#I really connect to that so their relationship isn’t solely on romance

[clownsuu]

I hope this question doesn't make you uncomfortable (extremely sorry if it does) but do you see howdy and wally as a couple? Your art of them is very sweet and I love it a lot

[looks at all my tagged ship art of them and then back at u]

yes HDGDGSH-

#Funfact #i am #not good at making art of people bonding in a relationship/potential relationship way- #Unless it’s hella vague or in a very joking matter #You can blame my aro/ace’ity for that KDHGD #And also my extreme crippling anxiety that makes me almost mute- #Iv only been able to answer asks and post and such cause I’m so used to doing it for years now #But when people try to talk to me I get extremely nervous and anxious it’s very crippling #So I have like- zero communication skills and when it comes to ship stuff I can only do a few things JDHHDDH #Also it’s another reason why I make them both aro/ace #I really connect to that so their relationship isn’t solely on romance #It’s also just them bonding from day to day things

[nadia-zahra]

Deep Dive on Mike and his Gay Feelings

So a lot of people speculate when exactly Mike realizes he has romantic feelings for Will, and I’m jumping onto the snowball train. Lemme explain:

For the show’s pitch on the characters, Mike was insecure ab not having a girlfriend. From the start, the duffers wanted his character to struggle with not being heteronormative. All of the characters are type casted as being different in their own ways. But this let’s us know that Mike thinks having a gf is what’s going to make him normal. Lucas and Dustin didn’t have anything ab girlfriends in their description, so why Mike? Well, it implies that the duffers have always had the intentions of making him queer (ima gay mike truther personally), but I don’t think this means since s1 he knows he likes Will.

Season 1 shows us Mike and Will have a deeper connection compared to the rest of the party. Mike keeps a binder of his drawings, puts himself and the rest of the party in danger in order to find Will, trusts El solely because she says she can help find him, and was going to kill himself at the quarry because he had lost all hope in finding Will. I don’t think Mike starts developing romantic feelings for him in this season because tbf he’s 12 and it is really traumatic to have your bff of 5 year’s old disappear. But I will say that this behavior does show just how deeply he cares for Will and that his feelings definitely have some romantic undertones (again gonna mention the binder of Will’s pictures and drawings all over basement).

His relationship with El s1 also highlights how mike is queer. El is the only girl he’s ever became friends with that understands what it’s like to be an outsider. He’s in the mindset of normal=girlfriend, and since El is the only girl in his life he thinks they’re supposed to date. Even tho they are depicted as a blossoming romance, both Mike and El’s behavior isn’t romantic in the slightest. It more so reads as mike thinking him and El need to date because he’s a boy and she’s a girl, and El just going along with it because she doesn’t know better. The clearest piece of evidence that mike doesn’t have romantic feelings towards El is when discussing El living in the Wheeler house in 1x8. Mike says El would be like Nancy’s sister, but wouldn’t be Mike’s. This means that his feelings for her are platonic because he views Nancy and El as a sibling dynamic, but thinks the next step in their relationship is dating because of heteronormativity. If he didn’t view her platonically, he would’ve said El could become friends with Nancy or wouldn’t have mentioned Nancy at all.

Season 2 pre-snowball is when things pick up a bit more with byler because now we actually see how Mike and Will interact with each other. Will said Mike was the only one treating him the same. So before the ud, Mike was super affectionate and protective and was basically acting like a boyfriend? Cool, good to know. 2x2 specifically gives us the most insight into how they’re dynamic works. The whole Halloween episode let’s us know Mike thinks of Will and their friendship differently than the rest of the party’s. Him getting pissy with only Will for not talking to him ab max joining (even tho lucas or Dustin didn’t either), him immediately searching for Will after he’d left Will’s side for not even 3 minutes and then dragging Will back to his place to be alone, and, finally, the crazy together scene. Again, I don’t think the crazy together scene is when Mike realizes he has feelings for Will. This is when WE, the viewers, know Mike has feelings for him. That scene was the nail in the coffin in confirming these two clearly have romantic feelings. But for Mike, it was a turning point in their relationship. It confirms that they are their own individual team separate from the party. This scene probably had mike feeling all kinds of butterflies and just didn’t know why they were happening…yet 😏

His relationship with El s2, again, shows us that his feelings for her are platonic and also not has strong compared to Will’s. He doesn’t believe El is dead…but he also doesn’t search after her once, doesn’t bring up how he saw her out his window to the party (only to Will might I add), and, besides calling her everyday, Mike basically acts like she doesn’t exist. This is a complete contrast with Will’s disappearance!! This is the girl Mike supposedly has a crush on, the only girl he’s ever had a deep connection with—this behavior doesn’t add up with his character…unless he doesn’t feel as strongly towards El as he does Will. And the way Mike behaves versus how El behaves in their reunion is telling ab how they see each other too. It’s obvious that El feels romantically towards him now (she’s looking at him with heart eyes and is a little breathless), but he reads as platonic. Like if it had been Dustin or Lucas, he would’ve said and reacted the exact same way. He didn’t overreact (in my books at least) when finding out hop was hiding her either. Just really platonic and would’ve also started punching and screaming at hopper if it was anyone in that room.

THE SNOW BALL *duh duh DUHHHH*

I need to preface this beforehand: Mike didn’t think El was going to show up!! His reactions and responses of what’s to come are without El in mind.

Ok back to Mike realizing he like likes Will

When Dustin arrives late to the dance we see Lucas and Max together (presumably as dates) and Mike and Will…so he thought during the whole dance it was just going to be him, Will, and Dustin together once lumax started doing their own thing.

But then this random girl comes up and asked Will if he wants to dance and Mike pushes Will to say yes. Just noticed only Mike and Will turn to her when she comes up, Dustin doesn’t. this happens for two reasons 1) Dustin is heartbroken ab lumax so ofc he isn’t watching this happen 2) Mike isn’t heartbroken by lumax, and is also thinking “why tf is this girl coming up to Will?”. So when this random ass girl asks Will for a dance and Will looks at him for an answer, the only thing he thinks is to say yes because that’s what a good NORMAL friend would do.

Yet, even though he’s the one that told Will to say yes, he automatically starts sulking. He looks just like Dustin: heartbroken from jealousy.

but this is his face when he realizes what his jealousy is from:

YEAH THIS IS THE MOMENT HE REALIZES HE LIKES WILL

Sitting there, just processing his feelings, Mike realizes that his jealous insecurity of someday being replaced by Will’s future girlfriend is because Mike doesn’t want him have one and, instead, wants Will to be with him.

His face gives it all away!! He looks in shock. Eyes wide, mouth opened, and staring at nothing because he’s so deep in thought. He looks completely dumbfounded, like “I like like Will holy shit” is on repeat while he thinks about every interaction they’ve ever had. And this shocked face was intentional!! They stay on him with this face for almost 10 seconds before El walks in. This wasn’t just a quick cut to him looking bored (which is what it looks like if your just casually watching). They wouldn’t have stayed on him for so long if we weren’t supposed to notice his facial expression!

You might be thinking, why now? How does this girl coming up to Will and making Mike jealous get him to this realization? After all, he was super jealous when he thought Will liked Max, so why not back at the crazy together scene?

Heres the difference between him getting jealous over Max and Will versus the rando and Will: he saw unrequited feelings between Will and Max (she didn’t like him back), but not with Will and the rando (he says yes). Plus the crazy together scene leads Mike to believe their bond is stronger than anything else, but Will leaving him for a girl makes him realize it isn’t.

And this realization doesn’t help him mentally— it just feeds into his “I’m not normal” insecurity. Not to mention he thinks Will doesn’t love him back or even could. So guess who walks in and is able to save him from his gay crisis…

YUPPPP THE ONE AND ONLY EL

Even the mileven kiss proves mike knows he likes Will. Mike wasn’t originally supposed to kiss her— he duffers didn’t even want it, Millie did. She literally asked for it because she thought that shippers would be pissed (she’s the shipper) if it didn’t happen. The duffers don’t give a fuck ab what shippers want! Never have! And even tho it was her begging for it, I don’t think they would allow a 13 year old to make major decisions like this without it working with their vision. However…it does. They realized the kiss actually strengthens Mike pushing away Will, so that’s why they lit the green light on that impromptu kiss. The kiss is just Mike belly flopping head first into his new (fake) personality.

Mike begins his “I don’t like like Will, I’m normal 😃” phase that continues through s3 and s4. Except that phase takes a turn after he realizes he’s in love with Will in the season 3 finale, but that’s for another byler essay.

#byler #byler proof #byler theory #everything points to byler #byler nation #byler brainrot #byler for the win #byler is real #will byers #mike wheeler #mike is gay #mike wheeler i know what you are #mike x will #will x mike #stranger things #st2 rewatch #st1 rewatch

[erithel]

In my own personal opinion I just don’t think romance should have been in Voltron period.

They butchered Allure/Lance, a ship that could have gone somewhere (even if it wasn’t everyone’s personal fav) if the writers actually took the time to develop the relationship earlier in the series, but they decided not to because of plot/story reasons.

Then Lotar/Allure, again, a ship that could have been interesting and took the story into a whole other route, but in the end the writers decided against because because plot/story reasons (and wanting to keep the galra the big bad evil guys)

To me it’s clear the writers were way more focused on getting the story plot out as quick as possible then anything else which could be seen as a whole other controversy.

So I’m actually glad they didn’t listen to the fans and add in ‘klance’ or any other fan loved ship because the writers would probably botch that up too and get the fans upset then no one would be happy. Because to me having a certain ship in place of another isn’t going to ‘fix’ the poorly written romance or the quality of it.

I’m not trying to say you can’t have a romance in a plot/action driven story or whatever but I am saying that the writers that worked on Voltron clearly didn’t know how to include it properly.

You have a lot of good points here that I agree with, which I want to address before getting to my biggest gripe with a romance subplot in VLD.

First and foremost - I agree.

In terms of relationship focus, I think the stronger story would have relied on building the team as a team. A found family. Building up the relationships between all the paladins without throwing in a romance just for the sake of romance.

I think this angle would have made it even more compelling if they still went ahead with the Lotor/Allura subplot - because then Allura could have had people to talk to about it. She wouldn't have been alone trying to sort out all the feelings she was having that hit her out of nowhere.

I think that the caliber of romance that is in VLD canon is the same as can be found in most action movies. And by that I mean, it's just there because the main dude has to "get the girl" in the end. It's not really founded in anything, and it doesn't really add anything to the overall show or movie.

On this same note, I believe this is why so many people actually thought Klance could actually happen. Because they included moments that made a keen-eyed viewer pause and think "wait a minute. Why did they lay so heavily into that?" or "why did they linger on that moment" or even "bro, if my strictly platonic friend called me 'the future' I would start to wonder if they had feelings for me."

I've definitely said it before, but it's worth repeating. People want to see romantic relationships that are founded in something. They want to see romance that makes sense because the characters share something special.

We should be past the point of throwing in a romantic subplot for the sole purpose of simply having one in there.

But - going off on another point you made - this cannot happen if the focus is not on the characters and their relationships to each other. You can't add in any kind of special connection if the only goal is to have Plot and Action.

And here's my biggest gripe with romance in VLD.

They had one they could have built on. It was right there, and as far as I know, it was okay with everyone.

So why in the fuck wasn't the romantic subplot Hunk and Shay?

Seriously. They were adorable, and they actually had something between them. And then it just...never went anywhere. Shay even came back in a later season, and...nothing.

I would have loved to see Hunk and Shay as the romance story of VLD, but I guess a lot of that has to do with how the creative teams viewed him as "not a main character" enough. :(

#asks #vld #erithel's hot takes

[spectrum-color]

One of the most frustrating things about Fitz is his relationship to fatherhood. He is obsessed with having a child. When Patience warns him that the method Molly is using for contraception doesn’t actually work, he just thinks about how tragic it is that she’s even trying to prevent pregnancy in the first place. He is stuck on a domestic fantasy where he marries and has a family with her and has no plan about how to make this actually work. Of course she ends up pregnant, and he watches her and the baby in dreams and talks about going to them and marrying her, but then she marries Burrich and he chooses to pretend he’s dead and not to be in his daughters life at all rather than face the reality that Molly ended up with someone else (I don’t believe for one moment that it was actually selfless or for their safety considering that he went back to the much riskier Buckkeep where he would be surrounded by people who knew him before.)

He takes in Hap, but clearly doesn’t really know what to do with him and doesn’t give him much in the way of guidance or planning for his future until Hap brings it up himself. He just kind of floats along in his depression cabin. When he’s dragged back to Buckkeep, he’s initially resentful of and a total dick to Dutiful (his bio son unbeknownst to anyone but him and the Fool.) It takes the poor kid basically forcing a relationship for them to have any kind of positive interactions. Later on, he gets his memories and feelings back, and it seems like he’s going to make a good effort to finally connect with Nettle and help take care of Molly and Burrichs sons now that they’ve lost their dad. Instead, it seems he mostly pays attention to the kids for the sole purpose of impressing Molly and then loses interest once he marries her. His life with her ends up being about reliving his teenage romance rather than becoming part of her family. He has a distant relationship with Nettle and none of note with his stepsons.

Then comes Bee, a bio child he can raise from birth (something he always fixated on.) She doesn’t turn out like he expected. She is very slow to grow and develop, and people around them think she may have disabilities. Fitz is blatantly disappointed by her and leaves her care to Molly since she isn’t the kind of child he wanted. It isn’t until Molly dies and he has no choice that he makes any kind of effort to bond with Bee, and he still flounders in the way that only a man raised by people who had no idea what they were doing can. When she’s missing, he tries to hide her journals from Beloved not because he’s reluctant to share her but because he’s ashamed of what kind of father he was and afraid of what it will say about him.

Despite how critical I’ve been here, I think this all makes sense. Fitz was a deeply lonely kid who was traumatized by his parents abandonment, and he wanted a family of his own to fill that void. He doesn’t have the emotional skills or maturity (he continues acting like a teen well into adulthood) to actually parent effectively though, so he ends up falling vastly short of the life he’s convinced he can have.

#realm of the elderlings #rote #fitzchivalry farseer #bee farseer #mishap badgerlock #nettle farseer #dutiful farseer #I love fitz so much but he’s such a disaster #he’s always fucking up and ruining things #and there is no area he’s worse in than parenting #it’s even worse than his attempts at romantic relationships

[writing-for-life]

Let's go choose violence:

3, 8, 9, 25 for The Sandman :3c

Rubs hands gleefully…

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr 

Of course not screenshotting as everyone’s entitled to their opinion, so this is just a thing *I* find hard to understand/get my head around:

“Neil Gaiman ran out of ideas, and that’s why he killed off Morpheus.”

I mean, you could say he wanted to conclude his arc, and with that I agree. And thank fuck he did, because if Murphy were still alive, we would need to suffer the horrible takes that DC has foisted upon us ever since. But it is so completely incomprehensible to me when I read that there was no sign that Morpheus would off himself before World’s End or TKO. That it came out of nowhere, that it made the whole thing completely depressing and insufferable and sends a "bad" message. 

It all was right there, from the start. You can’t read "The Sound of her Wings" and not see that he’s absolutely haunted by the narrative, and how much comfort he finds in her. And you don’t need to read the whole thing and then just see it in hindsight (it's something I hear/read quite often). It’s clear as day if you are willing to go down the line of thinking that the Endless aren’t people but concepts. I personally think that’s where people can trip up. And I even get it--of course we want to humanise them because we are human. But they are not. They are mirrors and foils that are supposed to make us think about our own humanity (and we recognise it in them, but that still doesn’t make them human--they just show us human traits and what this mortal coil is about. Carry it and abandon it in equal measures).

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about 

Everyone apart from me of course 😂

"Hob Gadling is any shape or form the personification of hope, and his sole purpose is to (squee! UwU) save Murphy from his bleak existence".

No he ain’t. Hope is Hope, and she is a little girl (blows a raspberry right in your face). If Hob''s anything, he is humanity in a nutshell: ugly, self-serving, opportunist, but also feeling, caring and redeemable. But especially the first part is harder to woobify.

Did I also mention I have this take that making Dream's relationship to Hob all about romance and sex forgets about the importance of friendship, and why it's actually so important for the plot? Plus, that we have a tendency to erase male friendship and hence lean into toxic masculinity if we make every glance and every touch and every close emotional bond about: "Oh, they want to fuck?", and that's decidedly *not* progressive? Yeah, about that... (ship them, it's fine, no problem whatsoever, just be aware it's not the *only* take, and I will stick my neck out now and say: it won't be canon).

9. worst part of canon

That’s a tricky one because I can make sense of pretty much everything to be fair, but if I had to choose, it’s that Morpheus’ failed relationship to Nada created ripples that basically doomed every black woman connected to his arc (not *all* black women, I think that’s actually a misinterpretation, as is that Morpheus is racist, which he conceptually can't be). And as soon as he’s dead, we get token Gwen who isn’t doomed by the narrative anymore. And said Gwen *really* is a token black woman with no true agency of her own—her entire purpose is to serve the redemption of the slave trader. And that Neil actually confirmed this was *intentional* in The Sandman Companion. I get why he made that narrative choice, but to me, it still looks bad. I have hopes though he moved on from that take and we don’t get to see it in the show (the signs are there, so fingers crossed).

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

Ties in with 3: That The Sandman should have a different, “more hopeful” ending. 

But quite a few others: 

You *should* write fanfics about XYZ because there’s not enough of it. 

You *should* elevate supporting characters to main characters because they are ABC.

You *shouldn’t* focus so much on the main character because he’s a guy/male-presenting (I mean, he’s the protagonist, so there’s that).

You *should* ship m/m because it makes problematic dynamics less problematic. 

You *shouldn’t* ship m/f because it’s heteronormative. My favourite: Johanna Constantine is bi, you *shouldn’t* ship her with a guy, because again: Heteronormative. Erm, I hate to break it to people (and speaking from experience): That’s how being bi works, and we like m, f and nb equally? And we happen to want sex with m, f and nb? And we pretty much have blinkers on when it comes to falling in love with a *person*, or what we find hot/sexually arousing? And I swear if I read shit like that once more, I’ll get heteronormative out of sheer spite and will smite people.

You *should* or *shouldn't* ship. Both fine. And/but there's certainly more to The Sandman than blorbofication and allosexualisation of everything.

So yeah, pretty much anything that involves a *should*. You can do whatever the fuck you like as long as you don’t lose your ability to critically engage with it. Plus, the space has to be welcoming for everyone, and that’s sometimes hard for creators and people who don’s serve/like the main flavour. And therein lies the problem, because critical engagement doesn’t always happen, and a lot of good stuff disappears in amongst the noise…

#asks answered #asks #today I choose violence #will it tag this? of course I will >>> #the sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #hob gadling #hope beautiful lost nebula #nada sandman

[yesterdayscake]

so my little prediction for the gala is that many people will be really thinking about karl as a person who they had a relationship or connection to in some way, and others will be thinking of favourite chanel pieces. not sure if there will be too many people attending who care or know about karl lagerfield’s reputation among the masses (or at least the parts of it I am connected to), but vogue has already been putting out little snippets with anna talking about her friend karl, so I think it’s going to be over all quite respectful to the man; who for all his cuntish ways and chanel’s horrific legacy, could certainly design a dress.

in terms of design I really don’t love everything he did, his ideas of beauty, desirability and romance don’t mesh with mine much at all. so his work thankfully isn’t as present in my psyche as others have been; but there were certainly moments.

it will be interesting to see how many designers and attendees have their finger on the zeitgeist and whether the event can continue to hold our attention. the fashion industry as a whole seems not to want to change as it must, despite the seismic shifts that have been happening since 2020 especially, but even going back to 2008ish and the rise of street fashion photography and the way that really made the elite fashion houses scramble to gain control of trends again

there was a very interesting post this morning from [at] kardashian_kolloquium on instagram talking about how the way the met gala is seen on a general level changed after anna wintour crawled into bed with the kardashian family and I have to agree.

whether it’s solely due to the kardashians, or whether that is a moment where vogue and anna decided to involve influencers in their publicity campaigns in general I don’t know

but it’s certainly true that how the met gala is seen by the public (many of whom don’t know much about the met museum’s costume institute, nor the way the event is actually run) has very much shifted over the past couple lot years. and the event, which used to be considered just one fundraiser event among many in new york alone has played to that audience to a point of ridiculousness. I don’t think that’s sustainable at all, especially with the way other red carpets have been getting very excessive lately as well, and I know that last year with the unfortunate and honestly callous choice of theme for the moment there were a lot less people excited about it compared to previous years. and this year there is karl who isn’t a lot of people’s favourite to say the least (esp when issey miyake and vivienne westwood also past since lagerfield did) and next year will probably be queen related, so we’ll see

anyway this is more words than I’ve ever put on here but just felt like jotting these thots down

#met gala 2023 #karl lagerfeld #anna wintour #vogue #costume institute

[pinkfey]

explain about tauriel? I’m not remembering anything 😅

yes ofc!!

so in lotr women are frail, subservient, and are supposed to hold the children while the men die at war. that’s nothing new. galadriel and eowyn are the exceptions to this rule, with eowyn actively fighting quite literally every man in her life (save for merry) for her right to be on the battlefield. ultimately she does it with literally no man’s blessing because all men in the films want her safe and believe her “better than” the horror of war; essentially she is their delicate flower in need of protecting.

she serves as our Token Woman and catalyst for some liberal feminism. i don’t really have to explain much further the lenses through which women are viewed in lotr are misogynistic, but at the very least eowyn is complex. her relationships with men are not her becoming an accessory to them and the story devotes a pretty great deal of time to showcasing what’s going on in her head. and i love that.

enter tauriel!! she’s cool!! she’s badass!! she does flips and kicks on par with legolas!! she’s everything we wanted!! a woman efficiently fighting from the get-go!! no need for saving!!

except that’s not really tauriel. yes, she is an exquisite fighter and i do love the choreography of her fight scenes, but that is not why she’s there. like eowyn, tauriel’s sole connections in the films are men: thranduil, legolas, and kili. but unlike eowyn, tauriel exists to accessorize them. any possible backstory of hers gets chalked up to being a silvan elf and the single other scene of her expressing her thoughts is used to show kili developing feelings for her.

tauriel is there to show thranduil’s high standards for his son, to show legolas’ bitterness over her unrequited love, to provide the viewers with an unearned heterosexual love story between her and kili, and (and i don’t see this brought up much) to watch over children. when kili is injured and bard is off in jail, tauriel is there to take care of the children. because of course she is. women are caretakers after all.

so!! in summary!! though i really really wish tauriel was more than just a cheap faux feminist ploy, she just isn’t that. despite tauriel being what most people wanted out of eowyn—sharp and quick on her feet and efficient—she falls short of everything eowyn rose above!! aka men!! tauriel is a weak plot device, and from just her introductory scene it’s made clear she will not be written with any care, where she swoops in to save the man who will fall in love with her and the camera lingers on her in a way it does not do with bilbo or thorin. it’s supposed to be a nod to the audience, a cue to applaud her for breaking such a gender norm, while also informing you of the stale romance that is to come.

so there u have it!! everything i’ve noticed about the absolutely terrible writing of tauriel ♡

#i didn’t mean to write paragraphs abt this i’m so sorry anon fjshdbfk #also this isn’t me pitting two bad bitches against one another this is me using eowyn as a good example of a female character who was writte #—with love at the very least. tauriel could never be as effective as eowyn was because she was never written with care for women in mind #letters #anonymous #lotr liveblog #<- just bc this was kinda epic and belongs here idk

[daisyspraggins]

Interesting Facts I Bet You By no means Knew About Dating

Seniors LLC is the safest and the most protective on-line dating for seniors within the United States and we use an holistic strategy within the safest method that can assist you (single seniors) find love of your retirement life once more in your group. Let's find out what indicators you're sending, and hopefully figuring out the reply will allow you to send the ones you meant to send! Marcus Smart, like most celebrities, prefers to maintain his personal and love life private, so check again often as we'll continue so as to add new dating news and rumors to this page. For this reason it's necessary to back up even probably the most explicit words with signs, to make clear to the opposite individual what you need and who you're, all without unnecessarily freaking them out or coming throughout as somebody you are not. It may be lots tougher to be upfront when you don't truly know what you need, or whether this individual is definitely that into you. I do not know! Should I?

Please let us know if you find any details about Jordan Calloway that is out of date. Answer this concern in all honesty to study why it might possibly be so very onerous for sites like craigslist private you actually to discover a date. Having a meeting with a pal or household is at all times a good way to end the date without making נערות ליווי בתל אביב והמרכז it forced. Mention them in the first date or two, then get specific in a few months. Moreover, each tree building and dating are then constantly primarily based on similar distance-based approaches. But then came the web and the large world of dating apps, which made finding the right match (and keeping it on the hush) simpler. Finding out who is dating Nathan MacKinnon is comparatively straightforward, but protecting observe of his flings, hookups, and breakups is more difficult. This merciless tactic is perpetrated by exes who don't desire you to forget about them.

I say what I think they want to listen to. For example, for those who inform somebody you are into them, they could think you are a desperate and clingy mess, entirely too forward, or simply the type of person who indiscriminately hits on everybody as if it's a pure numbers recreation. I say I'm not on the lookout for something severe, so I don't seem desperate. Yes. I'm not having them going round calling me determined. Yes. It was superior! She was thought to be a prodigy among youngsters, having begun drawing at the age of four. Long-distance relationships may work if you end up more severe or are solely fascinated by having some thrilling chat periods. A helicopter journey of town would work for me. On the a centesimal floor is an remark deck the place guests can look out over town. We’ll additionally go over Noah’s biography, details, and web value, among different issues. I go over and say hi. Immediately, so as to make sure they know you are over it! Do you wish to know what the longer term holds for you in the connection division? How else do you get out of a bad early relationship?

Jeremy Lin’s girlfriends: He has had no less than one earlier relationship. Someone inside the car fired a handgun a number of instances, and the victim was shot a minimum of once. I prefer somebody who is submissive, however not too much. I might want someone that knows learn how to have enjoyable. Yes, but not because it's fun - I do it because it is polite. Yes, but it turned out they have been bad for me. Slightly romance shouldn't be a nasty thing. I would really feel justified in notifying mutual acquaintances that they are a foul egg. They aren't afraid of the groom’s monetary issues or his age. Some guys are far too romantic. I love tall guys. I like a bearded man! I might desire a handy man. Billy Currington will not be dating anyone as of 2022. Billy is a 48-year-outdated man. Emily Skinner isn't dating anybody as of 2022. Emily is a 19-12 months-old lady. The 19-12 months-previous tv actor has had a profitable profession. The 18-yr-outdated American TikTok sensation has had a profitable career. However, it's one thing to be totally frank with a associate who you already know loves or likes and respects you, when you're completely sure that they are the one for you.

[famoustyphooncloud]

Ten Dating Issues And how To unravel Them

I want a distinct dating app. I'm dating round, however no one seriously. Online dating is the right solution. Any letters they key in would reach the recipient only in its translated form. Both Chlipala and Johnson agree that open and welcoming physique language is vital to being approachable. I prefer to be the one being romanced. The biggest part of a relationship is spending time with the opposite person, which is why enjoying one another’s company is so vital. I work all the time. “Take a special way to work or to the gym, strive a brand new restaurant or coffee shop nearby, or be a part of a meetup around an activity you love,” she says. Try to accept it. The same will also be true of services where the software program just isn't distributed in any respect and is therefore neither free nor nonfree; but step one is to ditch all the proprietary apps and JavaScript these companies try to get folks to make use of.

On the earth of on-line dating, it may be easy to cover behind a screen and neglect that there are actual folks on the opposite facet. I'm on the messier aspect. Police let most Capitol rioters walk away. I would like to go for a stroll. I want to go to a live performance. He’d previously appeared in movies like Beerfest and The Dukes of Hazzard. I don't need to be like a celebrity couple. Will you two be Samwell Tarly and Gilly or are you the last word energy couple like Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo? Is your relationship along with your vital different like that of John Snow and Ygritte, or is extra like Ned and Catelyn Stark's? I wish to have one sometime. Car part longevity isn't a brand new thought; in actual fact, car manufacturers affix warranties on new vehicles and trucks that inform you the way lengthy sure parts are assured for, however one necessary a part of your automobile often goes unnoticed with regards to auto part longevity: the tires.

They're raised and taught to assume and act independently. Well not so quick, there is the entire "opposites attract" factor to consider. Touching someone you don't know nicely is never a good idea because it makes them uncomfortable, and it's an invasion of personal house. נערות ליווי בצפון  There's a good probability I'd blow up their DMs. Some we see repeatedly and others we could solely bump into once over the course of our entire lives. Take this quiz to seek out out, and when you are finished, ask your important other to take it to see what he/she's going to find yourself with. So whether or not you're interested in confidence, ears, freckles or something solely different, take our quiz to search out out what naturally draws you to other people. We went out for a drink. Instead, the choice to textual content or name to ask another person out on a date is a person one, and relies on context. Before you head out on another terrible date or start viewing your current relationship as a flaming dumpster fireplace, ensure you're on the lookout for the correct particular person. You by no means know just who you would possibly meet and how much connections you will type out on the planet.

People who are appropriate on a soul stage develop a robust connection. Take this quiz and discover out what kind of man makes probably the most sense for you on a soul degree! However, true chemistry only happens when there may be an actual soul connection. When two souls match, the magic really happens. Please let us know if you discover any information about Stephen James Hendry that is out of date. But we are going to allow you to in on just a little secret: In order for you to look more engaging to other people, we suggest exuding some confidence. I'm a bit romantic. I'm all types of romantic. There are various ranges of attraction and all kinds of how that individuals can get alongside. However, these things take time and sometimes you possibly can wait for years to your perfect companion to come back by. Some of them are searching for youthful women for serious relationship even marriage to reside their remaining years fortunately.

[glamrockerfredbear]

Yooo, I got an interesting one! What sort of people do you think the Glamrock Classics (ie: Freddy, Chica, Bonnie and Foxy) are attracted to? And what sort of things about a person would cause them to start crushing? Thank you! 😊

Chica likes Gordon Ramsey

𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 ☆ 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐲, 𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 ☆ 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐞, ✭ 𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐅𝐨𝐱𝐲 ✭, 𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 ♡ 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚 in what would make them kick their feet up and giggle

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆　　 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 ☆ 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐲

Okay. Freddy isn’t attracted to people easily and this can come as a shock to most people. Freddy likes people yes, but to be attracted to them he’s sorta picky. But hey, who isn’t picky with love?

Freddy loves people who are attracted to him as well. He hates the whole song and dance of ‘will they, won’t they?’ and he’d rather just know how you really feel about him. He never really understood the benefits of secrecy in crushes and romance, since isn’t a relationship suppose to be clear and honest? Just be very clear that you like him in return and if you don’t return his feelings, he obviously won’t pursue you. Mix signals will just make him frustrated.

He enjoys having anyone by his side. To be honest, he kind of wants a clingy partner. Someone who will hold onto him and pepper his cheek with kisses and praise him with compliments about how handsome and strong he looks. It’s his guilty pleasure…

He wants someone shorter than him. He likes to feel needed and protective over his loved ones, and it’s not really hard to be shorter than him since he IS 7 feet tall.

Freddy needs someone who will kinda be like his best friend in a relationship. Of course, he knows the difference between friendship and relationship but he feels far more comfortable with someone who will also treat him like a close friend/best friend as well in a relationship. He hasn’t truly been quite well adapted to “relationships” a whole, so he would feel way more comfortable with someone who won’t treat him as someone above others, just as someone special to them as they are to him.

No PDA except hand holding and longing looks. He doesn’t like showing any type of romantic affection in front of guests since he believes it’s incredibly unprofessional. Unless it’s to comfort or reassure you, then he’ll make an exception.

Freddy is easily swayed by a lot of factors. Including but not limited to: Your smile, your frown, your eyes, your cries, your laughter, your hands holding his, your kisses, your hugs, your-

He doesn’t understand…sexual desires. Like he understands the part of why people do it but he doesn’t really think of it highly at all. He doesn’t want the highest point of your relationship to be something physical since Freddy believes relationships aren’t solely based on physical touches. He wants you to know you’re connection with him is more than physical love.

His love language is definitely quality time. He loves to spend time alone solely with you doing whatever you like. Talking, painting, sleeping, cuddling, helping you learn the guitar or letting you rant about your likes, Freddy’s just down bad lmfao.

Like down BAD he’ll actually argue with the managers and supervisors about it being too chilly in his room for a person.

“Freddy you’ll overheat.”

“ >:( your mom”

He wants you to get matching fake tattoos with him and he will not care if it stains. You’re his and he’s yours.

Definitely would want to get the carnival “I’m he’s” and “I’m she’s” shirts unironically. You have to wear it too. Do it for him.

He’s so madly in love with you. Like I genuinely think Freddy’s pupils form into hearts when he sees you. How is that fucking possible? I don’t know! He bends the laws of reality for you. Freddy would tank a train for you because you’re his one and only Superstar, and he won’t lose you to anyone or anything.

𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 ☆ 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐞

He’s a little picky just a Freddy. A lot less picky tbh since he’s way too chill of a guy to be picky.

He’s really flexible with relationships too! Bonnie understands people are different and he really doesn’t require a lot of attention, either. He doesn’t have a set preference for people, just wishes they will bowl with him and will eat ramen noodles with him when asked.

Just one thing: He’s kinda…sensitive. Like he won’t cry if you make a sarcastic joke but be kinda considerate of your words because Bonnie struggles with insecurities about not really being a performing animatronic like the others. Not to say he’s completely in touch with his feelings but he’s rather have a s/o who would be sympathetic and empathetic towards his struggles.

Not a lot of PDA from Bonnie. He doesn’t really view it as necessary for a relationship to function; more like a little extra treat for the whole cake. But he will give it if asked.

His love language is giving material gifts. So the man will and has brought you flowers and chocolates and you are that annoying couple on Valentine’s Day. You can’t get out of gifts with Bonnie, it’s impossible. He always knows what you want, too. He’s like psychic.

“Bonnie how the fuck did you know I needed new headphones?”

“ :) your eyes glimmer with need.”

“Okay Shakespeare chill tf out lmfao”

Bonnie acts like a lovable jerk. He will make smart little comments and jokes about literally anything whether or not it’s a minor issue. One time you were arguing with a STAFF bot over whether or not you were an employee and this douchebag boyfriend was in the back giggling with Monty, not even trying to stick up for you. All in good fun though as he won’t make comments or jokes when you’re genuinely upset.

If you yank his ear he will yank your hair back so just, keep that in mind.

For sexual things, Bonnie really doesn’t give a shit. Whatever it means to you, it will mean the exact same thing to him. I’m telling you, this man is extremely flexible in relationships. Anything you say, goes.

Bonnie would be the type of boyfriend to see you storm out of a restaurant, angry as hell, and storm out with you without asking questions. He’s definitely got your back.

He hates bunny puns. Don’t do bunny puns unless you want him to wake you up with some loud drums. He has a lot of pent up agitation against guests doing bunny puns and you’re his target for most of his pranks so >:) watch it.

Have I mentioned Bonnie loves pranks? Him and Monty are like the most annoying guys with pranks. It’ll never go to flat out embarrassing you and making you get traumatized, but he will have the fart cushion and shock gum on his person at all times. You have picked a dangerous man to love, friend.

Bonnie’s pretty into technology besides his love for bowling and pranks. It just kinda makes him feel safe and grounded. He likes to call it a “safe hobby” in where anytime Bonnie begins to panic or feel distressed he begins to read up on circuits, or how fans work or why he needs fans. It makes him understand his body better and helps him grow a bigger layer of appreciation for how he works.

So please, respect his hobbies and interests. Bonnie absolutely takes them seriously, and he feels as if you should too. And he will definitely ask you to share your own hobbies. Bonding over hobbies is something Bonnie feels is extremely personal to him; it makes him feel vulnerable without opening his chest cavity for you to see all his technical faults. It allows him to feel comfortable.

MATCHING BOWLING COUPLE BLOUSES LMFAOOO

✭ 𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐅𝐨𝐱𝐲 ✭

You gotta reciprocate Foxy’s undying physical affection. Ain’t no way outta that, chief. Once you become Foxy’s, you’re his. Meaning you will be asked by him to be around him mostly, and to accompany him even on the most shortest of breaks. He wants your person on him, touching or not it doesn’t matter. You’re his is what matters!

Wants someone to respect his privacy. A lot of the times when he’s giving you affection, Foxy will tire himself out and have to take a few minutes to an hour for himself at Pirate Cove. As much as he cuddles you and smooches you, he loves his little hideout and will only allow you inside a handful of times. It’s his personal space, yknow? And it doesn’t have any cameras either so it makes him feel at peace.

Foxy can be a little…jealous. He doesn’t punch people or do something gross like treat you like property (Foxy thinks that’s immoral and nasty for anyone to do!) but he does sort of do little cunning things to help his jealousy. That little sneaky guy is always plotting, always thinking ahead of anyone else when he starts getting jealous. And it doesn’t help his programmer added lying as one of his best traits! Why does Foxy need to be such a good liar?

An employee is too close with you? Oh, would you be a dear and follow Foxy to Parts and Service? He desperately needs an update :(. Or another excuse you’ll hear is how some rude kid stuck a fork onto Foxy’s tail and needs his precious pirate to help since he won’t let no one near him.

Lazy. Be lazy with him. Be sluggish. He adores lazy cuddling and lovebug cuddles on the comfort of Pirate Coves comfy fuzzy blue couch. He dislikes wasting so much energy outside of birthday parties and work days since it makes him drain so fast and so quickly. He only likes to run when he absolutely has to, so don’t worry about him being a busy bee like Freddy.

Foxy struggles with being his identity in the gang. Of course, he’s happy to reunite with his old gang but…What is his place? Who is he? Why is here and what is his purpose? You have to be someone who can relate or try to understand his emotions because Foxy has a big tendency to not confront them and just let them drain him and make him feel like an outsider. Create a space for Foxy to really speak about his emotions, and he’ll return the favor for you.

Sexual actions make him feel kinda…conflicted. On one hand, lots of physical affection and proclamations of love. But on the other, it’s a lot of work. The poor pirate can’t make up his mind.

He’s loud and super annoying. The type of boyfriend to proudly proclaim how you’re so wonderful and create a whole PowerPoint for the kids to start learning how you’re greatest employee at the PizzaPlex and how you should be treated like how Freddy’s treated. Definitely praises you for the smallest things, too. Like omg yessss you got coffee you’re so fucking smart and amazing and precious-

He wants those couple bracelets that are two halves of a heart. He knows they’re cheesy and for incredibly PDA couples but like, it would be something to remember him by when you’re not with him. He really loves to see that little golden half heart on your wrist everytime you speak to anyone; it makes him feel important and wanted.

Foxy has kept every single drawing a child has given him. And he will over share everything about that day. He has great memory, which means Foxy remembers everything.

Meaning Foxy remembers small details and things you’ve murmured, so expect him to know one or two things about you. You just make him act this way! He’s head over heels in love with you.

Foxy can be sort of intense with his loving; he absolutely loves to be passionate and have strong emotions in every situation and position he has. So he automatically transfers his passions over to you! He needs someone who can either give him the same amount of passion or someone who can handle it and take good care of him.

Look out for him because he definitely looks out for you. He wants you to have his back so he can have yours. It’s all about trusting your captain.

𝐆𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 ♡ 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚

Chica needs someone as energetic as her. She can be a lot during relationships and so she can easily overwhelm a calmer lover by a lot. She needs someone who can match her excitement and get excited with her, regardless of how silly it is.

Chica’s the type of girlfriend to buy you presents first. You are always caught off guard with how well she hides her knowledge of your wants. It’s scary how well her and Bonnie predict gifts. She will always act oblivious and a little dumb, but you know that chicken better than most.

Eating is a big part of her day, she loves to do it. So she’d prefer an s/o with a big appetite or someone who can relax and let her gobble down a box of pizza.

You must love children too. Chica loves working with her kids, just like Freddy. She enjoys their companies and happy little squeals when they spot her. She can’t stand people who just hate children for the sake of hating them; she finds them pretentious and dislikes how “holier than thou they act” in her own words.

Chica is extremely sensitive to any emotions you have, there is no “hiding” things from Chica. She knows. She’s very well to picking up even the smallest behavior changes in anyone, child or not. So be upfront and honest with her about your issues.

She needs someone to be her restraint. She eats a lot and sometimes her urges evolve into garbage eating, so she needs someone to keep her from going to those extremes. Chica appreciates you holding her back and laying it to her that she can’t go to those extremes. You are like her safety blanket she can always rely on.

She loves to feel relied on, as well. She loves to help people anyway she can, and so it helps her feel at ease when she knows your issues are something she can help with!

Eating and a lazy Sunday with a show on your phone is the greatest time waster Chica has ever been introduced to. She loves it so much because she can just relax and simply exist only with you in her room. No one else, just you and her. Her love language is definitely quality time.

Chica loves decorating and drawing :). She wants to put stickers on you and doodle on your arms if you’d let her. Practicing her art skills so she can become a good enough artist to draw scenery all around the PizzaPlex. It’s one of her many goals she hopes go achieve by the end of the year, and with how employees always buy her the newest crayola markers and soft pens, she’s sure she’ll reach her goal!

Chica has never gone outside the PizzaPlex so she asks of you to be a bit rebellious to sneak her out and help her see the stars and constellations in the sky!

#five nights at freddy's #five nights at freddy's security breach #fnaf sb #glamrock foxy #glamrock animatronics #glamrock freddy #security breach #glamrock freddy x reader #glamrock chica x reader #glamrock bonnie x reader #glamrock bonnie #glamrock foxy x reader #fnaf #fnaf security breach #bro I wonder how Bonnie feels abt prank channels #does he hate them or nah

[spencers-renaissance]

Emergency Contact

Summary: When Spencer ends up in the hospital again, his emergency contact — who happens to be his boyfriend, Luke Alvez — is called. Too bad he hasn't told the team about him yet...

Tags: whump, h/c, hurt spencer, broken ribs, coming out, relationship reveal, protective derek, team as family, fluff, au: different first meeting

Pairing: Luke Alvez x Spencer Reid // (heavy on the Derek & Spencer friendship, too)

Word Count: 2.6k

Masterlist // Read on AO3 // Bad Things Happen Bingo

Okay, so Emily was not in S11, but for this fic she is, because I wanted supportive Penemily and that's what I gave myself. Other than that, this fills the square "broken ribs" for my Bad Things Happen bingo card. Enjoy the whump mixed with fluff!

Spencer doesn’t mean to get hurt again, but he also isn’t exactly surprised when it happens. If anything, Hotch really needs to stop sending him out to scope places and suspects out by himself. Surely Tobias Hankel proved he’s a trouble magnet in that regard years ago.

The summerhouse the suspect rents is a nice enough place to lay incapacitated while he waits for back-up, he supposes, but he’s not exactly able to lie and enjoy the sunshine when his ribs have been smashed in with a metal baseball bat and he knows the suspect is currently hightailing it down the beach. Not to mention the fact that it’s worryingly difficult to breathe.

Still, it’s better than a dilapidated cabin in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere Georgia, pumped full of heroin while his feet are whipped. Small mercies.

“Goddamnit, Spencer, again?” Derek asks amusedly when he finally arrives and crouches down by his side, but the undercurrent of worry in his voice doesn’t elude him.

“Sorry,” he wheezes, still winded and in immense pain from the ambush. “I didn’t see him coming.”

Derek raises a brow, chuckling slightly. “Yeah, pretty boy, I figured that.” His hand goes to Spencer’s hair as his expression furrows in concern again. “Did you see where he went? I’ll send the others after him while I go with you to the hospital.”

Spencer smiles a little, relieved that he won’t be alone. It’s become a strange sort of tradition to sit in one another’s hospital rooms after the job kicks their ass, and he’s glad Derek isn’t about to break it now.

“I saw him turn right out of the backdoor, but that’s all,” he says breathlessly, before cringing at the effort and folding in on himself even more.

“Okay, Spencer,” Derek says soothingly. “Just relax. The ambulance will be here any second.”

He obeys and closes his eyes as he listens to Derek call Hotch on the radio and send the team in the right direction before coming back to sit next to him on the floor.

“This might be one of the nicer places one of our unsubs has owned, huh?”

Spencer nods, mirroring Derek’s morbid amusement. “Crime pays better than investigating it,” he manages, smiling up at his friend.

He snorts. “You can say that again. With the way the market’s turned in the last couple years it’s more like this is my hobby and my properties are my day job, rather than the other way round.”

Spencer tries to reply, but he moves involuntarily in amusement, and a fresh wave of pain has him wincing again, trying to will the tears away.

“You’re alright, Spence,” Derek says gently, his hand returning to his hair. “Help will be here soon, okay?”

Thankfully, the medics do show up in a semi-timely fashion, and both of them are loaded into the back of the ambulance as the EMTs check him over, Derek’s hand not leaving his person unless it absolutely has to.

“How many times were you hit, Dr Reid?”

He cringes. “Four.” It’s almost embarrassing that the unsub got four hits in, and the only reason there weren’t more is because he was fleeing the scene, not because Spencer was able to fight back. He tries to remind himself that there isn’t much you can do when caught-off guard by a furious arsonist armed with a steel baseball bat, but his ego is still bruised. Albeit not as badly as his poor ribs.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” Derek mutters under his breath, his grip tightening on Spencer’s shoulder minutely enough for him to know he isn’t doing it consciously.

Spencer smiles appreciatively, closing his eyes against the pain. The non-narcotic painkillers they’re feeding him through the IV really aren’t doing anything.

“I think you’ve managed to avoid internal bleeding,” the EMT says, all though he tacks on a pointed, “just. But I’m concerned about the possibility of a punctured lung. There’s a chance your trouble breathing is solely pain-induced, but I don’t like the way your chest sounds. The doctors will check everything out when we get to the hospital, and get you all patched up.”

“Hold in there,” Derek says urgently. “I really can’t have you dying on me, pretty boy.”

Spencer smiles as comfortingly as he can through the immense pain in his chest and his mangled breathing. “Trust me, I don’t intend on it.”

The x-ray reveals two broken ribs and confirms the paramedic’s suspicions of a punctured lung, although thankfully, minor enough to not require surgery. He’s set up with oxygen and regular nurse check-ups in a quiet room after the doctor is able to remove the excess air in his chest cavity.

“How are you doing, Spence?” Derek asks worriedly as he pulls up a chair next to Spencer’s bed as soon as he’s allowed to see him.

He pulls away his oxygen facemask to answer. “A bit better,” he says, but his voice is dry and raspy from the oxygen so he certainly doesn’t sound it. “The pain meds are actually working now.”

Derek’s tight, anxious expression relaxes slightly. “That’s at least something.”

Spencer nods tiredly, but before he can respond, a nurse is popping her head round the door. “Dr. Reid,” she says genially, “sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to let you know that we’ve managed to get a hold of your emergency contact, and they’re on their way.”

Spencer’s eyes widen. How could he have forgotten? Granted, he was a little preoccupied with the whole punctured lung, broken ribs thing, but how could he have let it slip his mind that this little accident would lead to the secret he’s been keeping under wraps getting out?

When he’d first met Luke at an FBI gala last year, he never could have foreseen the most intimate and special relationship of his life coming to fruition, but it had. They’d connected on so many different levels, and the chemistry between them felt like something out of one of the fantastical romance novels Penelope reads, and when he’d asked if it was okay for Spencer to put Luke down as his updated emergency contact, he’d been rewarded with a wide, beautiful grin and a firm, heartfelt kiss.

It was serious enough, sure, and they were coming up on having been together for a year, but besides Emily and Penelope — who’d met Luke and developed an amusing, playful rivalry with him — he hadn’t introduced him to anyone on the team.

“On their way?” Derek asks, raising an eyebrow in mild confusion. “Isn’t your contact Hotch? He already knows you’re in the hospital.”

Spencer just stares at him like a rabbit caught in the headlights, completely blanking on something to say. They’re working a local case, so it won’t be long before Luke is bursting into his hospital room armed with cuddles and comfort, and as much as he craves that, he’s too busy panicking about his team finding out to really look forward to it.

Eventually, after watching Derek’s face morph into even stronger, more suspicious confusion, he gives up. They’re going to find out anyway. “I’m dating someone.”

Derek’s face lights up. “Pretty boy!” he exclaims happily, playfully pushing his shoulder as gently as he can. “That’s amazing! Why didn’t you say something? What’s her name?”

Ah. That’s the primary reason he hadn’t told his team about Luke. He’s nowhere close to being ashamed about his sexuality, he accepted himself decades ago, but he’s still not worked up the courage to share that part of himself with his team. Excluding Penelope and Emily who have been together for years (he’s still baffled as to how the others haven’t caught on yet), everyone’s in the dark.

It had started as a basic survival tactic. He’d joined the FBI two years younger than the standard entry age in the early 2000s, and he was far too concerned with just getting by than living outwardly as a gay man. And then, as time went by and he knew his team was accepting and welcoming, he found it too awkward to try and correct people when they assumed he was straight. There just wasn’t ever the right time.

“I’m gay.”

Derek’s happy expression falls and for a split second, Spencer feels a flash of panic. Maybe Derek’s okay with gay people as long as they’re not his immediate friends, as long as he doesn’t playfully call them ‘pretty boy’ and play with their hair when they’re injured, maybe—

“Well, what’s his name, then?”

Spencer looks up from his panic, seeing Derek smiling again, eyes maybe even brighter than they were just seconds ago.

“Wait—”

“Spencer, if you think I’m gonna care that you’re gay — if you think any of us will care that you’re gay, then you have another thing coming,” Derek reassures him. “Wait, that isn’t why you didn’t tell us right?”

He suddenly looks distraught at the idea that Spencer might not have felt comfortable coming out to him, and Spencer rushes to correct him. “No! No, I know everyone would be fine with it, I just didn’t really know how to say it. Penelope and Emily know, but only by accident.”

Derek relaxes, chuckling a little. “I’m sure there’s quite a story there.”

Spencer blushes. “Maybe.”

“I’ll find out later,” he says confidently, winking at him, and something in Spencer loosens at the fact that Derek hasn’t changed his behaviour at all. “But I’m more interested in Mr. Sexy Emergency Contact Mystery Boyfriend Man right now.”

Spencer outright laughs at that, before wincing painfully as his ribs twinge, and he has to fit the oxygen mask around his face again and breathe deeply for a couple of breaths before the nasal cannula can suffice again.

“I met him around this time last year at an FBI gala actually,” Spencer manages. “Everyone on our team bailed except Penelope, Emily, and me. He’s called Luke and he works in the Fugitive Task Force. We just clicked as soon as we met, you know? We have this chemistry that I’ve never felt with anyone before, and we started dating pretty quickly. We actually moved in together last month when his lease was up, but we’re thinking of moving to a bigger, nicer place in Mount Pleasant. Luke’s actually had his eye on this one house that went up…”

He trails off when he notices Derek looking at him strangely, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “What?”

“Nothing,” Derek says gently. “You just look happy, pretty boy. When you started talking about Luke you got this happy, dopey smile on your face, and I’ve just never seen you like that. It’s nice.”

“Oh.” He blushes fiercely at the acknowledgement of just how soft he is for his boyfriend, but it’s not embarrassing, he’s just ridiculously happy and head over heels in love.

Still, feeling a little awkward at the attention, he raises the oxygen mask to his face just for something to do.

“Does he treat you well?” Derek asks seriously, suddenly looking like the FBI tough guy he really is.

Spencer grins and nods, pulling the mask away again. “So good. He’s one of those people that looks out for everyone before himself, you know? He listens to my rambles and tangents like he actually knows and cares about what I’m saying, and he insists on making me every meal we’re both home for. Every day off, he brings me breakfast in bed, and he’ll even suffer through my documentaries even though his favourite thing to watch is action movies. He’s the best boyfriend I could hope for.”

“Good,” Derek says fiercely, even though he’s smiling just a little at the thought of Spencer being taken care of. “But if anything ever changes, I won’t hesitate to—”

“Spencer?” Derek’s interrupted by the door flying over, and a very harried looking Luke Alvez rushing towards the bed, seemingly not noticing the man literally threatening his death right next to him. “Oh my God, Spencer, I was so worried, I thought—”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Spencer says, voice still a little weak. Can’t he at least sound convincing when he’s trying to tell these people that he’s fine? “I’m okay, I’ll be out of here before you know it.”

“Are you sure, baby? Do I need to get the doctor? Have they been looking after you, because I swear—”

“Luke,” he laughs, interrupting his worried tangent. “I’m fine, I promise.”

He watches amusedly as Luke sags with relief. “Oh thank God,” he breathes, and it’s then that he appears to notice Derek. “Oh, shit.”

He looks to Spencer with an alarmed look in his eyes, knowing full well that he isn’t out to his team yet, but before apologies can start dripping off his lips, he rushes to fill him in.

“It’s okay. I told him.”

Luke’s face brightens in an illuminating smile, his eyes wide and happy. “You did? I’m so proud of you, cariño.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Derek says, rising from his chair to shake Luke’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you in the last ten minutes.”

Luke grins. “All good things, I hope.”

Derek winks teasingly at Spencer. “Oh, better than good. Spencer here seems quite gone for you.”

He blushes again, but Luke just sits on the edge of his hospital bed and takes his face in his hand. “Well, I’m just as gone for him as he is for me. Probably even more so.”

“No way,” Spencer protests as vehemently as he can with an oxygen mask glued to his face again. “I definitely love you more.”

His words are half swallowed by the mask, and half muffled by the gaggle of FBI agents pouring into his room, all talking over one another loudly.

Luke jumps off the bed and stands to attention as they all quieten down, three of them in complete shock, one of them — Emily, recognising Luke — in anticipation of what’s about to happen.

“Uh,” Spencer starts unsurely, eyes flicking between his boyfriend and his team. “Meet my boyfriend?”

There’s a brief pause before everyone jumps into action again: Emily greeting him warmly, JJ introducing herself, and Hotch and Rossi giving him firm, threatening handshakes as a warning that no harm is to come to their pseudo-son.

Spencer knows they don’t have to worry about that, though, not with Luke, and they’re quickly shown that when he takes his rightful place sat on the edge of his hospital bed again, hands smoothing his hair gently.

“Thank you,” he says to Derek, voice soft and sincere as everyone’s sat leisurely around the room, doing their own thing now they’re calmed down after the initial meet and greet, “for taking care of him. I worry about him, you know, and it’s good to see that he has so many good people looking after him.”

“We all do,” Derek replies, looking over at Spencer fondly. “We’re all incredibly overprotective. Residual effects from him joining the team so young, probably.”

“I can see that,” Luke smiles, looking over at Hotch and Rossi, who still have their eyes trained on him, despite having warmed up to him quickly.

“Well between us all,” Emily interjects diplomatically, “I think we have Spencer covered. He has a lot of good people looking out for him.”

Spencer knows they all think he’s asleep, but he can’t help but say something. “I definitely do,” he slurs tiredly, causing Luke to quickly turn his attention to him, pressing a tender kiss to his forehead as he runs his fingers through his hair with the hand not intertwined with Spencer’s. “Love you.”

“I love you too, baby,” Luke murmurs. “And so does everybody in this room.”

Smiling softly and feeling safe as anything, Spencer finally gives into the heavy pull of tiredness, and lets himself drift off to sleep.

I'm such a sucker for coming out fics omg, I hope you didn't mind that element! But God, I've missed writing Ralvez fics. If anyone has any Ralvez prompts then please send them my way because I want to write them so badly but I really find it hard to find plot for them! <3

taglist: @criminalmindsvibez @suburban--gothic @strippersenseii @takeyourleap-of-faith @makaylajadewrites @iamrenstark @hotchseyebrows @reidology @spencerspecifics @tobias-hankel @goobzoop @marsjareau @garcias-bitch @oliverbrnch @im-autistic @anxious-enby @kuolonsyoja @ropoto

#my writing #ralvez #criminal minds #cm #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction #luke alvez #spencer reid #derek morgan #hurt spencer reid #spencer reid whump #luke alvez x spencer reid #spencer reid x luke alvez #spencer reid/luke alvez #luke alvez/spencer reid #ralvez fic #ralvez fanfic

[billfarrah]

I can’t believe how truly blessed I feel to have a series like Young Royals in 2021. As predictable as the story beats are, it’s the way that the story was told and the way the characters were written that makes it special, and I hope it’s something that people see.

So many times in series with queer love stories, the love story either takes a back seat or the love interest of the main character exists solely to be the love interest and doesn’t get a storyline of their own. It was so wonderful to see Simon treated as a character completely independent from Wilhelm. I loved that we got to see his relationship with his friends and his family. He was given his own hobbies and interests; he takes school seriously, he likes video games, he likes music. I loved that he was openly gay but didn’t exist solely to guide Wilhelm through his own sexuality crisis. So many times in gay romances, one character exists mostly to do so, but so much of Wille and Simon’s relationship was based on their genuine affection and attraction for each other. Simon being out was such a casual thing; he mentions it off-handedly to his dad and it’s never mentioned again. His friends know, his family knows, as they all pick up on his feelings for Wille, and it’s just so casual.

You understand why he and Wille like each other; they make each other laugh, they tease each other, they’re the only people who treat each other like normal human beings. Simon is ignored by the other rich students because he isn’t wealthy, but that never impacts Wille’s opinion of him. He’s smitten with Simon before he even knows anything about him or his background. On the other hand, Simon is the only person who doesn’t put Wille on a pedestal because of his status. They just act like two regular teenagers around each other. You really feel their connection. The dialogue feels natural; they’re awkward in an endearing way. The actors nailed the stolen glances, the smitten smiles, the anxiety. It’s the little details that make this relationship special. The way Wille becomes overwhelmed from touching Simon’s hand and has to run from the room and press his hand over his racing heart. The way Simon loses his words when Wille is close, like when he can’t tell Wille what kind of hot dog he wants or the way he loses his train of thought when he’s talking about the fish and Wille puts his arms around him. When they’re anxiously taking each other’s clothes off for the first time and Wille accidentally hits Simon and he flinches and they laugh it off. The sex scenes don’t feel scandalous and overly flowery or sexual used; they’re awkward in a way that makes them feel so much more romantic and real. I don’t know how six episodes was enough to make this relationship feel real and not rushed, but somehow they were able to pull it off. The pacing felt perfect.

I love that we weren’t forced to suffer through scenes of Simon trying to talk to Wille at school and Wille blowing him off to save face. They were low key around each other, but it never felt disrespectful or degrading to Simon. Wille is never ashamed of interacting with Simon in public. He’s cautious due to his high-profile status, but even when he asks Simon to delete the story he posted, he apologizes. They’re always so considerate of each other’s feelings.

I’m just so blown away by how much care was put into their relationship. The actors and writers blew me away.

#young royals #wilhelm x simon #edvin ryding #omar rudberg

[oh-boy-me]

I found your speculation of Satan having a crush on mc from the get go verry interesting. I was wondering if you have any speculations around the other boys? Like in what order do you think the boys fell for mc? Any specific points in the story that you think are the "fall for mc" moments for them?

(HFSDHFSD LISTEN I’ve had this in my drafts for AGES and I’m so sorry I’m just now getting to actually posting it ;w; )

I’m MORE than happy to speculate on this!  For the brothers, at least, because I haven’t read up to the parts where the other characters show notable interest in you

Putting most of this under a cut for long post and spoilers, but the tl;dr (with some mysterious elements to catch your interest heheheh) is that I believe the brothers “fall for MC” in this order:

1. Satan 2. Mammon 3. (Lucifer) 4. (Levi) 3. Belphie 4. Beel 4. Levi 4. Lucifer 7. Asmo

That must look a little weird; I hope I’ve piqued your interest!

Now, what am I defining as falling for MC?  For consistency, we’re going to consider a brother falling for MC being the moment when they themself realize that they might have feelings for them.

#1 Demon: Satan Moment: As early as day 4

First up is Satan, who I’ve already explained here.  An argument can be made that Mammon catches feelings first, but assuming a real-time progression, Satan’s first text reaches MC on their fourth day in the Devildom.

#2 Demon: Mammon Moment: Lesson 4-1

Mammon is interesting, because with this analysis he’s one of only two brothers for which you can actually get a calendar date for their falling for MC.  You can do this because the first few lessons cover a very short span of time.

According to the fact that Lucifer says you don’t want to be late on your first day of school after giving you a hint about Goldie, MC makes a pact with Mammon on their second day in the Devildom. (You don’t go to school on day 1.)

Lucifer blocks MC from the attic on the night of day 3, and after that things get shaky again until you hit the TSL movie night with Beel and Mammon.

The reason the movie night is interesting is because Beel specifically states that midterms are coming up soon.  Based on the game’s Japanese origin, we’re going to assume that RAD also follows the same three-term system that Japanese schools do.  This places the TSL marathon at about a month into MC’s stay.

Anyway, we’re basing Mammon’s interest in you on pretty obvious factors:

We basically don’t see any of Mammon’s trademark tsundere nature until after these lessons.  Before this it’s not him being tsundere, he’s genuinely annoyed with you.

He left a toothbrush and charger in your room sometime between Lesson 3-10 and 4-4.

This famous line: 

He probably developed feelings sometime during the TSL marathon, but I think it was when you were in danger, and even though he kept saying he’d let you die his first instinct was to save you, that he understood what those feelings were.

#3.  Demon: (Lucifer) Moment: Lesson 12-19

Crossed out and in parentheses Lucifer is the first one where we start to go off of assumptions and headcanon rather than concrete in game evidence, but.  I’m sure your bigger question is “why is he crossed out AND in parentheses AND why does he show up again later.”

The moment I listed is the lesson where you and Lucifer have to fall in love to escape the “horror game” that Levi “trapped” you in.  He spends most of the time seeming like he isn’t interested and doing it out of necessity, but then he turns around and says these lines.

Assuming that was almost a confession, I wouldn’t be surprised if he decided right there, in that moment, that he was developing feelings.  Lucifer is very self aware, and very sure of himself, and it’s also not like him to suddenly change his mind about how he’s treating things.  If he was hiding his feelings the whole time, I don’t think he would have almost slipped at all.

Of course, right after this, you announce that you’ve met Belphegor, and his developing feelings are overshadowed by rage.

And of course, Lesson 12-19 never happened.

What?

Let me remind you of the timeline.  Barbatos explains in Lesson 16-19 that he has the power to choose any timeline as the sole reality, and he chose the timeline you traveled to.

When you jump back in time, you end up in the moment right after making a pact with Satan (Lesson 12-10).  This means that everything that happened between Lessons 12-10 and 15-17 was erased from history.

The timeline in Season One looks a little something like this, to simplify.

Admittedly, we don’t know how far into their conversation MC and Lucifer make it in the second timeline, but on Lucifer’s part I don’t think it changes much.

This timeline stuff is important because

#4 Demon: (Leviathan) Moment: Lesson 14-4

Ok, first, I have to say that I really hate the way MC and Levi make up in Lesson 14.  imo it has the potential to be really manipulative on both sides.  But that’s not the point of this post.

Levi does NOT have a crush on you before Belphie shows up out of nowhere.  In Lesson 14-4, he’s talking to himself, and distinctly complains about losing a friend, and how Henry is his only friend.

He’s also refusing to acknowledge your existence, and he’s talking to a fish, so there’s no reason for him to hide how he really feels in the moment.

Then, later on in the same chapter, this is Levi’s response to seeing MC hug Lucifer.

I’m assuming MC isn’t the one he’s jealous of.  But what’s interesting here is that, as far as I can remember, this is the first time Levi ever expresses jealousy about you in any sense, platonic or romantic.  You don’t really interact with Levi one on one between Lesson 14-4 and this moment, so 14-4 is the most likely catalyst for this change.

Levi does say “you’re my true friend” at the end of 14-4, but you are not a fish, and that doesn’t change the fact that he could have been like “oh wow MC didn’t abandon me they really like me oh no I really like them”

Also, by 16-A he canonically likes you.

But just like with the last one, this exchange never happened and Levi never fell for you.

#3 Demon: Belphie Moment: Between Lessons 18-15 and 18-19

Now Belphie is interesting, because I would argue that he was trying to fall in love with you for a while.  All that “making up for lost time” and seeming to spend every waking hour with you in lessons 17 and 18 to me point pretty heavily to the idea that he wants to feel the same way about you that his brothers do.  Whether it’s to feel more connected with them or from a genuine interest in you is unclear though.

But then he decides to give you a pact as a present, which is a pretty big deal.  Most pacts in the game are made before the demon has feelings for you, but aside from Belphie, Satan is the only one who brings it up himself.  And since like I said Satan pretty clearly liked you before making a pact, the same can probably be said of Belphie.

I should also mention that Belphie muses over giving you a pact in Lesson 18-A, which takes place before Lesson 17-7 at the latest.  But we have to remember that this is before you’ve helped him mend his relationships with his brothers, and therefore he barely knows you.  Satan also barely knew you, but Belphie has the added problem of mixing up you and Lilith.  You can make arguments for the others when they were uber nice to you in Lesson 16-19, but for Belphie there’s really no other possible reason than Lilith.

However, Lesson 18-15 is the one where Belphie says he’s going to move forward with his life and stop putting things on hold for Lilith.

So, chances are his attachment to you is pretty unhealthy at first, but I’m choosing the timeframe I did as the moment because in 18-19 he explicitly states that he isn’t confusing you with Lilith.

This would be the moment of confirmation that he likes you, not the idea of what you might represent.

#4 Demon: Leviathan, Beelzebub, Lucifer Moment: Sometime during the time skip

I don’t think we see these three fall for you on camera.  The time skip covers literal months, and I think they fall for you in somewhere in that long period of time.

I don’t think I need to tell you that Levi and Beel like you by the time Lesson 20 comes along, since they both confess to you.

Lucifer doesn’t explicitly confess, but if you choose to hug him, he says this

Which heavily implies that he wants to be the one most important to you.  Also, I don’t think he’d have made a pact at all otherwise.

#7 Demon: Asmodeus Moment: Lesson 19-17

For Asmo, I think we see the EXACT moment he realizes he’s in love with you.

First off, in Lesson 16-A he noticeably isn’t openly interested in you in any way other than superficially.  Granted, 16-A never happened, but it does confirm that he didn’t like you before then.

Then, in his part of Lesson 19, you go drinking with him.  Early in the night, he says this.

His answer to your prompt of romance suggests that he doesn’t understand the fact that he does like you like that, or at least that he’s in denial.

However, then you beat him at a drinking game, and the reality of you leaving him behind comes crashing down on him.

The drastic change makes me think that this is the very moment he understands his feelings.

--

And that’s it!  I hope this was an interesting read, and sorry again it took SO long.

#obey me #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me analysis #renoodle #gardengnosis #image

[retrievablememories]

matched | ten (m)

title: matched pairing: alien!ten x black!reader genre: sci-fi, angst, fluff, romance, smut summary: the quest for love leads you to a new dating app with a slight twist—and straight into the inbox of someone who’s light-years out of your usual dating pool. word count: 9.7k warnings: familial conflict, strained parental relationship, mentions of cheating, prejudice/discrimination based on species, body modifications/alien biology, unprotected sex, oral (female receiving), dom!ten, photography during sex, cumshot, squirting, some spanking a/n: as always, i lose all impulse control whenever i get a ten request so i have finished this sooner than i expected

i decided to lean more into the romance plotline than stress too much over the realism of the science-fiction elements with this fic, so there are some inaccuracies/impossibilities...but that’s fiction for you 🙃

AM 2074 (After Migration)

You are lonely.

Your last breakup did not end well, to say the least, and you haven’t dated for a while since then. It seemed like a smart move—a safe one—to shun all romantic relationships until you felt ready again. At the beginning, you were glad to be alone for a while, to regroup and rediscover yourself worrying about another person’s opinions on everything you did. To not have to deal with someone else’s drama.

The toll of not having companionship is gradually getting to you, though. Even if your last relationship was a mess more often than it wasn’t, you still long for those good moments, like going on night dates on the weekends and sharing pillowtalk into long hours of the early morning. You hadn’t realized how much you’d missed those things until all the emotions of it crashed down on you at once.

Your friend Malika claims to have a solution for your loneliness. Now, sitting at this outdoor cafe, you’re simultaneously eager and hesitant to hear what she has to propose, knowing her track record for silly plots.

With twinkling eyes, she looks at you and says, “You should try a dating app.” She clasps her hands together and puts them on the table like she’s made a grand announcement. You absorb her words for a few moments, looking out at the street across from you and watching cars—some hovering above the asphalt, some driven autonomously, and many still with human drivers—pass by.

You eventually sigh, your shoulders slumping. “That’s the big solution you called me out here for? People have been using dating apps for decades, that’s nothing new.”

“Exactly! The fact that they’re still popular even in 2074 is proof that they work, Y/N. You can put yourself out there and talk to dozens of guys without even meeting them in person. If one connection doesn’t work out, you don’t have anything to lose, and you don’t have to see the guy ever again.”

“Maybe I’ll lose my sweet time and patience during the process, though.”

Malika shakes her head and types something into her hologram pad, then holds it up for you to see. The hologram displays a dating app called matched—it reminds you of what Tinder was supposedly like before it became eclipsed by more advanced platforms, though that happened years before you were even born. “This one is kinda new, but it’s gotten popular fast and has good success rates. I’ve tried it before and met some nice guys. Give it at least one chance before you hate on it.”

“Ugh, I don’t know...there are always so many weirdos hanging out on those apps. What if I meet someone who keeps a collection of severed alien tentacles in an icebox in their house? Like that one guy who showed up on the news?”

“...Really?” Malika rolls her eyes. “You’re so dramatic. Stop getting in your own way and just take a risk for once.”

You shake your head at her optimism. “I’ll do it because I know you won’t leave me alone about it, but don’t expect me to find some great love story on this app.”

--

Once you download the app and start making an account, it becomes pretty obvious that this isn’t just a regular dating platform.

Choosing your gender and age preferences is normal enough, and you pass through those screens quickly until you get to one that gives you two new options.

➤ Species Preference ❐ Human ❐ Extraterrestrial

Whoa. Aliens? An alien-friendly dating app?

You weren’t overly familiar with the mechanics of dating apps, and you certainly didn’t consider that ones allowing aliens might’ve existed until now. It had been 15 years since the first contact with aliens was established, and a little less than a decade had passed since aliens began migrating to Earth and taking up permanent residence—and vice versa.

Humans had little problem with accepting aliens’ technological adaptations and claiming them as their own, though they were far less welcoming of the aliens themselves. That resulted in strained interactions between the two species, with aliens trying their best to assimilate and humans questioning their every motive. As far as personal relationships went, interspecies mingling between humans and extraterrestrials was still fairly uncommon—something that only people who were considered to be on the fringes of society participated in. There were “normal citizens of society” who built relationships with aliens, but many of them also kept it solely as a kink or fetish to be done only in the dark.

You decide to check both options. It feels a little scary, like diving headfirst into the unknown, but you are open to it either way. You’ve interacted with aliens before, both as kind acquaintances and near strangers, and they’ve always been relatively normal in the grand scheme of things—beings trying to survive and make a life for themselves like anyone else. Certainly not plotting how to take over Earth as many people have speculated. If they really wanted to, they possess the technology to have done that ten times over already.

You take a while trying to come up with a clever bio and spend an even longer time mulling over which pictures of yourself to choose, but you eventually complete your profile.

The first few matches you make are not very successful.

Whether it’s human guys feeding you terrible pickup lines or alien guys who can’t make it past the language barrier—or who ask you to move back with them to their home planet after two days of talking—you don’t see any potential love interests during your first two weeks of using the app. 

You’re not sure what kind of skills Malika used to make multiple good matches, but maybe you need to interrogate her so you can sharpen your own. So you decide to do exactly that.

“Don’t give up on it just yet. Just be yourself—which also means not being afraid to cuss someone out if they come at you crazy. Some of these dudes lowkey like the mean girl shit, though, which is kinda weird.” Malika speaks from the shimmering translucent mirage of your hologram pad as you walk through the park one afternoon. She couldn’t make it out to meet you today, but you managed to snatch a moment to talk to her even if it couldn’t be face-to-face. “You probably shouldn’t expect to find a boyfriend in the first few days—”

“Girl, I don't think anyone was expecting that. Duh.”

“I’m saying, just give it time!”

“Okay, but listen. You didn’t tell me it’s also for aliens. Have you dated one before? You never told me!” You lower your voice then, not wanting anyone nearby to eavesdrop on your conversation and hear that part. You feel kinda bad for even thinking that way, but it’s hard to shake the stigma associated with interacting with aliens.

“Yes, and it was the best sex I ever had, but maybe I’ll tell you about that later.”

“Sis. Don’t withhold tea from me!”

“Someday when you’re not literally standing in the middle of the park, okay?” Malika shakes her head, smiling.

“Don’t forget about it, either.”

“I won’t. And you know what to do if you find a guy. I want to be the first to know!”

“Sure, sure. I wouldn’t hold my breath on it, though.”

You decide to spend some more time on the app after that conversation instead of just deleting it like you’d planned to initially. And one day, you get another new match that catches your eye out of the many others.

“Ten? Like the number…?” Besides the interesting name, you immediately see that he’s an extraterrestrial. From the Sommu race, as it says in his bio.

You click on his profile.

You’re a little surprised by how pretty he is, which isn’t to say the other aliens you matched with were all hideous. But he doesn’t have tentacles coming out of his face or two sets of eyes, either. The most noticeable thing about his alienness is his blue skin.

“Likes...dancing, art, music, okay so we have an artist type here...dislikes...fruit. Huh. That’s...interesting.”

The pictures of him on his profile are all deliberately artistic, as in they aren’t just some half-baked selfies he took with a hologram pad. You grow increasingly curious. It’s safe to say he’s either super into himself or just appreciates the art of good photography, and you figure there’s only one way to find out. You decide to take the first step and message him.

➤ Nice pictures :) 

You don’t know when or if you’ll get a message back, since he’s not online when you send it, so you try not to get your hopes up too much. Maybe you should’ve tried to come up with something more cool and funny—nice pictures?—but you try to remember Malika’s advice and roll your eyes to yourself. There’s no point in getting stressed over a dude you don’t even know yet.

You eventually get a reply back from Ten.

➤ thank you 🙏 are you into photography too? you have talent for taking beautiful photos 

You giggle quietly to yourself; another line, but it’s definitely one of the tamer ones you’ve received. Why not see where this one goes?

The first conversation you have consists mostly of the regular getting-to-know-you talk, such as your personal interests and favorite things. You get him to talk more about his photography hobby, which he’s eager to tell you all about—as well as his penchant for art.

To your optimism, you and Ten quickly get comfortable with each other. You soon forget about all the other potential matches you have, but those don't matter much to you anymore. So far, you’ve connected the most successfully with Ten, which means you’re more than glad to stop spending your time reading boring messages from guys who’ve only pretended to have things in common with you.

Things go so well, in fact, that he asks you to meet in person not long after you begin talking to each other.

For your first meetup, you decide to meet at a park nearby—the same one you’d been walking through the day you were talking to Malika about that very dating app. You and Ten have talked through the hologram pad on multiple occasions, so you’re more reassured that you’re not starting from scratch with some faceless being. Still, the thrill of seeing each other in person for the first time is undeniable.

“Y/N?” You turn your head at the sound of your name, and you see Ten walking towards you.

“Ten!” You give him a smile, waving at him. You feel a little more nervous than you usually would on a date, though you can’t tell if it’s the good kind of nervousness. You mostly chalk it up to not having been out with anyone in a while.

Ten’s just as pretty up close as he was in the photos and on camera, if not even more attractive; he’s breathtaking in the light of the sun. His hair is styled nicely, meticulously-place strands curling over his forehead, and his clothes perfectly outline his slim body. He looks pleased to see you, his lips curving into a coy smile.

“You could’ve given me a warning,” he says as he outstretches his arms to you. You hug him, but not without a questioning glance on your face. He is warm and smells good, like juniper, which almost makes you forget about your question.

“Warned you about what?”

“How you’re even more beautiful in person.” He says this at your ear before pulling away, and it makes the back of your neck bloom with heat.

“Oh, you’re laying it on thick.” You giggle nervously, shifting on your feet.

“Are you ready to go?” he asks.

“Yes, let’s go!”

You leave the park to go to an aquarium nearby, which is the biggest one in the city. You find out quickly that Ten is easily fascinated by the wide range of creatures there. Despite living on Earth for a few years now, he hasn’t seen a lot of them until now.

You walk through the blue-lit hallways together, surrounded by water everywhere you turn. You observe the different animals up close and from far away, reading information about them from the signs beside their tanks.

“What the hell is that?” Ten says through laughter, looking at the squished-up mouth of a stingray as it floats in front of the glass, baring its pale underside to you both.

“It’s a stingray!”

He scrunches his nose up. “It’s ugly. But kinda cute, too…”

You both end up staying at the aquarium longer than you expected, with Ten wanting to see practically every animal they had on display; plus, you got to see some you weren’t familiar with before either.

After visiting the aquarium, you go downtown—which is otherwise known as food truck central, where you can get pretty much anything you’re craving. This area is always quite busy this time of evening, especially on the weekends. Food in hand, you and Ten end up walking through a few of the quieter back streets where there’s not as many people—streets where the closely-packed buildings give way to the grassy yards and paved roads of nearby neighborhoods.

“Should we talk about our families now, or is it too soon?” you say jokingly. “You know, that seems to be the only thing we haven’t mentioned after talking about everything else under the sun.” You’re not entirely sure why you bring this up while knowing your own relationship with your parents isn’t great, but you are curious to hear about Ten’s family.

“I don’t really know mine,” he replies.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” You feel a little bad about it, thinking there was definitely a reason why he never mentioned the topic.

Ten looks confused for a moment before shaking his head. “No, it’s not like that. Sommu never form close bonds with their parents or siblings.”

You give him a curious look. “Why not?”

“Well, we aren’t born or raised the human way,” he explains. “Our parents have a bunch of us at once, raise us for the first couple of years, and then go off to reproduce again and continue the population.”

You’re startled at that. “Just for a few years? How do you survive?”

“We age faster...both physically and mentally. We become independent around 4 or 5 years old, and we can live without our parents.”

“That’s...definitely very different.” You try to wrap your mind around that information, though it’s difficult. Even with your not-so-healthy relationship with your parents, you couldn’t imagine having no family whatsoever at such a young age. You also can’t even begin to comprehend what it’d look like to be taking care of yourself at only 5 years old, fast aging or not. “But, you said a bunch at once...how is that possible?”

“We are formed inside things like eggs. It’s not like your form of childbirth. See?” And you become flustered when he lifts his shirt up to show his lack of a belly button, right there in the middle of the street.

“Uh, wow.”

“The human concepts of ‘family’ and ‘relationships’ are...very new to me.” He seems a little embarrassed to admit this. “That’s why I, um, joined a dating app, for more experience...I was told I need to learn to be more…” He searches for the word. “Im...pertinent?”

“...Empathetic?”

“Yeah, that.”

“So, did that come from a previous partner, or…?”

“Yeah, I’ve had two relationships since I’ve been here.” He seems wistful now, maybe a little sad. “They didn’t work out well. Maybe we were too different.” Before the mood can shift too far into negativity, Ten turns to you with a soft smile. “But maybe that’s not the kind of thing you want to hear while we’re on a date.”

You shake your head and smile. “I don’t mind, it’s interesting to know about.” More than interesting. You want to ask him a hundred more things about what his life was like when he first got to Earth. “Anyway, you can never have too many new starts in life. Let’s enjoy this one.”

--

At the end of your date, Ten walks with you back to your place. It’s almost midnight at this point, with you both walking all the way back from downtown. You’d drawn more than a few skeptical stares over the course of the day, but you both did your best to ignore those and just focus on each other.

“I’m really glad we got to go out today, it was fun,” you say, hugging your arms to yourself to shield against the cool spring breeze.

“I think I haven’t had that much fun in a while,” he agrees. Ten smiles wide then, the tip of his tongue sticking out from between his teeth, and you have to do a double take. 

“What—”

“Oh, that. Sometimes I forget everyone doesn’t have this...” And when he sticks his tongue out, you see clearly now that it’s split halfway down the middle. Sort of like how a snake’s would be. “D’you like it?” His expression is wicked when he asks this, and a strange heat sweeps through your body.

“Wow.” You cringe at your lackluster answer, but that’s the only thing you can muster up at the moment, too busy internally questioning yourself. You’ve seen body modders with split tongues in documentaries and on the internet, but it’s never appealed to you like this before, and you don’t know what to do with that new realization.

“It’s okay, it takes some getting used to.” He gives you a smile that might be called innocent by anyone else, but to your eyes it’s quite obvious he’s proud about making you flustered.

“Getting used to...yeah, I’m sure.” There are about 15 different questions you want to ask him about that, too, but you aren’t going there on the first date.

“So...can I expect to see you again?”

“Of course.” You smile again at the hopeful note in his tone. “Just let me know whenever you want to go out again.”

Before Ten leaves, he places a hand on your shoulder and kisses you on the cheek. It’s a simple and short kiss, but it still makes you blush beneath your brown skin.

You wave goodbye to him from your doorstep as he goes, feeling like you’ve finally done something right for the first time in a long time.

You’d taken a chance with dating an extraterrestrial, someone so different from yourself and your species, and you figured it would be a new experience. Obviously. What you did not bet on, however, was the idea that you’d fall for Ten so fast.

After three months of dating exclusively, you feel like you could say you love him, which is frighteningly quick for you; though you don’t tell him this yet.

You’ve decided to bring him to meet your family. The idea frightens you, because your parents have never been very receptive to the aliens’ migration. But you are still holding out some hope that maybe they’ll realize all their assumptions were wrong, and that you’ve found a nice man who you love and who you’re sure loves you just as much. Whether he’s human or not shouldn’t matter.

You manage to set a date when all your schedules match up so you can bring Ten over to your parent’s house. Ten is nervous—more nervous than he was when you went on your first date—which you find a little surprising. You’ve gotten used to him being the one who you can lean on, who always seems to know the right answer.

“Do you think it will go well?” he asks, his tone implying he’s not confident of the answer.

“I hope so.” You give him a smile that you hope is reassuring and squeeze his hand.

When your parents open the door, there’s visible surprise on their faces. You’d already told them your boyfriend was not human, which drew doubtful responses when you first said it, but they’re acting as if they never knew that information—as if this is the first time they’re seeing an alien, period.

“Um…hi, mom, dad.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Ten says, though his own tone is overly formal, like he doesn’t know how he should speak. “I’m Ten.”

Your parents pause for a few moments longer. Finally, the awkward quiet is broken. “We thought you were just messing,” your dad says, though he steps out of the way to let you both come in, if a bit reluctantly.

“I—no.” You’re uncertain how to respond to that, though you don’t feel optimistic about what it entails. Your mother doesn’t say anything at all, just stares at you and Ten like you’re both strangers who’ve just waltzed in uninvited. She goes back in the kitchen to finish dinner once the door is closed, not saying anything to either one of you, and you already feel a cold pit settling in the bottom of your stomach.

Your dad sits in the living room with you and Ten, and another awkward silence ensues as your dad gives a stiff smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He clasps his fingers together and pulls them apart repeatedly, like they’ll give him the answers for what’s going on.

“This is just a fling, right? Of course you won’t be staying with this ma—” Your dad almost says man but then stutters, thinking maybe the term isn’t appropriate since Ten isn’t human. He makes a vague gesture to fill in the space of the missing word.

“It’s not a fling,” you say, feeling like you’ve had cold water poured down your back. You’re sitting straight and still on the couch, and it’s not comfortable, but you’re too tense to move. Ten is almost equally stiff beside you.

“Y/N, we just want you to make good decisions for yourself.” That’s what your dad says out loud, though the look in his eyes finishes the rest of that sentence: And I don’t think this is a good decision.

“I am,” you insist. “I don’t need to be told that over and over again.”

“Me and Y/N are happy together,” Ten explains, and your dad seems a little shocked that he’s decided to speak.

“Do you truly think you’re what she needs?” your dad asks. You’re not sure what makes you more angry; the question itself, or the fact that he keeps his tone non-accusatory and light, as if he’s only asking something like where do you work? Like the answer doesn’t matter because he’s already made up his mind.

“As long as Y/N wants to keep seeing me, there’s no reason to stop our relationship.”

A sound of displeasure comes from your mother in the kitchen, and your skin prickles. Your dad nods to Ten’s answer, but he does so in a way that conveys he just wants this conversation to be over rather than consider anything that was said.

You deeply regret not leaving straight after that failed discussion, but you soon find out just how bad it can get once you all make it to the dinner table. Your mother is chillingly silent for the first half of the dinner, acting like neither you nor Ten exist, while your dad attempts to make awkward small talk about how things are going.

There comes a point where you can no longer handle the cold sweat and the nerves, and you put your utensils down. Not that you had much of an appetite anyway.

“Why won’t you even talk to me?”

Your mother glares. “You can’t guess? What kind of question is that to ask?”

You falter. You don’t know why she always does this to you. Ask ridiculous rhetorical questions that you both already know the answer to. Now you must sit here and explain why you asked like it isn’t already obvious.

“I’m visiting after I haven’t been here in a while. With my boyfriend. I thought...I don’t know. The least you could do—” Your mother shakes her head at the word “boyfriend,” and you already know everything else you said went in one ear and out the other.

“I still don’t know why you didn’t just stay with Christian?” she interrupts. “He had a decent job, came to see us often, and was NOT an alien.”

“But he cheated on me,” you say, a sickness rising in you.

“That’s what men do sometimes, Y/N. You deal with it and move on. You’re supposed to be strong—fix whatever is making him do it.”

You and Ten exchange a tense look, and there is clear confusion whirling in his eyes, but you don’t say anything to each other. “That relationship is over. I’m trying to do something for myself for once, not whatever you think I should do.” Even saying those words makes you internally recoil, unsure of what the reaction will be, but you don’t take them back.

“You may be an adult but we’re still your parents. Frankly, you need to be with a man of your own race and species—not this blue Martian here. How would you even have kids?”

Ten gives a humorless laugh, like he wants to respond but doesn’t want to make the situation worse or offend you. “You know what, I should just leave,” he says abruptly, rising from his seat.

You get up quickly after he does, but your mom slams her hand on the table. “Y/N, you better not walk out of here.”

You feel defeated and exhausted, like you always do when dealing with your parents and their objections to every single thing you do, but you decide not to give in this time. “Stop treating me like I’m still a child, ma.”

“What does being an adult matter when you still act childish? Don’t come back here crying when this doesn’t work out. I’ve already warned you more than enough.”

“That isn’t going to happen.” 

“So now you think you know better than me, when you couldn’t even keep a man the first time around.”

“This is hopeless,” you sigh, feeling wounded and angry at all these cheap shots.

“Y/N, please just listen to your mother for once…” your dad interjects, but you try your best to ignore their protests as you grab your things and follow Ten to the door. You can still hear your mother’s angry complaints as you close the front door behind you, though you’re surprised—but grateful—that neither of them attempt to follow you outside.

The ride back home is uncomfortable and mostly quiet.

“I’m sorry, Ten,” you say, feeling like you’ve been frozen from the inside out despite it being nearly summer. You’re near tears when you speak. Ten shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

“It’s not your fault…” he replies weakly, though his words aren’t very persuasive to either of you.

He still walks you up to your door when you arrive back at your place, trailing slightly behind you. The night air is distractingly humid, wrapping around the both of you like a physical thing. Neither of you know what to say to each other.

When you get to your front door, you turn to look at him. “I shouldn’t have made you come. I should’ve known...” 

“I wanted to come,” he points out. “You didn’t make me do anything.” Ten’s tone isn’t outright harsh, but the words are noticeably sharp. Maybe he realizes it, because his face softens as if he’s said something wrong.

You nod. It’s as if there’s a mountainous gap between you two that you just can’t cross right now. “I get it.” You say this almost mindlessly, because you’re not sure what you’re getting, exactly. Your hand rests on the doorknob. You don’t want to end the night on this awkward and painful note, but neither of you are making any progress with this lack of a real conversation. Maybe now isn’t the right time to try to talk about it.

“I think...I’ll just go home tonight.” You expected he’d say that, but the words still make your heart hurt, even if you don’t want them to. He looks like he might say something else, but he just gives you a small nod before starting off.

“Ten…” You don’t know what you want to ask of him or tell him, if anything, but his name slips from your lips like it’s something you can’t keep inside.

Ten stops for a moment and turns back to you. He steps closer again, leaning forward to give you a soft kiss on the lips. When he pulls back, his eyes hold you in place.

He mumbles, “I’m not mad at you,” before leaving.

More than anything, you want to know how Ten is doing, but you’re too ashamed to contact him for the first couple days after that mess of a night. Maybe he thinks you’re just like your parents and doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. His reassurance at the door wasn’t enough to soothe your worries, and you end up tearing yourself up internally over it—repeatedly recalling the warmth of his lips and wondering if that’s maybe the last time you’ll ever feel it.

Similarly, nothing but radio silence comes from his end. He doesn’t respond even after you finally muster up the nerve to send him a text—a short text, but still a message all the same—and you fear he must really be done with you.

On Ten’s part, he does have one justification for it; he’s preoccupied with dealing with the avalanche of unpleasant memories and emotions that incident resurfaced. Everything about what your parents said and how they looked at him reminds him of his past and ongoing struggles with trying to assimilate on Earth.

Even though he’s often very sure of himself and what he wants, he begins wondering if he’s “enough” for you. Maybe you’ve just been humoring him this whole time, or you’ve decided your parents are right and you’d be better off with another human. 

Those thoughts keep him up into the early morning hours, and he soon realizes he doesn’t want to let you go. In fact, he’s not sure what he’d do with himself if you decided to walk out of his life right now, and the idea of it makes him ill. Which makes him feel even more foolish for tuning you out.

Ten’s anxiety over losing you culminates in him standing on your doorstep again after almost a week of emptiness and not knowing how you were thinking or feeling—which has been killing him in its own way.

You’re not quite sure how to feel when you open the door and see him on the other side, but relief shoulders its way to the forefront.

“Y/N, I’m sorry—”

“Can you please—”

You both speak at the same time, your words breaking afterwards. 

“You can talk first,” Ten says.

“Come in.” You let him in the door, and the words start spilling before you know how to stop them. “Ten, I-I’m...really sorry. I should’ve known better than to put you in that situation, but I thought…” Your words trail off. You don’t want to let him know just how desperate you still are for your parents’ approval sometimes. Even though it’s a fruitless case. “I just wanted it to go well. I want things to work now, for us. I really, really want things to work for us.”

Ten surprises himself with how quickly he moves to take you in his arms before the last words have even finished settling in his mind. He hugs you tightly. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want me anymore,” he whispers, like he’s telling you something forbidden.

“That couldn’t happen.” You’re saddened he’d come to that conclusion. “But...it’s not fair for you to leave me in the dark, either. I want to help you...so would you please let me?”

Ten squeezes you a bit tighter, as if you might disappear from his arms. “I’m sorry I ghosted you...it brought back bad memories of how things were when I first got here. When people were more open about treating me like some kind of enemy. I didn’t know how to deal with it.” You tuck your chin into his shoulder and listen to his breathing, his heartbeat, the sound of his words. “Y/N, I’m not sure if I’m very good at love, or if I even know enough about it. Maybe the others were right and I’m kidding myself with something I’ll never properly learn. But, I…” His voice cracks. “I-I think I love you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Entirely overwhelmed, you answer his admission with a long kiss, cupping his face in your hands. His response to your kiss is automatic, the knots of tension unraveling in your embrace.

“I love you, Ten,” you whisper against his lips after you separate. Here and now, it doesn’t feel too soon at all; there couldn’t be a better time to say it. His expression is a lot of things at once. Relief, happiness, contentment...he’s blushing, but it shows up as a darker blue on his already blue skin. When he smiles, it turns his whole face into a picture of joy.

--

“I want to go away.” Quietly, you tell him this as you rest your head in his lap.

You’re both lying on your couch, the room dim and the sound of rain occupying the silence. A downpour started coming down soon after Ten got to your place. You’ve sat there just like that and listened to the rain on the windows for the past couple hours, not wanting to do anything else or separate from each other. You knew he wouldn’t want to go home, and you didn’t even have to ask him to stay.

Ten’s been petting your hair the whole time. The motion of his fingers in your kinky strands makes you sleepy, but now the movements pause at your words.

“Go where?” he asks.

“Away from all this. My parents hate me, and they won’t let me have any peace as long as I’m with you. I just want to go away for a while.” Despite you overflowing with love after finally getting your feelings out in the open, the thought of your parents’ disapproval has lingered steadily in the recesses of your mind. You close your eyes against the tears that begin to well up. Ten’s quiet for a few more moments, and then begins stroking your head again.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

A few tears fall despite you trying to keep them in, and your eyelids flutter when you feel Ten’s fingers on your face, wiping them away. “Then we’ll go away.”

Ten’s homeland is a planet where the sun—or rather, a star called Proxima Centauri that’s much like the sun—is always out, no matter what time of day it is. There are days where it rains or gets cloudy, but night never falls and the star never dips any lower in the sky, always staying pinned in that same spot like a tack on a corkboard. That everlasting light throws your body clock off, and combined with this weird new form of jet lag associated with space travel, you are a mess for the first week or so after your arrival.

Ten makes a few jokes about fragile human bodies, but for the most part he tends to you as best as he knows how and tells you stories about how he grew up to get your mind off the discomfort. He feeds you these neon green drinks that don’t look like anything on Earth you’ve had before, and although they do make you feel better, you begin to think maybe you should’ve had a wellness plan before running off-planet.

You aren’t the only human who’s ever visited or even lived there, though, which gives you reassurance about adjusting to everything. By now, there’s a small population of human beings living here due to the interplanetary exchange initiated by Earth.

Before you left, Ten told you he had a small home in his homeland. You didn’t quite expect to hear this, since he’d been on Earth for a while now and had no family to return to. Though he’d migrated, he still expected to come back to his planet every so often, if only to visit. Now was as good a time as any.

Although many differences exist, the scenery is much like Earth’s; there are ecosystems with plants and animals and other living beings—like the Sommu themselves. Ten’s homeland is not filled with wall-to-wall technology like you’d expect an alien city to be, based on the small examples you’ve seen on Earth. You might compare it to the tropics back on Earth, with the Sommu yielding to nature’s rightful place in their ecosystem instead of clearing out whole forests or continually mining for resources. Ten is amused by your struggle to comprehend the newness and unfamiliarity of it all.

When you feel good enough to explore, he starts taking you to the beach often. It looks mostly like any other beach, but there are large coral forms that grow out of the ocean, reaching up towards the impossibly blue and constantly illuminated sky. Because there is no moon to guide the tides, the water is eerily still, the surface mirror-like—like a huge lake or pond that extends in almost every direction for miles. You’d almost believe it was a mirror if you hadn’t seen a bird-like creature skimming across the surface as it flew by, creating fleeting ripples.

You swim around a little in the still waters after Ten convinces you that you aren’t going to turn into a fish or something equally scary. He has to hold both your hands the entire time to get you to step in, and he doesn’t let go until you’re confident enough to explore the water on your own.

“Just focus on me, okay?” His smile is bright and shining against his blue skin, and he looks you directly in the eyes as he backs into the water, breaking the surreal stillness of it with his movements. “It’s just like the water on Earth.”

“Okay, okay,” you say uncertainly, gripping his hands and stepping in tentatively. The water does feel like any other water you’ve touched throughout your life, which helps you calm down slightly. His hands stay tight around yours as you get waist-deep into the water.

When you’re finally able to let go of him, he claps his hands more enthusiastically than the situation probably calls for. “Yay, you’re a big girl now!”

You roll your eyes at him. “You’re not funny, Ten.”

--

On a bright afternoon, Ten lets you into a room of his house you haven’t entered before. You’ve passed by this shining white door several times, but it’s always remained firmly shut until now.

“What’s in here?” you ask as you hold his hand.

“That’s what I’m going to show you.” He laughs and pushes the door open.

You think it’s a darkroom at first, seeing nothing but dim light and the shiny surfaces of what looks like photographs as your eyes adjust. But when he touches his hand to a panel on the wall and the lights come on, you realize it’s not a darkroom. More like a small gallery for all his pictures.

The “pictures” are physical, but they aren’t like the old Polaroids or film photos that have begun fading out of existence on Earth. They’re small crystalline squares that play eternally-moving videos on their glossy surfaces—a bit different from the translucent holograms Earth adopted. You step further into the room to look at them. It’d probably take days to explore them all, there are so many. Different scenes play out as soundless movies, and when you look for long enough, you realize they’re split into different categories. Numerous events within a life.

Many are of the beach, other scenic places around his homeland, oddly-shaped buildings, and plants in colors that there are no names on Earth for. You step closer to one of the walls to look at the collection of images more closely. You actually do “recognize” a select few, linking them together with old memories Ten had shared with you only weeks ago. There’s so much happening in these small snippets of time, so many stories you haven’t yet heard, that you feel like you could look at them forever and not get enough.

“This is...something else.” Your words seem inadequate, but you don’t quite know how to express your sheer wonder.

“I could take some of you,” Ten suggests, from somewhere behind you. “I want to.”

You glance back at him. “Hm, yeah.”

“I’m serious.” Ten comes up behind you to clasp his arms around your waist. He tucks his chin into your shoulder. His lips are close at your neck, and you let them linger there. One of your hands goes to his own hand that’s over your waist, and you run your fingertips over his knuckles as you gaze at the photo wall before you. “I think you’d be the perfect muse.”

“You could do that.” You’re still entranced with it all, and you already know you’ve made up your mind to let him take as many photos of you as he wants.

--

The next time you go to the beach, Ten takes some photos of you standing near the huge coral forms—or at least as close as you are willing to get—and he laughs at your lingering hesitation.

Still, the crystalline photos he takes of you are the embodiment of perfection. When you look over them later, watching yourself twirl around and strike silly poses in the water, you can almost hear the sound of your laughter twining together and feel the warmth of a star that’s not the sun on your skin.

“What if we stayed here?”

You ask Ten this while you’re lying in his bed, watching a kaleidoscope of shapes on the ceiling. The bedroom window is open to allow the breeze to come in. The ceiling of the bedroom—and every other room in the house—is more like an ever-changing reflection of shapes and colors than an actual ceiling. You might compare it to a mirror, like the surface of the ocean, but you think it’s much more complex than that. Sometimes you can see the distorted outline of yourself in it, like a funhouse mirror. Other times, you see the sky above.

Ten lies beside you with one hand behind his head and the other resting on his stomach, and he turns his head to look at you.

“Stayed?”

“If we just decided not to...go back to Earth.”

He pauses for a few moments. “Is that a good idea? You have a whole life there...and your friends…” Ten doesn’t mention your family, which you are grateful for.

You sigh. Nothing like a quick injection of reality after letting your imagination get ahead of you. “We’d have to go back. I’d have to tell them goodbye. And sort some other things out. Maybe it wouldn’t happen right now. But, after I do everything I need to do on Earth...maybe I could migrate here.”

“That’s a big decision to make...and it should be yours to decide.” Ten pauses again, like he’s weighing his words. “You know I don’t have many connections on Earth…” In other words, leaving Earth and returning home for good might not be as big of a deal for him as it would be for you.

You sit up and look out the window, seeing how the warm wind stirs the trees outside. “I want to.” You say it almost inaudibly, your words nearly carried off by the breeze. You turn back to him only to find him already there, sitting across from you and looking at you closely. Your faces are only inches from each other’s as he searches your eyes. “What do you want to do?”

“I’ll do anything you want to.” Ten’s voice is earnest, like he’d follow you to Hell and back if you asked, and you believe him.

Resting your hand on his cheek, you kiss him.

This kiss is a little different from the ones you’ve shared before—more yearning. More desperate. You kiss like there won’t be enough time to do all the things you want to do with each other—to each other. His split tongue bumps against yours, caresses it, and it causes a shiver to go down your spine, like it always does.

You end up lying back on the bed again with Ten’s body crowding yours in, legs tangling together and hips pressing against one another’s. Neither of you have made a move to take the other’s clothes off yet, but then he separates from your lips for a long moment and studies your features, from your eyebrows down to your mouth.

“Touch yourself for me.”

Your mouth drops open slightly.

“I want to see it.” He takes one of your hands and guides it up under your skirt and between your legs, pressing your fingers against your sex through your underwear, and you look at him with wide eyes, taking a deep breath. He lets go of your hand, and you keep yours right where it is. You’re slightly nervous about his black gaze trained on you, unrelenting and prying, but you begin to move your hand anyway. 

Over your underwear, you press your finger between your lower lips, sliding between them and over your clit, and a little tremor goes through your body. You find yourself getting wet more quickly than you normally would with Ten watching you as you tease your entrance. You breathe a little heavier but make no sound yet. One of Ten’s hands reaches out for your ankle, though he doesn’t do anything other than keep his fingers there, a light touch that keeps passing back and forth over your ankle bone.

You circle your fingers across your clit more insistently, your legs tensing as the pleasure mounts higher. Ten’s lips part as he watches you, a heavy breath escaping from his chest. The hand on your ankle slides higher up your leg, just below your thigh, like he wants to slide his fingers into the mix and take over, but he doesn’t make a move to do so just yet.

Finally, Ten reaches under your skirt to pull your sticky panties off, sliding them slowly down your legs and leaving them somewhere on the floor. You want him to touch you again, the brush of his hands against your hips not enough, but he doesn’t grant your desire. “Keep going,” he says, leaning back on his hands, and you can see he’s growing hard.

You bring your hand back to its original place between your thighs, sliding through the wetness more easily and shuddering when your fingertips graze over your clit. You slide a finger into yourself then. A small moan slips out, and you close your eyes, but Ten’s fingers pinch your chin—not enough to hurt, but the sudden touch makes you look at him. “Keep your eyes open.” His thumb presses into your lower lip, and he stares at your mouth for a moment like he’s imagining sliding something hard and hot between your lips.

Ten kisses you on the lips again, and this time he trails the kisses down your body until he’s gripping your thighs on either side of his face. You pause in your movements when he reaches the junction of your thighs, and you watch as he grabs your hand and slips your finger out of yourself. He sucks the slick digit into his mouth, and you cannot tear your eyes away from him.

He lets your hand go and pulls you a few inches closer to his face, dragging you across the bed, and you can barely get your bearings back to sit up again when he slips his tongue through your lower lips. You moan, and he responds to that by repeating it again, catching your clit between the split in his tongue, and wiggling both sides.

“Oh Jesus...oh fuck.” Your hands go to Ten’s hair, pulling on it as you push your hips closer to his mouth, your back curving up. He is alluring tucked between your thighs like this, teasing and sucking your clit with his split tongue and prodding his fingers at your hole until he chooses to slide two of them inside.

His free hand keeps you close against his face as he eats you out, that wondrous tongue sliding against the most sensitive part of your body and making you gasp with boundless pleasure. Little droplets of moisture bead at the corners of your eyes from how good it feels, your stomach tensing and releasing as you try your best to keep still.

He has to keep his grip on your body tight when you come, as you try to squirm away from his tongue because of how stimulated you are. He only lets you go after he’s satisfied himself with licking up all the wet that’s spilled from you.

Then he strips your skirt off for you, because he knows you’re not quite in a state to do it for yourself right now. He peels the rest of your clothes off similarly, which doesn’t take much time or effort to do; you’ve dressed lightly for the weather.

Ten looks at you lying beneath him on the bed, his gaze stuck somewhere between awe and lust. 

He slips out of his own clothes with a certain practiced ease. Yes, he’s really blue everywhere. He looks mostly human-like everywhere, too, except for the lack of a belly button. 

Ten kisses you deeply as he slips into you, and you clutch at his sides. He tries to keep his pace slow at first, maybe for your sake or to just savor how it feels, but he gives into the feeling of you squeezing around him and starts thrusting into you faster. There is already sweat sliding down to his jaw, though you think it might be because of the heat, too.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” comes out of you in a voice you hardly recognize as your own.

His pelvis sliding against your clit from the proximity of your bodies makes you curl your fingers into the strands of his hair, wanting to touch every part of him you can. His lips go to the sweat-slicked skin of your shoulder, leaving little wet kisses behind as he wraps an arm around your waist and simply fucks into you, his shaft dragging against your walls.

He eventually separates himself from your neck, though it comes with some effort, to gaze at your face again. However, he finds that your eyes have drifted shut.

“Do you wanna come?” Ten asks, softly, gently, like you might break apart if he speaks too loud.

You’re a little winded from how he’s thrusting into you and can’t yet see the motive behind this question—because of course you do—but you answer with a shaky “I-I want to.”

“Then don’t look away from me.” His voice becomes harsher on these words.

“I…” Your lips move without any real words behind them as he thrusts into you harder, sinking all the way into you before pulling out to the tip. You want do what he’s just told you, but you find it difficult with the way he’s intent on burying himself into you, his eyes piercing into your own. “Mmm, I-I…”

You don’t know if you can, but the way he’s kindling your rising heat with each thrust makes you want to try very, very hard. Ten keep his hands on the sides of your face so you cannot look anywhere but at him.

The pleasure bears down on you more with each second, and you try to keep your breathing steady as another climax approaches.

“You’re almost there, come on baby,” he coaxes you, sloppily kissing the corner of your mouth before slipping his tongue in again. The way you gasp against his lips and tighten around him signals him to your orgasm, and he sits back to watch it play across your face, smirking at how you moan his name desperately.

Ten’s continued thrusts make you shiver from the flood of sensations overcoming your body, and you whimper at his movements until he pulls out and comes on your abdomen.

Ten gives you time to recover after you come down from your second orgasm, though he makes sure to lay a few more enamored kisses on your weakened body. He gets off the bed and exits the room after that. You don’t bother to ask where he’s going, because you know he’ll be back anyway.

When Ten comes back, he has his camera with him. The teasing tilt of his lips never leaves his face as he points it towards you. He takes a photo of you lying on his bed nude, with the breeze coming in and rustling the tree leaves and your hair, your skin shining bronze under the light of the eternal star. Then he comes closer, making the bed sink under his weight, and nudges your legs apart. He takes more photos of your lower stomach glistening with sweat and his cum—and photos of him sliding his slender fingers between your thighs and bringing you careening into another bout of euphoria.

The camera is soon forgotten after you come again. Ten climbs fully back onto the bed now and pulls you into his lap. His dick is hard again, and the length of it nudges against your lower lips, making you whimper from how sensitive you still are. He shushes you with a kiss and lifts your hips so he can slide into you, his shaft nudging that soft spot inside you and making you grip onto his arms.

You’re too mushy and dazed to do anything but let him push his hips up into you while you cling to him, your head lolling back. Ten’s mouth goes to the open expanse of your neck, and he wets your skin with his tongue.

The kaleidoscope of shapes above you on the ceiling morphs into one glistening reflection, throwing the blurred shapes of your bodies back to you. It’s like looking through a dense fog. You’re a little caught off guard by it, and you stare up at your nude forms. Ten looks up as well to see the cloudy figure of you cradled in his lap, and he only grins and thrusts up into you harder and smacks your ass in reply.

He grinds into you while he has you sitting full on his dick, and you think he must have set off your internal “reset” button somewhere between landing slaps on your ass and repeatedly hitting your g-spot. Your mind is blissfully, amazingly blank. The only clear thing you can distinguish is how he feels in and around you.

When you come this time, it comes with a gush of wetness that makes Ten whisper several smug praises into your ear for being such a good girl and making a mess on him.

As you quickly find out, Ten’s refractory period seems to be nonexistent, while his stamina is overflowing.

Ten knows how to mix the pain with pleasure in a way that enhances both feelings, and you don’t know if you’ve ever experienced anything more perfect. One moment, he’ll say something romantic and fairytale-like to you before shoving your head into the pillow and taking you from behind in the next moment, pulling one of your arms behind you for leverage as he thrusts into you hard. You want him to do whatever he desires to you, and so you let him hammer into you until you think your hips and ass will be bruised by the next morning.

You’ve never knew that sex could be so carnal and so loving at the same time, but this is all of those things, and it makes you feel so full that you could split at the seams. You scream, cry, and moan more times than you can count, so enveloped by pleasure that it seems like the atoms of your body will simply dissolve from the intensity.

When you both finally become too exhausted to continue, it’s still daytime. Of course. But Ten draws the blackout shade forward and seals all the light out, and so you know it must be time to sleep. Time blends together here. Even if it’s not yet the midnight hour, it will be as long as you deem it so.

“Come here,” he says, and rolls you over on the bed so you don’t have to sleep in the wet spot. You grin in sleepy amusement against his neck as he hugs you to his body. “Let’s stay right here.”

You know he’s talking about sleeping for the next few hours, but you can also imagine he’s referring to your new life—one you’ll create together.

#ten scenarios #ten imagines #ten smut #ten fic #wayv imagines #wayv smut #wayv fic #wayv scenarios #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct smut #nct fic #ambw scenarios #kpop ambw #ambw fic #ambw imagines #ambw smut #nct ambw #nct fluff #wayv fluff #nct angst #wayv angst #ambw fluff #ambw angst #ambw

[armorabs]

hi. can u talk about squidward/larry

ok so this is a really late response but i promise you ive thought about this constantly since i first got this ask 6 months ago, but i hadn’t been sure how to formulate my thoughts in a digestible format but im ready to give it a shot so here it goes

FIRSTLY: interactions

squidward and larry are a duo that seemingly don’t interact all that much, with only squid plus one focusing on their relationship in any real capacity. but when you look deeper into things, they have more interactions than initially perceived, usually in the background. there are quite a few occasions where they can be seen just kind of hanging out in the background

smiling at each other when something good happens in one episode

dancing together in another

sitting next to each other at a party...

whatever tf this is

(there’s also squidward asking larry to pretend to be mr. krabs for his checkup in another episode, and squidward clinging to larry for protection in larry the floor manager...)

and there are two different stories in the comics where squidward and larry’s friendship is kind of... a plot point? like when squidward is trying to impress a girl who is mean and critical, so spongebob and larry work together to figure out how best to get her attention because they’re both his friends and they want him to be happy. after trying various workout regiments to see which one would suit squidward, the three of them end up doing ballet together and larry compliments squidward’s calf muscles. 

or another where squidward chooses larry as his sole companion in an interstellar escape from bikini bottom and planet earth in general. unfortunately, larry... literally dies, so his presence in the story doesn’t last. and since it was a parody of planet of the apes, it can’t really be taken at face value and isn’t really indicative of much but i think when contrasted with squid plus one it’s... interesting. i’ll get into that in a minute

SECONDLY: dynamic

the planet of the apes parody story combined with squid plus one suggests that squidward truly likes and values larry and his companionship - on a level that isn’t really easily comparable to his other friendships, such as they are. in squid plus one its easy to see that they do have a really genuine connection, and they are easily able to find interests they can share together even though they have totally different life styles and personalities

mostly i just think they can be both hilarious and funny and sweet together, and it really all depends on the kind of story that needs to be told and the roles they can serve in a narrative. obviously i think there is a LOT of potential in the idea of their dynamic being read as a possible romance. and unlike a lot of characters, i don’t think either of them really need to drastically change who they are as characters and people to work as a relationship long-term because their personalities largely dont conflict and generally compliment each other

despite squid plus one ending with squidward hurting larry’s feelings and larry ditching squidward because of it, the two are clearly shown to continue being friends afterwards and still generally get along. of course, given the nature of the series, that disagreement is never going to be addressed. it doesn’t need to be - but there’s potential when it comes to the idea of whether or not it could be. yes, squidward thinks poorly and talks down to the kinds of interests and lifestyle that larry values, but he doesn’t actually look down on larry because of it and in fact... hardly seem to... associate those interests and lifestyles with larry beyond being consciously aware of the fact that larry is a weightlifter and a jock

so in the context of a non-continuity gag cartoon, this conflict is not ever going to be addressed or talked through because it isn’t the point of the episode or the cartoon... but if you put them in a context or setting where conflict is allowed to be resolved and taken seriously, they’re both characters who would seek to address this conflict and make it up to each other.

larry is a good-natured person who believes in doing whats right and good, and being kind. if he lashes out because he’s hurt, he’ll take time to cool down before apologizing and trying to make amends. we’ve seen him do this before! and for all squidward’s faults - sometimes selfish with a narcissistic, inferior superiority complex, delusions of grandeur, and pretension - he’s still got a good heart and is capable of realizing when he’s done wrong, reconsider his position and mindset, and make amends when he’s hurt others.... we’ve seen him do it too!

so it’d be surprisingly easy for them to resolve the conflict of squidward looking down upon the athletic and weightlifting lifestyles while also respecting and liking larry, and larry’s reaction of hurt over this if given the opportunity and room to do so in a setting that allows for it... and they had to have done so off-screen to continue being friends in episodes following that. which is just vague and compelling enough to think about the ways they must have resolved their differences and how it’d effect their dynamic going forward in a hypothetical scenario that is not solely comprised of jokes and gags

and when it comes to trying to think of how a relationship would work long-term, i don’t really think squidward works with spongebob or patrick. they’re both overwhelming, intense personalities that can be too much for him to handle long term. they like him and he likes them, and i can easily see any of them having non-platonic feelings for each other in any combination... but i feel like they would just overwhelm him too much for it to really last without completely changing them as people and characters in ways i don’t care for. but with larry, he doesn’t need to become a different person and neither does squidward - i don’t need to change the things i like about them to make them better for each other

maybe they’d have to make some changes in their life if they were allowed to exist in a realistic setting where they pursue a long-term relationship. changes that would come naturally to a person in real life who would want to start a relationship that could become long-term... but they would be changes that would never be necessary to explore in a setting like spongebob. which is fine! but the thing that interests me about cartoons is the inherently flexible nature of their characters and relationships and how they can fit different story needs while remaining recognizable - that they can exist easily in comedic, nonsensical stories while also easily existing in a more serious, emotionally-driven one.

and i think squidward and larry’s relationship that works both in a more comedically driven context, as well as a more down to earth and sentimental one. to make a relationship work, they just need to bridge the gaps that already exist and communicate with each other - and doing so can be beneficial to them both. with larry’s desire to be fair, supportive, and kind coexisting with his hotheaded and adrenaline seeking nature, and squidwards... you know... all of that, there’s just a lot that can be done with them and i like that

#spongebob squarepants #squidward tentacles #larry the lobster #squarry #Mysterious Strangers

[clarkgriffon]

another day another pll rant.

just thinking about how the fact that marlene/the writers finally realizing how talented troian was actually signaled... the descent of the show?

like i’ve thought about this meta a lot but not in a negative connotation like i am now and that’s the fact that it’s one of the only shows i’ve ever known to switch it’s main character.

and yeah, yeah, pll is an ensemble cast. but i’m of the firm belief that even ensemble casts have focal characters- some are more obvious like eleanor in the good place or leslie in parks and rec and sometimes it takes a bit deeper of a look like i’d say rachel is the focal character of friends, even though friends does a very good job doling out screen time to all characters.

and pll was very clearly made with conceit that while it was an ensemble about four girls, aria was the main character. lucy hale was the face of PLL for the early years- i didn’t even watch the show until season 6 was halfway over, but i do remember seeing promotion in the early 2010s and it was always lucy hale’s face- to the point that i didn’t realize it was an ensemble cast at all. as an outsider looking in, i thought it was a show about lucy hale’s character, whoever that was.

and it’s surprisingly more subtle in the show than it was in the marketing- even though aria does the initial “shhh” and the show starts from aria’s perspective, the girls share screen time fairly well throughout the first 2 seasons. aria is the main character, yes, but that doesn’t make her more plot-connected than the other girls. she gets just as much “A” time as the other girls (or suspiciously... less? but let’s not go there) and her main character-ness mostly comes from the fact that she has the most important and central romance plot.

by season 3, they’ve dropped the idea that aria is the main character and have fully embraced that the girls are all important (unless you’re emily... then i guess, sucks to be you). 

but around season 5, i think the writers realized... hey, troian is far and above the best actress on this show and spencer isn’t technically a better character (as in how the character is written on paper) than any of the other girls, but troian is so compelling in this role... what if the show was about her?

and it’s an INSANE thing to do because even when aria was the main character, the show wasn’t about her. it was about ALISON. and that’s why it worked. aria may have pulled more focus than the other girls, if only slightly, but she was not the question to be answered.

in alison being re-alived, they no longer had that focus and decided spencer was just... everything to do with the show. alison still had some plot relevance, but almost everything that could be tied to alison could also be tied to spencer due to spencer and alison’s shared relations.

by the end of the show they’ve gone so off the rails that spencer is the ONLY character of the ensemble that has any connection to the plot. it’s the spencer show, about spencer, for spencer, the mystery IS spencer, she is both the question and the answer and meanwhile in the background the rest of the girls... deal with personal squabbles, i guess.

when i originally set out to write about the main character switch, i was coming at it from a point of “huh, that’s intriguing” and i still think it is, to have the view of what you’re creating shift so much you change who’s central to the show. but thinking deeper i really think it was a big part of the downfall, particularly in the very last seasons.

and i think part of it was definitely recognition of troian’s talent, but another part was solely about fan reaction changing what the show was. i don’t think marlene set out to make a mystery. i think she set out to make a teen drama- about relationships. THAT is why aria is the main character in season 1 and 2. it’s not about “A,” it’s about aria and ezra, spencer and toby, emily and maya, etc, but especially aria and ezra. they thought that was the selling point of the show and the mystery... it was just a backdrop.

when this culture of clue hunting came about through social media, they changed directions and aria just... stopped being the main characters. particularly, because she was the liar that was usually LEAST plot relevant and MOST rooted in relationship drama. and i think that’s also indicative of the downfall- i really don’t think they intended for pll to be a good mystery ever. and i know that’s been said before, but it’s true. it was a show about teen drama relationships and the shift to it actually being more about mysteries is what triggered the shift in main character to spencer.

but what’s ironic about that? because spencer became the solo focus for the mystery, the show unintentionally regressed in its final season to be almost entirely about relationship drama. because no one but spencer had anything to do plotwise, all the other girls COULD do was have squabbles with their partners or each other. and so, in shifting the show to be mystery focused, they weirdly shifted it back to be relationship focused.

#pll #sorry this is so long my dudes