#this girl is talking about how she hates the freshmen so much bc she thinks they're all furries and therefore 'weird' and 'messed up'

[spiritunwilling]

Biting and killing in my bio class

[ebugsbones]

big rant from my bottled-up feelings:)

I FUCKING HATE YOU

!!this is targeted and is just everything I’ve been thinking for a moment I can guarantee this is not about anyone seeing this:) but TW for basically everything!! also this is not proofread

Why take homecoming pictures with someone and then not post any of them??? Like we went to the place you wanted them and then you didn’t even post them! And basically telling me I look bad and I was dressed inappropriately? In the dress my Christian grandmother picked out for me?? This isn’t even meant to be shaming but was it because your jealous? Did you think I looked better or something? Because honestly there should be no other reason unless you where embarrassed about how you yourself looked. You literally posted every other picture and even ones from the Photo Booth but I wasn’t in any of them. It can’t be coincidence. I’m not even going to ask about it if you tell me tmr that something’s wrong then so be it. The only other thing would be that you where mad I sat out most of the face bc I was overwhelmed and forgot myy headphones. (That I could understand a bit better but even so tell me)

No but honestly how can you be such a self-centered ass hole to do something like that to someone. Fuck you #### I hope you have to re take your ducking senior year you cunt<3 you’re a dumb bitch anyways and I honestly don’t care what I say anymore I’m sick of your drama and your constant mood swings. The only reason I went to homecoming with you was because you got turned down by another sophomore boy who was your neighbor?? With a girlfriend, who’s mom told him to say yes so you wouldn’t be alone your senior year. All you do is talk shit about other people and put them down when you have no room to talk. Also don’t even get me started on you making fun of a girl with POTS and putting her down for having an illness/disorder she can’t control. I may not like the girl much either but At least I’m not being a bully.

<3 I’m done walking on egg shells have a great senior year with no one who will put up with you because you lost the last person who gave a single fuck about you. You need to grow up and start treating people with respect and you also need to stop touching people inappropriately. You’re an adult now stop groping my boobs. It’s honestly sad that all your friends are freshmen and sophomores, and using your seniority to manipulate them into sticking around is disgusting. You also need to stop being so 2 faced. This isn’t just about pictures at this point it’s about how last year when I was being harassed by ~~~~~ and her group of friends you took her side once people started to realize how bad of a person she was before she started getting clean. And this isn’t about her bc I’m very proud of her for getting clean and making the changed needed to do better for herself. Bc let’s be honest if your asthma is that bad you don’t 3 monsters a day. Also learn how to stay if fucking step you suck at marching and keeping time plus you never play your trumpet and it’s honestly pathetic bc only 1 person plays in your section. Moral of this rant is don’t be a suck up and don’t let people who still act like little 8-year-olds control you and make you upset.

Also, another thing how the fuck are you going to try and tell me that calling a Native American a red skin isn’t offensive and they liked it? Because Ik your white ass knows nothing about my culture and I know I’m very white washed but I’ve experienced racism and if I’m telling you personally that I don’t like the message then there is definitely something wrong with you. And then getting angry at me because I told you your wrong. It’s not okay and continuing to make jokes with one of your friends about how I look adopted and I look Asian because I don’t tan like the rest of my family is fucked up and I’ve told both of you to stop multiple times and that it makes me uncomfortable. It’s not just a joke. And it’s also funny how you continue after you talked so much shit about the girl who started it.

And the reason I’m posting this here is because I needed to get these emotions out in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone including the person the post it about:) also like the person this post is about don’t let other people invalidate your emotions it’s okay to be angry and if the person your upset with isn’t open to letting you express your feelings, then they aren’t a person to keep in your life. Stay safe.

also sorry I know that's a lot most people wont read but then again I'm using this as a diary and its better out then in:)

[oneeyekitten80]

Head cannons for Sam!

She had the biggest crush on Selena Gomez when she was little she was OBSESSED with wizards of Waverly place. I'm taking bedspread, posters, toys when they had the dress like ur fav Disney star clothes in target she lost her shit!

She likes to draw. She doodles here and there it's all over her notes for school Miguel likes to borrow them so he can see what she drew for today. When she figures this out she starts to draw little comics for him on the sides. He'll add to them but he's AWFUL compared to her.

Victorious was one of her favorite shows too. She and Aisha became friends because of this the both were crazy about it. She is a big crush on jade she turns pink on the ears whenever she was on screen and bright red when she sang. Aisha thought this was SO FUNNY. she still colors when she hears jade sing which Aisha LOVES.

she was a warrior cats girl

She was really into ever after high ( her and Robby will have deep discussion about this bc ever after and monster high were supposed to get a movie together and that would have been SO COOL)

Both she and Anthony are big marvel fans it's their sibling bonding thing

I think she was like a WEIRDO become the first season of Cobra Kai like in middle school and like a little in her freshmen year she was weird. I still think she's weird but she's embarrassed about it more. But I think she was like warrior cats run on all fours till she was 12 type beat. She knows a lot about animals. And Amanda will still by her cat stuff when she sees it in stores ( “mom im not 12 🙄” “but you love cats! I remember you used to wear those cat ears and paws for three years straight!” “mom!! 😳” )

Idk I just love the idea of little weird girl Sam (ppl who were little weird girls are the best ppl now!)

She was wary of johnny when he first started hanging around more with her parents. (she figure they were swingers when she was like 14 bc she meet her mom's “best friends” Kathy too much time for it not to make her question) she mostly disliked him cause of what her dad told her and Robby she knows a lot of the shit he did to Robby so she dislikes him heavily for a while but as he starts coming over more and more and TRYING with Robby and cooking with her dad and dancing with her mom and playing with Anthony she starts to like him a bit more. Plus he is kinda funny. (he becomes her favorite after a while the feeling is mutual)

After talking with moon she realizes she doesn't like men she tells Aisha first who is so super happy for her then Robby who is also really happy for her. She’s nervous to tell Miguel bc of how much he likes her but he's super supportive and he just loved her so he's fine being in her life non romantic plus its kinda healthier for them.

She has a crush on tory but also hates her so much. She wants to kiss her and punch her.

(“Dad is so frustrating! I just wanna hit her then kiss her! It's driving me crazy!!”

“Yeah I know that feeling”

Looks over at johnny angrily trying to send a picture to Miguel through Instagram

Daniel “😑😒”)

[moonlightjeno]

ten things and then some | l.j

𝕡𝕒𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘 :: jeno x reader 𝕤𝕦𝕞𝕞 :: based on the poem from 10 things i hate about you if you haven’t watched it fo yourself a favor and go watch the movie bc it’s a m a z i n g. ty 𝕨𝕔 :: 15.5k this is the longest thing i’ve ever written wow. 𝕒/𝕟 :: y’all jeno fits the concept to this p e r f e c t l y, and no i am not being biased :) and a massive massive thank you to @smoljh​ for helping me and giving me feedback, you’re the sweetest. and ofc to my soulmate girl yk i love you to the moon and back, and i hope you enjoy this piece @mangotexts​ ( truly the best hype woman anyone could ask for ).

everything in bold is part of the poem, from “10 things i hate about you”

I hate the way you talk to me,

Sweetheart. love. angel. The words that spin from his mouth every time you hear him talk to you, made you aggravated. It was a constant stream of words that had begun as a prick of annoyance. Every time, he opened his mouth, looking at you with his dark brown eyes. 

“Earth to y/n” the snapping of fingers disrupts your train of thought, eyes glancing back to the dark-haired boy on the other side of the school grounds, before landing back on your friend. 

“What?” the words slip from your mouth with disinterest, a lack of concern for whatever your friend had been rambling on about for the past five minutes. The small amount of conversation you’d registered was she’d been talking about a party that johnny suh, school alumni, and constant talk around school grounds were throwing as a “welcome to the end of high school”. Though as parties went, you were almost sure that it would encompass school graduates, seniors, and the occasional sophomores and freshmen that would manage to sneak their way in, eyes glittering with excitement as they entered their first high school party. 

“Are you coming?” her words were drawn out as if she’d ask you five times before, she might have, and it was only now that you had finally heard the question. The question slightly baffles you, because everyone in school knew you didn’t go to parties since freshman year. 

“Uh, no. you know what i think of parties, they’re a waste. An excuse for seniors to think they're above everyone else, as they tell off the younger students that they’ve deemed aren’t ‘cool’ or mature enough, while the freshman walks around with some sort of desperate hope in their eyes as if the world will drastically change if they show up at a senior party. Someone should tell them” you say, looking past your friend whose excited smile has dimmed to a small frown, eyes slightly annoyed, something that doesn’t surprise you at this point. It isn’t a secret what you think of parties either, even if you are best friends with the queen of parties herself. You stop yourself before your eyes have a change of drifting to the brown-haired boy with a leather jacket that tends to sit by the foot of the football field, whom you can’t seem to find, probably smoking the thought is bitter and places a scowl on your face before you look back at your friend,  “nothing changes''.

“Just once, one time is all i ask of you” the pleas that come from your friend make you focus on her, her hair is loose ruffled by the light wind that has blown over the course of your conversation. It’s almost enough for you to agree to go to the stupid party, when you see her glance towards mark lee, the boy she’s been crushing on for as long as you’ve known her. It hadn’t surprised you, that she’d fallen for him, when you saw him. The boy who made most girls swoon, but who had somehow managed to beat all the stereotypes of “hot” because mark was also talented, more than you’d like to admit when it came to music, he’d helped you a couple of times when you’d been stuck on a composition, always a smile on his face. so when she glanced towards him, the glittering in her eyes and rose tainted cheeks as mark looked back, flashing a small smile, you couldn’t help but give in. 

“I’m going to regret this,” you say, the words a mix of a grunt and an exasperated sigh, but your friend is almost jumping up and down, giving you a quick hug and promising that you wouldn’t regret it, not at all, you’d have the greatest time before she was turning around a skip in her step. A smile graces your face at your friend’s happiness, and it remains there unfaltering until you hear “hello love”

Brown hair made its way into your view, as jeno’s face presented itself in front of you, a cocky smile grazing his features that made your smile falter and eventually turn into a scowl.

“What” the word isn’t a question, more like a complaint as you try to turn around and head in the opposite direction, away from jeno and his sweet words. But his voice trails behind you only a couple of steps away before he’s next to you leather jacket glaring against the end of the summer sun, and you wonder only for a second how he isn’t passing out from the heat. 

“Oh come on angel, a lil smile wouldn’t kill you” his words are filled with a tone you can only describe as intolerable, making you slightly gag.

“A smile wouldn’t kill me, but i might kill you” you smile at him, a grin adorning your features, “luv” the words that left your mouth are meant to push jeno away and have him leave you alone, but the boy is persistent and though his smirk falters slightly at the glare you give him, the grin is up and running again as he stops in front of you. 

“And then who would you have to glare and fight with luv?” the moment the words leave his mouth he turns away, proud of his line. The dumbass, you think, insults quickly forming in your head and ready to be thrown out towards him but your phone pings, and you thumb it open. The message “see you at the party angel” makes your blood boil slightly, but you can’t hide the way your cheeks slightly turn red and the smile that slowly grazes your face before you make a vulgar gesture to the sweet mouthed boy, and turn away.

As much as you hated to admit, you looked forward to the party only just slightly more than you did five minutes ago, the small nicknames swarming around your head. 

And the way you cut your hair.

The too-loud music and blinding lights that could be heard and seen from multiple blocks away, and you almost stopped in your tracks, ready to turn around and head back home. But a pull from your friend as she squealed in excitement at maybe having a chance with mark managed to keep your feet moving towards the flashing lights. 

Strong alcohol, tequila, or vodka is something you’re hoping they have at the party so that you can attempt to get away from the sex-craved teenagers that are lined up against the walls, pushing against each other. Just walking into the house, and the stench of cigarettes, weed, and sweat floats through the air almost enough to make you gag, as your nose scrunches up at the sight and smell. 

Drinks are set far too far from the entrance of the house, the kitchen seems to be miles away not close enough for your liking until you finally reach it. Johnny, black-haired slicked back, the sunflower tattoo on his forearm a stark contrast to the leather jacket he wears and it makes you smile just slightly at the different personalities the dark-haired boy has.  Yet you can’t deny his loud and extravagant personality as he talks from person to person whether senior or freshman, making drinks, even if some of the spillover the sides, you sit by one of the stools ready to get a mixed drink of whatever the alumni is able to concoct before getting the courage and energy to head back into the party and socialize with people you really have no interest in socializing. 

In the short minute that it takes johnny to get your drink, the lemon drink shot with a strong tequila is set in front of you just as your friend has left you with the only warning being a sharp look, as she smiled to a brown-haired boy that you can only presume to be Mark, by the way, her face flushes, and she takes a swig from the drink in her hand before leaving you, and you yell a sharp “go get em” before gulping down the liquid inside the red solo cup. 

Alcohol you’d forgotten burned down your throat, it’s lingering sharp and bitter taste leaving a tang in your mouth as it traveled down your mouth. You forget that the effect of the drink doesn’t come into effect a little later, where you are jumping up and down on the table, dancing from side to side as the music pumps through your blood and body. You won’t be able to tell that it’s the alcohol that you’d sworn you wouldn’t drink unless surrounded by friends, but most definitely not in a social gathering, that makes you jump from table to table and grab other’s next you as you dance with them. Hair slightly plastered to your face from the sweat, and though you’re dancing your words are slightly fuzzy from the multiple drinks you’d had from random tables you’d pass by.

A sharp tug and pull gets you off the current table and you begin to complain, wanting to continue to let loose to the rhythm of some constant beat song that sounds all too vaguely familiar to your ears, but the arms that are wrapped around you feel oddly warm and comfortable and the protest die slightly on your lips as you turn around to see who’s holding onto you. 

Dark brown hair, almost black frames the boy’s face perfectly and you want to run your fingers through it. Some sense of longing for love and being loved passes through you, and now you’ve realized how drunk you truly are as you push down the emotions of attraction to the boy in front of your face showing only the traces of what would be a smile if he wasn’t so concerned for your safety. 

“y/n?” the boy asks, and you’re still in a light haze of alcohol that buzzes through your skin and blood making everything fuzzy that you can’t quite picture whose face it is in front of you, whose voice that is soft and gentle towards you and sounds so familiar, to which you only manage to nod your head slightly hair falling in front of your eyes as you smile. It’s small, fluttering, and the boy in front of you smiles too, as he repeats your name, and then the words that leave his mouth make him click into place. 

“y/n? Luv? How much have you had?” The word luv, makes you push away from the strong arms that hold you, the classic leather jacket that tends to adorn his body has somehow managed to be wrapped around you, and you realize that you are no longer inside the house with loud music. Instead the music and flashing lights have been replaced by trees and twinkling lights that flash in the dark sky and the distant background of loud music that is too low for your ears to register anything more than a constant drone. Your smile has been replaced by a scowl, and you grunt at the jacket you’re wearing, hating to admit that it’s warm and comforting. You try to speak, the words a slur before you hurl, holding onto your stomach as the content of your lunch and too much alcohol are spilled on the grass floor in front of you. 

The acid from your stomach burns your tongue, a bitter taste seems to linger even as you chug down the water that jeno offers you, a small smile gracing his features. And you blame the alcohol, but you smile back at him, and can’t think that maybe he isn’t as bad as you thought he was. You can’t shake the feeling of his hand wrapped around your waist, another holding up your hair as you hurled, and coughed no mocking grin or satisfactory smirk making their way onto his face. Instead a small smile was present, his dark hair that you finally admitted to yourself, made him look hot, was tousled and messy by the wind and it looked cute. 

You blame the day’s events and the words that were thrown at you at the beginning of the party making you head straight to the intoxicating drinks. You blame the chemicals that are still in your system, as you sit on the grass dragging jeno to sit next to you, hand intertwined with his. The grass that is cool against your touch, making your skin feel less hot, less sticky, and more conscious. You blame the alcohol and everything it changes in your core, for letting you lean your head against jeno’s shoulder, as his arm wraps around your shoulders pulling you in only slightly, scared to scare you away. You most definitely blame the alcohol as the words that fall from your mouth as you hold onto jeno’s calloused hand. 

“I like it” the words are a mumble, whispered into the night air, and it causes jeno to turn just slightly his lips almost touching the crown of your head, “like what?” he whispers back, and you can almost swear a small kiss is placed on the crown of your head. 

           “Luv” 

I hate the way you drive my car.

It seems that the stars want you to hate jeno more than you already do, as he half carries you half drags you to your parked car. The moon shines on the car surfaces mixing in with the dull yellow lights from the evenly spaced streetlights. You wished that you could walk straight, but you still stumble a little, your steps not sturdy until jeno has placed his arm around your waist lifting you up, that you manage to walk to the old vintage car that is parked under one of the dimmed out streetlights. 

The sequence of opening the door and you get inside the car occurs in a slight blur, but you find yourself on the passenger seat, head resting against the cool window that makes you jump slightly from the contact. It isn’t until you turn your head as the engine roars to life underneath you that you see jeno by the wheel, adjusting the rear view mirrors to his height and gripping the steering wheel. 

Time seemed to stop as you lay in the grass, head tucked in between jeno’s shoulder and his head. It stopped when the last words that had left your mouth had made jeno’s smile widen and his eyes match the moon that shone brightly above the two of you. The droning music has stopped, flashing lights no longer as constant as they were when you had first dragged jeno into the cool grass. In that position did you two lay for hours, a comfortable understanding and silence settling between the two of you until your breaths became constant and your eyes had begun to droop threatening to close that jeno shook you lightly. The only response he got was a small humm that you were still awake, as he pulled you up and started to make your way to the car. Something that seemed almost impossible as jeno had absolutely no idea where the fuck your car was and you didn’t seem to quite remember in your hald drunken half sober very much about to fall asleep state.

Jeno could have almost jumped from joy when he’d seen your eyes brighten up at the sight of a beat-up old red mustang, and you pointed towards it. The moment he had opened the passenger door you had climbed inside curling up next to the door like a cat, and he couldn’t help but think that you were adorable, even when you snapped at him for taking your keys. It was a different side of you that he’d never seen, and he doubted many people did see. One where you weren’t putting on a sort of facade of hating everything around you, but instead you let your eyes relax holding a sort of brightness and glow jeno hadn’t seen before but now couldn’t stop himself from looking at. Stop, jeno scolded himself as he turned to look at the road, car roaring to life.  

“Nu-uh” you grunted at seeing jeno aggressively change gears, “stop being so aggressive,” you say as you sit up. The smile that adorned jeno’s face turns into a grin, as he continues to aggressively switch gears as he turns the corner, and you regret ever thinking he was kind. 

“My car doesn’t deserve this” you grunt out, and jeno chuckles looking at you from the side, and he loosens his grip slightly on the gear stick. 

“You mean my presence? I’m gonna have to agree, sweetheart” you’re not sure if it’s the light trace of chemicals that still surround your brain, or if you’ve really wanted to do this for a while but you don’t stop your fist as it punches jeno in the arm. 

“The fuck” leaves jeno’s lips, as he rubs his arm where you’d hit him and you do a little dance on your seat, “don’t hurt my car dumbass” is your only answer before you continue to laugh at the face of confusion and mocked hurt that jeno fakes. 

Your laugh rings around the car, and echoes through the street, as the windows at some point where rolled down. The way jeno looks confused makes you laugh harder, and he turns just slightly, his eyes narrow and eyebrows slightly scrunches, and he looks like a confused dog. Alcohol might have made you hit him, but you can’t fathom why you would be laughing at jeno, no not at him but with him as his laugh has joined yours as he drives the car down the street. The ridiculousness of the night catches up with, making you hold onto your stomach as jeno parks into your driveway smile never faltering. 

From the way, both of your eyes shine from joy and amusement one could almost swear that the two of you were friends, almost lovers by the way jeno looked at you. But no one was looking at two in the morning, and no one can be there to tell you that the way you two look at each other is in a new way. No gazes filled with mocked sympathy or non-wanted flirtatious remarks, instead, you two seem to gaze into each other’s eyes for what seems too long if it weren’t that neither of you seemed to mind. 

And because you are still slightly tipsy, and the stars and moon make jeno look like some sort of angel as his hair is illuminated by a white light, that lights up his face making his eyes a warmer brown that they usually are that you think about opening up yourself to him. Maybe he isn’t as bad as you think, maybe just maybe the nicknames he gives you make you feel a flutter because he could be someone to trust. 

Possibilities for the maybes and wants to fill your head, and you don’t realize your eyes have fluttered shut and you are leaning in only slightly a sway towards where jeno is until you feel his hand on your shoulder stopping you, a pitiful gaze grazes his features and you are almost sure you want to go crawl in a hole. Instead, you push him back, opening the car door and slamming it behind you, chin held up as you walk back towards your house, the water in your eyes threatening to spill. But you manage to make it, as you walk into your house, and slam the door behind you the words “maybe not now” replaying in your head, because why the fuck would he actually like you. 

You don’t notice when you go to sleep music blasting from your headphones that you’ve wrapped yourself in the leather jacket that smells slightly of cat and boy, the lingering stench of cigarettes and fire from the jacket given to you by the boy who had managed to hold your heart for only a second. 

 I hate it when you stare. 

              in and out. Your breaths match the classes metronome, a constant beat to keep your breaths even and focused on whatever the teacher is saying, which happens to be the importance of pentatonic scales when composing a new song. He drones on about the way modern pop music isn’t really music and that the same fours chords and rhythmic patterns are used over and over again with a slight variety to them. You would have looked around the class, taking in the beautiful instruments that are set on display around the class, most of them hanging on hooks and nicks that cause the brass instruments to gleam in the classroom light. Admiring the way the guitars were filed neatly, basses next to them and the small ukuleles that the school's “hipsters” would pretend to play every so often at the talent shows. Some of the guitars and ukuleles were decorated by the art classes, the flowers blooming from one end to the other making it impossible to tell the difference between where the original brandished wood begins and ends. It almost seems at times like the flowers in full bloom are consuming the wood, taking away its air and nutrients that then allow the students to play melodica tunes without the professor yelling at them to tune their instruments. You would be admiring the piano that lay at the front of the class where your professor is currently pacing back and forth, his hands waving in grandiose gestures that make you cough an attempt to hide the rising laughter in your throat. The piano that you’d heard most of the students in the class play and almost lull everyone to tears or sleep depending on who it was, as the keys would rise and fall with each stroke. 

Admire. Stare at the instrument you longed to strum and let out the bundle of emotions that were piled up in your stomach, taught and knotted together waiting to be untang;ed by the strum and finger pattern of the acoustic guitar. That’s what you would be doing if you weren’t slightly interested in the way that your professor was taking down and criticizing modern day music which you could only nod your head too, agreeing with most of his points. The rest of your class seemed to be disgusted, their faces shriveling and eyes rolling to the back of their heads. 

“Well yeah, music today doesn’t, well shouldn’t really constitute for “real” music. It shouldn’t be dictated by a constant talk of sex and the drugs, what about the power in music? The way that it is in itself a universal language?” you speak out of turn, your arm coming down slightly aching from having to hold it up for so long with no acknowledgment. The moment you speak you can almost feel the class sigh and grunt, their heads dropping slightly. 

“Now miss y/n” his voice is grainy and unpleasant, but you nod, eyes defiant at whatever critique will come your way even if you just agreed with your professors point of view, “did i ask for your opinion on the universal language and power it has on your feelings” 

“Well no but-”

            “No buts” you want to roll your eyes and flip him off, and decide to do both as you sigh, “not like you’d understand what that is” you mumble loud enough for your the boy at your right to hear you and his mouth falls slightly open, and you roll your eyes flipping him off as he turns around facing the scribbled blackboard.  

You can feel eyes staring at you, analyzing the way you bite onto the top of your pen or how you doodle across the margin of your paper, random notes and lyrics that pop into your head as your professor drones on and on about the theory of music. It’s a pity you think that it’s those eyes that make you want to stand up and hit someone, those eyes that seem to want to dig a whole through your brain are what cause the feeling of uneasiness in your stomach every-time you turn around. 

in and out. The metronome beeps constant again, and you loosen the grip on your pencil. Turning around slowly before locking gaze with jeno, who seems startled, you turned around and looked at him in the first place. Replaced is the mocking grin by a sheepish smile, and you can almost swear there’s a speck of guilt in his brown eyes as he looks at you with a small pleading look until you flip him off, mouthing the words “fuck you” into the air. But he seems to register them as he breaks the contact, eyes darkening and head bowing down just slightly, making a small smile graces your features. 

Tick tick tick - ring. The bell goes off and you can’t seem to get up and out of your seat quick enough, following pursuit of the other students that have already packed and are counting down the seconds until class is over. You’re almost at the door, fingers stretching to reach the handle when you feel a light tap on your shoulder, a brush of your hair to the side, as you swirl around. You bite down the curse that is about to slip through your lips as your professor stands in front of you an amused smile on his face as he tells you that even though you’re an exemplary student you should tone down on the whole “power to the people” role you hold and you have to stop yourself from turning around and walking away. “Uh sure…” you are ready to leave, feet beginning to turn but your professor isn’t done and he holds you back telling you about the inconveniences of being a teacher at this day and age and you wonder what the man had wanted to be if not a teacher but the question and pity are quickly erased when he tells you that you about the end of the year assignment, “a project of sorts” he drawls, one hand stroking the light beard that sticks in odd patchy places around his face. “that will test what you’ve learned this year” you say nothing, waiting for what the punch the goal of the assignment is, “a song based off shakespeare’s sonnets” 

You don’t have time to clap and jump from joy at the assignment and thank your professor before the fire alarm goes off and you are walking towards the football field. You don’t have the time to register the way people are looking at you, the way jeno is staring at you with a goofy smile and hopeful eyes as the intro chords play to i.f.l.y  by bazzi and he gazes towards the crows that has gathered around him, eyes finding yours. 

I hate your big dumb combat boots,

The clunk of boots against the aluminium causes the bleachers to shake slightly, a vibration of clashing echoing through the field as it mixes in with jeno’s voice. The dark haired boy that scares the school away on most days bounces along from one side of the bleachers to the other. 

You can feel the warmth spread to your cheeks, the heat spreading through your body and you shake your head slightly at whatever is going because you truly aren’t quite sure. The only thing you know is that it seems to be the whole school’s eyes are darting from you to jeno, who can’t seem to take his eyes off even as he jumps from one row of bleachers to the next the microphone on his hand a he raps along to the lyrics to the song. Lyrics that sound as familiar as a midnight drive and cooling moonlit fields. 

*

The way he conveys the words and raps is not something you hadn’t heard before, you’d heard him speak his poems to you that late night in the midst of summer heat when you had been in a need of escape from the world that surrounded you. The summer heat had been too much, too suffocating that in a whim you’d driven to the highest point in the city. City skyline had been laid before you, the hues of the city changing as the sun slowly dipped itself over the buildings, and it seemed to want to disappear like you did. Slowly, leaving a mark in the world as it reached past the buildings and water that lay far beyond the city, stretching it’s red flames that would slowly flicker and turn into different hues of pink and purple. It was mesmerizing, a way to get away as the sun went down and the moon shone brighter than the city lights, no amount of light pollution that littered the air enough to you were in your own world. Your mind travelled to that safe and peaceful place that would only come out when you were surrounded by the twinkle of stars that seemed to flicker hope, while the moon remained a constant reminder of the light in the darkness. That is until the crunch of leaves behind you, a sign of the coming autumn disturbed you from your silent peace.

Moonlight shone on black boots, the combat boots seemed to dull the moonlight, taking away all it’s light by absorbing it as it crunched the leaves underneath them and stopped in front of you. Eyes landed on a hooded figure, their black hoodie being slightly too big, as it drooped over their frame, reaching slightly past their hip, where you could see the tears in the boys jeans, and you hated to admit that the outfit wasn’t bad. The boy’s face wasn’t visible from the shadows caused by the moonlight, but it wasn’t that it mattered as you went back to looking at the city below you, waiting for the boy in front of you to sit down next to you. It would have normally bothered you to be disturbed in what you had claimed to be your “spot” but maybe it was the way the boy held his head down, or the way the stars shone and illuminated portions of his face, maybe it was just that there was a mutual understanding between the two people that had seeked comfort in the middle of the night underneath the stars. For whatever the reason, you stayed next to each other not touching, not leaning against each other but there was a sense of comfort by each other’s presence and a mutual knowledge of what each wanted. The silence was one of comfort, a blanket that seemed to surround the field that two of you sat in, and when the boy with the worn out combat boots began to speak, a light melody and rhythm to his words all you could do was nod along and enjoy the melodic and soothing sound of his voice. His words shocked you, reaching somewhere inside of you that seemed to be dormant for a long long time. 

“Summer’s been lonely, time seems wasted and passing.  But when the stars shine, and the sun goes, Summer becomes a lil less lonely Little less wasted Because when i'm with you  Time’s gonna stop” 

You couldn’t help but feel drawn to the warm voice that rapped next to, as he talked about lost time and love that seems to be a long lasting one that makes you feel like you’re gonna burst from everything that you feel for them only for them to leave in a quick second. And though you don’t know the boy next to you, you don't know his story, you don’t know why he decided on this very day much like you too climb to the top of the hill and admire the busy world from afar, you know the melody. The song that follows his heart, it’s something out of a movie you think, the way the two of you met, lost souls finding themselves by watching everything around them fade into the dark. You don’t know each other but you do, you know the way his song goes and it’s an understanding beyond words beyond actions as the two of you sit next to each other, hours passed midnight a boy with combat boots that crunch through leaves and a voice with thoughts that seem to connect to everything around you, and you. A lost soul with music in heart, that sways and calms down in the brightening moon of the night, as you give each other mutual company in a field of moonlit flowers, and blinking concrete. 

*

Jeno has made his way down the bleachers, his cheeks are red and you can’t help but feel amused and honored. Because as much as he annoys you and makes you want to hit something you can’t deny the way your heart flutters when he smiles at you as he is doing right now, steps bringing you closer and closer to you, his warned out combat boots make you laugh because you’d never seen him wear anything else. You can feel the anger fade away from the week, anger at him for embarrassing you, anger for not feeling loved like you wanted to be loved, but there was a sort of bond that was formed when the school's resident bad boy decides to sing a love song to someone he’s hurt and cares for. There’s something vulnerable by the way he looks at you, a light in his eyes and embarrassment and all of a sudden he’s in front of you. Faces only centimeters away, his breaths fanning your face slightly, their heavy and uneven but he’s smiling tune slightly off-key as he sings the last verse. 

“So I guess what i'm saying” the mic is lowered, and the space between the two becomes your own world. No longer are aware of the hundreds of teenagers surrounding you, some of the whistling others video taping. 

“I guess what i'm saying” you hum back, smiles adorning both of your faces, 

“I fucking love you”

And the way you read my mind.

It seemed as if the world had suddenly shifted. No longer where you are grounded on earth, goals set to go to the other side of the world away from your family, instead you feel alleviated. Where the ground used to be now there was air, a lightness to your movements and words that weren’t there before. It isn’t that the world suddenly changed, the clouds didn’t suddenly become more bright, the world didn’t suddenly become a bright ball of colors and sunshine. 

Falling for someone was based upon the little moments spent together. The way the world seemed to feel a little less heavy, a little less lonely when brown eyes would meet yours, greeting you with a lopsided smile. You had read in books that falling was like falling asleep, slowly and then so quickly that you didn’t even notice the way your heart would take skips when hand touched hand, calloused fingers from constant strumming of a guitar, grazing yours. They say it’s supposed to be too fast for you to notice, as if you were in a dream state that you had fallen into and slowly when your heart is shattered or turned over do you wake up from the dream-like state wishing you had stayed in it. In your opinion falling was neither of those, and it was both. 

Falling was being dragged out of an arena, filled with a whole school student body, where laughter trailed behind you as the boy with worn out combat boots took you to the place you first met. It was the way his eyes would light up their dark brown becoming a lighter color, almost matching his honey colored hair when the sun would hit him from behind, when he looked at you while you talked about the project you were working on. Falling seemed to be the way that the first sentences after the boy sang bazzi’s confession song was a banter over why the song was chosen, you two debating which of his songs was better, an ongoing debate whether smile or i.f.l.y was a better show of emotion. The argument lasted the whole car ride, you drove and it hadn’t taken much convincing after you threatened to keep his leather jacket, that you had shoved back at him only previously that morning. It was only a matter of seconds after that conversation, that jeno pride smile on his face opened the passenger's seat to the beat up mustang and let you slightly, well more like lecture him on how to be gentle on the old car. If jeno would have been tested on the way that your hands would flit back and forth, moving from side to side and up and down making grand gestures and soft ones in order to justify and further prove your point, jeno was sure he would ace the test. But if it came to what you were talking about, how he shouldn’t force the car to change gears or how one button should be pressed before the other he would have passed, he loved hearing you talk passionately about anything and as much as he loved to get on your nerves to see you get flustered cheeks growing slightly red, but would have failed on purpose just for you to smack him in the arm. The punch, which he would never admit kinda hurt the first time you’d hit him what seemed like ages ago, but was really only a season ago, had softened and felt now more like a “you’re stupid but i don’t mind it”, it made him smile. Banter that flitted back and forth between the two of you, constant little arguments that weren’t truly arguments but more of a facade at the emotions and hidden feelings that grew between the two of you. 

The coming winter air was sharp against your ungloved hand, making you shake it up and down, which only caused jeno to look at you with a confused look. 

“You know luv” the nickname no longer made your blood boil, and you’d finally admitted to yourself that it made you feel warm, “there are pockets for a reason” he put his own hands in the stitched pockets of his leather jacket for emphasis, and you huffed. 

“And then how would i be able to carry this?” you lifted your hand, the what had been hot chocolate was now cold all thanks to the new barista at the cafe, jungwoo you think his name was. Your fingers that had seeped up all the warmth they could get from the previously steaming cup of hot chocolate were now pink at the ends, the cold biting into them, and you slightly shook from the cold air you hadn’t been ready for these type of temperature when jeno had sent you a message this morning, the contact “soft bad boy” appearing repeatedly in your phone, with the vague instructions to get ready to go out in the span of fifteen minutes, he’s been by your door in fifteen minutes leading you to your car where he opened the driver's seat for you as he headed into the passenger. It had taken you arriving at the snow covered school to realize where jeno was taking you, and when you had realized it was the school protests were coming. Questions such as “jeno? It’s winter break, why the fuck are we in school?” and “fuck it’s cold”, or jeno’s favorite which you were almost sure he would forever tease you about, “my hands weren’t made for this” you’d been talking about the numbing of feeling in your thumbs when you had been holding the chocolate, keys, phone and wallet in your hands because your jeans had been made without proper pockets. Fuck the patriarchy you hat thought. Jeno has heard the whole situation out of context, and has made it his life goal to tease you on and on about your small hands. It was torture. 

“You could ask for help?” his little bow almost made you laugh, but you rolled your eyes pride getting in front of his help

“And hear you brag about how you don’t feel the cold” you sigh, changing the drink from one hand to the next letting the pocket in your hoodie heat up your hand slightly, “no thank you”. The next thing you know though, is jeno’s jacket is placed around your shoulders, their warmth heating up your bones, and his hands are wrapped around yours, “no, i’d just do this” his voice is next to you, breath stirring the hairs at your ears, warmth sweeps through your body, by the contact his skin makes with yours, and for a second you want to turn around and kiss him. You want to know what it’s like to kiss his lips that seem so soft, want to know what it feels like to wrap your arms around his neck while you kiss him, and play with the black strands of hair at the back of his neck. The feeling doesn’t leave as much as you try to push it away, as jeno holds your hands and drags you towards the school gate, and into the music room.

Falling is about the invisible things. Falling is noticing the way he can read your mind like no one else can, falling is making dumb jokes at each other smiles on both of your faces, it is the way you seem to have conversations about what you want from the world at two am and still poke fun at each other in a passing by through school. Falling you think you finally understand, isn’t singing i.f.l.y by bazzi in front of the whole student body because you don’t want someone to be mad at you, no. falling is the way from summer to fall to winter you get to know each other, until your hearts seem to be in-sync with each other, as jeno who fiddles with the rings on his fingers tells you to sit down on a chair in the music room. It is the way he picks up the guitar your breath catches on everytime you see it, the flowers swallowing and making the wood more vibrant than it was, and looks at you in the eyes. Falling is how his hands tremble slightly when he begins to strum the guitar, and his husky voice fills the empty room, as he sings about the way you make him feel less alone, and part of the universe.

But there’s a thing about falling, there’s the way that you can feel your eyes tear up when he finishes a goofy smile plastered on his face, the last g chord ringing throughout the room and into the hallways. When you fall, you can never tell when the bottom hits, you can never be prepared for the way the ground lurches before you, a slap in the face, right as you let go of the moon boy in front of you breaths still a little uneven from the shared kiss, which made a star fall seem small. Once that rock bottom is hit, the world falls back into place and you aren’t held at freefall, when you hear the “click” and whoops and yells from the hallway and you try to ignore the invasion trying to take in the boy in front of you, until your phone dings and then so does his. A new text message from an unknown contact, with a photo image attached,

“Turns out the bad boy took the bet after all, and y/n isn’t as cold hearted as they seem”

I hate you so much it makes me sick;

Crashing, falling and burning. Emotions that seem to curse through you days, a weeks later after the text is sent, the one that follows is worse. 

“Turns out, jeno was being paid all along to make cold-hearted y/n to fall for him. If you don't trust us, ask him” you knew the message was a taunt, a test to see if you would break but you’d plummeted down down down, and the way jeno’s eyes had shuttered and the light was no longer the way gave you the answer you wanted. 

A breaking point is what they call you’ve heard when one can no longer hold in the anger or sadness or any sort of emotion that seems to be too much. The breaking point that causes one to lose control over their actions, or thoughts because things you thought to be true, are flipped on their side, and the worst part is you wanted yourself not fall for the boy with the easy smile that shone like the moon, and sweet words that made your blood boil and melt all at once. 

Sick, that’s how you felt when you pushed him away, leather jacket dropping with a heavy thud onto the wooden floor. A twisting and turning of emotions rammed through you, anger coming out strong as you shoved him away again before walking out of the room, leaving jeno mouth wide open as if he’d wanted to say something, hands clenching and unclenching as if he’d grabbed onto to you or hadn’t let you check your phone it would change the world worked. The light that had shone in his eyes left, it seemed to be squashed out by the water that threatened to escape because it was true, he had been paid. It isn’t something that made him particularly, it wasn’t that he wasn’t intrigued by you, from the night you two first met all those months ago under the moonlight. 

Payment, green paper that would be slipped into his hand by haechan, a fellow senior he barely knew apart from the school’s biggest flirt accompanied by na jaemin, he did wonder at times how they weren’t at each other’s throats most of the time, but substantially he truly didn’t care. It didn’t matter to him the more he got to know you, the more he held your hand and felt the way his heart would swell and at times skip a beat or two, maybe even three if you looked at him with light in your eyes, laughter ringing in his ears from a joke he had said. 

The first time he’d been offered the paper, fifty bucks to see if the cold hearted bitch that everyone seemed to fear was capable of giving her heart to someone, he had denied because as much as the world thought of him as a cold hearted human being he truly just didn’t want to be bothered or be torn apart from his music and dance.  The second time haechan offered, he accepted on a whim. There had been a sort of argument in music class, you leading the conversation against something he couldn’t quite remember but he remembered you taking down student after student, a defiant look in your eyes as you gave point after point on what you believed was right. He had accepted, because seeing you standing on top of your chair, passion driving you away from the textbook and to speak clearly voice ringing through the room, made him wonder if it was even possible and if he gave up with what he thought was to be your overly cold demour then at least he's earned some money and the freshman that had walked up to him that morning telling him about the plan they’d set up would work. The plan chenle, a boy who was taller than him, but a freshman nonetheless broke it down in simple steps, it was entertaining to say the least, the way he discussed how he would get his new found jisung to go out with your sister, but that would only be possible if you would date. If he wanted to lie to himself, he would say that he accepted the deal because he wanted to help the kids out, but he was never one to not follow the truth. But now, his hands feel cold and empty, lips still feeling the ghost of yours against his, and he remembers a quote he read not long ago on the story of how the sun died everyday in order to let the moon live at night. 

Jeno is sure that he should be the sun that should die, not because the sun was where the world gravitated towards but because you were the moon. The moon that seemed to hold him together and stand by him even after the lies that are spun about his background at school so when you walk out the door, and he sees the tear’s shining beneath the classroom lights he knows he’s lost. If only you knew that he had stopped taking any sort of money the moment he caught feelings, if you only knew the money that he’d earned had gone to help his fostered cats that hung out by his house every now and then. But even if you did now it didn’t make him any better than Haechan who had sent out the text message, informing the world about the stupidities and decisions he made and had regretted two weeks later when you had scolded him about how to drive your car. 

Sick. From your stomach to your head a loud and never ending thump went on and on like the metronome in the music room all those weeks ago. The headache seemed mocking of your developed feelings for jeno, and you could feel your heart twist into itself, as you went over the events of the last few months. What was real, what was done as an act, you didn;t know but you hated it. You hated the way he made you feel, hated the way one text one yes or luv had led you into this snowball and fall that had hit harder than you’d ever wanted it. You hated him so much, it made you sick. 

It even makes me rhyme.

Melodies follow structured patterns, like the rhythm to a song and the lyrics that accompany it, never missing a beat a simple dun dun dun that tends to lead people into a dance like trance. Yet that was the problem with melodies, it was the way that they held onto certain chords, following the same stroke of keys the same vocal riff or bass slap that would drive you insane but would also drive modern days love songs whether they dealt with the infatuation that was love or the consequences of that love which lead to the inevitable heartbreak all followed the same sort of patterns and lines. 

Rhyming, that’s what you did as you recited the end of the year Shakespeare inspired song. A mixture of words with similar sounding words with the same syllables, like car and stare or hate and fate a juxtaposition between the two. Rhymes where everything you tended to avoid, the stereotypical and overused notes digging into your brain, playing and replaying over and over but you didn’t care anymore, as you recited the scribbled lines on the old piece of notebook paper. Some of the yellow had faded from the drops of tears that had dropped weeks ago, as your mind thought of jeno, his smile no longer the same comfort it held when he drove you out to the beach and led you late at night to admire the stars and watch the sunset. Some of the blue ink bleeding through, making smudges across the paper you were to run in, the doodles that had been scratched and re-drawn only to be scratched and drawn in different shapes the notes written down almost everywhere except in the five bar staff that was supposed to hold the notes. 

The shaky breath you let out helps you calm down as you look out into the pinned up pictures of the bedroom wall and the view that gives out to the dying sun set out in the horizon making space for the ever present and shining moon in the blue now purple and lilac sky. Hands grip at the paper, making it crinkle slightly at the force being used, and you read halfway through the lines you can’t fully get through before tears begin to spring up at your eyes. 

I hate it, i hate the way you’re always right.  I hate it when you lie. 

The words feel raw, and posion, vile seems to rise up at your throat the further you go down, and thought the tears don’t fall heavily they steam. A dashing race down your cheeks and back into the yellow notebook paper, as if they were being recycled. The words on the page breaking you, the emotions a sway of everything they say you aren’t, written by you to the boy who shared his heart and then stole it taking it far far away. Salty water drops onto the paper, until they dry up and then they fall again the next time you read them, and you read them and fix them and read them again rhymes embedded into your brain until the tears no longer fall and the paper is no longer in crinkles. 

I hate it when you make me laugh,

The memory flits back to you when you are met with brown eyes on the first day back from winter break. The air is no longer sharp and threatening to cut into you, but nevertheless you wear your sweater, hoodie slightly up, headphones popped into both ears. You didn't realize the figure in front of you, until you’d bumped into the halfway through a new invented dance move you had decided to create as you bopped and moved to the music that surged through your headphones. The toppling into one another was fast, rushed almost as you collided against each other, a stutter back from both of you before you saw who exactly you had crashed into. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, you should have realized who the boy was from the worn out combat boots that had been dyed black again, and the leather jacket that had a couple of new patches adorning it’s sleeves. 

“Sorry” jeno murmurs, but you don’t hear music still flooding in, and you are too focused on the way his eyes shift from your face to your hoodie, and then back to your face not being able to look straight at you, it causes you to scoff. Of course he was able go behind my back, get paid to play with me, and when he gets caught he can’t even look me in the eye, the thoughts are slightly disappointing but not surprising - boys you had learned tended to follow patterns. It isn’t until jeno shifts his focus entirely from you, brown eyes darkening that you are intrigued by the change emotion, guilt and a sort of plead to apologize is wiped from his face and you soon realize the purple haired boy, who couldn’t help himself from laughing at your situation, calling more students to him that had set jeno off. 

“If it isn’t the schools biggest joke” haechan’s voice is mocking, and you truly don’t know why the rest of the student body is laughing with him, when there isn’t anything humorous, sadly this is what you expect from the school by this point, it happened in ninth grade there was nothing to say it wouldn’t happen again. You think about ignoring his comments, there truly was no use getting involved, haechan just wanted a reaction, that is until he flaunted his money around, the constant taunt of how you had been manipulated thanks to the douchebag in front of you not leaving your mind for a second and you’d had enough. Haechan or his group of friends couldn’t have stopped you even if they tried, as you walked up to him, hood down, the rings on your fingers shining in the morning sun, as you punched him. 

“Bitch!” his voice broke as the word escaped his lips, blood beginning to swell on the side of his face, “i have a photoshoot tomorrow” you punched again in response, this time his lip was cut, and you snickered. 

“Hmmmm” you hummed looking at the boy’s eyes, they held anger and a hint of mist that threatened to escape and not being the schools ‘perfect’ boy, “guess they’ll have to find someone else, you know someone that’s actually, how do i say this in the nicest way possible” placing a hand on your chin you pretend to think about it before a grin spreads on your face, “nevermind there isn’t a nice way because you don’t deserve shit. rot in hell fucker” the last word is almost a yell as you’ve turned around and have walked away from the scene, a shit eating grin on your face, at the look of defeat Haechan held. 

It isn’t the way Haechan looks at you with disgust, no that gives you some sense of pride by taking him on, it’s the way jeno’s eyes are filled with pride and warmth. A plea to hear him out at least just once, and as much as you try to deny it his eyes take you back to hot chocolates on random days, snowball fights late at night and random drives through the city to calm you down, music blasted through the stereo of your old car. Memories of him being next to you, arms around yours holding onto you as if you would disappear if he didn’t hold on tight enough. Memories that as much as you wished wouldn’t flood up every time you saw him did and though you kept telling yourself that it was just an act, you can’t help but think that maybe just maybe not all of it was an act. The hope you hold close to your heart, is what leads you to be stuck back in the place that the mess started, stuck inside the music room yet again, jeno hand centimeters away from yours which just gets you to sit far far away from him. 

“So…” he starts, fiddling with the bracelets that adorn his wrists.

“So…you gonna say something or can i go because i have class to attend to” the words come out harsh, as your annoyance slightly rises, mixed in with being emotionally exhausted you really weren’t here to sit around the boy who had played with you. 

“The cafeteira is having french fries today” the second the words leave jeno’s lips he regrets them, because how stupid is he to start an apology by talking about food, when he looks at you he sees you laughing. Laughing so hard that he manages to walk closer to you so that you are only a couple of feet away from each other, but it isn’t a laugh that fills up the room. Your laugh is dry and humourless, empty and broken, it reminds him of the way one laughs when they have nothing to lose and have given up all hope.

“You know” you start, willing the tears to not fall, your voice to not break because just being in the room with him feels like too much, like one wrong step and the glue that has tapped your heart back together might diffuse into thin air, “for a second, a short second i thought you were gonna say something meaningful” the words are like poison, as you spit them out wanting them to strike and hurt the black haired boy with the perfectly chiseled face to hurt as much as you do, as you begin to head out of the room, the tears threatening to spill again. You’re about to reach the door before you hear your name being called, and you wouldn’t have stopped if it weren’t for the desperation that was laced with his words. If it weren’t for the words that followed your name, “Summer’s been lonely, time seems wasted and passing” the lyrics, the way they roll off his tongue as if he’s heard them a million times catch your breath and make you turn around. 

“Stop” you hold your hand out in emphasis, trying to calm your beating heart down, trying to stop the idea that this boy, the one that held your heart and broke it is the same boy that made you feel at peace in a day of chaos, on a midsummer night. But he tries again to talk, a small smile on the ghost of his lips and you have the urge to laugh and smile at him. 

“Just stop” you almost plead, and jeno takes a deep breath, waiting for you to continue, “stop because dam you have no right to sing that. You had no right, no right at all to make me laugh like no one else that day and day’s after, you had no right”  

Even worse when you make me cry.

Jeno has never been one to convey emotions with words. It was never, his forte as people call it, but in the music room that felt stuffed and almost suffocating he reached for words. Any word that might be sufficient, no, not sufficient, words that would convey his truth. Somehow, some way to get rid of that look of disgust, anger and defeat in your eyes that made his heart ache. He can feel you pull farther and farther away even if you are only a couple of feet away from, a couple of inches until if he held his arm out he could catch your hand in his. There was some part of him that thought the moment you two shared what seemed to be years ago, would help, would stop your eyes from shining every-time a light would hit them, the tears he knew you were holding back, because you weren’t one to cry in front of others threatening to spill.  In response, he could feel his heart ache for longer, his hands clam up, eyes look at yours pleadingly. 

“I know” his voice is defeated, almost as broken as you feel and the way it still manages to pull at your heart makes you look up at him, willing if only for one second, or to prove yourself that you can listen to him. The pause seems to make the room feel slightly more bearable, less stuffy, a little less suffocating, because two words are more than just an acknowledgement at the past but also at the present and the recent fuck ups. You hear more than see jeno take another shaky breath before he opens his mouth, closes it and opens again, a hand squeezing his eyes shut before he begins. 

“I know” the words are repeated again, and you aren’t sure what to make of them but he isn’t done, “i fucked up” you scoff, and jeno has a faint smile, “i know that anything that i say will seriously not make up for anything i did because no one in there right mind would ever accept to what i did. No one who knows you, would ever even consider agreeing to being paid to approach you. No one, because being around you, getting to know you is a gift itself. And yes i did agree at the beginning, it’s a long story” the words become clustered, a mumble and you want to leave again, because they feel like an excuse, 

“A long story, that still ended with you winning right?” the words snap from you before you stop them, and jeno is left wordless for a second before his eyes focus in again, mind running at a million, “yes?”

“No. no, i mean no” the sound that escapes from his lips confuses you, it’s a grunt and a sigh but he looks exhausted, “this isn’t going well”

“You think?” The question is more of a fact but that doesn’t stop jeno’s lips twitching slightly upwards, and you're mirroring his. Banter is good? I guess jeno thinks. 

“What i mean” he starts again for the uptenth time, “is that the moment i saw you smile, the moment i got to know you, not the cold exterior you present the moment you laughed at something stupid i said, because for some odd reason you seem to find my jokes funny when no one else does. The moment you... i saw you, eyes dazed as they looked at the sky i knew that the whole thing was stupid. And i stopped it, i promised i stopped taking money from haechan the second i knew you because you didn’t deserve that. Does that make me any less of a shitty person? No it really doesn’t” he stops for a second, catching his breath and you're trying your best to not let the tears drop to not scream or yell or hit him over and over again, but he makes it so hard. So fucking hard when his voice and eyes seem to convey everything you need to hear, everything you want to hear, but then the word money is said and you remember what he did and you can feel yourself recoil back, but not before a silent tear slips. 

“It doesn’t make me a better person if i had stopped the moment i had accepted the deal because I considered it. But y/n the way I feel about you, the way you manage to center me and be the single thing that keeps me afloat in this hell hole. The way that being next you whether it’s holding your hand that tends to be cold because you hate wearing gloves in winter and rather let them freeze'' another smile, and another tear slips making its way down your cheek, “can make me so happy and completely infatuated to the point i don’t know what to do with myself. It is the way I can feel your body next to mine hours after you’ve gone home from one of our random late night drives, or the way you steal my jacket and then i can feel you with me even when you are in class. It’s the way the stars and moon seemed to align that summer day, when we were both lost and found each other in the same lyrics, the same words and melody that sang to us. So yes, i was so stupid, so dam stupid for ever thinking i could be anything other than a stranger to you, and accepting that. But I can feel the way my heart seems to forget how to beat, anytime you look at me, and you smile, and unlike what the world wants us to believe. You aren’t my sun, or my stars. You are the center of the universe that i stand for, the moon that no matter how much i tried to get away from continues to rise and remain even on the never ending days, because i didn’t mean it all those months ago in the bleachers when i just wanted you to stop being mad at me for being the dumb ass i am, and i will never be the best when it comes to words and emotions luv, but i mean it now. I truly truly am sorry, and -” his voice breaks, and his hands shake, a tear slips from his eyes and you can see it’s reflection by the light. 

“St…” you take a breath, the word not leaving your throat, your breaths are shaky and jeno tries to reach out to you, tries to wipe away the silent flow of tears that continues to stream down your face, “stop”. The word finally manage to leave your lips, harsher than you wanted them too but it stops jeno from grabbing your hand, from taking away the warmth of his hand against your cheek, his eyes that had begun to light up slightly to be shut down again, as if someone had doused water on him. 

“Luv…” the moment the words leave his lips you know you have to leave, because if he does say those words, the ones you know you’ve been dreading to hear because you feel the same way. Because you have fallen and though you have hit rock bottom, and have been smacked back into reality your heart has never stopped reaching towards his. It doesn’t help, when his eyes look at yours with love, and you want to forgive him, you want everything to be okay, and in order for that to happen you can’t break down in front of him. Slowly do you shake your head, arms wrapping around your body as if they could provide some type of warmth, and heat up your bones, give warmth back into your eyes the way they do when you look at jeno. Which is why you don’t look at him, why you turn away leaving his arm outstretched and hanging. You can feel his eyes trail you, as you open the door the noise of the outside world rushing into the room, startling you for a second, but jeno doesn’t seem to hear it. The only thing he can focus on is you leaving, your footstep getting farther away, and his world becoming a little darker, more grey. The last thing he sees is your - well what used to be his - grey hoodie, the marking of sharpie that have been used to doodle on the piece of clothing one late night, flashing before the wooden door closes shut, surrounding him in a lonely silence again. 

I hate it when you’re not around,

The world seems to mock you for falling for lee jeno. The black haired boy seemed to follow you everywhere you went no matter how far away you tried to get away from the memories that plagued you. Days had passed since the world had yet again seemed to shift on its axis, and you had seen jeno less and less, but that didn’t stop your mind from making you remember his laugh anytime you heard a bad joke. 

No longer did brown eyes meet yours right after school ended in the cafe next to school, you weren’t greeted by the easy smile, that turned eyes into moons, or called the obnoxious pet names of angel and luv that used to make you want to punch a wall, only for you to find the words to be missing from your everyday life. Moments when the radio would play the song about summer and hazy love would worm their way into your heart, and it was like he was there. Smiling at you, his hand intertwined with yours as you drove your car to the top of the mountain where you first met, and just when the chorus would hit the two of you would belt out the song at the top of your lungs. It was only when the song ended, the melody fading into the back and replaced by the rapid voices of an ad for some car dealership you really didn’t care for, that you would look to find an empty seat beside you. No boy with a leather jacket, and combat boots that might have been propped up on the dashboard much to your protests, instead the seats were either empty and cold with no presence or soul in them, and the car would suddenly feel small and distant. 

Other times, the pang of not hearing his laughter diffuse into the air, over your clumsy self either tripping over words or almost falling over due to there being a small rock in the sidewalk. The problem wasn’t that you didn’t have friends. Your best friend, the same one that had dragged you into that party all those months ago, would never miss a beat to be with you, to take you out for a random karaoke night or a late night drive on her car. It wasn’t that you didn’t love them, you loved how they would always make time for the small nuisance you would bother them about, even if it was just to tell them about a new meme you’d found but the way their presence would fill only a small space in your heart made it hard. Especially because you would see how happy they were anytime they talked about Mark, the stories of their lazy dates filled your heart with happiness and joy. It had become a habit to prioritize other’s happiness above your own, and soon it became a habit to prioritize getting jeno out of your memories out of the place in your heart he had seemed to crawl into and not leave. 

Memories you come to realize are fleeting, and unpredictable. They are made from what one process to be from the emotions they feel in the current moment that the memory is being stored into your brain. The thing about memories, it’s a thing that they don’t tell you in 12th grade biology class. School or teachers don’t teach you about the different emotions and images that memories bring along with them. The figments that surround every memory you have for the past year seem to somehow always lead back to jeno. He comes when you think about your favorite drink, hot chocolate, and the drink transports you back to jeno bringing you hot chocolate late at night after long after hour practices. His black hair makes a presence, when you think about the essay you had to turn in a week ago, you don’t remember much of the project but your brain, against your conscious will remembers the way jeno’s hair felt through your fingers as you played with his hair one late afternoon. The threads come together slowly, on a random day, in which the sun seems to almost be desperate to stay on the earth’s surface, as it turns the buildings around it into purple hues. It almost seems like it’s gasping for air, and as the purple slowly turns into pink and lastly disappears beyond the horizon it’s last breath taken and long gone you realize something. Like the sun, and the threads that are tied together in order to form memories, in order to form the segments of life that when pieces together form a picture that lets one create the story of a person or a setting, jeno seems to form in front of you. You sit on top of the mountain where you first met, but this time you are alone, the skyline displayed out in front of you. The trees have lost their leaves and some of them even still have some white specks of snow in them, that with one push of wind would make the tremble and shiver, letting go of the white covering. 

Jeno is next to you, his hand only a mere centimeter from yours, but you continue to look at the sky, the buildings that go on for as long as you can see. His memory, the way you rest your head on his shoulder and he listens and listens no judgement ever from his eyes, only support and encouragement to let you choose what will make you happy. A memory that repeats over and over again, but that isn’t your favorite memory from jeno. The last memory that forms in your head, after the roadtrips, to sweet make out sessions that led you two to leave whatever homework you had to work on for another time, or the sweet messages left at your phone that would bring a smile to your face even if he just texted you about the weather, to then get a back hug as he called you angel. 

Your favorite memory was the day you had been on the exact same spot you where now, except jeno had been next to you, breathing a little harder than normal he had just shown you a dance routine he’s been working on for as long as you could remember. His eyes didn’t shine like they usually did, they didn’t take in the light around him, and his face didn’t have traces of a grin that you had grown so used too. Instead he pushed you away, dark roots from his bleached hair he had decided to try out for the month had begun to show and you could see the stress that seemed to suffocate him. This was a different side of jeno, a side you hadn't seen, one that you tried to approach with a joke, only to be quickly shut down. A small argument over school and life had formed, in which you two had gone from being right next to each other to being feet apart, a scowl on your face, the same one that jeno bore. It was this memory that was your favorite because it had been the first time you had truly seen jeno be vulnerable, it had been the first time from the weeks you had gotten to know each other that you felt that the walls on walls he built around himself, the walls you built around yourself had been torn down. There had been no shared kisses, no shared moments in which one hadn’t jokingly filtered with the other until the first droplet fell down jeno’s face. The only reason you had seen it was because the sun, punctual as always, had descended flickers of light reflecting in his face. It was a small action but enough that there was some part that managed to push aside your pride and you approached him, arms wrapping around his waist. The memory makes you remember that it took him a second to wrap his arms around you, but in that moment, it seemed as only for a second in which you could provide some support for the boy in front of you, then he could give you the support you needed. Threads of the memory are vague, movements in which you can’t fully pinpoint what happened in between or later, in which you know that at one point music had begun to make its way up the mountain from one of the daily parties the teens would throw, but you two held onto each other. The song, isn’t one you can seem to recall, but it wasn’t one that people slow dance too, it wasn’t one in which you are supposed to hold onto the boy in front of you arms around his neck, as his eyes looked into yours, smiles grazing both of your features as your foreheads touched, a small kiss placed on your forehead. Moonlight cascading the both of you, pushing away the shadows that surrounded you both. 

It was any memory that you had in which jeno took part, in which you could feel him next to you, that was your favorite. Memories, you remember reading somewhere are your subconscious telling you something, it is the way the body and mind admit what you are too scared to take in for yourself. Memories of jeno next to you, and then not are what make you realize how much you hate not having the black haired boy, with the overly kind personality next to you. 

And the fact you didn’t call.

Days turn into months, as the winter snow leaves the tree’s branches leaving them barren. Only for the spring rain and occasional sun to let the leaves and flowers begin to spring back up again. Teachers are at the point in the year whether they aren’t quite sure if they want to give everyone in the class a pass just so they don’t have to hear the constant complaining on the amount of assignments a student has due by tomorrow, or if they’ll give more work, more assessments as a sort of payback for the hardships they’ve had to endure throughout the year.  

You are in music class, your professor going over the final assessments guidelines one last time before they are presented at the start of class tomorrow. The weight of the written sonnet feels heavy, and though the physical copy of the assignment is types out neatly somewhere in your computer, the original draft that you had begun to draft all those months ago is crumpled up in your jacket pocket, a constant reminder of everything you want and everything that you feel you can’t have. 

If you close your eyes just for a second you can see yourself back in your room, until the space changes and you are no longer in your room but are at the school’s roof. The warm spring breeze tangling your hair, and making the page in front of you flutter. You didn’t need the paper, the lyrics to the musical sonnet that had been shakespeare inspired seemed to be embedded into your brain so that when you weren’t thinking about the thousands of words you still had to write when it came to the labs for biology class, or the analysis of catcher in the rye for english class, the words would replay in your head over and over. The soft melody accompanying them. Humming to the song had become a habit, one that had developed like how one realizes that they bit ethier lip, or thumbs when they are stressed or bored. A habit that once you realize it’s there you can’t help but notice it every time you do it. The notebook paper continues to rustle, and you fold it and place it into the pocket of the black jean jacket, taking a deep breath as you do so. Unlike summer nights and winter afternoons, spring doesn't feel suffocating when the sun is out, because the clouds do a job of covering the sun before it burns your skin. The wind dies down, and you begin to humm to the sonnet, the words so familiar you were almost sure if your memory was to be taken, those words would remain embedded, and make their way back up because they were an acceptance of everything you were and everything you felt. 

The final bell has rang, and you can see the swarm of teenage bodies rush out of the school, some go directly to the bus stop in groups, others head to the grass fields that make up most of the school's building. You don’t think much about where others go, don’t dwell much if they get home safely or if their parents will pick them up. Dwelling too much on thoughts a feeling never helped anybody, it’s a mantra that has been drilled into you and almost every other teenager and young adult in this lifetime as movies and books tell you to focus on the present never on the future and most definitely not in the future. Yet you wonder if these books written by great authors that make you question the world around you, or movies that seem to transcend time if the authors themselves that preach about not dwelling too much on one moment if they themselves spent too much time focusing on the sound of their love’s laughter, or the way their nose would scrunch up a reaction to the world around them anytime they found something amusing. You wonder if the person or memory they were told or did think about so much that it caused them heartache had the ability to make them write the poems you had written. So you try to not dwell on the people, no larger than your thumb as they rush from one side of the campus to another, because if you thought about him, it, for too long the memories would rush back in. Instead you look down, the light vertigo causing you to snap back into some realm of reality. 

 Sitting down on the roof’s edge, legs dangling off the edge you continue to hum and sing to the melody that plays in your heart, confession to yourself, a confession to the dark haired boy that captured your heart. The tears seem to swell up over and over as you reach the bridge, and they stream silently, down your face. They run down landing on your hands, on the ripped jeans and doodle converse. Your mind drifts to the memories connected with the lyrics and the fact that as much as you wanted to not want to hear jeno’s voice especially after you had pushed him away, you couldn’t get rid of the way he knew you. He knew you better than at times you almost thought you knew yourself, it was a nuisance the way your heart would skip beats months after everything went down, how it would still accelerate when you two would make eye contact because he had apologized and you don’t know if it was because you had never felt this way before, or because you two kept meeting underneath the moonlight the same song that seemed to connect the two of in one string of fate that you had forgiven him. But forgiveness didn’t mean forgetting, it didn’t mean that you had wished he’d called and you hate him - or lack thereof to do so - when days passed and the beep boop ba a compilation of random noises jeno would make whenever he was confused, and your ringtone for him didn’t disturb you. 

Your voice breaks slightly as the melody in your head falls, fading into a non-existent background. The sun had begun to fall, but you don’t notice, eyes closed as you take in the world around you. Notes ending, song and the hum of love never confessed, never expressed, stolen by the wind. And that’s the thing about having your eyes closed, oblivious to the world and the people around you, because you don’t hear the opening and closing of the slightly rusted door. You don’t notice the boy with a leather jacket, hair almost covering his eyes that are filled with so much love but confusion by the words that leave your mouth. It’s the thing about the wind, that it takes a message and delivers it to whom it wants you unlike a phone call that is directed at who you choose. The wind is a free spirit, and it doesn’t travel far. To be more exact it travels the short span of a mere seconds, a mere feet to jeno whose mouth has fallen at the sound of your voice so raw and pure. It is the wind that calls him to you, the wind that makes him take slow steps to you. 

Wind, a warm breeze in the coming summer air, love that you don’t realize you have, you need until it’s wrapping its arms around you.

                         But mostly i hate the way i don’t hate you.

The moment you feel arms wrapping around you still. Every bone in your body stops moving, your legs stop swinging and your voice catches in your throat. It isn’t until you spot the small cassette tattoo on the wrist of the arms wrapped around you that you breathe again and push yourself back, a curse escaping your lips. Laughter rings in your ears as jeno holds you up from where you sit, and turns you around so that you face him. You begin to push him away, on instinct from weeks of telling yourself that you wanted nothing to do with the boy in front of you. That the way his eyes dimmed, and lips curved down by the light gesture of pushing him away didn’t affect you. It was a mantra, push him away, don’t get hurt, a mantra produced by a time of hurt and fear for being broken again. Something that you had come to realize though in the past week, the past day, past couple of minutes when someone’s arms had warped around you and you had wished it had been jeno, that the heart and the mind don’t always coincide. 

It is when you look up again, and jeno is already looking at you, hair illuminated by the descending sun, as it casted flames dancing across his features, and lighting up his eyes, that you smile. Some sort of smile that repairs something in jeno, because his eyes seem to be filled with hope again and he opens his mouth ready to speak, ready to tell you everything he wanted to say again, mostly to apologize but when he opens his mouth the words seem to be caught in his throat. Stuck, as if there was some force pulling them back, not letting them escape and reach you. Mouth opens and closes again, and it’s the sound of your voice as you call to him, and say something he can’t quite process, blocked by the noise that doesn’t leave his head that he can finally speak again. 

“June 21” those weren’t supposed to be the words that lef this mouth, and your confused look didn’t give him any confidence to continue whatever the hell he was gonna do, which at this point he truly didn’t know because this was supposed to be an apology but he had already apologized. Jeno decided to do his best, and try again, “that was the day we met. The day you helped me finish composing this beautiful song that helped me get into music school. The day where the second i heard you singing off the words i threw out into the open air hoping for someone to grab onto, you did, and my heart seemed to begin it’s freefall” a small smile graced your features, as you remembered the day, not knowing how much life would change. The small smile is all jeno needed to continue, gaining confidence even as happiness filled every inch of you, tears that you promised you wouldn’t shed in front of him steamed but not from sadness or anger this time. This time they were from a place of loss and happiness to the boy whose eyes conveyed so much more than the words he spoke, whose hand had come up to your cheek wiping away the spare tears that would come down. Ever so gentle and full, always him. 

“It was something I didn't think was possible, you know? Coming to this new school, everyone had come up with their own ideas of who i was, because of stories they had heard, only to find you. Headstrong as ever, always standing by whatever you believe even some like pluto is still a planet” you both laugh, it’s a quick one, more like a chuckle but it’s filled with joy, at the memory. “You who didn’t care what the world thought, only that if you put your mind to it you would get it done. I never meant to fall in love with you, never meant to make you cry because of something that shouldn’t have ever happened, I never meant to get you too hate me the way you probably do” his eyes softened, and he pulled away ever so slightly, “but here I am. And i now i most definitely don’t deserve it but y/n, i can’t deny it because since i first heard your voice that late night i think i fell for you, and it has been a constant free fall from there. So when i say it now, i mean it i fucking love you” the end was more of a ramble, a long list of words that made your heart flip and expand in your chest, making your smile grow and you could see the doubt in his eyes, you could see him retreat back into himself, he completely let you go when you spoke up again, “you want to know what i hate the most?” you didn’t wait for a response before speaking again, grabbing his hands in yours, and you willed him to look at you. 

“I hate the way that I don't hate you” you take a step closer to him, your faces so close the sun casting glows on you both. Two shadows becoming one behind you as the sun set, as one confessed to another the way they felt. “Because i don’t hate you, jeno. In fact it’s the opposite, because hate is not even close, not a tiny bit in resemblance to what i feel you for you,

Not even close, Not even a little bit,  Not even at all.” 

adfghjk and it’s finally done !!! i had so so so much fun writing this piece and seriously hope you guys enjoyed it !! im such a sucker for jeno and this movie in general lol. i struggled w the ending so i hope it came out well :) n e ways,,, please please tell me your thoughts on it, what you liked? what you didn’t like? things i could improve on. much love to you all !!

masterlist

[creampuffqueen]

Just Like This | Chapter Two

a/n: Hey friends! It's been a hot second, but here's chapter two! This chapter is about a high school football game, but written by someone who has never attended a high school football game as a student (I was always performing haha) I also have no idea how football works and yet wrote Rayla explaining it to Callum! So please forgive any inaccuracies lol. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Word count: 3846

Warnings: Dirty jokes/innuendos, language

Read on Ao3

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Friday, October 5th, 2020

Callum’s house, 6:02 PM

HONK HONK HONK!

Rayla leaned on the horn of her car with a snicker, face splitting into a wide grin when the front door of Callum’s house opened. He was still putting his jacket on, and his mother followed him out, fussing.

“Have fun!” Sarai called as Callum clambered into the passenger seat, face red.

“Bye Mrs. Prince!” Rayla shouted back, waving goodbye as she put the vehicle in drive. Callum just groaned, putting his face in his hands and shaking his head.

“God, my mom’s embarrassing.”

“No, it’s sweet,” Rayla assured, “At least you know she cares.”

Callum quirked an eyebrow, but didn’t press at the statement hidden in those words. Instead, he turned his gaze out the window. “This isn’t the way to school, Rayla.”

“Duh, I’m not stupid,” She snarked back, “We have to go pick up Andie and Callisto. I just didn’t tell your mom, because technically I’m only supposed to drive with one other person, but I don’t really care about that rule.”

“Fair enough.” Callum opened up the glovebox, rifling through all the trash to find the CDs stored beneath. Her car was old enough that the radio still used CDs rather than just connecting to a phone. He found one that seemed good, and put it in the player.

At the next red light. Rayla took her eyes off the road to glare at Callum with full force as Taylor Swift’s voice filled her little car. “Where did you even find that?”

Her best friend gave a knowing smirk. “It was actually at the top of the pile. Which is weird, since you supposedly hate Taylor Swift.”

The light turned green, and Rayla was forced to look away, though her ears still burned. “I never said I hated all her music. Just the new stuff.”

“Oh, so you’re a country Taylor fan?”

“If you don’t shut up and change the music before Andromeda gets in this car I swear to god I will throw you onto the concrete.”

Callum responded by nonchalantly tossing his legs onto the dashboard. “What, like we don’t all already know you’re not as badass as you pretend to be? You’ve got a reputation to hold with us?”

“I hate you.”

He dragged a hand through his fluffy brown hair, leaning further back in the seat. “No, you love me.”

Rayla gave him her middle finger, even as her face seemed to suddenly catch fire. If only you knew.

Thankfully, she pulled up outside of Andromeda’s house just in time. The other girl could diffuse some of the sudden tension, and maybe in a few minutes Rayla could look back at Callum without her head going all fuzzy.

“Hellooooo fellow sexy people!” Andromeda crooned as she plopped into the backseat, “How are we all feeling this fine evening?”

Glancing behind him, Callum’s eyes widened at the other girl’s outfit. She was completely decked out in the colors of Katolis High School, red and gold covering her entire body.

“I thought you were just wearing that getup for the first game?”

Andromeda shrugged. “Why not for every game? It’s fun.” She tugged at the red and gold jersey emblazoned with the number eight, then twirled her silvery hair tied into two pigtails with red ribbon.

“Let’s go get Callisto,” Rayla suggested, pulling out of her friend’s driveway.

“Perfect,” Andromeda replied.

As they drove, Rayla continued to speak, “Ground rules: you and Callisto keep your hands to yourselves in my car. I don’t care what you do at the game, but I’m not having any bodily fluids on my nice seats. Am I clear?”

“You and Callum with your ground rules,” The other girl sighed, “But fine. You two clearly think way worse of us than we actually are, though.”

Rayla and Callum shared a grin between them. Andromeda and Callisto were great on their own, but ever since they’d begun dating freshmen year they’d starting getting all handsy. Rayla knew, because Andie shared everything with her, that they hadn’t gone all the way, not yet.

Key word: yet.

And god help her, they were not going to complete their yet in her backseat.

It wasn’t long before they pulled up to Callisto’s house finding them similarly decked out for the Friday night game.

“Well now I’m feeling underdressed,” Callum snorted, glancing at the couple behind him. True to their word, they were keeping a perfectly respectable distance, but everyone knew it wouldn’t last.

“You’re wearing red,” Callisto suggested awkwardly, gesturing to his read scarf. “Just not the right shade.”

“I’ve got extra ribbons for my hair, if you want some, Rayla,” Andromeda offered.

As they pulled into the stadium parking lot, the sun rapidly setting behind them, Rayla turned back to her friend with a grin. “Yes please. You’re so good at hair, Andie.”

The group piled out of the car, Callisto and Andromeda holding hands, as expected. Callum turned to her with a smile and offered his arm. Nudging his side affectionately, Rayla hooked it with her own, desperately trying to keep her face from reddening.

Soon enough they were inside the stadium, and Callum had let go of her arm to pull out his phone and ask where the rest of their friends were. Rayla’s phone buzzed, probably from the group chat, and she opened it up to find where Claudia, Ram, and Skor were sitting.

Claudia: We’re on the far right of the bleachers

Claudia: Kind of near where the band is sitting. We’ve got a really good view close to the top

Ram: Hurrrrry

Andromeda: stfu ram, we’re coming

Ram: If Callisto’s with you then you’ll certainly be coming ;)

Andromeda: I’m going to obliterate your tiny twig ass

Claudia: ANYWAY

Claudia: My friend Nyx from theater class is here, is it okay if she sits with us? Maybe not for the whole game bc she says her friends are coming but just for the start

Their small group began to make their way to the far side of the stadium, where Claudia said they were, while Andromeda still had her nose in her phone. Probably insulting Ram, if Rayla had to guess. The idea of another person staying with them bothered her, if she was honest. They already had their friend group; they didn’t need to add anyone else.

Callum: Yeah sure, it’s fine

With a slight sigh, Rayla followed her friends up the steps of the bleachers until Claudia came into view, standing up and waving. Callum bounded up the stairs, a wide grin on his face. When he reached her, Claudia gave him a quick hug, then released him to reach for Rayla.

“Everyone, this is Nyx!” After hugging everyone, Claudia turned towards her other friend to introduce her. Nyx was sitting casually on the metal seats, and she gave a cheerful wave.

“Hi Nyx,” Everyone seemed to chorus in unison, making the other girl chuckle slightly.

Soon everyone had settled onto the metal bleachers, waiting for the game to begin. Tonight they were going against Neolandia, a longtime rival. The other school had a bit of a reputation for playing dirty, and everyone had resolved to keep a sharp eye out during the game for any instance of foul play.

But every thought about the impending football game flew from Rayla’s head as Callum leaned against her side, his soft hair brushing right below her eyes.

“Aren’t you cold?” He asked, giving a pointed glance to her bare arms.

“I probably will be later,” She admitted, taking in her outfit. Jeans, Converse, and a red and gold t-shirt wouldn’t do much to shield her from the cold when the sun went down.

“Just tell me and I’ll share my jacket,” Callum promised with a good-natured laugh. Rayla’s eyes widened a bit. Was he serious?

She was jolted from her thoughts by a sudden tap on her shoulder. Andromeda sat behind her, several hair ties and various ribbons clutches in her hands.

“Braids or pigtails, Rayla?”

“Er…” Slightly unsure, she took one of the red ribbons from her friend’s hand and twisted it slightly in her own.

“Braids,” Callum finished the sentence for her, “Your hair looks good in braids.”

“It really does look good like that,” Andromeda hummed appreciatively, dragging Rayla to sit closer to her so she could brush her fingers through her silver hair.

With the motion of Andromeda rhythmically combing her hair, Rayla allowed herself to relax in the familiarity of her friends. All around her they talked idly, Claudia’s snort-laugh punctuating sentences, Callum’s voice cracking providing plenty of entertainment.

The buzzer rang to begin the game just as Andromeda tied off the second braid, flicking both of them over Rayla’s shoulders so she could see them better.

“Oh, they’re so pretty!” She leaned back to give Andromeda a hug. “Thanks, Andie.”

“GO SOREN!” Claudia screamed suddenly, causing Rayla to nearly topple backwards into Andromeda’s lap. Everyone around them flinched, and they got a couple dirty looks from the other spectators.

Claudia didn’t seem to care, though. She was standing, cheering ecstatically for the blob moving down below, who must have been Soren. At some point she’d acquired pom-poms. From where, Rayla had no clue.

Callum and Rayla shared a look, neither of them lasting very long before bursting out laughing. If Claudia noticed, she didn’t show it, and kept cheering in the stands for her older brother.

“Woohoo!” Andromeda pumped her fist, though she didn’t stand up and join the junior girl. Instead she scooted over on the metal seat to sit next to Callisto, nearly tossing herself in their lap. Her partner just rolled their eyes and wrapped an arm around Andromeda’s waist.

Claudia’s cheering eventually faded into the background, letting Rayla focus on the field. They were rapidly taking yard lines, but it was only the first quarter. Things could change. Though she sure hoped not; if they were going to lose a game to anyone it had better not be Neolandia.

Then, on the next play, someone tossed the ball high and far, and Rayla was on the edge of her seat, and it was getting closer and closer to the endzone-

“TOUCHDOWN!” Claudia roared, sweet demeanor evaporating in the spirit of the game. “WE GOT A TOUCHDOWN!”

“We got a what?” Callum glanced up from his sketchbook. Both Rayla and Claudia whipped around to glare at him, neither realizing he’d brought it out. In an unspoken agreement, Claudia distracted him with a piercing stare, giving Rayla just the opening she needed to snatch the book from his hands.

“Hey!” The other boy yelped, but it was too late, and Rayla was already sprinting down the steps of the bleachers, sketchbook in hand.

“You’ll get it back after you watch the game!” She shouted from below, sticking her tongue out to blow a raspberry.

“Oh, very mature Rayla!”

“Come watch the game!”

His pout was absolutely adorable, and Rayla flushed at the thought, waving the stolen sketchbook high in the air. “Come watch with me!”

Finally, he relented, though not without a fair amount of complaining and cursing as he traipsed down the bleachers to get to her side.

“You are an evil person.”

She giggled, tucking the book under an arm. “I’m the weirdly sexy villain on a kids’ TV show.”

Callum just sighed. “Not funny.”

“Excuse you!” Rayla shot back, giving a dramatic wail, “I am the funniest person in this entire school!”

He made a weak grab for his sketchbook, but Rayla simply danced out of the way. “Nuh uh, no sir. You are going to watch the game with me.”

“But I don’t even know how football works,” Callum complained, gesturing to the field. The timer was paused, and Katolis was ahead, though not by much. It was going to be a tight game.

“Then I’ll teach you. And you’ll have fun, and learn to enjoy football, and we can all be a big happy friend group and you won’t have your face buried in a sketchbook.”

“For the record, I like having my face buried in a sketchbook-”

“Nonsense!” Rayla exclaimed, “You’re going to have fun. Without this old thing.”

“Alright, alright,” Callum sighed, “I’ll put it away. Can I please have it back?”

Rayla finally relented with a triumphant grin. “Let’s go back up top; you can see way better. Plus we’re near the band so we get to hear their stand tunes up close and personal.”

They arrived back at their seats just as the timer started again, and Rayla began her intense rundown of the inner workings of football. Callum tried to pay attention, but she could tell everything was going right over his head. Finally, she just settled for, “Cheer whenever our side is cheering, and you’ll fit right in.”

In the time it took to explain the first quarter had nearly ended, with Neolandia pulling ahead. Claudia was doing an elaborate pompom routine to rival the cheerleaders down below, even involving Nyx for parts.

“Gimme an S! Gimme an O! Gimme a R-E-N! What does that spell!?”

“Soren!” Nyx finished, and Claudia waved her pompoms triumphantly. Rayla watched them both with slightly piqued interest, flicking her ribbon-braided hair back and forth over her shoulder.

“Rayla, Callum-” She was pulled from her thoughts by Skor’s booming voice as he walked near them. “First quarter is over, we’re going to get some snacks. Come with?”

“I’m starving!” Callum chuckled, “It’s definitely time to stuff my face with junk food.”

“There’s the football game spirit!” Rayla cheered, clapping her friend on the shoulder. “Let’s go consume sugar-rich foods in unhealthily excessive portion sizes!”

The small group left Nyx and Claudia to their pompoms, and Callisto and Andromeda to… whatever it was they were doing. Perhaps trying to fuse their faces together? Whatever it was, it was gross and making everyone want to leave for a minute.

Beneath the bleachers was crowded with students and parents alike. Callum linked one hand with her, offering the other to Ram, attempting to keep from losing their group in the crowd.

It was a struggle to keep her face neutral. All her thoughts suddenly surged away from her head, instead focusing on that single point of contact. Were her hands sweating? God, she hoped they weren’t. She hoped she wasn’t the only one feeling too many emotions to count.

In the line for the snack bar (or, what she hoped was the line, as it was too crowded to properly tell) Callum didn’t meet her eyes, but his grip was firm as he pointed out the menu. Ram and Skor stood nearby, having foregone holding Callum’s other hand. Rayla wasn’t sure if she was happy for it or not.

“If we pool our money we can get a hot dog for everybody,” Skor suggested, “And maybe some popcorn too.”

“Yeah,” Callum agreed, “Let’s get a few popcorns and we can all share in pairs. Like you two, Claudia and Nyx, me and Rayla, and then the two leeches.”

“If they ever come up for air,” Rayla snickered, and she was greeted with Callum’s resounding voice-cracky laugh, and he truly turned to meet her eyes.

“Wanna bet they’ll eat it out of each others’ mouths?”

Rayla pretended to gag, “They’d better not.”

“Oh! Wait! They’ll eat the hot dogs like in the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp!” Ram snickered, and his suggestion was met with varying levels of disgust.

Finally, it was their turn to order. As they all gathered up their food Rayla could hear the buzzer on the field and more cheering from their side, so she hustled her friends back onto the bleachers.

Just in time, too. On the field, the ball flew into the endzone, and the entire Katolis side erupted into cheers. The band started playing a tune, and the cheerleaders began a mini routine.

“THAT’S MY BROTHER!” Claudia screamed over the roaring of the stadium, bouncing so hard Rayla wondered how she hadn’t simply flown away yet. Andromeda was standing on her seat to cheer, Callisto’s arm wrapped her around her waist to keep her steady.

“Gold! And red! We’ll knock ‘em dead!” On the edge of the field, the cheerleaders chanted carrying it throughout the stands. The band kicked into a higher gear, playing the school’s iconic fight song that had everyone clapping to the beat. Out on the field, Rayla could spot Soren’s blond head among the other players, pumping his fists in triumph.

“So I’m assuming we did something good?” Callum shouted over the din, wading through the throng of people to sit back down on their metal seats. One of his hands was still attached to hers, and Rayla had no intentions of letting go any time soon.

“Yes, dummy!” She giggled back, pointing to the scoreboard. They finally were able to reach their seats, and plopped back down while the cheers began to fade. Callum had been holding one of the bags of popcorn, and he placed it between them so they both could share. Ram and Skor passed out the rest of the food, and the group all relaxed once more.

When the game was finally up and running again, Nyx turned away from Claudia’s intense one-woman cheer session to face Rayla and Callum, plopping pieces of popcorn in her mouth. Her eyes, one blue and one amber, honed in on Rayla in such a way that an embarrassed flush crept up her cheeks with little warning.

“You two look cozy,” She remarked with a smirk. Rayla’s face burned hotter, and she resisted the urge to scoot away. Callum blinked in surprise, glancing between Rayla and Nyx.

“Callum’s my best friend,” Rayla replied, though it sounded lame, even to her. “We’ve always been close.”

The other girl just smiled broader. “It’s so cute. At least you guys are way more subtle than those two over there.” She gave a pointed glance behind them, and Rayla didn’t even have to turn to know that Andromeda and Callisto were making out. Again.

“Oh, uh, we’re- we’re not dating…” Callum said awkwardly.

“You’re not?” Nyx blinked up in mock surprise. “I mean, you’re sharing a popcorn, she’s practically in your lap-”

“I am not!” Indignantly, Rayla shot a glare at the other girl.

Nyx just rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, lovebugs.” Reaching for more popcorn, she turned back around in her seat to chat with Claudia some more.

“Well, she’s something,” Callum muttered under his breath, “Going out and assuming things.” He met Rayla’s eyes, then looked away just as quickly, like he hadn’t meant to be heard. “I mean, us dating?”

Rayla’s whole face was on fire. Scratch that, her whole body was on fire. Was she having a panic attack? Is this what a panic attack felt like?

“Crazy, huh?” The words came out of her mouth before she could stop them. The two teenagers shared an awkward laugh that did nothing to lessen the tension, then went back to eating their popcorn.

Rayla didn’t have much of an appetite anymore.

The rest of the game was a blur she hardly remembered, points and scores blending from one to the next. On the outside she was smiling, laughing, cheering. On the inside she was empty.

Before long the last buzzer had rung, and Katolis had won the game by the skin of their teeth. The band played their final tune, and everyone began to vacate the stands.

With the crowd that had come to the game, it took a while to make it back to Rayla’s car. They said their goodbyes to their friends while they walked their separate ways, promising to see them again on Monday.

It was pretty late, nearly 10:30, so the chatter that had filled the car on the way in had lessened now. Andromeda and Callisto were even talking, rather than engaged in a lip-lock. In the passenger seat, Callum once again had his feet up on the dashboard, and was sketching by the light of the stadium floodlights as they waited their turn to leave the parking lot.

When they finally exited, the talking stilled even further. There was no sound in the car save for the radio, and the quiet scratching of pencil lead on paper.

Callisto was dropped off first, Andromeda not too long after. And then it was just Rayla and Callum, alone once again.

She pulled into his driveway and put the car in park, letting it idle while he gathered his things. He reached for the door handle, but something stopped him. He turned back to face her.

“Rayla, I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” She echoed, “For what?”

Callum scratched at the back of his neck. “For making things all awkward. You know I’m not good being put on the spot like that, but I just made things worse and I’m sorry.”

“You mean about Nyx?”

“Yeah.”

Rayla shrugged. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. It’s her who should be sorry, assuming and being an ass and all that.”

“Still.” Callum glanced down at his sketchbook, still open. After a moment’s hesitation, he reached down and tore out the page. Rayla only had enough time to furrow her eyebrows in confusion - Callum never tore out pages of his sketchbook - before the page was in her hands.

Oh.

It was a picture of her. She was smiling, and her hair was braided with ribbons. It was a picture of her just tonight.

“You’re my best friend, Rayla.” She glanced back up to see Callum’s earnest expression as he spoke. “I don’t wanna let something stupid come between us. Whatever Nyx said doesn’t matter, okay? We know what we are.”

“Yeah,” Rayla said, punctuating the sentence with a half-hearted laugh.

“Okay,” Callum chuckled, “Glad we’re on the same page. We communicate, you know?” His grin was real as he stepped out of the car.

“See you on Monday, Rayla.”

She waited for him to reach his front door, making sure he got inside safely, before she pulled away. She was so exhausted that she drove all the way home nearly in a daze (which would have been way more unsafe if she hadn’t just been driving through a neighborhood).

It wasn’t until she was back at home in her own driveway, car turned off, that everything truly hit.

If he hadn’t been clear before, he was crystal now. He may as well have outright said, ‘I just see you as a friend and I’ll never see you as anything else’. Maybe being so upfront would make things easier, and keep her from clinging to stupid, false hope.

Rayla refused to let herself cry. Don’t cry, not over him. He’s still your friend. Take what you can get.

So she got out of the car, went inside, and went to bed. And maybe she cried, just a little.

No, you love me, he’d said with that adorable little grin of his.

Okay, maybe more than just a little.

~~~~

a/n: AHHHHHH I feel bad for Rayla and I PUT HER THROUGH THIS PAIN. They never even got to share Callum's jacket because Nyx made things awkward :(

Tag List (comment to be added or removed):

@hipster-rapunzel

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom season 2, ep 12-16 thoughts! these episodes, in comparison to the first 10 or so, felt way more laid back and low-stakes, which I appreciate sometimes. I didn't appreciate how lazy jack's halfa design was in masters of time, it made me so annoyed I redesigned it. 👎🏻 u_u

see prev episode thoughts in this tag <3

-'picking a fight with me and my upgraded form!' 'you upgraded to a mullet?' DANNNNY. YOU CANT SAY THAT TO TECHNUS. YOUVE HAD A MULLET TWICE NOW ('fun' split danny, and evil future danny BOTH HAD THEM). I HAVE THE RECEIPTS.

-danny seeing technus hurting valerie and yelling I AM GOING TO BREAK YOU IN HALF. SAMEEEE <3

-axion labs is now a part of vladco. FUCK YOU VLAD. hes not even really IN this episode, but just thought I'd throw out a nice fuck you anyway.

-'capable of blasting a single person into space in (2) minutes!' tucker. that would kill someone. i mean yeah they might get to space, but theres NO WAY THEY WOULDNT CATCH FIRE, OR THEIR ORGANS WOULDNT LIQUIFY BECAUSE OF THE STRAIN. THEY'D PROBABLY PASS OUT BEFORE THEN, BUT. ...no, okay, I get why vlad bought this company. this is RIGHT up his alley.

-danny KNOWS VAL DIDNT DO THIS, THAT SOMEONE STOLE THE SUIT. AND SPENDING ALL NIGHT CHATTING WITH HER. <3 and val is a 9TH DEGREE BLACKBELT?? danny's mom is, too!! omg and she hunts ghosts, his parents would love her. and her fav fruit is kumquat bc its a funny word. im so with danny val is amazing. I love her and I Do Not Want To Hear It From Sam.

-I knew danny wanted to be an astronaut, but the bowling tidbit is like. yes give me more useless info abt these characters, I love tiny details that make them feel more human, and im glad hes got hobbies aside from ghost stuff, we dont really see a lot of that!!! (I mean, we knew 'fun' danny from when he split himself in half liked bowling, so obv it makes sense he LIKES it, but hes very GOOD at it. so proud of him, bowling king) val calling him neil armstrong and them teasing each other. LOVE THAT.

-technus you are my favorite grandpa for setting this up. SAM WHY ARE YOU BEING SO CREEPY BE HAPPY FOR YOUR FRIEND!!! STOP SPYING ON THEM!!! who actually cares if technus did 'set them up' together, theyre having fun and enjoy each others company!!! 'you think the universe wants you two to be together?' 'i dunno, but maybe /I/ do!' EXACTLY DANNY!!! SOO TRUE.

-and valerie being happy sam said she wants to try and be happy for them and make room at the lunch table for them. and hugging sam over it. VAL NEEDS MORE FRIENDS.

-VAL GOING AFTER TECHNUS IN HER SUIT WITH (1) MILK, AND (1) TREE BRANCH AND KEYS!!!. I LOVE YOUUUU BEST GIRL. her new suit kicks ass

-dannys like 'HEY IM AN ASTRONAUT :D' AW. ...HES IN SPACE... the fact he's actually intending to give her the ring. with SAMS NAME ON IT?? IM CRINGING DANNY NO. YOU CANT DO THAT...thank god he didnt. thank god valerie cut it off and said they can just stay friends for now. tbh, they both have a lot on their plates!! they obv both still like each other...it can be a future thing!! when she knows about phantom! youre 14 theres no need to rush. I just want her to have friends and be happy :(

-...danny struggles to do (1) pull up. SAME. but all the ghost fighting in phantom form REALLY doesnt carry over at ALL? that sucks

-sam being as fit as she is, is not just a goth. shes a goth jock.

-honey I Shrank Our Kid, One of his Enemies, and his Bully: the episode

-dash's crush on phantom is So Obvious. fitness buddies :) watching them interact always makes me laugh. also, phantom, with PANTS. 'how many costume changes you gonna go through, what is this, vegas??' DASSH DJKSFHASKDF

-MADDIE GOING AFTER THE MOUSE WITH A BROOM, WHAT THE FUCK. AAAH. JUST BUY SOME KIND OF MOUSE TRAP.

-danny likes lime and vinegar chips. which sound very good.

-'our boy finally has the physical prowess of a 60 year old president!' ...poor danny LMAO

-'what's wrong with beauty pageants' oh tucker you sweet naïve child. what ISNT wrong with them. who approved this for a high school?? (I mean, yes. unfortunately child pageants exist, but...) also danny and tucker once again treating the pretty girls like objects. I need to meet the grown man who wrote this, I just want to talk...

-prince aragon's dragon form reminds me of maleficent (color scheme wise) which is always a bonus. considering the episode is called beauty marked, I feel like the sleeping beauty references are deliberate

-sam with the fake fangs. once again her accessories never miss. hate the 'not like other girls, girls who get sucked into this kind of thing are all shallow and all want to be carbon copies' bs tho.

-sam trying to be the Worst Bride, being rude as shit. DORA IS GOING TO GET KILLED. DID YOU MISS THE PART WHERE SHE SAID THE PRINCE WILL HAVE HER HEAD IF YOU ARENT THE IDEAL BRIDE. YOU /KNOW/ DANNY WILL COME SAVE YOU. JUST ACT CHILL UNTIL THEN. even if you were doing fine to get him to take off the crown, consider maybe not letting his poor sister get punished also?? sure, she could also take off the crown and has dragon powers, but did you know that for sure?? dora didnt even really realize it until you guys talked!! (or at least, she was scared to stand up to him. you had no guarantee she would...) but. good for dora. ANOTHER friendly ghost to add to the List :)

-tucker is so under appreciated in his time. if he was doing a tech-based campaign today he'd have a better shot. people in 2004 had NO IDEA how much tech would be a part of our day-to-day lives...altho. tbh if you're going to be running for student council president, maybe you should..focus on things to actually improve the school? since he's going for a tech angle, he could say like, he would be running fundraisers for the schools computers to be upgraded, etc? we've already SEEN he can be good at money-making entrepreneur type stuff!!

-oh my god wait. this episode is JUST YUGIOH?????! A REBORN PHAROH USING A TEENAGER AS A VESSEL?? YESSSSSS

-tucker using his new minion to feed him grapes and carry him. AND LOCUSTS ONTO THE BULLIES. I love how when he's possessed, he gains winged eyeliner.

-this episode is giving me big 'plankton makes everyone in bikini bottom his slaves and build monuments of him from the spongebob movie' vibes. and the pharaoh has a traitor who works for him? VERY big yugioh vibes. aknadin confirmed

-I like that danny is still completely exhausted after using ghostly wail. (still patiently waiting on him to get duplication)

-LOVE the fenton's 80s outfits. I get hes 14 and embarrassed by everything they do because theyre his parents, but. cmon, this is one objectively cool thing theyve done. love 80s fashion.

-...was vlad just standing on that streetlight waiting for danny to come out? how'd he know they'd be coming out the back? how long has he been up there???

-oh, wait, his ecto-acne has flareups? that SUCKS. danny was...well I dont want to say he was LUCKY HE HALF-DIED, but he was lucky his was pretty instant (I'm assuming that had to do with the power/scale of the portals being different?) I remember in the ep we met him, vlad made a point of saying he was stuck in a hospital for a long time, so. that really actually sucks and I feel bad. not that it excuses anything he's done...but like. it does suck.

-vlad being so sure danny wouldnt help him he made it somehow contagious to his friends to make sure he'd get help? danny is a nice boy, he wouldve helped if it was anyone else. the only reason he wouldn't have is because of the shit vlad did to him, on purpose. vlad 100% dug his own grave by being the biggest asshole, so it is very hard to feel bad for him.

-clockwork is back!!! and making danny learn lessons The Hard Way. Uhhh, okay. I kind of get Danny’s logic, that time traveling this far back would prevent vlad from becoming a halfa also, ergo no arch nemesis or ectoacne to worry about. But the fact that was basically the first solution Danny came up with to solve this problem is actually so funny. It’s so extreme

-APPRICIATION FOR THESE 80S LESBIAN BG CHARACTERS.

-vlad telling maddie in the lab (in the 80s) he has something he's wanted to tell her 'for a long time'...how long have they known each other? I assumed they met in college, since jack always calls vlad his college buddy/roommate, so jack and vlad for sure met in college, but did vlad know maddie longer? thats surprising if so. Tho we don’t know what year of college they’re in so they could mean they met as freshmen and a few years have past…speaking of maddie shes crushing the 80s look.

-vlad blames jack, but. maybe dont stick your face 2 inches from the portal??! THIS FEELS LIKE LAB SAFETY BASICS. IF SOMETHING HAS POTENTIAL TO BE DANGEROUS, DONT GET NEAR IT. WITH YOUR FACE UNPROTECTED IN ANY WAY. (altho jack didnt really give a Big Warning besides screaming BONZAI. so. also that, but cmon.) also, they need gloves, goggles, and to pull all of their hair back tbh. but fuck lab safety, I guess!

-cryyyyinnng at how lazy they were with jack's ghost form design, its just plasmius' design on jack!!! you couldve given him his own design!!

-there. I did that in about 10 minutes and its somehow less lazy than what made it into the show. embarrassing! better yet, I think the episode would've been better if maddie would've gotten the ectoacne. or maybe its just me, wanting to see her design! anyway. I'm sure people have already done redesigns of them both as halfas. I have to go look after I finish this watch through. Also mildly frustrated jacks resentment and bitterness is basically also a copy paste of vlads backstory. They’re different characters, I really don’t think jack would stew in bitterness and jealousy the same way vlad would!! I also don’t think he’d give up after one time of trying to hunt ghosts and getting laughed at. Our canon timeline says different…I dunno, I get it was for laughs, but I’m annoyed because the POTENTIAL this plot has…

-did vlad really wear a stupid cheese hat to his wedding. ok actually that kinda rules. and the cheese door knocker. the dairy-only buffet table. vlad still got rich, just on being the New Dairy King. (Assuming that means he owns a lot of dairy businesses?) ok! this actually is great. hope maddie isn't lactose intolerant!

-'no matter how hard I tried, I could never get rid of my ghost half, the half I knew Maddie could never accept' ohh, ouch, what a horrible thing to say to her HALF GHOST SON. 'YOUR MOM WILL NEVER ACCEPT YOU' BASICALLY.

-maddie strapping danny to the table with a lazer pointed at him in a secret lab she keeps from vlad that she makes a point of saying is sound proof so he can scream all he wants...CHRIST. DANNYS POOR PYSCHE.

-also, not to feel bad for alternate vlad (because, he did lie to maddie saying jack blames her and never wants to see her again...) but. being married to a woman 20+ years and she immediately goes back to jack? if she didnt love vlad and feels like she had to hide shit from him, and says she wasted her best years with him, WHY MARRY HIM. it feels like leading him on!!! cannot believe im feeling bad for vlad, but. this alternate timeline vlad is significantly Less Horrible than Our Vlad. did she not think she'd get funding for her ghost stuff? (which, fair assumption since they're considered 'ghost fanatics/nuts in canon...but...) why did she think jack or vlad would be her ONLY OPTIONS? be like your sister. be single. Actually, this au could’ve been really interesting if after the accident, vlad lied to her and said jack never wanted to see her again, but she stays single. Imagine how much that would bug vlad… like, in her mind, it was never a competition it was jack or no one type situation…

-danny being like 'leave him ALONE' this jack is a HOMEWRECKER, DANNY. let them go to court and settle this at the least. ...or just throw vlad into the portal. (100% human, defenseless vlad) CHRIST, MADDIE THATS BRUTAL. THATS MURDER.

-danny seeing his mom immediately accepting him and his dad being half ghosts in this universe, if I was him this would be a great sign that his universe's maddie would also.

-*maddie voice* "clockwork will help!" *2 seconds later, with clockwork* "I will Not Help." TOUGH LOVE KING. YES LET DANNY SEE THE SODA HIMSELF AND DEVOLP BETTER OBSERVATION SKILLS.

-when clockwork ""reset time to the way it was"" just before danny "meddled"" ...did he really erase a whole alternate timeline? ...damn. because maddie and danny both called it an alternate timeline by name, it splitting when the college incident went different, so it wouldnt have really mattered if he reset it, right. like because danny's timeline is on a different stream? why didnt clockwork just. show danny a replay and not Reset That Timeline. wh...I wonder how many people that Erased From Existence. Anyway! once again stating clockwork is casually terrifying!

[helliontherapscallion]

omg pls share the story abt the lecture from that girl’s dad (only if u feel like it) but seriously ppl it’s not that hard to put a mask on to help the spread of a virus. just wear it, it keeps u safe. and for the ppl who don’t care then just wait til it affects u, bcs covid isn’t a game. I just wish ppl were more serious abt it

Ok so sit down and buckle up kiddos and grab some snacks bc this is a helluva ride

Little background info: I have been a section leader for both my junior and senior years now. When the new freshmen came in my first year of being section leader I was hyped as hell. And then this new freshman whips out a lighter and lights it WHILE WE’RE INSIDE THE SCHOOL MIGHT I ADD with a straight face looking off into the distance before we ask her to put it away. She also always has a pocket knife on her that we found on the ground during band camp. I’ll call her POS. 

I tried to like POS I really did, but then she turned out to be a bigoted racist asshole (she also drinks deer blood straight from the corpse and simps over jeffery dahmer so even more red flags). It was extremely hard for me to treat her like I did with the other people in my section, but I managed to treat her the same as the other people and avoided her for the most part (thank god she wasn’t in my subsection I would’ve actually gone insane)

Flash forward to this year. Covid was hitting full force and we had to quarantine for the first two months of our season setting us back by a lot. She was wishywashy about rejoining but as the most senior leader of my section my band director was on my ass about getting a straight answer from her and fast. So I kinda had to force her to give me an answer (which she told me she was doing it quickly which leads me to think she already knew she was doing it) so she already was going into the season hating my guts

When we finally had an in person rehearsal for the first time, she wasn’t wearing a mask so when I asked her where it was she looked at me like I was the dumbass and said in a matter-of-fact tone “it’s in my pocket” and pointed to the confederate flag bandana hanging out of her pocket. Those four words told me that this season was going to be a fuckin long one with her. I just deadpanned (she couldn’t see it tho bc mask, sunglasses, and floppy hat blocking my entire face) and said “I’d rather it be on your face. (band director and marching instructor’s names) will have my ass if they see you not wearing one.” She rolls her eyes and puts it on (at least it was over her nose)

A few months go by with me telling her constantly to put on a mask bc I am responsible for my section and I’d be damned if one of them got sick bc of one idiot being stupid that I could prevent. She is getting madder and madder with each passing rehearsal. 

Band camp rolls around and it changed from 5 13 hour days to 15 3 hour ones and I am already done with her bs. We get our dots and I mentally groan bc she’s next to me for the vast majority of the show. She is between me (an asthmatic) and my close friend (vvv immunocompromised and also hates her, I’ll call her S) so now I’m more worried about covid going around the section. It was in this time that I find out that at least 5 other people out of 20 also have pre existing conditions that make them susceptible. So now I make it even more my mission to make her wear a mask. 

It was in the middle of band camp when she is yet again not wearing a mask (we were just marching without instruments) and I turn to her and as kindly as possible (it was the second time that day) asked her to put on her mask. She once again rolls her eyes and says “ya know, (band director) walked past me 3 times and hasn’t said shit, so I think I’m gonna listen to him and not you.” S and another friend of mine looks over in shock cuz she just talked back to me. They were about to say something but I wove them off. POS wants to fuck with me? Fine. I’ll just go full force with this. She wants petty?? I’ll give her petty, I’ve been holding off all season. 

So I’m marching there for the next twenty minutes quietly seething and counting more aggressively. She’s getting annoyed, but I pull the section leader card and tell her that she needs to be counting as loud as I am bc her feet was lowkey off time. After we break off for a gush and go (very short water break), I go straight to my band director and use my limited water break to tell him what she told me. He apologizes and says that he thought she was just taking a breather. He tells her to put on a mask and she does so and glares at me the rest of the rehearsal. 

She blocks me on all social media and I obviously clown on her in private with the other section leader (he’s more of a pacifist and never really told her to wear a mask which kinda pissed me off but I understood) until she makes a passing comment to my other friend about using the knife she kept in her boot. Now he tells me cuz he’s a good friend and I’m shitting myself at that point bc holy shit I might get shanked. 

I think about telling the band director but I realize that there’s no proof of her saying this and she could easily get out of this so it’s kinda pointless to tell anyone. Plus if she did shank me, she’d get into so much trouble and I’d be laughing at her from my grave/hospital bed. 

Many rehearsals go by and she still refuses to wear a mask so after one rehearsal S and I went to the band director and reminded him about our conditions and told him about how we were worried for our safety (I also told him abotu the other vulunerable ppl in the section) and he says he’s gonna do something. Next rehearsal he gives POS a warning and she begrudgingly wears a mask for the rest of the rehearsal. The next rehearsal rolls by and she isn’t wearing a mask (again) and he sends her home. Major victory for S and I.

The next sectional tho was something I wasn’t expecting. I get there like 10 minutes before it starts like I usually do in a good mood. I get out of my car and go to grab my stuff when a massive white truck with a busted muffler pulls up into the parking space next to me with a cloud of black smoke. The window rolls down and reveals POS’s dad and POS herself in the passanger seat. 

Of course I’m thinking that this is the day I die and start mentally preparing to yell for help to my other section members 100 feet away on the field already.

Mans starts to lecture me saying things like “it’s unhealthy to wear a mask outside bc it’s like a pitri dish under there. 6th grade science!” (I am not joking or overexaggerating with this, he actually said that). I really wanted to say “well, 7th grade science says otherwise, but you wouldn’t know that bc I’m sure you didn’t pass 6th grade, but go off ig” but I didn’t bc I didn’t want to get shanked or disappear randomly. I just tell him that I am only doing what my band director told me to do and that there are tons of people (myself included) that can really get hurt from just being in contact with covid. He says that’s bullshit and tries to tell me that I’m an idiot before I cut him off by telling him once again that I am just trying to protect my section and that the sectional was going to start soon so I didn’t have the time for this. I walk away leaving him trying to keep talking to me and soon enough POS gets out of the car and follows me to the field giving me a smug smile on her unmasked face before she puts it on when she sees the other section leader stroll up. 

Lemme paint the picture for you: this guy (a 6′something burly guy in his 50′s that I know has like two felonies under his belt) pulls up next to me (a 5′2 17 year old ball of anxiety that drives a small yellow car) and starts to borderline yell at me. Traumatizing. I was shaking for the rest of the sectional and I spent the rest of the season looking over my shoulder looking for the glint of a knife swingin at me

Now I’m pretty sure she’s suspended bc she was caught with a knife on school property and she wore a confederate t-shirt to school, but I would be lying if I said I don’t still look over my shoulder or speed up when I drive past her house lmao

[alicemitch09writes]

JJK ASK | what are your thoughts on the jjk girlies maki, mai, nobara, miwa hehe

my girls!!!!!!!

a’ight *cracks knuckles* here we go:

let’s start with sweet Kasumi Miwa

She’s such a sweet girl, honestly. I like the fact that though she does her duties, she still has her morals and gets conflicted when tasked to kill my bby son, Itadori Yuuji.

I also respect the fact that she’s off as a jujutsu sorcerer to help her family - that’s something really admirable, for me at least. She’s not doing it for herself, she’s doing it for the people she loves.

Her skill as a sorcerer is quite impressive, enough to hold off against my wife, Maki. She was also trained by a First-Grade sorcerer. I really can’t wait to see more of her. *glares at Akutami Gege*

And just like me, we’re both Gojo fans (ꈍ ᴗ ꈍ✿)

next up, Zenin Mai

First of all, I think she’s really pretty and refined and thought she was up there in the Zenin. LOL boy was I wrong because the Zenin clan (save for her and Maki, which I’ll talk more later) are, in Nanami’s words and tone, “FULL OF SHIT” Honestly, good for Toji for leaving. But anyway, back to Mai, she can come off as a bitch, but with good reason: she was forced into something she never wanted.

She just wants to live a normal life, free from the dangers and horrors brought by being a sorcerer and born as a fcking Zenin. I understand that she really hated Maki for leaving, but I think she was also hating herself because she got the better half of the stick rather unwillingly, wanting only to be with her sister.

Also, I found a really interesting twitter thread that discusses on the Zenin twins’ relationship. Do give it a read! It really changes your perspective on not only Maki and Mai, but on their bond as a whole.

I’ll talk more about her when I get to my wife, please hold.

Next up, Kugisaki Nobara!

I’ll be honest with you all, I thought her design was average. Then again, that was the point of it. Akutami Gege is said to be a woman, some say they’re a man, but point is: they don’t want to oversexualize their characters. It’s because their mom reads their works (how supportive! huhu) but maybe also because they’ve had enough of women being sexualized. In Japan, they have this disgusting sense of humor, especially with sexualization tropes (big boobs, nosebleeds, etc). Nobara’s design feels like a breath of fresh air because she looks like a typical Japanese teen - dyed hair, make-up, and all.

One of my favorite reactors also adores her character, supporting her in the episode she fought against Nishimiya, dismantling the idea of how men and women should be in the jujutsu society. It doesn’t matter who you are and where you stand, if you love yourself - flaws and all, then you’re enough. Nobara’s a prime example of that. He said: “Look cute, be strong, go crazy, Nobara!” And I support that. Time and time again, she continues to dismantle that very idea, sanity slipping off to unsettle her foes, getting her hands dirty, yet staying true to herself in the end.

In a way, she reminds me of Haruno Sakura. Then again, maybe she’s this generation’s Haruno Sakura, and I hate to make comparisons, but there needs to be more strong female protagonists like her to stand alongside the male protagonists.

Saving the best for last is my *wipes a tear* MY WIFE, Zenin Maki!!!!!!!!!!

Let’s just take a moment to appreciate this woman.

This wonderful, amazing, strong-willed, and mesmerizing woman. I could go on.

I love a strong female character, Maki’s just that. Unlike her sister though, she wasn’t born with amazing jujutsu techniques or inherited their signature, powerful technique, blessing her with inhuman strength like her cousin, Toji. This would make her seem like a second-rate or sad excuse of a human, at least in the eyes of her shitty family. Yet, Maki rose to the occasion and decided to prove everyone wrong. Even at a young age, she fully understood that because of that absence of power, they would never see her, so she had to make them see and recognize her in another way.

I’ve always had a weakness for people who are weapon masters (bc i grew up watching far too many martial art films), add that with Maki’s unshakable determination and strong will.

Plus, she’s a bit of a tsundere (ᅌᴗᅌ✿) Like not wanting to lose face to Yuta, when they first met. Super sensitive to people’s feelings, unaware that the freshmen were still mourning. And wise for her age, encouraging her juniors time to time. Loving, too, incredibly loving, because her goal to be the next Zenin leader was not only to pay respect to those who weren’t able to achieve power like that of her sister and Megumi, but to also build a better place for Mai. Everything she does is for Mai. I’m soft. Maki, I love you so much.

With the recent chapters, I’m scared-nervous for my wife, especially because she has to deal with the shittiness of her family, the misogyny of it all, and their disgusting obsession with perfection, tradition, and power that’ll corrupt and hopefully destroy them. Mwahahaha I SAID WHAT I SAID 

Again, props to Akutami Gege for not oversexualizing their female characters. It’s really a fresh of breath air to have these amazing woman who are fleshed out so well, recognized for their grit and not because of their physique fuck you Naoya Zenin.

[mattygraygubler]

our campus: chapter 4 (tom holland fanfic)

summary: frat!tom and reader go to the same college and y/n is tasked with being his tutor, they don’t really get along at first (because i love reader and tom hating each other trope)

warnings: none ?????

word count: 2.1k

a/n: so many texts and so much dialogue fuckin kill me also texts are bold

for a list of characters click here

to be added to the tag list send me an ask !

masterlist

✰✰✰✰✰

“I don’t know what you did to get her to give you a second chance, but I need to warn you.” Ally said. Tom turned to look at her, they had only ever spoken when necessary for theater stuff. 

“Warn me?” He asked. 

“Y/N can make your life either very, very good or very, very bad. She has most of the professors in this school wrapped around her pinky. And she doesn’t make it obvious, but she’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. She can really help you if you let her.”

“Well, thanks.” He said awkwardly and turned back to his stuff. 

“One more thing.” Ally said. Tom turned again and raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you dare catch feelings.” “Seriously? No need to worry about that.” Ally scoffed. 

“I’m serious, Tom. Don’t. She doesn’t need that right now.” 

“Yeah, fine, I get it.” He said. 

“Alright guys let’s get started.” Gigi said, signaling rehearsal was about to start. 

* * * 

It was finally Friday, and your phone was blowing up as you walked to the library. Class had gotten out late, so you were walking as fast as possible so you wouldn’t be late to your meeting with Tom. 

Al

if Y/N is ok with it its fine with me

Iz

i still dont know how i feel about this

Em 

pretty pretty please guys i really like this guy and he really wants me to go

You

what are we talking about i was in class

Al

harrison invited em and all of us to the delt party tonight

Iz

and i said we shouldnt go bc of what happened

plus isnt tom a delt? wouldnt that be a bit awk?

You

honestly i couldnt care less. after the week ive had im gonna too blacked to even realize where we are

Em

lets take it to a vote

aye

Al

aye 

Iz

nay

You

im abstaining

Em

the ayes have it! delt BABEEEYYYY

ill have harrison put us all on the list

You 

glad we got that sorted ill see u guys at mine at 8

You walked into the library, checking your watch and seeing it was 4:02. You bit your lip. Hopefully he didn’t give you any crap for being late. 

You walked quickly into hlab, and you knew you looked like a crazy person. Your bag was falling off your shoulder, you had a coffee in your hand and your water bottle tucked under your arm, and your phone in your other hand. 

You scanned the room and saw Tom sitting across from Max, both of them had books out. 

“Hi,” you said breathlessly. Max slid over a seat so you could sit across from Tom. “So sorry I’m late, crazy day.” 

“No worries dar-” You heard him start to say darling, but stopped himself. “No worries. It’s only 2 minutes after.” 

“How long have you been waiting?” You asked.

“Max and I have been hanging out for a while, not a big deal.” 

“Speaking of, I’m on alc duty for tonight so I better go.” Max said, did his stupid handshake with Tom, and walked out. 

Hlab was almost empty except for some freshman. Most people don’t like studying on a Friday, who could blame them?

“So I got a copy of your lectures from this week. What do you want to start with?”

“I don’t care.” 

“Ok, what is currently confusing you the most?” He thought for a second before saying “Astronomy.” You nodded. 

“Great, grab your notes and your textbook.” He pulled out a notebook and his laptop, opening the online textbook. You pulled out your laptop and a pen and highlighter. 

“May I?” You asked and pulled his notebook to your side. You went through his notes, circling certain things with the pen and highlighting others. 

“These are really good, Tom. I like how you put question marks next to things that confused you.” He laughed. 

“Do I get a gold star?” He joked. You rolled your eyes. 

“So phases of the moon.” You started. 

“Wait a second,” he said after you had been talking for a while. “You’re telling me that the moon doesn’t actually, like, change?” 

“It’s all shadows.” You replied. He nodded and seemed to finally be getting it. 

“The phases will most definitely be on your next lab, which isn’t open note, so make sure you memorize them.” You said. “Let’s move onto stats.” He groaned. “What?” You asked. 

“Statistics is so stupid. Letters and numbers shouldn’t go together.” You rolled your eyes. 

“Stats is easy, I promise you. This is the first unit, all we’re doing is descriptive statistics and graphing. Let’s start with some vocab.” You said, highlighting certain words in his notes. 

Once you could see his brain was about to explode, you moved onto writing. 

“There’s not much to talk about, just email me your most recent paper so I can go through it and look for themes we need to discuss.” 

‘“Themes?” He asked. 

“You know, on going issues that need to be addressed.” He nodded and emailed you his paper, which you would read tomorrow. You heard your phone buzz and took a quick glance. 

Em

al dont be upset

Al

then dont give me a reason to get upset

what is it

Em

……….. It’s themed

Al

are you kidding? were not freshmen, i dont wanna go to a stupid themed frat party

Em

its blackout !!!! itll be fun i promise

You turned your phone back down and didn’t realize you had an upset look on your face. 

“Everything ok?” He asked. 

“Just arguing in the group chat.” 

“Do you need to go?” He asked. 

“No, no, just arguing about tonight.” 

“What’s tonight?” 

“Tonight is not related to political conflict, which is what we should be talking about.” He laughed. 

“Do you ever have fun?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“I’m serious, do you ever have fun, or do you just go to sleep surrounded by planners and textbooks.” 

“That’s not funny. There’s a lot more about me that you don’t know.” 

“Clearly.” 

“So we’re starting off with socioeconomic issues over time and the class strugle. Did you read the Marx chapters?” 

“Yup. Didn’t understand a word of it.” 

“Ok, let’s get into it.” You said and began rambling about the bourgeoisie and the communist manifesto. Politics was your favorite subject, you could talk about it for hours. 

You were having a really good discussion with Tom. It was global political conflict, and he was able to connect the themes to both America and England, which made you really pleased. 

You were pulled out of your discussion when your phone vibrated. 

Iz

pickin up panera anyone want anything 

“Jeez it’s already past 6:30, I gotta go.” You said. 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He said. 

“No it’s not your fault, I get so into politics I lose track of time.” “I can tell.” He said as you both packed up your stuff. 

“Wanna grab some food?” He asked. 

“Sorry, can’t,” you said. 

“Why, got a hot date?” He joked. 

“Maybe,” you said. 

“At least let me walk you to wherever you’re going.” 

“You don’t have to do that.” 

“Well where are you going?” 

“Congression Hall?” You replied. 

“Wait, you live there?” 

“Uhm, yes? Me along with practically every other junior.” 

“What floor?” 

“8.” You said. 

“Should’ve guessed.” He replied as you started walking across the quad. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Honors 8. I forgot you were in hc.” He was referring to the eighth and top floor of Congression Hall, which was reserved for the honors college juniors. 

“Yeah.” You said simply. 

“I’m on six, by the way.” He said. “That’s why I was curious. I’ve never seen you around there.” 

“I’m not usually, I only really use it for sleep.” 

“Of course,” he replied. 

“I assumed you lived in a frat house.” You commented. 

“Nah, next year.” He said with a wink. “Speaking of frat houses, there’s kind of this party going on at Delt tonight-” 

“I’m aware.” You said, cutting him off. 

“Ah, well, if you want I can get you on the list.” You smiled to yourself. 

“No need, I’m already on the list.” You said. 

“Oh?” He said, clearly embarrassed. “Because of delta nu?” 

“Nope.” You said, not offering any other information. 

“Well maybe I’ll see you there then.” 

“Even if you do see me there, I will be pretending I don’t know you.” 

“Why?” He asked, clearly offended. “I run that house.” He joked, trying to play off the embarrassment. 

“No offense, but your reputation would not be good for mine.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Well I have a certain reputation in the greek community, and if people see me with you they’ll get the wrong idea.” 

“The wrong idea?” He asked as you walked in the lobby of your building. 

“Well, see, the thing is,” you said, stepping into the elevator. He pressed the button for six and eight. “I have certain standards. If people see me with you, they’ll think I’ve…” 

“Wow, you are really uptight, aren’t you?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Certain standards? Jesus christ, you’re not the queen, Y/N. And I don’t have a bad reputation. But god forbid I don’t live up to your ‘standards.’” He said, storming off the elevator without another word, clearly upset. You sighed. Good job, Y/N. 

Tom got to his room and threw his stuff on the floor, collapsing on his bed. His head hurt from all the tutoring, and trying to focus on not staring at your lips. 

delt juniors

Tom

aight important question guys

Cal

whats up tommy

Tom

do you guys know a girl called Y/N Y/L/N? shes a delta nu

Joey

dan knows her ;)

Cal

fuck, Y/N? what are you doing with her? 

Tom

shes tutoring me stop buggin 

Max

i know her which u know shes in hc with me 

Liam

oh danny DEFINITLY knows her 

Will

who doesnt know Y/N? shes a hot commodity

Tom

what do you mean? 

Cal

shes like the perfect girl next door, totally hot and so smart which just makes her hotter

Will

doesnt help that shes a huge fuckin flirt AND can hold her alc

Joey

dan is being suspiciously quiet……..

Dan

shut up joe

Liam

care to share with tommy your story with Y/N, daniel? 

Dan

i hate u all 

fine

i was like in love with her freshman year

and i thought she was into me too

and we made out a couple of times but nothing else

the second she found out i was in delt she stopped talking to me

like complete radio silence 

Tom

wtf? Why? 

Cal

she doesnt fuck with delts

thats like common greek knowledge

Will

maybe its because shes gonna be dchi sweetheart? 

Joey

nah theres gotta be something else

Harrison

well i just put her on the list for tonite

Tom

wait YOU put her on the list?! 

Harrison

yeah i invited her friend Emily Gold and she doesnt go anywhere without Y/N and these two other girls

Cal

Ally Park and Isabelle Miller

Harrison

yeah howd u know? 

Cal

theyre like those cool girls from high school everyones obsessed with that are just out of everyones league

Tom

wow american high schools are so weird

Dan

tom if u wanna get with her i wont be pissed

Tom

nah like you said she hates delts, and after three tutoring sessions with me i guarentee i am her least favorite delt ever

Liam

theres no fuckin way she shows up tonight

she wouldnt be caught dead at a delt party

Noah

wait you said Y/N Y/L/N may come tonight????

DIBS

DIBS DIBS DIBS

I CALL DIBS

Cal

noah u seriously show up just to call dibs?

Noah

yeah bro have u seen her? if she comes tonight and any of you try to cockblock me i stg ill deck you

Dan

pretty sure tommy has rightful dibs to this one

Tom

nah fam she hates me so fuckin much

let noah try his luck

i doubt she’ll even show

Max

she’ll show. 

Tom

what makes u say that? 

Liam

max does know her best

Max

she and ally and emily and isabelle are ride or die. they circulate who picks what party they go to and if its emilys turn and harrison somehow conviced her to go, Y/N wont miss it

Dan

she hasnt set foot in a delt house since freshman year, you seriously think she’ll show? 

Max

five bucks says she does

Dan

youre on 

Noah

i just wanna make it clear

that if she does show

D I B S

[angelbabylu]

Can We Just Talk? // AI

pairing: reader x ashton

warnings: angst, smut

word count: 9.1k

summary: lashton are brothers in this fic, reader & luke are best friends, reader is secretly fucking his brother

notes: about a month and a half ago i saw this picture of Luke and Ashton looking like brothers and i decided to write a smutty blurb about it. anyway here we are 9k later. this,,, is the filthiest thing i’ve ever written. its like only 4k actual plot the rest is smut. shout out to @baby-loba bc our hoe sessions inspired this fic tbh. It is only this nasty bc of you. also @aspiringwildfire for reading it & giving me advice before i posted. and @5sex-of-summa  for finding the picture for the fic (and @5sosnsfw for trying lol). love you all 

this fic is inspired by talk by khalid

--

The air turned heavy with anticipation. The second Luke got up and began walking away, both (Y/N) and Ashton had their eyes trained on his back, waiting for him to step out of view. When Luke rounded the corner, Ashton was on her. The hand that had previously been resting on her thigh crept closer to her heat and his mouth attached to her neck, lightly teasing the skin there.

“Fuck,” She groaned out, so overwhelmed she could barely keep her voice down. Silently, she thanked whatever deity was watching that the TV played loud enough to drown out her moans.

Moving to another spot on her neck, Ashton whispered, “You brought this upon yourself, baby girl.”  

1.

About three hours before, (Y/N) had received a text from Luke that simply asked movie night?

She had texted back immediately with yes!! can i stay the night?  

Movie nights had always been a staple of her and Luke’s relationship, but only recently had she begun getting so eager to spend the night. If Luke noticed, he hadn’t said anything. Perhaps he thought it had something to do with how lonely she got in that apartment by herself. That was only half of the truth.

The other half was that she liked what it meant for her and Luke’s older brother.

She had met Luke when they were both freshmen in Communication 101, bonding over their love for classic rock and their dreams of working in the music industry one day. She wanted to be in management and Luke wanted to produce music like his older brother. (Y/N) didn’t meet said brother until she followed Luke to LA, unable to fathom her life without him.

She remembered the day she met this brother very clearly. She was sweaty and disgruntled, unused to the boiling LA heat. Having been there for years already, he was seemingly unaffected.

The first thing he said to her was, “Are these yours or Luke’s?” signaling the boxes stacked on the right side of the U-Haul. As if she wasn’t hot enough, he had her flushing hotter. She could definitely see the family resemblance - the curly hair, the square jaw, the pronounced chin - but when he smiled, her heart reminded her that this was definitely not Luke.

“Those are Lu’s.”

“Cool,” he nodded. “I’m Ashton by the way.”

They lasted all of one year before they started fucking each other.

Luke, of course, had no idea. She and Ashton weren’t anything serious, so there was no need to concern Luke with the idea of sharing his best friend with his older brother or vice versa. And sometimes the struggle of always being around Luke, unable to touch each other, made their relationship even hotter. They were always finding ways to rile each other up without Luke noticing.

Like earlier that night, for example.

When she first got to the house, Luke was in the theater room flicking through movies on Amazon, while Ashton was in the kitchen preparing snacks. Instead of helping Luke with his choice, she lied, “I need to go to the bathroom,” and immediately made a beeline for the kitchen.

Ashton was standing with his back to her in a black sleeveless shirt, chopping a pineapple into small bite-sized pieces. She paused for a second, eyes trained on the swell of his bicep as his hand worked the knife, she could tell he had been working out.

“Are you just going to stand there and watch me from the doorway?” He asked, snapping her out of her bicep fantasy.

(Y/N) let out a small chuckle before silently crossing the kitchen floor to him. She knew her and Ash were just friends with benefits, but moments like this made it easy to forget.

As soon as she got behind him, she placed both hands on his waist, got on her tiptoes, and placed a kiss gently on the side of his cheek. A feeling of warmth spread through her chest as he leaned into her. Then, he turned his head just as she moved to the side, both in sync, both bringing their lips together for the first of many times that night.

“Hey,” she greeted as they parted. She slid away and moved to stand at the counter to his right, close enough that his arms brushed hers when he resumed his pineapple chopping. Grabbing a slice, she slipped it into her mouth.

She didn’t miss the way his eyes flicked down to her mouth, watching as she licked the dripping pineapple juice from her fingers. When the air in the room went heavy, (Y/N) was not surprised. It was like this whenever they were around each other. There was something about being in each others presence that brought a cackle of electricity.

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” She said, the bashfulness of her voice contradicting what she was about to do. “I’m going to need to borrow your hand for a second.”

He shot her a questioning look but pulled his hands away from the pineapple slices nonetheless. A small, lopsided smirk began playing on his lips, enough that she could see the slight indent of a dimple.

“My fingers are a little sticky.” He wasn’t sly. She knew exactly what he wanted.

She grabbed his hand, stepped closer, and said, “That’s okay, I can take care of that for you,” before bringing his fingers up to her lips. This wasn’t a part of her plan, but to say she had a thing for his fingers would be an understatement. She pulled three fingers into her mouth, loving how he immediately took over, pressing on her tongue as she licked and sucked around them.

“I’m assuming this wasn’t the surprise?” he asked, eyes locked on her lips as she switched out the three fingers for his thumb.

She shook her head, tongue circling the thumb. When she pulled it out, a small translucent strand of saliva still connected them. She licked her lips to break it.

���Nah, that was just a little extra,” she admitted with a wink. Ashton was always so responsive to her ministrations, it made her bold.

She moved the hand away from her mouth and slowly guided it down to the edge of her t-shirt dress, eyes locked with his the entire time. He took over, other hand coming to join the first, pulling her flush against his chest as he took a moment to enjoy the feeling of her skin under his fingers. It only took a few seconds before he realized the surprise she was showing him. He groaned, grabbed her ass in both hands, and pulled her even closer to him.

“Fuck,” he grunted, hands skimming up and down her lower back confirming, “You’re not wearing any panties.”

She nodded her head against his chest. “Wanted to make it easy for you,” she murmured. Her breath hitched as a large hand gripped her ass cheek and pulled before lightly gave it a light slap. “So, we don’t have to waste any time when Luke finally falls asleep.”

“How the fuck,” Ashton responded through gritted teeth, “Am I supposed to sit through this movie knowing you’re right next to me with no panties on?”

She looked up at him, bit her lip and shrugged. “But speaking of movies, I better go back to the theater room before Luke starts wondering where I am.”

As she pulled away, he shot her look that told her she would pay for teasing him like that later.

--

It was later, and she was paying.

Knowing Luke wouldn’t be in the kitchen for long, Ashton made quick work of wetting his fingers and pressing them on her clit. The feeling had her gasping, throwing her head back, and biting her lips to control her moans.

“Wish I could eat you out, baby.” He whispered, lips brushing against the column of her throat. “Wish we had more than a couple of minutes so I could get down and eat you out right here. You wouldn’t be able to sit through another movie night without thinking about my fingers and tongue inside you.”

He had a filthy mouth; she had a love-hate relationship with it. She loved listening to him talk but hated how he just had to breathe one word, and she’d be wet and pliant for him.

“Or maybe next time I’ll get you a vibrator, pretend I don’t realize how I’m ruining you while you struggle to stay quiet and still so Luke and I can enjoy the movie.”

Whining, she bucked her hips up, begging for more than the glide of his fingers between her folds, craving those fingers inside her. Grabbing the arm that was working her pussy, she dug her nails in hoping that he’d oblige.

He didn’t. Instead, he kept teasing.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Love struggling to stay quiet with a vibe inside you?”

And he really didn’t have to ask. He knew how much the thrill of getting caught made this thing with him even hotter.

But she whined, “Yeah,” anyway. Her breath hitching as his fingers finally slid inside her. Her other hand settled on his thigh with an iron grip. She needed something to hold on to - everything was too overwhelming.

Her next whine was interrupted by the sound of the microwave beeping in the kitchen.

Ashton was off her in an instant. He licked his fingers - reminiscent of that moment they had shared in the kitchen - before moving away and grabbing his phone. She gasped at the loss of him, at how quickly he had shifted off of her and took on a cavalier demeanor at his end of the couch.

Without even looking back at her, he said, “You might wanna cover up, baby.”

She was still struggling to compose herself, but she pulled her dress down, crossed her legs, and threw the blanket back over her for good measure. She had hoped that she could catch her breath, that she could control the flush on her face before Luke made it down the hallway and back into the TV room.

No such luck.

When Luke walked in, he took one look at her and asked, “Are you okay? You look flushed.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, hoping she didn’t sound too breathy. “But maybe we should head to bed after this movie? I’m a little tired.”

Luke shrugged, “Yeah I have an early day in the studio, anyway.”

For the second time that night she thanked whatever deity was up there looking out for her, helping her get laid.

--

The rest of the movie was a blur. Ash was a steady presence beside (Y/N), his hand resting on her thigh under the blanket, reminding her of what they could be doing that very moment. Luke was on the other side of her, reminding her why they couldn’t.

The half an hour it took for the credits to roll in was torture. It felt like every minute, Ashton’s hand would creep higher and higher up her thigh.

She knew he wouldn’t try anything - not with Luke draped against her. Too much movement on either of their part would alert Luke to what was going on. As much as a part of her wanted to say “fuck it,” wanted to drag Ashton upstairs, to let him have his way with her, it would be better for everyone if she waited patiently for the end of that half an hour instead.

When the movie was over, she and Ashton were out of their seats immediately. She grabbed Luke’s hand, trying to pull him off the couch and up the stairs.

“Let’s go to sleep,” she whined, hoping he wouldn’t see through the fake yawn that followed.

When he yawned in return, she counted it as a win. He still didn’t move from his spot on the couch, however, suggesting instead, “We should at least help Ashton clean up first.”

Ashton shook his head, already picking up the trays with a few pieces of fruit still leftover. “‘S okay, I got it.”

“You sure?”

Luke looked surprised. (Y/N) didn’t understand why - Ashton was always cleaning up after them. It was kind of his love language, these little acts of service.

“Thanks, Ash. Love you,” Luke chimed, finally standing up.

Ashton rolled his eyes in response. But they had a rule about always repeating the sentiment when one of them said I Love You, so as (Y/N) and Luke ascended the stairs, they were accompanied by the sound of Ashton calling “Love you too. Goodnight,” after them.

Luke and (Y/N) had done it so much lately, getting ready for bed together was almost routine. They spent about a half an hour together in the bathroom, brushing their teeth, washing their faces, and applying the various creams and serums of their nightly routine, all the while chatting about everything from industry gossip to what Luke should do with his hair. As Luke talked, she could lend him no more than half an ear, her mind consumed with thoughts of Ash, wondering if he was already in his bedroom waiting for her.

She wondered if he would take some time to rile himself up while he waited. Maybe he was sitting on his bed, idly playing with his dick, hissing as his fingers ran over it, knowing that his hands could never do her pussy or her mouth justice. Her mouth watered just thinking about it. She needed to get to him as soon as possible.

It took Luke all but screaming her name for her to snap out of this fantasy.

“You okay?” He asked, obviously concerned about her uncharacteristic spaciness.

Knowing she couldn’t very well say, “Sorry, I’m thinking about fucking your brother,” she shrugged and mumbled, “Just tired, I guess.”

Luke led them both out of the bathroom, shutting off the lights behind them. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Eagerly, she bounded towards the bed, lifted the covers, and slipped in. When Luke slipped in beside her, she breathed out a sigh of relief. She hoped he would fall asleep quickly so she could sneak from his bed and into the room right next to his.

About ten minutes later, she got her wish. Luke’s breath was coming out in short huffs which usually indicated that he was asleep. “Luke?” she tested. When he didn’t respond, she snuck from underneath the covers, making her way out his door and over to Ashton’s.

Ashton had been waiting for her. He must have heard her footsteps approaching because before she could even knock, he was opening the door and pulling her in. He had to be careful closing the door behind her, knowing that a slam could wake Luke easily - and waking up alone to a noise coming from elsewhere in the house would mean Luke coming to investigate. That was the last thing either of them wanted.

“God, I wish I could be rougher with you,” Ashton groaned, pushing her lighter than he wished against the door. He grabbed both ass cheeks immediately, kneading them in his large hands. “Wish I take you hard and fast until the headboard was slamming against the wall and you were screaming my name.”

The very idea of it had her squirming and moaning, pushing back against his large hands, hating the way he riled her up with no way of making good on his promises. She thought maybe the following day they could meet at her place, be as loud and as rough as they wanted to. She didn’t get the chance to suggest it before he’s wetting his finger and bringing it to her hole. Rubbing around, he was surprised to find her already a little wet with anticipation. He pushed the digit inside her, playing with her for a moment, darting in and out of her, loving the way she pushed back, trying to get the finger deeper.

As much as she loved getting fingered by him, she was horny, and this was not what she came for. She reached a hand behind her, rubbing down the front of him, trying to get a hand on his dick. He was only in his boxers, which made it easier for her to grip and rub it.

“Let’s take this to the bed maybe?” she suggested, words heavy with desire.

His finger slipped out of her; then, he grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the bed, pushing her down to lay on her back. He grabbed her waist lining her up with the edge of the bed where he knelt before her.

“You have to be quiet,” he reminded, hands roaming up and down her thighs. This was a game they played. He liked to see just how much he could drive her crazy as she struggled to remain silent.

She bit her lip and nodded, “I can stay quiet,” but he threw her a skeptical look.

“One sound and I stop,” he warned, and with the warning still in his hazel eyes, he bowed and took to her heat.

She had to bite her lips to keep from crying out right away, squirming as he flattened his tongue and licked between her folds.

He licked a broad stripe over her pussy, coming a to stop at the clit, bringing it in between lips and sucking. She wasn’t expecting it, the pressure was too much - she had to bring her hand up to her mouth, covering it to prevent a cry. She could all but see him smirk at her reactions. He knew it was a matter of time before she couldn’t contain her screams anymore.

She tried. She did. She bit her hand, and her tongue and her cheek, bucking as he dragged his tongue back and forth against her. She could hardly breathe. One hand reached down to grip his hair for purchase, as she tried to lift her hips off the bed, chasing more of that sinful tongue laving over her pussy.

When he took her by surprise, sucking her clit into his mouth once more, both hands went to his hair, and she cried out, “Fuck, Ashton.”

She was so caught up in the heat of him, she didn’t realize what she’d done until he was off her, looking unimpressed.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I’ll be good, I promise.”

But it was too late. Ashton got what he wanted. She was always wound so tight in her everyday life, he loved that in bed he could get her to be less than perfect. And she loved the feeling of giving up control, something she had a hard time doing outside these moments with him.

“Turn over,” he ordered, standing up to remove his boxers as she rolled onto her stomach and got up on her knees, face pressed up against the sheets, ass waving in the air. When he looked up from where he had kicked his boxers off to find her ass in the air, he groaned and grabbed it for the third time that night. To say he was an ass man would be an understatement.

She wasn’t sure when he had rolled a condom on, but she felt his plastic clad dick pushing into her. When his dick bottomed out, she could already feel herself becoming overwhelmed with the feeling of him inside her. Her toes curled, and her hands reached out grip the sheets. When he started fucking into her, she knew that she would have a hard time staying quiet.

With every stroke she had to make an effort to control her moans, bringing her hand to cover her mouth, biting the sheet below her, holding her breath. None of this made a difference when Ashton began picking up speed, pounding into her.

She was whining lowly, twisting, trying to take him deeper, when he grunted, “You gotta be quiet, baby girl.”

And she nodded, but she really couldn’t control herself, each other breath drawing a moan or gasp or whine from her.  

Eventually, Ashton flattened himself against her, strokes becoming shallow and slow. He brought his lips to her ear and whispered, “Shh, Luke’s gonna hear you.”

She shook her head against his. “Can’t.”

The sensations were too much. She couldn’t control herself.

“Just gonna have to help you out then.”

He pulled out of her, and she gasped whining at the loss of contact. Then he was flipping her over, leaning over her on the bed, realigning himself and pushing into her. This time, he had one hand braced beside her head, twisting in the sheets, the other came to curl around her throat.

There was something about his fingers around her neck that quieted her. Maybe it was just the sheer act of dominance that down, causing her to submit in every way. It brought her feelings inward, bringing awareness to how her entire body was aflame.

It felt so good to have him pounding into her while she was unable to breathe. She could feel her orgasm building, and by the look on his face, his orgasm was coming too.

When she came, her whole body seized, squeezing down on his dick. That had him chasing his own orgasms, a few pounds into her before he was coming too.

He rolled off her slowly, pulling off the condom, tying it, and placing it in the trash. When he came back to lie down next to her, he caressed her face, running his thumb over the light sheen of sweat that had collected on her upper lip and pressing a small chaste kiss on her lips.

“Was that okay?” he asked, fingers rubbing at where they were choking a few minutes before.

(Y/N) nodded, knowing that he liked checking up on her after getting particularly rough.

He searched her face, making sure she wasn’t just saying it, making sure she was actually alright, before saying “Good,” and capturing her lips again for a kiss.

This time it was filthy, tongue dipping into her mouth, rubbing against hers.

“We should get under the covers maybe?” He suggested. Then he gestured to both their states of varying undress. “I mean I’m cold.” He didn’t have anything on, but she was still wearing her dress, bunched up at her hips.

She chuckled but shook her head. She did consider it very briefly. Since they’d started fucking, she had gotten kind of addicted to the feeling of his arms around her. But, she knew she couldn’t, Ashton knew she couldn’t, not when Luke had fallen asleep with her in his bed an hour before.

Sitting up she said, “Gotta get back before Luke notices I’m gone.”

She saw the moment his face fell and fought to ignore the tightening of her chest. Leaning down, she moved for one final kiss. “We can do something tomorrow night?” she suggested, remembering her earlier idea. “You can come over, and you can get as rough as you want and we can even cuddle after.”

“Yeah,” he breathed out, in a manner that almost sounds like relief, burying his hand in her hair and pulling her down for that last kiss. 

2.

When Luke left early the next morning, (Y/N) almost left too. She had an entire morning routine - gym, breakfast, then work, like clockwork, every morning. Yet, all it took was her being in the same house as Ashton to get thrown off her game. She felt pathetic just sitting around for him to wake up, so she ended up making herself some breakfast. It was nothing fancy - just a smoothie from the leftover fruit in the fridge and an English muffin.  

She had the blender on high when Ashton emerged from his bedroom, coming to greet her in the kitchen. She didn’t hear him coming up behind her, so the hand on her waist and the kiss to her hair was a surprise.

“Morning,” he mumbled, sleep still evident in his voice. He released her and moved over to the dishwasher to grab a cup. “What are you still doing here? Shouldn’t you be at the gym?”

“Just woke up,” she lied, figuring that sounded infinitely less pathetic than I couldn’t bring myself to leave without seeing you.

He smiled as he filled his cup with water from the fridge door. It was a knowing smile, one that told her he was well aware she hadn’t just woken up. Before he could call her out on her lie, she asked, “Do you want to do lunch?”

“Sorry,” he responded, causing a cloud of disappointment to settle over her. “I have lunch with an artist. But I’ll be by your place tonight, okay?”

She obviously didn’t do a good job of hiding said disappointment, because he was crossing the kitchen floor to grab her chin, forcing her to make eye contact with him. “Don’t be sad,” he said, kissing her once on the lips. “I’ll more than make up for it tonight.”

--

She had lunch with Calum instead.

“Speaking of Ashton.”

That was a mistake.

“Were we speaking of Ashton?” She asked throwing him a look of irritation. They were not. He had waited until there was a lull in the conversation to spring the topic on her.

Which really could only mean one thing.

With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, she said, “He told you.”

Calum at least had the decency to look apologetic. “Sorry,” he said. “But to be fair, you had to know he was going to tell me.”

She opened her mouth to argue but couldn’t. Ashton and Calum were very big on openness and honesty with each other. Ashton keeping a secret from Calum was rare, unheard of even. She should have expected it, but that didn’t mean she was any less annoyed by it.

“To be honest,” She joked as a means of hiding her frustration. “I’m surprised he didn’t roll over and text you immediately after he finished. He at least waited until he got me off first. I’m proud of him for that.”

The joking also kept the bubbling anxieties at bay. It quieted the voice in the back of her mind trying to tell her that one more person in on her secret was one additional variable she had to keep track of. Being with Ashton made her feel out of control enough. She loved it in the moment but, at times like these, the lack of control burned a hole in her chest.

Unfortunately for her, Calum sobered the conversation. “You’re not mad that I know, right?”

She didn’t know how to respond. Yes, she was mad, but she was trying very hard not to be.

“It’s me. I’m not going to tell anybody.”

And she knew that. There were definitely worse people that Ashton could have told. But at the same time. . .

“I don’t know, Cal. I was kind of hoping it would be just between him and me.”

“Why? This group has never kept secrets from each other. I know intimate details about both your sex lives. What makes this time any different?”

She sighed.

She had forgotten who she was talking to.

This was Calum Psychoanalyst Hood, and she was ever his favorite patient. She had a habit of ignoring her feelings and making bad decisions, and he had the habit of pointing them out. But never in an upfront manner. He preferred to let her know he was concerned about the way she was acting without letting her know why. She hated it; she had a reason for ignoring those feelings in the first place.

They were interrupted then by the waiter shuffling towards the table to ask if everything was okay with their meals. She clammed up as Calum said, “Everything is great, thank you.”

The waiter brought a brief reprieve to their conversation, both of them taking a moment of silence to begin eating again. This did not last long. Both her and Calum were too confrontational as people to just leave the conversation be.

She cracked first.

“Maybe I didn’t want him to tell you because I thought you’d make a big deal about it and do something like, I don’t know, ruin our lunch by terrorizing me about it.”

“I’m not terrorizing you. Two of my best friends are fucking each other and keeping it a secret for some reason. I can’t help but be concerned.”

“What’s concerning? There’s no need to be concerned. It’s just two adult friends having frequent consensual sex with each other. No need to be concerned.”

It felt hypocritical for Calum to be concerned about this. He had many different friends with benefits arrangements. She did too, and so did Ashton. Why would it be a problem now?

As she looked up into deep brown eyes, heavy with apprehension, she knew, one way or another, that she was about to find out.

Calum was silent for a beat, letting her anger seethe while he took a bite of his sandwich and a sip of his water.

Then he said, “Am I correct in assuming that the reason you don’t want Mikey or I to know is that because you’re afraid that Luke will find out?”

Oh right, Luke.

That was the one thing she worried could blow up in her face. But she couldn’t just tell Luke. There were so many reasons why Luke could react badly. Most notably was the fact that she and Luke had become inseparable in the last few years. Luke had gone through a lot of shit with his ex in their final year of college and (Y/N) was his crutch throughout the aftermath. When they left for LA a year ago (just a few months after Luke broke up with his girlfriend), Luke had been friendless, depressed, and was a borderline alcoholic. She spent months picking up the pieces. There are moments from his rehabilitation that still haunted her; moments where Luke’s newfound abandonment issues were out in full force. She had been the last of their old friend group to stick with him, and while Luke never said it outright, she knew he was afraid of losing her too.

He was a lot better now, but she could see how he might think this thing with Ashton meant losing her. Was it so terrible that she wanted to enjoy her relationship and spare Luke’s feelings at the same time?

As if the thought of Luke finding out wasn’t haunting enough, Calum followed up with, “Well, afraid probably isn’t the right word since you guys keep almost having sex around him.”

That comment wasn’t particularly fair. Yeah, she and Ashton frequently teased each other in Luke’s presence, but they were careful about it.

(She didn’t want to think about how careful had a habit of flying out the window with Ashton around.)

“You guys might want to stop that if keeping Luke in the dark is truly your aim.”

And there he went, being cryptic again without explaining himself. She felt irritation building like an itch, and she had to scratch. She couldn’t let him continue.

“What the fuck do you mean if it’s truly my aim?” She asked, voice low, ever aware of how easy it was for her to get loud. “You know I hate it when you psychoanalyze me like that.”

“I’m just saying,” Calum pushed back. The intensity of his voice matched hers, but without the underlying anger and irritation. “That the part of you that so desperately wants no one to know needs to have a conversation with the part of you that’s itching to get caught.”

She pushed her bowl away. She was done. With the food and the conversation. She hated that Calum brought up such good points about the incongruity of her actions. She wished that he would just tell her what he thought it all meant.

She said as much to him, “Well since you know me so well, why don’t you tell me what I really want.”

“(Y/N), I know you dislike thinking about your emotions, but this is one thing you’re going to have to figure out yourself.”

Conversations like this were such a commonplace in her and Calum’s relationship, he recognized the moment she reached her breaking point.

“Go,” he said, and she stood immediately.  

One day she would learn to sit and fully finish an argument without having to run away or having to change the topic of conversation. For now, she behaved as she always had. She stored everything Calum had said in the back of her mind, ready to spend her day thinking it over, stood up and grabbed her things.

“Love you,” said Calum before she could walk away.

It was times like this where their dumb little rule about always saying “I love you” back was so important. When she and Calum had an honest conversation like this, his  “Love you” served as a way to remind her that he said what he had because he cared.

She parroted her, “Love you, too.” It released her of all the negative feelings that arose and reminded her that their friendship was much more profound than her mild irritation.

As she passed by his chair on the way to the exit, she stopped. She placed a tiny kiss to his hair, smiling as he leaned into it. 

3.

That the part of you that so desperately wants no one to know needs to have a conversation with the part of you that’s itching to get caught.

Calums words ran through her mind all day. Did a part of her want to get caught? She didn’t think so. It was probably more accurate to say there was a magnetism about Ashton that made her throw all caution to the wind. That was the bigger issue. She was so consumed by her thirst for him, that she constantly forgot herself.  

Had this been anyone else, had she been in her right mind, she would not have allowed it to continue for as long as it did. She knew what she had to do - she had to take control. What she and Ashton needed were boundaries.

But boundaries were easier said than done.

She was sitting on her living room sofa hours after her lunch with Calum. She ruminated on what he had said, a glass of wine in one hand, the rest of the bottle sitting in wait of its consumption atop her coffee table. In her other hand was her phone. She had been staring blindly at it for a few seconds now. She hadn’t decided yet whether to take snapchat up on their offer to respond or their offer to replay.

She said, “Fuck it,” aloud to herself, then tapped replay.

As the video started, all she could see was Ashton’s hand and in it was a tiny, purple, egg-shaped device with a small hook curving off of it, and an equally small remote. She felt heat pool in the pit of her stomach immediately. Her eyes hadn’t deceived her the first time - he was, in fact, holding a vibrator.

“Hey baby,” his voice came rolling through the speakers, gruff, sexy, and commanding as always. “Couldn’t stop thinking about you today. Thinking about how you’d look with a vibrator in you as you sat through one of our movie nights, trying to keep your whines quiet.”

He rolled the device back and forth between his fingers as he spoke.

“The thought of you being quiet for me, being a good girl for me, got me so worked up that I had to stop by the store on the way home. I bought us a vibrator.”

She was expecting the camera flip this time, ready when Ashton’s face popped up on screen. The phone was close enough to his face that she could feel the lust in those deep hazels burning through the phone. “And luckily for us, the boys wanna hang out tonight, so what do you say?”

She bit down the part of her that so desperately wanted to say yes and overwrote it with reminders of Luke and why boundaries were necessary.

Ashton, she typed out, holding her breath as his little bitmoji popped into the chat. I don’t think we should do these things around Luke anymore.  

As soon as he read her message, he was facetiming her. She declined the call immediately,  worried that he would be more than capable of convincing her to go against personal interest.

So instead of getting a conversation face to face, he got a text message. We don’t need to talk about this Ash.

I think we do.

She took one look at the bubble at the bottom of the screen that indicated Ashton was typing and decided that she really didn’t want to hear it. Acting on pure instinct, she turned off her phone and threw it on the couch just opposite her.

Going wireless for the night had not been the plan, this conversation with Ashton definitely was not the plan, but she decided to use it to her advantage. Picking up her laptop, she began catching up on some work, all the while desperately trying to distract herself.

Nearly eight o’ clock, two hours later, her efforts prove to be a success. She was so caught up in the analysis she was doing for work, she didn’t even think when she heard a knock on the door.

After picking up her glass of wine and draining the last of it, she absentmindedly moved towards her door.

“Who is it,” she asked stopping just shy of the knob, hand already outstretched.

“It’s us.” The gruff, unmistakable sound of Ashton’s voice had her pausing in surprise.

Fuck.

Her only consolation was that he said “It’s us,” and not “It’s me,” which could mean Luke was there. And Luke would make a great barrier between her and Ashton if needed.

She tried to steady the shaking of her hands as she reached out and opened the door. Standing there were Luke, Ashton, and Michael, all portraying varying emotions. Luke, as always, looked happy to see her, Michael looked his usual excited puppy-like self, but Ashton, she could feel the anger rolling off of him in waves.

“What the fuck, (Y/N)!”

Yeah, he was angry.

Her immediate response was to go on the defensive. “Don’t come into my fucking apartment and yell at me, dick face!”

Ashton ignored her and barreled into past her. Luke and Michael followed him in, shutting the door behind them. They stopped and stood, each of them flanking her as they watched Ashton go on his tirade.

“Where the fuck is your phone? Why haven’t you been answering any of our calls? We thought something happened to you, asshole.”

Before she could react, go to that place of anger and annoyance, Luke stopped them, stepping forward between her and Ashton. “Relax,” he called over his shoulder at Ashton. Placing both hands on her shoulder, he asked softly, “You okay, bubs? Was kind of worried when you didn’t answer any of my calls.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, allowing herself to be pulled into a hug. “My phone was off. I wanted to get some work done.”

The look Ashton shot her over her shoulder said he saw right through her lie. He knew she was trying to avoid him. She closed her eyes to it and buried her face in Luke’s neck.

Michael, in true Michael-like fashion, ignored all the tension in the room and announced, “She’s okay, just like I said she’d be. Can we go get food now?”

She must have been a pit stop on their way.

Luke pulled away from her, looking her in the eyes. “As long as you’re okay?”

She smiled, heart warmed by Luke’s concern. “I’m okay.” She promised. “I just wanted to get some work done. I’ll definitely let someone know next time.”

And that was enough for Luke. Looking past his shoulders, her eyes caught Ashton. That was not enough for him. He still looked furious, the intensity of his stare burning holes through her.

“You guys go ahead.” This was the first thing he’d said all night that rich with anger. “I need to talk to (Y/N).”

She hated the way that turned her on. She knew he was still angry. The thought of being alone with him and that anger should make her nervous, but instead it made her want to fall to her knees, have him use her until he wasn't angry anymore.

There were mumbled “okays” and “goodbyes.” Michael and Luke both hugged her and, before she knew it, they were alone.

She sat down and poured herself another glass of wine from the already half empty bottle. She was going to need it for this conversation. Ashton had already started pacing.

Three sips in and he was still pacing. God, she hated how hot his anger got her. She always thought that if she got into a relationship like this, based so heavily on passion, she would match her partner, anger for anger. But here she was, ready to submit if it meant getting what she wanted.

“Ash,” she began.

He didn’t even look at her.

She did not like that.

“I shouldn’t have turned off my phone, I get it. But I didn’t want to have a conversation about it. I didn’t want you trying to convince me.”

His head snapped around, eyes finally meeting hers. There was that animalistic passion again, burning bright in his eyes.  “We have to talk about shit, (Y/N). This isn’t going to work if you refuse to communicate with me.”

She had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. It just wasn’t that serious. It wasn’t like she was ending their arrangement. It was one small boundary. Putting her glass down, she sauntered up to him, stopping him in his tracks. She had other ideas about how he could use his anger.

“I’m sorry.” She reached one hand out, running it down his chest, allowing her nails to claw at him through the soft cotton material of his shirt.

He grabbed her hand and placed it back at her side. “Stop trying to distract me.”

Stepping even closer, she put both hands on his chest this time. “I’m just trying to apologize,” she said, letting her want spill over into her voice. She could feel his resolve breaking in the way his chest heaved beneath her fingers. She knew what would push him over the edge.

“Let me show you how sorry I am, daddy.” Dropping to her knees, she pouted, looked up at him underneath long, fanning eyelashes and breathed, “Please.”

That was all it took.

He swore and hastily undid his belt, shucking both his jeans and his underwear off to the floor. She watched, entranced, as he took his dick into his hands, pumping it twice. Her mouth watered at the thought of swallowing him down, getting him hard.

“God, look at you,” he groaned, one hand coming to rest at the nape of her neck. “You’re gagging for it.”

She whined and nodded, showing him just how desperate she was for it. She pushed his hand away and took over. Starting at the base of his cock, she licked a stripe to the top, moaning as she got to the head and sucked it into her mouth.

“Shit,” he whispered. A hand came to rest at her nape as she bobbed up and down a few times before finally taking him down to the hilt.

When she came back up again, spat on his tip and murmured, “Fucking love your cock,” using her thumb to spread her spit over the head.

She loved putting on a show for him like this, wanton and begging, because she loved the feel of his attention entirely on her. It also got him hard like crazy. It didn’t take long before she could feel him start to fill up her mouth. His breath was coming in pants from above her as he surrendered completely to her ministrations.

She was moaning on his dick, taking him down as far as she could go, when he stopped her.  

“Baby girl,” He moaned out, hand tightening in her hair. She didn’t want to stop. Ignoring his words, she sucked him down until she was choking on him, hands coming up to play with his balls.

She couldn’t help the feeling of satisfaction as he cried out “Fuck.” He got a tight grip in her hair pulled. She whined and released him then, head rearing back to lessen the pain.

“Let’s take this to the room,” He commanded, bringing the hand from her hair to rest on her chin. Gently, he nudged her to standing height and pressed a soft kiss on her spit soaked lips. “Need to fuck you.”

She threw her arm around him and drew him down into a deeper kiss. Sliding her tongue against his, they took a minute to re-acquaint themselves with the taste of each other. He ended the kiss with a nip against her plump bottom lip.

“Bedroom,” he demanded. “Now.”

He stepped out of his boxers and pants before following her down the hall and into her room. On her way there, she removed her shirt and shimmied out of her pants, both items of clothing tossed over her shoulder haphazardly. Thank god she lived alone.

When they both got to the bedroom, Ashton pulled his shirt off, his last article of clothing, and came to stand in front of her. His lips immediately went to her neck, gently tracing down the side of it, stopping to nibble at her shoulders. His hands traveled down her waist, exploring everywhere, dipping into and out of her underwear.

“I’m still mad at you,” he grumbled.

She rolled her eyes but resisted quipping back for fear that it would set him off on his tirade again.

“We’re going to have to talk if we want this thing to work.” He continued, this time spoken from the spot beneath her ear.

Sighing, she pulled away from him and looked up into hazel eyes.

“I’ll be sure to talk to you next time,” she lied. “I promise.”

That was exactly what he needed to hear. He brought his large hands down to cup her ass, lifting her up, causing her legs to wrap around him on instinct.

“Thank you,” he said, before kissing her again, filthy and deep. She almost felt sorry for lying to him, but she knew that the best way to take control back from someone like Ashton, was to let him think he still had it.

He walked to the edge of the bed and gently deposited her on top of her comforter, mouth never once leaving hers.

“You gonna be loud for me tonight, baby?” He asked when they separated from each other. His words brought electricity back to the air, their usual passion burning bright.

She nodded eagerly in response. There was no need for secrecy between them tonight, no Luke to cause her to hold back her moans.

He nudged her to her stomach and pulled at her hips, bringing her to her knees. “Let’s get this off,” he said, slapping her cotton covered ass once gently before thumbing underneath her panties and pushing them off.

He wasted no time bringing a finger to her entrance. He slid inside her easily, pussy already dripping for him. His finger pumped in and out of her a few times before he brought another finger up to join the first. The feeling of his fingers was both too much and not enough. She loved his fingers, but she wanted more. She wanted to be full with him. She wanted his dick inside her.

She was about to complain when his fingers bent just right, and he hit that spot inside her that had her crying out. She arched her back and moaned at the feeling, “Fuck, Ashton.”

He hummed, pulling out his fingers, but dived down immediately to replace them with his tongue. He licked into her, laving between her folds, all the while her hands twisted and pulled at her comforter.

Without the pressure of being quiet that night, she chanted his praises, letting him know how good he felt. She allowed herself get so lost in the feeling of Ashton’s tongue on and inside her, when he came up for air she heard herself whine pathetically at the loss.

Chuckling, he bit her ass cheek then sucked until she was sure he had left a bright red mark she wouldn’t be able to ignore tomorrow. He liked eating her out from behind for precisely this reason. It was rare for her to walk away from Ashton without at least a couple of bruises on her ass.

He slapped the cheek twice, each time landing on the already painful bruise he had sucked. She felt her body quiver at the sting of it. She moaned his name, “Ash.”

“Ready for me to fuck you, babe?”

She could feel her whole body jerk with how heavily she nodded her head. The warmth of Ashton’s body disappeared from behind her for a moment as he reached over into her bedside table rummaging for a condom. She panted and pushed her ass back in anticipation.

With the condom rolled on, he returned his attention to her, crawling onto the bed behind her, grabbing her hips, and aligning himself with her before pushing in.

He started off slow, allowing them both to get used to that feeling of him buried deep inside her. She encouraged movement, pushing back against him, writhing impatiently, and gasping, “Fuck me, Ash.”

That was all it took for him to take charge. He grabbed her hips and established a rhythm as he slammed into her. The room filled with the sounds of sex. Each thrust was punctuated by the slap of their skin and her voice as she repeatedly screamed his name. She got loud for him, letting him know how good he made her feel, how she loved the feeling of his dick deep in her pussy.

She wasn’t surprised to feel her orgasm building. She had been worked up since the second he started yelling at her that night. When she came, her whole body clenched, and her knees gave out underneath her. He followed her down, dick still deep inside her. He slowed his thrusts while the waves of her orgasm passed, then grunted at how limp and pliant she was underneath him.

Pulling out of her, he flipped her over. He crawled over her, realigned himself, and pushed back into her. She cried out, loving how sensitive she was from her orgasm. She knew he was close too, they had done this long enough that she recognized that look on his face.

She brought a hand up and ran it through dyed red hair before pulling him down for a kiss.

That was the wrong move.

Instantly, she was consumed with the intimacy of the moment. There was nothing dirty and animalistic about the way he licked into her mouth. This felt like a different kind of passion, and that scared her like no other. He pulled away from her to look her in the eyes.

“I love this,” he confessed, one hand coming up to brush away the hair that was sticking to her face, his hips still snapping into her, his thrusts deeper and slower now. “Love doing this with you. I feel so connected to you.”

“I-” she started, but she didn’t get to finish because he was crying out, his hips stuttering to a stop as he came inside her.

He buried his face in her neck, breathing in the heady scent there as he climaxed inside her. They both laid still for a few seconds after he came, breathing in each other and basking in the afterglow. Seconds later he rolled away, tying off his condom and throwing it in her bedside trash bin.

She paid no attention to what she was doing. Her mind was far away. She allowed herself to be moved pliantly as he came back next to her and laid her on his chest.

“I” she had begun to say. If he hadn’t interrupted her, she might have said something she would have come to regret. And even Ashton, the way he said his piece, the “I feel so connected to you” felt deeper than his usual praises when they had sex.

What did it all mean? She didn’t know, but the twisting feeling she had gotten while talking to Calum earlier was back with a vengeance.

God.

Fuck.

She rolled off of him. This was getting to be too much - the closeness of them. She had felt it before, the way how the relationship felt like more than just a friends-with-benefits situation, but her stupid talk with Calum now had her dwelling on it. She wondered how they ended up here, trying to find the defining moment took their relationship from one friend eating out another at a studio in West Hollywood to this.

It happened while she wasn’t looking.

She sat up and moved towards her bathroom door.

None of that mattered anyhow, she tried to tell herself, not now that she was taking back control.

“Hey,” she called over her shoulder. “Make sure to close the door when you leave.”

There was confusion in his voice. He sounded almost small as he asked, “I can’t stay over?”

She took a deep breath and turned. Meeting his eyes, she begged her resolve not to crumble. “Why would you do that?”

They were silent for a moment, eyes locked on each other. For a moment she thought he would complain, make a fuss like he did earlier. Instead, he released a frustrated grunt and began to get dressed.

“See you later, Ashton.” It was hard not to look back as she walked into her en-suite.

-- 

end notes: ok so confession: this is theoretically parts 1-3 of a 9-ish part story, but I thought it worked well as a stand alone. don’t forget to let me know what you think! 

[scige-alt]

YOUR ALIAS & NICKNAMES — james bt usually its spelled JAMES bt irl i’ve been called jimbo and jam and jammies and jimjam n w/e endearing terms bc i am precious

AGE — 20

TIMEZONE — est

PREFERRED PRONOUNS — she/they bt the she is more out of convenience fr others n also nothing bothers me

MBTI — istp i share this with bri and also my character viktor bt ive also gotten infp before i think which is almost the complete opposite so! take tht as u will

HP HOUSE — oh wait i actually know this i took a fckn quiz hold on. ok i took this fucker right here and i got burned gryffindor primary, model hufflepuff primary, gryffindor secondary, n model hufflepuff secondary which boils down 2 ... i dont know

ARE YOU A STUDENT? WHAT DO YOU STUDY? — technically yes but i havent taken a class in a year bt i used to be a social work major n then i was gna switch to english n then i wanted to do environmental / coastal / marine biology / science bt then i realized i cant do math so idk

ARE YOU ENJOYING IT? — i was :/

LINKS TO OTHER ACCOUNTS & SOCIAL MEDIA — i dont like being perceived bt my twitter is @fauxcherub and my pinterest is @offbrandsodapop / big tid and im too lazy 2 link them so im sry bt also my rph is @svrgcnts​ n my theme is unfinished ignore it

DISCORD USER — sniff#3644 i think

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FICTION GENRE? — i like modern fantasy / urban fantasy just like. modern magic. modern. bt mostly fr books. fr like films n tv shows i dont know i binge watch gossip girl and eat several oranges

TOP FIVE FAVOURITE FILMS — i ...... dont know .... pride n prejudice, austin powers, halloweentown n co’, the princess bride, the princess diaries or ella enchanted

A BOOK YOU FEEL “CHANGED” YOU? — i read the darkest minds when i was a freshmen in high school and it was the first book that ever made me cry and i think it unlocked the part of me that genuinely feels emotion because ever since i read it i cry multiple times a week to every single day at like. everything. so. its not even a revolutionary book i just really liked it

A MOVIE YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN? — probably pride n prejudice i wont lie but also if something stars mike myers chances r that its on my mind

WHAT IS YOUR SIGN? — aquarius sun, aquarius moon, cancer rising

ARE YOU INTO ASTROLOGY? — not 2 the point where i hate u if ur a gemini i just think its fun 2 b like ‘haha i do that’

WHAT PLATFORMS HAVE YOU ROLEPLAYED ON? — facebook n club penguin

WHAT OTHER HOBBIES DO YOU HAVE? — im a shell of a person.

HAVE ANY PETS? IF SO, TALK ABOUT THEM! — harley n bodhi i love them and so do u harley is a pit mix maybe possibly idk? and bodhi’s a shiba and theyre opposites. harley is so nice. bodhi is an asshole. i love them so much

IS THERE A TV SHOW YOU RECOMMEND A LOT? — i rly liked fleabag but schitt’s creek mostly. i also liked the politician but i want to punt ryan murphy so. i think the haunting of hill house is also a good show

ANY SHOWS YOU LIKE SOME MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT YOU DO? — i think im too predictable bt if anybody wants to tell me the answer to this please do

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT? — god i think i was reading strange the dreamer by laini taylor or smth like that bt ya i was enjoying it even though i stopped halfway thru and havent picked it up in a year

CURRENTLY READING? — i cant read

LAST FILM? REC IT? — the joker and no.

THREE MOVIES YOU NEED TO WATCH — practical magic bt i told myself i wouldnt watch it until i do my replies, perks of being a wallflower, n uuuhhh beautiful boy (thank u neen)

WHAT MOVIE DO YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN THE MOST TIMES? — austin powers or halloweentown or shrek i wont lie its probably shrek yeah its shrek

WHAT ALWAYS PUTS YOU IN A GOOD MOOD? — the gc usually :/

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE MUSICIAN / BAND? LIST IF THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE. — lady lamb bt im mad at her bc she hasnt toured to florida and all i want is to see her live bt im really feeling bay faction lately bt also mcr bc im emo but im kind of a few songs frm every artist type of person n not like entire discographies except fr the bands ive just listed

WILD NIGHT OUT OR QUIET NIGHT IN? — house parties r cool bt i like 2 be. in bed most of the time

ANY PHOBIAS? — none tht i can recall atm bt i have a lot of anxieties in general :/

DO YOU LIKE BUGS? — depends on the bug ...

BIRDS? — mostly no but ig it depends on the bird ... i like them frm afar bt their talons scare me

ARE YOU A CAT OR DOG PERSON? BOTH? — im v allergic to cats bt i want a cat so mf badly. but also ig im a dog person bc ive. always owned a dog

BIGGEST PET PEEVE? — like. not being self aware. passive aggression. the rpc

FAVOURITE THING ABOUT THE RPC? — this is a trick question

TOP TEN FAVE FCS TO USE? — dev patel, avan jogia, natalia dyer, bill skarsgard, medalion rahimi, naomi scott, ella purnell, freya mavor, liana liberato, sky ferreira.

FIVE YOU LIKE WRITING AGAINST? — i dnt rly focus on the fcs of other muses so i dnt think i can answer this. austin butler.

FAVOURITE TYPE OF FOOD? — mexican food i would eat it everyday if i could

WORST FOOD? — i think sushi is gross

DO YOU PLAY VIDEOGAMES? IF SO, WHAT ONES AND ON WHAT PLATFORM DO YOU PREFER? — not frequently. i like the bioshock like. series. universe. bt i like point n click adventures a lot ... deponia is my favorite game series theres like four of them n ive finished them in 8 consecutive hours each. i only use pc

ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE TAG? — im so sleepy

LASTLY, HOW DID YOU FIND US? — drama SJNKDFMG

[madam-lit-nerd]

OK BUUUUUUUT I don’t have enough high school Destiel in my life lately, so here...HAVE SOME HIGH SCHOOL DESTIEL!

So Dean transfers to Central High School at the start of his junior year, brand new and handsome with the sharp jawline and bright green eyes, and oh-so-mysterious with those brooding stares and leather jacket.

Cas, on the other hand, has been in the county’s school system since pre-school—same classes with the same kids for so many years. There’s nothing mysterious in the least about his wide gummy smiles and bulky sweater vests, always paired with askew glasses and perpetual bed head. Which, on some people would be sloppy, but on him, it’s all kind of...adorable.

Right off the bat, Dean’s earning quite a bit of attention from guys and girls alike, all staring at him with desire or glaring with jealousy. There are, of course, a few people who immediately try to ingratiate themselves to him, but he‘s met these kinds before—they always try to wiggle their way in, bathe in that new-kid spotlight with their too-bright smiles and too-loud voices.

And yet, between all the first-day, back-to-school outfits and makeup and hairstyles, all the flirtatious smiles and overt greetings...there’s one person who stands out to oh-so-cool, mysterious Dean Winchester: the disheveled kid with the gummy smile who grins at him from three lockers away and quickly tosses out, “I’m Cas. Lemme know if you need anything!” before rushing off to his next class.

A friendly interaction that’s not too overbearing is exactly what Dean needs, and he finds himself glancing over at that locker throughout the day, hoping for another moment. Turns out that, even though he never quite catches Cas at his locker, he does see him when he walks into the last class of the day (physics).

Cas already has several other students around him, laughing and joking as they discuss their summers, but as soon as Cas sees Dean, he pats the desk behind him in invitation. Dean smiles gratefully as he settles his long frame into the small desk, surprised yet grateful for the unexpected show of friendship.

They fall into conversation easily, almost as if they’ve been friends for years. But as Dean watches Cas interact with the other students who walk into the room, he realizes that this is just who Cas is, how he actswith pretty much everyone. He’s awkward and dorky, sure, but endearingly so.

Dean finds himself admitting that he’s kind of into music and maybe it’d be fun to be involved in a band of some kind. Cas smiles widely and tells him about Chuck and his band that meet in Practice Room C almost every day after school.

“They’re no Zep,” he admits with a little chuckle, “but they’re the only band we have here at Central.”

Dean blushes and says that he’ll check them out, earning another blinding smile from Cas.

After the final bell of the day, Cas walks with Dean back to their locker block, still as easy and engaging as ever. Dean can’t help but marvel at how many people pause to bid Cas goodbye, everyone from freshmen to seniors, top-rung athletes to low-rung nerds. And Cas is just as friendly and open with each and every one of them.

Once they’ve gathered their books, Cas points Dean in the direction of the practice rooms before heading off to his own Monday-afternoon club (something about recycling, from what Dean catches). Dean does find the practice rooms and the aforementioned Chuck, along with his fellow band members Gabriel and Cain and Crowley. He hears them before he sees them, and he’s surprised at how good they are.

He doesn’t know what to expect when he knocks on the door—in fact he’s pretty surprised that he actually works up the nerve to do so—but Chuck’s already heard from Cas, and immediately invites Dean to sing along with them for the afternoon. By the end of the rehearsal, they’re blending like they’ve been doing this for years, and Dean’s got himself a vocal spot with Aborted Apocalypse.

When Dean spots Cas in the hallway the next morning, disheveled and adorable in yet another bulky sweater, he tries to thank him, but Cas just waves him off with a simple “That’s what friends do.”

And, from what Dean observes over the next weeks, Cas is just as generous with...well, pretty much everyone.

First it’s the giant football player Gordon who runs up and scoops Cas into a giant bear hug bc he finally earned a B in his history class, all thanks to Cas tutoring him in his one free hour.

Then it’s the sketchy guy Sid who usually hangs out behind the gym celebrating April 20 every fucking day, shuffling up to Cas to mutter that he’s “got the stuff in his car.” At first Dean’s taken aback, bc he can’t help but wonder if Cas, well...but then it turns out that “the stuff” is the Tupperware containers that Cas used to pack a bunch of meals when he learned that Sid’s mom was in the hospital for surgery.

Then it‘s Bela sauntering up to inform Cas that their usual girls night at the movies will need to be moved to Friday instead of Saturday bc she’s been asked out on a date.

Then it’s Becky, a freshman who stumbles up sobbing bc her junior boyfriend broke up with her to ask Bela out on a date.

Then it’s some random sophomore asking Cas for a hug and a piece of chocolate bc they failed their world history quiz. Then the frickin school counselor stops by to ask Cas to sit in on an appointment with one of his friends (a term that literally applies to the entire school, as far as Cas is concerned).

And Cas—sweet, adorkable Cas who’s involved in so many extra clubs and volunteer groups on top of all this—just takes it all in stride. Dean can’t even begin to guess when the guy studies or does his homework, but he passes in all the homework that’s due and he aces all his quizzes (at least the ones that Dean grades).

When Dean finally asks Cas how he does it, how he manages to look out for so many people while still taking care of himself, Cas just shrugs and says something about “mom friend” before offering Dean one of the cookies he’d baked over the weekend.

It’s at this exact moment that Dean realizes that he’s falling for Cas. Pretty fucking hard. It doesn’t help that they’re spending more and more time together: studying for physics, hanging out at each other’s houses, binge watching Dr. Sexy, volunteering for events with the animal shelter (Cas’s idea). Cas will even sit in on the band’s rehearsals some afternoons and hum along as Dean flashes him funny faces and flirtatious winks.

And yeah, Dean tries dropping hints here and there, flirting and gentle teasing—everything that’s worked for him in the past. But, Cas seems oblivious? Honestly, truly oblivious. Whenever Dean flirts and tries to compliment his eyes or hair, Cas deflects and makes a joke instead. The couple of times that Dean asks Cas out, it’s misinterpreted as just . . . hanging out. It’s incredibly frustrating, to say the least.

But there are so many hints that maybe Cas does like Dean back? Like the way he always smiles so openly at Dean, with his entire face lighting up every time they’re in the same room. The way he goes out of his way to talk to him and spend time with him, no matte how many other people are vying for his attention. How he attends the band’s gigs once they start playing local venues...He even befriends Sam (which is a huge deal for Dean) bc they’re both in GSA. Which, that certainly sparked Dean’s interest when he heard, but Sam had to admit that he didn’t actually know if Cas was into guys, or just an ally.

It isn’t until Bela sweeps into an Aborted Apocalypse rehearsal on a Tuesday afternoon in November and shoves her perfectly manicured nail into Dean’s chest to ask, “Why the hell haven’t you made a move on Cas?” Which surprises Dean, bc he knew that Bela and Cas were close (an unlikely pairing, given...well, them. Apparently it went back to freshman year with Cas helping Bela through some family stuff) but he didn’t know that she’d take such an active role in trying to get them together.

He offers his entire list of excuses, from “Cas is the same with me as he is with everyone else” to “I don’t even know if he’s into guys.” Bela just rolls her eyes at every single one.

It’s only when she says, “You both can make up as many excuses as you want, but everyone can see how you’re into each other!” that Dean begins to consider the possibility that Cas might actually want him back.

But he still has to be sure. “Everyone can see?” he asks around the ball in his throat. Bela nods slowly, like she’s dealing with an idiot, and as Dean looks around, he can see the rest of the guys nodding along too, all with shit-eating grins. Well, fuck.

It’s then that he has to admit that none of his usual tricks have worked. And Cas is just so fucking friendly with everybody. Dean can’t believe he, of all people, is special to Cas.

Bela just rolls her eyes and drags Dean from the room to another empty practice room. She levels Dean with a stern glare as she threatens to “disembowel you slowly with my pinky nail if you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone, ever.” And then she tells him about Brady.

Apparently, Cas is gay, but his last boyfriend Brady (some dickwad who attends another school across town) spent the entire relationship actively convincing Cas that they shouldn’t ever break up because no one else would ever want him. And then when they did break-up, Brady blasted Cas on all the social sites, and at one point, even vandalized Cas’s car, spray-painting derogatory, hateful slurs across every surface. So Cas is understandably hesitant about starting a new relationship because of how Brady treated him.

But, the biggest reason he won’t let himself show interest in Dean is he still believes what Brady said. Regardless of how many people love and accept him at school and at home, there’s still a tiny part that thinks that he isn’t good enough. When Dean scoffs in anger and disbelief, Bela arches a brow and spells it out: unless Dean makes it super obvious that he’s into Cas like that...well, Cas will never make that leap on his own.

As Dean is just about to head back next door, Bela calls out, “He loves the Beatles, you know.”

Dean smirks back at her, “Give me some credit, Bela.”

That weekend, when Cas arrives at the little coffee shop the guys are playing (with Bela in tow), Dean makes sure to stop at their table before the show and compliment Cas on his new button-down. When Cas smiles up at him, blushing so prettily as he murmurs his thanks, Dean can’t help but brush his fingers over the back of Cas’s hand, sharing a long, soft smile before his giddiness carries him back up to the stage.

They start with their usual set—a couple songs that the guys had written before Dean joined, a song they’d all written together, a couple popular covers—all songs that Cas has heard before. But then, the last song before the break, Dean smiles right down at Cas as he says, “This next song is for my amazing best friend, who’s loved and appreciated by so many people...including me,” he glances down shyly as he admits, “Cas, there’s no one else I could sing this to.” He looks right back up into Cas’s shocked blue gaze, “No one else who I’d want to hold my hand.”

He nods to the guys behind him, and the bass line starts to thrum as Dean sings the first, low lines:

“Yeah, I’ll tell you something. I think you’ll understand, when I say that something: I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand.”

The tempo picks up as the others join in. “Oh please, say to me...you’ll let me be your man. And please, say to me, you’ll let me hold your hand. Now let me hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand.”

Cas’s cheeks burn a bright red, but he can’t seem to tear his gaze away from Dean—from his sincere eyes and kind smile—and Dean can’t bring himself to look away either. Everyone else, everything else, fades away. It’s just him and Cas as he sings the bridge.

“And when I touch you, I feel happy inside. It’s such a feeling that my love... I can’t hide...I can’t hide...I can’t hide.”

As Dean sings through the final chorus, he can see it in Cas’s face—the realization and certainty that Dean is singing this just for him.

When the song ends, Dean still can’t tear his eyes away from Cas. Chuck announces a short break, but it’s all background noise to Dean as he hops down from the stage and returns to his best friend. Their shy smiles match as Dean reaches down to intertwine their fingers together. Cas slowly stands and pulls Dean into a tight hug with his free hand, unwilling to release the hands held between them.

“I really do, you know,” Dean murmurs into Cas’s ear.

Cas pulls back just enough to let Dean really see his eyes. “I know. I’ve hoped, for so long, but I just...I couldn’t tell.”

Dean scoffs. “You couldn’t tell? You, who spends so much time looking out for other people—“

Cas rolls his eyes. “Yes, the mom friend.”

“Why do you keep calling it that?” Dean wonders, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Because that’s what I am,” Cas insists. “And no one wants to date the mom.”

Dean arches a brow. “Ever heard of Stacy’s Mom? Or MILFs? Or Mrs. Robinson? Or—“

Cas cuts him off with, “I get it, I get it.” He chuckles, brushing his nose against Dean’s. “I still don’t understand it, but I get it.”

Dean’s eyes drop to Cas’s mouth. “And you get me.”

“I do?” Cas can’t help but tease, but Dean chooses to respond with something that will erase all doubts. His lips meet Cas’s, somehow gentle and fervent and kind and sincere, each giving and taking at the same time.

When they finally part, to the sound of people clapping and cheering, Dean glances down at Bela and nods once. “Thank you.”

Cas looks down at her, his eyebrows arched in surprise. “This was you?” Bela just shrugs as she looks back down at her phone with a bored expression, “I was just so sick and tired of the eye-fucking.”

Years down the road, when Dean and Aborted Apocalypse have hit it big, Cas will use his sparse free time (you know, between his full-time job as a social worker and his classes to earn his second masters degree) to go see Dean and the others perform whenever they’re nearby. And every time Cas is at one of their shows, they play another Beatles song. But they never actually circle back around to “I Want to Hold your Hand” until the night Dean pulls Cas onstage to drop to one knee and ask him if he’ll hold his hand for the rest of their lives.

So I’ve kind of had this idea floating around in the back of my head for a while now (you know, high school nerds falling in love over music). I mean, I’d heard through the grape vine that Jensen could sing, but it wasn’t until I saw this video that I realized I had to write something with musician Dean. The song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was originally sung by the Beatles, but the version I picture Dean singing here is closer to this slow version from the Across the Universe soundtrack. Anyways, hope you enjoyed! As always, please like and share, as that is the lifeblood for us authors on here. Ok, byeeee!

[trash-the-tozier]

losers club + marching band hcs

I was thinking about trombone playing mike hanlon and got super carried away so i’ll put this under a cut

bill - was told that clarinet seemed to suit him best when testing what instrument to play but picked saxophone instead bc it was cooler  - switches to tenor saxophone after sophomore year - is always sunburned - is a section leader by his senior year and takes his job very seriously - kind of - he still gets into plume fights with richie after halftime shows at football games (and stan yells and chases them because you're not supposed to touch the plumes without gloves tHOSE ARE REAL FEATHERS) - he's never ever had to sit out/gone to the med tent and he's very proud of that fact - even that one time that he really should have bc he tripped and skinned both of his knees rly bad and was bleeding all over himself - has a saxophone solo during the ballad his senior year - has the most supportive family ever - they're that group of people that yells "we love you bill!" in the silence after the announcer but before the band starts - all of the freshmen really love him and give him a special present at band banquet senior year

​beverly - she's a cymbal girl! - talks a lot during practice but she's sneaky about it so she doesn't get in trouble - usually wears those tank tops with really long cutouts down the sides and a colorful sports bra - learns drill really fast - always wears sunglasses - gets a really bad sunglasses tan on her face like reverse raccoon eyes completely outlined in new freckles - hypes everyone up by yelling encouragements when practice gets slow - reminds all her friends to stay hydrated - she's the main reason the percussion bus is always called the party bus - always ropes the losers into going to mcdonalds or ihop after football games - is somehow always the first person in the band hall on competition days, even if report time is something super early like 4am - requests the cha cha slide at band banquet and even the band director joins in

ben - plays bassoon during concert season - double reed instruments can't march tho so the band director asks him to march sousaphone because he's so Big and Strong  - the sousaphone is heavy as all heck and at first ben really isn't sure about this - he gets the hang of it - he even starts learning how to play it a little bit - by the end of the season he's good enough to play in the show - by the end of high school he's a master at both instruments - has a farmer's tan so strong that richie claims it probably has magic powers - the low brass and the battery are always really close to each other so he and bev always race each other to their water jugs and back during water breaks - bev usually wins - sometimes richie will help and hold bev back so ben can get to his spot first - ben asks beverly to band banquet freshman year and she says yes, and they go to it together all four years

mike - plays trombone and is amazing - becomes the trombone section leader his sophomore year - becomes a drill instructor for the entire low brass his junior year - is head drum major his senior year - his salute before their performance is fierce - he likes being drum major but he found actually marching in the show to be more fun - plans on going to school to be a music teacher but wants to do some drum corps first - (he makes it into madison scouts for a year, then goes to carolina crown) - he, beverly, and bill get really into the football games - is on the uniform committee with stan and mostly tries to keep stan from yelling at the freshmen when they hang up their pants wrong - he's literally always in a practice room, even when the band hall is supposed to be closed - he and richie always imitate that 'dad on trombone, kid on oven' vine (richie's snare drum sounds enough like an oven) when they're walking back inside from practice bc it makes bev laugh

stan - first chair flute player - his marching technique is impeccable but he never tries out for a leadership position so he never gets one - complains a lot about the heat or his feet hurting or being sweaty - still prefers marching season to concert season tho bc he hates his private lesson teacher - she's the reason he threatens to quit every year (he never actually does) - he's the head of the uniform committee and actually does take that job very seriously - all the freshmen go to other members of the committee for uniform checks because stan gets scary - "how fucking hard is it to make sure that when you hang your uniform jacket there's one shoulder pad on each side of the hanger???" jfc - if they're on a bus going somewhere, stan is definitely asleep - stan's favorite sets in the show are the ones where he's close enough to see bill out of the corner of his eye - he somehow trips on the power cord for the synthesizer almost every day - cries after his last performance

richie - percussion obvs - plays in the battery instead of the pit, and is on the snare drum - ends up becoming center snare player his senior year - turns out he and mike have amazing chemistry and the band is never out of time from the battery ever again - he loves doing rim shots rly late at night when they're coming back inside after games/performances and everyone curses at him - has passed out/nearly passed out on the field at least once every year because of heat exhaustion - threw up the first day of practice freshman year because he had cereal for breakfast - is one of those boys that refuses to cut his hair, so beverly has to put it up or braid it before they have performances to keep it all inside of his shako - is always the one to get in trouble for PDA because nobody believes him when he says that no really eddie started it, he was the one kissing me it's not my fault - (doesn't complain tho) - gets extremely competitive at marching competitions - has worn the same ratty pair of tennis shoes all four years

eddie - doesn't play an instrument! is in the colorguard - good on flag, best on rifle, doesn't do sabre much - every single lowerclassmen (and some upperclassmen) are afraid of eddie "step on my silk and i will kill you" kaspbrak - wears a bandana, a fanny pack, and short shorts to practice - is the kid in the band with the insane watch tan (the skin underneath looks fucking translucent) - no one is ever sure if he'll be there or not next year because his mom always wants him to quit - argues with ben about swing flags whenever they're put in the show (ben thinks they're pretty, eddie things the choreo for them is way too boring) - is the best in the guard at show makeup but can't help with hair to save his life - had a wild time at band banquet he loved it - tried to teach richie how to do drop spins on a rifle one time but richie somehow hit himself in the face and broke his glasses

[ukulelewrites]

All’s Fair In Love & War {1}

A/N: natty’s back at it again with the “i am trash for kim donghan” fics~~~ So yeah, a chaptered fic for the rudest yet cutest boy ik. Also tagging @smols-n-tols bc they heard this idea from me first!

Pairing: JBJ’s Kim Donghan x Reader

Genre: Angst, fratboy!donghan, more things to come~

Word Count: Roughly 2k

Parts: 1 / 2

An A on your paper. A stupid bet spurred by anger. And an especially annoying frat boy who goes by the name of Kim Donghan. Who knew such things would lead you to such a mess?

College was always something you had thought about growing up. Ever since your sophomore year of high school you knew you wanted to travel around the world while writing, so when you got the acceptance letter from Lawrence Sarah College in the mail, you were ecstatic. However, your parents were less than thrilled. “How can you go to an all girls’ college? How are you going to get a normal college experience surround by all girls?” your mom asked, concerned, over dinner one night.

“If I wish to graduate college with honors and a journalism major with a minor in linguistics, work for some of the top newspapers in the country, and then build up my resume to be able to go freelance by the age of 28, I can’t afford to have a ‘normal’ college experience,” you replied matter-of-factly, not even looking up from you dinner plate.

“College isn’t just about getting a degree, kiddo,” your dad asked, “It’s about finding who you are, what you want to be. Plus, can’t you just go to the State University? They have a strong journalism program, right?”

“Dad, I already know who I am and what I want to be, and going to Lawrence Sarah is going to help me with that. Plus, in the journalism world, a degree from Lawrence Sarah carries way much more weight than State.”

Your parents shared worried glances. “Whatever, you say, kiddo. We’ll trust you to make the decision that’s best for you.”

That was two years ago. You were now a sophomore at Lawrence Sarah, and you were thriving. The intensive coursework kept you on your toes and away from distractions such as socials and parties. You stayed within your dorm room or the library constantly studying and constantly writing; that’s how you were able to maintain your spotless GPA for the past two years.

“Prof, can I talk to you about our paper?” you asked one day after class.

“Of course, Y/N, go ahead,” he said, looking up from his desk.

“I just wanted to run a couple ideas by you for the article we’re expected to write, since it is 80% of our grade,” you said, eyeing your professor nervously. Once he motioned for you to continue, you began to speak. “I was thinking of doing more research into the negative effect of-”

“No,” your professor clipped, returning his attention back to the papers on his desk.

“Well, what about the systematic-”

“No.”

“And why not?”

He looked up at you through his glasses. “Y/N, you’re an extremely bright student, but as of now, all of your topics don’t pertain to you.”

“What do you mean? These are things I feel very strongly-”

“You can feel as strongly as you want, but through this paper, I want to learn something about you as a person too, Y/N. Be informative, be personable, be something different. Because, Y/N, I know you can write well about the negative effects of enforced gender roles and expectations on children. I know you can write well about the growing population of people identifying as queer and what that means to them. But I want this article to be something about you. You’re a college student after all. There has to be something you can think of.”

“Well what about,” you paused, pondering over your lackluster knowledge of college life. Suddenly you remembered your friend mentioning something about the State University’s frat. “Well, what about I write an exposé on fraternity mentality and their influence on college life?” you offered, “I can interview a couple of the fraternities at State, and I can even talk to their school’s director on the influences of the Greek system, maybe even pull up a couple statistics?” you looked at your professor expectantly.

“And how does this pertain to you?”

“We’re right next door to State. A lot of my classmates are affected by the fraternities there, so it’d be good for me to write something to inform them of exactly what they’re getting into when the boys of Epsilon Beta come over to our campus to invite impressionable freshmen to their parties.”

He leaned back in his seat, and a pensive look overcame his features. “Hm, your perspective on the whole thing would add a nice twist,” he paused, “I guess, you’ll just have to write it and convince me it’s worthy.”

“A fraternity? You’re doing an exposé on a fraternity?” Yebin asked, choking on her lowfat yogurt. You crinkled your nose at her sparse lunch and took another bite into your burger.

“I blanked okay! He shot down all my other idea, so I kinda just blurted that one out,” your words thinned out at the end of your sentence.

“And how exactly are you going to get someone from a frat to agree to this? You’re exposing them for the purpose of an A. I see no benefits here.”

You shrugged, “I’ll just say it’s an article highlighting the positive effects of fraternities within a college community. The actual dirt I pull will be through my own observations at frat events and statistics I find.” You finished your burger and leaned forward in your seat. “Anyways, Yebin, can you get me into a frat party?” She almost sprayed mineral water over you.

“You? A frat party? Jesus Christ, Y/N, you’re seriously dedicated to this aren’t you?”

“It’s 80% of my grade, of course I’m dedicated.”

She roller her eyes at your reply. “Well,” she leaned in also, dropping her voice to a whisper, “I’m seeing this guy from Epsilon Beta, so I think I can get us into their next party.”

“Of course, how could I expect anything less from you,” you said jokingly, knowing extremely well your best friend’s reputation. “So, when’s the party?”

“Tomorrow.”

You leaned back into your chair in shock. “Tomorrow? It’s a Tuesday night! I have classes Wednesday.”

Yebin shrugged. “That’s just how Epsilon Beta works. You asked me to get you into a party, and that’s the one I can get you in.”

You groaned. “Fine, what do I wear?”

“Well, have anything that goes above your knees?”

You tugged at your skirt and the hem of your crop top uncomfortably. “It’s the middle of October. Why the hell am I wearing a crop top?” you asked, teeth chattering.

“Because you look hot, and if you want to get any frat boy’s attention, that’s the way to do it,” Yebin replied nonchalantly as the two of you walked up to the house. The bass was already reverberating through you, and the stench of mischief filled the air. You eyed the boy standing at the door warily as Yebin threw an arm around his shoulders and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Sanggyun, it’s so good to see you!” she squealed. He grimaced.

“Save your flirting for Taehyun. It’s bad enough he put me on door duty, now I have to deal with kiss-ups like you trying to get in.”

She rolled her eyes playfully. “You know full well Taehyun hates it when I squeal. He says it ruins the mood,” she said this with a pout. “Anyways, what did you do to earn such a duty?”

Sanggyun smiled proudly, “Well, Donghan and I got onto Taehyun’s laptop and uploaded this code that opened your last tab on full volume the next time you turned on your laptop, and well, it’s his own fault the last tab he had opened was a really bad porno. Really, no tact at all, everyone knows to use incognito mode for that shit.”

“And how’d he know it was you?” you piped up from behind Yebin.

Sanggyun’s eyes widened when he realized you were there, but he continued on with his story, “We’re the only two CS majors in the entire frat, so through process of elimination, he figured it was us.”

“Riveting,” Yebin deadpanned, “anyways, can you be a kind soul and let us into the party?”

Sanggyun eyed you carefully, “I guess it wouldn’t hurt anyone if I let your friend in. She’s not like, going to break shit right? Last time we let someone’s friend in, they caught Hyunbin’s mattress on fire.”

“I promise I’m not a pyromaniac,” you swore.

He shrugged, “Good enough for me. Enjoy the party, ladies.”

Yebin had long ditched you at this point for her current fling, so you found yourself alone, back pressed against the wall as you scrolled through your phone. You honestly had no clue on how to conduct yourself here. You were never fond of dancing or alcohol, so you were at  a complete loss as to how to approach any of the boys.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing all alone?” someone asked. You looked up to find a boy towering over you. His black hair was tousled slightly, and his fitted white tee and tight black pants gave room for little imagination. He wore a smirk as he looked down at you, obviously confident with the idea of you throwing yourself at him instantly.

“Trying to avoid people like you,” you said icily.

“Hm, usually not the response I get, but you’re pretty cute, so I’ll let it slide. Name’s Donghan by the way,” he said. His back was now pressed against the wall; the two of you standing there side by side, watching the crowd.

“Well, I’m Y/N,” you replied.

“Hm, Y/N, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around.”

“I’m from Lawrence Sarah.” You scooted a bit to the left, trying to create some distance between you two.

“Lawrence Sarah? The home of lesbians and sluts?” he asked, also scooting to the left.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t call it that. It’s completely degrading to the girls attending the university.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Look, one of the only other girl from Lawrence Sarah here is currently in one of the upstairs’ bedroom blowing our president,” he replied crassly.

Your ears felt hot. “Well, it’s still rude to only widdle her down to the word ‘slut.’ She’s extremely bright, and she’s on her way to being a member of the national women’s soccer team,” you huffed out. You crossed your arms tightly across your chest.

“Let me guess, she’s your best friend?” You gave the answer away once you turned away from him. “Look, babe, didn’t mean to offend, but considering the only thing I know about her is that she’s blown almost every single guy on Greek row, it’s hard not calling her a slut.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “And you’re just the spitting image of chastity, aren’t you?”

He broke out into a smirk when you said that. “Well, I don’t really do chastity.”

“Then you have no right to call her such a demeaning name if you do the exact same thing she does.”

He rose his hands up in defense. “Didn’t mean to offend, I swear.”

You rolled your eyes at him. “I’m assuming you think yourself as some kind of god for sleeping around so much.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say god, but,” his smirk grew, “girls just seem to flock to me.”

You scoffed at his statement. “How humble,” you said, sarcasm dripping off of your tongue. “What has happened to chivalry in the modern age?”

“Chivalry’s dead, babe. It’s been dead since knights stopped being a thing.”

“So you’ve never loved anyone?”

“Love’s overrated. Life’s all about living to the fullest. You can’t do that tied down.”

“How,” you paused to mull over your words, “fratboy-ish of you to say.”

“Of course,” he leered down at you, “if it’ll get you into my bed, I’m all for dating.”

You shook your head at his statement. “Of course, how could I expect anything less from someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” he asked. His eyebrow cocked up in amusement.

“Someone who masks their fragile masculinity and fear of falling in love by never staying with the same person too long because it’s so not cool to be in a loving, trusting relationship.”

It was his turn to scoff at you. “Babe, I don’t love, period, not because of whatever bullshit you’re spewing. Love’s just something made up by the Hallmark company to sell their overpriced cards.”

“Really now? Well, what about a wager.”

“And what’s the wager?”

“Whoever I choose, you have to woo them. If you get rejected, you automatically lose the bet.”

“I don’t get rejected,” he said cockily.

“Anyways, if you succeed in wooing them, you have to date them for 4 months. Kissing, hand holding, dates, all that jazz, but you can’t sleep with them. If you seriously don’t feel anything for them by the end of the month, you win. If you do feel something, I win.”

He looked interested now. “And what do I get if I win?”

“Whatever you want from me.”

He rose his eyebrow at you. “You sure about that, babe? I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.”

You straightened yourself up. “I think I know what I’m doing, babe.”

Donghan looked at you amused and stuck his hand out. “Then I guess it’s a deal.”

You begrudgingly took his hand and shook it. Quickly letting it go, you turned around to scan the party, looking for someone. “Well, you have to go after her,” you said, pointing to a girl sitting by herself. You knew her from your Women’s Studies class, knowing full well how kind-hearted and genuine she is. It’d be impossible not to fall for her.

Donghan squinted his eyes in your finger’s direction. “Can’t you pick me someone a bit more, I don’t know, hot?”

You smirked up at him. “A deal’s a deal, Donghan. I recommend you get to work now if you really want to win.”

[saturnsovereign]

all the numbers

aight, i got nothing else to do. i’ll try to keep them less than a paragraph short tho. 

1: Talk about the first time you watched your favorite movie.First, I’d have to decide my overall favorite movie, but I don’t have a Favorite ya know. But if I had to pick some, my default answer is Beauty and the Beast and Treasure Planet. I don’t really remember watching Beauty and the Beast but I do know that I loved their soundtrack. Treasure Planet, I’d seen some clips on youtube and one of them made me cry so I thought I’d check it out and man I loved it bc of the adventure and space and pirates. :D

2: Talk about your first kiss.My first kiss happened the summer of my Sophomore-Junior year of HS and its what set up the drama for Junior year. Anyway, confused feelings had been in place beforehand and I had gotten with and broke-up with my ex-bf in a little more than a month due to conflicting feelings that I realized during our band trip to Disneyland. Fast forward a few months, my friend confessed her feelings for me first over text, and I said I felt the same way. She invites me to her birthday party which was a sleepover. Once everybody fell asleep I kissed her on the cheek and I thought that would be it, but she pulled me back for a kiss on the lips… and then we had a makeout session for like the whole night. Then a few weeks pass and she dumps me. :/ What made it worse was that she held it over me for the rest of the school year since we were on the same team together. 

3: Talk about the person you’ve had the most intense romantic feelings for.This one is easily my girlfriend. I’ve told the story about the prank and our fake dating shenanigans, but lord I fell for her so hard. I have a thing about touch, and I don’t really like it when people touch me all the time or without permission. But with her man.. her hugs–I’m shorter than her so she basically envelopes me and like I still think back to the first day I came back after That Day which was band camp weekend but man that was a good hug and we weren’t even dating yet. Sorry, I digress, but I found her so much easier to trust than everybody else I’d been with. Like with my ex-bf I was always holding back my actual feelings/pretend everything was ok and with ss I always had to watch my language, and like with both of them I never got around to fully trusting. But with her-my gf-I trusted her before we started dating and I trusted her so much more after we got together. I trust her still to this day. And with the romantic feelings bit, I’m not afraid of being a dork around her and flirt with her and hold her and god. She’s so beautiful. 

4: Talk about the thing you regret most so far.There’s a lot of things I regret. But I think rn, the one I can tell you is that I didn’t work hard enough in high school bc I never thought I’d make it through high school. 

5: Talk about the best birthday you’ve had.This last one actually. Heh. I got to spend my day with my gf :)

6: Talk about the worst birthday you’ve had.I don’t really have bad birthdays, I just hate my birthdays bc I don’t like having been born. :/

7: Talk about your biggest insecurity.Idk what exactly is my biggest insecurity but I’ll talk about all my other insecurities. I think I’m a horrible conversationalist, being all awkward and highly introverted. I don’t complain about my body too much but I certainly don’t celebrate it. I hate my laugh and my voice, and I don’t think my face is really anything to look at I used to think everybody just talked to me because they had no other choice but to. I feel easily replaceable and forgettable. I feel like I’m dumb af bc I’m not exactly the quickest thinker and sometimes I can’t hear people. I feel like I’m always doing the wrong thing and I stand out but not in a good way. I just feel like a good annoyance in general. 

8: Talk about the thing you are most proud of.I’m proud of being able to graduate high school. :/9: Talk about little things on your body that you like the most.I like my calves, they’re the only thing that show I have some muscle. I used to like my biceps too but they’ve deflated and there’s like no muscle there anymore. I like that my ears can do the little wiggle thingy. Also my hands can type medium-fast speed. 

10: Talk about the biggest fight you’ve ever had.The biggest fight I’ve had is with myself ever since I wanted to kms. But if you want an external fight, its probably the one between me and ss since that shit lasted hella long. 

11: Talk about the best dream you’ve ever had.I don’t remember dreams unless they’re really weird.12: Talk about the worst dream you’ve ever had.Idk if you’d count it as a nightmare bc it was just super weird but I remember a dream about people getting turned it leaves, and witches, and Professor X and idk its all just a mess. 

13: Talk about the first time you had sex/how you imagine your first time.The first time I had sex was in the guard room. And like it was weird bc I’ve never masturbated and stuff so I didn’t know how anything felt down there. I’ve never used a tampon by then so I’ve never had anything inserted there. Also I was pretty unaware where tf my clit was… So. My point is, there was a lot of confusing sensations but I didn’t really mind bc it was my gf who took my virginity. 

14: Talk about a vacation.I went to Lake Tahoe with my gf and her family and we did like hella romantic shit. Like we went on a stroll on the beach at night with all the constellations and we did stuff in bed and we went to an arcade and we swam and man that was a lot of fun. I was on my period tho for most of it, which sucked but. 🤷🏻‍♀️

15: Talk about the time you were most content in life.I just really think about the times my gf would hold me and I’d focus on her heartbeat and the feel of her and nothing else. 16: Talk about the best party you’ve ever been to.idk about this one. With parties, I usually get peopled out. 17: Talk about someone you want to be friends with.I don’t have anyone rn since school hasn’t started yet for me and also I’m pretty anti-social. :/18: Talk about something that happened in elementary school.I was known for being the most aggressive girl/team member in gym floor hockey during PE. So like, picture this, from 3rd graders to 6th graders all being in the same PE class since there were so little of us. Now imagine smaller me coming up behind a taller, older boy and ramming them into the wall in order to get the hockey puck. Also imagine smaller me, sprinting–and I was the fastest girl in my grade for a while–and practically charging at you to get that hockey puck. Needless to say, people liked being on my team. 19: Talk about something that happened in middle school.I was in 7th grade, and I had just transferred into my new school. I had been sitting alone at lunch, minding my own business, and reading a book when three girls come up to me. They introduce themselves and invite me to sit at lunch with them. They really helped. 

20: Talk about something that happened in high school.For my final english project in senior year, we had to do a live acting of Romeo and Juliet. I was in the odd ones out group and it had a bunch of people who would never be in a group together unless they were forced to- which we were. I had done all the preparation for the script, it was like two days before the final date and we agreed to meet at the park’s ampitheater to do a final run together. I had just come back from performing at a parade and lord I was tired. We were fighting about how things were supposed to go a lot. 

21: Talk about a time you had to turn someone down.During 8th grade, I got transferred into another PE class since I signed up for creative writing and there was only one period of it. I don’t remember how, but I eventually became friends with this scrawny kid named Tiger.. no joke. Anyway, I distinctly remember one time we were sitting inside on some bleachers and there were those jerk-y middle school boys behind us and they started picking on him. I remember looking at them and like telling something along the lines of back off. Anyway, skipping to 8th grade dance, I was with my friends when Tiger came along and asked for me to slow dance with him. I did. He was the second person I slow danced with. After a few slow dances my friends were making fun of me for it, but like not bc of him, more that someone asked me to slow dance and they were like poking harmless fun. Thing was, I knew he had a crush on me but I really didn’t return the feelings. Moving on to freshmen year, he calls up my mom due to bowditch directory, and asked me to go to the movies with him. I had to turn him down. 22: Talk about your worst fear.My worst fear, there are a good few fears that tie for that spot. My first one is my fear of abandonment and like disappointing everyone to the point that they just realize its better to go on without me. To an extent, its my fear of being forgotten. My second one, the fear of myself, or rather my intrusive thoughts, and being faced with all things I’ve done and thought, knowing everything that’s happened is my fault and getting confirmation of that. Fear that I’d hurt someone because of something I did. The third one is losing everything that matters to me. 

23: Talk about a time someone turned you down.Let’s just talk about my “breakup” with SS during Sophomore-Junior summer bc it was kinda shitty. The reason its in quotations is bc is it actually a break-up if you were never officially together in the first place. Like, the details get muddled up but she essentially told me over text. I remember this because I was just coming back from working on my drum major routine over the summer, I was on a bridge when I got the text. Something along the lines of her parents and her religion and stuff. It really sucked bc it was before I would leave for guard camp and the people who were going with me had shipped both me and her together. :/

24: Talk about something someone told you that meant a lot.There was one time in Brentwood and one time after SCVC camp. But thats between me and her.

25: Talk about an ex-best friend.For the 4th time today, I’m talking about SS. Like c’mon universe really? Anyway, she was a best friend but honestly man, she wasn’t even the best of my friends. She was a close friend, but she wasn’t the best friend. It didn’t help that I had had a crush on her for half the time before our really bad and long ass fight. 26: Talk about things you do when you’re sick.I just realized I haven’t been properly sick in a while like sick with a fever so I actually have to stay in bed. Like I’d usually get like sniffles and a cough but I’d be okay for the day. So like, I like piling myself in blankets and hide from the world really. 

27: Talk about your favorite part of someone else’s body.The eyes will always get me. Take that and add a smile, and bruh. Thats beauty. 

28: Talk about your fetishes.Forgive me, but I had to search these up bc I didn’t know what exactly counted as a fetish. So like if something isn’t a fetish just like.. tell me or something. So like BDSM like light bondage and blindfold and stuff. Strap-on. Dom/Sub stuff and like orgasm control/denial? Are hickies considered a fetish? I’m reading here something about being bitten but idk if that means voyeurism or like vampire roleplay or if they mean hickies. 

29: Talk about what turns you on.My gf ;) But like kissing. Neck and ear biting/nibbling.  Dry humping. Hair pulling- moreso bc of my haircut. Teasing. When my gf is being really dominant. Also when my gf is being really submissive and her moans. ;D

30: Talk about what turns you off.Those gifs of porn when you’re searching up a tag on tumblr and like bruh, I just wanted to see a pic about like puppy i didn’t need to see some bondage gay puppy roleplay like c’mon!

31: Talk about what you think death is like.A rest from the thoughts in your head. Quiet. The final escape. Maybe you get a second chance. That the next universe you experience, you’re in control, that you get to relive your life but better the next time around.  

32: Talk about a place you remember from your childhood.I remember the first time I stepped foot in the Post Office in my hometown/childhood city. It looked different from the PO in place where we used to live. It was made of bricks and it looked really cool. I’ve only gone in once or twice but I remember all the PO boxes and the wooden shelves and getting to learn how to send a letter. Idk why exactly I remember this but yeah. 

33: Talk about what you do when you are sad.Depends how sad I am. Sometimes I try to distract myself, sometimes I just stew in those thoughts. If its night, then I have a good chance of crying myself to sleep.

34: Talk about the worst physical pain you’ve endured.Idk when I get leg cramps in the middle of the night. It used to happen all the time during Sophomore and Junior year and I’d feel it throughout the day. 

35: Talk about things you wish you could stop doing.Living. heh. Procrastinating and being depressed. 

36: Talk about your guilty pleasures.ml and pr. shhhh

37: Talk about someone you thought you were in love with.5th time. Hopefully my last time talking about her. The reason that what happened between us hurt so much was bc I thought I was in love with her once. That’s why every time she’d shove a crush of hers in my face or something that I’d forgive her. But I got tired of it and waiting for her. I moved on. And it was a good decision bc I now have someone I really am in love with. But she didn’t like it, and apparently she had still “loved” me by letting me go, but thats just bullshit. That’s just bullshit. 

38: Talk about songs that remind you of certain people.I have a whole playlist for my gf. And then there’s No by Meghan Trainor that my friend really hates XD

39: Talk about things you wish you’d known earlier.That I’d make it through HS and graduate. Maybe I could have built something up rather than assume I wouldn’t make it. 

40: Talk about the end of something in your life.It was my birthday, so it was the end of me being that age I was before. 

[dear--charlie]

Dear Charlie,

10/4/17 12:05AM mj.p

It’s been over a year since I last wrote to u. I was barely starting freshmen year, & I was scared shitless about the future & was overthinking a bunch. It got the point where I was suicidal. But, I made it through the school year. At the end of the year I struggled, but I did it. That’s not the point though. The point is, a lot has changed weirdly in over a year. I become close to a girl in 8th grade (I had a hate for her in kindergarten hahaha,) but she’s my best friend now. I appreciate her so much, & she appreciates me too. She deals with my bull shit, my mood swings, problems, etc. She tries to tell me how I’m gorgeous & everything. Thank god I met her. I didn’t think I’d ever make a new best friend because of what happened to my ex best friend & I. But I met my new best friend, & she knows me so well. Another thing that happened is, I’m talking to someone. I’ve been talking to them for over 7 months. Crazy thing is, we’ve only seen each other once but we didn’t talk because it was so nerve racking. He gets his license soon, hopefully we can hangout. I’m still nervous about it though. Wish me luck that when we hangout, it goes well. Another crazy thing is, I actually slid in his dms?? & weirdly, it worked out, he asked for my number, now we’ve been talking for 7 months. He’s a senior & I’m a sophomore, so I like how he’s mature compared to boys I talk to at school or go to school w/. Everyone thinks it’s a bit sketchy, I know. He won’t do anything or use to me, I think, he doesn’t seem like that type. He’s sweet. He’s different from the other guys I’ve talked to. Well honestly, I’ve never talked to any other guys. Other than my ex crush/first love who left me for my ex best friend. But this new guy A (code name,) he’s so sweet. He reminds me everyday on how gorgeous I am & cares about me. He knows I deal with personal issues, but he doesn’t care & still talks to me. I worry that sometimes I’m too much or I will be too much, but I know if he cares, he’ll be willing to stay. Another problem I always worry is that he’s talking to other girls or telling them the same thing he’s telling me. I suppose I worry because the distance and how I’m not with him in real life. But, I only know about A from my friend, who talked to him w/ this other girl. He told them the same thing, but I didn’t talk to him at the time. So I can’t be mad. That was years ago though, he was a freshmen, he’s changed. He doesn’t know I know this though. But, his reassurance helps w/ these neg. thoughts. He makes me happy, Charlie. I hope this really works out. Another thing that’s been happening is, I’ve been going to therapy. Over the summer I thought about getting help bc I was so fucking sad, so I convinced myself to get help. I hate getting help, but it’s been somewhat helping me out. I’ve figured out a few things about myself & how to try to deal w/ things. But it’s still a bit difficult & rocky sometimes. For ex, today. My self esteem has been so fucking low lately. I’ve been comparing myself a lot & feeling like shit. My therapist tells me I should be more compassionate to myself, but it’s hard. I’m always beating myself up. I wanna change that. But, I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you a few things that have been happening & how a lot can change in over a year. Let’s just hope everything works out Charlie, thanks for listening.

Sincerely, mj.p