#when you feel like there’s no one sidedness in a relationship

[nosleep83]

Mondo Gecko and Mikey are actually peak friendship. Like. You find someone. They dig your vibe. You dig their vibe. And you’re friends for the rest of your lives. No friendship could be better.

[thatbookgirl1118]

I cannot for the life of me find the original post (tumblr is a hellsite) but this was sent in an atla gc:

@the-badger-mole

and tbh i always kinda felt like kataang was weird exactly because of that one-sidedness??? like there's one episode of katara maybe sort-of seeing aang as a love interest (when the fortune teller tells her she'll marry a powerful bender), but then the rest of the show is her being passive in the relationship or actively pushing aang away (like their second kiss). and then at the end she just randomly decided "okay i like you i guess."

whereas aang got a bunch of pining moments and you actually believed he was in love with katara.

and most of their relationship was about how she helped aang - he did contribute to her character development over the course of the series especially as a bender of course but it didn't feel as emotionally/spiritually deep as katara's literal one episode sidequest with zuko.

but then someone else wrote "I would argue the opposite? Kataang is where Katara choose the peaceful nomad which subverts the trope presented where zutara is where she chooses the strong protector/combatant. Aang as a character is a subversion of the typical hero while zutara is like,,, coloniser romance idk"

and honestly... i kinda get that. aang was problematic in a lot of ways, but he was definitely a subversive protagonist, and i can see the power of allowing the woman to choose the pacifist vegetarian over the extremely obviously hot jock badboy. this is an incredible oversimplification of their characters of course, but the point stands.

Basically, Kataang is the ship we all logically want - the sweet, friendship-based, seemingly subversive one. But Zutara is the one that actually makes sense in the story, with these characters, not their tropes. Aang is subversive, but he and Katara are also kind of terrible for each other - he isn't mature or selfless enough for Katara, who needs someone to force her to take care of herself because she's always the one taking care of everyone else (wonder what that's like). That's why she and Zuko are so perfect, because he not only takes care of her, he makes HER prioritize herself. Aang... does not. He's pretty selfish, which yes is partially due to his immaturity (I personally don't count Korra as canon because it treated ALL the og characters terribly so I'm speaking purely from his 12 yo self), but it's also just a basic incompatibility thing. And Katara is actually equally bad for Aang - she enables him waaay too much, and he needs someone who doesn't. Who forces him to stand up on his own two feet and take responsibility. She's too much of a mother, and her relationship with Aang is too mother/older sister-ish.

With Zuko, on the other hand? Katara started out HATING him, forcing him to prove himself to her instead of handing him everything she had like she tended to do with Aang and Sokka. He had to earn her care, and as a result he appreciates it way more and demands way less of it. He's a far less selfish character generally for the same reasons, and is much more mature/has a better understanding of life and gray areas. Southern Raiders is a great example of this - he's down for whatever Katara decides because he understands that there's no one right answer, unlike Aang who simply preaches forgiveness. I'm not necessarily attacking Aang about that either - I do believe that grudges eat away at a person, and taking a life does haunt you, so forgiveness isn't necessarily bad advice. But it's not what Katara needed. Aang is great as a friend, but I don't think he's what Katara needs from a romantic partner. Zuko just... is.

[burnyouwithacigarettelighter]

IT’S YOU, HAPPY ALL THE TIME ─── jonathan breech ✧☾𖦹

ೃ⁀➷ “I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else." — ‘Jessica gives me a chill pill’, Angie Sijun Lou.

pairing. jonathan breech x reader

summary. you’ve bared your heart to your bestfriend, jonathan, more times than you can count, whilst knowing practically nothing at all about him. what is friendship if it is not equal… what is love if it is not returned? can your relationship survive such one-sidedness?

warnings. swearing, TW mention & description of suicide/attempts & depression, very introspective/kind of a character study???, alcohol & drug use, pining, ANGST!!!!, crying, fluff, smut with feelings, p in v, unprotected sex, oral sex (f), SMUT UNDER THE CUT! 

word count. 10k (WTF??!?!!??)

a/n. the title is from “she won’t go away” by faye webster:) btw this is… rly angsty (and SO long omg im still in shock) so beware🫡 ALSO IM SO SORRY FOR NOT POSTING IN WHILE!! SCHOOL IS KICKING MY BUTT & THIS FIC WAS AN ABSOLUTE MONSTER TO WRITE LMAO

i. 

There are very few words in your vocabulary you can use to accurately describe Jonathan Breech. 

The boy is an enigma, a matryoshka doll that never ends: he is witty and lighthearted and sarcastic, but you’ll always catch that edge, the air of malaise he carries around himself, the unspoken elephant in the room that screams WHO ARE YOU REALLY?

He had always been more of a figure, a landscape; something to witness, observe-- experience without letting it do the same to you. You don’t know if that’s something you want, either: there’s an imbalance in his hilarity, and he always takes things a step too far. Jonathan lights matches and lets them burn all the way down to his fingertips; he shaves and lets the blade leave stinging little nicks, rivulets of blood running down his neck; he chainsmokes cigarettes in his room and only opens the window when he feels his heart hammering in his chest, desperate for air. 

You meet him — or, first experience him in a similar fashion: he had been in the university library, standing on top of a creaky, old bookshelf, shouting something you couldn’t understand over the music blasting through your headphones. You could certainly see him though, gesturing animatedly, dressed eccentrically in his signature winter trapper hat and a velvet blazer. That thin, effeminate figure of his was making winding, marionette-ish steps along the wood, an action that had everyone readying themselves to catch his inevitable fall. 

Then, seemingly out of nowhere and catching you completely off guard, you caught his eye. He began stepping from one shaky shelf to the next, a complete miracle none of them toppled over, before stopping on one close enough for you to read his lips. 

“Hi,” he mouthed, shifting uneasily on his left foot before regaining a steady balance, “you’re in my class, right?”

You nodded, hesitantly— yes, truthfully, you’d seen him in your Introduction to Literary Studies course a couple of weeks ago, sporting the same outfit as he did now, but you thought nothing of him. He’d been generally well-behaved then, asking slightly odd but in-tune questions that more or less answered all your inquiries, so you didn’t think the guy would have a penchant for, well… book-shelf hopping. 

He grinned, about to say something else, before something — or someone, made him flinch. A professor, probably, considering the unintelligibly muffled, booming voice behind you. However, Jonathan made quick work of the situation, sneakily climbing down and escaping out the door. 

The next time you see him, he’s sidled up beside you in your shared class. “Mind if I sit here?” a familiar voice had asked, to which you murmured a non-committal knock y’self out, before realizing with wide eyes.  His presence had caught you off-guard, as he so often did, and you sensed a pattern blooming. 

Jonathan certainly made for an odd desk-partner; his personality warped the environment around you, and it was suddenly so much easier to tear your eyes away from the lecture and land on Jonathan’s own. It’s something you never thought you’d ever do, because you adore the material being taught. 

At the end of class, he asks you out for a drink: he’s just found the best Irish stout in the entire city, and what better way to make it known than to take anyone and everyone he knows there?

Rejection is written on your face clear as day— you have class tomorrow, an essay that needs to be finished, and honestly, pubs just aren’t really your scene. 

But in the end… you still bite. You can’t help it: he’s disarming and warm and looks like he should smell like a bonfire. Somehow, that just does it for your brain; it’s here you learn of the charm that is Jonathan Breech. 

That night goes everything and nothing like you expected: you expected not to be able to predict his actions, and that’s exactly what happens. When you meet Jonathan at the aforementioned pub, it’s not actually the one he’s meaning to take you to— it’s just the closest public place to the on-campus dorm, which is where he says he’s rooming. 

“‘ve got a neighbor m’pretty sure is trying to sleep with me,” he says absently, ushering you onto the back of his bike, which had been leaning against a NO PARKING sign. “He’s always toget’er wit’ our dorm advisor, so I should l reject him before I get kicked out, if y’get what I mean.”

Now, you honestly should’ve expected this from a guy who jumped from six-foot book shelves, but Jonathan’s biking is all swift turns and jilted stops, mere milliseconds from repeatedly running red lights. You want to ask if he just learned how to ride the thing yesterday, but can’t, not with how utterly reckless and shameless he is about it, his terrible steering making you instinctively wrap your arms around his chest. 

You clutch him tightly, making him hum in approval, and you feel your ears burn flusteredly. You would’ve pulled away, but then he cut from the right lane to the left in one swift move, barely missing several cars, and you practically shrieked instead. “Oh my god!”

“Sorry,” he apologizes quickly. You can’t see his face, having shut your eyes in fear, but after hearing the blatant cheekiness in his tone, you can imagine clear as day how gleefully it contorts. You want to slap him somewhere, anywhere, but that’d defeat the point of being mad at his recklessness, so you squeeze him tighter instead, and he chokes on his breath. “Jesus-- m’sorry, really!”

When the two of you make it to the pub — alive and uninjured! — annoyingly all the way across town, your first few steps off his bike are stuttered, dizzy: “We are-- not going by bike next time,” you gasp, leaning against a random brick wall. 

“Next time, eh?” He grins, and this time you really do slap him— just on the arm, bless your self-control and niceties not to beat this oddly comfortable-to-be-around near-stranger to death. 

The pub, with its forgettable name and dingy stools, has a minimal, lackluster crowd. A kitschy neon sign flickers and dies as you walk in, making you raise a brow, but Jonathan merely drags you by the arm to a cozy corner table, then disappearing deeper within the venue before returning moments later with two pints of black beer in tow.

“Go on, then,” he gestures, setting the tall glass on the table, sitting down in the chair in front of you and taking a hearty sip of his own drink.

You let out a little hesitant sigh at his words, before relenting and taking in a long gulp of the liquid. “…Huh,” you remark, impressed. Jonathan smiled knowingly behind his glass, letting out a smug little ah, you see? 

“Worth the long ride?” he inquired innocently, as if that was the only thing wrong with the night.

“Worth the ride, but not worth almost dying for,” you rolled your eyes goodheartedly, knocking back the rest of the bitter drink and making him whistle. 

The rest of the night goes like this: Jonathan orders two more rounds of the quality Irish stout before the two’ve you are stumbling out of the pub, exploring all the nightlife there is to offer, like the crowd surrounding an out-door live comedy group performing down the street that has you and Jonathan giggling for hours after, or the underground speakeasy you accidentally find yourselves shoved into, a nasally guitarist singing on a smoky stage, several more drinks finding themselves in your system despite how nauseous you already feel.

“You-- d’you fancy him?” Jonathan slurs behind you, steadying himself by pressing his hands to your waist.

“F-fancy who?” you blink blearily, leaning into his warm touch.

“Who else m’I talkin’ about, girl? The singer!”

You shake your head no numbly, practically collapsing into his arms now, your head lulling on his chest. You’re so close you can smell the distinct scent of his skin, that unique musk everyone has, and it’s strangely familiar, like those smells that evoke old, nostalgic memories. It’s like how sunscreen summons the smell of the sun after a childhood beach day, or how vanilla extract takes you back to the smell of your mother’s baked goods on a specific winter evening.

“Reckoned you wouldn’t,” he assumes, hands coming away from your waist to wrap his arms around your shoulders, swaying to the music slightly in the crowded club, “looks like a -- right bleedin’ dope… wit’ that mop of hair.”

You giggle, alcohol riddled beyond belief, unable to formulate a response with the conflicting blurry thoughts in your head: it’s telling you Jonathan Breech isn’t the crowd you want, that you need to go home and work, that you let loose too easily— but it also tells you that you can see yourself becoming friends with him very, very quickly. 

It’s there, in that club, Jonathan Breech moves into your life and fills a gaping hole you didn’t know existed, like a hole in your stockings you only notice when you get home. You have friends, certainly, more than you can count on both hands, but they never get as close as Jonathan does. After that night, an unknown force pulls the two of you together, making you run into him everywhere, and a tight friendship blooms like a lilypad in a raging storm; beauty within the chaos. In the multitude of close friendships you’ve harbored, he is the first to see so many sides of you. The last thing that did was your mother; it had only ever been your mother. 

He is an endearing, amazing friend, both the intent listener and the charismatic speaker all at once; he knows his friends like the back of his hand, can recount their life like he can count the number of moles on his face-- but you, and everyone else, know absolutely nothing about him. 

At least, close to nothing-- you know he likes ice cream and hanging out and going to the pub; you know he likes biking and doing drugs and women; you know he hates the sea and his brother and his father, but you don’t know him. All you’ve ever seen him do is smile or laugh or shout in mock anger; there is a carefully glued mask on his face he takes meticulous caution in preserving-- he is terrified to let go, despite the blasé persona he lets on.

Or maybe the mysterious matter of your bestfriend is tripping you up for no reason; maybe you’re psychoanalyzing something that doesn’t need to be psychoanalyzed, reading between lines that don’t exist. But if you were asked to answer honestly, there’s just something about Jonathan you don’t get. There is a split seam in the tapestry of his life, missing pieces in the story he pretends to tell with utmost accuracy. There are things that he never talks about, that he recoils when asked like you’ve poked a tender wound. 

“So, what were you doing before… all this?” You ask him once, laying on his messy bed in his dorm-room and scanning the water-damage constellations dotted along his popcorn ceiling. By all this you mean going to university, being the resident party boy, aimlessly pursuing a degree you’re 99% sure he picked blindfolded (culinary science) and standing here, with you, snorting a line of something on his creaky wooden desk. 

Jonathan freezes, still hunched over. “What d’you-- what d’you mean?” he says, tone breezy but, uncharacteristically tense… jilted and preoccupied. You could’ve brushed it off as him being seriously focussed on his drugs, but the way he shifts, how his shoulders curl in like he wants to disappear, tells you otherwise. 

“I mean, before going to school here… y’know, what were you like as a dumb teenager?”

You two’re twenty, barely not-teenagers, but it still makes a world of a difference: you’re living away from home, doing what you want, experiencing (a juvenile, naive version of) freedom and adulthood.

“I dunno… kind of a tool, that's f’sure,” he chuckled, rubbing his nose roughly. He’s being funny on purpose, a jester’s distraction: he doesn’t want you to realize his answers’ not really one at all. 

You shifted on his bed, now leaning against his headboard. His answer strikes you as odd and uncharacteristic despite his attempts to evade suspicion: usually, Jonathan pounces at the chance to yap on and on. “What, the great Jonathan Breech doesn’t have any wild stories to tell? No bones broken, girls dumped, houses trashed?” 

He snorted at that, like some inside joke you weren’t privy to was brought up in your words, and he descended back down on a carefully partitioned line of white. “I broke my baby finger once,” he relented vaguely when he finished, dusting off the table and licking the remains off his hand. “I cried and I cried and I cried.”

“Did it hurt that much?” you grinned, mind trailing off to imagine a baby-faced Jonathan Breech, a juvenile highschool boy, doing something silly to break that finger. Maybe he accidentally flung off his bike, broke it because of a dare, or maybe it happened just by slipping and falling. 

“It - uh… didn’t hurt enough,” Jonathan smiled, tight-lipped and paltry. All at once the air in the room had changed, like someone attached a vacuum to the window and sucked everything out. 

Your grin fell, and you watched him carefully: perhaps, had you not been as close to him as you were, he’d have let something show. A twitch in the smile, a break in the facade. But you were, and his face stayed the same, and your thoughts ran circles around themselves. This was… something else, something belonging to the part of his life he didn’t talk about. 

The atmosphere had grown tense, taut, a rubber band twisted ‘round and round, threatening to burst, so you leave the matter of his injury alone; of his life alone. You go back to staring at his ceiling, he goes back to his drugs; Jonathan collapses within himself, and you don’t notice how badly he suffocates… how suffering in silence is also accompanied by the overwhelming desire to be found.

ii.

Sometimes, despite his self-imposed distance, Jonathan lets someone look inside his head. 

You are both the sometimes and the someone; you don’t know why it’s always you, but you chalk it up to the fact that beneath his unpredictable demeanor, the murky and unreadable feelings he holds for others, is this uncharacteristic constant: he holds a softness for you. It’s what lets you know there’s something haunted lurking beneath his happy-go-lucky surface. 

You don’t know where this softness comes from, either. But you know you see it, in lingering touches, tender duchenne smiles unlike the devilish tilt his lips usually hold, how he clasps his hand around yours after a night at the pub and walks you home because he knows you get paranoid. You see it in how he comes over to your apartment when you don’t answer anyone's calls during exam season, how he remembers what your mother’s name is and what your childhood pet was and what your favorite flowers are. How his lips brush past your cheek when he pulls away from hugs, his hands shuddering around your shoulders, like he’s afraid he’ll crush you.

You only wish you could do the same. You want to sit by his side and mend his heart, lend an ear to his most mundane fears, you want to take his hand into your own and kiss it softly, return all that he has done for you, take the same as you have given to him: what is friendship if it is not equal, what is love if it is not returned? It is something broken, unable; split halves of one heart, an imbalance in the scale, Bonnie without her Clyde, a fish out of water. 

Jonathan pours his heart into your own, filling holes you know you don’t have, and you think he may be overcompensating for something else, seeing things in you that really belong to him. It is maddening, and you just want to beg and plead he lets you in. 

But you settle for the gentle pokes, the prodding, and try to decipher the vague answers he gives you. Most days, you can’t really make sense of it. 

“Sorry,” you apologize, about to leave the outing you planned with Jonathan — studying, or, trying to study, at an intimate coffeebar the two of you frequented — “my dad’s gotten drunk with his lads and my mum needs help dragging him home.”

 “Hey, hey, don’t worry. I get it: my dad used to do that all the time,” he waves your words off casually, but you don’t miss how jilted he says used to and the pain in his tone at all the time.

“Oh, surely she was fit to go to the madhouse?” you laughed once, responding to Jonathan’s complaints about an eccentric classmate in his agricultural studies. He laughs back, he always does, but this one is hollow, forced; barely stopping a grimace from coloring his tone. 

You notice these things like it’s a shadow following someone in the sun. He is lying, hiding; about something you don’t know but it is happening. It is happening, and you are so very curious: you pick up on the littlest tendrils of him, fed wholly on any information you can squeeze out. He is a mystery you want to delve within completely; answer that question of WHO ARE YOU REALLY? and leave no room for error. 

You’d give yourself to him the very same if he merely asked; you’d whisper childhood fears and tell the origin stories of faded scars on your knees and why you check under your bed before sleeping. You’d detail your entire life from sunset birth to starry night end if he even made a passing comment about knowing; you would trust your love, your heart, your entire life in his beautiful, shaky hands. This is the relationship you have built around yourselves, and it is beginning to feel terribly one-sided. 

Alas, your curiosity overwhelms him, and you take it too far, just once. Only once. 

“Where’d this come from?” you murmur, brushing your fingers over a scar above his eyebrow. It’s something you see only now, his hair mussed and wild from the various blankets and pillows on your dinky couch. 

He’s crashing at your apartment tonight, an invited event, because you often miss him like you miss home; the boy is sneaky— he slinks away like a street cat and only comes back for food. It’s only fair he lets you wrangle him back like this, making him stay by your side at least once a week.  

Your words make him freeze, like he often does; it reminds you of hikers, who freeze when they see mountain lions— he thinks if he stops and stares and pretends to disappear you’ll look the other way, drop the question, forget him completely.

But you don’t. You don’t know what’s affecting him -- not that he wants you to -- so you just stare back into his cornflower blue eyes. You stop and stare and see right through him; you hold the question like a knife to his neck, and commit him to memory. 

“The scar?” Jonathan pales, shuddering despite it having long since been healed over. The aftershocks of an earthquake. 

You simply nod, fingers pulling away. You’re still closer than ever though, the two of you being the only things in your cramped concrete apartment, the chosen movie on your telly still running and long forgotten. 

Your attention remains on him, brandished into something dangerous, like you’ll carve the answer out of him if you have to— but the moment passes. He doesn’t say anything and you accept that as the answer. Gone is your razor-sharp focus, and there is nothing more to the matter. 

But Jonathan doesn’t register this, no, he’s thinking, gears in his head turning and creaking. His tongue grazes against the backs of his teeth, jaw chattering like it was as cold as it was when… as cold as it was back then, and he doesn’t want to tell anyone— but it’s you. You’re not just anyone. 

You’re the one he holds a certain softness for. The one he equally bares his heart to and holds the most secrets from. The one he’s most terrified to know. The only one he wants to know. 

So, he decides to tell a partial truth— something digestible. People adore that which can easily slide down the gullet: news headlines don’t detail the goriness of a murder, they give the “insider” scoop of the scared neighbor. To be able to digest information is what makes the world go round, and he does not think you could digest the full truth-- he does not think he wants you to. 

He feels ill at the thought of anything between you changing— oh, how ruined he’d feel if you began treating him like fucking glass.

This abhorrent social pressure is what makes Jonathan grit this sentence through his teeth: “I got into a car accident,” he gulps dry, “when I was nineteen. Was drunk… went fer a spin. I skidded off a -- um, an empty highway. The tall sorts; high up, y’know. Fell.”

His voice makes you look back up at him, and your eyes are beautiful and tense— it breaks his heart. He knows you’re probably thinking it was in-character, how expected that is of Jonathan Breech, how you’ll easily take this partial truth, how you’ll never know the full one until it comes in a letter under your door and he’s long gone. 

“Tell me,” you ask him, lips falling into a near-frown instead of laughing or grinning wider. It’s hushed, whispered like a secret, “What did it feel like? Falling, I mean.”

Jonathan licks his lips, bores his shaking gaze into your own, and tells you not everything feels like something else. That the word connotes all you need to know. Falling meant he was falling; his arms raised and the air took him and that was it. 

It makes your brows twist and your lips press into a thin line: his nonchalance is worrying, no more his signature characteristic— there is something wrong about this apathy toward injury, toward the potential death. 

“Is that how you broke your finger?” You murmur, and it startles him. How you pieced the two things together, how you weaved a web from what little you knew about him; how futile his attempts to hide could be.

“What?” he responds, hoarse. There is a lurking shadow in his bones telling him he’ll taint you, telling him to be ashamed, telling him how badly you will never be his. It is such a damning reality, that no matter how much he may yearn for you, he is too incomplete to meet your needs; he is too hurt not to hurt you too. 

“The car accident. Is that how you broke your pinkie?” you repeat, and you gripped his hand resting at your side, bringing it up to present the finger to him like he forgot where his pinkie was. 

Jonathan’s gaze darts from you to the finger, and he feels his insides quiver; so badly does he want to spill his entire soul to you. But that internal reminder -- hurt people hurt people hurt people -- makes him settle for nodding, parted lips locking closed. 

Nothing special happens that night, no shocking revelation or bombarded confession; Jonathan nods, keeps his lips sealed, and gets up from the couch, figure dreary and fatigued. He murmurs an incomplete excuse, something half-baked and blatantly unconvincing that he has to leave, and you let him go. You think you’re imagining the shudder in his shoulders, the shake in his voice as he says goodbye, and you let him go. 

It’s there, like that club so long ago, you discover another thing about Jonathan Breech: push too far and he shuts down, closes shop and puts up his guard forever. It’s the mere fact of how attentive you are to his words; you remember how he broke his finger, and he realizes he cannot hide from you any longer. 

You’re reaching a point in your friendship -- your relationship, no matter platonic or romantic for all lines have been crossed; nobody is so raw to one another with love not involved -- where you’ll bare your hearts on your sleeves, share your every thought and dream and fear. But Jonathan won’t be able to reciprocate, and the very thought of rejecting you, betraying you, makes his stomach twist in knots. That crestfallen face of yours would haunt him for all time, your every melancholy feature burning into his memory like the scars left by cigarettes on skin.

So he leaves, hurt people hurt people hurt people echoes in his ears all the way home; he turns into an alleyway shortcut and prays death swoops down and takes him right there. He leaves his consciousness curled lovingly in your arms; his shell walks home and prays you’re none the wiser. But you’ve already reached that point in your relationship; you already know. 

When people die, or friendships do, sometimes they end with just a goodbye, a mild, casual goodbye because you think there’ll be dozens, hundreds more-- but there won’t be. Suddenly, alone in that cramped apartment, the buzzing from the tv filling your ears, your couch still warm from someone long gone, you know.

You know you startled him, that he’s left your apartment and he’ll never come back. Your heart cools, and she whispers that you took it too far, that you crossed a line you were never made aware of, that when you see him in class tomorrow he might not sit next to you, he might not talk to you, that you might lose him forever because he is too stubborn to open up and you are too stubborn to let him go. 

Well, you were too stubborn to let him go. 

It’s three weeks before you speak to Jonathan again. Three long, dragging weeks, moments in time where he avoided your gaze, evaded your presence, slipped past you before you got too close. You certainly try, of course— you seek him out every chance you get, trying to get an I’m sorry, please talk to me out before he runs off, but it’s virtually impossible.

Once, after class, you’d caught him in the middle of a flurry of exiting students by the velvet blazer, your hands curled around the lapel. “Jonathan,” you panted, trying to drag him off to the side to escape the bustling activity around you, “please, we need to talk--“

But then Jonathan had faced you, eyes widened and spooked like he’d seen a ghost, a never-before-seen-by-you fear covering his gracefully cut features, before he tugged off the black blazer and escaped into the crowd. He had seen you, widened his eyes, left. Such a simple action tore your heart in two; it had confirmed your suspicions— you’d gone too far, he was never coming back, and you were all alone. There you stood, fingers wrapped around one of his favorite articles of clothing starkly without its beloved owner, completely alone. 

In three measly weeks, he has put up a biting winter of distance between you two. 

Your feelings are unable to comprehend themselves— they fight and sob and run circles around your mind, they make you doubt, crumble, devour yourself from the inside out; they make you ask yourself what you can do to salvage this, what can you do to fix this? What is there to make of him, of his behavior; what do you do with yourself and this guilt?

If you could imagine time was a construct, you were certain you could convince yourself this stretch of time was nothing… propel yourself into a present where Jonathan does not afflict your mind, take over your every thought— does not ruin you like so. If only you could do that, you could close your eyes and reopen them when you’ve let go. But you were always too stubborn to let him go, weren’t you?

It’s three weeks to the day before you speak to Jonathan again, and it happens through the crack of his dorm door, your arm wedged through it because you know he is not cruel; he will let you in without a doubt.  

“Please,” you plead to Jonathan, “just— I just want to talk. Please?”

He stares at you straight, expression cold and reserved, before he breaks and pulls away; bites his lip, lets you in his room, doesn’t look you in the eye. Looking around, you sense something in his dorm has changed; it had gained a bereft quality, like it was attuned to Jonathan’s state of mind and felt depressed beyond your comprehension. There was a cold air to the place, an utmost frigid demeanor to a room incredibly warm just weeks prior. In your absence, the dorm had been neglected, gutted, abandoned. 

“I’m sorry,” are the first words that tumble out of your mouth. “I- I know you don’t like… talking about -- about your life before here, and I’m sorry. But please, Jonathan, just talk to me. Tell me what I can do to make it up to you.”

He sits down on the edge of his weak bedframe, pulling his knees up and pressing his face into them. “You don’t need to-- don’t… don’t apologize. You don’t need t’make it better, either. All’s grand.” he promises, words muffled and shaky. It’s a weeping kind of tone; you could just as easily imagine him sobbing with that voice. 

Your brows knit. Your emotions are wavering, treading brutally between disbelief, despair and rancor. “Then -- then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you avoid me? Why did you - why did we spend these last three weeks playing cat and mouse, if you weren’t mad at me? Is this your sick idea of a joke?”

“No! I-- jesus christ,” Jonathan looked up from his hands before immediately pressing two fingers between his eyes, “I wasn’t … avoiding you.”

“I haven’t seen you in weeks!” you point out painfully, exasperated. “You know, you’ve been avoiding me for longer than this. You— you push me away any chance you get. You’re afraid. I don’t know of what, but you’re- so fucking secretive, and it’s tearing me apart.”

“I’m not - afraid of anything. I’m just a private person— you know this. Would you, if I ‘pushed you away?!’” 

At his denying deflection, something within you snaps: “Why won’t you - fucking let me in? I’ve — I’ve bared my soul to you; you know me from the inside out. I trust you with my life— why, why can’t you do the same?”

“I didn’t ask you to do that! And I didn’t — I didn’t mean t’get so close to you, okay?!” He bursts, and you flinch. His hands shakily come up to his face once more; he wipes roughly but it’s no use— you’ve already seen his delicate tears threatening to spill, and it burns more holes in your heart than you thought his suffering would.

“What are you talking about?” you pry, now without any cautious reservations about his demeanor.

“I didn’t mean to get so fucking attached, because - ‘cause I…” Jonathan’s hands clenched into fists at his sides, “fuck.”

“What?” you repeat, but it’s softer, concerned; how quickly his body language shifted from irritated to terrified has you scrambling to support him. “Talk to me,” you ask, taking nervous steps closer, like you were approaching a wounded animal.

He sucks in a sharp breath, and holds it, like he did cigarette smoke, before exhaling heavily. “Okay- okay. When I was - nineteen, I drove a car… I drove off a cliff and tried t’kill myself. I was-- admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a year, and when I got out I moved here f’school. I- I… promised m’self I wouldn’t let anyone get too close.”

The confession hangs in the air, a lonely little thing; it’s a bleeding piece of his own heart he’s plucked and placed in your palms. He shudders, and you want to nurture it like nothing else. This is a culmination of a year’s worth of evasion coming to a close; you’re seeing him completely, rawly, for the first time.

“But- but why? You don’t have to— Jonathan, you don’t need to do that just because you - you… y’know.”

“I’m- I know that,” he starts brashly, defensively. “It’s b’cause I am very, very aware of my - of m’own self destructiveness…” His words taper off into something of grief; the Sisyphean struggle of wanting to live, while that depressive boulder pushes him back, colors him completely. “I just… I didn’t want to - t’hurt anyone in case I -- in case next time I succeeded.”

“Next time?” you repeat, and your voice broke in a way you wish was less vulnerable, less blatantly miserable.

“This is why I didn’t want to—“ Jonathan sighs, deflates, “I’m not telling you this because I want you to - t’fucking save me, okay? I’m telling you this because you wanted to know, and I couldn’t hide from you anymore. Because you asked.”

“You didn’t need t’hide it in the first place!” you exclaimed, coming closer to him. “You’ve never had to hide a fucking ‘ting from me.”

“You wouldn’t have understood!” He said back, volume nearing a shout. “You’ll treat me differently now, you see, you’ll look at me fuckin’ different—“

It made your heart sink-- how sure his words were, how certain he was of your rejection. How little trust did he have in you? 

(You remember he wanted to sink, too-- lose himself in the baby blue sea; let it swallow him whole and never be seen again.)

“You - you really think I’ll treat y’differently because of this? You know my every crevice, my every thought-- I have never once doubted that you’ll accept me.”

“I-I… why should I - expect any of this to stay the same?”

Suddenly, you took his face into your hands. “Because I-- I fucking love you, okay? And it’s not just friendly, or romantic, even if it’s both— I’m… I love you like nothing I’ve ever loved before. I accept and adore your every skill and flaw and antic; you wormed your way into my heart and I want to worm my way into yours.”

“That doesn’t mean—“ Jonathan tried to interject, a noise all utter disbelief. You cut him off, though, continuing your sudden confession; you hadn’t been privy to these own romantic feelings of yours till moments prior, but everything being said just felt right. 

“Jonathan, I don’t care if you drove a car off a cliff or cyanide-poisoned our professor or blew something up, because I love you. You, with all your problems and great, big, beautiful life. All I want is for you to want that life; I want you to want me in it. I feel it in my bones that I’m meant to love you; you are meant to be my home, you are everything I am supposed to know. It won’t fix you or fix anything at all but I just need you to know-- I need you to know the why to my every action. It’s because I love you.”

He looked up at you, wide-eyed, head resting in your gentle hold. “I - don’t know what to say… are you - for real?”

“As real as can be,” you smiled back at him, tracing circles along his smooth skin; you could’ve drank in that attentive stare of his for hours upon hours. “I love you, and nothing and no-one, not even you, can change that.” An aching grip had clenched around your heart at his words, that blatant disbelief: are you for real? God, had you ever been-- had you ever fucking been. 

Jonathan’s mouth opened to speak, but instead, he let out an agonizing sort of cry; an exclamation of utter surprise at the loving acceptance. Then, he hesitantly leaned into your touch, as if he’d never hugged before, wrapping his arms around your waist to snatch you as close to him as possible. He held you tighter and tighter as the seconds went by, like this was all a mocking dream his yearning mind had made up; that if he closed his eyes now he’d wake up desolate, alone, without you for eternity. His worst nightmare. 

“…God, I’m so - fucking stupid,” he grumbled, sounding angry, but you could feel vulnerable, hot tears soaking into the fabric of your shirt. “To assume you, of all people, would act that way… you of all people.” He said that tenderly; you of all people certainly meant miles more things you weren’t explicitly aware of, but you still felt the sentiment. “I’m not -- poetic or anything like that… but I love you, too.”

You chuckled a beautiful, wet laugh. “You don’t hafta’ say anything sweet or special. You’re everything to me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, before wrapping his fingers around your wrist and pulling you onto the mattress with him. He flipped you beneath him, and held himself up by the forearms laying on either side of your head. “Fuck, I love you. I love you.” Jonathan repeated the words several more times, strange and foreign but right at home being said to you. Like his mouth was made to only ever say I love you to you. 

Suddenly, you pressed your lips to his, shutting him up momentarily. You could still feel the vibrations of I love you rumbling in his throat as you kissed him. Your tongues danced along one another, an all consuming waltz; you wanted to know everything about him, down to the taste of his tongue, memorize how sweet his mouth felt on yours. Oh, how you longed for this moment; how could you ever think about love again, and yearn for it, without thinking of Jonathan?

You reckoned that’s what this had been the whole time; your love started as a little flame, something under the guise of friendship, but the two of you had fanned it, nurtured it-- all of a sudden the miniature warmth of platonic love burst into a raging, adoring fire. You’d fed this flame with tenderness, and it responded in kind; you could never again look at Jonathan without a certain intimate reverie. Perhaps that’d been why Jonathan found it so hard to cut off this relationship as he had dozens others: something primal and unconscious within him had begged him not to let you go— some higher being knew his home was only ever in your arms. 

Jonathan deepened the kiss hungrily, pressing his weight onto you and pushing you into the mattress. Your head was spinning from the lack of air, and one of your hands had to sneak beneath his hat and tug at his hair to get him to stop. “Hey,” you panted, looking worriedly into his eyes, “what’s up?”

“Sorry,” he apologized sheepishly, hanging his head lowly for a moment before meeting your gaze once more, batting his long lashes. “Jus’ missed you. Thas’ all.”

“Missed y’too,” you murmured, pulling him back down to kiss you again. Your hands left the crown of his head and trailed down his backside, tracing over the curves and bumps of his frumpy yellow v-neck sweater. 

That touch of yours seemed to spur him on even more, and his kisses began to travel; along your jaw, to your pulse, down the long ravine of your neck, tongue darting out to lick the hollow of your collarbone, making you squeal. He chuckled against your skin, a genuine amusement rather than the mocking one you two so frequently practiced, and it all went downhill from there. His hands skillfully tugged off your tank top, knee between your clenched thighs, more teasing kisses being planted along your now bare -- save for your bra -- chest.

You didn’t mean to come over, profess your love and suddenly jump into a steamy, yearning makeout session (which, you were pretty sure was venturing off into sex…) but you supposed that apologizing— arguing, whatever —meant your relationship went back on track to wherever it was heading… which may have been set to end with an ardor romance anyway. This love of yours would’ve bursted at the seams of friendship; it could not be confined by such mere things as labels. 

“Fuck,” you groaned, arching into his teasing kisses along the peaks of your breasts, his hands ghosting around your clothed chest but never touching. “Please, Jon.”

You could feel his cheeky grin on your skin, “Tell me what you want, love.”

“…Take this off,” you demanded gently, referring to Jonathan’s sweater.

“Your wish is my command.” he snickered, obliging and removing the yellow knit-- as well as his white undershirt and pajama bottoms. He was left in a pair of boxer-shorts and that silly, silly winter-trapper hat, his fingers sneaking up to your supple thighs and tickling the edges of your jean-shorts; a silent plea. 

“Eager,” you mumbled, noticing his over-compliance in completely stripping, smiling and guiding his hands to the waistband of your shorts to tug the tight article off. 

When he did so, you shivered, both at the feeling of being only in your underwear, as well as Jonathan’s sharp, attentive gaze. “You’re so beautiful,” he panted, eyes exploring your every sweet feature. 

He was enamored with your bare body, not in a sexual way despite the blatantly sexual situation, but rather in a worshiping, religiously devoted way. It may’ve been blasphemous to think so, but Jonathan’s sudden chaste kisses along the curve of waist only seemed to prove you right; his mouth on you was gentle, like he’d held you before, except now without any guilt or hesitation. It was a holy way of loving you; something all-consuming, becoming the epicenter of a life, becoming the purpose, motivation, and belief all at once. 

That familiar broiling in your gut occurred as he made his way closer to the pulsing, lace-covered place between your legs; your hands were gripping the sheets tightly in pure anticipation, his hot breath on your sensitive skin. “Don’t be such a tease,” you pouted, legs fumbling for purchase along his body, trying to pull him closer to you.

“We’ve got all the time in the world,” he hummed, but his fingers still curled into the band of your baby-blue panties and dragged them down in one desperate go, “but I do wanna taste you….”

Jonathan’s veiny hands pried your quivering thighs apart, murmuring an offhand already stole y’panties, don’t get all shy on me now when you whimpered flusteredly, before he descended on your dripping lips, licking a flat-tongued stripe up to your clit. 

You gasped at the sudden action, but it quickly morphed into a choked moan when he pressed himself further and parted your lips, nose to your pelvic bone; he made quick work of you, artfully curling his long tongue into your hole and slurping your slick. 

“So sweet,” he praised, the vibrations of his voice making your thighs clench around his head. He hummed in amusement at your reaction, lapping you up quicker; he kitten-licked and slobbered, feeding on your sticky cunt, tongue darting in every direction, feeling your walls and prying deeper into your hot hole, which ached for the cock straining against the mattress now. The bottom half of Jonathan’s face was now positively soaked, glistening with his own drool and your needy wetness, all of it mixing dirtily and sliding down the length of his neck. 

“Jon!” you mewled, hands tearing off his trapper hat and flinging it elsewhere before curling your hands into his mousy brown hair and pushing his face deeper into your pussy, desperate to come. You were riding his face now — or, attempting to, more accurately bucking up into him — adoring his unceasing ministrations. He was basically fucking you with his tongue, overstimulating your clit with teasing licks then pulling away, feeling along the ridges of your walls.

“Pick m’hat up later, love,” he tutted, pulling away slightly to see where you’d haphazardly thrown it, and your desperate whine neared a sob. He breathed in sharply, taking in how quickly he’d undone you: in a matter of minutes, your expression had grown wanton, eyes blown out, drooling, hair askew, bra riding up your tits and revealing your sweet, puffy nipples. 

Jonathan quickly forgot about the state of his beloved hat, and went back down on you, mouth devouring in full force once again. You rolled your hips forward, and when he pulled his tongue out of your wet hole to suckle softly on your fleshy nub, your eyes rolled back into your head and your legs shook around his face, toes curling tightly. A choked moan left you alongside the sudden climax, sounding a hundred percent pornographic and all for him. 

You panted, silent and unmoving for a moment, and Jonathan began moving to get up and let you take a breather before continuing, absolutely terrified to push you too far or do anything you didn’t want to do— he was the spontaneous one, and you were the responsible one, but that didn’t mean he ever wanted to force anything upon you. His simultaneous decisions were made mostly in part with your interests in mind; he made the decisions you were too nervous and over-thinking to choose quicker. 

However, you took a long breath, then trailed your hand over the painfully noticeable bulge within his soft boxers. “Wan’… make you feel good,” you murmured, flattening your hand against his erection. 

Jonathan inhaled sharply, pitifully affected by the minor touch but holding back with an incredible amount of self restraint. “I can wait,” he offered sweetly, one of his hands coming up to your flattened hand’s forearm to rub the skin. 

You shook your head foggily, cupping him through the fabric, slowly adding friction by sliding your hand up and down. 

“S-shit,” he bit his lip, “you want this now, baby?”

You nodded vehemently with a whimper, and to make more of a point, you reached behind and unclasped your bra, tossing it elsewhere on his dirty dorm floor, before beginning to slip off his underwear. 

The hand on your arm stopped you, though, in favor of doing it himself and pressing his weight further onto you, your chests flush with one another. You were only able to take in thin breaths, making your head spin, but it also amplified the  arousal blooming in your cunt when Jonathan slotted himself at your soaking entrance, collecting his saliva and your slick on his tip. 

Before he pushed in, however, his head dipped into the hollow of your neck, plush lips brushing past the shell of your ear. “Is this okay?” he murmured, pressing a wet kiss to your temple. 

“Please,” you whined, hands pushing flat on his back to bring him closer to you.

With that, Jonathan slowly buried his length within your cunt, making your breath hitch. “I love you,” he groaned, entering you inch by inch, relishing how your warmth swallowed him whole. “Fuck, I love you so much.”

Your hole was stuffed beyond belief, but Jonathan was gentle with you, caressing your waist with the rough pads of his fingers and massaging you, trying to ease his entrance into something painless. Obviously, with that length and thickness it couldn’t be painless at all, but his attempts helped your mind drift off elsewhere and take some of the attention off the stinging stretch. 

After a long moment of ragged breathing, Jonathan cooing words of praise into your neck as he kissed you without moving, you dug your fingers into the skin of his back: “More,” you choked out, the fullness in your cunt now feeling delicious rather than cringeworthy. 

He smirked against your skin, “Looks like you’re t’eager one now.”

“Oh, get on with it,” you rasped and he let out a low chuckle, sliding out of your hole before thrusting back in. That first movement already made your hips jerk up into him, back arching. It was like all the warmth in your body had collected in your cunt, leaving you freezing from the tips of your toes to the top of your head, but still with a needy, burning fire in your insides. 

Jonathan’s pace was affectionate and rhythmic: you could feel the tenderness in his each and every gentle roll of the hips. It made you feel like the sun, how attentive he was, but he was also so fucking slow. If anything, that had your walls clenching onto him harder than if he hammered into you— that slow build-up of friction was dizzying. You squirmed, cunt clenching and contracting around his smooth thrusts— you wanted to take him within you completely, cause more friction for you were going stir-crazy with this lazy speed. 

“F-fuck! Faster, please,” you cried out, unable to take his sensual movements any longer. Your legs were twitching with his patient movements, and you could’ve sworn you saw a cheeky grin on his lips. The bastard— even in sex was he teasing you, wanting to torture you until you gave in to the pleasure and begged him to ruin you.  

Sure, this was your first time together, and was going extremely pleasantly and sweetly, but you were actually pretty fond of the idea of letting him pound into you like there was no tomorrow… 

At the lewd thought, your walls pulsed around his cock, making him buck up unintentionally, hitting that sweet spot within you. He grunted at the feeling of your tightened cunt, while you cried out his name, pleasure running like a current through your body. Your face was on fire, reminiscent of a raging fever, and your insides were coiling— god, how did his cock just feel so perfect within you?

“Oh,” he grinned in a pant, “found y’spot, didn’t I?”

Jonathan didn’t give you a chance to speak before he pulled out so far his tip was the only thing in your hole, before slamming back in and making your eyes roll to the back of your head. Props to him-- he hit your g-spot with utmost accuracy, and you let out a long, stuttered mewl, scratching at his freckled back, legs twitching. Your wail was almost catatonic, loud and cock-drunk, dripping unabashed, filthy pleasure. 

“Makin’ such sweet noises f’me,” he praised huskily, hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead, “fuck, ‘ve gotta hear that again.”

He must’ve noticed your neediness earlier, when he was slow and languid, for the new speed he set was double- no, triple that: his hips were snapping against yours, balls smacking filthily against your lips, left hand pinning your hips down and letting him sink into you faster. Shocks of pleasure tore through you at the sudden increase in speed- he’d inured you so well to the torturously slow pace from earlier that this new frenzied one felt like getting hit by a bullet train. You were overstimulated and needing more of him all at once, practically vibrating with need under his touch. 

“I’ve- hnngh- wanted this…” you gasped between moans, “f-for so long…”

“Wanted m’cock?” Jonathan questioned in a hiss, feeling with his every inch how your walls absolutely soaked him. His tone was, obviously, sarcastic, but it still made you feel incredibly lewd. 

You shook your head numbly, “Wanted you… I love you, Jon!”

“So fuckin’ beautiful,” he purred, fucking you faster and making you writhe beneath him, “love you s’much.”

Jonathan targeted the spongy, swollen spot deep within your cunt, suddenly filled with a renewed vigor and motivation to make you come as quickly as possible, and he pounded into that one, specific spot, watching how you twitched and squirmed, heavy moans exiting you. He was relentless, hands reaching to hook under your knees and spread you wider. 

At the new angle, his cock penetrated you even deeper, fuller, which you thought wasn’t possible with how goddamn full you already felt, but when his thick cockhead brushed up against your cervix you thought you were going to burst. Then, one of his hands came up to your tits to knead the flesh, and you squeaked when he tweaked your soft nipples. He was pawing at your sweet tits, fondling you in a needy, boyish way, like yours were the first pair of boobs he’d ever felt. 

“M’close!” you gasped, mind going fuzzy with pure ecstacy. Your skin prickled with goosebumps, cold  sweat running down your spine, a terribly stark in contrast feeling to the warmth buzzing under your skin. 

“C-can’t last much longer either,” he choked, still pumping in and out of your sticky hole and savoring the feeling of your tight warmness on his long length. He looked absolutely exquisite above you, and you lost yourself in the ethereal picture. Maybe you were in love, or maybe he really was just an empyrean beauty; you took in the sight of his focussed iceberg blue eyes, the cute flush spreading along his pale cheeks and bare chest, how he bit his pink lips to muffle his needy grunts and moans. 

Then, you mewled and convulsed around him, your walls spasming and contracting as you came undone, reaching the precipice of your pleasure. That made him fall off the edge— you had tensed all over- all over, and Jonathan couldn’t help how his hips stuttered, knees buckled, cock twitched; he only gave one last, powerful thrust into you before spilling himself inside of you. He painted your soft walls white, and you felt that familiar heat spreading within you; you welcomed it completely, and wanted such warmth to be there forever. 

You milked him for every last drop, cunt like a vice grip, and Jonathan gave you another wet kiss, this time on your lips, and your hands wrapped around his neck, allowing you to kiss him back. Your brows knitted at the sour taste of yourself on his lips, but it just made everything feel so real— Jonathan and you had “made love”. It was a phrase you always wrinkled your nose at, feeling uncomfortable and juvenile at the intimacy it entailed, but now you understood it completely. 

“I love you,” you repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, unable to say anything else that conveyed what you felt for him. 

Honestly, you weren’t sure anything could accurately do so— you felt infinitely about him, your love touching all edges of your mind, heart and soul, filling you completely. You supposed you felt about Jonathan how the sun felt about the moon— without one, there could not be the other. 

“I love you-- too,” he responded, pausing in the middle at the aftershocks of your orgasm, which had caused you to tighten around his softening, sensitive cock for a second. 

You peered deep into his baby-blue eyes, watching the utter love that coloured them; it was like submerging yourself in a great blue ocean, except you didn’t want to come out, because you knew you wouldn’t drown in those eyes. No, you knew Jonathan would always be there to pull you out. 

Speaking of pulling out… Jonathan slipped himself out of you softly, careful not to agitate that first stretch any more than necessary, before collapsing back into your arms. The two of you tangled yourselves in a messy flurry of limbs on his cushy mattress, sweaty and breathy, something that should’ve been terribly uncomfortable but just wasn’t— you swore you could fall asleep anywhere, no matter your own state or the circumstance, as long as you were with him. 

Blearily, both your eyes began to droop, until you gave into the familiar presence of deep, dark sleep. It was a dreamless sleep for you, but you had an ever present comfort at his weight on yours, something you could feel even in unconsciousness. 

Hours later, in a brisk, shuddering early-morning that you felt all over due to Jonathan’s unruly habit of opening his window at the peak of the day’s hottest weather and forgetting to close it before cold nightfall fell, you awoke to Jonathan watching you carefully, so close you could feel his warm exhales of breath on your cheek. 

There was no goodmorning or anything like that, just pure, uninhibited being, reveling in the space you two occupied together. Like you two were the only things left in the world. 

When Jonathan noticed you woke up, he shifted, presumably to extract himself from your grip. You stopped him, though, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and bringing him closer to you.

“What did it feel like?” you asked instead, for the last time. You brushed your fingers over his scar, and, knowing exactly what you were asking, this time Jonathan doesn’t flinch away. This time, he leans into your touch: it doesn’t burn, not anymore, and he wants your tenderness to swallow him whole. 

You didn’t mean what it actually felt like, of course. You meant, what were you thinking? What have you done, and what will you do to yourself? You meant, I love you.

“It felt like,” falling; not everything feels like something else; I raised my arms and the air took me and that was it-- “it felt like… giving in. Letting my desperation find its purpose. It felt like I’d reached a point of peace… gained clarity after a long stretching, wounded moment came to an end. It felt like becoming something only meant to be talked about in past tense.”

You don’t say anything to that; you know he doesn’t want you to. There’s no need for you to hush or plead or make better, you just need to listen, and love him. He knows you accept him for everything he is, all his flaws and his strengths; he knows your love is all accepting- it veers on saintly. 

At your silence, he melts into your arms and you can finally relax; there is an admission in the action, a release, an acknowledgement -- is suffering in silence not also accompanied by the overwhelming desire to be found? -- you have found him, at last, and you will never, ever let go.

You take it too far, just once. Only once. And you let him go just once, only once; never again. 

[fwckriley]

I've read lots of fanfics and headcanons about Ghost with partners who are usually kind, pure, like a angel, all flowers and butterflies and stuff etc. I get it, but no offense, and looking at it from another perspective, when you think about people who have experienced childhood trauma, they tend to repeat certain patterns. I'm not saying that every person with a traumatic past will have a toxic relationship.

But, you see: I personally believe that Ghost would never give a chance to someone he deems "perfect," innocent, pure, because that's completely opposite to how he sees himself. How could he be in a relationship with someone so different from him? How could he be understood by someone who doesn't have a certain darkness within? I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but I think a part of him would never fully reveal itself out of fear of being judged. On the other hand, I believe he would also seek out people who, in some way, are unattainable, to reaffirm that little voice inside him saying he doesn't deserve to be loved. Of course, none of this is really true, but that's how the mind of someone with many traumas tends to work.

I think he would avoid relationships and commitments for a long time, and wouldn't be able to choose someone outside of his field of work. "Normal" people could never understand the things he does, they could try, but never fully comprehend. In my opinion, he would fall in love, without realizing it, with someone from his field of work, probably a teammate with whom he shared many experiences. Someone with whom he has a deep connection. And, as I mentioned at the beginning, I believe he would unconsciously seek out more complex people. I see him attracted to people with a similar outlook on life, who are tougher and more realistic. Who share a darker sense of humor. Who have also experienced some kind of trauma in the past, so they can understand how he feels. I imagine him in a relationship with someone who has these characteristics, and unlike him, is ambiverted or extroverted. Someone who challenges him, calls him out when he's wrong, or is determined. Someone honest, but not rude. Someone funny, smart, creative. Someone with a thirst for adventure and a spark, to contrast with some parts of him.

But honestly, I can't picture him with someone he deems pure and perfect. He doesn't feel worthy or even attracted to that. He tends to surround himself with people who are similar to him because that's where he feels comfortable. Just to clarify, it doesn't necessarily mean that this partner in question would be a bad or toxic person, but simply someone similar to him. I believe Price is the best example of that, who is good but not innocent, not entirely right.

In the end, I think the relationship with the chosen person would be a challenging but functional one. Not toxic, not abusive or destructive, just difficult. Traumatized people are human and fully capable of relating to each other, but it takes patience and determination, and a lot of work. I think that over time, they would improve greatly. Because Ghost's biggest fear is one-sidedness. He needs to know that he is protecting and helping, but he also needs to feel protected and helped.

[floradinterlunium]

The Inevitable Consequences of Translating words without Cultural Context

The problem with translations is that they can't fully account for all the nuances in language. The meaning of words and how people utilize said words changes over time and translators can't possibly account for the innumerable definitions people assign to words. So when confusion arises regarding how a word is translated the impetus is on the reader/listener to research how that culture uses said word, not how YOU would use that word.

For example, there is currently this debate circulating the fandom regarding what Jimin meant when he said he hasn't had a crush in a long time so he had to ask a younger member of Smeraldo Garden Marching Band (SGMB) for help.

Now it is clear here that JM is using the word crush differently than how many American's use the word. Most people from the US tend to use "like" and "crush" synonymously. Even though that is not the actual meaning of the word, it is how people today casually use the word .

Here's the Actual Definition

Now it is clear here that JM isn't using "crush" to simply mean "like" because if crush meant like, had feelings for etc. he could have consulted with ANYONE of any age. Instead he needed to consult a young person, so he went to the youngest member of the SGMB for help.

So what does this tell us about how Koreans use the word crush?This tells us that being young is somehow related to Koreans usage of the word crush.

Lucky for me I have two Korean friends to go to for help when I need things translated so that's what I did and here is what they said in a nutshell (not their exact words): Crushes are immature, often fleeting feelings of intense attraction towards someone. Or when you like someone alone. The intensity of feelings tend fizzle out as quickly as they form...which is why crushes are associated with "Youth" because it's I don't know how else to say it but silly and/or unrealistic feelings.

So when JM said he hadn't had a crush in a long time he was simply pointing to the fact that he's almost 30 and can't recall the feelings associated with having puppy dog feelings for someone. He wasn't saying he hasn't liked anyone for a long time.

For those of you thinking well if JM and JK were together for as long as you all claim there must have been a period when they were really young when JM had a crush on JK , so why couldn't he write from that experience? And to answer that reservation I'd say there are innumerable reasons for this but to cite a few:

Firstly, JM crushing on JK would have been a really long time ago...and it is clear from JM's music that he seems to only be able to write songs about things he is "currently" experiencing or feeling. Writing lyrics to old emotions would be difficult for a person that writes from current experiences

Secondly, it may be difficult for JM to want to recall how it felt crushing on JK because no one likes replaying feelings of rejection, pining, etc.

At the end of the day I don't think JM has problems writing lyrics about love or liking someone...we have Letter and Like Crazy to prove that. So if JM could write these two songs about liking or loving someone without needing to consult someone about what if feels like to "like" someone...pretty sure he meant something different by the word "crush." And pretty sure he meant he can't recall being a young person infatuated with someone.

To close, very little can convince me Jikook aren't a couple. I think they have been in a committed relationship for a very long time so JM saying he can't recall having a childish crush makes sense...he's not a kid anymore and the last time he had a crush was JK in my opinion and those initial feelings of pining and one sidedness are long gone.

Just my two cents.

[midnight-melancholiaaa]

a hasty follow-up to my earlier post, where i questioned why sol had told fake-osha that he was ready to come clean to the jedi council about what happened on brendok, and yet switched off his comms and jumped into hyperspace to avoid the incoming jedi team. doesn’t seem like coming clean to me…

few key things here 1) sol made those remarks to somebody he believed to be osha, and now he knows it wasn’t her, his priority has switched to finding her, rather than post-mission exposition on coruscant. 2) we’ve already seen sol’s frustration at the jedi regrouping in meetings instead of pursuing an urgent ongoing situation. sol is likely avoiding asking for permission he knows he won’t receive, so he can find osha and qimir as soon as possible. the fact that he does this by avoiding the jedi altogether, inadvertently placing even MORE suspicion upon himself as a fallen jedi, is….. ouch………

so why restrain mae and monologue to her? i’ve seen posts arguing (very well) that his incoming explanation of brendok will be a self-centred emotional unloading, rather than anything useful for or considerate of mae. i totally agree there’s an element of that at play, but i think there’s something else going on as well, linked to sol’s mission for the rest of the show.

a couple lines stick out to me. “you and i have work to do” is, i think, a fairly obvious statement that mae will be roped into helping sol rescue osha. but the other is hiding in an earlier scene: “you found him”. as i explain in my other theorypost, i think this line is said after sol has realised mae is pretending to be osha. within a double meaning, it could allude to mae’s relationship with the master. she’s found qimir once — why can’t she do it again?

so yeah, i don’t think it’s super out there to say that sol is planning to recruit mae and use her to find qimir, and osha along with him. why the table restraining then? on a purely practical level, he’s keeping her cuffed until he feels in control of the situation and as though he can rely on her allyship. and getting to that allyship? sol’s going to try his damndest in this explanation monologue to convince her onside, and he doesn’t want her struggling or arguing until he’s said that full pitch.

i think all this really speaks to the level of desperation sol is experiencing. he’s just watched the other jedi he cares deeply for get massacred in front of him, and failed to save any of them. and it turns out the one person he thought he’d saved, osha, is still in danger, and that he’s failed his ex-padawan again. no wonder his responsibilities to the council fall by the wayside when sol, a person clearly motivated by love for those close to him, has one final chance to do right by ANYONE in this clusterfuck situation. sol also feels extremely out of control in this series of events, so is grasping for whatever control he can salvage — hence his desperation to do whatever it takes for his mae-saves-osha plan to work and his… questionable methods in accomplishing it.

the implications for sol giving into fear and a need for control like this are certainly juicy. dude is on the struggle bus lately, and this particular struggle bus has a few dark-side-themed stops. also, the irony of sol behaving like this indirectly digging his grave re: the council’s inclination to believe in his dark-sidedness…….. makes me want to lie in a ditch for a while. can’t wait for next week where my theories will probably be proven wrong and also i get to cry on the floor!!!!!!! i <3 the acolyte!!!!!!!

[cool-fancier]

The Way I Loved You

Synopsis:After your breakup, you realized how selfish you had been, prioritizing your career over your relationship with Bada. As months went by, you wrote the song "The Way I Loved You," in which you expressed your regret and love for her. When Bada heard the song, it had an intense effect on her and caused her to consider her feelings for you.

Being a solo artist meant that your career had always come first for you. Your relationship with Bada has been damaged as a result of your persistent dedication to what you want in life. She had been your girlfriend for quite a while, but the months prior to that had been very difficult.

Bada was tired of the one-sidedness of the relationship. She seemed to be patiently waiting for you to make the time for her and give it a try. Your relationship faltered as a result of your hectic lifestyle and ongoing focus on your job.

One day, Bada had gathered the guts to talk to you about the distance that was forming between you two. Although neither of you wanted to have the conversation, it was necessary.

The atmosphere in the room was strained, and the weight of the conversation was noticeable. You and Bada sat across from each other, both knowing that this conversation had been a long time coming. Your relationship had been slowly worsening and now it had reached a breaking point.

Bada inhaled deeply, a mixture of agony and despair visible in her eyes. "Y/N," she said, "we need to talk about us."

As you knew what was about to happen, your throat tightened as you nodded. "I know, Bada. We do."

Bada's voice quivered as she continued, "Our relationship, it's not working anymore. We've been drifting apart, and it seems like we're both just acting the part.”

You couldn't help but become upset at what she said. "Well, Bada, I'm not the only one. You know I have a busy schedule with my music career. But have you thought about how much I've sacrificed for us? I've put my career on the line for this relationship."

While Bada's expression relaxed, the pain stayed. "Y/N, I love you, but this love isn't enough. We need more than that. We need effort, we need to feel like we matter to each other.”

You began to tear up as you realised what a failure you had been at making Bada feel loved and valued. "Bada, you're right. You should also realise how much I sacrificed for this relationship; I've become arrogant and you're not the only one who's made sacrifices."

Bada's voice cracked as she said, "I never thought I'd say this, Y/N, but maybe we should take a break. Time apart to figure out what we really want."

You nodded, your heart breaking at the thought of being without Bada. "If that's what you need, Bada, I'll respect your decision, but don't forget everything I've done for us."

Bada's tears flowed freely now, and she reached out to hold your hand. "I want us to be happy, too, Y/N, but we can't do that if we're holding each other back."

Knowing that this was the beginning of the end, the two of you sat there with your words and emotions hanging in the air. It was a difficult choice, but you both knew that sometimes love couldn't repair what was wrong. For a while at least, you had to let each other go in order to find yourself and possibly come back stronger.

After the breakup, you were left alone to think on what went wrong. You couldn't help but feel an overwhelming feeling of loss. You had to deal with the consequences because your job had forced you to be separate from the person you loved.

It was a harsh realization, but you couldn't stop loving Bada. Every time you saw her, every time you saw the happiness she found with someone else, your heart twisted. It was your fault for letting her go and for assuming her love would always be there for you.

As more time passed after your breakup with Bada, you found yourself struggling to come to terms with the reality of being apart. You felt a sharp aching in your heart every day, and you couldn't help but think back on the times you had spent together. You couldn't escape the feeling that you had made a terrible mistake.

The decision to part ways had weighed heavily on you. The more time that passed, the more you understood how selfish you had been during that conversation. You lost the love of your life because you prioritised your music career over your relationship. You could see that Bada had moved on and was now happy with Howl, her new partner. They loved each other in the same way that you once did with Bada.

Even though you knew it was too late to change the past, you longed for Bada. You were unable to turn back time or change the harm you had caused. But you may use your music to convey your emotions, your regrets, and your longing.

So, you put all of your heart and soul into a song that expressed how much you once loved Bada and how much you still do. Your true regret and the painful knowledge that you gave up something valuable were all over the song. You called it "The Way I Loved You," a sincerely honest and highly personal song.

The song became a hit as soon as you released it. The lyrics and melody that captured the depth of your feelings were written with a real emotion that connected with your audience. Your confession, apology, and devotion for Bada were all expressed in the song.

Bada heard the song, and it moved her in ways she hadn't expected. The love that had always been there was like it had been revealed by the lyrics, which had peeled back the layers of your heart. She realized that you hadn't been selfish because you didn't care. It was because you cared too much, but you hadn't known how to balance your career and your relationship.

Every time Bada listened to "The Way I Loved You" on repeat, tears welled up in her eyes. She had to admit that she still had feelings for you. But the question remained: was it possible to mend what was broken?

[onesidedradiostatic]

Favorite thing about this ship is that whenever I see it someplace else everyone seems to agree that the one-sidedness is the best part of it and it is great fuel for fanfic writers and artists. Which I honestly agree with.

It isn't like usual rivals-lovers tropes, cause one side (Alastor in this case) does not reciprocate the other pathetic bastard's feelings. Doesn't even see Vox as a threat. It's interesting to see how people interpret Vox's feelings and turn it into an interesting story (comic or fanfic wise) Not much of a fanfic reader, but I've been loving all the fanart and comics that specifically take this ship as one-sided on Vox's part (the proper way to see it if you ask me)

OK, enough rambling now. Tldr; this ship is great fuel for a bunch of people and I am very happy about it

HAHAHAHHA yeah I'm glad so many people can agree with this interpretation of the ship. there's just somehow something so funny about it that's so hard to put into words.

it's enemies/rivals-to-lovers but one-sided

okay that is already really fucking funny

vox's obsession is already canonically one-sided

alastor will never ever reciprocate

alastor canonically rejected vox and vox got pissy because of that

vox looks like an incel because of the above two points and calling him an incel is incredibly fucking funny

he's not even an incel he has an on-and-off relationship with val but he still acts like one when it comes to alastor

vox is bi and alastor is aroace which is somehow very funny to me

vox is legitimately intimidating when he's not thinking about alastor which makes his patheticness when it comes to alastor even more funny

their rivalry actually has layers because they have shared history together and used to be friends which makes their relationship actually interesting on top of the funny aspect

there is more but I genuinely cannot put it all to words idk it's just great

[liketwoswansinbalance]

I am really curious to see your take on Aric and Japeth's relationship. I mean, the beloved author and creator of the series have addressed this issue with 'in their own sick wicked way they had loved' so yeah it's cannon cool. But I feel like the further implications of this? We saw evil 'unable to love'/ 'only ever have true love'. From what I remember Japeth mentioned Aric more than once, how they would write letters to each other how Aric 'begged' for Japeth to come to him but Japeth never did so and then bro spent the last of his life trying to bring Aric back to life. There are so many implications, the dynamics, the context, everything, but I love how you theorise and explore all sorts of ideas so I can't help but wonder how you view all of this :D.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a great day/afternoon/evening/night!

Sorry to disappoint, but I should probably start off with the fact that I don't ship Japeth and Aric. While I like Japeth, partly in thanks to @discjude winning me over, and further recognizing the tragedy surrounding him, his relationship to Aric never canonically does him any favors. And, with Aric, I think I'm apathetic enough towards him that I don't actively hate him; I just don't care about him. In truth, if not for Aladdin's pitiful existence actively hammering on my nerves, Aric would probably be my least favorite character.

The first thing I want to address is that Evil being "unable to love" or "only Evers have True Love" is actually false, despite the many times the series puts forth this claim. Yes, we are explicitly told this "fact" in book 1, but the book's point was to subvert/deconstruct the myth.

First, by the end, with her self-sacrifice, Sophie proved Evil's capacity to love, meaning: Evil being unable to love is just a commonly-held belief in the Woods, not the absolute, be-all, end-all truth.

(And the belief could've been perpetuated by "Rafal's"/Rafal's way of running his institution that literally shapes the Wood's perceptions and the future. Alongside this claim about love, consider the existence of the Doom Room, created to punish a singular mutinous class of first-years, based on a now-revised philosophy about Nevers' learning from harsh treatment and (probably) disproportionate retribution that an excessively stubborn dead man already too entrenched in his old ways never had the chance to change because he died—and this is all aside from the fact proven by the display at the very first Circus of Talents, that Rafal's students did indeed learn better when he finally listened to them and mentored them as an equal in their position (as Fala). In addition, the statement: "Nevers learn from deprivation" similarly reveals how the Woods really do generalize about Nevers—until Sophie, the "exception" and iconoclast, comes along.)

Second, Sophie's non-romantic True Love at some point was said to be Agatha, and I think this established fact is consistently maintained throughout the series, even if other elements overshadow it, so not only Evers can have True Love.

My take on Japeth and Aric is that Japeth's love for Aric, however twisted or sincere it was, drove him to become the Snake, follow along with Rhian's Camelot ambitions and initial staging-terrorism-and-hostage-scenarios plot, and commit all his other, duplicitous, villainous acts throughout TCY, later by his own will, which is a motive I find fascinating (and contradictory about the nature of the Woods' Good and Evil souls, whenever Japeth is set next to the rather grey Rhian).

So, while Japeth's devotion to Aric could be viewed as romantic, it's just not appealing to me, personally, due to the relationship's ambiguous one-sidedness in particular. And, I think I once may've read something about Japeth as a Never fighting for True Love (or his perception of "True Love") and Rhian as an Ever fighting for power (the Nevers' ideal fairy-tale ending) being ironic or inverted in some way. That's also some world-building fodder to consider, or even just another point that could overturn the Rules as we know them, yet again. I'm not surprised by that subversion honestly. Japeth is very much like his parents. Nearly every SGE villain Soman has ever written has been motivated by the pursuit of love, or by the overwhelming force of their own (often obsessive) infatuations (with the exception of somewhat flatter, less-developed, secondary villains, like Aric, Vulcan, Marialena, and Peter Pan).

Also, thanks for the compliment!

[abrisaber]

Full Moon kinda sucked :/ (Another HB Rant - Spoilers for Full Moon)

I hate to say this but I think Vivziepop has finally lost me. Now I'm not saying I'm no longer an HB fan, JMI was geneticlly enginered to get me addicted to whatever he's in meaning I could'nt stop watching HB even if I tried. However I am starting to doubt Vivziepops talents. I have no idea what happened between the first half of Season 2 and the second half but this kind of seasonal rot has to be studied in a fucking lab.

I want to like the episodes after "The Circus," I really do. I don't even hate Cherubs, but aside from Oops and the Mid-Special, every episode following The Circus has ranged from disapointing to awful compared to S1.

It's not even like I hate the episodes after The Circus either. Seeing Stars was okay for the most part, Exes and Oohs tried to do something, even Unhappy Campers introduced a potentally intresting character (and thats it). But these episodes have so many glaring flaws in my book that it's hard to grasp.

In my opinion, Helluva Boss was at its best during the balk half of season 1/The beginning of Season 2 (Truth Seekers-The Circus) and the decline in writing quality started at around Seeing Stars.

I made a long post that explains what about Truth Seekers I like so if you care even a little bit about my opinions, you can suffer through that rant, but to shorten it here, Truth Seekers is my favorite episode of the series because it balances the comedy and the drama expertly imo. Truth Seekers feels like Helluva Boss had finally stuck the landing at what kind of show it wanted to be. It showcased how Blitzo felt about his past relationships and his current one, it gave Moxxie a chance to be heard outside of his flaws (before the show decided they wanted to retread the same fucking plotpoint a couple more times), and it was pretty funny (comedy is subjective tho so feel free to ignore my feelings on comedy from here on out).

Ozzies is a good episode because, well, Asmodeus, but also it does more for Blitzo's character. It contrasts with Truth Seekers via two of the three halucinations calling him out on his shit, and it starts to build upon how he views his relationship with Stolas.

While I don't really like The Circus, what it did at the end for Stolas and overall how it setup the relationship for him and Blitzo was genuinly good imo. How it started with Blitzo initiating the one sidedness of their relationship and whatnot.

Notice how I'm talking almost exclusively about Blitzo as my reasons for enjoying these episodes more than others. And thats because Helluva Boss is at its best when it treats Blitzo as its main character. Even from the beginning he was the real star. Obviously you have characters like Stolas and Moxxie also getting focous, but even in those episodes, Blitzo still gets development, because Blitzo is the main driving force for the show. He's the Helluva Boss. He's the center, the emotional core. HB should be about HIM and HIS relationships to others.

Some of the worst episodes are the ones where Blitzo isn't really the main focous, I'm not saying that Blitzo automaticlly makes the show good or that he should be the only one get focus, but when you pull back and look at the series, almost every beloved episode have him (or him and Stolas) at its emotional center.

To keep this already long post from being absurdly long, I'll skip ahead to why I really didnt like the newest episode, Full Moon.

SPOILERS AHEAD

First things first, the Cherubs and Dhorks fucking suck ass as antagonists. They're annoying, they're not funny, and just like Crimson and Striker in Oops, they serve zero narritve purpose outside of being glorified cardboard cutouts for the main characters to fight. They are everything wrong with B-plots in media. Their only existence is to create artifical narritve throughlines that makes artifical suspence to keep the audience engaged like babies watching those baby sensory videos. "Oooo look its the Cherubs from the most nothing burger episode of Season 1. Oooo it's the Dhorks that are easily the most forgetable aspect of Truth Seekers. OOOhhh isnt it sooooo fucking hilarous how the Dhorks killed a bunch of children? Ohhh aren't you so invested to see these characters that mean absolutely nothing to the plot that Vivziepop is trying to sell the show with? DONT YOU JUST LOVE THESE KEY JINGLING ASS CHARACTERS YOU FUCKING BABY-"

I got a little carries away there, but my point is that Dhorks and the Cherubs are worthless slop that should be removed from the plot entirely.

Usually I wouldn't even care since 2/3 instances where useless villans show up to be useless, the main plot not involving them is really good (Refering to Oops and Truth Seekers).

But the main-plot in this episode is just as bad, if not WORSE than the B-plot.

Regarding my previous rant again, I was an avid defender of Stolitz up until maybe Western Energy, although in that case with the aftermath of Ozzies being handled mostly offscreen is more me being skeptical about Vivs pacing and writibg style. I didn't have a problem with the actual idea of Stolitz yet, just with the execution.

In actuality, my problem with the writing started in The Full Moon.

Even with me being an avid defender of Stolitz, even with me analyizng and disecting Blitzo's mentality and reasonings and emotional trauma, even with me trying to justify BOTH sides of this toxic relationship with no real abuser,

THIS does NOT come off as Blitzo begging to keep Stolas in his life because he cares about him and wants to be with him. I'm sure theres some of that in there and I still have faith that Viv try to put more of that into the execution going forward. But no matter how many times I watch this ending scene and the scenes before it, no matter how long I sit and think and think and think about this dynamic, this scene does NOT feel that way to me.

To me, this scene looks like a lower class citizen begging on his knees to the person whos essentaily employing them to let him keep his job to be able to feed his family and keep his colluges/close friends in work.

This feels like a man whos society is stacked against him trying to keep the one thing he has afloat.

I don't feel this way towards the entire scene. When Blitzo tries to avoid the whole conversation by trying to keep the transaction going, thats when I see more of the emotional side, but it still doesn't sit right with me how the dynamic is being represented.

Stolas explains it pretty well in the moments after. He says "This transactional thing we have, its not right anymore. It hasn't been. It never was. And now, all I can see is how wrong it is to be teathered to someone in such an unfair way. And not know how they feel."

To me, this finally feels like Stolas coming to his senses and realizing that he and Blitzo's relationship is unbalanced. He sees that Blitzo's reliance on him is unfair, so he works to end it.

My problems start to arise again when Stolas reacts to Blitzo trying to play it off again as Roleplay.

I can understand his side of the coin, how he feels that Blitzo only wanted him for sex and nothing more, or how he believes that Blitzo doesnt really care for his feelings and only stays for the book, and when giving Blitzo the option, he chooses to ignore it.

But I still cannot get over how icky this scene makes me feel. Blitzo has made it clear how he thinks Stolas feels about their relationship. In the Just Look My Way music video it seems that Stolas somewhat realizes that Blitzo is hurting in some capacity. When Blitzo vents his frustraitions, Stolas says "I didn't know you thought so lowly of me" which doesnt make any fucking sense in response to what Blitzo is saying.

Again, its that image of a person mistreated by society begging someone who is privlaged to let him keep his job. I cant stomach this idea that Stolas got his fucking feelings hurt over someone he indirectly played with for his own pleasure and to escape his marrige venting their frustraitions about how THEY feel about it. HE HIMSELF admitted that the relationship was unfair, so when Blitzo says "You treat me poorly and expect me to believe when you suddenly express your feelings for me? Can I get a minute to actually process what you said," its litteraly just parroting what Stolas was saying.

Stolas knows how Blitzo feels. He knows Blitzo is hurting. And yeah past relationship trauma isnt an excuse to be shitty, but it's not like Stolas made it very obvious that he did actually care about Blitzo's emotions.

Up until this point the relationship has been one sided on both sides. Both parties think the other doesnt care or that the other is just using them for something. Both sides caught feelings and didnt want to admit it, and Stolas was the bigger person for trying to initiate that discussion. But with the ending line Stolas says and all the promotional matreal being released for the upcoming seasons, the show feels like its going to make Blitzo out to be the one in the wrong when he isnt. Blitzo did the same fucking things Stolas did, so why does it feel like the next few episodes are just going to be "Blitzo sucks and we hate him." Like are you fucking serious??

Maybe I'm reading the whole thing wrong, who knows at this point.

[dairy-farmer]

jaytim angst fic recs? 🥹🫧

!!!! yess!!! i have a few, a lot are one shots/short since i have horrendous attention span and it takes me days if not weeks to be able to get through long fics- once again: blanket warning for dark or angsty tags, noncon, unhappy endings, one-sidedness etc

one-sided by cicigreen03

jason developed feelings for tim and came to his birthday party only to find out tim was already taken and dating bernard

found each other on the wayside by yasmindifference

jason and tim have been sleeping together and maybe developing into something more for months. then tim is caught in an explosion and presumed dead and jason sees no reason to keep his hands clean anymore

Keep Moving Forward by pemfrost

jason and tim have broken up and have their first real conversation following the end of their relationship. dick is stuck as a witness

Two hearts, one bet by lovetimdrake

rom com angst plot where jason bets that, for 200 bucks, he can successfully bed sweet little time drake. jason is somehow unware how he might be an asshole for doing it until he actually gets to know sweet tim drake.

Ya'aburnee by RivetingFabrications

earth and many of its heroes were destroyed in an invasion, against his will, jason is forced to leave tim behind on earth along with other refugees being evacuated. a decade later sensors pick up activity from earth. people have survived. jason finds tim but...not the same.

All Tied Up And No Place to Go by WeirdAlterEgo

tim is trapped into a relationship he doesn't want and is terrified of jason. only...that's not what jason thinks is happening.

Force-Fed by meaninglessblah

tim has survived the game show that is the hunger games by pretending to be a star-crossed lover with another competitor in the games that came close to killing him. tim doesn't like him, is scared of him. but to keep his life he must keep up the act. turns out the show never ended because wealthy sponsors are now talking about how excited they are to see his and jason's 'first time' together. jason and him are in this miserable existence together now.

Time to Save You by darkdream253

jason and tim meet in a time slip 3 years apart. only that jason is dead in tim's time.

To love and to honour by elareine

jason and tim and the ups and downs of their marriage

also an additional platonic angsty jason and tim centric fic!!

The Long Way Home by itsnatalie

jason and tim don't get along but when they're tugged into a labyrinth and forced to compete for their lives they'll have no choice but to work together and trust the other will have their back.

***this one is more gen/platonic but their dynamic in this one is so good!!!!!

[just-jae]

"Apology Tour"

Helluva Boss in respects to the episode "Apology Tour", demonstrates an overt shift in storytelling that not only went far out-of-character, but handled their portrayal of a toxic relationship, ironically in a toxic way.

To start, Im aware that the show has had storytelling flaws, and have since moved on and accepted that it's ultimately unplanned story subject to retconns (Such as with Moxxie, Stella, Octavia and Stolas) as well as just not going in any particular direction sometimes, especially given these are relatively new characters and personalities, and a story started as a small side-project with only one planned season, compared to Hazbin Hotel, who's characters have been in development since Viv was a kid, whom she had a clear and set vision for by the time Hazbin Hotel started production.

That being said, these past few episodes give me an impression that the focus of their story is shifting, due to the lacking cohesion between prior setup and Apology Tour and the one-sidedness in this episode's story, even if we only rely on the show's content for context.

They set up that Blitz is self loathing, having developed a deep-seated self hatred after causing the death and traumatization of people he cared about, internalizing other's opinions, effectively having given up on being the person he wants to be and considering himself a failure in that regard.

But, its not just self loathing, as Apology tour insists so strongly. Its also disillusionment with love. Blitz once knew love in the form of his mother, Fizz his best friend, and (maybe) his sister at least into his pre-teen years. He even attempted to confess feelings for Fizz with a letter on his birthday, and still cares about his sister enough to go look for her when she leaves the insane asylum.

He nearly believes Stolas's texts and his words in Full , because that's who he is at his core, someone who loves and longs to be loved, but convinces himself that Stolas doesn't actually mean what he says, and thus acts accordingly. Somewhere along the line he learned that "It's an act" after being betrayed, abandoned, or otherwise hurt by people he trusted with his heart. People like his father, Fizz, exes, or even people he set up performance act for, whom ultimately rejected him-- hence why he gave up.

"You tried a solo act, it didn't work out so well."

Unlike Stolas, who, since birth has been raised by emotionally distant, fake people who pretty themselves up despite being rotten and who "pretend to want to fuck his scrawny twig-ass" (his wife btw) because they have to. Honestly, I don't know why he'd consider his relationship with Blitz to be any better than his wife's.

Because they were drunk the first time i guess >=>… Seriously was that episode even canon--

Blitz went into the room already certain that Stolas was getting bored and about to cut him off, making efforts to appeal to Stolas-- a guy whom he considers an unpleasant chore to be around, insisting "I can do better". He even begs, that he'll do anything with DESPAIR -- as if expecting to be even more uncomfortable just to maintain their arrangement. And this moment shows clearly that Blitz never wanted to do any of the stuff their "relationship" is built on. He's there because those are the terms Stolas set for being allowed to use his book.

"Once a month, you return the book to me, followed by a night of passionate fornication!" Stolas, as usual conveniently ignores that this is the situation Blitz has been in since they met and proceeds to act like Blitz is the jackass for hating him AFTER ADMITTING THAT THEIR RELATIONSHIP was "NOT RIGHT". Blitz doesn't even initially steal from Stolas (when they're children) because he wants to, but because his dad is making him do it.

In Full Moon, Blitz snaps and goes on a rant about "Everything you've put me through" and how people like Stolas have tended to treat people like Blitz, because just as Stolas feels hurt, Blitz has also been hurt, as much as he tries not to be, such as the sentiment he expressed in "Ozzy's" (Which, btw was their last serious on-screen conversation), that Stolas has made him feel used more than anything. Even if Blitz initiated their arrangement, Stolas trying to make it an emotional relationship feels like a lure to be hurt, and having to reject that offer, especially after seeing a genuinely loving relationship, also forces Blitz to verbalize WHY he rejects the offer, being that at no point has Stolas done anything but sexualize Blitz and disregard his own disinterest and discomfort, which has been apparent throughout the serise.

Blitz has, up until this point, made it blatantly clear that he hates having sex with Stolas, and avoids doing so unless he needs to maintain access to the Memoir.

Blitz has been completely transparent about how he feels about their relationship from the get-go.

ALL that being said, it's becoming apparent that "Apology Tour" marks a noticeable shift in the storytelling style, where the writers are starting to portray specific unrelated life experiences through these characters, even if it doesn't line up with the situation set up by previous episodes.

In apology tour, Blitz not only doesn't take Stolas' breakoff seriously, but doesn't even believe that Stolas genuinely doesn't want to fuck anymore (despite having started the episide thinking he was getting bored, and having a history of breakups). And even exhibits behaviors of being possessive of Stolas, going over to his house to insist on nothing being different, getting angry when Stolas kisses another guy, even claiming that he "Stole" his bird.

In apology tour he's angry at Stolas, not for putting him in an emotionally vulnerable position, but for being emotionally vulnerable and rejecting his sexual advances, which felt not-only OOC as fuck for Blitz but resembled traits of a narcissist more than someone who was self loathing or emotionally insecure. He even says shit like "Stolas always wants to talk to me" as if suddenly he can't fathom that someone doesn't like him or doesn't want to be with him rather than the opposite mindset that's been set up throughout the series.

Apology Tour wants to tell a story of projected self loathing, but uses experiences with narcissistic tendencies to do so, through a character that, prior to this specific episode was anything BUT, and whom specifically had a history of initiating breakups SPECIFICALLY because he didn't think people actually loved him and were just luring him in to be hurt (or because he was predicting things were starting to go downhill and just decided to be to first to jump ship).

I can tell this episode is a depiction of personal experiances with breakups from certain kinds of toxic relationships, but the entire time these characters didn't feel like themselves but other people in their skins.

What bothers me, specifically, is that in sympathizing so one-sidedly with Stolas, Apology tour villainizes Blitz, and disregards the mistreatment HE'S endured from Stolas, suddenly blaming him for Stolas's insecurities and heartbreak when AT NO POINT did Blitz ever pretend to like their arrangement or be interested in Stolas. AT NO POINT were they ever even in a relationship. It was a transactional fucking that STOLAS required for Blitz to use the book. Stolas catching feelings doesn't obligate Blitz to suddenly put his own heart on the line, especially when he's already vulnerable in that he relies on Stolas for his business to operate.

STOLAS HIMSELF admits that their relationship was transactional in FULL MOON. AGAIN, Stolas was the one who made sex the requirement for getting the book in the first place when he could have just been lending Blitz the book without that.

This whole time STOLAS has been the one controlling the terms by which their relationship is maintained, and never made an effort to pay attention to how Blitz felt about it until Blitz actually told him no, even then he completely disregards the obvious vulnerability and fear of being hurt to focus instead on Blitz's self loathing.

"Why cant you just open up to me--someone who's talked down to you multiple times, litterally called you a plaything, needlessly disregarded your boundaries and discomfort, and who exploits your need of me for sex-- and just admit that you hate yourself?? I've tried so hard to be nice to you since the first time you refused to do what I want! Why aren't you giving me what I want?"

Like. TF? How is Blitz the bad guy here?

This could have been remedied just by swapping the character's roles.

Stolas should have been the one portrayed as a clingy, emotionally deaf asshole, (That he's been since his first appearance), who struggles to comprehend genuine love and actually being loved-- as opposed to Blitz who's just afraid of loving and self-punishing.

Blitz should be the one who's catching a break here.

An alternative approach to this story: Blitz realizes there's another way to get to the living world, and warily asks Stolas to help him get it, even offering to keep banging afterward as thanks, or, taking a risk that maybe Stolas genuinely cares about him. Stolas is too insecure to actually choose to give Blitz that freedom and potentially never see him again, and/or take him seriously at first because he's so sure everyone's happy with the current arrangement-- an arrangement that, frankly he's familiar with after living with his wife for years.

Maybe this could reveal that Stolas just felt that, being used/needed (for the memoir) was the only way he was even going to get close to something resembling a relationship and just hesitated a bit too long, causing Blitz to quickly back out and go for the crystal himself. Then maybe Stolas shows up to help anyway and they have a similar conversation as in Apology tour, without the made-up "we all hate this guy, its all your fault, you're the shitty one" party that, if anything just reinforced Blitz's self loathing.

Seriously. The dude's even a better dad than Stolas is-- he actually pays attention to Loona, and is capable of loving her and interacting with her even when she's a dick bc he's used to people being dicks and not kissing his ass when they're not drunk-- unlike Stolas.

So why does Apology tour make the entire situation Blitz's fault and make him soley responsible for their and EVERY "relationship's" failure? Why isn't Stolas made to confront or even acknowledge the way he's treated Blitz up until Ozzy's? (except for some flirting in a filler episode and some texts on a phone)

Why does the show make it BLITZ's obligation and responsibility to be sensitive to Stolas's feelings and vulnerabilities and to be vulnerable to Stolas after a majority of their relationship BY STOLA'S OWN ADMISSION has been transactional with Blitz being the one reliant on Stolas and therefore having an unfair power dynamic?

Because its not their story, they're being used to tell someone else's story.

Stolas sure does prop himself up as making efforts to be kind and loving pretty often. I guess that's why his daughter hates him so much and feels unloved and abandoned, why Blitz never felt loved by him, and why we literally see Stolas abusing and bossing around imps that work for him, if not talking down to them like he does to Moxxie and Millie.

I can accept that the show is veering more toward using the characters to tell personal stories, and that the change is probably going to cause a loss of serial cohesion, but this was such poor way to handle the relationship and dynamic between these two characters and is infantilizing and glorifying Stolas as a pure -of-heart sweetie way too much.

Because we even saw before, that when when they're just cuddling, Blitz adores it. He likes the idea of a relationship, and having someone to hold, in a non-sexual way but can't let himself actually be vulnerable, especially not with people like Stolas who talk down to and take advantage of his reliance in order to maintain access to an asset they need to run their business.

This was careless. It's like watching a truck full of baggage veer across several lanes to make a last-minute exit onto a different highway and spill half of its bags all over the road in the process.

I had a problem before when they tried to portray Stolas as a kind and caring father who's done nothing to earn his daughter or spouse's spite. And I have a problem now when they try to blame and villainize the person who had less power in a relationship and has been shown not only being mistreated and used but capable of loving and respecting others, as shown with his relationships with Loona and Moxxie, and emotional vulnerability even when they don't want to be.

I do appreciate that they're putting in effort to portray painful personal experiences, but for fuck's sake at least review the history of the characters you use to tell the story before you go and blame someone in the LOWEST CLASS OF SOCIETY who RELIES on the other MUCH MORE POWERFUL person for FINANCIAL STABILITY and whom ALREADY PANDERS to SEXUAL DEMANDS AGAINST THEIR OWN PREFERENCE for the failure of a NON EXISTANT RELATIONSHIP and FOR NOT LETTING THEMSELVES BE VULNERABLE WITH SOMEONE THEY ULTIMATELY DONT TRUST.

I was actually rooting for them to finally break tf up because it's toxic af, and they somehow managed to make me hate it.

Literally they could have just swapped their roles and made the story make a lot more sense based on the setup, but No, Stolas is the sweet and innocent romantic one that needs saving and Blitz is the tough, cold hearted, reads hand, clingy jealous ex with narcissistic tendencies… for this one episode…

-----

Okay upon looking into it further it looks like a lot of the mismatch between what Stolas says and what Stolas does is intentionally him being in his own head. I really wish they would make that clear instead of Blitz being portrayed as such an ass-- like more assholish than usual, having an entire party of people who hate his guts in particular as if he's somehow worse than the average hellspawn, and having Blitz not refute most of the criticisms Stolas throws at him.

Like, the most Blitz has to apologize for is blowing up at Stolas for trying to help him, but. That's all he did, yelled. He even waited for Stolas to reply and even tried to apologize. So. Idk, if they're really gonna chalk all this up to "It's Stolas being in his own head" they-- I want them to come down so hard on his ass after this.

[pegasussomnus]

The lack of existence of, one-sidedness and toxicity of Tim and Steph's current "friendship"

So after Tim's UL thing many people are acting like he and Steph have now transitioned into "platonic besties" or something. Aside from the fact they have NEVER had this dynamic at all throughout their histoy, this write up will explain why the current 'friendship' of Tim and Steph after UL is pretty non-existant, one-sided and frankly kind of toxic.

The first thing to note which is what people use as "proof. Tim introducing Steph to Bernard.

People talk about how 'cute' or 'a sign of trust' it is, but they seem to be overlooking one crucial fact. Tim did it without even asking Steph first or telling her they would be meeting him.

Let's be honest introducing your ex to your new partner without telling your ex is a selfish move as while you may be over your ex, your ex may not be over you and it might be hard for them to see you with someone else so quickly, especially in this case as Tim just apologized for treating her badly via ghosting her and being a jerk to her. The fact the whole time Tim was planning to introduce her to Bernard even before he talked with Stephanie shows he was planning it without taking her into consideration at all and not giving her her own space to properly deal with things.

When Kyle Rayner met with Donna while with Jade after he and Donna's relationship ended on bad terms due to her ghosting him (it was because her son died BTW) and more or less ending the relationship in a way that hurt him a lot, he properly gave Donna a space to deal with it and didn't include Jade in it as he knew Donna as someone he loved a lot even if it was over needed his undivided attention here to deal with loose ends. He told Jade this before going to talk to Donna even.

So Tim comes off as incredibly selfish and unintentionally manipulative as he did this right after laying a lot on her with the apology, telling her why he ghosted her, and in public, doesn't give her really time to process things and puts pressure on her to just take it as a bad reaction in public would be bad but also after Tim laid this on her and they reconciled might alienate them even further which Stephanie didn't want as was shown by her attempts to mend things in UL and how much it hurt her.

And Tim not even bothering to even really ask her how she is doing or for her full perspective before doing this was also conceited as again he was ghosting her for a long time. All she did was just reiterate what we and the audience already know and he in the past has pushed Stephanie to express her feelings to him and be frank, so not even doing so and being satsified with her just saying what he already knew felt self-centered.

Not to mention Stephanie's entire reaction made her look like she has no self-respect as Tim:

A. dumped her without a reason

B. Acted like an asshole to her when she tried to help him

C, ghosted her

D. lied that she was ghosting him

E. Only apologized after he met her by accident (where he wished he wasn't there) and her life was in danger

F. Introduced her to his new BF after all this without asking her first while she is still getting over him as Batgirls annual showed

Like aside from clearly using her as a prop it is so bizarre. Introducing your ex to your new partner after all this and in the manner Tim did comes across as flaunting and Steph just taking it is so weird. Like knowing that she still isn't over him and combined with her normally low self-esteem (which Tim knows about) it makes it look like Steph feeling pressured (not necessarily by anyone in particular but by herself) to act supportive because she feels obligated to. Like the fact she hasn't even brought up she still isn't over him to Tim and just acted the way she does further makes it look like this, which again provides a pretty one sided dynamic that comes across as toxic.

This brings into how subsequent interactions again show Steph being this ultra supportive cheerleader but Tim not reciprocating anything really.

Like in issue 4 of Tim's solo, Steph ask's if things are okay with Bernard (of course she does will get to that later) and Tim doesn't even really reply and just moves things back to the case. In fact their interactions throughtout the issue are completely dry and strictly business related. Compared to when he interacted with Dick in issue 5 and opened up about his insecurities in branching out or Kate in issue 8 about the times they've bonded and other things, him being so dry with Steph feels odd. They have him say he "trust Steph and Cass" the most but everything is just business related and this "trust" is only vigilante wise it seems. Like he doesn't even ask Stephanie how she is doing or what's going on in her life. Given issue 2 Tim says he's worried about "ruining things like with Steph" or how in isuse 3 Tim claims he "loves that she's the most unpredictable person" (which was a pretty lackluster description/summation of her compared to how he summed up Dick as the "coolest person he knows" and Damian as his "brother" which fully captures what they mean to him. This description of Steph seems only like something vigilante related which is where her unpredictability comes from and again only an aspect of it) him treating her so drly and professional is just odd when he is more open with Kate than her and again like a friendly work acquaintance at best, which shows he is still keeping her at a distance.

Not to mention how in issue 8 we later see  Stephanie literally dancing over him and Bernard being together in the montage of him recounting he and Kate's bonding moments involving the Batfamily. it is implied this took place not too long after the whole introduction to Bernard which again was pretty bizarre for the reasons I said above. so her doing this after the whole thing again makes her look like she has no self-respect.

This ties into how Tim only seems to involve her in his life when it comes to Bernard/how the author only uses her as. Like the only non-vigilante thing she ask's about is Bernard in issue 4 and in that montage of issue 8 the ONLY time Stephanie shows up in his interactions with the Batfamily in this issue is with Bernard while, Dick who is the closest to Tim apart from Steph shows in two montages, but for Steph it's only this one. Like when moving on his boat in the montage with Dick, he asked Kate, Barbara, and Darcy over Steph for help despite it being a supposed important step in his life. Like he'll include her with Bernard related stuff but other important stuff he'll go to people who are less closer to him for? It makes Tim look like he's using her to validate his new relationship and Steph going along with it makes her just a pushover

It doesn't help how Tim in other instances says/thinks some questionable things about her and their history. Like in issue 1 he thinks about how he was 'settling' before Bernard and how Stephanie would hate his boat after thinking about how much he likes it there and what it represents to him in terms of branching. Like Stephanie was giving her own thought box and HATE was emphaszied while the other Batfamily were grouped together and no emphasis on their reaction and they seemed more like light hearted sentiments/commentary/jabs at their reactions especially with the use of the word hate which is pretty strong and how it was emphasized.

There was also how in DC YJ when "Batman" and "Wonder Girl" in the fake world said Tim should get back with Steph, in that stupid scene, they did so in a way that makes it look like Steph only likes Tim for his vigilante identity via saying she would want him back if he was Batman like she's hero equivalent of a girl who wants to date the most popular jock and painting her as shallow yet Tim doesn't defend her or even care about the slight against her.

Their is also way he talks about her to Connor in DC Pride 2023. Like in the Pride Special Tim claims says she was "everything he ever wanted and more" yet aside from saying he was settling before Bernard, here he says he was really avoiding her because she was a reminder of a past of letting other people define him and he was invested in the relationship on to avoid examining himslef on purpose......

only mentioning how she was a reminder of a past he wanted to avoid and only in a negative connotation and how hard it was for him to be around her and not the fact of how he hurt her in then process and not how she became supportive of him (really shows how Steph in supporting Tim being bi is just used to shill Timber) when he talked how supportive Bruce was when we haven't seen it and he wasn't to the extent Steph was (who he also didn't treat badly and also mentioned as part of letting people define him though weird how he didn't have trouble being around him, but it just shows how they are framing Steph as the 'closeted' past or a barrier to bi Tim....) makes Tim look unappreciative of her and incredibly self-centered.

And like the final point is how Tim again hasn't shown any kind of support for her at all or even tried to be there for her in any way. Like even his 'talk' with her in the Pride Special was all about him. So the lack of support and the way he is still keeping her at a distance makes him look really self-absorded. It makes their 'friendship' all give and no take.

TLD DR: Tim and Steph's current 'friendship' is basically non-existant, one-sided and comes off as kind of toxic due to Tim coming across as self-centered and Steph like a pushoever with no self-respect

[allovertheplace-writing]

Do you think you could write about Kyojuro and a reader that has separation anxiety?🤔🤔🤭

Demon Slayer

Character(s): Kyojuro Rengoku

Genre: Fluff + Comfort

Type: Headcanon

Description: Who knew a lunch trip and an impending departure would end with more than a few feelings spilt?

Warning(s): Gender-Neutral Reader(My Default), Reader is Part of The Corp, Pre-Relationship(We've got Pinning :D, Can Also be Read Completely Platonically)

I sure can!

Thanks for requesting btw, I appreciate it <33

The morning sun encroached upon the harsh shadows, filtering through the rustling leaves as if dancing across his figure was it's only purpose. Hugging the apples of his cheeks and glittering in his amber eyes. His voice, though boisterous, was gentle upon your ears, breathy but not overbearingly so. He sung praises and inquired what you'd both eat upon reaching town. Something he did perhaps too often when he was with you

"It all sounds good, Kyo." A hushed laugh fell from your lips, a smile tugging at your cheeks. "Perhaps we should visit them all, then! Having good food before we part is a must and having more wouldn't hurt." With how he marched on, he couldn't see the way your face froze mid beam

Clammy hands clenched and tugged at your layered pants, releasing only once your anxious heart settled enough to seem okay, "You shouldn't spend so much, you know." His hair moved with the shake of his head, falling over his shoulders and tickling his neck, "If it's for lunch with you, then how much I spend means nothing!" You nudged his arm when he looked back at you in earnest, your face warm, "Be responsible!"

Empty paths soon met bustling streets and your personal spaces met invasion. Shoulders were bumped and distance was inevitable. He would stop each time and stand as an impenetrable wall until you reached him again, however

Sunlight was blocked by buildings both short and tall, alleys were painted gray by blocked shadows and towering walls. Yet it was warm, smiles passed and laughs exchanged. Some couples, some families. Everyone seemed to feel at home. The subtle aching in your soul felt far, but pinched with every scare.

"Ah, there it is!" His calloused hand found yours, grip firm but gentle, "C'mon, (Y/n)!" He tugged you forward, guiding you like the breezing wind. You stumbled once he pushed from the crowd, sides knocking with another's. Relief of pressure settled on your bones, shaking them with each calming breath. He was still smiling, beaming just like the blazing sun. Everything about him was bright and it drew you in just as it had the day you met him. It made you feel like a gullible moth, doomed to die at the wailing flames arms

Someone sat you both down quickly, a nervous energy shaking them similar to you. The building smelled rich and spices tickled your nose with every breath. "What are you going to have? I'm thinking of ramen or miso." Of course you are, you wanted to say, but you remained quiet instead. "(Y/n)?" You breathed deeply, "Ramen." He laughed, "Can never go wrong with that!"

You wondered how he could do that, smile when death and heartache looms at every corner. Usually he put you at ease, but today all he seemed to do was squeeze your heart in his hands. How many more times am I going to see you beam? Is today the last day I have with you? You could only hope his eyes didn't recognize your boiling anguish. Nothing ever went your way though, did it?

With your orders placed, he continued chatting idly despite the one sidedness. His voice was quieter than normal, as if he was more focused on gauging your engagement. "Hey, (Y/n)?" You lifted your head with a hum, eyes curious from his call out. "What do you call a cat without whiskers?" A huff jumped from your chest, exhaled as a light wheeze, "I don't know, Kyo. What is it call?" A grin stretched across his face, "A whiskful cat!" It was ridiculous, the joke. It shouldn't have made you laugh the way it did yet you hadn't the gull to be mad at that. The silly punful joke shook your very core and stole every bit of air from your lungs

The aching pain you felt was replaced with the rattling of your ribcage and tensing of your tired muscles. "That's..." You took a moment to breathe, leaning against your hand, "That's so stupid, I love it." His smile brightened with yours, "I've got more!" Shifting, you shake your head, "You're going to send me into an early grave, Kyo."

Once your stomachs were full with warm food, you both left and made way to the outskirts of town. The sun layed upon the horizon and the sky became a gentle pink...and your heart sunk lower and lower. All until it pressed uncomfortably against your twisting gut

He moved forward with his head held so high, as if there were no doubts within his mind. A part of you envied that despite it being far from the truth. But perhaps you envied in his strength rather than his stature. "(Y/n)?" He called you, stopping with a turn. "Yeah?" You found the cloth of your pants within your hands once again. "Are you alright?" Your breath caught in your throat. "You've been a little out of it today and...well, everytime we have to go you seem to be." Steeling yourself, you managed to speak beneath your breath, "I...I hate leaving- you leaving.."

"It gets..hard to function when I realize we won't be near each other...I can't breathe right knowing that-" Warmth rests on your shoulder, like a blanket placed over you by a loved on a chilly night, and only moments later...it finds your body. Enveloping your heart and mind, drowning doubts and bubbling fears, soothing any weeping from your anxious soul. The weight pressed to your chest alleviates some of the pain, little by little until it's just the shaking of your figure

Your lungs ached as if you ran miles to reach his arms. "We'll always come back to each other..." He squeezed, "I promise." Carefully, he leaned back from you, "No matter the rivers or mountains, I'll come back to you." And as the stars began to rise, he smiled as gently as they twinkled.

[wide-ride]

Chat Fat (sudden wg, dirty talk)

Amy let out a giggle with a nervous edge as she leaned closer to her computer monitor. It wasn’t as if she were new to the niche chatrooms that catered to the fantasies of, well, fans of fat. However, it was rare for her to find anyone online that she really enjoyed talking to and, as she read the next message and bounced excitedly on her ample thighs, was good at turning her on.

Amy was a young woman, just out of community college and working in hospitality. She had always carried a bit of extra heft, hovering just below the 200 pound mark ever since she was a teen. She hid her weight behind flattering clothes and plenty of elastic waistbands. When she stood on the scale, the wavering of the dial just below the big 2-0-0 made her stare with both fear and longing. Longing because she wanted nothing more than to be pampered and fattened and kept deliciously full; fear because the rigors of real life didn’t quite allow for that.

So she lived out her desires through messages and photos traded with men that frequented chatrooms that allowed for anonymity. Unfortunately, most of her conversations had petered out into awkward one-sidedness, boredom, or simply one participant ghosting the other. There were one or two that she had really enjoyed keeping in touch with, but one had left the chat scene when a real life relationship became more serious and the other just seemed to be busy. She had started talking to his new man today and the conversation had become so hot so quickly that she felt giddily disoriented.

In her last few messages, she had described her imagined ideal body weight and type, and he had responded with all the myriad ways he would love to feed her up to that size. She was typing out a response in turn when a short message blipped onto the screen.

“I could do that for you”, the message read, a common enough sentiment from oft-lonely online feeders, “if you wanted me to.”

“I’d love it,” she replied, and added a winky face. She went back to typing up a more descriptively erotic response to his earlier paragraph but another message popped up.

“I could show you,” it said. Her stomach did a little flip in trepidation of having to turn down a person she had literally just met on the internet but another message arrived.

“Let me rephrase that. I can give you a little preview of how things would be if I were feeding you.”

Amy smiled excitedly, but she was still a bit confused. She was more than glad to continue typing up responses to his described feeding session, but his previous messages basically were a preview of how things would be if he were feeding her.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“One sec,” was his reply. She pursed her lips and let out a little sigh.

“No prob,” she responded. She leaned back in her desk chair. She idly wondered if she should take a nice picture for him to return to. She picked up her phone and fiddled with it, wondering if the higher quality of the phone over her webcam would be worth the bother of transferring the pictures to the computer. It was a shame that the site she liked to chat on had not yet released a mobile app.

When she stood from the chair, the sensation of her shirt growing taut over her belly gave her pause. She was wearing a tight fitting blouse as to best show off her curves, but surely the bottom hem hadn’t ridden up so easily before. She pressed her fingers into her gut with disbelief. Maybe she was closer to the 200 pound milestone than she thought.

A new message arrived. “Sorry, back now. How are you feeling?”

There was a thrum of heat that passed through her when she ran her fingers along the soft curve of her belly that now hung a little lower. She typed out a response with one hand. “Really good :) Welcome back lol.”

“Good is good to hear. But as I was saying...if I were your feeder I think I would have you eating 24/7. If we want to get you that heavy, wobbling belly that you want, you’re going to have a steadily high caloric intake. Are you a fan of pancakes for breakfast?”

Amy grinned and sat back down in her chair. Her belly rested heavily on her thighs. The base of the armrests dug a little more into her hips than she remembered.

“I love pancakes! And waffles, and french toast...I’d be more than fine carboloading for breakfast. Especially if it’s loaded with syrup and butter. Lol thinking about it is making me feel fatter already.”

His response made an electric chill shiver down her spine. “That’s because you are fatter already. Isn’t that right?”

Amy wasn’t wearing a bra. She could feel her breasts pressing heavily against the fabric, the sensation of it making her nipples perk against cloth. She squirmed in her chair and had to keep from moaning at the sensation of her belly and tits wobbling as she moved.

Another message arrived. “Don’t worry about typing a response. I’m sure you’re enjoying finally getting to feel like the well-fed fatty you deserve to be.”

The buttons of her shirt were struggling. In a haze she watched as her belly heavily spread out on her thick thighs, her bellybutton nearing her knees. The fat was pumping in smoothly, making her stomach round yet bottom heavy, like a beanbag chair. As buttons began to pop she felt her swelling breasts fall to hang free of the confines of her shirt. Her still-plumping belly made supported them, but as they grew heavier they began to sag to the sides.

“I’m sure you’re looking like a prize pig about now. I think by that size I’d have you addicted to food. That big round belly of yours is going to crave being stuffed full. Hell, you’ll be begging me for a funnel just to make sure you’re always topped off.”

Amy moaned as her belly jolted forward, as if it had been instantly been packed with food. She felt deliriously full. As her hips grew wider, thick love handles began to form. Her underwear was stretched to its limit and the elastic dug viciously beneath one of them.

“If I can ever get you to take a break from eating, I’d love to watch you try to walk...all that lard jiggling as you struggle to waddle even a few steps...”

Amy tried to reach between her legs and discovered two things. One, her belly and tits were so round and swollen that she could not reach. Two, her ass was so fat that she was completely wedged in her chair. Her vain struggle to even reach forward to the keyboard did nothing but make her wobble. She was so horny that it was hard to think, and her inability to move was only making it worse. She could just barely grind herself against the seat of the chair. She kneaded a nipple, thankfully still within her reach, and it felt so sensitive and lush that she cried out.

“Yes, I’m sure you’d make a great piggy for me. You want nothing more than to pack on pounds. I doubt you’d even blink at surpassing immobility. You’ve got simple desires: feeding and fucking.”

Amy felt so awfully close. Her fat gut was spilling over her knees.

“But I did say this was just a preview.”

And like that, it was all gone. Amy was her usual self, sitting in front of her computer screen, her blouse stretched to ruin as the only sign that anything was amiss. She took a few minutes to catch her breath before hurriedly typing out a response.

“So, where did you say you were from again?”

[happi-tree]

🥺🥺 cheerkicks ........ 🤲

Calsmonaut hihihiiiiiiiiiiii my beloved 💜💜💜 Cheerkicks ALSO my beloved,,,

Ship It / Don't Ship It

What made you ship it?

Um. Uno reverse. You. Sskdfkhdvhfvkhvfs but yeah you and Travvy mostly I think!!! And there was this one specific fanart of them awhile back (I'll link (ha) it here if I can find it) that made me go. Oh. Ough. Okay yeah I can SUPER get behind these two.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

As you may have noticed. I enjoy friends-to-lovers. I also really enjoy childhood friends-to-lovers. And I feel like Cheerkicks is a phenomenal way to get that fix. I also really enjoy the (perceived) one-sidedness of it all when you look at it from Normal's perspective,,, it's abundantly clear to me that Normal wants so badly for Lincoln to like him in canon and it seems to him that Lincoln really does not like him that much, while in actuality Lincoln really does like and care for Normal! There's also just,,, a certain Something about pairing the two healer-jocks of the party together,,, I think they understand each other more deeply than they realize, and that's a really fun dynamic to explore imo!

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Once again. I am asking more people to consider queerplatonic relationships (not you though, Cal, I'm fairly sure you and I are 🤝 on this one). Sshdfbjskdbfjbs it might just be the ace arospec in me but I just think they're really really fun to think about!