#yes its on a garages playlist.

[cherriesformatt]

sand || matt sturniolo

matt x fem!reader

summary: matt surprised you with your dream date because he saw some tiktoks you reposted about it

warnings: pure fluff

word count: 1,3k

a/n: I saw this on TikTok and it was just so cute I had to write about it. Thank you guys for all the love under few last stories. I am really happy ily all! Remember English is not my first language so be patient with me! Now enjoy its so cheesy...

🍒

Matt told me this morning to get ready for a day because he is taking me out off town for a day. I was exited because the weather was beautiful today and it was so sunny and warm. May grey was making me wanna scream because it was so literally grey and foggy all the time so I was happy that sun was out (and if I'm lucky someones son is going to be inside me 😎 my fav joke to annoy matt). I wore a nice sundress and curled my hair. I did light makeup and I was waiting for Matt to pick me up. When he texted me that he was here I took my purse and sunglasses and went out. I locked my apartment and walked to the elevator that took me to the garage. I did not have a car so Matt always parked on my parking spot which came with my apartment. I smiled when I saw him leaning on his car.

"Hi..."I smiled at him and waved walking in his direction.

"Hi... you look beautiful baby" He pushed himself up and opened arms for me.

"So do you..." I smiled and threw my arms around his neck and kissed him lightly.

He was wearing denim shorts, white nikes and sleeveless black tee. His tattoos were showing. I loved them so much. His hair was fluffy and he had sunglasses on them taking some of his hair back. He looked so good.

"Get in loser were going to the beach" He said again after I moved away and patted my bum.

"Aw great I am so happy... the weather is so beautiful today and did you just quote mean girls? Who are you?" I said and got into the car after he opened the door for me. We were standing on the passenger side anyways.

"I know how you love the beach in spring time so I decided we could have some time on a nice beach...Malibu? And thats your fault you watch it all the time"He smiled.

I loved going up to Malibu. And yes I did love mean girls.

"I love you Matthew" I said happily and he laughed and closed my doors and went to his side. I loved him the most tho.

While we were driving I connected my phone to the aux and put some music on from our shared playlist so I did not have to listen to Matt's whine about my songs.

"So I am thinking brunch, ice cream and then beach or do you wanna take food to the beach? I have some snacks and drinks for us too" He said.

"We can take food to the beach" I said and he nodded agreeing with me.

"Cos he was sunshine I was midnigh...."I looked at Matt so he could finish singing.

"Rain...."He sang and I smiled.

"Oh how world would love you for singing Taylor" I laughed.

"It is you special only, I am not singing to anyone else" He said.

"You're in a good mood today.... Chris and Nick didn't have a chance to piss you off today?" I put my hand on his knee and stroked it gently.

"They were still sleeping when I left but I told them yesterday that were going away for a day and yes I am in a good mood because I missed you and you are so cute in your dress and I am exited about our date" He said and also put his hand on my thigh and left it there.

"Aww do its a date?" I smiled.

"Yes, it's a date...." He smiled as well.

Whole drive we were talking and singing and talking shit about other drivers and people because thats us.

When we finally arrived at Malibu we stopped to get some food and then we drove to the beach.

"What's that?" I asked when Matt took a bag from the trunk after he handed me food and drinks along with a blanket.

"You will see" He said.

"Okay..."I said looking at him suspiciously.

We settled down far from other people so we could have some privacy just in case someone would recognized Matt.

"So... I bought this" He took out glue and canvas from the bag.

"Oh my god....Matt how did you know I wanted to do this?" I gasped happily knowing already what is it all for.

"I follow you on TikTok you know" He laughed what made my laughed as well. I forgot I must have reposted some TikTok about this.

"Can I make a TikTok from this?" I asked him.

"Of course you can but let's eat first because knowing us we will get glue everywhere" He smiled.

"Probably.... Matt thats so cute I can't believe... you're the best boyfriend ever and like I never had to beg you for a good date.... you always just do this out of nowhere and it's been almost two years" I said.

Time with Matt was my favorite time of my life. He was my everything and I don't even remember who I was before I met him.

"Well.. I am trying out here, so are you, you're the best" He put some of my hair behind my ear.

I got up on my knees and kissed him. I loved him so much and it was all so cute that I couldn't resist.

"Our food will be cold" He laughed in my lips and I peck his lips one more time and moved to sit down on my spot.

We ate and opened some drinks. Then Matt went to throw away empty food containers while I prepared the canvas and glue.

"Ready?"I smiled and he gave me his hand.

I put some glue on in and distributed it all over his hand with my own.

Then we sticked our hands to the canvas.

"I hope it's going to work" I said while putting sand on one when he was putting sand on other.

Then we cleaned the access of the sand and only our sandy hand prints were left on the white canvas.

"Oh it's so cute Matt! It worked" I said.

"It did... here, you write our initials on mine and I will on yours" He handed me pastel pink marker. Pastel pink was my favorite color.

I did what he said and on the back I left a little note and the date.

"Let's go cleaned our hands?" He asked and I nodded.

We went to clean our hands in the ocean and came back. After we packed everything we took a walk by the shore and came back to the car.

"Would you like to stay at my place tonight?" He asked while we were driving.

"Yes... you have to show me how much you missed me" I winked at him and he laughed.

"You're impossible" He shook his head.

I edited the TikTok and posted it. It was very cute and I sent a picture to the group chat we had with his brothers.

"Your brother just called you a lover boy" I said and laughed.

"He can fuck himself" He rolled his eyes.

"Oh Matty but you are my loverboy...."I looked at him with a big smile.

"I will drop you off in your apartment actually" He said and it made me laugh even more.

"Okay okay I am done" I put my hands up in defense.

"Thought so..."He said and put his hand on my upper thigh under my dress. It made my body cover with goosebumps.

I smiled.

"Thank you for today... I loved every second of it" I told him.

"Don't thank me just yet...the night is still young sweetheart" He winked at me.

"Oh my god, he winked everybody" I said and put my hand on my lips acting surprised.

"Okay that's it, you're walking home, I am stopping right here" He laughed.

"You love me too much" I said.

" You right, I do..."He said back and took my hand to his lips and kissed it gently and then left both of our hands on his tight.

I was the luckiest girl in the whole world.

[jensengirl83]

Dirty Dancing

Dean x reader

Word Count- 3885

Warnings- SMUT, idiots in love, mutual pining

A/N- I was listening to my playlist, and "Cry To Me" by Solomon Burke played, and this whole fic played out in my mind, so I had to write it! I really hope you all enjoy it as much as I did writing it!

Dean was walking through the bunker, wondering where Y/N had disappeared to. One minute she was sitting at the table in the library, and when he came back in from the garage, she was gone. It wasn’t uncommon for her to disappear somewhere in the bunker, but he needed to do a supply run and wanted to ask her if she needed anything.

He caught himself wanting, no, needing to make sure she was okay lately, checking in with her before he even asked Sam if he needed anything. He knew why but didn’t want to admit it out loud. Dean was ass over tea kettle in love with Y/N. How could he not be? She was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, not to mention that she could hold her own on any hunt put before her. She was smart. As he would put it, she was Sammy smart. She knew her lore just as well as his brother, and that was impressive, considering Sam was a giant, walking encyclopedia.

He and Y/N had been friends for years. She had moved into the bunker with them not long after he and Sam had discovered its existence. But they had known each other long before that. Bobby had introduced her to the brothers shortly after John’s death. Her father had been a hunting buddy of Bobby’s, and he had taken her in when her father had gotten killed on a hunt. Granted, she was twenty-four when her father died, but Bobby didn’t want her to be out there on her own. Dean had been smitten from the first time he had seen her but never acted on it, happy to have her as a friend until lately. Now, she was all he could think about, and to be honest, it was scaring the shit out of him.

His thoughts were interrupted as he walked upon her door. What sounded like her TV on had gotten his attention. He peeked in her cracked door and couldn’t help but smile at the sight before him. Y/N was sitting cross-legged on her bed, her hair up in a messy bun, her eyes glued to the movie playing in front of her. Even in her old pajamas, her hair a mess on top of her head, Dean had never seen anything as beautiful. His heart fluttered in his chest as he looked at her, a smile pulling at his lips as he knocked on her door to let her know he was there. He could stand there and watch her all day, but he didn’t want her to catch him staring and think he was a creep.

“Hey, Y/N. I’m heading out on a supply run. Do you need anything?” he asked, smirking as her eyes never left the TV to look at him.

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Movie that good, huh?” he laughed, finally making her break her eyes away and look at him.

“Damn right it is,” she exclaimed loudly, a small giggle leaving her, making Dean’s heart flutter yet again, “It’s one of my favorite movies.”

“Really? Dirty Dancing is one of your favorites?”

“Absolutely! It’s a classic!”

“I don’t know about that,” he chuckled, trying to aggravate her. He loved when he could get her flustered. It was the cutest damn thing.

“Are you serious right now?! It’s so romantic. Especially this scene,” she sighed dreamily as she turned her attention back to the movie.

Dean looked up to see it was the scene where Johnny was dancing with Baby in his cabin. Yes, he knew this scene, as he had seen this movie before. Swayze always gets a pass!

“Women really find this stuff romantic?” he questioned, watching her reaction closely.

“Yes,” she replied softly, watching the scene intently, “And a man that can dance is just sexy.”

His heart almost stopped when she smiled and winked at him, her gaze swiftly returning to the movie. He watched her as she continued to watch, her expression was soft, and did he see want in her eyes as she watched the two on TV dance together?

Little did he know that he was right. Her heart beat faster as she watched the scene, her imagination running wild as she pictured it was her and Dean dancing together that way. Her chest felt tighter as the sadness that it would never happen washed over her. All she wanted was for Dean to want her as badly as she wanted him, but he would never see her that way. She sighed softly as she looked over to see him still looking at her, and she smiled, trying to cover the hurt she was feeling at that moment.

“Actually, could you pick me up some ice cream? I feel like just being lazy and eating junk while I watch movies all day,” she asked, knowing she needed to be alone the rest of the day. It was getting harder to hide her feelings for him, and she didn’t have the strength to fight it today.

“Sure thing, sweetheart.”

It had been a few days since she had spent the day by herself. She was glad Dean had left her alone, considering she had watched, as he would call them, ‘chick flicks’ and cried at the longing to be with him, knowing it would never happen. Luckily, today was a better day. She had cried out all her frustrations and was happy to be in the library with the boys. She smiled as she looked around her, grateful that she was where she was. A hunter’s life can be very lonely, and even though she wanted to be with Dean other than his friend, she had to accept that it could be worse. At least she had them in her life at all. The sound of a chair scraping the floor broke her thoughts as she saw Dean standing and walking out towards his room.

“What’s that about?” she asked, looking at Sam for an answer.

“No clue. Who really knows with him,” he shrugged, returning to the book he was reading.

She looked between Sam and where Dean had disappeared down the hallway. She sighed as she stood to go to her room. So much for spending time with Dean today, it seemed. He had been acting off since he left her room the day she was watching movies, now that she thought about it. She couldn’t figure out what happened that would make him distance himself from her. The more she pondered on it, she realized he had been holed up in his room a lot since that day. She felt her phone buzzing in her pocket as she reached her bedroom door. Taking it out to see that Dean had texted her asking her to come to the Dean cave. Maybe she would get to spend some time with him after all.

As she opened the door to the room, she saw Dean standing in the corner beside his record player, a shy smile on his face. Curious, she walked into the room, shutting the door behind her as she approached the man she longed to be closer to. He looked nervous, which wasn’t a look that she had seen on Dean very often. Once she was standing beside him, she looked up to see him staring down at her, his hand reaching out for her.

“Dance with me?” he whispered, terrified she would deny him.

She stood in shock momentarily, wondering if she had heard him right or if her ears were deceiving her. She looked between his face and his hand, frozen in disbelief. Before she could say anything, a look of hurt and rejection crossed his features as he started to pull his hand away. That jolted her out of her stupor, quickly grabbing his hand before he could put it in his pocket.

“I’d love to,” she smiled shyly, squeezing his hand gently.

His smile lit up the room. She hadn’t rejected him after all, and now, he hoped this would work as he had planned. With her hand in his, he picked up the needle to the player, sitting it on the record, turning to wrap her in his arms. As the music began to fill the room, she was stunned. The song played in the scene from Dirty Dancing she was watching when he came into her room that day. He began to sway with her exactly how Johnny was dancing with Baby. She couldn’t contain her giggle as he held her to him.

“Seriously? Damn it, woman, I’m trying to be romantic here,” he grumbled, looking at her with his best bitch face.

“I’m so sorry. Please continue,” she answered, not able to contain her smile.

He rolled his eyes dramatically but continued to sway her body with his. Her smile disappeared when he pulled her tighter to him, leaning down to rest his forehead on hers, his breath fanning her face. The look in his eyes made her gasp. She saw what she had wanted to see for years, desire for her. She felt light-headed with want for him. She had wanted him like this for so long, and now here she was, wrapped up in his arms, as he danced with her.

The song had ended, but he was still swaying them slowly, unable to let her go, afraid she would disappear if he released her from his arms. She wasn’t in a hurry to move, though. She knew she was where she was meant to be, in the strong arms of the green-eyed hunter that had won her heart a long time ago. Reluctantly, she pulled back, looking up to see him smiling down at her, and without hesitation, closed the small gap between them, pressing her lips to his in a barely there kiss.

She had imagined kissing Dean so many times, but even in her most vivid dreams, she couldn’t have foreseen how good his lips would feel on hers or how much the little whimpers he made as she deepened the kiss and ran her tongue across his bottom lip would affect her. The feeling of the muscles in his shoulders moving under her fingertips as he moved his hands all over her body made her ache with desire. She had never wanted anyone so badly in her life, and it was finally happening, making her head swim with the idea of what was still to come.

Dean walked them back over to the couch without his lips ever leaving her, laying her down cautiously, watching her expressions to make sure she wanted this as much as he did. When he found no signs of hesitation, he leaned over her, slotting himself between her legs, his lips going to kiss and nibble her neck. He was in no hurry tonight. He was going to find every little spot that made her cry out, make her feel like she was the only woman in the world, because that’s exactly what she was to him.

Y/N was a withering mess beneath him. The way his body was pressing her into the couch, his lips on her neck, his hands gently caressing her would be the death of her, she was sure. She needed more, needed to feel his skin against her, his mouth leaving open-mouthed kisses all over her already sweat-sheened body. She pushed his flannel down his shoulders, letting him shrug it off before grabbing the hem of his t-shirt and pulling it up his back as she tried to remove it. Dean chuckled as he sat back on his heels, pulling the shirt over his head and throwing it to the floor behind him.

“Is that what you wanted, sweetheart?”

She bit her lip as she nodded, a little embarrassed at how carried away she was becoming. No man had ever made her feel the things she was feeling at the moment. Maybe it was because Dean was just so fucking handsome or that she was so irrevocably in love with him, but whatever it was, she had never been so turned on in her life. And he hadn’t done anything but kiss her.

“Hey…” he whispered, getting her attention. He knew that look. She was in her head again. “This will only go as far as you want it to. I want to touch you, feel you, make you feel so damn good, baby, but only if that’s what you want,”

“I want you, Dean. I need you,” she whimpered, quivering in anticipation.

“Are you sure? We’ll stop right now…,”

“Don’t you dare stop,” she groaned, earning another chuckle from Dean.

“Whatever my girl wants,” he winked, leaning down to capture her mouth again.

He moved his lips down her jaw, kissing and lightly nipping her skin as he trailed down toward her ear, licking the spot right behind her lobe. The sound she made was between a moan and a whimper, and fuck him if he didn’t want to hear her make that noise over and over.

He bore his weight on his hands, stiffening his arms so he could look down at her, and the unbridled passion he saw looking back at him took his breath away. She really wanted him, and it made him want to drown himself in her, completely let go and show her just how much he wanted and loved her. He made it his mission right then to show her how special she was because, god damn if she wasn’t perfect.

“Can I?” he asked, pulling the hem of her shirt up slightly, smiling when she nodded at him somewhat shyly.

Once her shirt had been thrown behind them, he dropped himself down on his forearms, placing soft kisses on the swell of her breasts. Her hands entwined in the hair on the back of his head, pulling him to where she wanted him, and he couldn’t contain the groan that spilled past his lips. She was starting to relax and enjoy herself, and if that wasn’t the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, he didn’t know what was.

She was writhing underneath him as he took her nipple in his mouth through the fabric of her bra, her back arching with pleasure as her pussy clenched around nothing. She could feel him smirk against her skin as he kissed his way down her abdomen, stopping at the waist of her leggings. He looked up, silently questioning if he could continue. He smiled wickedly as she nodded in approval, sliding them and her panties down in one pull.

“You’re so beautiful, Y/N,” he whispered as he ran his hands down her legs, spreading them slowly so he could see all of her.

Dean sat back, taking a moment to just admire the woman lying there before him. He could never express his gratitude for being here with her like this, and it wasn’t about just the sex. He knew what she was giving him and how special it was, and he wouldn’t take it for granted. He wanted to give himself to her wholly, but he had never been so happy and terrified. This wasn’t some one-night stand that would walk away in the morning. She was his best friend, and that scared the shit out of him. What if he couldn’t make her happy? She deserved the world, and he didn’t know if he could be the one to give that to her.

“Dean, stop,”

His eyes shot to hers. This was it. She had finally realized that she was making a mistake. He hung his head, knowing she was too good for him. He should’ve known that he would never deserve someone like her. He turned to reach for her shirt to give back to her when he felt her hand on his cheek, making him look at her.

“I can see what you’re thinking, and I want this. I want you, Dean. I’ve wanted you for so long...Please...Please, Dean, make me yours,” she said, tracing his bottom lip with her thumb, “Make me your girl.”

The dam had broken. Every emotion he had kept bottled up where it concerned Y/N was now at the surface, and it was overwhelming, to say the least. She wanted him, was begging for him, and who was he to not give her what she wanted.

In a flurry of limbs, he had his jeans and boxers off in record speed. He nestled himself back between her legs, caging her in with his arms, his mouth crushing hers, trying to show her exactly how he felt without words. She slid her arms down his back to his hips, pulling him to grind against her, both of them groaning at the feeling. He moved his hand between them, running a finger through her soaked folds, teasing her entrance with the tip of his finger.

“So wet for me, sweetheart,” he groaned in her ear, “I haven’t even tasted you yet.”

“Not this time, please! I need you inside me,” she begged, not wanting to waste another second before she felt him.

“I have to get you ready for me first.”

He pushed his middle finger deep into her heat, slowly dragging it in and out before adding his index finger. The way she was moaning and clutching for him made it hard not to slam home right then, but he also wanted to make her come on his fingers. He moved his thumb to slowly circle her clit as his fingers moved inside her faster.

“D, please! I’m gonna...I’m…”

She couldn’t finish her sentence before she came hard on his fingers, soaking his palm with her juices. Her body shook with her release as she cried out, grinding her hips down on his hand. She swore she had seen stars. No one had ever made her come that hard with their fingers. He slowed down his pace as she came down, going limp, eyes shut tight and breathing hard. She could hear him sucking her taste off his fingers, making her shiver.

“Fuck…,”  she huffed, finally opening her eyes to see him smiling down at her.

“There she is…,” he chuckled, leaning down to kiss her softly, “You okay?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she rolled him over to his back, straddling his hips. She didn’t wait as she grabbed his hard cock, lining it up with her and sinking down. The feeling of being so full, him stretching her so good, almost had her coming again. His size made her have to adjust for a moment. He was bigger than anyone she had ever had, and she could feel the difference.

She pressed her hands to his chest for leverage and began moving, riding him slowly and making him go deep. Her moans soon drowned out the song playing in the background as she felt the coil in her belly tighten again.

“That’s it, sweetheart, take what you want,” He growled, fighting hard to stave off his release.

“Dean...Oh, God…I’m so close.”

“Let go for me,” he said, reaching up to cup her chin in his hand, forcing her to look him in the eye, “Come, baby girl.”

It was almost like her body was at his command. The coil snapped as soon as the words left his mouth, sending a white-hot heat coursing through her. Her body collapsed on his chest, his arms holding her to him as he thrust up into her, working her through her high. He captured her lips as he rolls them over, placing her leg over his hip as he drives himself deep, whispering praises in her ear.

“You feel so good, Y/N. So wet and tight for me.”

“Dean, please…” she begged, unsure what she was begging for anymore.

“I’ve got you. I’ll always have you, baby girl,” he growled into her shoulder, fighting back his orgasm. He refused to let go until she came around him again, “Touch yourself for me. Come again.”

She whined at the sensitivity as she circled her throbbing bud. She didn’t think she could come again, completely blissed out from the two times she had already, but to her surprise, the coil started to wind tight again, her release right on the edge. Dean thrust in hard while he pulled her nipple in his mouth, and that’s all it took to send her flying off the edge. She came with his name passing her lips in a chant as her eyes rolled back in her head. Her pussy clenching around him threw Dean over with her, stilling deep as he filled her up, whispering her name in her ear over and over.

Neither wanted to move, both enjoying the post-sex haze, but now also scared of what would happen next. Dean was the one to break the stillness as he rolled away, pulling her back to his chest as they lay on the couch. He nuzzled his face into the back of her neck, breathing in the smell of hair as it cascaded across his face. If this ended up being a one-time thing, he wanted to enjoy this little bit of peace that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Hell, he didn’t know if he had ever felt peace like this.

“Dean,” she whispered, breaking the silence between them.

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“What happens now?” her voice was so soft that he barely heard her.

He stayed quiet for a moment. Seriously thinking of how he wanted to answer her. He knew for a fact that he couldn’t go back to being her friend now. He was absolutely gone on her, and she needed to know it. He pulled her tighter against him as he began to speak.

“Well, I’m not sure how you feel, but Y/N, there’s no turning back for me now. I’ve wanted you for so damn long, and now that I have you, I can’t be just your friend anymore. If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m head over heels for you, sweetheart, and I’m all in. That is if you’ll have me.”

“All I’ve ever wanted was you,” she smiled, squeezing his hand that was resting on her stomach.

He kissed her head before he started to laugh softly, “I’m so damn glad I took the time to learn that dance.”

She turned in his arms quickly, looking at him in shock, “You learned that just for me?”

“Well, you said that a man that can dance is sexy,” he chuckled, kissing the tip of her nose.

“You didn’t have to learn that to be sexy, Dean.”

“Well, then, I don’t have to worry about having to dance again,” he smirked at her.

“No! I never said that. You were already sexy, but that dance made you extra sexy,” she giggled as he tickled her side.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart,” he chided, grabbing the blanket off the back of the couch and covering them.

That night, they lay cuddled on the couch, stealing kisses and never taking their hands off each other. Both of them eventually fell into a blissful sleep. The first night of many that they slept in each other’s arms.

[harry-on-broadway]

The Last Line: Part Five

Part Five

Word Count: 5.2K || Series Masterlist || Rating: M

***

“It’s perfect.” 

“Really?” Penny blinked. “You’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not,” Skylar said with a light laugh. “There are a couple of things we might want to move around, but this will be a very light edit. Great work, Penny.” 

“Thanks,” Penny said, still in a state of shock. “I didn’t think it would be that good. I mean, I didn’t even think about it while I was writing. It was…” she searched for the right descriptor. “Word vomit, as gross as that sounds.”

“We often produce our greatest works when we give ourselves the space to say what we want to say without self-censoring. I wanted the articles in this series to come from the heart and that’s clearly where you pulled this from, Penny. I should have edits to you later this afternoon and we’re well on track to publish it tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good. I have a couple of calls but I can make time to review it this afternoon.” Penny paused on her way out of the room. “Thank you again. For giving me this opportunity. And for helping me. With everything.” She inhaled sharply, feeling tears prick in her eyes. 

“I’m lucky to work with an incredible person like yourself, Penny,” Skylar said. “Helping you, guiding you, it’s my pleasure.” 

Penny could feel the eyes of her newsroom on her during the brief walk back to her desk. In the weeks since her meltdown in the conference room, Penny’s coworkers had begun to treat with a newfound sense of respect. Darren had been asked to seek other work in its aftermath of the incident and Penny’s subsequent relationship with Skylar had the others viewing her as some sort of deity. 

“Well?” Chloe asked as Penny slid into her desk chair. 

“She loved it.”

“As I knew she would.”

“She said she thinks it’s going to run tomorrow morning.” 

“So soon! Amazing!”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think he’ll…?” Chloe didn’t need to finish her question. 

“I don’t know.” Penny swirled her straw in her cup, trying to get a sip of the vanilla syrup that had gotten trapped underneath the layers of ice and coffee. 

“Has he still been creeping?”

“Yes.” They hadn’t spoken since that night at her apartment and Harry continued to ignore every text and voicemail she left for him, but he was still lurking in her instagram stories. She’d started testing him, posting random and mundane shit like her morning coffee and the song she was currently listening to on Spotify. Regardless of whatever her story was, he was the first one to view it. 

“And do you think he’ll take the bait?”

“I hope so! Otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do. I just –” 

“Hey, it’s fine,” Chloe said, attempting to soothe Penny’s distress. “This is going to work. I promise you that.” 

Hours later, Penny’s Slack app chimed with a note from Skylar saying that edits were ready for her to review. As promised, her suggestions were minimal and Penny cleared them all within a half hour. She knew legal and design and all of the other departments involved would need to sign off on their end before it could be official, but by 8am tomorrow, her words would be out in the world. 

She didn’t know why she felt so nervous. She’s been through this hundreds of times before, but never had she shared something so personal with the hundreds (Or was it thousands?) of people who read the site everyday. It felt like she was giving a piece of her soul for public consumption. All in the hopes of winning back a man who never wanted to see her again. 

She sighed and closed her laptop. “I’m going to head out,” she said to no one in particular, earning a handful of half-hearted acknowledgements from those who were scattered around her. In her car, she opened one of the playlists Harry had shared with her and pressed play. Feeling the music wash over her, she pulled out of the garage and drove home preparing for the most nerve-wracking night of her life. 

***

August 17, 2019 

The Start of Something New 

By Penny Sanders 

This coming November will mark one year since I joined the staff at The Moment and four years since I accepted my first, official, grown-up journalism job. Ahead of these personal milestones, I’ve been reflecting a lot on what it means to be a journalist, specifically one that covers the arts. 

One of the main tenets of being a good journalist is objectivity. You’re there to present the facts in an unbiased way, calling out injustices and holding truth to power. Everyone learns that in their freshman mass comm class. But what they don’t tell you is how that rule isn’t always so cut and dry. 

While I do a bit of everything when it comes to music coverage here at The Moment, my primary role has been that of a critic, reviewing concerts and albums and giving you my honest take on them. It’s a dream job for many, but it’s also one that has caused me a great deal of stress and anxiety over the years. 

I’ve struggled to be harsh (even when a well-pointed criticism is deserved). I’ve struggled to hone a voice, oscillating between gushing fan girl and hardened veteran to appear as if I know what I’m talking about. And I’ve been a victim of intense (at times almost debilitating) imposter syndrome, second guessing that my opinions and ideas are even worth sharing. 

But all that has changed in recent months as I’ve started to venture down a new professional path, chatting with and profiling newsmakers in this industry we all love. Sitting down for these interviews, I’ve always expected the cold formality that has long been associated with an industry presser – say your question and get your answer as quickly as possible, foregoing any sort of human interaction. Instead, what I found was a connection I never knew I had been looking for. 

Recently, I had a chat with an artist who shall go unnamed. I’d reviewed their work before, and while I might have been fair in my assessment of their music, I wasn’t necessarily kind, something that I didn’t realize the impact of until we had a chance to speak face-to-face in an informal setting. As we spoke about our respective writing processes, I had a realization. We were one in the same. We found our way to an industry where everyone speaks the same language, found a pack to call home, and were creating the art we always wanted to, even if it was on opposite sides of the line. That conversation, along with subsequent others, really put into perspective the fact that you can’t separate the personal and professional when it comes to art, as a piece of you will always live inside your creation. 

So, why am I rambling about this and forcing you to read it at 8am as you have your morning coffee? Because I’m making some changes starting today. 

You’ll still see me around town and on the website reviewing concerts and albums (like I’d ever give that up!), but I’ll be expanding my coverage area as well. I’ll be chatting with some of the biggest names in the industry, cutting through the scripted BS and having real, human conversations about the thing we love most: music. I’ll also be sharing more personal essays about my own thoughts and feelings on the business of the day in an effort to start a conversation with you, our readers. 

So, if you’re reading this (and hopefully you still are), what are you waiting for? Let’s chat. My schedule’s wide open. 

***

Penny jolted awake at 6am the next morning. She had a couple of hours before she’d be able to share her article and put her plan into motion, so she took her time getting ready, blasting an early 2000s pop punk playlist while she did her makeup and drank her coffee. At precisely eight, she opened up The Moment’s website on her phone, grabbing the link to her article before navigating to Instagram. 

She’d already preselected a photo – a throwback shot of her in one of her dad’s old concert tees, cheesing hard in front of a record store. She posted it to her story with a quick caption (Tried something new and got a little personal this morning) and a link to the piece. She watched the progress wheel fill as the story uploaded and when it was finished, she opened it again, instantly spotting Harry’s profile picture in the bottom left corner. 

Distraction was essential to the next phase of the plan, so she tossed her phone in her bag, grabbed a thermos of coffee, and started the drive into the office. She could feel her phone burning a hole in her canvas tote, but she ignored it until she was seated at her desk. Her mom and one of her college roommates had replied encouragingly, but there was nothing from Harry. 

Doug, the SEO coordinator, greeted her brightly as he made his way to his cubicle. “Already getting a lot of traffic on it. Great work!” 

“Thanks.” She checked her phone again. Nothing. 

There was an editorial meeting that morning, and then Skylar took her for a celebratory pastry from the bakery across the commons before Penny’s afternoon interview with a photographer. When she finally got to check her phone over lunch, there were tons of notifications, but as she scanned through them all there were none from Harry. In the middle of the afternoon slump, she saw an email come in from Jeff – it was a simple “Nice job!” Not the most encouraging thing, but if Jeff had read it, it was probably safe to assume Harry had as well. 

Tom messaged her a little while later, a long and meandering note professing how proud he was of her and how great it was. The most interesting tidbit came at the end though. I think you’ll be surprised by the impact this has. 

“What does that mean?” she asked, passing her phone to Chloe.

“I don’t know, that you’re the voice that will define our generation?”

“Be serious.”

“I honestly don’t know! On the surface, it seems like a general ‘this is going to resonate with a wide audience’ comment, but maybe on a deeper level he’s talking about…you know.”

“But that’s not your first instinct.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Damn it.”

“Pen, it’s OK. We know he saw your post and that’s a start. Maybe he hasn’t had time to sit and read it but will later today or something.”

“Maybe…”

That night as Penny left the office, her head was somewhere else, deep in a daydream of what it would have been like if her plan had worked. Harry would have been outside her door with a cup of coffee and a bouquet of flowers. There would have been a kiss and maybe a little something else, but most importantly she’d have her friend back. Her eyes were on the ground, so it was the loafers and socks that she saw first. 

“Jesus Christ, are you trying to kill me?” she yelped, her heart racing.

“I didn’t know how else to find you.” Harry stood sheepishly slouching against her car door, wide-leg trousers slung low on his hips, bowling shirt unbuttoned just a little too far. 

“You could have come inside the building for starters? Or texted me? I know your phone is still working Mr. Instagram lurker.”

“You knew that was me?”

“It was pretty fucking obvious to anyone that knows you. And we had a bunch of mutuals including Tom, Jeff, and Mitch.”

“Fuck, I thought I was being a little more low key.” 

“Sorry.” Penny shifted uncomfortably. “So-” She was interrupted by boisterous laughter from a group making their way to a group of cars one lot over. 

“Maybe we should go somewhere a little more private to talk?” Harry asked. “If you’re comfortable with that?”

“Um, yeah that would be great. Do you want me to drive?”

Harry nodded affirmatively. “I bummed a ride off of Jeff so I am currently without transport.”

“Jeff’s a good friend. I would have made you hitchhike.” 

Harry snickered as he opened the passenger door and slid in. 

“Do you mind if we make a stop?” Penny asked as she pulled out onto the main road. 

“Not at all.”

“Good. I have a tradition after I publish an article.”

“What’s that?”

“An In-and-Out milkshake. Do you want one?”

“Chocolate, please.” 

Penny cruised through the drive-thru, grabbing the milkshakes as Harry tried to go unnoticed beside her. Ice cream in hand, she continued driving until they made it back to her apartment. 

“This is about as private as it gets,” she said, stirring the thick liquid with her straw. “We can stay in the car if you’d prefer.”

“No, let’s go in.” 

Harry stayed two steps behind Penny as she climbed out of the car and unlocked her front door. He followed her lead, taking his shoes off and sitting down on the couch. He took a sip of his milkshake and Penny mirrored his action. Neither was sure who should be the first to speak. 

“I’m sorry,” Penny said, thawing the awkward chill that had settled between them. “I know that’s an empty word, especially between us, but I just need you to know that I regret how everything blew up. I have an explanation for it all but none of that matters when you were hurt by my actions.” She paused. “I really hope you forgive me, but I won’t ask you to, as what I did crossed a line.” 

“I forgive you.” Harry said without hesitation. “And I would like to hear your explanation for what it’s worth.”

“Oh-kay.” Penny shifted, tucking her legs under her and turning to look at Harry more directly. “So you know how I’ve been trying to mix things up at work, write some more serious pieces? Well, it just so happened that Tom gave me one on a silver platter when he mentioned you were working on a new album. My intent was just to break some news, get a scoop that could show my editors that I could do it. But then I got to know you and you were telling me things that would have made for an amazing story and I just got carried away. I made the wrong choice to keep taking notes and working on this hypothetical story. Then Darren –”

“The asshole.”

“Yes, the asshole. He got involved and it spiraled out of control and things got complicated because of….” Penny trailed off, searching for the right word. “Us.” Penny looked up at Harry. “It’s important to me that you know I would have never published anything you told me after all of that. I value you as a person more than any sort of splashy article.” 

Harry nodded slowly. His face was serene but his fingers were working overtime, twisting the ring on his finger at warp speed. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me like that but just seeing those notes you had…” He chewed on his lip and his eyes grew damp. “It used to be so hard to figure out when someone was using me and when someone just wanted me for me. But thankfully, I’ve become a pretty good judge of that. I thought you were one of the good ones so seeing that just made me really second guess not only what we had and how I felt about us but it made me question my judgment. Do any of my friends actually care about me? It was a rough time. I’m still working through some of that if I’m being honest.”

“I hate that I was the cause of that.” 

“It was bound to happen eventually so don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said with a wry laugh. 

“Well either way…I’m glad my selfish actions helped you grow? That feels weird to say.” Penny laughed. “Anyways, I’m happy we were able to clear the air. I much prefer talking to you face to face instead of watching you lurk on my Instagram stories.”

Harry laughed before placing his cup on the coffee table. “Speaking of talking…I actually did want to discuss something with you.” He cleared his throat.” “That night…the last time we saw each other…what you said? About why you couldn’t do that profile?”

“Mhmm.”

“What did you mean that you love me?”

Penny took a long sip from her drink, buying herself some time to think. “I hated you the first time we met and I don’t know why because I feel like you’re the only person to ever truly understand me. You know what I’m thinking before I say it, you see things in the same way as me, and you make me feel invincible. That day that you read that article that Darren killed…I felt so supported in a way that I haven’t really before, which is like weird to say because I have friends and family who care about me, but standing in that coffee shop with you holding my hand and telling me I was good at my job was something I never knew I needed. But once I had a taste of it, I knew I had to have it forever.” She finished speaking and looked at Harry, who had an indiscernible expression on his face. “That was a lot, I know but you–”

“Can I kiss you?” His voice was low, his question was tentative, and Penny couldn’t even be sure that was what he actually said, but she nodded anyway. At this point, she would have given him permission to do anything. 

He approached her carefully, as if any sudden move would scare her away, cupping the back of her head with his hand and drawing her closer to him. 

Their first kiss was nothing like Penny had imagined. In her dreams, she’d envisioned everything from a quick peck on the cheek after he walked her home, to a feverish, tongue laden precursor to fucking. In actuality, it was gentle, yet firm, and despite the simplicity of it, the gesture was charged with more emotion than any kiss she’d had before. She didn’t even realize how lightheaded she was until they broke apart and she found herself gasping for breath. 

She met Harry’s eyes and exhaled. “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for that.” 

It was like the kiss had unleashed something lurking deep inside them both and Harry lunged towards her, pressing his lips against hers again and again and again, pushing her flat on the couch, the remnants of their milkshakes long forgotten. Penny tried to memorize every detail: the weight of his body against hers, the softness of his lips on hers, the silkiness of his hair as she ran her fingers through it. She tried to stay in the moment, but the sensation of his body rubbing against hers made it hard to not think about what would happen next. 

“Ow!” Her head bumped uncomfortably against the arm of the couch as she slid down further.

“Are you alright?” Harry asked, pulling back and checking her for any harm. His lips were swollen and his curls were disheveled. “What’s wrong?”

“I just bumped my head.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“No, it’s fine. Just a little cramped here.” Penny swallowed. “My bed might be more comfortable. If you’d like to move there.” 

There was a heavy pause and Penny prayed she hadn’t misread the moment.  Harry’s eyes glazed over as he processed what she said. “Um, yeah, that’s great. Lead the way.” 

Penny breathed a sigh of relief as he climbed off of her and helped her stand, keeping his hand entwined with hers as they made the brief journey to Penny’s bedroom. She backed him up into the room, and Harry fell back on the bed. Penny climbed astride him, kissing him again and again and again, and she ground her center against his growing erection. 

They’d waited for what felt like forever, but when they had nothing but time in front of them, there was no need to rush, even as Penny felt herself grow wetter with touch and caress. As Harry sucked kiss after kiss from her lips, she realized she’d never really thought about how hot kissing could be. Maybe it was just that she’d never been properly kissed, something Harry was working hard to rectify. 

Harry wound his fingers in her hair gently pulling her head back to expose the column of her throat. He nipped at the sensitive skin, sucking a kiss from it before soothing the spot with his tongue. He repeated the process up and down her neck until his fingers fell to the hem of her shirt.

“Is it OK if I take this off?” he asked.

“Yes,” Penny said, guiding his hands as they pulled her t-shirt up and over her head. She unhooked her bra as he tossed the shirt aside. Her bra followed leaving her naked from the waist up. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, absentmindedly rubbing his fingers up and down her side as his eyes took in every piece of her. “Come here.” He pulled her close and started kissing every inch of skin he could see. “So fucking beautiful.” 

Penny shifted so one of Harry’s legs was nestled between hers, giving her the pressure she craved as Harry continued kissing her neck. After a few minutes she stopped him. “I’m going to take these off if that works?” she asked, gesturing to her jeans. 

Harry nodded. “I should probably do the same.” He pulled his shirt off in one fluid motion and pulled his pants and briefs down next. Penny couldn’t help but stare. 

“Stop it, I’m shy.”. 

“You’ve got nothing to be shy about,” Penny said, trying not to let on exactly how impressed she was with what she saw in front of her. 

Harry cleared his throat, and Penny couldn’t tell if the flush in his cheeks was a result of their activities or embarrassment. “Do you have a condom?” he asked. 

“Oh, yeah. There’s probably one around here somewhere.” Penny opened the drawer of her bedside table and dug through the mess. “That one is expired,” she said, tossing it to the waste basket. “And this one is….” she squinted to read the date. “Still good! We’re in the clear.” Harry laughed and it was her turn to blush. “What can I say, it’s been awhile since I needed one.” 

“No judgment as I’ve also been in a bit of a dry spell.” Harry took the condom from her and adjusted himself and Penny watched. She was still in shock that this was actually happening and was half convinced that she’d wake up from this dream any minute. 

“Penny?”

“Oh, sorry! Did you say something?”

“I just asked how you want to do this?” Harry asked. “What’s usually best for you?” 

“Oh…” Penny wasn’t sure if she’d ever had a partner ask her about her preference so directly, especially on the first hook up. She scoured her brain trying to think of what she actually liked and what wouldn’t be too intense for what could just be a casual hook up. “Um, usually just missionary is fine. But I also like to be on my knees occasionally.” She cleared her throat. “What about you?”

“I’m going to be honest with you, Penny, I think anything with you would get me across the finish line.” One look at his cock and she knew he wasn’t lying. She hopped up on the bed and got on her knees without a second thought. 

Penny could feel Harry lining himself up with her as she braced her hands against the headboard. It had been a minute since her bed had seen this much activity and she prayed the IKEA frame would hold up. Harry dragged his tip over her and she squirmed with the anticipation of what would happen next. The first thrust caught her off guard and she pitched forward. 

“Careful,” Harry said. His voice was soft, but its usual gentleness had been replaced by something harder. “Do you need me to stop?” 

“Please, no,” Penny panted. He’d reached a spot deep inside on just one thrust and she just needed a minute to adjust to him. The burn of him inside her was unmatched, the perfect combination of pain and pleasure. Harry had wrapped one arm around her waist holding her steady as she adjusted, lightly tracing abstract patterns over her skin. “OK, you can go,” she half whispered, half moaned.   

Harry anchored his hands on her hips as he thrust in and out in a painstakingly slow rhythm. It was torture – for the both of them – Penny presumed, and she felt the beginnings of an orgasm building inside of her. She could feel the pressure of his hand against her hip, knowing it would leave a bruise tomorrow, a thought that turned her on even more. Harry moved his hand up her body, settling on her breast and rolling her nipple as he increased the pace of his thrusts. It was all consuming, but Penny still needed more. She reached down to stroke her clit, the bud already tender and slippery with arousal. She was close, she could feel it. Just one more stroke and –. 

“Can we –?” Harry asked breathlessly as he attempted to flip Penny onto her back. “I want to see you. I need to see you.” Penny complied, her body pliant in his arms as he placed her gently on her back before ducking down for a deep kiss as he locked his fingers with hers. 

He pulled away and gently pushed inside of her, eyes not leaving hers. Even if she wanted to, Penny wasn’t sure she could look away. She was transfixed by what she saw in front of her. Harry’s skin and hair were damp from exertion, and the curls she’d been playing with earlier were pressed against his forehead. She could feel the tremble of his muscles and when she buried her nose in his neck, she got a whiff of the scent that could only be described as Harry. 

“Are y-you close?” Harry asked as his hips stuttered. 

“Yeah, I am.” 

“Can you come for me, baby? I need you to.”

It could have been Harry calling her baby or it could have been the feeling of him rubbing against her clit or it could have just been the intense passion she felt between them, but Penny pitched over the edge, moaning Harry’s name as she fell. 

“That’s it, baby,” he moaned, as he spilled into the condom. “That’s it. So fucking good.” 

He fell forward, resting his full weight on her as they lay there. He pressed kisses against every bit of skin his mouth could reach and she raked her fingers up and down his back and through his hair. Penny didn’t know how long they lay there like that but even when she felt their sweaty skin start to stick together she made no effort to move. 

She wasn’t letting Harry go ever again.  

***

When Penny woke up, Harry’s arm was heavy around her waist and she could feel his breath on her back. He radiated heat and despite the uncomfortable stickiness of the sweat that covered her, she made no effort to move. She had no idea how to define what had happened last night – and again in the early hours of the morning – but she knew she didn’t want this to be the end. 

She could feel Harry stir behind her and she carefully twisted around in his arms to sneak another look at him. He was so peaceful when he slept, his hair a tangled mess on the pillow. He snored lightly, almost like a whistle, and he was most definitely a cuddler. She closed her eyes and sighed contentedly, lulled back to sleep by the gentle rhythm of Harry’s breathing, only to be jolted awake by the sound of her alarm. 

Harry slowly opened his eyes, squinting against the faint light that was trickling in through the curtains. He looked around, getting his bearings before smiling at Penny as she silenced the alarm.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I usually don’t have to worry about waking anyone else up.” 

“It’s not a problem,” he slurred, his voice still thick with sleep. “Should probably be getting up now anyways.” 

“You could stay for breakfast,” Penny offered, hoping she wasn’t misreading the situation. “I make a mean egg and cheese and have beans from the coffee shop down the block.” 

“I’d love nothing more than that.” Harry leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the lips, before rolling over to grab his phone. The gesture felt so normal, as if he’d done it every morning. 

“Shit,” he laughed. “I’m going to have a lot to explain today.”

“What’s wrong?”

He angled his phone so that Penny could read the screen. It was filled with messages from Tom, Tommy, and Jeff. “I told them I was planning to see you and they were very supportive of that decision. I think they’ll be thrilled with this development.” 

“Which is…?” Penny asked, testing the waters. 

“Us being together.” Harry’s eyes widened at Penny’s noticeable silence. “Unless I’ve completely misread this.” 

“No, no, no.” Penny leaned over to kiss him. “I want that. Us, I mean. I just didn’t think you’d want me after everything.” 

“You’re absolutely insane for thinking that, Penny. I’ve been waiting my entire life for you and I’m not letting you get away again.” Penny reached for his hand, squeezing it tightly, knowing that there were no words she could say to accurately convey how she felt in that moment. “Now come on,” Harry said. “You mentioned something about a breakfast sandwich?” 

Harry looked perfectly at home in her kitchen as she directed him on where to find the ingredients for their breakfast. They moved through the small space as if executing a perfectly coordinated dance routine neither of them had been taught, before sitting down at Penny’s table to eat together. 

“What do you have planned for today?” Harry asked. 

“Well, I’m going to go to work and then I’m going to head home.”

“No shows?”

“Not tonight.”

“Well,” Harry said, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “I would like to take you out. On a proper date. Could I pick you up at the office? Say around six?”

“It’s a date,” Penny said, smiling from ear to ear.

When the breakfast dishes had been washed and dried and Harry had donned his clothes from the night before, they lingered by the front door, not wanting to say goodbye. 

“A kiss for the road?” Harry asked. Penny stood on her tiptoes and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. “I’ll see you later then,” he said, unlocking the door. 

“Harry?” she asked, suddenly bashful. “You don’t have to answer, but what made you give me another chance?” He was so quiet, she wasn’t sure he had heard her. 

“It was your article,” he finally said, turning back to look at her. “You got me with the last line.” 

***

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who has read this far and has stuck with this story despite its infrequent updates. This one was really personal for me to write so I greatly appreciate all of the ten people who have read this. 🫶🏻 Would love to hear what you think of the end!

talk to me! || story inspo

taglist: @harrysfolklore​ @platinumbarbie143​ @majasophieanna​ @lukesaprince​ @styles217​ @andwhenshesays​ @be-with-me-so-happily​ @hslllot​ @b-reads-things​ @awesomenavy​ @sweetwanderlust05​ @permanentllyharry​ @reveriehs @very-berry-harry​ @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite​ @jerseygirlinca​ @st-ev-ie​ @kahluamystery97​ @indierockgirrl​ @copiastricycle​ @autumnleaves1991-reads​

[thisismeracing]

ok so since i had dance practice today

mick and hamilton!reader would absolutely be the types to dance in the kitchen

waltzing would be their sleepy, i want to touch you but also dance but also im dead on my feet but still want to dance

and since salsa requires more energy to at would be their we’re making lunch but the food needs to sit in the pan for a bit and we have the space and time to be wrapped up in each other dance

i think they wouldnt dance in public at first cause they want this to just be their thing before its something the world knows

but one day on the paddock someone accidentally connects to a bluetooth speaker and one of their salsa songs come son and before anyone knows it mick has pulled hamilton reader close and they are in their own world salsa-ing around

everyone is like where is this music coming from and why is it so loud??? and then they turn their heads towards them two and they just watch in stunned silence and adoration

lewis is a smiling wideeeeeeee cause thats his sister!!!!! and her man treats her so welllllll

[sidebar: lewis was the one to teach hamilton!reader the waltz, but reader and mick learned the salsa by themselves]

the engineer’s phone who was desperately trying to disconnect let the song run cause they arent going to take away this moment from them

and at the end the surrounding garages give a round of applause

(maybe lewis pulls him aside later and jokingly, but not really, and gives him his blessing and he better see a ring on his sisters ring soon. mick totally isnt shitting bricks when he says that and then reader, unknowingly saves him from her brother to take him away cause its time to go home)

☕️

first of all, it's so cool you dance!!! I love it <3

second, yes, hamilton!reader and mick would totally dance, they have their own playlist after all, we should expect something like this from these two. They would waltz to the piano version of King of my heart, Mick just got home from sim work, and Yn is super tired and had just gotten home too, she's putting something together for dinner, and their shared playlist just ended, so now Spotify is playing similar stuff, and for some reason, it started playing the piano version of their song. Mick, who had just reached the kitchen door, hugged her tight, kissing her temple, and relaxing with her scent and touch. It was seconds, and they were still hugging so one of them casually started to move, and the other followed, and then they were just quietly dancing in each other's arms.

It would take a bit for them to get the hang of Salsa, but it was so much fun to learn with each other. They would share some tutorials, and their algorithm would help by suggesting salsa songs and TikToks. She would make fun of him, but also encourage him - get this right and I'm kissing you on the lips, one step wrong the kiss is on the cheek, and so on, all while in the kitchen. Some days they would move the sessions to the living room, dragging the coffee table to the corner of the room, and just having their fun. Angie would bark here and there especially when they would laugh, she would love to watch those two.

OMG OMG But the look they would share the second the music started playing, silently deciding if they would dance to this or just pretend it wasn't happening, but then Mick was grabbing her hand, and it started small, just one foot here, other there, but then you were dancing for real, and the whole time they were smiling at each other, eyes never leaving the other.

Lewis is the proud brother, and he would totally snap a small video of it (that thing about having a shared folder with Gina), whereas he's also the protective brother so yeah, he would tell how happier reader seems to be and how Yn happy means he's happy too, and meanwhile Mick is just nodding unaware of this is going, sipping his coffee, and watching Lewis go through his salad, at this point, Lewis is more talking than eating his food. And then boom, he asks when he'll be seeing a ring on her finger, and Mick chokes on his coffee, gulps at the tricky situation, and before he can confess to Lewis that he, in fact, got his mom's ring just a few weeks back, but he would probably wait a bit, Yn barges into the room laughing with Bono and Mick breaths in relief.

Side note: I am in love with all your hamilton!reader thots <3 the way you got them is just *chef kiss*

King of My Heart Masterlist

[concerning-goth]

He was in an absolute rut yesterday; I spent most of the day getting fucked within an inch of my life. First few hours were filled with the bliss of being used and filled. Then he started pounding me with less and less regard to the point of complete overstimulation and pain as he brutalized my insides trying to do the impossible and fit the entirety of his cock inside me with animal intensity. I started to thrash and wail, fighting with everything I had, but it was useless, he’s over a foot taller than me and can throw me around like a rag doll, and he didn’t react one bit to being covered in dark red scratches and bite marks.

He eventually relented and put me on my leash and took us out to pick up pizza to have in our favorite nature park. Despite the leash he kept firmly in his hand or looped around the gear shift, as we sang along to our playlist of mutual faves my mind managed to drift away from the fact that he hadn’t cum in the last hour or so and how his cock had been visibly darker when he’d tucked it back into his pants, which I knew was a surefire way to tell he was still painfully wanting.

But as we pulled out of the parking lot, he ordered me to spread my legs and start touching myself. As soon as we pulled into the garage at home, his hand went under my skirt before pulling me on top of him, and I started riding him feverishly, so badly wanting to serve despite the fact that taking even just the tip hurt. But when he tried to pull me down further onto him, I involuntarily screamed and the mindless little prey animal I was becoming tried to scramble away, half tumbling into the back seat. He reclined the seat and locked his arms around my thighs so I was uncomfortably bent over the headrest and started viciously devouring my soaked pussy, pulling my leash backwards, until my mind broke again, cumming over and over on his face. He pulled me back onto his lap and pushed back inside, roughly fucking up into me. My cum drunk panting giggles were punctuated by a little shriek with every particularly deep thrust.

We shifted so I was on my back in the back seat, him standing outside the open door, and leaning in he pinned my knees on either side of my head. My legs screamed; while I’m very flexible, they’d spent hours stretched like this today. That strain was quickly drowned out by the agony of him forcefully pressing as far into my swollen bruised cunt as he possibly could. The pain instantly snapped me back from insane, pleasure flooded giggling to sobbing and begging him to stop, but his arms were far too long and strong for me to reach his body to try and hold him off, and my own arms were too well trapped under me to claw at the hands pinning me down.

He raped me in the back of the car for hours, animal lust in his eyes as the light faded from mine. Pain and pleasure had lost meaning, my mind dissociating as I laid there limp and drooling, eyes rolled back and half closed. By the time he was spent, I was a completely empty shell. He had to carry me inside as I was non-responsive and very obviously incapable of walking.

He put me in bed and brought me my favorite hot chocolate protein drink, fixed up with hazelnut creamer just like I like it. As he ran his hands soothingly over my broken body, my ability to think started to return, I was able to stutter broken near-sentences out. “Th- thank- using me- hands touch ok good just no more- please don’t touch -between legs more ok please- yes- genu-genuinely,” remembering to tack on our word to indicate that what I said was real and not to be ignored in cnc play. “Ok,” he said, showering my face and neck with sweet kisses, stroking my hair. “Meds?” “Mmyeshplease. And inside hurt lots, gotta sleep pill too yes.”

…

I began to drift off, the sleeping pill doing its work despite the cramping in my guts and strained hamstrings. I thought it was a dream at first when he caressed my cheek and pulled me by the shoulders to the edge of the bed so my head hung off it. I barely processed it as he rubbed his tip against my slightly parted lips, though I instinctually opened my mouth and positioned my lips and tongue just right.

I may not be able to take his full length elsewhere, but I’ve worked hard to train my throat over the last year to be able to take it all the way, though I haven’t been able to completely suppress my gag reflex. But the combination of being heavily sedated and utterly fucked out and broken allowed him to use my mouth relatively uninterrupted. “Fuck, your throat feels just like a pussy,” he groaned. My back arched, unable to let out the moan around his cock that his praise would usually elicit. He noticed my reaction, and I could hear the smirk in his voice when he said “you said I couldn’t… but nothing’s stopping you from touching yourself. Rub your clit for me.” I mindlessly obeyed, too far gone for reason or self-preservation.

As I became more alert from my own touch, my gag reflex kicked in and I began to choke and struggle. He wrapped one of his hands around my neck and whispered, “shhh… shh… I’ll make it better,” and my consciousness started to fade again as he choked me. I hazily wondered if he could feel his cock thrusting deep in my throat under his hand.

I don’t remember how the night ended, only snippets of memory of my helpless body continuing to be violated, often with my own mindless assistance. Then my collar being gently removed, and being tucked into bed.

[russellsppttemplates]

I recently got out of a 3 day long migrane episode that was absolute horrendous, er trip and all😓 Haven't had one in almost 2 years, but this one got me hard. Maybe something that with bf Mick, if you're up to?

-🌻

Tw: migraines and its symptoms, hospital ER visit

Migraines had accompanied you for a good while now and while you hadn't suffered from them in 2 years, what you can assume was a mixture of stress from university, little sleep and changed routines triggered a massive one, Mick finding you in your shared bedroom with all the curtains closed and covers pulled around you, already assuming you hadn't been feeling that well since you asked him for some painkillers on his way home, "Schatz, what's wrong?", he said at his typical voice tone that right now seemed like he was screaming, the groan you let out concerning him even more as he approached you. Searching for his hand, you spoke quietly, "I'm having a terrible migraine", you explained, your boyfriend of just over 18 months having never seen how bad it could get, having only heard a story or two about your previous migraines. So he did what he thought best, grabbing some cool flannels for you to put on your head and have in your hands, making sure he was as quiet as possible while doing so, managing to keep the room dark as he helped your reach the things you needed, "Do you want some cuddles? I don't want to make it worse for you though", he whispered, "yes, please. Just let me lay on this side so it doesn't hurt as much", you whispered back, having managed to eat the soup he made for you and appreciating how his fingers kept running lightly through your hair, his kisses on your head attempting to help the pain.

You thought you had managed the worst of it but when the next day came around, you couldn't seem to keep anything down, the food you had eaten along with your medication coming back up, "I've never seen you like this, but I don't think this is good, my love, do you have a doctor we can call? I don't like seeing you like this", Mick whispered, his hands rubbing your cheeks confortingly as the pulsating on your head got even worse, "I have his contact on my phone", you whispered, wiping your mouth while he went to call your doctor. Coming back to you, Mick laced your fingers in his, "Dr. Edwards said that we should go to the ER, he's on call and can assess you", he said, earning a small nod from you as he helped you to the bedroom. Sitting you on the bed, he helped you rid of your clothes, his touch delicate and soft as he helped you change out of your top and into one of his comfortable hoodies and one of your sweatpants, now thanking him when, earlier in the week, he forgot to put the scented fabric softener on the load of washing you had asked him to do, "all done, my love, c'mon now, gently", he said as he helped you make your way downstairs to the car. "Thank you for doing this for me, I told you I could have called my parents", you said as you strapped yourself in, "I'm going to take care of you as best as I can, I want to", he said, kissing your cheek as he reversed out of the garage, "thank you, I love you", you said as you felt his hand on your thigh, "No need to thank me, I just want you to feel better", he said as he carefully drove to the hospital. The admission was pretty quick and after checking you, you were prescribed a stronger medication and while you waited for it to kick in, Mick was holding you against him, checking every now and again with you on how you were feeling, giving you your water and encouragung you to drink a little bit, his lips not leaving your skin for long as he peppered little kisses where he could reach.

When you were back home and feeling a lot better, actually able to keep the homemade soup down, you were cuddling on the sofa, your smaller headache allowing the quiet lullaby of one of Mick's soft playlists to actually soothe you as you tried to show him how thankful you were for him, "I love you, schatz, and I only want you to feel good, I'd do whatever it takes to make you feel better", he whispered lovingly.

(Thank you for submitting an ask 🤍! I used some information I have from my housemate because she has them too, I hope you're feeling better!)

[abushelandablog]

I’ve been listening to my charles playlist and you know what?

even if tmrw is bad, we’ll be ok.

itll hurt ofc, but you know, thats in a way what ferrari *is* its what makes it unique. yes other teams work hard and such but ferrari-its different.

the songs of the ages say ferrari- not mclaren, not redbull , not even mercedes. Because ferrari? Ferrari, its blood, its cutting yourself open and standing in front of the gods, veins flowing begging with tears in your eyes, driver to driver, fan to fan, and then finally, finally when the light shines, its the strongest ambrosia there is- and no taste will ever compete. whether we ache for ten minutes or twenty years, that inevitable glory, that predestined day- and it will come it has to, by law and by logic and by the sheer nature of time, everyone will remember exactly who we are - a *stallion* dark, proud, and true, prancing through life, in all its complexities, weathering any storm.

"The Horse as your totem animal represents freedom above all else. The horse is a majestic animal that embodies the spiritual power of independence, freedom, nobleness, endurance, confidence, triumph, heroism and competition. Its symbol is associated with strength, courage and freedom." This is surely the spirit of the scuderia and of the tifosi. no other team has that not even max. ferrar isi red because it is blood and sacrifice and hard grueling work but its red because its life its passion and its fire it can be dimmed for a bit but will come back blazing.

*you see a ferrari and everyone stops in their tracks, breath held*

You ask a kid to paint a car they will paint it red, fans wear ferrari caps in other teams garages. This is ferrari.

I think there's a reason why Ferrari is referred to with feminine pronouns in italian- she is that eternal lover, up and down but ultimately the one. Forza Ferrari. Sempre.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Something I Noticed When Organizing My Playlists

99% of the world might use Spotify... I'm one of those 30-year-old dinguses who still uses iTunes. Yes, you heard right... iTunes... I have a digital music collection, I carry around a 2011-era iPod Classic that all my music is stored on (never to disappear because of a random rights issue or whatever), and I have a few meticulously arranged playlists... I prefer it this way, when not listening to music through physical media.

I have a playlist for every year in music collection. For example, my playlist for 1967 contains over 400 songs... It's probably my favorite year in popular music... And they're all in chronological order. The playlist starts with 'Break On Through (To the Other Side)' by The Doors, the opening track of their eponymous album released on January 4, 1967... And ends with a song called 'Take Out a Loan' by Ray Yeager... Actually, a release date or year for that song - to go on a tangent - has never been found. Most of his singles were released in 1966, and this undated one? I have it in 1967, my gut tells me it's from 1967. Discogs, 45cat, and other record databases have no evidence of a release year... Because there doesn't seem to exist any data! Okay, if we take this obscure country rock song out of the equation, the playlist ends with a couple of songs that were *in fact* released in 1967... But no month is given... So they're all "unspecified 1967 releases"... Songs like 'Time is Set For Now' by a Cleveland, Missouri-based garage rock group called Fugitives (which I have to specify, because it seems a million bands were called "The Fugitives" back then), 'I Won't Be Your Fool' by The Oscar Five, and 'Cafe Creme' by Christine Pilzer...

If I lost you there, I apologize...

Anyways... These playlists, which I created over the course of years in my spare time, helped give me an idea of when this music all came out and what was out at a given time... Like, what was available in April 1967, and what was a few months old by that point... Then I place myself in that timeframe, and it's like... This is almost a snapshot of the cultural wave, what was out, what was in, what wasn't, etc. etc.

So sometimes, in a given year, I'll notice that the sound changes fast, as does the zeitgeist in real life... It's a very hard thing to keep up with. Suppose I put on my 1967 playlist, and I hear plenty of songs that sound very 1967... Psychedelic, less traditional poppy, having a bit of an edge... But sometimes you'll hear an example of something very, say, 1965... In the mix, as if the people making the song weren't entirely up to speed with what was going on, and just made what was considered a standard... And it'll sound a little dated. Like, this song is from 1967?? I would assume, by listening to it, that it's from a few years prior! And then you'll hear something a year ahead of its time... It's an art form, much like film and animation, that is rapidly changing...

I was thinking about last year's crop of animated movies, and even 2021's for that matter... I look at Disney Animation's films, like RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, ENCANTO, and STRANGE WORLD... And I see what their cousin studio Pixar has been up to post-ONWARD... And other studios as well...

I think, now that we're in a post-SPIDER-VERSE age of CG animated movies, there's some questioning as to why Disney Animation - the original American feature animation studio that's still standing, and one of the big guns - still sticks with the house style that they started using with BOLT and TANGLED way back in the late aughts/early '10s, and arguably perfected with some of the later movies, like MOANA.

And I think... STRANGE WORLD, their latest movie... Release that in 2015, it'd be cutting edge and it'd be greeted - I feel - with a sort of "wow, cool!"-type reaction. In post-SPIDER-VERSE times, it's more of the same, same as it ever was. Ditto RAYA and ENCANTO. They are undeniably well-made, handsomely-crafted films with ace animation and effects work. Their $150m+ budgets definitely show! But they also seem to look backwards, visually... Or do they?

These films were all greenlit before any footage from INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE got out to the public... And yes, before SPIDER-VERSE came out, very stylized CG pictures *did* exist. Disney Animation themselves experimented with promising and exciting technology that gave us the very hand-drawn-looking PAPERMAN way back in 2012, and the painterly FEAST in 2014... But then they didn't really do much with those discoveries afterwards, for the features anyways. Shorts still kept some of that alive. Reel FX made a very "moving concept art"-looking movie with the innovative THE BOOK OF LIFE in 2014. THE PEANUTS MOVIE in 2015 and CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS in 2017 are also stepping stones to SPIDER-VERSE. Heck, I'd even throw in 2009's CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS.

But I'd argue that SPIDER-VERSE was the movie that really, really solidified this move towards more stylized CGI. It's no surprise that we're seeing more of these kinds of movies now, not just from originator Sony Pictures Animation, who went on to give us the equally envelope-pushing THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES in 2021. Look no further than PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH, and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM...

But these were greenlit *after* SPIDER-VERSE came out. And before someone brings it up, PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH is not the same film as the one that was scheduled for a 2018 release and then scrapped four years before expected completion. That was Chris Miller's PUSS sequel, NINE LIVES & 40 THIEVES. It was likely going to look just like the first PUSS IN BOOTS, that he directed, and the other SHREK movies. THE LAST WISH is an entirely different iteration, an entirely different project, and it began active development *after* SPIDER-VERSE came out. Anyways- Moving on...

Disney's animated features up until this past year... *weren't* greenlit after SPIDER-VERSE... STRANGE WORLD, a 2022 movie release, was on the boards as early as winter 2017, right after its director - Don Hall - finished up his work as a "co-director" on MOANA. Par for the course with an animated movie of this caliber. The teaser for INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE debuted at the end of 2017, almost a whole year after STRANGE WORLD got put into active development.

STRANGE WORLD was likely locked as a typical house style WDAS movie, and maybe Hall himself wanted it to look like that, too... Given that he directed BIG HERO 6, and co-directed MOANA... STRANGE WORLD possibly could've opened earlier if not for a particular problem that occurred. You see, Hall was pulled off of STRANGE WORLD to take over RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, which saw a baffling director shake-up... Quite close to release, may I add. STRANGE WORLD could've released earlier if not for that, or maybe not... WDAS, exing COVID from the equation for a second, usually aimed for one a year. Every Thanksgiving season, with some exceptions. Had a deadly virus never happened, RAYA would've hit theaters in Thanksgiving 2020... And it likely would've been followed by ENCANTO in Thanksgiving 2021, which it *did* make it to, and then STRANGE WORLD after. That all has to do with scheduling and Disney figuring out its usually massive movie slate and where everything - Disney, Pixar, Marvel, etc. - falls. One might suggest... After SPIDER-VERSE, why didn't Disney just take STRANGE WORLD and reroute its visual style? They had plenty of time, right?

From what I understand, everything is probably determined early on: Look, assets, pipeline, etc. A big change in that, I assume, would throw a lot of things off... And up the budget, significantly. So, STRANGE WORLD was likely all set in that department before footage of SPIDER-VERSE even got out... If any WDAS movie is to embrace a completely different and dynamic visual style, it would be a film greenlit after John Lasseter's tenure as Chief Creative Officer, and probably after the 2018 release of SPIDER-VERSE...

WISH is the studio's next film, which was directed by Chris Buck. The only CG films he directed at Disney Animation prior were the FROZEN movies, which utilized the TANGLED style through and through. At Sony Animation, he directed SURF'S UP, and before Disney's purging of 2D features, he directed TARZAN, which used a ton of CGI. WISH has another director, too, Fawn Veerasunthorn. This is her directorial debut of any kind, be it feature or short or television series episode.

... and from what I've seen, WISH promises to be that proverbial PAPERMAN: The Movie endeavor. Would be fitting, given Buck previously directing a 2D film. Question is, was this a post-SPIDER-VERSE greenlight? Did SPIDER-VERSE's very existence influence the look of the movie? Did it tell Disney Animation heads that that PAPERMAN look *could* indeed sustain a feature after all?

Even then, the previous string of features were started at one time, and released at another. In those four years, a lot changes in the film world, the animation world, the cultural zeitgeist... Big changes just can't happen at last minute just like that! And if they do, it'll certainly cost.

This all reminds me of THE JUNGLE BOOK...

Coincidentally, Walt Disney's animated musical adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling stories was released in 1967... Look at that.

And yet, a lot of that film feels like it belongs in 1965. Maybe a year earlier.

The vultures, well known to be based on The Beatles (to the point where the studio wanted the Fab Four to actually voice them), are strong evidence of this... But they resemble a certain era of The Beatles that was long over by the time the movie was completed and released...

It's probably partially because of the film crew not being entirely in tune with the ever-changing maelstrom of pop culture and the music scene. Like, do you think 63-year-old Walt Disney in mid-1965 was interested in being up to date on The Beatles and other groups that teens/young adults were into at the time? Ditto much of his equally old film crew that handled the movie?

The film's principle elements were likely pretty much locked and in place by the end of 1965... Because of animation taking a lot longer, with less technological aid, back then... But The Beatles vultures in that film are very much based on the band's pre-RUBBER SOUL era. RUBBER SOUL came out in December of 1965 and marked a noticeable shift in the individual Beatles' songwriting talents. They looked a bit different, too, and they would call it quits on touring months later...

The pre-RUBBER SOUL era. The image. The seemingly fun-loving moptop image that the Fab Four tried to shed as they matured musically. THE JUNGLE BOOK was released in October 1967... That was only one month before MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR's US LP configuration was released, and a few months after their more experimental and adventurous album SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND... And that came off of the psychedelic and equally adventurous REVOLVER (which came out in August 1966), and the 'Strawberry Fields Forever'/'Penny Lane' single in February 1967... A lot happened in those three years! Night-and-day difference!

THE JUNGLE BOOK's vultures are very much modeled after the 1964/65-era Beatles, and other British Invasion groups of the period. They could easily be caricatures of, say, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. In fact, one of the voices of these vultures was British Invasion lad Chad Stuart, the late Chad Stuart, from the folk duo Chad & Jeremy. Stuart himself joked on the 2007 behind-the-scenes documentary for the film "They couldn't get The Beatles." The filmmakers wisely had the vultures sing a timeless barbershop quartet-style song instead of the very 1964-sounding pop song that was planned early on, that would've dated that entire portion of the movie. In its own release year! They would've been too late, like a sort-of reverse-SOUTH PARK situation. That'd be like a modern animated movie referencing, I don't know, 'Old Town Road' or something.

And also, by late 1967... What hip American teen or young adult was jamming to Louis Prima? He was their parents' music! A lot of that film's jazz soundtrack recalls big band and swing from the 1940s and 1950s, though the dialogue from the movie definitely suggests a more modern sensibility than, say, THE SWORD IN THE STONE. Interestingly, Louis Prima continued to work with Disney after THE JUNGLE BOOK came out. He did additional music for the studio's 1973 film ROBIN HOOD that only showed up on record, and was at one point supposed to be in THE RESCUERS... Moving on from Prima, you also have Baloo, voiced by contemporary comedian Phil Harris. Much of Baloo's talk in the movie definitely places it in the 1960s...

And yet despite these anachronisms, Walt's movie still struck a chord with audiences of all ages in 1967/68. It was among the year's blockbusters, such as THE GRADUATE and BONNIE & CLYDE. Being the last animated feature Walt himself personally oversaw certainly must've helped, too. In Europe, as usual for a Disney animated movie, it collected some serious coin. It was an incredibly popular film in West Germany, of all places (where it made an impression on a particular German boy named... Andreas Deja), and it was a massive hit in France... So, the dated stuff either didn't matter, or it worked in the movie's favor in some way or another. Maybe people in their 30s and 40s, a little behind the counterculture and maybe more into Frank Sinatra than Bob Dylan, were delighted to see that the funny singing orangutan in the movie was voiced by Louis Prima.

Even today, with all of our technological advances, not all animation can keep up with an ever-changing zeitgeist and audience tastes. Thankfully for WDAS, RAYA and ENCANTO seem to be quite popular and well-liked movies, especially the latter and how *that* blew up circa December 2021/January 2022. Ultimately, good storytelling that resonates with people helps these things last. It's what helped THE JUNGLE BOOK in 1967, for sure, to use that film as an example once more. That film also did fantastically in re-releases, and on video, it was part of Disney's Platinum/Diamond/Signature series. So, yeah, RAYA and ENCANTO - despite being released well after SPIDER-VERSE - are still successful in their own ways. STRANGE WORLD was like a horse being shot before it could even show if it could race, and even that seemed to do well enough on Disney+, too. Some of us may look at the visuals of these movies and think "They're nice and all, but c'mon Disney! You gotta experiment and try new things! Innovation! You're making the same movie you've been making since 2013!" And yet... I have to keep in mind, a lot of things in animated movie production are probably locked down and determined well before a frame is even animated, before a design is even rendered, etc.

[beesbeesbees]

On coping with failure

A good friend of mine pointed out (rightfully) that I’d been doing a whole lot of talking about the game I want to make, and doing things kinda-sorta adjacent to it like working out details and the visual presentation (I’ll write about that in a later post), but not a whole lot of actually learning the engine. So I decided to really buckle down and give Godot a try.

After all, you can’t make a game with nothing but a design document - you need practical experience. And since I had next to no experience actually using the engine as opposed to watching videos, it was time to build that experience.

So I watched more of GDQuest’s Getting Started With Godot in 2021 playlist, most notably up to the “How to use Godot’s signals” video. I figured that was about all I needed to do some really basic playing around.

On the one hand, I was correct - on the other hand, I wasn’t ready for something like 3 hours of banging my head against a wall trying to get extremely basic things to work. (Given my prior experience with learning coding that was more or less exactly this, you’d think I would know better by now.)

Let’s backtrack a bit. Godot games, as far as I understand them, are largely composed of three things:

Scenes

Nodes

Signals

Nodes are your simplest building blocks. Scenes are a bit of a misnomer, because they’re more like... a container for nodes. If a scene is a toolbox, then nodes are the tools inside.

Despite the name “scene”, they are not related to scenery (I mean, they can be, but not inherently). A scene can be practically anything - so for example, a player character, an enemy, a stat bar, or, yes, your game’s scenery.

A good example is the protagonist of your game. Your Mario or your Link. They are a “scene”, as odd as that sounds. So, this scene might have a sprite node (your character’s appearance), a collision node (the hitbox), an audio node (sound that plays when you jump or get hurt), etc.

Again, it’s basically a box of parts - any components that a player character needs to function. The scene itself is a mere container and a label. Anything in your game that has a few interlocking parts, even if it’s simple? Probably a scene.

So once we’ve made our player character’s scene, what do we do with that? Well, the neat thing about scenes is that once you make a scene, you can drag them into *other* scenes. If you have an overworld scene, you can drag your player character scene in, then some enemy scenes, and an item scene... et cetera. In other words, you design various parts of your game, then put them all together in a bigger scene.

And you can use as many instances of a single scene as you want. Want 4 goombas? Drag the goomba scene in 4 times. And if your Goomba turns out to have a bug in its behavior, fixing the original Goomba scene will automatically fix it for all 4 of those Goombas.

Another neat thing is that scenes can act like nodes. In other words, you can take simple parts, create a slightly more complex object, then put it inside of a bigger object. Maybe you make an Oil Pan scene and an Engine Block scene and you add those together to make an Engine scene. Which then becomes part of your Car scene, which also has four Tire scenes, and a Wheel scene, which in itself is in a Garage scene... et cetera.

There’s no end to this nesting. You can go as simple or as complex as you want with it. It’s all made in the service of making parts of your game easier to design, reuse, and debug.

For example, you could make a base Animal scene for behavior you know you want all animals to have (like walking, eating, drinking water). Then you make a Cow scene with the Animal scene in it, but now you add some features unique to cows. And a Goat scene that does the same with features unique to goats, a Horse scene, etc. You didn’t have to program in those basic features for each animal because you created that “part” and reused it.

But it’s kind of overwhelming. And the terminology, to be frank, kind of sucks. “Scene” is just a really unnecessarily confusing term. I think it’d be much easier if you called nodes “attributes” and scenes “objects” or something, but I’m sure those words are taken by other game engines so it’d get confusing? I don’t know.

It takes a bit of getting used to. And to be honest, it’s part of why I bounced off Godot a few times. But I feel a bit more comfortable with it now.

So! Signals. Signals are how your scenes (and the nodes within) *talk* to each other. In other words, if we were making Super Mario in Godot, and Mario jumps on a goomba, how do we have Mario’s scene talk to the Goomba’s scene?

The Mario scene has a hitbox node. It detects collision, checks if it’s from the bottom (so Mario jumping on something instead of running into it), and sends out a signal. It says, hey whatever I jumped on, you should probably die now? And the Goomba scene receives that and is like, “Yeah man” and deletes itself. It’s also received by the sound node that plays a fun little noise. It’s ALSO received by the score scene, which increases score, and sends a signal to the UI scene, which is supposed to update every time the score changes.

Or maybe you jumped on spikes instead. So the hitbox node would need to check if it was an enemy you jumped on, or spikes. And if it’s spikes, it’d have to send a message to Mario’s health node to make him either lose his mushroom or die, and that would send a message to the sound node, saying “play either this sound or that sound”. Et cetera.

Once you wrap your head around it all, it’s not too bad. But there are problems like... picking the wrong node for something, because you don’t know what to choose. Or something not working and you don’t know why. Or having to redo an entire thing because you were stupid and didn’t set it up right.

Or... maybe you went about it in a really inefficient way just because you didn’t think about it right in the first place, because programming and ANY software development means learning to think about things in the most efficient ways.

These are normal steps. They’re all part of learning. You can’t really sidestep them unless you’re watching tutorials that teach you off the bat the most efficient ways to do things, but even then, you’re going to need to go off script and make your own mistakes if you want to make games beyond Baby’s First Unity Platformer.

And God, it’s normal, but it can be really irritating when it takes you three hours to do something that feels like it should’ve taken - and will, in the future - only 30 minutes.

For a bit of an odd segue...

I’ve been learning Japanese on and off for a while, and though I can’t say I’m any level of “good” at it, I’m often struck by the parallels between natural language and programming languages.

There’s often this impulse, especially if you’re a newbie, to translate a sentence or sentiment 1:1 into the language you’re learning. A few months ago I was looking up how to say “hello from America” in Japanese, as kind of a friendly “hi, sorry my Japanese sucks ass, I’m a dumbass American” sentiment. It’s a common enough sentiment you hear enough times from other overseas folks that I assumed it was fairly universal - greetings from France, and whatnot. I didn’t really think anything of it.

But Google pretty immediately told me that yes, while you can say アメリカからこんにちは (very literally, “hello from America”), it will always sound artificial and translated because it simply is not a phrase that exists in Japanese. It sounds very normal to a native English speaker, and certainly, the meaning would get across, but it comes across as odd.

It’s sort of like if I said to you, “Not like we’re riding on a rabbit’s back”. From context, you’d probably be able to glean that I meant “We’re not in a hurry”, but it would sound very strange, because that is an idiom that only exists in Finnish, not in English. (Sorry to any Finns if ei tässä jäniksen selässä olla isn’t a common phrase or something, I got that off Reddit.)

In other words, it’s not enough to know how to say every individual word in another language. It’s also about learning the right way to do things. You’re not trying to be a dictionary that translates every word 1:1. You’re trying to learn to think in another language, and abandon your preconceived notions.

You aren’t supposed to think of an English sentence and translate it. You’re supposed to think of a sentiment, a concept, one without language, and in your target language, express that in a way that is natural - as you would in your native tongue.

Programming, and developing in an engine, feels a lot like that.

Programming is not just learning what an if/else loop and a function is. It’s learning to properly consider concepts from the very start, so that you can write them out as efficiently as possible. You have to learn how to break down broader ideas and translate them into code, or code-and-nodes-and-scenes-and-signals-or-whatever.

You have to fundamentally change the way you think about problems. You cannot look at it in the way you’re used to. You have to view it entirely through the lens of whatever tool you’re using. And, using that, you have to figure out the best, most efficient solution for the problem.

And then do that like, 200 times.

And, of course, you can’t learn the most efficient ways until you bang your head against the less efficient ways, and learn why those ways suck, and what ways work for you.

So, then, to the crux of this post: It’s honestly humiliating. And overwhelming. And I took a break for like a fucking week. My first real attempt at working with Godot, and it demoralized me so much that I stopped for a week.

(Pictured: This took me hours, and only one of the buttons works.)

I have trouble with stumbling blocks where if I run into a significant impediment, I get very demoralized and stop. It’s derailed projects for me more times than I can count. I think a lot of ADHD people can probably relate. But the problem is - when you get used to only doing things that don’t involve a lot of failure and risk, it really limits your opportunities.

I just wanted to admit that, like, this is fucking hard, I guess. And it’s okay for it to be hard. It’s okay to be struggling to learn something no matter how old you are. But that I’m not going to give up, either. I made this blog for a reason - to stay accountable.

I am tired of leaving behind a string of failures.

I’m going to go back to watching tutorials, and see if I can’t get a little more insight into what the best way to handle certain things is (like lowering and incrementing stats). Then I’ll come back, and I’ll take another crack at it. And we’ll see what I can do.

And I will probably bang my head against the wall for another 3 hours, and accomplish far less than I’d hoped in that amount of time.

But I will have learned something. Hopefully.

[dejaruhe]

No one gets me saying amen like Linkin Park. Been listening to the one that's not Meteora... Minutes to Midnight, which I have the CD for. Lost my Meteora :( MtM is not as good overall but is still beautiful and sincere and 'Hands Held High' is just. I love them so much. I will learn most of the rest of the album while I'm fixated on "hands held high into a sky so blue and the ocean opens up to swallow you" for the next bit of time, except for 'Valentine's Day' which is the only one that grates on me and 'Leave Out All the Rest', which breaks my heart.

I'm listening to this music on a CD that coincided with a Twilight movie release, pre-Obama, so a couple presidents ago (and I promise to rock it til it's threadbare, bet on it), driving around in my 2001 Toyota momvan, in which I can play CDs and cassettes and based on how many ashtrays there are I should be smoking more cigarettes — the point, which I am always losing, is that listening to CDs and cassettes is such a different way of experiencing music. I can't easily hook my phone up to the speakers, which aren't amazing anyway, so I am not Shuffling Playlists and looking at my phone sucks, especially when driving. So I choose a tape or CD and stick to it for a while. Study it. Very different from shuffles.

The charm of shuffling playlists is the charm and romance of the gambit, which has incredible charisma stats. +20 to persuasion. Nothing better than an archetype with sketchy edges and cards or dice. What will I get next! The algorithm decides. The algorithm is rigged dice, because it responds to data with different implications than like. Microfractures. One of its strengths, however, is that it has more data than I do and is connected to other people and allows new artists to reach me, and they are all performing themselves for me in my inbox now because I want CDs and so I end up on their listservs, and that's both very cool and very weird. Bard services. I love it truly but it's also so much?

I think the repetition and focus of physical media is probably my general preference in a lot of ways. In some ways, the *cloud* feels like a secure repository of my playlists, but even if I transcribed old mix CD playlists to somewhere on the internet, I would still be devastated to lose those lovingly written CDs. I have had Spotify and Pandora and I suppose now Google is the source of all my music, but I do wish they'd do a better job of separating the music app from the video app. YouTube is its own thing in a way that shouldn't be subsumed by... You know, as I start this rant I know I'm losing the point again and also, anyway, one of the benefits of that lack of separation is getting the music stuff that was only uploaded to YouTube in any playlist I want.

The point was about focus, which I lack, and now that I think about it, the deliberation of physical media has profound implications. I tend to be suspicious of things that feel like spiritual epiphanies, but if the alternative is being miserable all the time anyway then why not just treat these objects as the arcane and sacred things they will be, if so treated? The velveteen rabbit becomes real with love... I spotted a slightly rough-hewn wooden box in my uncle's garage that looked designed for cassettes, which was empty, he has switched entirely to smart home Spotify Amazon Google everything, and I asked if the box was designed for cassettes and he confirmed that yes, it was, he made it himself and if I wanted that instead of the cardboad Amazon box I am currently using to contain my cassettes in the van then I should take it, but also I should sand and stain it, and his garage has all the supplies with which to do that so I left it there so I can go back and do it. Take the time and take it seriously and mean it. And I will listen to all of these tapes and CDs (except the ones that make me cry while I drive) and I will PONDER them. How did they come to me? Do I want them? Do they work well enough to keep playing or should I turn them into art? Can I figure out a way to create an homage to the trash room at Meow Wolf Santa Fe that won't make me feel derivative? Why does derivation have such negative connotations? Why can't we all just hang out and make stuff and sing songs and not fight? It's because the world is devoid of justice and the exhaustion of being one drop in the ocean is overwhelming. Shane Koyczan's 'Shoulders' addresses this feeling with more poetry and hope than I can muster. I have to put a period at the end of this essay and stop writing now.

[echostatic]

tbh "Bodys" by Car Seat Headrest is such a good blaseball song for players

well so what?

we're young!

we're thin!...most of us

we're alive! ....most of us

[nico-robins-smut-diary]

Kid's Garage

🚫nsfw🚫

Kid x F!Reader

Summary: You bite back at your captain while he’s in his workshop and he shows you who’s boss

CW/TW: oh lord here we go biting, spiting, choking, ravage okay, pinning, cursing, aggression, name calling, photo taking (exhibitionism), masturbating, slight edging ,angst

AN: I’m sorry I’m a degenerate You know who’d be horrifying fun to piss off and push his feral buttons? Kid. 🥲 Enter if you like it ✨rough and mean✨

“Oi!!!!”

You hollered at your captain, trying to reach him past the sound of his workspace. Everyone calls it his garage and now you knew why, littered with scrap metal, tools, contraptions he’s made (no not all of them work) and of course his metal playlist at full blast.

“Kid!” You voice reaching its max as his circular saw was working away and some pipes he scavenged, grinding loudly as sparks few around.

The silhouette of your captain came into view, his welding mask down as he kept drilling, messy red hair, no shirt or apron, just muscles, dirt and sweat. “Mhh yummy” your perverse brain interjected. Once you were close enough, still calling out his name, the saw finally stopped and the pipe clattered on the floor. This was your first time actually meeting your captain up close and not just as a pass by between tasks he was doing, why were you so nervous.

“Eustass Captain kid!” You shouted, now almost too loud with the drill dying down but he heard you finally, standing up straight and lifting his mask off his head.

What a giant, he towered over you in his boots and broad build, you had to look up at the almost seven foot tall beast just to make eye contact. What looked like an engine was just casually being held in his mechanical arm with no effort from him. A beast.

“What?” Kid roared as he dropped the engine to the side, wiping his blackened hands off on some spare rag he had in his pocket, a ruby scowl on his face while glaring at him subordinate.

“Killer says lunch is on!” The metal music kept playing loudly so you continued to yell, hands on your hips trying to match his energy or to show you mean business.

Laughing at your adorable stance, he shook his head and turned the volume up. “I’ll be there whenever I want to be there” he growled back, turning to focus on his project again, turning his back to you.

You hated how stubborn he was being but Killer sent you on your first mission and you were determined to get this crimson demon down to the rest of the crew. How could you get Kid’s attention since he seems to shrug you off when you’re yelling at him. An idea popped into your head and it was sure to give you some backlash but you still smiled at yourself, sneaking through the garage while kid was pre occupied with taking apart the engine, you were now focused on looking for his stereo.

“Fuck yes!” You whispered to yourself, finding the massive music box in the middle of this ocean of scrap metal, digging around behind it eventually finding the power cord it was plugged into. This’ll get his attention for sure.

The abrupt stop of music left just the sound of metal being worked on but that quickly stopped too. “You’re FUCKING kidding me!” Kid roared and soon you saw the engine flying to the other side of the room you knew you had fucked up. Shit. His fuse was short.

You gasped as you saw the metal all around you start to shake and move towards your captain “Get your ass over here!” His voice barked at you, even though you couldn’t see him you could imagine the fury on his face. “NOW!” Barking that last order made you nervous but before you could even reply the metal (and you) were floating over to your captains giant Metal arm. This must have been his Devil fruit powers, you were still too new to see him in action but you’ve heard stories of it and at the time it sounded cool. Right now, however, it was mortifying.

Being help up by your throat, the cold steel of his arm gripped around your neck was exciting and horrifying, the face of your captain had his sadistic grin on it while his other hand held his stereo was now in view.

“Oh fuck..” you mentally panicked, not only because you majorly pissed off you boss but on top of that, his magnetism worked on your “stainless steel” piercings. You couldn’t embarrass yourself in front of him but his powers pulled your piercings and you could help but squirm and pant. He didn’t know you so of course he didn’t know you had piercings, nipples, tongue and clit, but he was going to find out soon if he didn’t stop.

“C-Captain! I’m sor-“ Your apology was cut off sharply when kid squeezed your throat, yelling over you.

“Huh???” His eyes wide, bringing you closer to his face. “Even Killer can’t tell me what to do! What makes you think you can come in here and boss ME around bitch?” His magnetism got stronger the angrier he got and the pressure on the sides of your throat was making you light headed, your body squirmed at the intensity of his Devil fruit while it was making your piercings go crazy.

“C-captain..” Your managed to whisper, closing your eyes, blushing and panting. This asshole didn’t even know what he was doing to you, how wet you were getting from your clits stimulation, how hard it was to breath.

“What’s wrong with you?” He growled, frustrated with your stubborn attitude, like a doll he dropped you aside and scoffed. You stayed on the floor for a second to recollect yourself and your breathing while he went to plug in his music again, playing right where it left off.

He raised his hand to bring another giant piece of metal his way but you were too close to him, you were stuck on your knees, whimpering and covering your mouth while the stimulation started again. You couldn’t move, your knees were weak “Fuck! You asshole!” You cried out, catching Kids attention as you spat curses at him.

“HUH? What was that??” He grabbed you by the hair to look up at him from your knees, teeth grinding together. Your eyes had tears pooled in the corner while both of your hands were trying to fight off his one massive hand. “Why the fuc-“ Dead stop to whatever he was going to say once his eyes caught your nipple piercings shaking through your gray muscle shirt. “Well well …I didn’t know you had those..” His voice now a low hum, sounding pleased. That bastard grinned at you and gripped your hands tighter, hovering his other hand over your breasts to make you whine some more and squirm for him.

“Kiiiid..” you whined, your head starting to spin at the over stimulation. “CAPTAIN.” Eustass Kid barked at you, increasing his magnitude over you.

A sharp gasp left your and your body writhed violently while your captain was now learning about your piercings. “Seems like your captain needs to remind you of your place on his ship..” His voice was low and dripping in lust, metal playing loudly in the back to cover up your needy moans. “Beg him to fuck you..” your invasive thoughts started up again, wanting so badly to be manhandled by this brute you call Captain. But your pride was too strong and you loved to be a brat, you wanted to push him further and see how far you could get away with upsetting him. Without even thinking, your authority issues and excitement kicked in and you glared up to him and spit, landing a shot on his cheek, right under his eye. Why are assholes always your type? It’s like you were poking a wild animal with a stick, knowing you’ll probably get killed.

Holy shit. Why did I do that? Fuck fuck fuck. Your mind raced at the few seconds of calm you got before Kid roared in laughter, accepting your challenge. A bewildered look on his face sent shivers down your spin, the beast of a man now had you hanging off the ground by your wrists and pinned you to the wall. “ You brat! I love a woman who challenges me..” The low tone of his voice was almost a growl in your ear, his hand sliding it’s way over your sopping wet entrance. “Mhh..your jeans are soaked, whore. Beg nicely and your captain might fuck you.”

The urge to fight him was still strong with you, the smugness that turned you on also pissed you off. “Fuck off” you groaned, not looking at him while your cheeks burned. You had no actual intention to fight a losing battle but this feral aura he had was turning you on so much and you could let your frustration out in him. Picking up the speed with his rubbing, his thick fingers made it to your clit where he pressed down on your piercing roughly in retribution of mouthing off at him, a hiss left your lips as your hips bucked.

“Holy shit..” Kid sounded too excited as he laughed at you , roughly circling your clit and vibrating it with his DF just to watch you squirm and blush, your piercings excited him. “Is this why Killer invited you to join the crew? You’re fucking hot. I won’t stop till you beg your captain for some mercy.” He sneered, pleased at the state you were in because of him. As much as you wanted to badly cuss him out, your body was burning up and your core was reaching climax just from his rough hands. Getting fucked roughly by Kid was what you needed but you were a brat through and he was breaking your tough exterior. You couldn’t take it anymore, you wanted fucked. Bad.

“C-Captain! Please!” You head cocked back, groaning the words your captain was wanting. Kid kept his aggressive pace and kiss your shoulder up to your neck, leaving a trail of scarlet lipstick kisses behind. “Please what?” His hot breath tickled your ear, planting more kisses beneath it. The softness of his kisses countered the roughness of his fingers and the mix of electrifying powers, messy moans , drowned out by music and squirming, you were left gasping. “Fuck!” Crying out as your breaking point neared, you were going to cum soon. “Fuck me captain! Please! Put me in my place! I want to cum for you” The words spewed out almost by themselves, making you sound needy and pathetic between whimpers and whines, anything to cum right now.

“Not yet my good little bitch.” His fingers and magnetism stopped all tougher, leaving you soaked and pleading. A rush of metal parts floated up to your hands and replaced his own. Now welded to the wall, you were hanging above ground in from of your captain. Fuck this asshole! You screamed internally, right to the edge of your climax as he left you hanging there, needy and frustrated.

“Open your mouth” He ordered, maybe it was the roughness of his voice or the proud tone behind it but either way you did as you were told, you left your mouth open for him. Kids calloused and rough hands traced up your sides, sliding up your tank and kept going until your tender breasts were exploded. A smile was back on his face as he ogled your nipples and their shiny accessories, licking his lips, placing your rolled up tank in your mouth to keep it out of his view of your body. “Bite down brat. This’ll shut you up..”.

Soon he was working your pants down, sliding those soaked panties down too but instead of the floor, he slid them in his pocket. You were completely exposed as a slutty mess to your captain. “Mhh..” He groaned in delight, turning the music up again so no one could hear the two of you, then walking back to give you his attention. His musk was strong, a mix of metal, dirt and sweat that you found irresistible.

His rough filthy fucking, hands travel around your clean body, sending shivers of anticipation down your body followed by goosebumps, hardening your nipples . “Let me return the favor..” Kid growled at you, grabbing your cloth filled mouth towards him, closer to his face. Oh god he was going to kiss you with that wicked smile and his beautiful painted lips? Nope. Kid pulled back an inch and spat on you. First your face, which he admired for a second, then on your breast, where his mouth went to work on ruthlessly. Licking. Biting. Playing with your piercings between his teeth. Your gagged moans and gasps were music to his ears, making you wiggle beneath him was now his favorite hobby. “God you’re fun!” He exclaimed with the same bewildered smile as before, his tongue lapping at your nipples.

Boots clunking as he took a few steps back his proud work. His arm outreaches and flying over was an older Polaroid camera. “Smile slut.” His tone was vicious and deplorable as the flash went off, capturing you in your worse state. A blush painted on your cheeks, muffled protests came from your mouth but no use.

A quick flash of the developed picture is all he gave you before chucking and placing it in his wallet. “Mine.” That one word flattered and excited you, almost as much as watching him start unbuckling his pants. Fuck. His messy hair and dirty body was already a sight but watching his muscles glean from sweat as he unlatched his pants was something else. A heavy thump on the floor as his pants fell and boots kicked off made your heart skip a beat.

Fuck. This animal was standing in front of your pinned body, nude with his huge member erect and ready. You didn’t realize your eyes were glued on his length until kid made his smart ass remark. “What? Never seen a dick before?” His large hands starting to rub and pump his length slowly for you, eyes traveling down your body. “Or maybe?..” He groaned as he put himself on display for you now, liking the attention you were giving him. “..My cocks the biggest you’ve ever seen?” Cocky and arrogant laughs escaped him while your thighs rubbed together, imagining how he’d feel tearing you apart from the inside. No way you’d admit but he was right, you’ve never seen (or had) a dick that big before, your slickness traveled down your thighs, imagining how he would feel sliding in his little brat.

After a few more strokes and he perked up, pointing up. “I fucking love this song!” The guitar was heavy and the drums boomed, you couldn’t make out the lyrics from the brutal growling, Kid quickly made his way to you and spread your thighs back, slamming them to the wall. “I can’t wait to fuck you in half to it.” No time for a response, his tip was pushing inside you, slowly stretching you out with short pumps so he was sure you could take all of him.

Eyes rolling back, your pain and pleasure was mixing while his entire length slid in and out of you you effortlessly. “Oh fuck.” Kid grunted under his breath. “You take your captains cock so well” a snide comment that would normally be an invite to a fight but you were in a daze, filled and wanting more. And more you got, after you were adjusted around his cock, Kid ruthlessly dug his nails into your thighs and he slammed right into your wet pussy, you body pulled from the wall you were attached to and had you bouncing on him from his pure ferocity.

Oh god, oh god, you head was spinning and the drool started pooling into your muscle shirt, he was relentless. Rougher and rougher, keeping pace with the heavy metal tempo like he promised, your body bouncing violently while the man of your dreams man handled you, occasionally clawing and biting at your neck and shoulders.

“Don’t stop” You wanted to beg, just muffled cries instead with his sweat dripping from him, landing on your shoulder and chest, driving you wild. “Take it good girl, take my cock” He panted into your neck, groaning as he lost himself in the same delight. Soon his movements were sloppy and his breathing hot and heavy, laughing as he panted and pumped into you.

“You want it baby? You want me to fill you up?” His voice was almost a growl, reaching up and releasing you of your gag, a string of drool leaves your mouth in the midst of loud moaning. “Yes! Fuck! Kid please!” You begged, and cried out as he carried on brutally pumping into you, teeth sinking into your shoulder. You were nearing your own release again, he wouldn’t dare stop you this time.

“FUCK!” He roared out and slammed his cock deep in you, your walls closing in on him, he unloaded in you as you cried out in sweet bliss, cumming too. Uneven breathing from both of you and his dark chuckles as his song finished, replacing his bites with kisses meant Kid was finally satisfied. Slowly his pace stopped and his head lifted from your shoulder, hair soaked with sweat and stuck to his lipstick smeared face. He was just as messy as you were. “Good girl..” he growled under his breath.

“So… that’s what was taking so long..” a cool and calm voice echoed in the now quiet room. None other than Killer walking past the mess of you two to turn off Kid’s music. If there was any energy in you, you’d be embarrassed or try to turn your body away but Killers presence didn’t even phase Kid, his pants were back on and your arms were freed from the wall. A small gasp as you feel down the wall but Kid already had his hunky arm around you. Maybe to shield you from Killer, who you could imagine was sneaking peeks from his mask.

“Tsk. You really roughed her up, I should have known better than to have her fetch you.” Killer walked by again towards the door this time as he scolded his captain. You body was just as dirty as Kid’s now. Bruises forming and bite marks littered your body, smudges of lipstick and sweat is what Killer was seeing.

“Yeah, fuck right off Killer. I’m ready to eat now.” Kid barked at his mate and threw on a white shirt he had set aside, to the two of them this seemed so casual and eventually Killer was gone. Once you legs could move and your clothes were almost all back on, you were ready to head back to your room until Kid hooked his arm around you.

“Oi” This time he addressed you in a more pleasant manner, well as pleasant as Kid could be (he was still loud), and shot you a beaming (or maybe proud) smile. “My brat shouldn’t be walking.” Your eyes rolled and a scoff came from your mouth even though that was a titled you liked coming from him, that didn’t stop him from scooping you up in his one arm and held you close to keep you steady.

“I’ll take care of you tonight. Come around the garage more often… I’ll show you some of my robots or something.”

Was Kid flirting? Asking you out? Being gentle? You laughed a bit at how caring he could be after reworking your insides.

“Yeah. I’d like that” Your voice soft as you leaned into his soft and warm chest, body so tired you were already drifting to sleep. He planned to keep that picture of you hidden in his wallet so he could look at it time to time , you were okay with him keeping your panties too.

AN: Thank you for reading!

My ask box is now open (anonymous option available) so feel free to send me some inspiration! Remember, we don’t kink shame here (I do have my limitations though)

and I’m always thankful for any tags you want to add ✨

[spacecowboyhotch]

All Grown Up Series: Prom

summary: jack asks his best friend an important question at their junior prom after some coaching from reader.

pairing: fem!reader x aaron hotchner, jack hotchner x estelle “tess” sanders

warnings: nerves, mentions of Haley, fluff, kissing

an: i don’t have much to say other than this shit is cute and makes me wanna cry…most of the parts do lol. if y’all have any ideas for other things you want to see as the parts come out i’m open to taking requests for this series!

word count: 1.5k

series masterlist | general masterlist

It’s a pleasant surprise when Aaron calls you on your drive home from work. It’s rare that he has a free minute that isn’t after 10 p.m. when he’s away on a case so you answer, eager and happy. It isn’t until you're a bit into the call that you think to ask him about Jack’s prom.

“Jack and Tess are going to prom together, did he tell you?”

Estelle, Tess as she goes by, is Jack’s best friend. Jack met her in gym freshman year. Somehow they’d ended up in a one on one game of basketball, and she wiped the floor with him. They’ve been inseparable ever since.

“No, I talked to him this morning, and he didn’t mention it. Romantically?”

You park in the garage, pressing the button to close it as you grab your bag and head into the house. “He claims it isn’t, so I’ll believe him until he says otherwise.”

“Does he seem excited?”

“He does but he’s nervous. He asked me to teach him how to dance.”

“You’re great at that, you taught me how to dance. Will you wait until I’m home?”

“Will you be home by Saturday?”

He sighs, doesn’t sound hopeful and so you know not to get your hopes up. It doesn’t bother you, you know its part of the job, but know how deeply it affects him. “God willing. I’ll do my best.”

“Well he works Friday night and most of Sunday, so if you’re home Saturday you’ll get a treat. But don’t stress yourself out about it, we’ll be here when you get back.”

“I just miss you guys, and this year is going to fly by.”

“He’ll be going to college Aaron, not moving across the globe. And his top pick is only 4 hours away.” You say, shedding your keys, bag and shoes in the mudroom.

“I know, I know. It’s just all happening so fast. He was just in middle school and now he’s going to junior prom?” You hear someone murmuring to him and know that he’s got to go. “I’ll call you when I settle in tonight? It’ll be late, say no if you need to.”

“Yes, please, call. Be safe and I love you.”

“I love you.”

____

It’s Saturday night, and you and Jack have pushed the coffee table and couch back so there’s enough room to dance. Jack has set up a playlist on the tv and soft music pours through the speakers. Aaron couldn’t make it, which isn’t a surprise but you want to bring it up to Jack just in case he’s feeling disappointed and wants to talk about it.

“Your dad wanted to be here but there’s another case so it’s just the two of us.” You say as you click through the playlist to find the right song.

Jack shrugs, doesn’t seem bothered. “Eh, that’s cool, I didn’t really want him seeing me make a fool of myself anyway.”

“You should’ve seen him when I taught him how to dance. So stiff, so uncoordinated.”

“I hope I’m better than him.”

“Don’t worry, he dances like a dream now. Alright, so hand on my waist, right here.” You nod when his hand is secure on your hip. “And my hand in yours. Okay we’re gonna just move to the music. Watch my feet and follow my lead and then we’ll have you lead.”

You count out loud, correcting him when he takes a wrong step or goes the wrong way. Eventually the two of you get into a groove and you let him lead. Once he seems completely comfortable you feel free to make conversation.

“So you and Tess,” You begin.

He laughs, loud and deep like his father when the two of you are alone, shaking his head. “It’s friendly, mom, I swear. She hasn’t said anything.”

You quirk an eyebrow at him. “Have you?”

He looks away, his cheeks turning a soft shade of pink and you can’t help but feel kind of giddy. “I don’t wanna make it weird. She’s my best friend, what if I screw things up?”

“Is it bothering you? Getting harder and harder to act normal?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I say you tell her Jack. You never know, maybe she’s feeling the exact same way you are.”

“You think?”

You drop the dancing hold, turn off the music and sit on the couch. “I think so, I really do. You both are so good for each other, you’re there for her when no one else is. I don’t think this will go poorly.”

“Well what do I say?” He asks, plopping down on the couch next to you.

“Why don’t we go have dinner at the diner and we can talk about it?”

“Yeah that sounds good.”

___

Jack looks dashing in a dark blue suit, and you can tell he’s nervous because he keeps smoothing he’s lapels even as he talks to his father, telling him that everything’s okay. Aaron is in boss mode, going down the mental checklist of everything that Jack needs. Jack is a little annoyed, but grateful because he knows his dad cares and that he’d probably forget something if he didn’t do this.

“You’ve got your keys?”

“Yes.”

“And your wallet?”

“Yes.”

“There’s enough money for dinner in there?”

“Yes, you gave it to me.” Jack says pointedly.

“Her corsage?”

“Still in the fridge so it doesn’t wilt.”

“And you know what you’re going to say?”

“Yes, dad.”

Aaron’s face falls, his eyes apologetic as he places a hand on Jack’s cheek.“I’m hovering I’m sorry, I’m just,”

“Nervous.” Jack supplies, placing his hand over his dad’s.

“Yeah.

“Me too.”

“You’ll do great Jack, you and Tess are best friends. Just be yourself.”

You come out of the kitchen, wanting to have a moment of your own with Jack. “Sweetheart, can you go get the camera so we can take some pictures before he leaves?”

“Sure.” Aaron disappears down the hallway and you walk over to Jack, taking his hands into yours.

“I know he means well but did he freak you out?”

“No, I think I’m okay.”

“Just take some deep breaths and you’re gonna be fine. He’s right, just be yourself, you and Tess know each other.”

“Deep breaths.” He repeats.

“You’re a catch, Jack and you look so handsome.” You glance behind you to make sure Aaron isn’t coming, you know its harder for him to talk about Haley than it is for Jack. “Did you do what we talked about?”

Jack nods, the slightest of twinkles in his eyes as his lips turn up slightly. “Yeah, I talked to her. It made me feel better.”

“Just hold on to that feeling. Know that all 3 of us are there, rooting for you.”

He doesn’t say anything, just wraps his arms around you. You return the hug quickly, and that’s how the two of you are when Aaron returns to the living room with the camera. He sets it down on the coffee table and then comes over to put his arms around both of you. “Everything alright?”

“Its all good dad.”

“Yeah everything’s perfect.” You murmur, kissing the top of Jack’s head.

—

It’s a little after midnight when your phone starts ringing. You shoot up straight in bed, reaching for the phone without looking at who it is, though you can guess. “Hello?”

“Mom!”

“Jack, honey, is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, I’m about to drop Tess off and come home, we stopped at the diner with some friends.”

Aaron wakes up with a reluctant grumble, turning over to give you a look, hair sticking up in an array of directions “Sweetheart,”

“Its Jack.” He sits up immediately, running hand through his hair as he leans in to try and get some of the call. “I’m gonna put you on speakerphone, dude.”

“How’d it go?” Aaron asks, eager for information as always.

“Well, I have a girlfriend now?” He says the word slowly, like he’s testing it.

“That’s a big responsibility Jack, you have to treat her right.”

“I know dad, I know.”

You have a one track mind, wondering about what you deem the most important event of the night.“Did you have your first kiss?”

“Mom, come on.”

“What if I was asking as dad’s friend that he lets spend the night sometimes?”

Jack snorts, “You haven’t been that since I was like 10.”

“Oh come on, humor me.” You whine, glancing over at Aaron who just has this soft look on his face.

It makes Aaron warm to listen to the two of you banter. Jack did indeed get his first kiss, saying it was really nice and made his legs feel like jello but he was successful in staying upright. You ask him how the dance was, and he says he can’t wait to do it all again next year, and is excited to share all the pictures he took.

“Dad, could we maybe talk when I get home?”

Aaron glances at the clock, eyes tired but his voice is sincere, saccharine when speaks, “Of course Jack, I’ll start building.”

“Drive safe, please.” You yell at the phone knowing that Jack has a habit of hanging up without saying goodbye.

“You got it!”

“I’ll make up for leaving you by yourself with pancakes in the morning.”

“And coffee.” You tack on.

“And coffee.” He agrees, bending down to give you a kiss. “I love you, goodnight.”

“I love you too.”

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[frostedfaves]

Dark Paradise

Masterlist

Pairing: dark!WandaNat x fem!reader

Summary: You meet the infamous Avengers on spring break with your best friend Peter, and two of them seem to adore you more than expected. Requested here by my lovely 🐞anon.

Warnings: 18+ ONLY!!! dark themes, manipulation, mind control, blackmailing, age gap (reader is 21), dubcon (saying this just to be safe because Wanda uses her powers for evil a lot here), smut: oral, fingering, penetration/sex toy use, voyeurism (kinda), edging, overstimulation (if I forgot something please let me know!)

A/N: hi this is 6k words, which is the longest single fic I’ve ever written/posted here haha. also the end is not technically the end, if you know what I mean. anyway this took forever to write so enjoy this super far from canon fic and please tell me what you thought!! (also if you’re on my taglist and you weren’t tagged it’s because your age wasn’t in your bio)

-

“Here, let me take that for you,” Peter offers when he notices you headed toward the car, and you hand your suitcase to him with a smile.

“Thanks, P.”

You close the car door behind you after getting in on the passenger side, instantly reaching for his phone resting on the dashboard once you were buckled in. The two of you had an unspoken rule that you controlled the music whenever you traveled together, so his library was filled with various playlists you’d created simply because you didn’t trust him not to listen to the same five songs for the rest of his life.

“This is different,” Peter comments as he gets in on the driver’s side and catches the opening notes to an upbeat song. “I thought you were going to go with something calmer to help you sleep, like you usually do.”

“Well, I’m not usually going to meet the Avengers, so I’m too nervous to sleep.” You turn to pout at him as he drives off. “Is it too late to cancel?”

“Don’t even think about it. If I show up without you, everyone will think you’re imaginary.”

“Do they think you can’t make any friends outside of Ned?” you question as you open a bottle of water. “Because they’re not wrong.”

“I can make friends!” Peter whines and a quiet snorting sound escapes you. 

“You can’t use me as an example.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not actually friends.”

He picks up on your teasing nature and rolls his eyes, causing you to laugh as you lean back and settle into your seat more. You had well over three hours to stress about spending a week with the world’s most popular superheroes, and you’d rather be comfortable while you do so.

-

“Wake up, we’re here!”

Your eyes fly open at the sound of Peter’s voice, and any of the nerves that left long enough to let you sleep made a U-turn and hit you again, full force. Sitting up straight in the seat, you practice breathing properly while stretching and taking a look around as he pulls into the garage.

“Are you okay?” Peter asks once he parks, placing a hand over yours as he meets your gaze and you smile.

“I’ll be fine, P. I’m not gonna miss out on hanging out with you just because your super family is super intimidating.”

“Good. Besides, it won’t even be that bad! I’m willing to bet $1 million that they’ll love you.”

“I appreciate your optimism,” you tell him as the two of you get out of the car. “But you’re going to regret that bet when I use your money to retire early in some faraway rural town.”

Peter carried both suitcases as you made your way to an elevator, and you jumped when you suddenly heard a male voice.

“Welcome, Mr. Parker and Ms. L/N.”

“What is that?” you questioned as you faced Peter with wide eyes and he chuckled. 

“You’re hearing Jarvis, Mr. Stark’s AI. Hey Jarvis, can you take us to the common room, please?”

“Right away, Mr. Parker.”

“This is so cool,” you comment as you look around the suddenly moving elevator. “How does it know my name?”

“Knowing everything is kind of its job, I guess.”

“Underoos!” a voice calls as soon as the doors open, quickly revealing itself to belong to Tony Stark as his gaze lands on you next. “So she is real.”

“I told you!” Peter defends as you step off the elevator together. “Mr. Stark, this is Y/N.”

“Nice to meet you, kid,” Tony greets you with a shake of your hand. “I’m glad he found you. I was starting to worry that he’d build a robot to spend the rest of his life with.”

“I’m just his best friend, so it’s still possible.”

“Is this your friend, Peter?” Steve cuts off Peter’s response as he enters the room, moving to shake your hand next. “I’m Steve. Nice to meet you.”

“Okay, I’m going to show her to our rooms and then we’ll be back for dinner,” Peter tells everyone once you’d been introduced to Pepper, Bruce and Clint as well, and you’re about to head for the elevator again when someone interrupts.

“How about we take her down to her room instead?”

Your eyes widen as you watch none other than Natasha Romanoff and Wanda Maximoff enter the room hand in hand. Natasha’s hair seemed much longer than the last time she’d been in the public eye, but her all-knowing smirk was just the same and her green eyes were even more piercing in person. You noticed a bit of red glowing in Wanda’s eyes, which faded as she probably realized you’d seen, and you couldn’t help but wonder if that meant she hated you already.

“I know what you’re up to, Red.” Tony seemed accusatory as he pointed a finger at the pair. “You can’t bribe her into helping you cheat tonight.”

“Maybe I planned on giving her tips for surviving this testosterone filled tower.” 

Natasha steps forward and grabs your hand with her free one, and with a flick of her wrist, Wanda has your suitcase floating in front of you as they lead you into the elevator.

“Sorry to whisk you away like that,” Wanda apologizes as the doors close with her head tilted to see you past Natasha. “We’re just excited to meet a new woman here.”

“No, it’s okay!” you insist breathlessly, your nerves slowly returning as Natasha lightly squeezes your hand. “I’m actually really excited to meet the two of you.”

“You know who we are?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that I know you personally, but I know that you’re one of the original team members.” You make eye contact briefly with Natasha before turning to Wanda. “And because the news stations somehow get ahold of everything, I know you joined after you helped everyone stop Ultron before he could create that indestructible body and destroy the world.”

“Yes, that’s true. Although I wish I could’ve saved my brother, too.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you lost him...or that you even had a brother.”

“It’s okay,” Wanda assures you with a smile as she lets go of Natasha, shifting to the other side of the elevator to grab your free hand. “I asked Fury to keep Pietro a secret because I didn’t want to see or hear any negative opinions from people that never even met him.”

“And we have plenty of time to get to know each other,” Natasha chimes in as the doors open to reveal a new setting. “This is our floor. We set up a spare bedroom here so we can spend time together away from the boys...when you’re not with Peter, of course.”

“Yeah, that’d be great!” 

They lead you past their living room and kitchen, and you shamelessly admire the simple decor with little personal touches spread about. Turning into a hallway, Natasha walks ahead of you and Wanda to open a door to a bedroom.

“What do you think?” she asks with a smile that widens upon seeing your expression. “I’m guessing it’s good, then.”

“It’s perfect!” you cry out as you walk past to enter the room, immediately noticing the eggshell colored walls trimmed with your favorite color along the borders. “Wow, this is four times the size of a normal bedroom. Wait a minute.”

“Do you like it?” Wanda asks when she sees you pick up the glass figurine on the nightstand. “Peter mentioned your love of this animal and I have a whole collection of them from different places.”

“Like it? I love it! I have the same one in my dorm room!”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I can get you a different one.” She steps forward as she brings your suitcase to the floor beside the bed and you hug the small object close to your chest. 

“Like I said, it’s perfect,” you assure her with a grin, which brings one to her own face.

“Well, I’m glad you’re happy with the set up. When you’re ready to head up to dinner, we’ll be waiting by the elevator. Also, if you ever need anything, our room is right across the hall.”

Natasha points to the closed door a few feet away, and you acknowledge her statement with a nod before they leave the room, closing your door nearly all the way behind them. You flop down on the bed with a dreamy sigh as you gaze up at the ceiling with a night sky painted on it.

“I don’t think I’ll ever want to leave this place.”

-

On the elevator ride up to join everyone for dinner, Natasha and Wanda take turns asking you questions about your classes and any friends you’d made, what you liked to do when you weren’t studying. You had to admit that the level of interest they had with you was shocking but flattering, especially when they insisted you sit between them at the table to continue your conversation.

“You don’t seem to be nervous anymore,” Peter acknowledges as you sit down, and Wanda faces you immediately.

“Were you nervous about meeting us?”

“Well, yeah,” you answer timidly, avoiding catching anyone’s curious glances by directing a glare toward Peter. “You might be normal people in here, but to the rest of the world, you’re portrayed as powerful and untouchable beings.”

“Maybe when they’re not talking about how much damage we’ve caused,” Bruce mumbles under his breath as the elevator doors opened again. 

“I’m here, I’m here!” a voice calls as footsteps hurry toward the dining area, and Sam Wilson is revealed as he rounds the corner. “Sorry, I’m late. I was--”

“On a date, we know. You only told us that 500 times.”

“Don’t be jealous, old man. You’re married.” Sam grins at Clint as he sits next to him before his attention turns to you. “Do we have a newbie?”

“No, Mr. Wilson. This is my best friend, Y/N.”

“Call me Sam, kid.” He smiles at you as he goes for his silverware, and you’re just about to acknowledge him when his expression suddenly turns serious. “I’m sorry. You’re not a kid. You’re an independent and capable adult, and I should address you as such.”

“What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know.” Sam clears his throat and shakes his head as if he was clearing his mind. “I just suddenly felt the need to correct myself…You have any powers we should know about, Y/N?”

“No!” you quickly respond with widened eyes. “I wasn’t going to say anything, actually. I’m pretty used to older people calling me kid by now.”

From your left side, Natasha asks Clint to recall an embarrassing tale for you and the table livens up again, but you can’t seem to move past the unsettling way Sam shifted gears from calm and casual to uptight and disciplined. The image stayed with you through the rest of dinner even after he seemed to fully recover, until dishes were cleared away and replaced with games, and you suddenly had a lot more to focus on.

“I just don’t think it’s fair that he gets to be on your team again when I haven’t had him once.”

“Is anything fair with the guy who could use his personalized AI to cheat for him?”

“Could I do that? Yes. But have I done that? Maybe.”

“Wanna grab some fresh air with us?” Natasha suddenly asks you, causing you to frown.

“Aren’t we about to play another game?”

“It’ll take them another half hour before they finally decide something,” Wanda assures you as her fingers thread through yours gently. “We have plenty of time, and they won’t even notice we’re gone.”

They lead you by the hand to the elevator once more, going up a few floors before leading you out onto a balcony. Because you were so much higher than most of the surrounding buildings, there was an incredible view of the sun that was probably minutes away from disappearing to the other side of the world. The air is chillier than when you’d arrived, but you had to admit that standing in the cool breeze is worth a few goosebumps on your skin. Your hands are released as you reach a bench near the ledge, and you climb over it to sit as the other two women settle on either side of you.

“Why did Peter decide to share his secret with you?”

“Technically he didn’t,” you recall with a laugh. “He’d gone out to deal with something that activated his spider sense or whatever and I came to his dorm room to sleep after an exam because I was too tired to walk all the way to my place. Anyway, I walk in at the same time he’s coming back in through the window, and I swear we both sat there for a full two minutes before either of us could think of anything to say.”

“It’s still very nice of you to keep such a big secret for him,” Natasha praises, and your laughter quiets down as you take in her words.

“I guess I just know what it feels like to not want your life to change drastically because of one thing.” Your gaze shifts between the women for a moment. “That reminds me, I wanted to ask--”

“Wait, look at this!” Wanda quickly cuts you off with an enthusiastic grin. “You’re about to witness one of my favorite things about living here.”

She directs you to lean over and look at the streets as the sun finally disappears over the horizon, and you can’t help the small gasp that escapes you. Street lights begin turning on at what seems to be the center of the city and quickly spreading, increasing the radius of well-lit neighborhoods by the second. It was a mesmerizing sight that--until every lamp was on--nearly made you forget the question you were building toward.

“That was so cool!” you express honestly before clearing your throat awkwardly. “So I wanted to ask if the two of you were dating...or in a relationship or whatever. I mean, I don’t want to assume anything of course, just wondering because you share a room and floor, and you seem to be really into holding hands.”

“Well, I’d never really been into holding hands or a lot of other forms of affection before I met Wanda, but she seemed to flip some switch inside of me.” Natasha admitted with a bashful chuckle as she glanced at Wanda before turning to study you. “And your hands are so perfect to hold.”

“To answer your question, we are together.” Wanda rests a hand on your thigh and casts a sweet smile in your direction when you face her again. “Natasha was the first to give me a chance after everything with Ultron, and initially I thought I was just feeling grateful to receive some type of positive attention from someone other than Pietro. It wasn’t until Tash called me out on staring at her lips that I realized I wanted more than friendship.”

“The only reason I did was to confirm she was feeling the same things I’d finally come to terms with myself.” Natasha chuckles as Wanda sends over a bit of red mist to squeeze her own thigh. “What about you, love?”

“What about me?”

“Do you think you’re feeling more than friendship for Peter?”

“Oh no,” you quickly denied with a chuckle. “He’s the perfect example of a great boyfriend, but not my boyfriend. Plus I’d rather not have the same experience as MJ did.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, the ‘close friends to a relationship that ends with each person pretending the other doesn’t exist’ experience. I’d rather not.”

“Yeah, that does sound messy,” Natasha sighs as she subtly rests her hand on your other thigh. “So you’re not looking for a great boyfriend. What are you looking for then?”

“Nothing really, at least until I finish school, but having a girlfriend would be nice. I’d like to be with someone that respects me and can take care of themselves when I’m not around, because I tried the ‘caring for someone’ thing and it sucks when they don’t put in the same effort that you do.”

“Maybe you should try someone older, more mature,” Natasha suggests as she shifts to squeeze your knee lightly, and you start to feel a bit nervous about where she’s going with this. “Maybe two people that already have their shit together and would go to the ends of the earth to please you.”

“Okay, um…” You push both of their hands away with a bit of difficulty. “You both seem great and you’re incredibly attractive, but I’m not really interested.”

“Don’t worry about it, detka.” Natasha pushes your shoulder down as you try to get up, and Wanda cups your cheek with her hand.

“You may not be interested now…” She stands with Natasha and leans in to kiss your forehead, letting her lips linger on your skin as she continues. “But you will be.”

She pulls away and winks before lacing her fingers through Natasha’s as they leave the balcony, and you gasp in air as the tension they’d built seems to exit behind them. You finally decide to head back once you’ve taken a few minutes to catch your breath and calm your shaking limbs, but you wonder how long the calm will truly last.

-

You found yourself waking up suddenly and practically flying into a sitting position as if someone had pulled you up, but luckily the room is empty. You sit for a moment to catch your breath and survey your surroundings to assure you’re truly alone, and you notice your door is cracked right before you hear an unidentifiable sound.

“Fuck.”

Despite every fiber of your being screaming at you as one would do to a character in a horror film, you decide to climb out of bed to investigate what you were hearing, justifying your actions with the excuse of seeing if your floor-mates were in danger, as if you could save them. A few seconds after opening your door fully and peeking out made you realize that they were more than okay.

“Fuck! Right there, please don’t stop.”

“Such a dirty mouth, malyshka.”

You’re quick to return the door to its cracked position, leaning against the nearby wall with wide eyes as you attempt to process the image across the hall. The bedroom door sits wide open, giving you the chance to examine every inch of bare skin of the two women spread across the bed, Wanda resting on her arched back with her hands in Natasha’s red hair buried between her legs. Her moans seem to raise in volume, pitch and frequency as she’s brought closer and closer to the edge, and you ignore the warm feeling in your lower abdomen as you hurry back to bed and throw a pillow over your exposed ear.

-

“Good morning.”

Your free hand quickly shoots upward to catch your water glass as it slipped through your fingers in your moment of shock, and you try not to make a deal of hearing two sets of footsteps headed toward the kitchen.

“How’d you sleep last night? I know how scary it can be to rest your eyes in a new place.”

“I think I did pretty well,” you answer quietly as you step away from the fridge and lean against a section of the counter that faces out into the rest of the room. “The bed’s really nice.”

“You’re lying,” Wanda accuses as she crosses the room, eyes turning red and hands lifting toward your face.

“What are you--”

“Couldn’t sleep because of us, right?” She chuckles when you go limp under her touch, and Natasha ducks between the two of you to save your glass for the second time. “Did you enjoy hearing us that much?”

“You did sound really good,” you tell her with a drowsy smile as she pins you against the counter to keep you from falling.

“I bet you wish you were in my place, don’t you?” Her tone is light and teasing at first, becoming a bit stern as she shifts to push her thigh between your legs and you instantly roll your hips against the pressure. “Or maybe you want to taste me while Natasha fucks you?”

“No.”

“No?!” she fires back immediately, leaving a red mist around your temples as she grabs your waist with both hands to keep you grinding against her. “You mean you don’t want to cum right now?”

“Well, now that you mention it…”

A breathy moan escapes you as your eyes flutter closed, and if your head wasn’t being forcefully held in place, it would’ve tipped backward. You feel what must be Natasha’s fingertips grazing along your jaw and tracing a line down the side of your neck and toward your shoulder, repeating the gentle motion as goosebumps appeared all over the exposed skin.

“Is everyone decent?”

The fog behind your eyes seems to clear in seconds, and you blink in confusion when you open your eyes to see Natasha and Wanda making coffee nearby. You try to recall even coming into the kitchen, but everything from the moment you stepped into the bathroom to get ready is a blur, so you shake your head and reach for your glass of water on the counter as Natasha responds.

“Come in, Peter.”

“Morning, everyone,” Peter greets cheerfully as he enters the kitchen, his grin falling when his eyes land on you. “Are you okay?”

You open your mouth with the full intention of telling him that you are not okay, not when you were missing at least an hour of memory, and bits of last night were slipping away from you too. But before you could speak, a cold feeling seems to pass through the back of your skull to slip into your brain, and a switch flips.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” you respond with a chuckle. “You worry too much, spiderling.”

“The world’s a stressful place,” he grumbles when you playfully ruffle his hair. “Anyway, are you ready to go soon?”

“Where are you headed?” Natasha quickly asks with a frown. “Y/N hasn’t even had breakfast yet.”

“We’re meeting Aunt May, so we’ll eat with her.”

“I just have to grab my bag,” you explain before heading down the hall to your temporary room, feeling the chilly sensation leaving you as you get further away from the kitchen, and it thankfully doesn’t return when you head back. “Ready.”

“Have fun!” Natasha calls as Peter heads for the elevator again, quickly grabbing your wrist once he’s out of sight. “See you tonight, printsessa.”

Her hand quickly shifts to grip the back of your neck as she leans in to kiss your cheek, and the two women are wearing sweet smiles as you turn away from them to catch up with Peter, attempting to shake the shell-shocked expression from your features.

“You sure you’re good?”

“I’m fine,” you insist as the doors close, in hopes that you really would be fine.

-

Meeting Peter’s aunt was much more of a pleasant experience than you expected, and it was obvious she adored you by the way she spoke to you, although part of you felt she was just happy Peter had more people around to love him. Your day was cut a bit short when MJ unexpectedly approached Peter, requesting to talk to him, and Aunt May offered to drive you back to the tower so you both could escape that awkward mess of a conversation.

“It was so great to meet you today,” you tell her with a grin as you take off your seatbelt.

“Likewise, honey. You have my number so just call me if you ever need anything, okay?”

She pulls you into a hug over the middle console and you thank her again for the ride as you get out of the car, trying not to seem too nervous when you notice Natasha and Wanda standing in the lobby. Your plan was to walk past them without speaking, but you should’ve known that wouldn’t work.

“Why was she hugging you?” Natasha asks coldly as you enter the building and you sigh.

“She was just saying goodbye--wait. Why am I explaining myself to you?”

You keep walking until they’re no longer in your peripheral, stopping abruptly as a red mist surrounds your legs, and your eye-rolling is cut short when Wanda appears in front of you and grabs your chin harshly.

“If Tash asks you a question, you answer.”

“Without attitude,” Natasha adds, which makes you want to roll your eyes again.

“Sorry, I didn’t get the rules handbook when I arrived. Can I go now?”

“You know what?” Wanda cuts off Natasha’s angry response with a smirk. “You can go.”

The red mist surrounding you disappeared, and despite the suspicious feeling that washed over you, you continued on toward the elevator with your head held high. You refused to let them get to you.

-

It was subtle at first. A slight tingling between your legs that you couldn’t seem to get rid of. In the very beginning, you were worried that something was wrong until you realized where the feeling was coming from when it turned into slow circles around your clit as you caught up with Peter in his room. By dinner, there was the added sensation of fingers curling inside you at a steady pace, and you hoped no one would notice your hips slightly bucking under the table as you attempted to repeatedly chase a release that never came.

A movie follows dinner today, and you make sure to cover yourself with a large blanket because you were still being edged and you couldn’t stop moving at this point. You even try to slide your hand into your sweatpants to finish the job yourself, and your jaw clenches in anger every time your fingers lock up because you know who’s responsible.

“Okay, you win!” you announce as you walk into the kitchen on Natasha and Wanda’s private floor, not missing the look shared between the two women. “I’m sorry I was rude earlier. Can you please just stop teasing me?”

“How about we help you finish instead?”

You should decline. You should just say ‘no’ because letting them finish you off tonight will turn into an attachment that you know you don’t want, nor are you ready for. Inviting them in will be equivalent to selling your soul, and you’re not sure you want to put a price on it. But the ache below your stomach is persistent, and if they won’t let you touch yourself, someone has to do it.

“Fine.”

“Don’t be so grumpy about it,” Wanda teases as she grabs your hand and starts leading you toward their bedroom. “I promise you won’t regret it.”

She pushes you back onto the surprisingly large bed as soon as you’re close enough, instructing you to take off your shirt and bra while she watches. Once your top half is completely exposed, she leans forward to run her hands from your shoulders down toward your nipples, circling them with her thumbs until they harden.

“I don’t like being teased.”

“Oh, you don’t?” she asks in a mocking tone as she reaches for the band of your sweatpants and pulls them down, placing her palm over the wet spot in your panties. “Then what’s this?”

“Please,” you beg through a quiet moan, bucking your hips again when she presses her thumb against your clit through the fabric. “Please just fuck me already.”

“Patience, detka.”

You watch with wide eyes as Natasha and Wanda both strip away their own sweatpants, revealing the toys tied to their legs. Natasha goes to untie hers while Wanda uses her powers to rip away your ruined panties in one fluid motion.

“There she is.”

Natasha puts her hand on Wanda’s back and forces her to bend over, and you bite your lip as her eyes flutter closed and mouth falls open while Natasha thrusts into her. You’re just about to grab Wanda’s hand to lead her where you want, when her eyes open suddenly with a glowing red surrounding her pupils, and your wrists are bound together over your head by an invisible force.

“Did you forget who’s in charge here?”

“Don’t get too cocky, malyshka,” Natasha reminds her as she grabs a fistful of her hair and slams into her, causing Wanda to moan and giggle at the same time.

“My apologies, Tash.”

You couldn’t help your sigh of relief as Wanda finally slid two fingers inside of you, her thrusts deepening each time as Natasha fucked her toward you with her hands on her hips. The sounds coming from your mouth and between your legs were embarrassingly loud, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care as she brought you closer and closer to the edge, until a loud whine escaped you as she removed her fingers and delivered a slap to your glistening folds.

“Tell me who this belongs to,” she orders through her own moans, holding you down when you begin grinding into her hand. “I’m gonna cum regardless of what you do, so you’d better answer. Be a good girl like I know you can.”

“Yours!” you cry out finally, sighing when Natasha leans into your line of sight with a brow raised. “It’s yours and Natasha’s.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

She slips back into you without warning, and your back arches off the bed as she finally brings you to orgasm. She continues to thrust into you as you whine and squirm away, luckily slowing down and finally stopping as Natasha makes her cum a minute later, leaving the strap inside of her as they both catch their breath. Wanda pulls out of you and sits up to lean against her, holding her hand up between them as they both clean your cum off her fingers with their tongues, and you sit there clenching around nothing as you watch.

“You seem tired,” Natasha comments as her eyes land on you again.

“Too bad we’re not done.”

Wanda flips you onto your stomach with a quick motion of her fingers, using her hands to pull you by the waist until you’re on your knees at the edge of the bed, and she holds one side of your waist as she delivers a slap to your ass this time. Her touch lingers as she pulls away to free her own strap, and you nearly fall over when you feel the tip of the toy rub against your clit.

“Wait, let me fuck her this time.”

You hear their soft laughter as they switch places, sharing a kiss in the process, and you gasp when a hand wraps around your neck and pulls you up against Natasha’s chest.

“I like having you this close to me, printsessa,” she whispers in your ear, chuckling when you melt against her as she pushes the tip of her strap into you. “How many times do you think I can get you to cum?”

Her grip on your throat is loose as she allows you to adjust to the size, tightening suddenly when she slams into you once, twice, until every thrust is at a rough pace that you wouldn’t be able to handle if she wasn’t holding you against her by the waist. You feel that same tingling circling your clit again, occasionally traveling upward to tease your nipples as well, and it wasn’t long before you were releasing a strangled scream as you climaxed.

Natasha eventually stops thrusting into you as your legs shake, and you breathe out another sigh of relief when she allows you to fall onto the mattress. However, the relief is short-lived when you realize that she only paused to let Wanda push into her from behind, and it wasn’t long before the two of them found a rhythm that was pleasing them and ruining you.

Your wrists are freed as Natasha pulls out of you some minutes later, and you collapse onto one side of the bed with your body aching a bit from a third orgasm, your eyes only halfway open as you watch the pair. They remove the straps from their waists and set them aside, and you become a bit more alert when you notice Natasha grab what seems to be a double-ended dildo.

“No more. I can’t,” you mumble tiredly as your wrists are bound by Wanda’s power again.

“One more, and you can,” she tells you as she flops onto the bed beside you, and that red mist surrounds her fingers again as she guides you onto your knees to hover above her face. “You wanted to cum, so you don’t get to run from this.”

Her hands grab your waist and pull you closer, and you release a shuddering moan as her tongue runs past your hole and over your clit, teasing it a few times with the tip of her tongue before diving in to wrap her lips around it. She alternates between sucking your clit and slipping inside you as Natasha climbs on the bed behind you to position herself with the new toy. 

“Fuck,” Wanda attempts to say once Natasha begins thrusting, and you fall forward as the vibration of her moans become too much, whining when Natasha slides her hands over your breasts and pulls you back up again.

“Take it all like a good girl.”

She keeps pulling until your head drops against her, and she moans against your neck while she kisses and sucks on your skin, bouncing faster on Wanda who groans loudly in response as she attempts to match each thrust. The hums of her voice has you grinding against her tongue, and you yelp when Natasha bites down just as Wanda brings you over the edge. She keeps going despite your protests, managing to get you to cum once more before they finally do.

You lie there with your bones feeling like jelly as you’re covered with a blanket minutes after everyone’s bathroom trip, too tired to even fight for sleeping in your own bed as Natasha and Wanda slide in on either side of you.

“You did so well tonight, detka,” Wanda praises as she strokes your cheek with a loving stare. “I can tell you’ll be a great addition to our relationship. I knew it from the moment I saw you.”

“I’m not doing this again,” you insist as the smile fades from her expression. “I’m not getting in a relationship with two women that don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and I’d prefer sleeping in my own bed.”

“You’re already in a relationship with us, printsessa,” Natasha growls as she shoves you back down when you try to get up, and you push her hand away.

“There’s nothing you can say that’ll make me want to be with you.”

“It’s not about what you want to do. It’s about what you have to do.” She grabs your phone from the nightstand, and you’re somehow not even surprised when she unlocks it on the first try. “Because it’d be a shame if someone was to tell Peter about all the nudes you have of him.”

You snatch the phone from her grip, eyes widening as you scroll through your camera roll, finding naked pictures of Peter scattered throughout it. You check the date on the oldest one and began to feel nauseous when you saw it was taken not even a month after the two of you met.

“Don’t think you’ll be deleting those either, because we can replace them and make things worse.” Her smile was falsely sweet and troubling as she grabbed your chin to force you to make eye contact. “We’ve gone this long without having you, and we’ll do whatever it takes not to lose you.”

-

Tags: @cordeliaswhore @egotisticalstoner @muralskins @natasha-danvers @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @madamevirgo @teenwonder @honeyvenable @slut-for-nat

[wayward-dreamer]

Life’s Lessons - Good Enough

Pairing: Mechanic!Dean x Female!Teacher!Reader

Word count: 6,372

Summary: Y/N and Dean are planning their wedding, but a reminder from the past gives him doubts about his relationship and whether he’ll ever actually be good enough for her.

Warnings: Swearing, Dean’s past with Lisa comes back to haunt him, ANGST, Tears, Dean’s self deprecation rears its ugly head, Making up, Fluff.

Music: Love Of My Life - Queen (Dean bar scene)

Life’s Lessons Spotify Playlist

A/N: The next time stamp is here! Stay tuned for another announcement soon about the saga! Hope you all like the time stamp! As always, happy reading and enjoy! :)

Life’s Lessons Saga Masterlist

Divider by @firefly-graphics​​​.

Y/N pressed the ‘end’ button on her phone, throwing it beside her on the couch with a loud groan of frustration.

Looking down at the coffee table in front of her, she shook her head at the sudden overwhelming feeling. The whole surface of the table was covered in bridal magazines, brochures, printouts of venues, her laptop with multiple tabs open, and everything else that came with planning a wedding. She kept hitting brick walls with every place she was looking at being unavailable for the date that she and Dean had decided on. The only thing she had managed to do was finalize the guest list, which was at 80 people. It wasn’t a big number, but knowing she would have to do the invitations as soon as a venue was decided, it was a lot of people. Luckily, it was everyone she or Dean cared about, without having to make sacrifices for their special day.

Y/N heard the key in the door and Dean’s boots on the wooden floors as he walked through the house. He smiled when he saw her, walking over quickly and leaning down, kissing her softly.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he muttered against her lips, kissing her again.

“Hey,” she sighed, a relief washing over her now that he was home. “How was work?”

He huffed out a breath as he leaned back against the couch. “Busy. Having the new guy on today didn’t help. I felt like how you must feel with the kids in class, keeping an eye on him most of the time.”

“He’ll get better soon enough, don’t worry,” she reassured him, leaning over and kissing his cheek.

Dean glanced over the coffee table, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees. “That looks like a lot. You okay? Anything I can help with? Not that I know a damn thing about weddings.”

He smirked with a small laugh, kissing her cheek. Y/N smiled and shook her head, looking down at the table and sighing heavily.

“I keep hitting dead ends with venues, that’s all,” she stated, shrugging.

“Hey.” Getting her attention, he cupped her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “Everything’s gonna work out. We’ll find something and it’s going to be amazing. I know it.”

She nodded, even though she didn’t really feel better despite his comforting words. “I guess I’m just worried about a lot of this.”

“You know whatever you need from me, I’m here, right? Say the word and I’ll do it,” he told her, his hands leaving her face and taking hers.

“I know,” she whispered, smiling softly at him.

“Don’t worry about anything, sweetheart,” he said, smiling at her. “We got this, okay?”

“I know, I just…” she stopped herself, unsure of how to express herself.

“Something’s wrong,” Dean frowned, sensing something wasn’t right. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she reassured him, smiling softly. “But… I just need to know you want all of this. I know you keep saying you want me to have the wedding I want, but I want us both to have that, Dean. I want what you want too.”

“Don’t go thinking I don’t want all of this. I wanna do this for you. For us.” he said, smiling reassuringly. “I do. I promise you, I do, sweetheart.”

“Okay.” She nodded, her worried expression morphing into a soft smile.

“Okay, good. Now, take a break from all this stuff and let’s make dinner. Sound good?” he asked, smirking.

“Yeah,” she replied, smiling wide as she leaned in and kissed him.

As they got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen to start cooking, Y/N breathed a sigh of relief, as she felt a pressure lift off her. Dean always had a way of doing that. It was incredibly cute to see Dean so excited, even if he didn’t understand what she was saying when she mentioned something to do with the wedding, but he secretly loved getting involved.

They couldn’t wait to get to the big day and start the next part of their journey together.

The doorbell rang, alerting Y/N that her guests for the evening had arrived. It was a Saturday, and unfortunately Dean had to go into work because of some problem with one of the cars, so Y/N was left to do more of the wedding planning herself. Dean felt guilty as he left, but she had assured him that it was more than okay.

She walked to the door and opened it, smiling wide as she saw Mary and John on the other side. They all hugged each other, before Y/N led her into the house.

“So, how are things going?” Mary asked, as they walked into the kitchen where Y/N had been making dinner.

“Things are… stressful,” Y/N replied, huffing a small laugh. “Though I managed to book a venue yesterday, and that’s taken a lot of pressure off. I was going to tell Dean first, but do you guys wanna know?”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Mary exclaimed. “Yes, absolutely!”

Y/N opened her laptop that was kept to the side on the kitchen bench, bringing up the photos of the outdoor venue. “Dean was telling me once that you guys used to drive up here a lot when he and Sam were kids, and I thought I’d try it out. The land is owned by the ranch close by that’s a wedding venue and I asked if we could use this space. They said they had an opening for our date, so I booked it straight away.”

She showed them the photos of a beautiful location, surrounded by trees and a lake. It was perfect for the ceremony, and the clearing nearby would be perfect for the reception.

“Y/N, this is…” John shook his head, speechless as he looked over the photos. “God, the boys used to love going there.”

“Y/N, it’s stunning! Oh, it’s going to a beautiful wedding,” Mary told her, her smile radiant as put her arm around Y/N and brought her close.

“Do you think Dean will like it?” Y/N asked, nervously.

“He definitely will. We used to take the boys fishing there. They never caught a damn thing, but they always loved going,” John replied, reassuringly.

“Okay, good.” Y/N nodded as she closed her laptop. “Because we initially thought about having it here, we don’t have room for 80 people.”

“Well, this is perfect,” Mary said, smiling.

“It is. I can’t wait to show Dean,” Y/N smiled, before standing up and walking into the kitchen to finish preparing dinner.

“Anything I can help with?” Mary asked, leaning against the kitchen island.

“Nope, almost done,” Y/N replied, smiling over at her. “John, there’s beer in the fridge. Mary, wine?”

“I’ll take care of that,” John insisted, taking a beer out before finding the wine Mary liked on the small rack.

In the garage, Dean pulled the Impala up and cut the engine, turning off the car. He sighed tiredly as he leaned his head back against the seat, closing his eyes. It had been a long day, and the last thing he had wanted was to go into work on a Saturday, but being the boss, he was needed. He hated that he couldn’t stay home and help Y/N out with whatever she needed and enjoy time with her, but at least he was back in time to have dinner with her and his parents.

Getting out of the Impala, he locked it and walked around the back of the car to the other side. He tried to slide past his work bench, but rammed right into it, cursing as the edge dug into him, sending a few tools flying to the floor.

“Fuck,” he groaned, closing his eyes.

He blinked a few times, crouching down and picking up the screwdrivers that fell on the floor. As he did, something that had fallen behind the bench caught his eye. He reached behind it, taking out the notebook that had gotten stuck. Opening it, he flipped through the pages, seeing old calculations and notes of his, knowing that they weren't of use now. Suddenly, a page fell out, falling at his feet, with unfamiliar writing on it.

“What…” he mumbled to himself as he held it up, reading over the page properly.

His face fell as he read over the words that were no doubt written by Lisa, recognizing her handwriting now that he could see it properly. She must have used this from his office in their house when she couldn’t find anything else.

Stubborn. Too close to his family. Doesn’t earn enough. Just a mechanic.

It was a pros and cons list. She had made reasons for whether she should stay with him or not. The only thing written on the pros list was that he was a good father figure to Ben. However, the cons outweighed everything as he read over them again. He didn’t earn enough. His job wasn’t good enough. And if that was true then that meant he wasn’t good enough. He knew he shouldn’t care what it said considering he was with Y/N now, and they were engaged, with his relationship with Lisa practically ancient history by now. Yet he couldn’t stop reading over her words.

Crushing the paper into a ball and shoving into his pocket, he shut the notebook, tossing it in the paper basket kept next to the bench. He walked over to the door that led into the house, closing it behind him and walked down the hallway, hearing Y/N’s infectious laugh coming from the living room.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, seeing him enter the room.

“Hey,” he said, walking over to her, kissing her softly as he leaned down. He went over to his parents and hugged them before sitting down next to her.

“How was work?” she asked, smiling at him.

“Tiring,” he replied, huffing slightly, but offered her a smile. “But good. Glad to be home though.”

“Well, I was telling your parents, but I can tell you now,” she started, sharing a smile with John and Mary before she turned back to him. “I found a venue for the wedding.”

“That’s great, sweetheart,” he said, smiling softly as he kissed her again.

Y/N frowned slightly as he pulled away, sensing something wasn’t right with him, but she let it go for now. She hoped that he was just tired from work and that was it.

“Do you want to hear about it?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course,” he replied, too quickly. “Actually, I’m gonna wash up and why don’t you tell me over dinner.”

“Sure,” she agreed, nodding. “Well, food’s ready. We were just waiting on you.”

“Okay,” he muttered, standing up and walking out of the room.

“Does he seem a little off to you?” John questioned, frowning as he looked between Mary and Y/N.

“Something must’ve happened at work,” Y/N sighed, worriedly.

“Well, let’s just hope it’s nothing too serious,” Mary added, her expression matching Y/N’s.

Dean returned after freshening up, just as Y/N, Mary and John walked over to the dining table. They all sat down, each of them taking turns to put food on their plate. They ate in silence, worried eyes glancing between each other and discreetly looking at Dean as he ate. Sensing they needed a distraction first, John and Mary exchanged looks, before she cleared her throat.

“So, we actually have something for both of you,” Mary announced, looking at John, giving him a firm nod.

The elder Winchester took out a small, folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket, and slid it across the wooden table to his son. Dean frowned curiously and Y/N’s eyebrows furrowed, as she looked over Dean’s shoulder. He opened it, both of their eyes widening as they saw what it was. He opened and closed his mouth several times, unable to speak.

“That’s from us, and after we spoke to your mom and dad, we decided to split things between us, so there’s should be coming to you soon,” Mary told Y/N, smiling.

“Mary…” Y/N trailed off, shaking her head as she was still in shock. “We can’t accept this cheque-”

“Guys, this is insane,” Dean finally said, frowning as he looked up at his parents.

“I thought you’d say that, but-” Mary started but Dean cut her off.

“We’re not taking it, mom,” he interrupted, his frustration getting the better of him.

“Dean,” Mary sighed, thinking about how to make him understand. “We’ve been sitting on this money since before you started renovating this place. We tried to hint then too, but you didn’t take it, wanting to do everything yourself. Had you never had this place we would’ve given it to you on your wedding day to put towards a house, just like we did with Sam and Eileen. Considering you have this place now, the least we can do is help with the wedding.”

“You’re really sure about this?” Y/N asked, completely unsure if this was a good idea. Clearly Dean wasn’t accepting this.

“Absolutely,” Mary replied, smiling. “And don’t even think about paying it back, it’s for both of you to use, however you want. Put it towards the wedding, if there’s anything left, put it towards the honeymoon, or savings… whatever you want.”

Dean shook his head, the frown still evident on his face. “So what? This is a pity offer?”

“No,” Mary gasped, eyes wide with shock. “Of course not, Dean. How could you think we would do that?”

He scoffed, turning to glare at Y/N. “I don’t make enough money, right? That’s what this is. You asked them for money.”

Y/N looked at him, unable to get over her shock at the way he was reacting. “What? No. No! Dean, how can you think that?”

Dean chuckled bitterly. He looked down at his food, suddenly losing his appetite. He quickly stood up, pushing up his sleeves as he pushed his chair out. Y/N felt her heart banging repeatedly against her ribcage, as she watched him get up.

“We’re not taking this. No fucking way,” he hissed, pushing the cheque back across the surface.

“Dean,” John’s voice bellowed around the room, staring up at his son with a stern expression.

“Dean, we just wanted to contribute, that’s all, honey,” Mary reasoned, trying to calm the situation. “If this is how you feel, then it’s put to bed. Let’s just enjoy dinner.”

“Yeah, damn right that’s how I feel,” he snapped, as he turned to face her.

“I’m sor-” Mary started but he cut her off again, turning to Y/N.

“Do you think I can’t do this for us?” he asked, his voice eerily calm but the shakiness gave away how upset he was, as he faced Y/N.

Her eyes narrowed in upset as she stood up too, looking at him. “Of course I think you can do this, Dean. How could you even question that?”

“Because it’s exactly what it looks like, Y/N!” he yelled. He scoffed and shook his head, scrubbing a hand down his face. “What I do isn’t good enough. I’m not good enough.”

She visibly flinched; her eyes widened as she looked at him. She had never seen him this upset. She felt tears brim her bottom lids, threatening to fall. John and Mary watched on in horror, unable to understand what was going on with their son.

“What?” she scoffed, shaking her head. “How could you possibly think that?”

“Because it’s true,” he muttered, looking away from her, his jaw clenching tight. “And if you haven’t already, you’ll realize it one day.”

“Dean,” she breathed, a tear rolling down her face as she saw how dejected he looked.

“That’s not true.”

“If you don’t want this anymore, Y/N, there were easier ways to tell me,” he spat, turning away from her and storming off.

“Dean, stop! What’s gotten into you?” she yelled, following behind him.

“I can’t fucking do this right now,” he scoffed.

Mary and John were hot on their heels too as they stopped in the entrance, watching Dean pick up his keys and make his way to the door.

“Dean, where are you going?” Y/N asked, choking as a wave of sadness washed over her.

“I can’t be here,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I need to think.”

“Think about what?” Her voice was cracking, the tears finally falling down her face. Everything was falling apart in the span of a few minutes, and she had no idea why. Why was he acting like this?

“I don’t know, Y/N, okay?” he snapped, turning to pin her with a scowl. “I just… I gotta get outta here.” Gesturing around him, he turned to open the door.

His mind was cloudy with all the doubts he was having at that moment. He needed a drink and some time to cool off. He walked through the threshold, not looking back at Y/N.

“Dean, wait-” she started but the door slamming as he left, cut her off.

Y/N felt knots in her stomach, tightening and moving into her chest. She tried to breathe normally but started to feel as if her throat was closing off, cutting off her air supply. Tears stung her eyes as they continued to flow down her face. She began hyperventilating, her hands cupping over her mouth as she began to cry. Her body shook with the force of her sobs. Her legs felt like jelly, like any minute she would collapse and wouldn’t be able to get up again.

“Oh, honey,” Mary whispered, as she wrapped her arms around Y/N tightly.

“I don’t… k-know what I did to-to make him think-” she stuttered, stopping as she sobbed.

“You didn’t do anything, sweetie. I just… There's something wrong. I didn’t think he would act like this. At most, he would be annoyed and then eventually give in. But this?” Mary tried to figure out what was going on, but shook her head as she couldn’t think of what could be wrong with her son.

“I’ll go talk to him,” John offered.

“No, he just needs space to process whatever’s going on in his head,” Y/N sniffled, pulling away from Mary as she looked between them. “You can head home if you want to. I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” John stated, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, and hugging her as she was between him and Mary. “Everything’s gonna be okay, don’t you worry.”

The silence made her mind wander off into irrational directions. Had she done something to make Dean this upset? Had she said anything to make him think he wasn’t good enough? She loved him so much, and she wanted nothing more than to be his wife, but if she had really made him feel that way, then she was the one who wasn’t good enough for him.

She managed to convince John and Mary that she was fine enough for them to leave, insisting they take some food home with them. They said their goodbyes, and Y/N headed upstairs, completely exhausted after the whirlwind evening. As she got changed in the walk-in closet, she felt more tears sting her eyes. They rolled down her face, but she didn’t make a move to wipe them away as she changed.

She just wanted Dean to come home so that they could talk and forget about what just happened.

Dean drove around town for a while, the words he said to Y/N plaguing his mind. He was just so angry after finding that list from Lisa, it just came out in the worst way possible. He reached the regular bar that he would go to with the guys, needing at least one drink to calm himself down.

Sitting down at the bar, he ordered a whiskey double, neat, and gulped the first one down in one shot. Asking for another, he nursed it as he thought about everything that had happened in the past half hour. His anger had dissolved quickly and had morphed into fear. Fear at what he would or wouldn’t find when he got home. As a Queen song played in the background from the jukebox, he quickly realized how much it was mirroring the situation they had found themselves in.

Love of my life, you’ve hurt me

You’ve broken my heart, and now you leave me

Love of my life, can’t you see?

Bring it back, bring it back

Don’t take it away from me

Because you don’t know

What it means to me

He realized how he had overreacted, that his parents, just being the people that they are, would just give the cheque to them. He shouldn’t have taken his anger out on them and Y/N. Hell, she didn’t even know what he was upset about. That considered, he knew that he wasn’t good enough for her, especially now. Taking out his phone, he looked at the screen and saw a few missed calls from her and a few texts. Gulping the lump in his throat, he opened the messages and felt his heart sink into his stomach as he read over them. There were three, and as he read the words over again, he felt tears prick his eyes.

She had nothing to be sorry for. He was the asshole that let things blow out of proportion, all because he let one stupid note get to him. Determined to make it home and fix everything, Dean paid for his drink and left the bar.

He hoped like hell that he hadn’t ruined his whole future in one evening.

Dean entered through the door from the garage. Not a single light was on as he walked further in, seeing the kitchen, dining and living area completely dark. Taking a deep breath, he turned towards the stairs and began the climb to the second floor, knowing he had to face whatever came next, even if he was fearing it so much that his stomach was in knots.

He walked towards their bedroom and stood at the threshold, his heart breaking at what he saw. Only one of the bedside lamps was on, providing the only light in the room. Y/N was lying on the bed, her back to the door, her knees drawn up as she laid in the foetal position, her shoulders shaking. She was sobbing quietly, the sounds low but somehow so loud in the quiet room. With every cry, a piece of his heart felt like it was shattering into smaller shards.

He moved slowly towards the bed, sitting down on the edge, watching as her head slowly turned. Her eyes were red and puffy, wet from the tears she had shed. She looked at him, sitting up slowly, their eyes meeting. Suddenly, she launched herself into him, wrapping her arms around him tightly, crying into the crook of his neck. He felt tears prick his eyes, letting a few escape as he felt his sadness wash over him.

“Y/N,” he choked out. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I never should’ve said the things that I did, I shouldn’t have reacted that way.”

“I was so scared,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I’m sorry for whatever I did, please, just tell me.”

“Sweetheart,” he whispered, pulling her away and cupping her face, looking her deep in the eyes. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m so sorry.”

“How could you ever doubt how I feel about you?” she asked, her voice croaky from how much she had cried. “How could you ever think you’re not good enough for me? What did I do to make you think that?”

“You didn’t do anything, sweetheart. I promise. This was… this was all me and my crap,” he said, shaking his head.

“What did I do to make you doubt me?” she cried, fresh tears making tracks down her face.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” he reassured her, frantically moving towards her, grasping her shoulders. “You didn’t do anything, okay? This… this is the reason I overreacted.”

She frowned as he handed her the paper, but opened the folded page and read over the words written on there. She was confused, knowing she didn’t write this, her eyebrows lifting in realization as she read over the “pros” column.

“I’ll kill her,” she growled, looking up at him with a ferocity in her eyes. “I’ll… God, I wanna hurt her!”

Y/N stood up from the bed and paced the floor, her whole body shaking with how angry she was at that moment. She couldn’t believe that something like this could come between them, showing that Lisa still had a grip on Dean’s mind.

“She doesn’t get to do this to you anymore, Dean!” she yelled, holding up the piece of paper. “She doesn’t get to ruin our future!”

He scoffed a chuckle, shaking her head. “I nearly let her.”

“So, don’t,” Y/N said, walking up to him. She cupped his face in her hands, making him look up at her as he sat on the bed. “You are good enough for me. Every part of you. I love you for exactly who you are, and if I have to spend the rest of our lives together trying to convince you that you’re my one, my everything, that there’s not a doubt in my mind that you’re so right for me, then I’ll do it.”

Wrapping her arms around him, his forehead rested against her chest as she laid her cheek on his head. She held him tightly, neither of them wanting to move away from the other.

“I’m sorry, I’m an idiot,” he muttered, his hands on her hips, feeling the material of his black t-shirt she was wearing against his skin. “I just saw that cheque, and I thought about that list, and I just overreacted.”

“No, you’re not,” she stated, kissing the top of his head. “You were upset.”

“That’s no excuse,” he whispered, hating himself for taking it out on her. “You didn’t deserve that. I uh… I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to end this-”

“Dean, stop,” she choked out, pressing her forehead to his, combing her hand through his hair.

He shook his head, lifting it to look into her eyes. “I’ve been… I’ve been thinking about this even before finding that list. I’m always scared I’m gonna say or do something to give you a reason to leave me. If that happened… I know I wouldn’t survive it.”

Y/N frustratedly wiped her tears away, looking around the room for her sweats. Finding them, she roughly pulled them on and slipped on her sneakers, putting on a light shirt over the black t-shirt she was wearing. Dean watched her; confusion riddled his face as she moved around the room.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing?” he asked, his voice wavering as his mind started to make up horrific scenarios.

“Come with me,” she said, firmly, a determined look on her face as she held her hand out.

“Where are we-” he started but she cut him off, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from the bed.

“Shut up,” she muttered, scowling as she dragged him behind her, down the stairs and out of the house, just as she picked up her keys from the table at the entrance.

Knowing he couldn’t argue when she looked so distressed, he followed behind her as they made their way to her car.

“Get in,” she demanded, harshly.

He was shaking, wondering what the hell had come over her suddenly but again did as he was told without saying anything that would possibly make her angrier than he already had. He couldn’t tell what he had done, but she was upset with him.

Dean looked on in silence as Y/N backed out and turned the car, the tires screeching as she sped off down the road. He gulped as she drove, his mind trying to talk itself out of thinking she was possibly going to kill him and dump his body somewhere. However, he also found her anger strangely arousing. They drove ten minutes before he recognized that she wasn’t going to do that, and that she had turned down a very familiar street. They drove past several houses before she stopped, pulling the car up to the curb and cutting the engine.

“Get out,” she ordered, leaving the keys in the ignition and opening the driver’s side door, slamming it shut as she stood on the road.

He got out, closing the passenger door and following behind her, looking around the dark street and quickly realizing they were standing in front of her previous rental house, just across from his and Lisa’s, all that time ago. She pulled at his jacket and he stumbled, straightening when she pulled him to stand in a specific spot next to the curb. She looked up at him, standing directly in front of him as the deep glare, her eyes riddled with sadness, was still on her face.

“Do you remember what happened here?” she asked, her eyes welling with unshed tears.

Frowning, he shook his head as he was unable to think straight, his mind clouded by the sudden change in her demeanour. “Y/N, I-”

“Do you remember what happened here, Dean?” she repeated, her voice cracking slightly as she raised it.

He sighed, glancing between the two houses, giving her a curt nod. “Of course I do.”

“Tell me,” she ordered, not breaking her eye contact with him, the scowl still present.

“It’s…” he cleared his throat, pushing down the lump in his throat as he looked at her. “It’s where I helped you with your stuff. It’s… it’s where we met.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, a tear rolling down her face as she nodded slowly. “And it’s also where my life changed forever. Even if I didn’t know it at the time.”

“Y/N,” he breathed, trying to reach for her hand but she pulled away, making his heart sink. She had never done that. Never.

“Do you remember what was happening in that house?” she asked, the tears flowing freely down her face as she looked across the street.

He looked over, breathing heavily, his breath shaky as he exhaled but said nothing. He remembered all too well.

“You thought you were happy. You thought everything was fine… but you were losing yourself because of-” she choked, shaking her head, overwhelmed as she thought about those early days and her first impressions of his relationship with Lisa. “Because of her, and you didn’t even know it.”

He was silent, unable to say anything or even try to deny it, because he knew it was true. Turning his head to Y/N, he saw her looking up at him, the glare finally disappearing, her eyes holding a determined look despite the tears.

“And now, you could lose yourself because of her again if you don’t stop yourself from thinking that she's right,” she stated, stepping closer to him. “She was never right and she never will be. She didn’t know you like I do. She didn’t love you like I do. She’s gone from our lives… so don’t bring her back into it by going back into the shell she put you in.”

His jaw clenched as he shut his eyes, squeezing them tight as a tear slipped down his right cheek. Lifting her hand, she cupped his cheek and brushed it away with her thumb, stroking his jaw. She pushed up on her tiptoes, capturing his plump lips between hers, kissing him hard and desperately. She needed him to see there was nothing there to leave him over.

Pulling away from the kiss but keeping close, she looked at him as her thumbs stroked along his cheeks. “You’ll never give me a reason to leave you. Not now, not ever.”

“You got a lot of confidence in me, sweetheart,” he muttered, a slight scoff in his tone.

She smiled softly, knowing that if he couldn’t see it himself, she’d spend forever showing him he was worth more than he gave himself credit for.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I do.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against hers.

“Don’t be,” she whispered back, her eyes closing, content to be close to him again. “We’re going to be okay.”

“You think so?” he asked, his voice laced with hope, as he lifted his head to look at her properly.

“I know so,” she replied, a soft smile on her face. “You’re not getting rid of me any time soon, Winchester.”

“You still wanna marry me after that?” he asked, a small smile tugging at his lips.

“Yes,” she said, simply as she pushed herself closer into him. “You can’t let something she thought affect you because it’s not true. It doesn’t matter what she thinks. So… promise me, right now, that you’re going to let this go. All that matters is you and me.”

Looking deep into her eyes, he remembered everything they had been through together, and thought about all the amazing things they still had to experience. He wasn’t going to let someone from his past ruin his future.

“I promise,” he said, firmly.

She smiled up at him, moving in and capturing his lips, kissing him passionately. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart,” he whispered. “So fucking much.”

“Let’s go home,” she whispered back, stroking her hand lightly over the back of his head. “I think I need to show you just how much I love you.”

He hummed against her lips, kissing her softly. “Yes, please.”

She laughed, biting her lip. “I scared you a little, didn’t I?”

“Well, when I didn’t think about how you could be plotting to kill me,” he joked, smirking as she chuckled, “it was kinda hot to see you pissed off.”

She shook her head, rolling her eyes as she giggled. “You’re crazy.”

“Hey,” he called out, pulling her closer, his hands sliding down to her hips. “I can’t help the fact that it turned me on, sweetheart. It’s just the magic of you.”

She felt her cheeks heat up, pressing her lips together as she tried not to smile. “Let’s go before someone sees us out here.”

Hand in hand, they walked back to the car, separating as they got in. He glanced back at the old house once more, feeling an enormous weight lift off him as he looked at the place that held a lot of pain before Y/N came along. That weight had resurfaced when he saw that list that Lisa had made, but as she always did, Y/N had been there to stop him from losing his way. She was the one who built him back up to the person that he used to be, the one who reignited his spirit. He had known early on how special she was, and she proved time and time again that she was there to stay.

And now, he was never going to lose sight of that. He let Lisa get into his head again, but for the final time, he was putting an end to that. He had someone by his side who wanted to be with him forever, and he was never going to forget that ever again.

Y/N sat at the dining table the next morning, her coffee in hand, all of her plans for the wedding spread out in front of her. She smiled as she sent a few texts out to the girls, asking them if they were available the next weekend to start looking for her wedding dress. As she was looking at photos, she flinched slightly, feeling Dean’s lips against her neck, moving down to her exposed shoulder, the sleeve of his t-shirt she was wearing having slipped down.

“Oh my god, Dean, don’t look!” she yelled, hiding her screen with her hands.

He chuckled, shaking his head as he sat down beside her. “Babe, you haven’t even found a dress yet. I’m pretty sure it’s okay if I can see those.”

“I know, but I don’t want you to see in case I do find something like this,” she explained, smiling sheepishly. “I want to surprise you.”

He smiled as he leaned forward, kissing her softly. “You’re gonna knock me out no matter what dress you pick. Just sayin’.”

“Even if I look like a frosted cupcake?” she teased, giggling.

“Well, yeah,” he agreed, his lips hovering close to hers. “‘Cause then you’ll look good enough to eat.”

“That’s so cheesy,” she snorted, laughing.

“You love it,” he grinned, chuckling along with her.

She pressed her lips to his, kissing him lightly but he had other plans, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her off her chair, onto his lap. She moaned softly against his lips as his fingers ran lightly over her bare thighs, the t-shirt riding up as she straddled him.

“So…” she pulled away from the kiss, reaching for the cheque on the table and showing it to him. “What do we want to do with this?”

“We use it,” he replied, nodding confidently as he smirked. “If there’s any left, we save it for the future, including anything your parents are sending.”

She beamed, brushing her knuckles against his cheek. “Sounds good.”

As they sat there together, having breakfast and coffee as they talked about the plans, Dean was leaving all the negative thoughts behind with the confidence that the woman sitting next to him wasn’t going anywhere. With the promises already made the previous night, he smiled as he thought about all the new ones he would make on the day she finally became his wife.

On the day the next chapter of their lives started.

A chapter he couldn’t wait to explore with Y/N by his side.

-x-

Tags: @deanwanddamons​ // @winchest09​ // @downanddirtydean​ // @jensengirl83​ // @wonder-cole​ // @that-one-gay-girl​ // @whatareyousearchingfordean​ // @flamencodiva​ // @danneelsmain​ // @ellewritesfix05​ // @roonyxx​ // @akshi8278​ //@hobby27​ // @michellethetvaddict​ // @spngirl05​ // @kyjey​ // @440mxs-wife​ // @stoneyggirl​ // @stoneyggirl2​​ // @deanswaywardgirl​​ // @redbarn1995​​ // @marianita195​ // @babypink224221​​ // @deans-baby-momma​​ // @parinarain​​ // @thoughts-and-funnies​​ // @mandalou29​​ // @jerkbitchidjitassbutt​​ // @supernatural-love14​​ // @vicmc624​​ // @prettyboyswow​​ // @lunarmoon8​​ // @irmcpar​​ // @compresshischest09​​ // @weepingwillowphoenix​​ // @xlynnbbyx​​ // @whiskey-infused-dreams​​ // @perpetualabsurdity​​ // @verytoadpapersoul​​ // @pink-sparkly-witch​​ //

[sour--disposition]

Little Limbs

This is inspired by an idea from the lovely @simp4sidemen, I hope I did your idea justice 🥰

-

Simon Minter x Fem!Reader

-

please check my masterlist to see if requests are open

The ring sat heavy on your finger. It had, after all, only been 2 months since Simon had presented you with the promise ring. 

After a beautiful date at a rooftop bar by the Thames, he’d pulled out a black velvet box, opened it and slid it across the table to you. “Is this what I think it is?”, you asked hesitantly.

“No”, Simon chuckled at the nervousness in your voice. “No, it’s not that. It’s a promise ring”, he told you, gently, nervously.

“Oh”, you were speechless, something that didn't usually happen around Simon, people usually couldn't get a word in edgeways around the two of you.

“It’s a promise that one day it will be what you thought it was. Its a promise that I’ll love you for as long as you’ll keep me. It’s a promise of me, to you, for you”, he said, fingers fidgeting over the box lid as his eyes held yours.

Tears sprung to your eyes and you quickly reached up to stop their flow. “Shit, I didn't mean to make you cry”, Simon panicked.

“No, no!”, you rushed out. “It’s not like that, that was just really beautiful and so is the ring and so was tonight. You just caught me really off guard”, you told him through your watery laugh. Simon instantly relaxed into his chair, relieved.

“Can I?”, he asked, nodding towards your hand. You nodded, and he reached over, picking up your right hand and slipping the ring onto your ring finger. “Perfect fit”, he smiled.

“Everything okay?”, Simon’s voice asked, pulling you out of your trance. You looked up to him, smiling softly.

“Of course”, you told him simply. “Can I wear this today?”, you asked, holding up one of his black Sidemen Clothing hoodies.

“Of course”, he repeated, a smirk dancing across his face. You huffed at him, throwing your night shirt, the shirt Simon had taken off when he got into bed the night before, at him as you got dressed. “You can’t throw my own clothes at me as an insult, Y/N. It just doesn't work like that”, Simon laughed.

“It just doesn’t work like that”, you mocked in a high pitched, whiny voice as you pulled your head through the neck of the hoodie, careful not to get any make up on it. Simon laughed at you, picking up one of the countless decorative cushions you'd plagued his room with, hurling it at your thigh. “Truce!”, you called, throwing your hands in the air to surrender, already knowing you wouldn’t win in a play-fight with Mr. Lanky-Long-Limbs in the corner.

You followed Simon out of the bedroom, down to the parking garage of the apartment building and into the car. “Are you sure we’re a team, yeah?”, you asked him.

Simon had roped you in to the Sidemen’s second parenting video. There was no host this time, just 4 teams trying not to kill a plastic, robotic doll in the streets of London. You’d agreed, of course, but only if you’d be paired with Simon. You’d throw the baby at JJ’s head in the first hour, guaranteed, and you weren’t here to lose.

“Yeah, and if not, I’ll just swap with whoever you’ve ended up paired up with”, Simon smiled simply, turning his eyes back to the road. The rest of the car journey was a comfortable silence, filled only by the sounds of your joint Spotify playlist running through the speakers. Simon’s hand rested on your thigh as he drove through the streets of London, occasionally mindlessly drumming along with the music as you waited in traffic.

Once you’d pulled up to Vik’s apartment, Simon parked the car. He squeezed your thigh softly before unbuckling his seatbelt. “Are you sure you’re okay?”, he asked you, voice tinged with worry.

“Yeah, I promise, Si. I just have a lot on my mind at the moment”, you told him honestly. His worry didn't subside, if anything it only got worse.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?”, he took ahold of your hand, his fingers running over the band resting on your finger. “You know I’m always gonna be here for you?”.

“I know, Si. I promise I’m okay. We can talk about it later, yeah?”, you told him, twisting your fingers to wrap them around his and hold his hand properly. “I love you”, you reminded him, leaning over to kiss him. “Now, come on, let’s go get a baby”.

Two hours later, you and Simon were strolling through a baby shop, looking for an outfit for your new child. “Y/N! Look how cute this is!”, Simon yelped, holding onto a tiny grey onesie that had ‘I love my Daddy’ written across it. “I think Petunia needs this”, he told you seriously.

“No, Petunia needs an outfit fit for a little lady. She wouldn’t be caught dead in grey, Simon. Gosh, do you not know your own daughter!”, you laughed, leading him over to the aisle that held clothes better suited to the size of your doll.

“Is it something you ever think about?”, Simon asked you, sifting through the little pink dresses in front of him. “Us, I mean... Having one”.

“I do, yeah”, you smiled up at him, leaning into his side. “Do you?”, you asked him, chewing on your lip. Simon’s brow furrowed.

“I do. I know you’ll make a great mum. I mean, if you can look after me and JJ drunk, you can do anything. I just... I don’t think I’d be a good dad”, he sighed, hand stilling on the flowery dresses.

“Why?”, you asked him, tilting your head up to look at him. “The fact that you worry you wouldn’t be a good father already shows that you care. Nobody knows how to be a parent until they have to, Si”, you told him softly, slipping your arm around his waist to rest your hand on his hip. “I think you’d make a great dad”, you smiled.

“Really?”, he asked you, eyes lighting up as he looked down to your face.

“Yeah, I mean look how much effort you put into youtube and streaming and fan interaction. That alone shows you can commit to looking after something. Yeah, its different than like... a whole baby... but in the last 9 years, you’ve never given up on it”.

Simon didn’t say anything after that, just wrapped his arms around you and held you close to his chest, dropping a kiss to the top of your head, before you moved on to find Petunia some shoes.

“Y/N, she won’t stop crying”, Simon stressed. The two of you were finished in the baby shop, getting ready to make your way over to the tills to pay, when Petunia decided that it was time for all hell to break loose. “What do I do?”, he panicked.

“You go outside with her and feed her and I’ll get this”, you told him, handing the nappy bag containing all of Petunia’s belongings over to Simon.

-

You were quite sure that the footage of yours, Simon’s and Petunia’s day would be positively, mind-bogglingly boring. It turns out that the one pair that actually function as a couple 24/7 make a really good team, who’d have guessed it?

Back at Vik’s apartment, the student cards were sorted out so you could see how well you’d all performed in parenting. It was no surprise when Harry and JJ’s baby came last, given that it returned to Vik’s missing an arm, a few toes and an eye. Ethan and Vik came next, somehow managing to shut the baby off 20 minutes into their day so there was barely any information to even report back. Josh and Tobi’s baby had survived, albeit a bit hungry and tired. But Petunia... yours and Simon’s little lady had come out on top.

“Oh, I’m so proud of Petunia”, you and Simon had gushed, like real proud parents. You showed the boys the picture of Simon asleep on the sofa, Petunia’s hand grasped tightly in yours.

“You didn’t have to show them that”, he huffed, nudging your side.

As Vik retired the babies to a spare-room, the rest of the guys set to ordering take out. “Who wants a drink?”, Vik asked as he walked back into the living room and kitchen area. A chorus followed, all reeling off several alcoholic beverages.

“I’ll just have lemonade”, you told him with a smile. After managing to convince Vik that, yes, you were sure you only wanted lemonade, you went and sat back down with Simon.

“I got you something today”, you told him once all the guys had got their drinks and found a seat. “Here”, you told him, handing him over a small gift box.

“What’s this for?”, Simon asked, turning the box over gently in his hands.

“Just open it”, you told him.

Simon pulled the lid off of the box. His jaw dropped. “You’re...”, he trailed off.

Inside the box lay two positive pregnancy tests and the tiny onesie he’d shown you earlier on in the day.

“I found out last week, I didn’t want to tell you until I’d been to the doctors and checked properly”, you told him.

“Oi, what is it?”, JJ asked loudly. Simon’s only response was to hold up the little outfit to show the guys. “I’m gonna be an uncle?”, JJ asked, a lot softer this time. His face had split into a grin, as had the rest of the guys.

“Y/N’s pregnant”, Simon said softly, as if he was trying to convince himself. He looked over at you, and then down to the baggy fabric of his hoodie over your stomach. “Can I?”, he asked.

“Of course. It’s your baby, Si”, you chuckled happily. He reached out a hand, laying it gently over your side. “Are you okay?”, you asked him gently.

“Vik, can we borrow the balcony?”, Simon asked, turning his head to face his friend but not letting his hand leave your body. Vik nodded quickly, pointing in the rough direction of the door since he already knew that you and Simon knew the way.

“Should I not have told you in front of everyone?”, you asked quietly. Instead of saying anything, though, Simon dropped down to his knees in front of you, letting his large hands cradle your sides. He dropped a kiss to stomach, just below your bellybutton, and you instantly felt better.

“Hello, little one. Daddy loves you, too”.