#you can tell I got tired towards the end ASHDJ

[smthaboutuss]

Quick comic about Rosie and Vox lol… I keep thinking about their possible dynamic it’s so interesting to me? They have very different goals (good business and cannibalism)

[bagels-and-seagulls]

i wish you would write a fic where matteo finds out that david can tie cherry stems with his tongue and has a lot of feelings about it ashdj sorry this is a bit random/stupid

this isn’t stupid at all!! i’ve got a little idea for it 🍒🍒

“What are you doing?” Amira asks with an eyebrow raised and her hand out in front of her, leaning over the diner table to stare at Sam, who was moving her mouth around like she got a popcorn kernel stuck in the back of her teeth and looking up at the ceiling like she was concentrating hard on something. They were out getting ice cream, Amira, Sam, Jonas, Matteo, and David, after a long day at the lake with the backs of their necks and the bridges of their noses turning a little bit pink and feeling a little too tired to stay out much longer but a little too young to go back home when the sun hadn’t even set. Kiki and Hanna were supposed to meet them here at some point, but they promised them that hours ago at this point. And they were all just trying to find ways to kill time until they inevitably had to part ways with some sad smiles and stilted goodbyes, even though they had already made plans to see each other tomorrow when it was high noon and their youth kicked in again. 

“Twyin ta tie da stem,” Sam mumbles out in reply, and Matteo looks at Amira from the corner of his eye to see if she could translate that for him. Turns out she couldn’t. 

“To what now?” Amira asks with a huff and takes a long sip of her milkshake, hearing the slurping at the end, not even picking up the whip cream anymore, but Amira wasn’t about to give up on the last half sip. 

Sam groans and pulls something out of her mouth like it offended her. “Trying to tie the stem!” She exclaims and waves a cherry stem around over the center of the table like they all had bad hearing. 

Matteo eyes it wearily from where he’s smushed leaning up on his crossed elbows and slouching into the wall with Amira on his right. “Why?” He asks and licks the back of his spoon to get some of the fudge off of it. David watches him from across the table with his cheeks still a bit red from when he was laughing on the sad and splashing Matteo when he tried to dunk him underwater, and Matteo feels his ankle press up against his, hot and demanding a little attention. 

“It means you’re a good kisser,” Sam says like it was obvious. 

“I’ve never heard that,” Jonas says with his mouth full of sprinkles, and Matteo hums along, staring into the bottom of his cup and wishing there was just a little bit more somewhere in there. 

Sam rolls her eyes in the same tone she says boys with a huff when Abdi wont’ leave her alone. “You take the cherry stem, and if you can tie it with your tongue, it means you’re good with, you know,” she explains and licks her ice cream cone slowly and dramatically as if there was anyone here who wanted to see that, and Amira scrunches up her nose and calls her gross because there really wasn’t. 

“I’ll try,” Jonas says quickly as if Sam’s explanation was a sort of challenge to his character and superior kissing skills, and takes the cherry that was at the bottom of his cup, and shoves it in his mouth without much finesse. Sam seems to take this has a challenge too because she sticks hers back between her teeth ever after her failed attempt, and both of them are sitting next to each other looking like a pair of idiots, trying to see if they could get the stem in a little knot like that meant anything about their kissing skills. Event though, Matteo has, regrettably, heard from both of their partners that they were doing just fine in that department. 

Amira nudges him with her elbow, and he perks up just enough to look over at her. “What? You’re not going to try?” She asks with a little bit of mirth and a glint in her eye that Matteo didn’t really get. 

He shrugs. “No cherry,” he answers and shows his empty cup without too much effort and without the usual cherry swimming at the bottom.

“Lame,” she responds with a little bit of a tease and turns towards David with a raised eyebrow. “What about you?” She asks with a little shake to her head, and Matteo knows immediately that David was going to accept, feeling personally invited into this little shenanigan. 

David lifts and eyebrow like he was considering it, though they both knew he was sold the second Amira turned towards him, and looks into his cup. He pulls out the cherry covered in chocolate at the bottom and bites off the fruit. “Only if you do,” he says back to her with a smirk and his lips a little red from the juice of the squished cherry between his teeth and a smear of chocolate on his bottom lip and a little under that Matteo kind of wanted to lick off, if they were in more private company that was. 

“Oh, you’re on,” Amira says with a giggle and fishes her cherry from the bottom of her glass with her spoon. 

Matteo sits there in the corner for a minute, watching his friends trying desperately to get the little fruit stalk to twist around in their mouths, all looking like somewhere between fools and clowns but feeling like they were all teenagers with nothing to worry about and time to kill, and somewhere in the back of Matteo’s mind, he wished that were true, that he could just bottle up with feeling right hear of playfulness, and joy, and boundless opportunities and put it in a little jar that he could open up on his gloomy day. He looks back over to David feeling a little giddy after watching Jonas huff out something and dig out a piece of stem from between his teeth. And David is staring back at him with his head tilted to the side and something tugging on the corner of his mouth like he could read Matteo’s mind and like he also wanted to distract him a little bit at the same time. 

What? Matteo mouths at him, leaning further on his elbows to get a little bit closer and looking between David and the rest of his friends, who don’t seem to notice with their enthusiasm to try Sam’s trick like there was a divider between them and the rest of table. Matteo feels David’s shin against him and thinks about how hot it is as David shows his teeth with a perfectly tied cherry stem bit between. 

Matteo blinks once and then twice and leans in a little closer still as David’s face spreads into a wide smirk and he wiggles the stem between his two front teeth like it was a trophy, and he wanted Matteo to congratulate him. 

“Wow, no way, man!” Jonas yells once he seems to pay attention to the rest of the table and smacks David on the arm, effectively ruining whatever little thing that was going on between him and Matteo, though he could still feel the press of his calf against his own. It was making the back of Matteo’s neck start to sweat, and he hoped people thought his changing color was because he forgot sunblock that morning. 

“Beginner’s luck,” Sam huffs and throws hers on the table in defeat and crosses his arms over her chest. David winks over at her as he laughs and holds his stem between his fingers, and she giggles and looks away. And oh boy, does Matteo get that feeling. 

“Could you do it again?” Jonas asks with a little too much enthusiasm, and David shrugs, looking at Matteo out the corner of his eye briefly with something a little bit dark and telling Matteo that he wants him to pay attention to him, like he was eve rnot. “Here, try this one!” Jonas says and throws the one he was using over at David. 

“No, dude,” David says like he was disgusted and shakes his head. “That’s been in your mouth.” 

“Don’t seem to mind with Matteo,” Jonas bites back with a grin. 

And David doesn’t skip a beat as he leans over Sam a bit to say, “Want to see how much I really don’t mind?” He asks with a leer and a smile all the same. 

“Gross,” Jonas says, scrunching up his face even though he’s laughing like he doesn’t think that at all, and David mirrors it, bright and happy. And Matteo feels too young and in love to be stuck in this booth when it felt like a million degrees out with David’s leg sticking to his. 

“Here,” Amira says and holds out her glass. “I have another one.” 

David looks over to Matteo with a little something playing behind his eyes as he takes the cherry off the stem and sticks the stem in his mouth. Everyone seems to get eerily quiet as they watch David, but David is just watching Matteo, looking him right in the eyes and smiling just a little bit. And Matteo feels like he really must be reading his mind then, feeling all that mushy and sweet shit that Matteo seems to be consumed with inside out when David is around, like he was some walking cavity. It honestly didn’t look like he was doing anything at all, at least not moving his mouth enough to actually get the knot in the stem, but the way David’s eyes were just a little hooded and the way his ears were still pink from earlier was making Matteo lean low in the booth and press his ankle hard into the side of David’s. 

After another couple of second, David stick his fingers in his mouth, still looking at Matteo, and pulls out a stem with a tight knot right in the middle like he had practiced this before for this very moment, this very test of his skills. Jonas and Sam start squeaking and squealing about it, bumping and gripping at David’s shoulder to get his attention and ask him how he did it, and David smiles all gums, winks, knowing full well what it would do, at Matteo, who just sinks lower into the booth, and turns towards Jonas and Sam. 

He starts answering their hyper questions as his fingers sneak down the edge of the table to run over the edge of Matteo’s elbow where they were leaned up against the table, creating little paths of heat that tingled up his arms and made something a little icy sink in his spine. Matteo presses into the feeling and grips at his fingers once it all becomes a little too much to handle. 

Amira scoffs at him, and he tells her to shut up.