the big 4-0 - @rocketrhap3000

chris being insecure for his 40th bday but reader makes sure he knows just how much she loves him (smut)

my girl - @punani

chris loves calling you his girl (smut)

the fluffer (masterlist) - @punani

it’s the 70′s and the erotic videos industry is experiencing another boom after the risen popularity in the previous decade. the studio’s are hot, gemini flanagan is a brand, and you’re a newly hired assistant at shaggin’ studios. chris takes a liking to you, altering your job description so that you get to work more closely with him. is this all just physical, or is there something more? (smut)

wedding shenanigans - @flowerbouquet

in which you and chris have a sneaky fuck in the bathroom during your best friends wedding (smut)

grocery run - @bucksfucks

innocently wearing chris’ shirt leads to you finding out just how much he can’t resist you (smut)

chain - @bucksfucks

chris tells you to bite down on his chain (smut)

home late (part 2) - @violetlilysunshine

smuttttttt

severance - @punani

the divorce process with chris is messy, seemingly never ending, and ultimately: heartbreaking. you had to be strong for your son, yourself, and eventually you wanted someone else to be strong for you, so, it seemed only natural that you would venture into the arms of another. however, sometimes the line between something officially ending or simply taking a break blurs when you’ve known someone for longer than you can remember (smut/baby fever/ex!reader)

so beautiful to me - @uprootbasic

despite being broken up and coparenting, chris still want to show you how much he loves you (smut/baby fever)

sundress season - @jurassicbarnes

in which all it takes is a pretty little dress to break his resolve (ex!reader/smut/baby fever)

mwah - @iguessweallcrazyithinktho

ur little bubba is obsessed with kissys and keeps leaning in to kiss you (baby fever)

long hair lover - @iguessweallcrazyithinktho

chris comes back from filming red sea diving resort and his baby daughter is crazy in love with his long hair (baby fever)

slobbery kisses - @iguessweallcrazyithinktho 

chris wakes up to sloppy kisses by his baby (baby fever)

baby rose - @fluffymisha97

reader and chris had a little baby girl. but not everything is going that well, you're both trying to navigate life as new parents (baby fever)

eve - @kiwisomething

you drop your son off with his father and he invites you in (baby fever/ex!chris)

parenting is hard blurb - @lokiscu

chris and the reader have just had a baby and the lack of sleep mixed with lack of physical affection and time they have with one another gets to both of them and they end up fighting because of the stress (baby fever)

isla - @uprootbasic

the reader is a famous singer and always sings to her little girl. one night, chris and the reader decides to have this little jamming session with their baby. chris plays the piano while the reader sings I wanna hold your hand by the Beatles (baby fever)

the neighbours lights - @lokiscu

it’s your first Christmas with a baby (baby fever)

paparazzi - @ozarkthedog

chris evans and reader are both famous and one day they are out with their daughter when paparazzi start to follow them (baby fever)

thunder - @worksby-d

your daughter is scared of the thunder (baby fever)

she’s the one - @worksby-d

chris x singlemom!reader masterlist (baby fever)

protective stepdad chris x single!reader - @worksby-d

masterlist (baby fever)

truth be told - @kthynes

chris finds out he has a 6 month old baby because his partner didn’t have the chance to tell him that she is pregnant because they broke up (angsty??/baby fever)

not her - @agentofbarnes

chris wants a family and you just aren’t ready yet, but that doesn’t mean he wants you any less (angsty?)

the love we have - @kthynes

the reader is chris's ex wife and she's about to be married again to a guy she doesn't really love. so in the night of her bachelorette party she's really drunk and she ended up going to his apartment and tell him that she still loves him and that she wants to hate him because he was the one who file for divorce but she can't, then she leaves. on the day of the ceremony their 10 year old kid tells Chris that he should go after her before is too late (angsty??)

Frank Adler

i ruined our sweet tune - @rodrikstark

the last person you’d expect to see in florida is the hot professor from your undergrad philosophy class 

buttons - @rodrikstark

buttoning franks shirt headcanon 

waffles - @amylillian22

the morning after their usual saturday date night, y/n runs into mary unexpectedly. frank wakes up to find them making waffles

remember - @sweater-daddiesdumbdork

frank wakes you up at the ungodly hour of 3:30 am and will not even tell you why

breeding kink - @stargazingfangirl18

as the hot single dad everyone wants to get with, frank turns a few heads at back to school night, and well, you may get a little possessive (smut) 

magic demeanor - @bloodiedskirtts

after moving back to Florida in the middle of a heat wave, things seem to be getting worse and worse. the only thing to make her days any better is her neighbour, Frank. with neither of them willing to admit that they can’t get enough of each other, a pesky shower malfunction may be the only way for them to tell each other how they feel (smut)  

Ransom Drysdale

2:27 am - @cloudystevie

it’s 2:27 in the morning when ransom shows up at your doorstep, and he wishes he could tell you why 

cold (third part of his return) - @kiwisomething

hugh is cold sleeping on the couch by himself 

new man - @worksby-d

ransom loves to pretend he’s not whipped for you, but here he is letting you do your skin care routine on him

morning dew - @agentofbarnes

it was only supposed to be one night, but ransom can’t seem to get you out of his head (smut) 

Andy Barber

the proposal - @fairyevans

andy takes the reader on a gorgeous vacation but everything goes wrong except the proposal 

consequences - @stargazingfangirl18

life after your breakup with ransom (smut)

yes, mrs barber - @jurassicbarnes

in which you’re down on your knees, about to suck his dick within an inch of his life because it was the only way to shut him up (smut) 

[the-silentium]

In Emergency Only

Masterlist

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Reader

Words: 2120 words

Warnings: TUA season 1 and 2 spoilers, violence, blood, sexual innuendos. 

Requested by: Anon!

Your last fic about Five was so good!!  Loved your unique twist you added and the interactions were so believable. Definitely one of my fav fics! If requests are open, could you do one of the same reader reacting to Five fighting and kicking ass, would they fight too or just hang out in the back and wait? Big fan and I love your work

A/N: Still 30 years old Five here! Same Reader and Five as in Doppelganger! Sorry for the title, I really had no idea. Oups.

The music playing in the background brought a smile to your face. You loved to learn more about different cultures and their different people dancing the Polka almost made you regret the reason of your little visit. You swore that this woman, the Handler, had Five in the middle of her palm, enraging your boyfriend to no end, but he sucked up his ego and accepted her deal to save his family. 

You followed Five through the enormous cabin. The architecture was truly beautiful, catching your eyes quite easily. You were occupied by admiring an intriguing animal carved into the wood that you didn’t see Five stopping in front of a vending machine and slammed into his side. He was quick to get a hold of your arms before you fell to the ground and hurt your behind, pulling you into his chest with a seductive smile on his kissable lips. 

“Distracted?” 

You rolled your eyes at him before pecking his lips. “I just like slamming into you.” Five’s groan made you chuckle before you turned your attention to the assortment of snacks displayed behind the glass. 

“See something you want?” Five buried his face into your neck, tickling you with his warm breath. Giggling, you pushed him away and pointed to a chocolate bar in the middle of the display. It has been a while since you last ate some, so you figured why not? You knew that you were sitting this one out, so eating would not be a problem. 

“Please?” You offered him your best puppy eyes, although you knew that it wasn't necessary. He asked you first after all. 

“Sure.” He pecked your lips one last time, turned to the machine while digging some money in his pocket and inserted the coins into the slot. He pressed the letter and number assigned to the candy and karma decided to hit you by stopping the spiral metal thing before the sweet could fall down. 

Frustrated, Five tried typing in the code again, without success. You knew that at this point in time, Five was getting pretty impatient. The last days haven’t been easy on him, especially when you almost got shot by one of the Swedes and every one of his siblings was scattered around town and not listening to him, causing Five to get irritated pretty easily. 

You grabbed his arm to calm him down when he started to push the machine and pulled him along with you to the cake further down the hallway. The only way to calm down Five was to allow him to successfully grant your wishes of eating something and the cake would do just fine. 

You quickly dipped your pointer finger into the icing, turned to him and when he opened his mouth to voice his anger you shut him up by putting your finger into his mouth. His pissed-off expression soon morphed into a cocky one when he noticed the red coloring your cheeks, proceeding to see if the color could reach your neck by sucking harder on your finger. Embarrassed by his antics, you retrieved your hand and hid your face in his chest. 

“This icing is heavenly.” He chuckled before reaching for something behind your back. “Look up.” You reluctantly did as told, dreading what you would find. Instead of being hit square in the face by a hand full of icing like you feared, a single maraschino cherry dangled between Five’s fingers, two inches away from your mouth. Instantly, your mouth started to water, the sweet ingredient had always been your favorite part of a dessert. “Open up.”

You would have blushed if it wasn’t for your excitement of eating the prized cherry. You didn’t hesitate to tilt your head and open your mouth to the incoming sweet, a delighted moan filled Five’s ears when you grabbed the fruit between your teeth and chewed.

“Now that’s a sound I like to hear.” The bliss of the cherry moment now over, your blush came back full force at his innuendo. You weren’t used to his flirty attitude, he was gone for 17 years and as young teenagers, your relationship wasn’t really oriented in that direction. You had to remind yourself that he was, in fact, 58 years old regardless of his physical appearance. 

A kiss fell on your cheek and Five let go of you to make his way to the fire axe on the opposite wall. 

“Do you think preventing the end of the world is enough of an emergency?” 

You smiled at his question and nodded once in approbation. “Definitely.” 

He winked at you before grabbing the axe with both hands and walked into the room. He passed in front of you and you took care of closing the door after yourself, this time your job was to keep watch and stop anyone from entering the room. Because it was the Commission’s board that was targeted, Five had thought it wise to take the matter into his own hands and keep you out of it. 

You weren’t against it, the memory of the barrel of an automatic rifle pressed at the back of your head was still pretty vivid and every time you thought about it you had goosebumps. In other circumstances, you were sure that you would have participated in some kind of way. Maybe with a knife or something, the fire axe was definitely out of your mental capacity. 

You had helped Five in some of his fights before. Not every fight, but some of them. You were impressed by the amount of bloody fighting your boyfriend could be engaged in and were truly amazed that every time he would get out almost without a scratch. 

Back at Griddy’s, you had to hide behind the counter where Five teleported you and wait until he had neutralized every armed guy in the room. You knew how to defend yourself, having followed some training with the Hargreeves when you were kids, but your skills were useless when guns were involved. This was the very first time you had seen the extent of Five’s ability. Never would you have thought that his space-jumping would be that effective. 

Then there was the fight with the Swedes in the Mexican consulate. The absence of guns gave you the opportunity to land some punch to the tough Swedes hitting the shit out of your boyfriend, the perfect distraction for him to throw the white-haired out the window. You hissed out of empathy for the guy before fist-bumping with Five and space-jump outside. 

Screams erupted from the room Five recently entered. Curiously, you made your way to the open doors to assess what you were sure was a gory scene. In the 2 seconds it took you to reach the doors, Five had already neutralized 4 of the board members and was quickly axing his way further into the room. You’ve never feared blood, your uncle had a butcher shop and you helped sometimes to put the meat into packages, nothing too dangerous, and while you helped you had seen the carcass of different animals being emptied from their organs so you were certain that you could handle whatever was happening in the next room. 

A blue spot flashed before your eyes and Five appeared at the same time a man hit a wall and fell down with a lamp. You rolled your eyes when Five took the time to take a sip from a glass, the next thing you knew a guy was hanging from the ceiling and three more board members were dead in a pool of blood. As much as you hated the view of dismembered bodies, you had to admit that Five was pretty efficient in his work. You managed to make eye contact with your boyfriend when he stopped for a second behind the last Commissioner, Five shooed you with one hand so you obeyed. If he thought that you couldn’t handle it, then you couldn’t. End of story. You had to admit that the sound of the axe hitting the bones was pretty disturbing, the sound occasionally made you shiver in disgust. 

You had your back pressed to the closed doors separating the bloody scene worthy of a horror movie and the welcoming Polka party, patiently waiting for your boyfriend to return victorious when a man with a fish tank as head stopped running when he saw you. If possible, you were as stunned as he was. You weren’t prepared to face a non-human person and he clearly wasn't prepared to see someone guarding the exit. 

However, he was faster than you to regain his senses and try to push past you. His sudden movements made you jump, his hands were almost on your arm when Five appeared in front of you and pushed the weird robot-man-fish away from you. 

“Surely we can come to some form of agreement that benefits both parties.” Your eyes widen at the voice, not expecting the fish to be able to talk. You tilted your head to the side so that you were able to see over Five’s shoulder and take a second look at the panicking talking goldfish. “Quid pro quo? What do you say?” Oh. His hope was cute. 

“Why not? Here’s your quid.” Five hit the human body’s leg with what you noted wasn’t the fire axe but something that looked like a cricket bat. “Here’s your pro.” He hit him again on the opposite leg. “Here’s your quo.” Five charged his hit as much as he could without hitting you with the bat, the fish’s pleas reaching your ears, then Five smashed the tank as hard as he could. The glass exploded, water got everywhere, the body fell to the ground in a thud and the goldfish dropped to the ground. 

As Five took a deep breath, you carefully stroked his back in a soothing manner before crouching to retrieve the gasping fish. You already had a bag ready for it, looking around you found a vase proudly showing off its beautiful purple flowers. You disposed of the flowers and poured the vase’s water into your plastic bag. Turning around you met your boyfriend with the fish’s tail trapped between his fingers, its head facing the ground. Hurriedly, you made your way toward them as you felt bad for the little thing convulsing out of the water.

“Poor little fishy! Put it quickly in the water!” You couldn’t help yourself and enveloped Five’s hand with the bag so the fish could be in his appropriate environment. 

“It’s far from being a ‘poor little fishy’ you know? It planned for the apocalypse to happen and ordered hundreds of people’s death.” He said letting go of the fish’s tail. 

You closed the bag so it wouldn’t escape and smiled sheepishly. “I guess I still can’t accept that a fish can talk. Or be at the head of an organization of killers.” You brought the bag at eye level to analyze the goldfish closer and sure enough, the fish was staring right at you. “I guess it does seem intelligent-” You paused as the fish nodded at your words. You controlled your surprise and smiled sweetly at him. “Can we name him sushi?”

The fish started to swim in circles, hitting the bag from time to time making you laugh at his apparent anger. A hand got a hold of the bag, taking the little burden out of your hands. At this moment you noticed that Five’s eyes were dull, their bright spark gone with every life he took. Worry etched your features, you reached for his empty hand and squeezed lightly hoping to give him some sort of comfort. He shot a small smile your way despite his eyes still being emotionless. 

Your heart broke for him, all this time he was forced to kill against his will and it ate at his soul. Oh how you wished you had a special ability like him and had the capacity to remove all of the darkness hurting his mind. Without warning, Five pulled you to his chest and jumped to an alley. The unexpected spacial-travel made you dizzy for a few seconds. You had done it enough time before to be used to it and be spared of the once usual wave of nausea following a jump. 

You knew that the Handler would come here sooner than later, so you engulfed your boyfriend in a hug regardless of the blood covering his clothes. Deposing a light kiss on his less stained cheek, you smiled lovingly at him. 

“It’s almost over. Then we’ll be only the two of us.” 

His forehead met yours and a sincere smile stretched his lips. “I can’t wait.”

[elvesofnoldor]

ugh i just wanna be able to design Esther Surana already so i know what he looks like...feel like pure shit just wanna be attached to one (1) of my wardens.........one....it’s all i ask

[anotheronechicagobog]

My One Chicago Headcannons Part 1

Cornelius Rhodes either killed his wife or orchestrated it somehow, and Connor found out or saw and knows his dad covered it up and he can't do anything about it

Connor gives 90% ofhis income away to charity cause after he was exposed to the injustices of the world he felt like he really had to do something and is well aware that money actually does have a lot of effect on social justice and change

Helen Manning (Natalie's MIL) showed up to her son's wedding in a white dress and had some weird attachment to her son

Natalie is fluent in Italian and has been teaching Owen

Maggie was blocked from her family group chat after she sent her 1,000 meme and her aunts and uncles got tired of feeling old so her cousins and nieces and nephews created a group chat called Maggie’s memes cause they think she’s hilarious

Will Halstead violated people's DNRs because he wasn't there for his mother when she was sick/dying and he feels really guilty and needs therapy

Sharon loves heavy metal, she listen to one song like 30 years ago by accident and fell in love with the genre and when Maggie one day walks in and sees her bobbing along to Black Sabbath she looks really surprised but then Sharon shrugs, pauses the music, and asks whats up, and Maggie just kinda tucks the info away and is just happy that she knows Sharon even better now

Dr. Charles has a therapist, but isn't completely honest with her I don't think because he did some seriously bad shit to Reese that was obviously connected to his failures as a father to his daughters

Reese would have been better suited in literally any other practice of medicine but psychiatry but she made a rash decision after a bad day, encouraged by her manipulative bf, and just accepted psychiatry cause it was the best thing that came along after she dropped pathology

Joey was a POS who purposefully dated med students cause they were so naive

April Sexton wanted to be a doctor but was bullied into being a nurse by her family because they thought that her make brother deserved a better job than her because of their genders

April is so holier than thou because she found some power in social standing at her job and holds onto it for dear life to deal with the failure of her personal goals

Kevin gets invited to all of Kim's family functions (so did his siblings when they lived with him) and the entire family has basically adopted him as an older brother

Kim and Adam (separately) mail presents to Vinessa and Jordan for their bdays and holidays

Jay was totally a mommas boy and was taught to cook and bake by her (Will burns water somehow and it's shocking that he's a functional adult) he also knows how to sew and knit and made baby blankets for Owen Manning when he was born, Louie when Gabby started fostering him, Terrance Boden when he was born, and Makayla when Kim decided to foster her

Hailey can also cook and bake but it's almost strictly Greek food and the basics (she tried making bouef bourguignon once and it tasted like pigeon farts, don't ask) she;s also an amazing singer and Jay swears that she’s part siren

Platt has a vacation house in Southern France that she tells no one about, but it’s where she and Mouch went for their honeymoon, and she let’s the Hermann’s and Boden’s use it for vacations every once in a while but they’re sworn to secrecy

Voight is bi and secretly had a crush on Al almost the entire time they knew each other and he’s been taking care of Michelle since he died and Olivia (his DIL) got remarried and he hates her new husband but won’t say anything cause he knows it’s just because Justin’s dead

Voight likes some people in the world, like Platt and intelligence, but Daniel (his grandson) is the only person he actually loves and lives for at this point (if Olivia asked him to retire and move close to them for Daniel he would at the drop of a hat but he knows she wants space after what happened to Justin)

Severide’s favourite drinks are the fancy fruity ones but doesn’t drink them cause he doesn’t want to get teased about it (one of the only things Benny instilled in him, internalized toxic masculinity) so Sylvie orders them and gives them to him sometimes as a sign of friendship after he divorced the blonde he married in Vegas cause she didn’t go with him

Matt was in the foster system after his mom shot his dad not becasue he didn’t have any other family, but because no one in his family wanted him, so he actually has a massive family with lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins that he hasn’t seen since he was fifteen

Matt keeps in contact with Louie and his dad (Gabby just couldn’t and everyone understood) and gets invited over for Sunday dinner sometimes, and Louie’s grandma makes him call her ‘mom’ and treats him like a son and Matt is so grateful

Stella LOVES cars, she’s super into them and Top Gear is one of her all time favourite shows

Sylvie would be okay with getting pregnant and having a biological child but she really wants to foster and adopt kids cause even though she was six she remembers just how bad the foster system was

Sylvie has a green thumb and knows carpentry cause her grandparents taught her

Mackey loves country music and knows how to play guitar cause she likes to play along

Joe is really good at painting, some of Chloe’s favs are his acrylics but he prefers watercolours

Mouch actually became fluent in Japanese and does part-time work as a translator for the CPD

Hermann hates silence. He works in a firehouse and then goes home to a house filled with his wife and five kids, if he ever actually gets a moment of peace and quiet he blasts music, sometimes he dances too and it turns into dance parties whenever his kids catch him

Boden carves and paints wooden birds after his dad died and asked Casey to make a mobile for Terrance out of the ones he’d made and makes a special carving for everyone he loves on their birthday they’re Donna’s favourite gifts and she literally has a specific shelf for them

Gallo only likes cheese on pizza and quesadillas and the real reason he and Violet broke up was because cheese was her favourite food and she’d put it on everything (even though he gave an impromptu marriage proposal after the green eyed monster made an appearnce, she actually liked him and wanted to work on the relationship after she obviously said no, but cheese was a deal breaker for him)

Ritter is 100% a Dog Dad, Tuesday has five different beds, far too many toys to count, and he buys her gourmet dog food and treats, but it;s okay becasue Eric spoils her too

[trashforgubler]

My Cell

Word Count: 1.7k

Summary: Spencer falls in love with the reader, who is the owner of a bookstore

Extra Info: Titled after “My Cell” by the Lumineers, which is one of my favorite songs ever, 11/10 should listen. Also the book I mention in here is one of my all time favs if you’re looking for a recommendation 

Requests: Open

masterpost

Spencer had a thing for books. At least, that’s what he told himself as he was walking into Bastet Books for the third time this week. Even though this bookstore was on the other side of town, and there were exactly three other book stores that were considerably closer to his apartment. He told himself this bookstore was better, even though the other ones had far greater selections (and lower prices). He told himself that he liked the white cat with one blue eye and one green eye that greeted him at the door every time he came in, and it had nothing to do with you thank you very much. 

 Of course, he had noticed that you were… attractive. But attraction is nothing but science. Anyone would be attracted to someone as beautiful as you were. The way your hands gently cradled the books in your arms as you restocked them on the shelf. The way your eyebrow furrowed slightly as you read, making you look lost in another world. Anyone would notice the smell of lavender and Old Spice as you walked by, excusing yourself with a soft voice and a shy smile, your bright eyes darting theirs as they moved past. This is what Spencer used to explain the butterflies that flew around in his stomach every time he saw you at the cash register. 

He did not have a crush on you, he was just observant.

 And as Spencer walked out of the bookstore with an armful of true crime and a copy of Twilight (in Russian of course, as he doesn’t read fiction in English, but still takes his friend’s recommendations), he realized he was going to have to think of some more reasons why he drives the extra 20 minutes to this bookstore, because the persistent itch in his eyes and nose were telling him he may be allergic to cats. 

 Three days later Spencer was back at the bookstore. The same bookstore that was an inconvenient distance away and had an animal that he was definitely allergic to. He told himself he got allergy medicine because there may be other times where it might come in handy and going into the bookstore was a good way to test it out anyway.

 The bell on the door welcomed him in. As always, he immediately looked to the cash register, secretly hoping to see you. No, I’m not hoping anything Spencer assured himself. Although his own mind contradicted this thought as he found himself disappointed when he laid eyes on not you, but an older man with a scraggly beard behind the counter. Funny, he thought for sure you worked on Thursdays. But he began browsing the shelves anyway because he was certainly here to buy books and that did not change based on who was working.

 He made his way to a section he hasn’t been down before: Historical Fiction. Usually, he preferred to keep historical and fiction books separate from each other, as he found the inaccuracies to be outraging when the two were mixed together. But he had already read all of the historical books in the store by now, and as he found last time, he was not a fan of complete fiction. Even in Russian.

 His long fingers traced the dusty spines on the shelves as he read each title to himself. The quiet music echoing down the empty aisle made him smile slightly, another reason he loved this store. The others were boring and dead silent. Stepping into them felt like walking around a prestigious museum more than a bookstore. Not here. Here, there was the strum of acoustic music that made everything feel alive. Small conversations could be heard from other aisles, and he liked how they stacked the books here. Not just on the shelves, but on top of them, and on coffee tables placed sporadically throughout the room. There were even books on the windowsills, as if the store were so bursting with words and stories they couldn’t be confined to a single space. 

 Spencer picked up a book from the top of the shelf: The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It was clearly used; the cover was bent at the corner and the spine was broken in several places. It was even starting to rip at the bottom. These were his favorite books. Ones that were read by so many people it was starting to fall apart but seemed to stay together just for him.

 “That’s a great book.”

 Spencer turned to the voice, but he knew he didn’t need to. He would recognize the softness of the words and the smell of lavender anywhere. You were standing near him, a box of newly shipped books in your arms, ready to shelve. Except the box was marked Contemporary, not Historical Fiction. Maybe it was this minute detail, the one that meant you had walked into the aisle he was in just to see what he was reading that gave him the courage to respond.

 “Yeah, it looks good. I think I’m gonna buy it.”

 He pretended to study the cover again. He wanted to keep talking, he really did, but the words seemed stuck in his throat. 

 “You’re Spencer, right?”

 Spencer looked up again and nodded, trying to keep his face and body language casual, even though he could hear his heartbeat in his ears. 

 “You’re in here a lot, aren’t you?”

 Spencer nodded again. Say something, he scolded himself. 

 “Yeah, I uh, really like to read.”

 He mentally slapped himself. Could he have picked something more stupid to say?

 “I can tell,” you said with a smile. God, you had such a beautiful smile. “I’m Y/N by the way.” You shifted the box of books into one arm and extended your hand to him. He shook it without thinking about all the germs that might be on it. For the first time in years, the thought never crossed his mind. Maybe it was because you were different than other people. Other people were germy and even the thought of touching their hands revolted him enough to spit statistics at them, lectures on how he would rather kiss a stranger on the lips than shake their hand if given the choice. The touch of your hand made him want to melt.

You stood in silence for a few seconds, smiling at each other politely. Spencer began to rock on the balls of his feet slightly, usure of what else to do. He should not be feeling nervous, but he was

 “Well, let me know if you need anything,” you said finally and leave the aisle.

 As soon as you were out of sight, Spencer rubbed furiously at his eyes. What was that? He interviews serial killers for a living but can’t have a coherent conversation with someone he likes? No, I don’t like them, he assured himself. Liking someone means going on dates and doing other things with them, and Spencer does not do that. He ignores the persistent voice in his head telling he would actually very much enjoy doing those things with you.

 A small purring object presses against the bottom of his pant leg, tickling his ankles. He looks down and sees the cat, rubbing his body against him. Spencer bends down and pets the top of his head, absently wondering if you had noticed that his hands had been shaking during the 30-second interaction. He looks back down at the cat and sees that they’re wearing a collar, Bastet it reads. Spencer smiled to himself. There seemed to be something unignorably adorable about naming a bookstore after your cat, and naming your cat after the Egyptian god of cats. Spencer liked the idea that there was someone just as nerdy as him.

 He gave Bastet a quick kiss on the top of the head and left the aisle. He turned right to go to the cash register but stopped when he saw who it was. Scraggly beard guy was gone, and instead, you were chatting with a customer as you bagged their items. Immediately, Spencer’s heartbeat picked up once again, and the butterflies returned to his stomach. Stop. He told himself. I will not let you get nervous over someone you don’t even like. When it was his turn, he put The Secret History on the counter and pulled the bills out of his wallet. 

 “Spencer, long time no see.” you joked. You scanned his book and took the bills from his hand. He would be lying if he said his heart didn’t jump when your soft fingers grazed his.

 Spencer forced himself to return the laugh even though he felt like throwing up. Why did he feel like throwing up? He avoided eye contact by shuffling the bills around his wallet until you returned the book to him. You opened your mouth to say something, but Spencer cut you off with a hasty, “Have a nice day!” before speed walking out of the store. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to hold up the line with another conversation, but he knew deep down if he looked at you for one second longer he would say things that were not rational, and Spencer was always rational. 

---

That night when Spencer tucked himself into bed and opened up the book, his receipt fell out of the first page and onto his chest. Only the receipt had something written on it in neat blue ink. 

 Spencer,

I’m not sure how to say this, so I’ll let someone better at words than I am say it instead (I’m a reader and not a writer for a reason). Read the poem "A Stranger" by Lang Leav. It’s one of my favorites and every time I read it, I find myself thinking of you. 

-         Y/N

 But Spencer didn’t have to read the poem, because he’s read it many times before. And every time he did, he found himself thinking of you. He smiled as he finally welcomed the butterflies and racing heart wholly at the thought of your name. And before he drifted off to sleep, he recited the poem in his head, and with every line he thought, a new butterfly appeared.

 There is a love I reminisce,

Like a seed

I've never sown.

 Or lips that I am yet to kiss,

and eyes

not met my own.

 Hands that wrap around my wrists,

and arms

that feel like home.

 I wonder how it is I miss,

these things

I've never known.

 Maybe falling in love, was not so scary after all. 

[elizabethplaid]

Scored 13 cds at Goodwill today!

6 were in a grab-bag for $10. The other 7 were like $30-something. 1 was bought to have a physical copy of an album I already have. Another was a 2-disc package, which I didn’t realize. And 1 had a switched disc, which I may or may not like.

Side note: I wore my “soft and full of tears” hoodie and my “oh worm” mask to the store today. And I’ve been wearing Beet Poot since dinner.

CD list and rambling below the cut.

Nick Drake - “Pink Moon” (already have digital album)

Yanni, in place of “The Secret Garden” original Broadway cast soundtrack

Lady Gaga - “The Fame Monster” and “The Fame” (double disc set)

Kronos Quartet - “White Man Sleeps”

Avril Lavigne - “The Best Damn Thing”

various artists - “A Winter’s Solstice VI”

Seal - “Seal II”

Offspring - “Smash”

Imogen Heap - “Speak For You”

Savage Garden - “Affirmation”

Regina Spektor - “Begin to Hope”

Chvrches - “Every Open Eye”

Journey - “Greatest Hits”

I already have some digital copies of a few songs from these albums (Imogen Heap, Avril Lavigne, Offspring). Some are artists I’ve liked for a long time but hadn’t yet explored firmly (Seal, Kronos Quartet, Journey, Savage Garden).

Back when I was in college, there was a free music player for students called Ruckus. I had a ton of great music on there, but I didn’t make a record of what was in that archive. Regina Spektor’s “Begin to Hope” was one album I had and loved. To find that, oooh so awesome.

Imogen Heap and Chvrches were on my batch listen playlist awhile back, with songs that are specifically on these albums. I also had Avril Lavigne’s “Keep Holding On” on an old playlist, but I had just downloaded the song by itself.

The “Winter Solstice” cd is another in a series that I already have. I have volumes 1 through 4 - stuff that I grew up with as a child. #6 here was from 1996, but I didn’t have that one yet. One of my fav pianists is on it, George Winston, though I think I already have that song in my collection.

Omg, they actually had 2 copies of my fav George Winston album “December”, and one was a deluxe edition with 2 extra songs. But it was like $5-7, so I passed. I already have a physical copy, so I didn’t need another.

Speaking of physical copies, I knew I had to pick up Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” as soon as I saw it. Another tumblr user, Scott Friday, sent me the digital album like 10+ years ago. Definitely the best of his original 3 albums; just my cup of tea.

[marvels-writings]

When the World is Against Us (4)

Spirits Lifted

Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch) Masterlist

Series Masterlist

| Preview | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | 

A/N: this one was effort, part 5 is gonna be intense

Everyone was keeping you in the dark on what was happening. All you knew was that the time was divided on the accords, Wanda was at the compound with Vision protecting her. Steve and someone named Sam was currently trying to track down someone named ‘Winter Soldier’. 

You looked at the picture at the bottom of the news report, it was a man who looked like he was in his mid 30’s, he had prominent brown stubble, bright blue-green eyes, shoulder-length brown hair, and a muscular build, his left arm was completely metal with a small red star at the top.

“Mom, what’s happening?” You asked, sitting on the couch and watching the News when you saw Steve chasing someone with a metal arm on a bike. You had changed out of your formal clothes into casual black jeggings, a white t-shirt, and your denim jacket was thrown on the bed.

“Oh my god.” She muttered you frowned when she switched off the TV, she was more panicked than you’ve ever seen her.

“We need to get to Tony.” She stated, picking up her jacket and throwing you yours, heading out of the hotel room hurriedly.

Natasha gave you a small explanation of what was happening, the Winter Soldier was one of Steve’s friends. He was almost a hundred years old, he had been experimented on by HYDRA and he had been turned into a weapon, the Vienna bombing was being blamed on him.

Once you and Natasha got there, she handed you off to Tony who was extremely stressed. He wore a Tom Ford three-piece steel suit with a brick red tie. He paced in a small glass room nervously, there were screens at the front of the room to monitor everything inside the building. 

“Tony, what’s going on?” You asked, he looked at you and sighed, sitting down on one of the chairs. You glanced at your mom talking to Steve on her way to you.

“Bucky, the guy with the metal arm over there,” Tony gestured to one of the monitors which showed a muscular man with long brown hair and green eyes strapped down into a chair, his left arm was metal.

“We think he bombed Vienna, but Steve doesn’t think so. If Steve doesn’t sign these accords, it’s gonna be a catastrophe.” He threw the accords down on the table and started pacing again.

You nodded and lounged back in one of the chairs, Steve came in and nodded at you. Natasha gestured for you to come with her, you stayed with her as she watched the interrogation. It was some psychologist evaluation, but something seemed off. 

“Mom, something is off about that guy.” You whispered to her, referring to the psychologist. 

Natasha turned to look at you and nodded, clenching her jaw and crossing her arms. The psychologist asked a few questions, it almost sounded like he was making small talk when the power suddenly cut out. Ross started yelling at people to get the surveillance back up. Steve darted out with Sam right behind him.

“Stay here,” Your mom instructed, you raised an eyebrow.

“Oh come on, I’ve been trained by the Avengers for christ’s sake, I can help.” You argued, your mom pursed her lips but you kept your eyebrow raised until she gave in.

Both of you ran after Tony who didn’t have a suit, only a glove. He shot Bucky with some sort of sonic ray which stunned him, your mom ran after him, using her signature move to try to drag him down, he picked her up instead, trying to slam him upside the head but he pinned her down on the table, holding her neck in a chokehold.

You pushed past Tony, running in and landing a perfect kick on the side of his face, blowing him back a few feet. Your mom choked on air, you helped her off the table and supported some of her weight when you noticed Bucky heading back towards you.

“Shit,” You muttered, pushing your mom to the side so the blow went to the side of your ribs instead.

His metal fist hit the side of your ribs with more force than you’d expected, the force of the punch blew you to the other side of the room, you sat there for a second, gasping. You lifted your shirt and checked your ribs in case they were broken, your ribs were now a bright red color, it was going to bruise.

You looked up to find your mom attacking Bucky furiously for hurting you. You saw the fury in her eyes when she glanced at you before Bucky threw her aside, heading angrily out the door when Tony tried to stop him. Bucky tried to shoot him, but the shot was blocked and he threw Tony at the table next to you.

He took down two Avengers as if it was nothing. You ran over to your mom, hand wandering over the bruise in your ribs as you went over to her, worry clouding your e/c eyes. The prince of Wakanda, T’challa attacked Bucky next, he seemed to be the only one capable of holding him off. 

“Mom, are you okay?” You gasped, kneeling in front of her, her whole neck was red and she was still coughing, hand wandering over her back where Bucky had thrown her. 

“Never better, you?” Natasha answered, smirking weakly at you. You rolled your eyes and bent down to help her up and out of there, making a mental note to call Wanda about this later. You had a feeling your mom was going to send you back to the compound. 

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Wanda’s POV

“Hey Wan,” Your voice greeted her softly over the phone, her heart leaping at the sound. She opened her mouth to ask if you were okay but you cut her off.

“Yeah I’m okay, just a little bruise.” You said, Wanda could hear the rustling of your shirt when you said that.

“What happened?” Wanda asked, nervously fidgeting with the sleeve of your hoodie before resting on her lap.

“I think you saw all about it on the news.” You commented, Wanda laughed lightly, relieved to hear that you were okay.

“So have you been doing anything or just moping around?” You asked, your tone was playful.

“Training a little, mostly watching movies and eating,” Wanda answered, a strange smell filling her senses.

“Moping around.” You answered your question, causing both of you to laugh before discussing what was happening.

You told Wanda that Steve was on the run with Bucky and Sam, he wasn’t planning to sign the accords anytime soon. Natasha and Tony were waiting for some sign of Sharon or the other three, but nothing so far. 

“I think Vis is making paprikash,” Wanda commented once you’d finished talking about what had happened. 

“Android made paprikash, tell me how that goes, I think I can smell it from out here.” You commented, Wanda frowned. 

“You mean you can smell it from Vienna?” Wanda asked, denying any hope that you could be nearby.

“Nope, would you mind opening the front door?” You asked, Wanda, grinned and leaped to her feet, practically running to the front door when Vision appeared in front of her. 

“Vis, what are you doing?” Wanda demanded, startled that he had appeared in front of her. 

“There’s someone at the front door,” he stated, looking down at Wanda.

“Which is why I’m opening it, it’s y/n,” Wanda said excitedly, Vision nodded and went back into the kitchen before the paprikash could burn.

Wanda quickly hurried to the door and opened it to find you standing on the other side, looking exhausted but happy you see her. You wore a loose fav/color t-shirt and patterned leggings with your denim jacket slung over your shoulder. The brunette pounced on you in a tight hug, you winced and let out a small gasp when she touched your ribs but bit your lip to hold down a groan.

“I missed you too.” You said, voice tight from pain, and Wanda quickly backed off.

“What, did I hurt you?” Wanda asked frantically, you waved her off, dragging your suitcase in behind you.

“It’s fine, it’s just a bruise.” You said, putting your suitcase next to one of the couches and sniffing the air.

Wanda quickly ran over to you to inspect the bruise, lifting your shirt to find a large, light blue bruise covering your entire left side. She gasped and let her fingers wander over it, noticing you gasp when she almost touched it. She used a little bit of her powers to ease the pain before standing up properly to face you.

“Thanks, and what’s that smell?” You asked, looking around to find Vision exiting the kitchen wearing an oxford shirt, navy blue v-neck sweater, and black trousers.

“I tried making paprikash to try and lift your spirits.” He gestured to Wanda. “Forgive me but I’ve never actually eaten anything.” Vision apologized, making an eating motion with one hand. 

You laughed and walked over to him, patting his shoulder.

“I’m sure you did your best.” You joked, patting his shoulder and walking into the kitchen, peering down into the large pot.

“It’s salvageable, you just need a lot more paprika than the tiny pinch at the top.” You commented.

Wanda laughed and followed you into the kitchen, peering down into the pot to find a light orange sauce, the top was peppered with red. Vision rubbed his neck and decided to pick a movie while you cooked. Wanda stirred the spoon, making the sauce a little thicker before lifting a spoon and tasting it, nodding slightly in approval. 

“Not bad, spirits lifted,” Wanda commented, Vision smiled at her and turned back to Netflix, you raised an eyebrow at the interaction.

“$20 it’s not as good as mine.” You muttered, gathering some spices to put in it. Wanda raised an eyebrow at your jealousy and smirked.

“Jealous? You should taste it.” Wanda commented, tasting another spoon to taunt you, licking her lips but missing a spot on the corner of her lip.

You smirked and took her arm after she put the spoon in the pot, yanking her towards you and kissing her. Wanda gasped into the kiss, she could feel your smirk but you quickly took the drop of sauce off the side of her lip and pulled away, licking your lips and shrugging.

“Not bad.” You commented, Wanda slapped you arm lightly as her blush grew.

You laughed and helped her improve the paprikash, enjoying your time with her as long as you could, playing some music to help her mood.

| Part 5 | 

Tag List: @capcarolsdanver, @versdan, @lesbian-girls-wayhaught, @lovebotlarson, @dhengkt, @5aftermidnight, @hstoria, @natasha-danvers, @veryfunnyal, @xxxtwilightaxelxxx , @ophelias-heart  , @never-didbefore , @justarandomhumanhere, @the-most-unicorn-of-them-all , @thatssocamryn , @lesbian-x-blackwidow , @wlw-imaginesss , @username23345 , let me know if you’d like to be in any of my tag lists!

A/N: The Preview takes place after this, so you might want to read that too.

[mirkwoodshewolf]

Moments with mini-angel; Roger Taylor

*Author’s note*

Here we go guys I managed to FINALLY finish off the last part of my Moment’s with mini-angel chapter and here we go with the most lovable member of them all, ROGAH TAYLAH!!!!!! Now this was is prob. my FAV part of the series but also the toughest to write cause I had established throughout the entire Rock Angel series, that Roger and you reader-chan as the RA have this SPECIAL bond and I knew I had to try and top that w/baby Kelly (so I HOPE I delivered to long time fans of this series)

So not really any warnings just make sure you bill me your dentist bill by the end lol cause trust me you WILL get cavities from the sweetness that’s in this chap. Enjoy my lovelies ;)

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things​

@ixchel-9275​

@psychosupernatural​

@waddles03​

@simonedk​

@platawnic​

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels​

@queensdivas​

@queendeakyy​

@geek-and-proud​

@kairosfreddie​

@onebigfangirlworld​

@bohemiansweede​

@5sos-wdw​

@labessieisallama​

@naturalswifty89​

@starswin​

@dj-lowkey​

@isabella-bby​

_________________________________________________________

*New lion cub; Roger Taylor. 4 months old. Surrey, England*

I was rushing around the house trying to get myself ready.  I don’t know why I agreed to do this interview in the first place? I wasn’t ready nor in the ‘physical condition’ to make a public appearance yet.  

I was still trying to lose the post-pregnancy weight I had gained, now all the critics are gonna call me out on even more curves.

“You’re muttering again.” I heard Jack’s voice say.

“I don’t mutter.” I sassed at him.

“Yes you do. You always mutter whenever you get extremely insecure.” Jack came up behind me from the bathroom door and wrapped his arms around me. “Now c’mon, what’s going on in my Rock Angel’s mind?”

“Just…….insecurities.” he sighed heavily.

“This is about the TV interview today isn’t it?”

“Could I possible call in and cancel it? Plus we can just stay here with Kelly.” I suggested.

“No we can’t. Look, I know you’ve been trying your best to lose the post-pregnancy weight but baby you look just as beautiful as before. Hell you look even more beautiful with them. And if some asshole wants to poke fun at them then he clearly has no life than to bring others down. And that is literally a shit way to live.” I looked up at him as cupped the side of his jawline.

“Why are you so good to me?”

“Because if I wasn’t then I’d have the hottest rock band beating my ass all over the world three times over.”

“Well Rog would beat you till the end of time.”

“See there we go!” I giggled softly as he kissed the side of my face up and down. “Funny and sexy. I really hit the jackpot with you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere Jack Kline.”

“Not true, it got me you.” I turned towards him and wrapped my arms around his neck.  Before I could say anything back to him, the phone rang.  I stepped out of the bathroom and picked up the phone connected to our nightstand.

“Hello?”

‘Hello (y/n) dearie, this is Trudy calling.’

“Oh hi Mrs. Cushing, how are you?”

‘I’m afraid not good dearie. I suddenly fell ill with the flu so I’m afraid I can’t come over and babysit for you.’

“Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear about that Mrs. Cushing.”

‘I really hate to drop this on you at the last minutes but—’

“No, no it is what it is. I’m sorry but it would be better if you stayed home and rest.”

‘Oh thank you so much for understanding dear. I would hate to give the sweet little one what I got, especially with her recent colic recovery.’

“Absolutely yes. Well I hope you feel better Mrs. Cushing, take care.”

‘You too dearie, goodbye.’

“Bye.” I hung up the phone and I turned to Jack.

“Is Mrs. Cushing sick?” he asked me.

“The flu. I told her it’s best she stay home and rest.” He sighed heavily and came out of the bathroom and sat down at the foot of the bed.

“So what do you wanna do?”

“What can we do? Deacy and Ronnie are in Bali, Brian’s busy with his own producing, I can’t even get a hold of Chrissie these days, Freddie said he didn’t even wanna come near the house till she was 6months after your little wake up fiasco.”

“You’re never gonna let that go are you?” he said to me with a quirked brow.

“Hell to the no. And today Rory has a doctor’s appointment and Dominique is busy with that.”

“Well you do realize that just leaves…….” Jack trailed off.

“I know. I can’t ask him to do it last minute. He prefers to know ahead of schedule.”

“(Y/n), you know that man would fly half way across the world if something ever happened to you. Remember when that bastard plastered our faces on the front page of every tabloid when we first met. The whole band actually cancelled the rest of their Japan tour just to interrogate you.”

“Your right. I just hope he’s up for it.”

“He is. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he’s waiting outside across the porch right now.” Jack teased as he went up to the phone. He picked up the receiver and dialed Roger’s number while I continued to get ready.

About 15 minutes later, we soon heard the doorbell ring and we both looked at each other.

“Speak of the chaotic blonde devil.” Said Jack.

“Just be thankful Fred isn’t here to back him up, then I’d really be worried.” I said grimly.

“You wanna answer it?”

“No you go ahead, I wanna say goodbye to my baby real quick.” Jack nodded and pecked my cheek and headed downstairs while I headed towards the nursery room.

*3rd Person POV*

Jack walked down the stairs all the while hearing the doorbell ring frantically as well as the loud banging at the door.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “I’m coming Roger, coming!” the second he turned the lock, the door suddenly swung open and in came in Roger Taylor.  Wearing his usual prescription shades and the shirt that (y/n) had named ‘the dad shirt’. The blue with yellow and white lines across it, white pants, and his usual favorite brand of shoes.

“Sorry I’m late Jack, hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

“No not really.”

“Where is she?”

“Which one?”

“Both of them.”

“Up in the nursery—” before Jack could even finish his sentence, Roger immediately charged upstairs and trudged towards the nursery room.  He entered in a calm manner to see (y/n) standing over her daughter’s crib, and baby Kelly cooing up at her mother.

*My POV*

“Hello lovie.” I looked up to see Roger standing there.

“Hey dad.” I said softly. “She’s literally just waking up now. Latest she’s ever slept even though she went to bed at her normal time.”

“Well that’s another thing she got from her mother.” He teased as he came up and stood beside me.  I gawked at him and slapped his shoulder he chuckled softly. “Nah, nah, nah I’m kidding. Well—”

“Dad!”

“I’m kidding. But I do admit you do look adorable when you sleep. Freddie says you look like a cat when you especially curl yourself inwards on the tour bus beds.” I lowered my head and I said down to Kelly.

“My darling baby, don’t you dare listen to any stories your godfather tells you.”

“Yes Kelly bear. Do listen to the stories I tell you. I’ve got loads of embarrassing stories in regards to your mummy.” He cooed down at her and he gingerly bopped her tiny little nose. “And you missy, need to head out and get to that TV studio for that interview.”

“Okay but not until I give you the list of Kelly’s instructions—”

“No need I know everything this cute dovie needs.” He interrupted me.

“No dad please you need to listen…..”

“I did. I remember where you have all the emergency numbers, who to call, where the food and milk is at, how to prepare it. Love I’m not the chaotic young drummer I used to be 12 years ago.”

“No. You’re just older.” He glared at me and that’s when he suddenly tossed me over his shoulder. “Whoa Roger what the…..”

“Ah-ah-ah-ah! No swearing in front of the baby. Now you’re going to that interview and I will take care of everything.” He walked out of Kelly’s nursery with me still hung over his shoulder.

“No stop it! Put me down!”

“Nope not till you get your butt out that door and go that interview!”

“Put me down this is humiliating!”

“Oh come on it’s not as humiliating as New Orleans at Mardi Gras back in 82.” As we reached the front door, he opened the door and set me down and gently pushed me out the door.  He then grabbed Jack’s wrist and shoved him outside. “Alright now both of you go. Leave and we’ll see you on TV lovie. See you later this afternoon you two love you my lion cub, bye!”

He slammed the door shut and we heard the click of the locks.  Jack and I looked at each other shaking our heads.

“It’s like he wanted to get rid of us.” said Jack.

“Like I said, he’s bonkers for our baby girl. But he is right, my interview starts in 30 minutes.” Jack and I walked towards the car and got inside.  I started the engine up and soon we took off out of the driveway.

*Roger’s POV*

I peeked out the window to see them finally drive off and as soon as they were gone, I shot my fist in the air.

“Finally! I thought they’d never fuckin leave. The three other guys get their one on one time with baby Kelly and I don’t? That is a crime in itself.” I said as I raced back up towards the nursery.  “Well no more, this time it’s just us. Me and my little Kelly-belly.”

As soon as I reached the nursery, I could hear the faint sounds of her sad little cries.  Poor little thing must already miss her mummy, well time for god-papa to come to the rescue.  I walked over towards her crib and reached down with one hand and stroked her head.

“Shhh, shhh. Now, now Kelly dear, mummy and daddy will be back soon.” Her crying ceased as soon as she heard my voice, her eyes that once cried small crocodile tears, now looked up at me with curiosity.

Her small brain must’ve soon connected the dots because with the snap of a finger she went from sad to happy as she reached out towards me happily cooing.

“Oh is all that joy for me?” I teased down to her. Her baby laughs echoing throughout the room as I talked down to her, “Is this happy baby all for me?” I reached down and picked her up and held her close to my chest. “God I swear every time I see you, you’re growing like a weed, much like my own little girl. You both need to stop that.” She babbled on. “No you do. I swear before you know it you’ll be walking, talking, graduating school and university, and god forbid marriage. God why can’t you girls just stay small and young forever like this?”

Kelly continued to coo at me and she even gave me that adorable gummy smile.  I smiled down at her before gently readjusting her in my arms so that her head rested up against my shoulder.

“What do you say we fill that tummy of yours up with milk? Hmm? I’ll bet you’re hungry aren’t yah?” she squirmed in my embrace and I took that as a yes.  The two of us walked out of the nursery and I prepped her bottle.

I looked at the instructions that (y/n) had written down when it came to prepping her bottle and as we waited for the bottle to warm up in the warm water, Kelly soon started getting even fussier.

“Oh I know lovie, I know it’s coming though.” I soothed her as I gently bounced her up and down.  After checking to see the bottle was all done, I took it out and walked over to the rocking chair in the living room.  Right as the nipple of the bottle touched Kelly’s mouth, she opened her mouth and proceeded to inhale her milk. “Now, now not so fast. Oi you little piggy, you’re gonna end up sick if you drink too fast you know that.”

I took the bottle away from her for a second to soon hear her do a small and very tiny but adorable hiccup.  I pulled my shades over on top of my head just as I gave her back her bottle.  

God if this is what (y/n) looked like as a baby, then she must’ve been the cutest baby in all of Leicester.

“My sweet little Kelly, you are every ounce of your mother aren’t you? Same eyes, same nose, and I can tell you’ll have her same fighting spirit. You know; when I first met your mother she was a shy one. But she had a kind soul. Even though I’ve always said this as a joke just to piss your uncles off, she actually gave me 1 and 3/7th sugars in my coffee. She really believed that it was for a health problem cause a friend of hers dealt with the same thing. From that day on, I knew I had to protect your mum. Because if she was willing to look after me, I knew I had to do the same for her.”

When she was finally done with her bottle, I set it down on the table and proceeded to burp her.  I had her over my right shoulder and I gently patted her back till finally she let out a burp.  And I’ll say I won’t deny that I was proud to hear that man-like burp come out of her.

“Nice one!” I praised.  I held her out in front of me so that I could get a good look at her. She softly cooed before she soon started making bubbles come out of her mouth with her spit.  I shook my head at her and asked her playfully, “What? You think you’re a soap dispenser?” she just looked at me with those wide, curious eyes of hers as she continued to make more bubbles come out of her mouth.

I popped her bubble spit when she raised her hand and proceeded to touch my face.  Her tiny hand which felt like the same size as a cat paw, soon began trailing down from my cheek to my lips.  She gently gripped my lips into her tiny fist which made me laugh.

“Excuse me Missy, those are my lips.” I said in a smooshed up voice.  She began to laugh thinking it was funny.  “So now what, hmm? You think you can just own my lips huh? Is that it?” she babbled a short response. “Oh you do own them huh? Okay then, you can have them.” I then took her tiny wrist between my thumb and index finger and moved them away from my lips so that I could proceed with a kiss attack.

I first kissed all over her tiny hand, before moving up her arm, to her shoulder before finally reaching her face.  I then followed through by making sure that I as I kissed her, I made those obnoxious kissing sounds with each kiss and giving her the occasional raspberry or ten.

You know they say there is always something that can be precious to us.  In my life I’ve had many precious things, but out of everything I could ever have or own, there is nothing more precious to me than the sound of a baby’s laughter.

The first time I made Felix laugh, it was—god it was indescribable.  It was like—a bell had rang off, but it was so soft and melodic, nothing like from the hard rock instruments I’ve surrounded myself with.  In fact his laugh was the one light musical ring that I would always love and cherish.

And now with my two girls, my daughter and goddaughter their laughter’s are just as melodic if not even more so than Felix’s was.

“I told you. You wanted my lips, then you get all the wet, slobbery kisses you can imagine.” I told her in-between my kisses on her chubby cheeks.  She laughed heartily and I swear it was like my heart was soaring at hearing that adorable little laugh. “You’re a silly girl. Do you know that?” I told her as I held her up in front of me.

She cooed at me as her hand once again reached out to touch my face, this time she rested it against my cheek.  I smiled at her and nuzzled against her tiny hand.

“Do you know just how cute you are?” she looked at me with awe. “Yeah, you are adorable. Just like your mother. Ohh let’s see if her interview has started yet. You wanna watch mummy on the TV?” at hearing the name ‘mummy’ she let out a coo. “Yeah that’s what I thought. Let’s see if mummy is on the telly yet.”

We moved over to the couch and I switched on the telly and turned it to BBC1.  There on the couch was Sally Fields, the young woman who I’ve been in an interview with a few times, charming woman and she asks good questions compared to male interviewers.

“Right thank you to Timothy Dalton for his onset interview for his next upcoming James Bond film, up next we have a young artist who has been making a name for herself in such a short time. The Rock Angel (Y/n) Kline will be here right after these messages.”

“Bloody commercials.” Kelly let out a soft ‘bah’ and I replied to her, “You said it lovie.“ the BBC station played commercial after commercial after commercial.  It just seemed to drag on forever till finally Sally came back on the screen.

“Welcome back. Our next guest rose to fame back in 1981 when she performed in the middle of a Queen concert in Madison Square Garden. For the next 5 years she proceeded to be one of the youngest female rock stars ever to have #1 hits in both America and Britain. (Y/n) Kline the Rock Angel is here with us today, welcome (Y/n)”.  The camera cut to (n/n) sitting right there on the couch.

“Hello Sally, thanks for having me here.” At seeing her mummy on screen, Kelly reached out her tiny hands cooing in awe.

“Yeah you see mummy? Yeah she’s on the telly.”

“Nice to see you here, now I was told you were on a brief hiatus for a while.” Sally told her.

“Yes because just 4 months ago I had given birth to my beautiful baby girl. My first child.”

“Which congratulations by the way.” The audience clapped and she thanked them.

“Can you clap baby girl? Hmm? Clap for mummy?” she reached her hand out and tried to point out towards her mum.  I chuckled and took her tiny hand in mine before taking her other one, “Like this baby girl.” I gently allowed her hands to come together before quickly separating them and then making them come back together again.

She eventually caught on and as soon as she heard her hands make that clap sound, she was in awe as she began giggling that sweet baby giggle and clapping her hands rapidly (just to hear that sound again).

“That’s it baby girl Yay!”

“Now your recent album ‘Mother love’ is quite different from all the other albums you’ve done previously.” Sally said to (y/n).

“Yeah, yeah. But isn’t it always good to mix things up a bit?” That’s my girl.

“Tell me how long it took you to record this album?”

“Well given the fact that I did want to try and get it done before I went on my maternity leave I wanna say—about 2-3months.”

“Now explain the title of your album, where did that come from?”

“Well as I said and from what everyone saw when I made my first public appearance back at Live Aid, I was five months pregnant at the time, and right after the concert I dove right into making that album. I really wanted this album to reach out to mothers everywhere whether they’re senior mom’s with grown up kids, the mothers who have many kids or first time mothers like myself.”

The interview continued on with the same old boring questions so I turned my attention down to little Kelly.  She continued to stare at the telly in awe and she would let out a soft coo every time her mum came on screen.

“So what’s next for you once your maternity leave is finished?” asked Sally.

“Well there’s a summer tour I’ve got planned out and then maybe a new single, not quite sure about that just yet but you can expect me on the road this summer.” Of course she couldn’t reveal it quite yet cause this tour she was going on was a Queen+Angel European summer tour.

“Well (Y/n) it was lovely speaking to you and we can hear in the background your latest song ‘Protecting me’. Now let’s not just hear it but also check out the music video for it.”

“Yes, lets.” It was then the telly showed a funny little edit to now show (Y/n)’s music video for Protecting me (which I helped produce).

The morning went by and soon it was time for Kelly’s schedule naptime.  After feeding her second bottle and burping her, we sat down in her nursery and I was reading her one of the many books that Veronica and Deacy had donated to them that they once read to Robert, Micky, Laura, and Joshua when they were just babies.

As I read to her, she didn’t seem at all tired. She just kept looking at the book then back up at me with them doe like eyes of hers.

“Right, I know. Boring isn’t it?” I closed the book and tossed it aside back towards the reading pile. “I think—you deserve a lullaby, hmm? Want papa Roger to sing you a lullaby?” I adjusted her so that now her head rested against my chest, right over my heart. “Your mummy told me of how when you were still in her tummy, you kicked along to Radio Gaga. Did you know that I wrote that song?”

She cooed up at me as her tiny little hand reached out for me.  I softly laughed and said as I nuzzled her cute button nose with mine.

“Yes I did. You want me to sing it to you?” I slowly rocked the chair back and forth as I softly began to sing ‘Radio Gaga’ to her. Her eyes were locked right up at me as I sang her favorite song.  She was so invested in my soft voice but I could see her eyes slowly drooping down.

Softly tapping my socked foot on the furry carpet beneath me for the two beats that the audience would usually clap to.  Just before I could even reach the second chorus, she let out a yawn before cuddling herself into my chest, gripping the placket of my shirt.  I looked down at her and couldn’t help but smile warmly.

Like mother like daughter.

I sat up and gently placed her back in her crib so that she would sleep more comfortably.  It was then I felt someone take my hand, of course I didn’t need to look down to know just who it was because the moment I felt the palm of my hand being kissed I knew it was (y/n).

*My POV*

After a long morning of interviews (both TV and radio) Jack and I finally arrived back at the house.  Already I could see some of Kelly’s toys out and some bottles hadn’t been washed yet.

“Dad.” I shook my head.

“I’ll take care of the bottles, you go see if he’s at least putting her down for her afternoon nap.” Said Jack as he kissed the top of my head and went to pick up the two bottles left on the table.

I slowly walked up the stairs and as I approached the nursery room, I heard Roger’s soft singing.  I crept quieter towards the nursery and peeked through the door to see Roger rocking my baby girl to sleep as he sung Radio Gaga to her (in a ballad type way, which really surprised me since he was such a hard rock and roller).

Seeing my surrogate father rocking my baby girl and being so domestic it—made my heart melt.  Roger always tried to put up this hard wall and be this ‘heart of stone rock and roller’ the ‘bad boy’ of Queen what with his reputation with the ladies (especially back in the 70’s).  

But now—he’s more mellow, especially when it’s involved either me or his own kids, and now he’s added Kelly to the list of those who can see the true soft-and-fluff Roger Taylor.

As I watched him put Kelly back in her crib, I felt like I could make my move and let him know I was home.  I silently walked towards him then once his hands were free, I took his left hand and lifted it, palm up, and kissed it before clasping my hand over his.

“We saw your interview with Sally.” He whispered to me.

“You proud I didn’t spoil the combined summer tour?”

“Honestly, I don’t care if you admitted it or not. But you should’ve seen your baby girl. Her eyes were glued to that screen the entire time you came on screen.” I felt my heart melt once more as I looked down at my baby girl.

“Thanks again for watching her dad. Especially at such short notice.”

“Hey, you know I’m always here for you. Both of you. I told you the day she was born that I was always, always gonna be there. Even cross an ocean to help you take care of your baby.”

“And give Jack fatherly advice?”

“Meh.” I playfully punched him but he raised his hands in surrender. “Of course, of course. Deacy can give the lovey-dovey side of being a father. And I can tell him how to be wary of the boys that’ll come in the future.”

“You mean boys like you were?”

“Oh now that…..”

“Shhh. Don’t you dare wake my baby girl up.” I shushed him.  The two of us looked down at Kelly to see her still asleep.  I gestured him outside and the two of us walked out to the hallway. After I shut the door, he said to me.

“Now about that comment…..”

“I’m messing with yah. Now go on and head back home, Jack and I can handle this from here now.”

“You sure you don’t need me to stick around?” he gave me those famed blue eyes puppy dog eyes.  I crossed my arms and quirked my brow at him. “Fine, besides Dominque is probably back from the hospital with Rory. Might as well see how my baby girl did on her checkup. And kiss her boo-boo’s if they gave her shots.” I softly giggled. “What?”

“You said boo-boo’s.”

“Oh grow up!” he said as he walked towards the stairs.

“No dad I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that as a compliment. I’ve—never really seen you like this other than with me. This whole domestic side of you, I love it.” He stopped just as he reached the last step and had a soft smile across his face.

“I only reserve that for only the most important people in my life.” I smiled at him and walked towards him and the two of us hugged each other.

“I’m—I’m so glad that I got the internship. You guys have literally been the best thing to ever happen to me in years.” I felt him embrace me back and he said softly in my ear.

“And you’ve been the best thing to ever happen to us. We love you (n/n). So, so much. We’re always here for you. I’m always there for you. Now and forever, my little lion cub.” I snuggled deeper into his shoulder and squeezed him even tighter as he did the same for me.

After that, Jack and I bid him goodbye and he drove off back to his family.  That Roger Taylor, he can be a handful at times, even to a point where he’s the ultimate helicopter dad.  But—his heart’s always in the right place, especially in times like this.

I’m sure after all this, he’s found himself a new lion cub of the Kline clan to call his own.  Of course, I don’t really mind because that’s what the three of us are. A strong coalition of lions.

[dellinah]

Did you just call tony hawk a fine gentleman

Ok, I'ma be real with you anon

You know how kids sometimes will get crushes on the adults in their lives?

When I was 11 years old a classmate pushed me down a flight of stairs in school, and I was helped by one of my teachers back then after the fall left me injured

Basically he was a tall man (6 foot 3/1.9m tall), white as can be (irish I think?), bright blue eyes, short beard, somewhat fit but not muscular (he worked as a firefighter when he wasnt in school iirc), and just had the nicest smile and best sense of humor I've ever seen. He was probs in his late 30's or early 40's, and just made sure I was ok after someone hurt me which made me feel cared for

It was the first crush I ever had, or the first one I remember having anyway (OBV I MEAN INNOCENT KID CRUSH HERE and ofc he was never a creep or anything before tumblr assumes anything)

Boi when I tell you that man RUINED me forever, bc to this day, if you ask what my type of man is, it's exactly that

It's the reason why I'm still unironically attracted to men like Benedict Cumberbatch more than men like Chris Evans and why "comforting someone who is hurt" is my fav type of relationship trope

And Tony Hawk unironically fits that description

So yes, he is, in fact, a fine gentleman in my eyes

[ma-tsu-the-male-goddess]

8, 14, 22, 37, 53

For the fav Characters ask post: thx!

(tbh, you didn’t even get half way through just the tv shows lol -- no books or movies for you!)

8. Ben 10

Hmmmm, this is very hard. There are so many different series to choose from, and a ridiculous amount of characters. 

(Summary: 10 year old gets a watch from space and has to protect the earth (and later the universe) by turning into different aliens.)

Character:  I love the *idea* of professor paradox, but Ben in Alien Force and Ultimate Alien is probably my favorite. 

Head-Cannon: May be cheating, because it’s not technically about Ben, but I love the idea of Big Chill’s little necrofriggian babies showing up again. I think it’s hilarious that Ben could just randomly run into one of his little alien children out in the universe, and he just has to accept that?? Plus they’re all super cute.

The Show: All of the aliens are so unique! My fav has to be Ultimate Big Chill but like XLR8 was so cool, and Ditto is such a useful alien. (Also: the fact that Rath’s species is supposed to wear clothes and Ben just never did because he thought they walked around naked just cracks me up.)

14. Cells at Work! 

I didn’t plan this I promise, but I’m so happy this show was picked! I just got into it and it’s awesome.

(Summary: Follow a red blood cell and a white cell as they complete their duties inside the human body.)

Character: The main white blood cell (U-1146) is by far my favorite. He’s such a sweetie pie and then immediately murders the thing next to him. I love him.

Head-Cannon: Other cells often stay out of wbc’s way because he’s scary/dangerous; they’re always shocked when sweet Red Blood Cell goes over and hangs out with him. They think she’s somehow not afraid of anything. But all of White Blood Cell’s buddies can see that he’s very much in love. 

(Oh Geez the absolute worst one I came upon was based on the fact that red blood cells live so much longer than white blood cells. I’m still sad about that fic days later)

The Show: 1146 & 3803 are so cute together. Also, I think I learned more watching the show than I ever did in the 3 biology classes I’ve taken. Also!! Watch it in English, or at least listen to the English version of the theme song!! I’ve listened to it 30 times in the last week, no exaggeration.

22. Dead Like Me

It has been forever since I saw this show, but the concept is great!

(Summary: Georgia (George) is killed when a toilet seat falls from space and kills her. She becomes a grim reaper.)

Character: Regina “Reggie” Lass. She’s George’s little sister and for a while became obsessed with toilet seats after George’s death, covering a tree with them in a shrine. She’s quite the little girl and certainly knows what she wants.

Head-Cannon: Reggie leaves letters for George when she comes to visit. She knows no one else can see her sister, and even she has trouble recognizing her. Reggie and George manage to become friends in her new life, even if neither of them ever acknowledge their true relationship.

The Show: This series is both interesting and makes you want to cry. It’s such a good way to explore death, and the depictions are beautiful. Particularly the little girl’s death towards the beginning of the series.

37. Galavant

My housemate got me into this show, and while it’s not my *favorite*, it’s certainly worth a watch. 

(Summary: A meta musical set in the age of castles. Follow a retired folk hero being dragged back into shenanigans.)

Character: As pretty as King Richard is, Sid’s my fav. The cliche sidekick who comes from the best town ever.

Head-Cannon: Sid could easily have done everything on this quest. He only dragged Galavant along because he wanted to see a “good” man back on his feet. Also, him and Isabella are best friends, don’t @ me.

The Show: Not gonna lie, the songs are great, but I love all the 4th wall breaks even more. Plus the thing between the Dwarves and the Giants was great.

53. Kuroko’s Basket

As honestly terrible as this show is, I love it. I probably couldn’t rewatch it, and I almost didn’t finish it, but I just love the Miracles too much. (well, most of them)

(Summary: A team of overpowered basketball players gets split up when they go into highschool. We follow the phantom 6th member.)

Character: Kuroko, duh. Just look at his face. He has no idea how to make expressions and he’s adorable. Next question.

Head-Cannon: Kuroko *totally* knows how to turn off his power. He deliberately keeps up his misdirection to mess with Kagami. He’s aiming for getting him to scream like a little girl in public.

The Show: The ridiculously over dramatic *everything*. Now, Haikyuu!! Is a good sports anime, well-done and not too crazy. Kuroko’s Basket is not a good sports anime. Everyone’s got like superpowers and its as if they took a 90’s shonen anime and stuck everybody in a 20 ft square and wouldn’t let them leave. I didn’t learn anything about basketball, and I didn’t want too. I was there to watch Kuroko secretly be a jerk and that’s it. That said, it’s great to make fun of.

[migleefulmoments]

"Hahaha. A friend pointed this out. W online shops too!" What does this even mean?! I don't know anyone in 2020 who doesn't online shop besides my 80 year old grandparents because they refuse to learn how to use a computer 😂 I don't get how Will, a 30 something year old man, online shopping is worthy enough for Abby to comment on it. I'm sure Chris does it too. And Darren.

On Nov 5, Darren wrote this post and the cc fandom lost their shit.    

They decided that organizing 10 costumes for multiple events in two different states for two different people was not worthy of acknowledgment- especially since they wore several purchased costumes. They spent the next 30-ish days mocking her “online shopping skills” like the petty idiots they are and now they bring it up two months later. 

Anonymous asked: this is funny, C posted a photo of beard, D posted photos with the beard. Almost like they were sitting next to each other and saying “ok ok I will say this”

ajw720 answered: The only difference, C controls his SM and the bearding, D does not, but they knew the Halloween post was coming when C posted his belated b-day wishes (not that he acknowledged they were late).  

It really is, if you can remove the very human, tragic element, like a script for a really bad D Movie.  C posts “Happy Birthday, Babe!” a day after the man’s actual b-day and “D” praises his fake bride for MAKING TEN costumes.  Sure praise her if she actually designed them and sat with her sewing machine.  No, she went online and ordered things (I doubt she even went to a store).   And 3 couple costumes were cheap frankly.  The only thought was how narcissistic she could be in their execution (as @flowersintheattic254pointed out even the Mario costume had  a reason, it was a reminder of Japan and the fake encagement by referring to the ad that paid for their trip there).

And seriously how are people not questioning that she spent the entirety of her month picking TEN costumes?  Who has time for this?  I know, i know, a person whose only role in life is to play fake plus one.

I am just so tired by D in particular being utterly dragged down by the useless dead weight by his side and his team’s sole ambition to promote her and make her sound like a decent person.  

If they wanted to praise her, maybe they should have forced her to participate in the zero waste initiative instead of sitting drinking by the pool or have her volunteer to help young girls who have been kicked out of their homes, or have been raped.  Or pick any cause and truly volunteer her time to promote it.  If she is not going to actually get a job and pursue a career, please force her to do something that is actually of value and contribute something good to the world. But to praise her for picking TEN costumes?  

Praise that comes from a man who this year alone won three awards, is starring in a show he created and wrote the music for, has his first big movie premiere this week, is exec producer and star of a huge show on N/etflix, just announced his starring role with 2 A++ lists actors next spring on Broadway, celebrated the 5th anniversary of the festival he created, volunteered his time for the zero waste initiative, performed at several charity events, and was just yesterday name limited series actor of the decade.  Where is the praise for him from his “bride”?  He at least deserves it.

How do they not see how ridiculous it is for someone with D’s accomplishments in 2019 alone praise a person for purchasing TEN costumes for Halloween?  And stans, how do you accept that this is right or normal.  You really know nothing about him and have such little respect for him as a person if you continue to accept the character his idiotic team has created on his behalf.  It is so far from the person he is and that he generally holds himself out to be when given the opportunity.  

This isn’t about being a “gay fetishist” or “hating woman” this is about wanting for D to be fairly and accurately represented and no longer forced to participate in this stupid, life sucking game to promote a person that contributes absolutely nothing to the world.  If you want to have a strong female role model, there are so many, i’ve talked about a few in the past few days (thus far Nancy, Lea, and Phoebe) and will continue to do so, but please stop worshiping a person whose sole reason you are speaking about her is her connection to D, even if you refuse to accept it is fake.  

klainecentric Finished reading the funniest ig story of the day, the qween being praised for sitting in front of either a sewing machine or computer...bravo your majesty qween....your my hero well done.👏👏. And all I can think of is how irrelevant the statement D made about being an emotional horder, being a very private person and finally D saying he's lazy when it comes to social media, I'm internally screaming in frustration because yeah we know D wouldn't have written a post praising that lazy good for nothing waste of space but he's coming across as a lier and it's extremely damaging to his character as a person. I absolutely hate lying and every time another "private" moment is posted to the world is another small piece that's chipped away from what D has originally stated about privacy. PBB, nobody cares about your cheap arse highly flammable costumes you buy online, did you forget about your piano baby adult strip club. I'm sure there are still plenty of people out there you can hire to rub and flaunt their flanges all over the beer taps, why don't you keep busy on that instead. If you want to make costumes, I'm sure you can sew some mighty fine titty tassels together. It'll be cheap nasty, sound familiar.

souly So, let me get this straight. We should all praise a person for going online, looking up different costumes in online stores, putting those in their shopping basket and hitting “buy”? Because I do that at least once a week with other stuff. Do I get praised for that now? Pretty please? I’m doing good work there and buy a lot of stuff, therefore I must be the best person ever!

notes-from-nowhere You’re my Queen. Please, love me.

souly

(I think I got it right. I’m getting the hang of what said person is doing. Wheee! ;))

notes-from-nowhere You nailed it 🤣

ajw720 Yesterday I got a delivery of car food. And instead of his usual seafood mix up greats, I got him shrimp flavor. I’m awesome!!!!!

souly Oh, hey! I think we should all take pictures of whatever we bought online during the week or month and make individual posts on all of our social media accounts about it. Because, you know…

cassie1022 I picked up stuff I ordered online at Target and PetSmart. Does that count? Should I receive accolades because my cat will have fresh litter to do her business on?

souly Only if you post the pictures to prove it! ;)

ajw720 As soon as I get home. Pictures forthcoming. Shrimp cat treats and I also got a burgundy blanket for my new comforter!!! Life goals!!!!!!!!!!!

souly Okay, so, let’s see… What did I buy online during the past month that can be shared as pictures? Some things are gifts, so I obviously can’t post anything about those yet. But I think these here are safe.

Let’s start with one of my fav new shirts. (Excuse the grainy quality. I had to quickly edit it for privacy reasons. :p And yes, that’s a butterfly mirror.)

The rest are behind the cut to save your dash from drowning in too many pictures. ;)

cheekyface72 You’re my queen from now on…

ajw720 I think emmy/sag/gg/CC winner DC should write a post @soulypraising your awesome, amazing, unparalleled online shopping skills!  You earned that praise.  That cat toy is particularly spectacular.

*********************

Just A Taste of M’s Amazing Online Shopping Skills that are worthy of such Praise

ajw720

Super Mario with inflatable Dragon $54.66 (x)

Princess Peach $78.99 (x)

chrisdarebashfulsmiles. i can’t

flowersintheattic254. When you add the fact that the wedding was sponsored so heavily, and her history of outfits I think it shows Mi@rren is something that’s always been done very much ‘on the cheap’.

From work vacays (honeymoon included), RC ‘glue gun’ looks, thrift shoes and subsidized weddings.

It’s BUDGET BEARDING!!!

leka-1998. It’s not worth more than this, that’s for sure.

notes-from-nowhere  We are so ungrateful. She worked hard to find the gloves.

I bet she had to click on another link to find them. She deserves another accolade.

ajw720 @flowersintheattic254 Budget Bearding!  I LOVE It! (and something tells me D’s SW costume in particular was far cheaper than either of these).

souly That Snow White dress can be found for about $25 in a ton of online shops. I stumbled upon it even before Halloween way too many times. 😂

@notes-from-nowhere The plush question mark block can be found in a couple online stores like this one. She simply glued it onto some gloves - or asked L to do it with that glue gun of hers.

flowersintheattic254 Well funnily enough I think we may have confirmation that 🚽🚽 glued on the puppies so I guess YES to the question mark block too!!!

cassie1022 They can’t even glue things properly. Why am I not surprised?

leka-1998

SW

So, so amazing. Bow to the kween and her not so helpful helper.

************************************

There are lots more...I figured enough of your brain cells died reading the ones I posted.  On Nov 30 she is STiLL bringing it up”

Anonymous asked:

Whenever I see miarren gifset they always use the same quote underneath (the rolling the windows down quote) and at first I rolled my eyes and thought uh not that quote again, and I can't believe it took me this long to realise it's because there is literally no other quote that can be construed as loving. You can hardly put down "she's a big girl" whenever you make a set of gifs with M beaming and D looking like someone murdered the dog he's allergic to.

ajw720: And I love the Emmy quote as it was an absolute reference to his character who was a psychopath. Pretty telling if you ask me. But that reference is over their heads.

And pretty much the only one. Guess saying he’s a ball and chain kind of guy isn’t romantic. They can’t even take pooping exes as he clearly steered the conversation away from her. Lovely lady of many moons? Nah she sounds like a stranger. Saying nothing changes after marriage? Sounds boring. It’s a struggle. But hey she’s an excellent online shopper that he done got hitched to!!!