#*shows up three years late with starbucks*

[thisfairytalegonebad]

forging an unbreakable bond, chapter 2/3

Title: forging an unbreakable bond Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Word count chapter 2: 1400 Summary: Ignis is the first one to be connected to Noctis. Gladio and Prompto follow years later. A prequel to pieces of a whole (previously titled three times they could feel each other, which is still the series' name)

Read chapter 2 below the cut, or on AO3 here.

“Nervous?” Ignis asks the night before Gladio officially gets sworn into the Crownsguard as Noct’s Shield. Not that he hasn’t been Noct’s Shield before that, but now he’ll finally gain access to the Prince’s Armiger.

“Nah,” Gladio says casually. When that just earns him a raised eyebrow, he grins and admits, “Alright, maybe a little. Can you blame me, though?”

Ignis smiles at him and takes a sip of his drink. Since Gladio found out earlier that day that he passed his Crownsguard exam, Ignis is treating him to a night out.

“No, of course not. It’s a special occasion, I’d say it’s natural.”

“Yeah,” Gladio says, draining the rest of his beer. “Hey, what’s it feel like?”

Ignis isn’t due for his Crownsguard exams for another year, but once it’s his turn, it’ll be a purely formal thing. After all, he’s been hooked up to Noct’s Armiger since they were children. Gladio used to be a little jealous when he was younger - as Noct’s Shield, he was supposed to be first .

Now that he’s older, and closer to both Noct and Iggy, he doesn’t really mind anymore. Really, he can’t think of anyone more deserving of being the first member of Noct’s retinue than Ignis, even if it’s not yet official.

Gladio doesn’t need to specify what he’s asking about - the connection to the Royal Armiger is always the most discussed topic among the new Crownsguard members, and everyone’s eager to know what it feels like.

“It feels… hm, it’s hard to describe. I hardly remember a time without it,” Ignis says, touching his fingers to his chin in thought. “The connection to the Armiger feels vast, powerful, even though I can wield but a fraction of its true strength. The magic feels almost alive, and once I learnt how to control it, it was as though it became a part of my own body, my own self.”

Gladio knows that Ignis has always been gifted when it came to magic. Once he’d been connected to the Armiger, he’d been put into magic lessons with Noct, and apparently, he’d taken to it as if he had been born with it. Unsurprising, considering Ignis rarely doesn’t excel at something.

If he’s honest with himself, he’s a little worried about what his own proficiency with magic will be like. His specialties lie in protection and brute force. He can’t imagine being particularly good at magic, but luckily, not all members of Noct’s retinue have to be.

“And you can feel Noct, yeah?”

“I can. It’s certainly the most notable part of the Armiger connection, and also my favourite. Noct is simply… always there. I can always feel his presence, no matter how far away he physically is.”

Damn. That does sound nice, Gladio thinks. People wouldn’t guess it, but he’s kind of sentimental, and the thought of that sort of constant companionship makes him feel all warm inside.

“And you?” he asks.

Ignis blinks at him as he takes another sip. “Me?”

“Am I gonna be able to feel you, too?” Gladio clarifies. After all, they’re gonna be sharing the same connection.

“I… haven’t considered that,” Ignis admits. “I cannot say for certain, after all, there’s never been another person before.”

Gladio shrugs. “Well, guess we’re gonna find out tomorrow.”

He wouldn’t mind if he could feel Iggy too. It’s a nice thought, the three of them, always connected no matter the distance.

----

Noct is clearly nervous. Gladio can almost see him vibrating out of his seat with nervous excitement as he watches his father perform the ritual for each of the new Crownsguards.

Gladio would be lying if he said his own nerves weren’t acting up, but it’s all excitement. He’s been the Prince’s Shield from the day Noct was born, and he’s here to stay. Getting permanently connected to him in a magic ritual is just another obvious step. No big deal.

He catches Noct stealing glances at him and flashes him a grin, hoping to reassure him. Noct offers a shaky smile in return, but it’s clear he’d rather just get it over with.

Lost in his own thoughts, Gladio watches the rest of the Crownsguard pledging their loyalties to the King until it’s finally his turn.

He catches Noct’s eye as he walks up to the crystal on steady legs and gives him a small nod.

The corner of Noct’s lip twitches upwards ever-so-slightly, but where just moments ago, there was a nervous, shaky teen, there now stands a proper Prince who holds Gladio’s gaze without a hint of uncertainty.

Gladio kneels before him and starts reciting his oath, the oath he’s practiced so many times he could recall it in his sleep.

“I, Gladiolus Amicitia, Son of Clarus and Orchis Amicitia, Shield to Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, hereby pledge my undying loyalty to the Crown of Lucis. And vow to provide my arms in times of war, my art in times of peace, and my service in times of need. I promise to defend my liege against all that desire him harm with word, deed and force. From this day forward, as long as I draw breath, I am bound to you, Prince Noctis, and you alone.”

Noct was nervous about messing up his part of the oath, Gladio knows from Ignis. But as he stands before Gladio, looking down at him with pride, his voice doesn’t waver as he delivers his reply to Gladio’s pledge.

“Let all here bear witness, that I, Noctis Lucis Caelum, son of Regis and Aulea Lucis Caelum, and 114th heir to the Lucian throne, hear and accept your oath of loyalty, given in good faith. In turn, I vow to defend and support you and yours, with word, deed and force. Those that keep and hold this oath true will be rewarded with my favour. Those that forget this oath and break faith shall be repaid with my judgement and dreadful wrath. Now, arise, Gladiolus Amicitia, so that our bond may be forged.”

Gladio stands, blinking rapidly to combat the sudden wetness in his eyes. Looking at Noct now, looking every part like the Prince he is, Gladio has never been so proud of him.

Simultaneously, they reach out and touch the crystal together, and when Gladio’s hand makes contact with the smooth stone, it’s as if he were touching something alive.

It’s brimming with magic beneath his fingers, and he feels its power flowing through him. The sensation is incredible and nearly takes his breath away, but there’s something else rapidly spreading through his body and filling every part of him.

Noct, he realises. It’s exactly like Ignis described, and more. For all the sappy books with flowery language Gladio reads, he’d struggle to express the sensation to anyone who hasn’t felt it for themselves.

Noct can feel him too, from the way he finally smiles at him, eyes glistening suspiciously.

Once Gladio pulls his hand back and breaks contact with the crystal, the flow of magic becomes less intense until it fades to the background, still there, but not as overwhelming. Noct, however, is a presence that doesn’t change, and Gladio is stupidly glad for it - now that he knows the sensation of feeling Noct so close within him, he couldn’t bear it if it were dulled.

And finally, he notices another presence, one that rivals Noct’s in intensity. It feels different; where Noct is calm and steady, the other presence feels warm and sheltering, and it only takes him a fraction of a second to figure out that this must be Ignis.

Once he realises this, he can’t really hold back the tears anymore, the wetness rolling down his cheeks for all to see. Let them see, he thinks. He’s always worn his heart on his sleeve, and he can’t bring himself to feel shame for this.

“Aw, Gladio, c’mon,” Noct complains in a whisper as they pass each other, both making their way back to their designated positions, but Gladio can see him blink tears out of his own eyes.

King Regis speaks again to finish the ceremony, but Gladio doesn’t hear a word of it.

His focus lies entirely on the presence of the two people he is now forever bound to, and he knows with absolute certainty that he would lay down his life for either of them in a heartbeat.

----

Read the entire fic on AO3 here.

#ffxv #final fantasy xv #gladiolus amicitia #noctis lucis caelum #thisfairytalegonebad's writing #*shows up three years late with starbucks* #like genuinely it's been three years

[melminli]

phone time

summery - you and satoru have been together for a long time now, like really long. next week marks your nine year anniversary, actually, and your friends think that it's a bit weird that you two are not doing anything special on that day.

contains: fem reader, fluff/crack, utahime being in your business, gossip, meimei hate, suggestive joke at the end

"we were thinking about going shopping with mei mei this weekend, you want to come with us?" utahime asked you as you stepped into the living room after leaving the kitchen. it took you a second to answer her, as your attention was focused on the tray in your hands. you really didn't want to risk one of the three cups of hot coffee spilling over and doing a mess. as well as getting a third-degree burn.

when the tray finally touched the small table, you got around to answering. "i don't know. i've been spending too much money lately." you admitted, making yourself comfortable on the soft carpet. sitting across from the sofa also helped the conversation flow more smoothly. "i would still come just to hang out with you guys, but you know i don't like meimei that much..."

shoko was about to add something when gojo interrupted her. "you can just take my card, you know. and meimei isn't much of a talker anyway. you should go if you feel like it." he suggested from his position on the pastel pink armchair. "you can also go to starbucks together. they should have pumpkin space latte on the menu again now that it's fall."

you thought about the proposal once more at his argument while holding your cup in your hands. the girls on the other side sent disgusted looks to the man. even though he spoke in their favor, they weren't really interested in hearing his input. "and why are you still here? i thought you told your crusty boyfriend to leave for a few hours." utahime complained to you.

"and i did." you replied and sensed the mean looks he gave you when you didn't correct her after she described him as crusty. you just shook your head to signal him that she didn't know what she was talking about. "weren't you gonna meet up with suguru?" you asked him, looking in his direction.

i can't believe i'm getting kicked out of my own place. he leaned a little deeper in his seat at that thought, but didn't really mind since it was you who asked him to. he wasn't really authorized to participate in girl talk and was, to be honest, a bit butt hurt about it. he would do anything to participate in a session. "we are. that asshole is running late, so i would be very grateful if you ladies could show me some mercy and let me wait inside since it's like two degrees outside."

you raised an eyebrow at his wording and spoke up with a grin after taking a sip. "what's the matter, elsa? can't handle the cold?"

satoru just rolled his eyes. "i can't wait until it starts snowing. doesn't it ever get boring? making the same jokes over and over again."

you pretended to give his question serious thought until you finally answered. "no, not really."

utahime watched the interaction between you with a furrowed brow. "i can't believe you two are a couple." she finally said, abruptly changing the subject. "you just don't act coupley at all."

shoko disagreed. "what does that even mean? they've been together for like forever."

it felt a little strange to gojo that she was kind of supportive of your relationship right now. she wasn't really, but it felt that way to him, and he was happy about it and agreed with her. "exactly. that is a heavy accusations you're throwing in the room, that i'm not going to tolerate. i would literally die for my girlfriend, which is like the bare minimum, i know. but still." he spoke in a completely serious voice.

you hummed in support of him. "yeah, i mean men are meant to die in war anyway, so it's good that you know."

there. you guys were doing it again. "that's what i'm talking about. nothing about how you behave with each other is romantic in the slightest way." she said, a little disappointed. "i've also never seen you kiss or heard that you're going on dates. i mean, do you even have anything planned for your anniversary?" she continued to enumerate, getting seriously worried.

you didn't take her worry serious since you did all these things in private. you just preferred it that way. "we live together, and we spend a lot of quality time together. just because we don't call everything a date doesn't mean we never do anything as a couple." you retorted, and satoru supported what you said with adding period. "i've been a little lazy lately due to it getting so cold again, and i don't feel like doing anything extravagant because it just mentally exhausts me on top with work. so we'll probably just chill and have some phone time in the evening." you answered her question about your anniversary. maybe you would get satoru a little gift like flowers. yeah, he liked getting flowers. you mentally made a note to look on the internet for some with a nice meaning.

shoko repeated questioningly. "phone time?" somehow, she imagined it to be something very strange.

"yeah, you know." satoru began, although the two had no idea what you two were talking about. "lying in bed. scrolling on social media - mostly tiktok. showing funny or stupid videos to each other and laughing about it."

you raised an index finger to add. "or cat videos." you reminisced about some silly trends in the past. "i kind of miss dabloon cat..."

so the two are just some sort of ipad kids.

"that's pretty weird, actually. you two are weird." said utahime in conclusion, not knowing what else to say.

you just rolled your eyes as you took another sip of your coffee. "last time i checked, you were single."

a sigh escaped her at the remark. "well, i can't argue against that. my dating life has been drier than a desert lately..."

at that, a slight giggle escaped satoru's lips, reminding you all that he was indeed still present in the room. "you know what's not dry after i - "

"satoru."

"what? just because she doesn't see us kiss doesn't mean that we don't do it."

#female reader #jjk satoru #jjk #jjk x reader #gojou satoru x reader #gojo x reader #gojo saturo #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #fanfic drabble #utahime iori #shoko ieiri #crack fic #jujutsu kaisen #satoru x you #x reader

[toomanystoriessolittletime]

Focus

Summary: You had been signed up with Joel and two other people to patrol to the radio tower in Cody. After getting there you offer to take first watch, leaving Joel coming up with a... creative idea to test how good of a sharpshooter you really are.

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem. reader

Wordcount: 2.7k

Rating: E

Warnings: established relationship, teasing, flirting, kissing, smut (Oral f receiving; unprotected sex; cream pie), 2 ass slaps, some biting, guns, shooting

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The ride to the radio tower in Cody was not something you looked forward to when you read your name on the patrol rotation board. 

You did not particularly enjoy sitting on horseback for a longer amount of time ever since you injured your tailbone just before you got to Jackson almost four years ago. The injury had fully healed of course, but certain movements still made you sore. 

But you were never one to complain and saw the bright parts of such a journey. 

Spending one on one time with Joel Miller for example. 

Not that you didn’t spend time with him anyway ever since he moved into your home almost two years ago. But there was something exciting knowing you and him would be almost alone for miles and miles. Well except for the two other people who were also on patrol which would be Eugene and one of the newer residents of Jackson a young woman named Katy. 

„I could talk to Maria, tell her you’re sick,“ Joel offered, his chin resting on your shoulder as he stood behind you his chest against your back, his arms caging you against the counter where you prepared a big to go cup (thanks to a Starbucks raid earlier this year) with Coffee for him and a fresh mint tea for you. 

„That’s awfully nice of you, but I finally convinced myself to pretend it’s like a little 3 day vacation.“

„Oh yeah?“ He asked and you nodded, smiling as you felt his nose against your neck, breathing you in. 

„Jup. You know, five star accommodation in a… abandoned farmhouse, food and drinks all inclusive, spa treatments….“ You listed. 

„Oh yeah I can see it. Rustic survival experience package included,“ he hummed and you chuckled. 

„See? The amount of money you’d have to pay for that like twenty years ago,“ you put the lid on both of the travel cups and turned around, tilting your head up to look up at him. His hair was still wet, combed back. He had shaved a little, leaving his beard a little shorter than usual. There were tiny wrinkles around his eyes as he looked at you, a small smile on his lips, his brown eyes soft and… happy. 

It was a completely different version from the Joel you met three years ago when he and Ellie first got here. 

It took a lot of time and patience to get to know this version of Joel, the version he only showed to the people he loved. 

You got on your tiptoes, kissing him softly on his plush lips. 

„Come on, we gonna be late,“ you whispered and he pecked your lips again, sighing as he parted from you and picked up both of your already packed backpacks, leaving you to carry the cups and sandwiches you had prepared for the journey.

With your rifle over your shoulder, your backpack and a bag with some food strapped to your horse, Ellie let you borrow Shimmer, you were riding next to Joel behind Eugene and Katy who were currently playing a game of car (yeah, hilarious, they already saw one in the last three hours).

You had another hour to go and you were already looking forward to taking a nap first thing you got there. You had volunteered to take the first watch during the night, giving you perks of not having to set up camp and clearing the area of infected. 

„You okay?" Joel asked and you turned your head to look at him, giving him a small smile. 

„I’m fine,“ you said as he looked at you and he sighed, not believing a word. 

„Want me to give you a massage later?“ He asked, riding a little closer so only you could hear him. 

„I don’t know, if I can afford a spa treatment. Money is a little low,“ you teased him and he sucked his bottom lip in, shaking his head, fighting a smile. 

„We’ll find a way for you to pay, don’t you worry,“ he hummed and you couldn’t help but smile at him for a moment longer before your eyes drifted away from him to watch your surroundings. 

It was almost dark when you got to the radio tower in Cody. The four of you made quick work of checking the building, before you spend some time talking and eating together. You took a thirty minute nap, Joel waking you up so you could start first watch.

You were looking forward to stretching your muscles while on the watch of threats, stretching your body after riding all day. Not that something had ever happened here before when you were out on this trip.

It was getting colder, winter fast approaching. 

Joel had given you his winter jacket to keep warm before he laid down into this sleeping bag, reminding you to wake him up in four hours so he could take over second watch. 

You still couldn’t get used to how dark the night made the world around you ever since the outbreak. There was no twinkling light of a city in the far distance, no noise of a far away high way.

You were on the roof of the tower, the whole landscape surrounding you.

It was dark and quiet. The only light source the half moon, the only noise an owl somewhere in the woods beside the house. 

You saw some deer while watching out through the scope of your rifle but you decided against taking one down. 

You did not have the right tools to put it apart and take back to Jackson so you watched them while they were running around. 

A noise behind you let you jump, your rifle still in your hand. Turning around you watched Joel as he walked up to you, completely dressed apart form his coat you were wearing, watching you with a little amused smile. 

„Could have shot you,“ you sighed, taking a deep breath to calm down your rapidly beating heart. 

„What a way to go,“ he joked and you rolled your eyes. You turned away from him, your eyes back on the landscape in front of you. 

„What are you doing up?“ You asked. 

„Couldn’t sleep,“ he hummed and you felt him getting closer until his arms came to rest on the railing in front of you, his body caging you in. You felt his warmth even through the layers you were already wearing, wondering if he was getting cold, only wearing his undershirt and Flannel. 

„You should try anyway. It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow,“ you said and he hummed. 

You stood there in silence for a while before you felt his lips on your jaw. One of his hands left the railing, pulling a little on the coat you were wearing until he could access more of your neck, his lips wandering down. 

„What are you doing?“ You asked quietly, your head tilting to give him more access.

„Nothin’…“ he hummed, sucking on your skin. His hand slowly unzipped your coat, grunting when he found another coat beneath it. 

„How many goddamn layers are you wearing?“ He asked irritated and you grinned to yourself. 

„Enough to stay warm all night,“ you said and he made a disapproving noise, pulling the zipper of your second coat down. His beard scratched over your skin when he finally found a sliver of your skin with his fingers, his lips humming against your neck. 

„Joel…“ you warned, the rifle still in your hands, propped over the railing, ready to be used immediately in the case of an emergency. 

„Just keep watch baby. Don’t mind me,“ he said, his fingers now running down your stomach, his fingertips slipping under the waistband of your jeans all while his lips kept kissing your neck. 

You took a deep breath before you relaxed your shoulders. You felt him smile against your skin, before his other hand let go of the railing and he opened the button of your jeans. 

„I want you to focus on keeping watch, baby. Can you do that for me?“ He asked, his lips against your ear while his fingers pulled at the waistband of your jeans. Your breath hitched, you head nodding. 

„I need words,“ he said and you whimpered. 

„I do. I can, Joel,“ you mumbled.

„Good girl,“ he whispered and your knees buckled at his low praise.

The rifle was by now slumped in front of you, only held up by the string over your shoulder. Joel slipped your jeans and panties down to your knees before his warmth left your back. 

„I want you to keep your hands on the railing. You gonna want to hold on to something,“ he said and your hand shot out, gripping the railing, fighting a whimper.

You had no idea what got into him, but you weren’t about to question him. 

His fingers brushed up the back of your thighs, making you sigh. 

“Gotta be quiet. Sound travels from up here. Don’t want Eugene knowing what we’re up to here, huh?“ he said before you felt his tongue lick through your folds from behind, front to back. 

„Fuck,“ you gasped, letting your hand fall in between your shoulders, your eyes slipping closed. 

„Nuh uh. Keep that eyes on you surroundings. Want you to keep watch while I eat this pussy,“ he said and you bit into your bottom lip before you tilted your head up, your eyes focused on the dark landscape in front of you. 

Joel licked you slowly, humming against you, both of his hands pulling your asscheeks apart, exposing you fully to him. You moaned quietly as he ate you out, his tongue slipping inside of you, fucking you with it slowly. 

„Shit,“ you whined, wiggling in his grasp. He slapped your ass. 

„Stay still. Tell me what you see,“ he hummed, you felt his breath on your ass. 

„Wha..at?“ You asked. 

„Tell me,“ he licked, „what you see. Got a job to do. Don’t let me stop you from it,“ you could hear the grin in his voice, before he slapped your ass again. Harder this time. 

„Fuck. Fuck okay,“ you said. You blinked your eyes a couple of times, your gaze wandering around as you felt Joel’s tongue flick over your clit.

„There’s… There’s a family of deer not far from here,“ you started. He hummed, his lips closing around your clit, sucking slowly. 

„It’s two big deer and five smaller ones. They… Fuck the younger ones are jumping around,“ you whimpered, your knuckles starting to hurt form how hard you were gripping the railing. 

„What else?“ Joel asked and you groaned. You took a deep breath, trying to find something else. 

„Ho-ORSES, fuck right there,“ you moaned and you felt him chuckle as he focused his tongue on your clit while two of his fingers entered you without any resistance, angling them inside of you, his fingertips brushing over the spot only he seemed to be able to find immediately. 

„Joel please,“ you mumbled out of breath. 

He played your body like he played his guitar, with strong hands an nimble fingers, pushing you closer and closer to your orgasm, your insides clenching. You could feel it deep in your bones, your muscles tensing. And just before you could fall over the edge Joel stopped. His fingers pulling out. 

You whined in disappointment and Joel bit into your left ass cheek. 

It’s then that you both heard it. The unmistakable noise of infected. 

You tensed, your hands gripping the riffle, pulling yourself in position. 

Joel held on to your hip as he got back up, the weight of him behind you keeping you focused. 

„How far away?“

„Far,“ you whispered, your finger now hovering over the trigger. With one eye closed you kept an eye on them through the scope. It were six or seven, you could not say for sure due to the darkness. 

„Think you can take them out from here?“ Joel asked and you heard him unbuckle his belt, fighting the urge to turn around to watch what he was doing. 

„What are you doing?“ You asked, your eyes still fixed on the slowly approaching danger. 

„Nothin’. Shoot them baby. I know you can. Best fucking shot we have in Jackson,“ he hummed. You were now leaning over the railing, the gun sitting over it, pointed towards your target. You steadied yourself, fading out everything around you, your eyes finding your first target. 

It looked like it had been a young man before it got infected. You breathed in, pulling the trigger as you breathed out, a shot ringing out and that was when Joel chose to thrust into you hard, making you stumbled minimally forward, gasping out. Joel’s arm came around you, reloading the gun for you, his cock deep inside of you. 

„Next,“ he hummed against your ear. You clenched around his cock, making him choke out as you took back control of the gun. 

„A little warning would have been great,“ you turned your head to look at him. He just kissed you once. 

„Where would be the fun in that? Go on, lemme check how good of a shot you are while you’re fucked,“ he said and you couldn’t stop a low moan from your throat as he rolled his hips. 

„Someone woke up horny,“ you mumbled to yourself and you heard him chuckle. You leaned back forward, your eye searching for your next target through the scope. When you found it, you didn’t think, you just pulled the trigger, watching it fall down, while Joel bottomed out and thrust back into you hard. 

„So fucking wet,“ Joel groaned, slowly fucking into you. 

You reloaded the gun, lining up the next shot, trying to steady yourself as you took the shot, Joel thrusting into you hard again. 

„Fuck,“ you whimpered.

„Gonna make you cum so hard once you took them all out,“ Joel promised and you gasped as you reloaded the gun again. 

Every time you pulled the trigger he thrusted into you so hard you had to push back against him to not stumble forward. 

It was after eight shots more (you only missed one) that you secured the weapon and put it down. 

„My good girl,“ Joel praised you, his arm pulling you up against him. You wiggled yourself out of his coat, wanting to feel him closer. One of his arm wrapped around you, his hand gripping one of your tits over your shirt.

„Please make me cum. I’m so fucking close,“ you whimpered, bringing your hands up to hold on to his arm wrapped around your chest. He fucked up into you deeply, his other hand coming down in between your legs, finding your clit. He circled his fingers over it while he continued to fuck you. 

„I’m… Fuck I’m gonna cum,“ you moaned, meeting his thrusts as best as you could.

„Shit, keep squeezing my cock like that,“ he grunted against you ear. 

It was within the next few second that you exploded around him, your lips parted in a silent scream, shaking around him. 

„Fuck baby. Can I cum inside you?“ He asked and you nodded. 

„Last period ended three days ago. Should be fine,“ you whimpered. 

„Fuck, you sure?“

„Joel please come inside of me,“ you whined and he groaned, thrusting a handful more times before you felt him twitch inside of you, fucking his cum inside of you. 

His head came to rest on the back of yours, you both out of breath. 

„What was that all about? Not that I’m complaining,“ you asked and he huffed a laugh. 

„Woke up horny for you,“ he said and you both chuckled. He slowly pulled out of you and you hissed a little. 

He pulled up your jeans for you after he tucked himself back in and you turned around in his arms. He had pulled his coat on and you put your arms under it, hugging him close.

„You took them all out?“ He asked, looking down at you. 

„Sure did.“

„That’s my girl,“ he smiled and kissed you. 

#my fic #Joel Miller #Joel Miller x fem. reader #Fanfiction #Fanfic #fan fiction #Pedro Pascal #joel miller fanfiction

[steddiecameraroll]

My whole existence is flawed (You get me closer to God)

Pairing: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson

Rating: Mature

Words: 24,120

Tags: AU Modern Setting 2014ish, AU No UD, Strangers to Lovers, Eddie Munson and Nancy Wheeler are BFFs, Musician Steve Harrington, Tattoo Artist Eddie Munson, Miscommunication, Romantic Comedy, Background Ronance, Steve's band is called Seven - play on the whole Joe/Djo thing

“You know I’m not into that kind of music. Why don’t you take a different friend or someone else who might enjoy it?” Eddie Munson leans back in the stiff wooden chair in the Starbucks and stares blankly at his best friend, Nancy Wheeler.

“Because I want my best friend to go with me. Come on, you haven’t gotten out in a while. This could be good for you. Plus, it’s his first official show outside of open mics. Wouldn’t you want to be able to say you went to Seven’s first-ever concert when he becomes big and famous?” She gives him a wink, and he rolls his eyes.

“You have a lot of faith in your high school ex-boyfriend’s talent there, Wheeler.” He comments while picking at his blueberry muffin.

“He’s really talented. Come on, Eddie, do me this favor.” She clasps her hands before her chest and gives him her most pathetic puppy dog eyes.

“Fine, but you’ll owe me.” 

“Yes! Ok, but it has to be an equivalent favor that doesn’t involve physical labor or borrowing money.”

“Deal,” he lifts his iced cold brew, and she smiles, raising her iced matcha latte and clinking the bottom of her cup against his.

“You gonna bring anyone?” She raises her eyebrows while taking a sip of her drink.

“No, you know I don’t have time for that shit. The shop is finally gaining traction, and I need to focus on that.”

Eddie opened The Hideout Tattoos and Piercings a little over three years ago and has dedicated every free minute to promoting and building a solid reputation for the shop. It’s finally paying off, and he’s been able to hire two more talented artists and has a full schedule of dedicated clients.

“Come on, you’re going to burn yourself out. You need to take a break and find a life outside that building.”

“Sure, I’ll do that when you tell that poor woman you have a massive crush on her?” Eddie motions to the barista behind the counter, who’s dancing a little to the music playing overhead.

“You know I’m never going to do that.”

“Well, in case you wanted to change that timeline, she has looked over here multiple times since we sat down, checking you out.”

Nancy sits up and fluffs her hair a little. “No, she hasn’t. Shut up.”

“Yes, she has. You’re so easy,” Eddie smirks just as the barista flicks her eyes over to the table for at least the 8th time. “Just did it again.”

“Oh my god, Ed, shut up.”

“Fine, then you can’t say shit about my love life.”

“Touche.” 

Eddie and Nancy never seemed like the friendship kind of duo, but it was easy once she let her guard down. They met at a mutual friend’s party years earlier when Nancy was in her Junior year of college. Eddie was still spending most nights consuming large quantities of alcohol. Nevertheless, Nancy was a positive influence on Eddie. Her business classes have helped him substantially in the last few years, and her stoic responsible demeanor has rubbed off on him.

Before their friendship, Eddie was sometimes found snorting Oxis off bathroom toilets in random bars and banging anyone and everyone he could while rarely being safe. He drank a good 5 days a week and was always late to his first appointments every day, regardless of when they were booked. He was working at a small street shop that took mostly walk-ins at the time and was on thin ice with the manager. He’d worked hard to get the apprenticeship at the shop several years earlier. Still, once he started building his portfolio and getting comfortable with his skills, he slid into dangerous territory.

If Nancy hadn’t fallen into his life then, he’s sure he could’ve lost his dream job and would never be where he is now. But instead, she helped pull him from the brink of an abyss he wanted to slip into. Now she’s his little bisexual soul mate and probably the only person on the planet that he can say he gives a shit about, besides his Uncle Wayne.

“At least give her your number. She’s clearly into you.”

He’s been watching the two of them stare longingly at each other for months, driving him insane. The barista’s name is Robin, and he thinks she’s cute in a bouncy, anxious way. He watches Nancy crumble around her every time they visit the coffee shop. Nancy’s usually so self-assured and put together that when they’re standing at the register placing their order, she starts stumbling over her words. It makes Eddie love her a little more.

“You know I can’t do that. What if she’s straight?”

Eddie looks at her like she’s got to be kidding. He briefly flicks his eyes up to look at Robin, then back to Nancy. “You mean the oversized shirt, non-makeup, Doc Marten, every finger covered in rings wearing little lesbian back there? You can not be that oblivious.”

“Straight girls can wear that stuff.”

“When did you last see a straight girl wearing any of that? They’re all into those skinny jeans, cardigans, and dumb ballet flat shoes. Like that Duschnell girl.”

“Do you mean Zooey Deschanel?”

“Yes! Yeah, her with her big ol eyes.”

“Look who’s talking, Bambi.”

He nods at her. His mom always called his big brown eyes chocolate buttons, so he has no leg to stand on.

“So come on, give her your number. Or let me do it!” He leans over the table, eagerly shimmying his shoulders at her.

“Never, no, don’t you fucking dare Munson, I swear to god. If you do that, I will call you at 6 am every Saturday for the next 6 months.”

“Fine, will you at least talk to her? Maybe take your cup to the trash and ask if she’s doing anything this weekend. Just open the door, at least. You could tell her about Steve’s show tonight and take her instead of me.”

“No, you’re not getting out of this, and maybe tomorrow I’ll talk to her.”

“I’ll take it.” He thinks it feels like some kind of progress. He may not be the relationship type, but Nancy is only the relationship type, so maybe this yin and yang thing makes their friendship work. “Shit, don’t you have to go to work?”

“Oh shit, what time is it?” She turns her phone screen on, and her eyes go wide. “Fuck, yeah, I gotta go. I’ll meet you later tonight at 8. Text me if you can’t find it.” She kisses the top of his head and rushes out the door.

Eddie catches barista Robin’s shock on her face after Nancy’s affection toward his skull. He knows he shouldn’t meddle but can’t help himself. He gets up from the table and casually shuffles to the counter.

continue reading...

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #nancy wheeler #robin buckley #steddie fanfic #my writing #steddiecameraroll posts #stranger things #musician steve harrington #tattoo artist eddie munson #fruity four

[mollymagician]

Dreamling Week Day 2: stuck in an elevator

Hi guys!! *shows up three days late with a Starbucks, two immortals and an old lady stuck in an elevator*

It was June 7th. Not THE June 7th, not the big one, they’re a few years off from that yet, but a random rainy 7th of June, and Hob was off doing errands. He’d have been a lot more disgruntled about slogging half way around the city in a pelting downpour if he hadn’t known that Dream would pop up somewhere, he always somehow managed it on this specific date.

But it’s still a surprise when he suddenly comes into being just as Hob is about to hop onto the lift at stop #2 on his to-do list.

Hob shoots him a grin. “Fancy seeing you out and about on such a miserable day.”

Dream replied with the small smile that seemed to be his grin-equivalent. “I thought you could use…assistance holding your umbrella?”

There was a ding as the doors slid open, and then began to close behind them as they stepped inside. Suddenly, Dream’s arm shot out, inhumanly quick and totally lacking the primal human fear of getting one’s fingers squished.

The doors sprang back open, revealing a stooped and wrinkled figure shuffling along behind a walker. Her gray hair was bundled into a messy bun, and gray eyes were magnified enormously by the thickest glasses Hob had ever seen.

Her name was Gladys, they would soon come to find out.

She didn’t seem to notice that Dream somehow knew what floor to push for her without asking, just crackled, “Oh, thank you kindly, dearie!” and Hob stifled a snicker. Dearie.

The lift began to rise. They made it to the sixth floor before the power went out.

Gladys sighed and pronounced with feeling, “Oh bugger!”

Gladys was eighty-two years old, never trusted elevators, but was delighted to be stuck in one with “two such handsome young men!”

“Er…I’m sure the power will be back up in a tick,” Hob said. Gladys settled comfortably on the seat of her walker, seemingly very content with her lot.

“So romantic, eh boys? Just like those little stories my granddaughter likes to write!” She gave Hob a wink. Dream’s head tilted and he took on the far-away look he got whenever he was accessing his mental metaphysical Google, or whatever it was he did. Hob could tell when he finally found what he was looking for, because his eyebrows shot up so high they nearly cleared the top of his head.

Fifteen minutes later:

“Well lads, thank the good Lord I had a piddle before I came or we’d be in dire straights right about now!”

Standing behind Gladys, Dream reached into his coat and produced his pouch of sand, giving Hob a look that he could only translate as is it really necessary for us all to be stuck in this box?

Hob wasn’t sure how to telegraph we cannot throw sand at a little old woman and teleport her out of a lift because she will have a STROKE with nothing but expressive eyebrows so he just shook his head and shot Dream his sternest look. It worked on his students…usually. Dream signed and put the sand away obediently.

Another fifteen minutes:

They had heard about Gladys’ late husband, her three grandchildren and how lovely the cardiologist was that she’d been on her way to visit before her morning got derailed. She rummaged around in her purse. “Like a mint, dears?”

Hob swore under his breath at his phone. “Connection is wretched in here. I can’t get through to anyone.” Dream patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. Hob could FEEL him restraining himself from pulling his sand out and dangling it in Hob’s face.

“I’m sure everything will be fine, lovie. I think I have a deck of cards about, somewhere…” More purse-rummaging. “Oh, and a sandwich! Bless, I forgot that was there.”

Ten more minutes:

“So,” Gladys said, “How long have you two been together, eh? I’d have been celebrating fifty years with my Bert this July.”

Silence. Distantly, Hob could hear the rain pounding against the building, echoing down the elevator shaft.

“Er…” he began, eloquently.

“That is…” he continued.

“Oh go on, it’s all right,” Gladys chirped. “My grandson, the one at university, he’s got himself a nice boyfriend. I said to myself, I said, Gladys, you can tell when two lads are sweet on one another, so don’t go challenging anyone to strip poker.” She pulled the deck of cards out of her purse and winked. “Yet.”

“Um,” Hob said.

“Sometimes it feels like six hundred years,” Dream intoned.

Gladys cackled and bopped the Immortal Endless King of Dreams and Nightmares on the arm with her purse. “Oh, listen to this one here!”

“It is…our anniversary,” Dream added.

He reached over to nudge Hob’s jaw shut with a little click, and then tugged Hob into his side like…like it was just something they did. And yes, that was definitely a smirk.

The power chose that moment to come back on.

“Oh…bugger,” Hob said.

——————————————-

They made it back down to the lobby with little incident. Gladys shuffled off to call her daughter, she said, since her doctors appointment was a bust. But first, she gave Hob a surprisingly crushing handshake and thumped Dream on the shoulder and said, loudly, “Well, thank you for the LOVELY time, boys. Let’s hope that the next time you’re stuck in a lift on your anniversary it’s not with an old bird like me hanging around, eh?” She executed a frankly indecent eyebrow wiggle, and shuffled away, humming to herself.

Hob stood for a moment watching her go, and realized he didn’t have the patience for any more of that day’s to-do list. He was to-do’ed out, as it were. Except for one thing. He glanced up at Dream and tried hard to control the idiot grin attempting to take over his face.

“We need to talk,” Hob said.

“That was partially my intent when I came to visit you today,” Dream said, still smirking, the bastard.

“Partially?”

“I must admit, I’d hoped that talking wouldn’t be our only activity.”

Hob sighed. “Right. I’m not hiking back to the tube in this weather. Get back in the lift, dearie. This time you can sand us all you like.”

Dream said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

#dreamling #DreamlingWeek2023 #stuck in an elevator #I like to think that a few years later Death pops in on the guys as they’re celebrating yet another anniversary #to tell them Gladys says hello #the sandman netflix #dream of the endless #hob gadling

[five-miles-over]

The Age of Loki - Part One

(credit to @tomhiddlestunned for this image)

Pairing: Professor Hiddleston x Reader, Loki x Reader (eventually)

Summary: For his second year teaching at Oxford's English department, Professor Hiddleston hires you to be his first-ever teaching assistant. One night while working late, he shows you the newest addition to his poetry class's syllabus: the Lokasenna, a poem centered on the Norse god of mischief...and accidentally summons the trickster god himself.

Disclaimer: this fic is not meant to offend any real-life person, it's just a relatively-harmless AU meant to explore a hypothetical what-if scenario.

Warnings: just a little jealousy, but mainly banter

Professor Hiddleston lived by three rules. Rule number one, always be kind to everyone you meet. Rule number two, dancing's not a crime. And rule number three, never get Starbucks for yourself without buying something for your TA, especially if she's working late. 

Professor Hiddleston strode into the library closest to the Oxford English department building as the grandfather clock rung ten times. His brown curls combed back, he wore a crisp three-piece suit and carried a leather messenger bag on his left shoulder. He immediately made his way towards the table where you were grading essays for his Fundamentals of Poetry course, and placed a Starbucks cup in front of you. 

"Grande Earl Grey Tea Latte with two shots of espresso and a dash of vanilla."

At the sound of his voice, you looked up from your papers and lowered your red felt tip pen. "Two weeks of working for you, and you've already figured out my coffee order?"

"Well, you were in my course for nearly five months before you became my teaching assistant." Professor Hiddleston gently corrected you with a smile, lowering the messenger bag from his shoulder while his right hand held a croissant wrapped in brown parchment paper. He took a bite into the flaky pastry and licked his bottom lip. "Plus, you always sat in the front row. I could smell the Earl Grey from your cup while I was lecturing."

"It was a course held at eight-thirty in the morning," you quipped, taking a sip. "I needed my caffeine. And so did you, judging by the tea cup on your desk."

Professor Hiddleston chuckled. He loved the way you always had a comeback ready for him. It made your relationship so much more than former student-former professor, or TA-and-professor. 

Being a relatively new professor at Oxford, you were the first teaching assistant he'd hired since he began his second year as a member of the university's faculty. Yes, his first course within the English department last year had a class size of almost two hundred students, but that number dwindled like drops of morning dew throughout the semester. And within the fifty or so students that remained, you were one of the few who stood out to him as someone genuinely interested in his class discussions and assignments. You showed up to every lecture, without fail, completely prepared and willing to bring your own ideas to the table. And to someone like Hiddleston, that was exactly what he needed in an assistant. Someone who could help him navigate the challenges of teaching a course from start to finish. 

So when the semester came to a close, and he'd finished doling out the final grades, he left a handwritten note on your term paper inviting you to see him in his office. When you arrived, he simply made you an offer, or rather a promise. He promised you the position of his first-ever TA, with a decent pay for a university student - about twenty-one thousand pounds a year - and the opportunity to be his "second-in-command", like a king's chief advisor, though some would say that a king's second-in-command is actually his queen…Never mind that for the moment. 

To say that working alongside you was enjoyable would be an understatement. He liked discussing with you in the library about life, literature, and how many times is appropriate to watch the same play. Professor Hiddleston found himself looking forward to each moment with you, to the point where he started ending his appointments five minutes earlier than scheduled, just so he could have a few minutes to comb his hair and put a little extra spritz of cologne before seeing you. And every time he had the privilege of introducing you as his new teaching assistant, whether he was talking to fellow professors or to one of his three classes this semester, Professor Hiddleston's face would light up as if he'd won the lottery. Actually, in Professor Hiddleston's mind that may as well be true; you were truly one of the best people he'd ever met since he joined the university.

You took another sip, and underlined a few awkwardly phrased sentences on the paper in front of you. "It looks like a lot of these people quoted Shakespeare's sonnet. You know, the one everybody knows about? 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'" You wrote a 'B' on the paper and then grabbed another essay, pushing a section of hair out of your face. 

"You picked a good assignment for your Fundamentals of Poetry course, it's very fitting for the first essay of the semester," you remarked, bringing him back into reality. You read aloud the prompt, which asked the students to write about how poetry has affected their lives. They were encouraged to include examples of poems that had a lasting impact on their lives and their world views. And if Professor Hiddleston were true to his word, then he would possibly use the assignment as a basis to decide which of the poems from his course's syllabus he might actually teach.

"I thought so too." 

"-Thou art more lovely and more temperate," Professor Hiddleston murmured in continuation, taking a few steps so that he was now standing right next to your chair, his eyes on you while you graded the next essay. "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date…" The half-eaten croissant completely forgotten, he placed his free hand on the table, inching it towards the essays and haphazardly-arranged pens until it was almost a millimeter away from your arm. He immediately froze as soon as he realized the proximity, his hand tensed all of a sudden.

His ability to recall verses at the drop of a hat was always impressive; it was one of the many things you liked about Professor Hiddleston. Your head down, you continued to skim the essay before marking it with a 'C+'. You sighed, "Exactly. But none of them seem to give proper explanations as to why this particular sonnet by Shakespeare. Listen to this, Professor. 'Shakespeare sonnet number eighteen has made me see the world in a more romantic way. I have learned to appreciate the beauty in the world, and see the 

Professor Hiddleston leaned against the table. "And why do you think that is an unsatisfactory explanation?" He asked with a small smile.

"Because that kind of an explanation could be used for any kind of poem. Alright, maybe not any kind of poem, but it's not specific to sonnet number eighteen."  

"I couldn't agree more," Professor Hiddleston simply said. "There's no clarification as to why that particular sonnet, or Shakespeare's sonnets in general?"

"No, not really." Putting the 'C+' essay along with the other graded ones, you reached for the Starbucks cup. "I just don't understand why a bunch of the students would all quote the same sonnet for this assignment, and then all use…shoddy explanations." 

Your word choice made him chuckle and look down for a moment. You could definitely make a great professor yourself.

Just then, your phone vibrated, and you reached down to the leg of your chair, into your bag to check it.

Professor Hiddleston crossed his arms, squaring his shoulders as the smile disappeared. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah, my boyfriend Chris just texted me. He's upset about having to postpone our date night."

He sighed aloud. 

"What is it?" You frowned and put the phone away. 

"I don't like him."

"You haven't even met the guy." 

He looked you in the eye, arms still crossed. "Not entirely true. I saw him pick you up from this very library two days ago, at eight-thirty. It was after you finished grading my pop quizzes on "The Fall of the House of Usher". He's a tall, blonde,…surfer, beach bum kind of boy, right? This Christopher of yours-"

You nearly gave the professor a scowl. "He hates being called that."

"I'm just saying that you could do better than this Christopher. He's just not the type of guy that you should be with."

You shook your head. "You're a wonderful professor, but I'm not taking dating advice from someone who's dating three different women at the same time." You retorted and picked up the red felt tip pen for no reason. 

His eyebrows furrowed. "Now hang on just a moment -" He interjected, "We agreed that nothing was to be exclusive."

"Is 'we' referring to you and your cell phone?" Alright, that wasn't your best comeback ever, you had to admit. It was late, and more than anything, you needed a warm hug and some sleep. 

"Drink your tea, it's getting cold." Professor Hiddleston pointed to your Starbucks cup, and then took a bite into the croissant, which was already starting to feel tough, almost rubbery in his mouth. "There's something I wanted to show you. Something I want for tomorrow's class."

"What is it?"

Professor Hiddleston ate the rest of the croissant in a single bite, reached into his bag, and retrieved a leather-bound book, its edges slightly torn up. The pages were almost a yellowish-beige, barely glued to the spine, and covered in dust. 

He began to flip through the pages. "It all began with the gods having a feast, hosted by the sea god Ægir. Loki grew jealous of all the praise being heaped upon the other guests, and slew Ægir's servant Fimafeng." 

"The Lokasenna," Professor Hiddleston introduced, a touch of theatricality in his voice, the same voice he used for his lectures. "It's a poem from Norse mythology, one of the poems from the Poetic Edda, describing the exchange of insults between Loki - the god of mischief - and the other gods."

"Interesting choice…it's certainly no Shakespearean sonnet." You commented.

You took a drink from your Starbucks, nodding. "Hm-hm." The clock inside the library rung eleven times, the sound as solemn as  funeral march. 

"And then," he sat across from you and continued to narrate, "Loki enters the hall and demands to be seated. The other gods are reluctant, but Loki recalls an old vow sworn with Odin that they should drink together. So, the gods make some space for Loki." Professor Hiddleston's eyes twinkled with excitement. "And Loki continues to insult the gods, and no one can seem to stop him. The only one…" he turned the page, "who can stop Loki is Thor, the son of Odin, because Thor is the only one who Loki fears."

"Thor, the…god of thunder?"

"Thor the god of thunder," Professor Hiddleston flipped the page again.

You asked him if the book contained any original Norse dialect, or any Old Norse. It turns out it was just a one-of-a-kind book about Loki left in the Oxford library hundreds of years ago, containing an English word-for-word translation of the Lokasenna, along with an interpretation of each verse. It could've been a collector's item, sitting in the study of some member of the bourgeoise, but it served a more glorious purpose in the library of a university, available for literature enthusiasts. 

I, Lopt, from a journey long,

Professor Hiddleston cleared his throat and began reading to you the part where Loki demanded the other gods for a drink.

"Thirsty I come | into this thine hall,

To ask of the gods | that one should give

Fair mead for a drink to me."

He paused only to sneeze, which should've been expected given the amount of dust within the old book.

Professor Hiddleston sneezed again, and you noticed a small cloud of blue dust rise from the book when he did. He finished the verse,

"Why sit ye silent, | swollen with pride,

Ye gods, and no answer give?"

"At your feast a place and a seat prepare me,

Or bid me forth to fare."

After he sneezed a third time, louder than before, another cloud of blue dust escaped from the pages. Only this time, the cloud of blue dust grew larger, and larger…until it began to swirl around the two of you.

"What's happening?" You hurriedly stood up from your chair. 

Professor Hiddleston gulped, his eyes wide as he dropped the book onto the table and immediately reached for your arm. "I-I-I don't know! I…Are we being transported to another realm?!"

"I should hope not!"

After what felt like several moments of confusion, the blue dust subsided. Before you stood a tall man with shoulder-length, greasy black hair, a pale oblong face with defined cheekbones, and a deceptive smirk. He wore a cape lined with green silk, that billowed around his ankles as he strode towards you, and his black leather heeled shoes clicked as he walked. 

Professor Hiddleston made his way forward, standing between you and the tall man with his hands out. "Who are you?" He demanded, his lip quivering. 

"I am Loki of Asgard," the man smugly introduced himself. With a wave of his hand, a set of golden horns appeared on his head, and a dagger in his other hand. Another wave, and both of those things disappeared. "And I have been summoned."

Tag list: @lokischambermaid @smolvenger @lokidbadguy @turniptitaness @lokisgoodgirl @evelyn-kingsley @lovelysizzlingbluebird @muddyorbsblr @anukulee @omgsuperstarg @holdmytesseract @lokidbadguy @stupidthoughtsinwriting @icytrickster17 @thatdummy-girl @fantasyfan4life

#tom hiddleston #loki god of mischief #loki #tom hiddleston characters #professor tom hiddleston #professor fic #professor hiddleston #professor hiddleston x reader #tom hiddleston au #tom hiddleston x y/n #tom hiddleston x reader #tom hiddleston x reader fic

[missmielyhoran]

Baby Honey (1)

in which Y/N and Harry are best friends hopelessly in love with each other and everyone seems to know this except them...

[Warning- Angst, fluff, two idiots who can't take hint, pinning, mention of toxic relationship]

My wattpad \\ Ig part 1

It was surprisingly sunny for a late November morning and there was no way you wouldn't use that in your favor.

You loved cold weather cause you loved the warmth. The feeling of warm clothes shrugged around the body or snuggling in a warm blanket after taking a relaxing hot bath but summer will always be your favourite. The cute dresses you get to wear, the beach parties you and your friends throw and the yearly road trip you and Harry make.

You quickly got out of bed and started getting ready for the day. It was 9 in the morning which was pretty early for the weekend. You had so much to do though, every Saturday you film video for your youtube channel mostly with Harry and then edit them over Sunday so, you can post it by Monday.

It's your schedule and you were committed to it, never once have you missed it (except for that one time you got diarrhoea 2 years ago).

After taking a quick hot shower you wrapped a towel around yourself and got out of the shower. You wiped the bathroom mirror with your hand as the heat from the water fogged it up.

You started doing your skincare and lash routine. It was your sister's idea for you to get some lash extensions cause she wanted them and was scared that if they look bad (which was idiotic cause she looks good no matter what) she didn't want to be alone. They were small, looking just like your natural ones but better. they defined your eyes and you have been in love with them since.

Sliding open the closet door you take out the brown three-piece set which had pair of sweatpants, a zipped hoodie and a crop top which can almost pass as a sports bra. After putting on your clothes you do your 'filming makeup' which included lots of concealer (cause sleep schedule? what's that?), blush, mascara and lipgloss. It's rare you do heavy makeup for filming if you're in that mood then maybe but mostly it's simple.

You grabbed your camera and other filming equipment needed, not caring that much about searching if you can't find anything cause Harry had some of his own at his place which is far better than yours and mostly you end up using his anyway.

You created your youtube channel as a joke. You were 16 just walking around the mall with your sister and decided to record and share it on youtube. It didn't get that many likes but it was far more likes for a shitty vlog you made. So, you decided to make more and as time more people joined and now you had a hefty amount of subscribers.

You have a very expressive face and people seemed to like that. The funny and weird faces they get to see or the self-deprecating jokes seem to relate to people, especially teenagers.

Putting on your shoes you walked out of your room and head straight to the door. You had a small apartment 1. cause it was NYC everyone has a small apartment and 2. cause you lived alone. It could pass as a studio if not for the separate bedroom. But it was beautiful, cozy and homey. The large window cascaded the light showing off the beautiful view of the city, the tall buildings, and busy roads. It was everything you wanted.

You walked out of the door locking it behind you. Your first destination was Starbucks to get your coffee and then to Harry's. You didn't bother to make breakfast cause H had the bad habit of feeding everyone even if they were full and no one can say no to his pouty face.

You were scarily dependent on each other neither of you could imagine living without each other ever for a day. Even if one of them is busy they keep in contact with texting.

You walked out of your apartment building seeing Martha walking dogs (she was dog sitter for the people who live on the floor below you), you give her a little wave which she struggled to reciprocate as all 4 dogs yanked her in different directions.

You skipped your way to Starbucks which was not that far from your house. You sipped on your iced coffee texting Harry that you were on your way and asking if he wants something. After confirming that he really didn't want anything you decided to take some pictures for your Instagram.

You situated your phone on a windowsill of a bakery and clicked a few shots already getting judgy looks from people passing by in their expensive suits. Rolling your eyes you picked up your phone and started walking to your destiny. Making it your clear goal not ruining your mood at any cost.

*****

You knocked on the familiar brown door and leaned against the frame waiting for him to open. You heard shuffling on the other side and then the door flew open showing Harry with his wide frog smile.

You smiled back and he immediately jumped on you, hugging you so tightly for a second you thought you might pass out.

"I missed you so much" He mumbled against your neck. His confession and the tickling of his breath both made you laugh.

"You big baby it has just been three days and we talk daily," You told him and sighed, melting into the hug. Harry always gave the best hugs, he was so warm and big (that's what she said) like a giant teddy bear.

"I know, but I need my daily dose of Y/N" He broke the hug finally and stood in front of you pouting. You shook your head and moved past him inside his apartment. The lavender scent mixed with his filled your senses and you felt at ease immediately as if your mind had been aching for that.

You put your bag on the cupboard beside the door and plop down on the couch with Harry following you behind. You turned to look at him to find his eyes already on you, you raise your eyebrows in a questioning manner.

"What do you want to do today?"

*****

Both of you filmed through whole morning and afternoon and now it was almost four in the evening. As fun as it was to film with him, it is very difficult as both of you started laughing at random shit and sometimes at nothing.

You were sitting on the kitchen counter as Harry made noodles and meatballs your favourite. Flynn was sitting near your dangling feet looking up at you as you steal noodles out of the pan and feed him earning yourself a glare from Harry.

Your phone chimed beside you. You used your pinky to open it as your fingers were dirty and saw a text from your sister.

"Bella and Mathew want to hang out should I tell them to come here?" You asked Harry who was putting servings on the plate.

"I have enough food for four people" He shrugged without looking up. I hummed and answered the text back. I looked back up at Harry, he was looking good today not that he didn't any other day but the white shirt which was almost transparent did nothing to hide his muscles and tattoos. His back muscles flexed with every movement he made and you had to bite on her lower lip to not create any embarrassing noise.

It was a no-brainer to know that you had a crush on Harry. The first time you saw him at a friend's party and just as your eyes met his you knew you were in deep shit. But he had a girlfriend at that time and you had just gotten out of a toxic relationship so, you didn't make a move on your feelings and when they broke up, you and he were such good friends that it terrified you that you might lose him.

The knock on the door gets you out of your thoughts. Harry looks over his shoulder and you gave him a nod and move towards it. Opening the door you're greeted by your sister Arabella and her boyfriend Mathew. Mathew ruffled his hand through your hair making you whine and your sister laugh.

Mathew was older than your sister which meant he was a lot older than you so, your dynamic since start became a little sister and big brother-like. He was just as protective of you as of your sister, going to the pub is a nightmare with him and Harry as they just scare off anyone who tries to come near the table by their stare.

All of you moved inside, Bella crouching down to pet Flynn while Harry and Matt exchanged 'Hello's. Harry moved towards you and squeezed your shoulder as a thank you for getting the door.

Soon enough everyone was situated on the couch. Harry sat on the corner and pulled you beside him, your sister sat beside you and Matt on the floor near your sister's leg. Chattering filled the whole flat along with Netflix playing in the background. You dug into your food as soon as you got your plate, hungry from not eating the whole day.

*****

Everyone was tipsy when the dinner ended and somehow we had roped Harry into dancing to Nicki Minaj's song. You covered your mouth as an ugly snort left your mouth when he started twerking badly. Bella had tears in her eyes and Matt was recording everything.

The song came to end and Harry ploped down on the couch with his head in your lap and his feet in Bella's. You ran your fingers through his hair subconsciously as Bella looked at the video Matt recorded on his phone. Harry took your arm in both of his and cuddled closer to your waist.

A Swarm of butterflies erupted through your whole body as you saw the drunken smile on his sleepy face but you knew it was just because he was drunk. So, you crushed the butterflies and focused back on the TV but his eyes stayed on yours.

Bella went to the kitchen at one point and Matt passed out near the foot of the couch with his neck awkwardly bent which was definitely sore when he woke up.

You thought Harry had also fallen asleep but apparently not, cause just as you changed the song to a slower one to relax and probably get you sleepy he opened his eyes and stood up.

You looked at him with a half smile stunned by his sudden movement. Harry extended his hand towards you which you took and he pulled you up. You groaned in laziness not wanting to move after being comfortable and warm there but as his hand slid around your waist and he got a lot closer than he should be you forgot everything.

'Apocalypse' by Cigarettes After Sex echoed through the whole apartment. At that time there were just two people there, no Matt, no Bella, just you and Harry. Even if the world stopped at that point you wouldn't have cared cause his eyes were on yours, those beautiful emerald eyes you adored soo much.

You splayed your palm on his neck, your thumb running along his sharp jaw. His pink lips parted, his Adam's apple bobbing from time to time. Was he nervous just as you were? Was he feeling the same things as you were? Was his heart beating just as fast as yours? Were his lips just as dry as yours? God those lips.

Those lips my love apocalypse...

Your eyes flicked down at his lips making him do the same. It felt like the space in between got smaller than it was before cause suddenly his breath was tickling your face. You looked back up with pleading as if saying to just push his lips on yours not caring what will be the consequences cause honestly at that moment you didn't give a fuck.

But a puppy bark and loud laughing broke your moment and Harry pushed you off soo hard that you stumbled back a bit. Your face turned red in embarrassment and you ran past him as quickly as you could. You were far more sober than before and honestly what were you thinking? He was going to kiss you? Fucking idiot mind, idiot song and this idiot world.

You collected your things as fast as you could and walked back to where everyone was. Bella and Matt were hugging saying good night to Harry. Your sister faced you after and when she saw your face, she knew something had happened but didn't say anything.

"Do you want to stay the night or want us to drop you home? We ordered an uber, it's outside." She asked. From your peripheral vision, you saw Harry open his mouth to say something, you panicked and said before you could think. "I will go"

You turned towards Harry finally looking at him to find the same pout on his lips from the morning but this time it felt like it wasn't a mocking one. Your heart lurched feeling bad, but why would he be sad?

You gave him short hug and said Good night before almost sprinting out of his apartment. You had to stay away from him for your own mental health's sake.

Harry was your best friend and you didn't want to lose that.

*****

Part 2

HOLY SHIT THANK YOU FOR SOO MANY LIKES ON THE IG POST EBSJWVSJD I LOVE YOU GUYS

Please like, comment and reblog!! Tell me your thoughts!

#harry styles writing #harry styles fluff #harry styles x reader #harry styles one shot #harry styles angst #harry styles fanfic #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x y/n #best friend harry #harry styles smut #harry angst #youtuber!au #youtuber!reader

[borschtwife]

if you get this, answer w/ three random facts about yourself and send it to the last seven blogs in your notifs. anon or not, doesn’t matter, let’s get to know the person behind the blog! <3

I don't like passing on these chain things but I will answer bc ur cute and I've been trying to chat you up

1. I like coffee with a lot of cream and sugar but hate those fancy coffee drinks. Like lattes make me sleepy which is the exact opposite of what I want.

2. I'm the kind of autistic where if I'm listening to a book on tape or watching a show, the main person's voice will become the sound of my internal monologue. Like right now its Jon Moxley which is awkward bc I'm literally desperate not to feel like a big scary man thing and yet here we are.

3. I'm at laguardia airport rn and i decided for the first time ever to stop at the Starbucks thats jn the baggage claim area, which for some reason is taking like a million years, but also so is the luggage for my flight. Caffeine this late is always a bad idea but I'm battling bad depression coming off having to spend a weekend with my family, so literally I'll have any stupid treat and caffeine is the one drug i like

[batsandbugs]

Bruce Wayne’s Headache Classification System Chapter 3

IKEA Verse

A/N: The author shows up a month and a half late, with Starbucks: S'up, here's 7500 words of pure chaos. Feast! Y'all are the best, thank you for the amazing comments in the last chapter. I love seeing your excitement for this crazy little world I've created. I have a new fic that I'll be adding eventually, called: "The Stalking of Daminette: A Treatise by Steph and Cass" it's still in its baby stage, so we'll see how long that grows before I post. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it because I have not started on the next part and I'm moving in less than a month, so maybe the next chapter will be out sometime in October, but I'm not making any promises. Enjoy!

Chapter 3

Bruce narrows his eyes and pins his children with an unimpressed stare. “What did you do?

“He was totally willing!” Dick insists with an innocent grin.

“Coercion.”

“Manhandling.”

Dick’s grin disappears evilly side-eyeing his brothers. “Both of you suck at being back up.”

“He didn’t want to at first,” confesses Tim. “But they held my computer hostage to convince me to agree.” Tim rubs a hand over the top of his laptop in a soothing manner. “So, I stole all his knives so he couldn’t stab us, while Jason and Dick wrangled him into the car.”

“Little demon was spittin’ nails, but we persuaded him not to throw himself out the car, so he was trapped.”

“By the time we arrived, I convinced them how a game of hide-and-seek would be a fun, non-disastrous way to spend time together,” says Dick, his face one of ruined hopes and dreams.  

“Mostly through bribes, blackmail, and calls to our innate competitiveness,” says Tim.

“Dickie kept the keys so none of us could leave, and declared himself seeker first,” Jason continues. “He found me-" 

"In the food court," says Dick.

"Then Replacement-"

"At the Starbucks."

"Didn't even get to have that coffee," grumbles Tim.

"So we joined forces and decided to search for Damian together. We spent an hour chasing him in circles. Swear I almost caught him too.”

Tim scoffs, “Yeah no, he had us good. We had no clue where he was.” 

Jason rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut up Tim.”

“You shut up,” Tim shoots back.

“Boys…” warns Bruce, already regretting bringing all three of them into this sitrep.

“Okay, so he evades us long enough to team up with a girl named Marinette Dupain-Cheng-” starts Tim.

Jason growls a bit. “Lying bitch.”

“Jason…” Dick sighs but doesn’t refute the insult. This only serves to deepen Bruce’s headache which now strongly veers out of the I-am-not-mentally-or-emotionally-prepared-for-this category and straight into Ongoing-dumpster-fire territory.

This was fine.

Jason slams a fist on the table. “She lied to my face multiple times! She said she was hired to poison Tim and Damian in order to steal Tim’s phone and if I didn’t find them in time, they were gonna die from brain damage!”

Bruce blinks. Did he hear that right? “Sorry, what?”

Tim sighs. “Okay, rewind, so Damian evading us like the little assassin he trained to be, hooks up with Marinette, who, as far as my research shows, is a civilian-”

“Yeah right, girlie ain’t a civilian. No way, not in a million years.”

“Shut up Jason, let Tim talk,” snaps Dick.

“She lied to Jason about where Damian was, and between her initial meeting with Jason and the incident in the food court, about an hour passed. Then she appeared in the cafeteria with Damian’s card, how we tracked her there in the first place. She panicked when she saw us and used her magic on the shelves in the warehouse to cause a diversion-”

“She crushed a fucking forklift, and we got blamed and billed for it.”

‘How?’ Bruce thinks in despair. Not over the money, of course. They had more than enough to cover costs, just in the general sense of incredulity. One would think, after being Batman this long, it would inoculate Bruce from bewilderment at all types of situations.

It has not.

Tim shakes his head. “No, I proved we had nothing to do with that."

‘Oh well isn’t that grand?’

"Didn’t manage to pin anything on her either considering how much electrical interference occurred whenever she performed magic, but we don’t have to pay.”

“Magic doesn’t cause electrical interference,” Bruce reminds them. “Not unless it completely breaks the system in the process.” All three boys – men really, his kids all grown up now, even if they pulled stupid shit like this – turn to him. Identical expressions of contemplation played over their faces.

“Shit, you’re right,” mutters Dick.

“Well, her magic does,” counters Tim, his brow creasing heavily, grasping past the sleepy, foggy haze that comes with being awake for three days straight. Grabbing a notepad he jots down the observation. “Her magic doesn’t obey any rules we know to be true.”

“It’s magic, dumbass,” Jason sneers. “It doesn’t have to make sense. I’m still on the fence about whether she enchanted Damian though. On one hand, demon-spawn shouldn’t be capable of smiling that much, and he defended her, deferred to her, fucking used her first name without blinking an eye. That ain’t natural for him. On the other hand, she’s the same brand of demented as he is, and maybe they want to be horrible little demons together.”

“I…” starts Dick before trailing off, his face flickers through a series of emotions. Mostly fragile hope, pragmatic disbelief, and good heaping of uncertainty.

“See, Golden Boy, even you can’t say this is a good thing!”

“He made a friend?” Dick offers with a pained wince.

“She’s a psychopath!”

Bruce cuts off the argument. As much as he would love to hear more in-depth detail about Damian’s newest… acquaintance, he wants a clearer picture of what happened at the store before he judges the situation. “Boys, behave. Tim, please continue.”

Tim nods. “Okay, so Marinette escapes the warehouse, and we track her back to their entry point into the vent system. We split up to cover more ground, I take the warehouse and keep myself from the worker’s sight but close enough to the vent I could spot them exiting. About forty-five minutes later they set me on fire-”

“Wait,” interrupts Bruce. “Fire? FIRE?”

Tim looks at him like he’s being particularly slow. “Uh, yeah, I said that a time or two now, keep up. To be fair, the fire was more around me. But I did end up singed.” He shows his arm sleeve again, and the singeing on the sleeve takes on a whole new meaning.

“I wasn’t sure what happened at the time, I expected to catch the little twerps, not engage in guerilla warfare. So, understandably, I’m off my game. The security guard dragged me into the office, and I’m ready to call for backup, only to find my phone missing. I talk down the manager in the warehouse, but then he yells at these poor workers. And Bruce, they were kids, couldn’t be more than fifteen, working in this busy warehouse with no clue about any rights they had, and then after the manager became… distracted I conversed with the other workers, and-”

Tim’s one-breath ramble was swiftly cut off by Jason. “Yeah, yeah you caused a worker’s strike through the power of charisma and rhetoric. So original. No one else in the world’s history has ever done that. Can we get back to the French bitch tricking me?”

Tim huffs, crossing his arms. “You can continue then because I wasn’t part of that.”

“Cool, I will. So, there I wait at my post, and it’s been like an hour and a half at this point. Timmy finally calls, but it’s not actually him it’s the French girl. She’s actin’ like a paid assassin slash company spy, and says she poisoned Tim and Damian through tricking them into eatin’ poisoned coffee and shit.”

“And you believed that?” Bruce asks. Jason glares at him with piercing green-blue eyes, and although his second son puts off an air of anger and annoyance, it’s a mask for a deep-seated fear that his brothers were genuinely in danger. That he would be too slow, too late to save them, like what happened to-

Jason flippantly shrugs his shoulders, years of practiced reticence covering his care. “With our craptastic luck, I sure as hell wasn’t going to take any chances. So, I go chasin’ and-”

“~It’s a trap~,” Tim gloats in a sing-songy voice, his grin wide and eyes unfocused. He’s going to crash soon, it’s just a matter of time.

“Shut up, you ended up set on fire and pickpocketed. You have no leg to stand on.” Tim rolls his eyes but slouches back in his chair. “So, it’s a trap, and demon-spawn is waitin’ there with one of those tricked-out trip wires Timmy made. He and Frenchie wrapped me up good, taunted me, and stripped me taking my wallet and phone. Bitch also took my knife. I insult the brat, and he fires back, but before he does anything else Marinette pulls him back and tells him to simmer down and he does.” Jason’s wide eyes drip with incredulity and, quite frankly, a little awe.

“I see,” Bruce says, a fake calm surrounding his words. He really didn’t. They were talking about Damian. Bruce loves his only biological son, he truly does. He loves Damian’s sketches, and care for animals, he loves his dedication to sword mastery and sly humor. The way his son has the same wrinkle crease between his eyes Bruce gets, and that Thomas did before them. The similarity soothes a small part of Bruce’s aching soul. He’s ridiculously proud of all the work and effort Damian went through, put himself through, to become a better person. To overcome the trauma his upbringing caused and come out stronger.

That being said, Damian was still arrogant, stubborn, and quick-tempered. He considered his opinions and plans more highly than others, and unless one could give a quick and compelling explanation as to an alternative option, he would be proceeding with his plan with efficiency; damn anything else standing in his way. Damian spared no sympathy to the average person and even less for fools.

This behavior was extremely out of character for him.

Which made the entire situation ring with alarm.

Jason shook his head. “I don’t think you do,” he says, calling Bruce’s lie out. “You’re gonna need to see it to really understand. Anyway, they leave me there for the police to find me, and the wire’s wound on tight, so I’m still struggling to get them off when security finds me ten minutes later.” Jason smirks. “Now those idiots had no clue who they were dealing with, and they loosened the wire round my legs, cause they sure as hell couldn’t carry me. By the time we reached the car I was out of the bonds and knocked one out and escaped from the other. Fat-ass bastard.”

“Language,” Bruce reminds him. Jason flips him off.

“Fine, the heavy-set bastard. Better?”

Bruce sighs. “Not really.”

“I scale the building, figuring the store entrances would be monitored. They had a nice handy dandy human-sized ventilation shaft up there - no wonder with the place’s fucking size - so, I shimmy down-”

“Like Santa,” Tim giggles, well past bordering on a manic state, and instead moved well into the capital of it.

The comment doesn’t appear to have fazed Jason though, who takes another long sip of his alcohol-soda mixture. “And like Santa, I have a knack for toys. I emerge out of a vent in the children’s toy area and snag myself a nerf gun.”

Sharp pain blooms on the side of Bruce’s neck. He doesn’t let it show on his face though. “Why?”

“Seemed like a good at the time, ya know?”

Bruce mentally counts to ten, takes a deep breath, and says, “Sure.”

“So, I head towards the play area to find Dick, because obviously, Replacement was a lost cause.”

“Geeze thanks, Jason.”

“But before I can get there, I spot Demon Spawn constructin’ a wacky ass Rube Goldberg contraption-”

Dick winces. “I saw the remains when I chased after Marinette. It was initially meant for me.”

“You were chasing the girl?”

Dick pouts. “She stole my phone!”

“Wait, so a civilian pickpocketed all of you?” 

“She was quick,” mutters Tim.

Jason raises a finger. “She didn’t technically pickpocket me, she frisked me after tying me up. I was fully aware of the stealing.”

Bruce reminds himself that he can’t strangle his children. He. Can’t. Strangle. His. Children. “I plan to make all of you go through awareness training, again. A civilian!?”

“Still not convinced,” Jason mutters, crossing his arms.

“I don’t care she certainly hasn’t trained with assassins and spent half her life mastering stealth and deception. I expect better from you all.” All three men mutter in acquiescence, to the extent that they would do better. “Continue.”

Jason’s demureness fades to be replaced with a gleeful grin. “Yeah, there wasn’t much left of the trap after I jumped the little bastard. I started shooting-”

“Jason…” Bruce’s headaches gain a specific twinge of exhaustion whenever Jason becomes involved. It’s a talent he possessed since the day Bruce found him hi-jacking the Batmobile’s tires.  

Jason’s hands go up in defense. “With the nerf gun, chill Bruce I ain’t trying to contribute to America’s public shooting crisis. I wouldn’t take a loaded gun into a shopin’ center unless crazies were already causin’ chaos.”

“I’d prefer you not to use guns at all.” It’s a pointless request, but maybe one day Jason would cede to it.

Jason scoffs. “Yeah, you’re still gunna lose that one pops. I got a rep to maintain.”

Bruce reigns in a sigh. Expected.

“Anyway, everythin’ was fine, I’d managed to dismantle their little trap for ya, you’re welcome,” he says with a pointed glance at Dick.

His eldest crosses his arms, and with a total deadpan stare, replies, “Thanks, Jason.”

“But then a security guard interfered after I knocked down a display or two.”

“So, you strung him up and gagged him?” Dick asks voice rising into the hysterical range.

Bruce now understands why Tim looks exhausted, dealing with the fallout from a situation this unhinged for the past forty-eight hours.  

“No, I didn’t do that. Demon spawn already set the rig, waitin’ for you. The guard tripped it.” He pauses, cheese-covered chip in hand. “Although I did add the gag, he was shoutin’ too much and grabbin’ attention. It only took a second, but by the time I turned back, Damian had shot off like a rocket.”

“Don’t take your eyes off the target,” chides Tim, with a smug little grin.

Jason’s eyes flash a brighter shade of green. “Fire.”

“Shut up.”

“Boys…” Bruce warns.

“Fine, fine,” Jason mutters, as he takes another sip of his drink. “I chase him through the store and he’s barely keepin’ ahead of me. I keep shootin’ at him. Newer nerf guns have a range and a surprising amount of ammo. Bastard didn't even look inconvenienced; he takes a fucking phone call at one point.”

“That was when I was chasing Marinette and we found the remains of their plan,” Dick interrupts. “She panicked with the sprung trap and called someone, but I couldn’t hear a word.”

“Yeah, he jumps off the call when I manage a shot at his head, and I’m close enough to have him in reach. Unfortunately, he ducked into the employee-only entrance. We weave through security rooms and offices and shit, and of course, causin’ chaos there.”

“He was right there, and yet somehow, we’re the only ones banned,” mutters Tim.

Jason scoffs. “Yeah, don’t know how that happened. Pretty sure I saw him dump a pot of coffee on-” Tim groans in frazzled distress. “Bad Timbo, you can’t have any more caffeine until you take a goddamn nap!”

Tim slouches into the solid wood dining chair. “You can’t tell me what to do, you’re not my dad.”

“Tim you can’t have any more caffeine until you sleep,” Bruce says.

Jason grins, sticking his tongue out at Tim, while Tim only glares and mutters something under his breath about ‘killjoys’ and ‘he’ll show them tired’ and Bruce really doesn’t want to see the result of that decision. This needs to wrap up soon. For both Tim’s sake, and his own as his headache has moved from Hassles-have-evolved-into-ongoing-dumpster-fires to Information-overload-caused by-dumbass-decisions-please-reboot-system.

“I get tangled in an office jam – literally, there were cords involved and by the time I scramble out of it, Damian’s already through a door and down a hallway. I haven’t a clue which way he’s gone, so I pick a direction and gun it because security is on my tail and there ain’t time to waste. I head down a hallway and lock the doors behind me to give me a second of breathing room. Then I spot the intercom system.”

“I wondered how you got close enough to use that,” Dick muses.

“I wondered what they did to piss you off so bad,” Tim adds.

Dick nods. “Same.”

“Yeah, so I call out Demon Spawn and French Bitch over the intercom, and I know they both must have panicked, but the guards broke through the locked doors, so I split. Now here’s the fucking miracle.” Jason leans forward, grinning. “I find the door that’ll take me back to the showroom area, the guards bearing down on me from all four sides. I don’t have a chance in hell, when the lights go off.”

“Blackout?” questions Bruce.

“Magic,” Dick says flatly. “It was Marinette.”

Jason slaps the table, snarling, “Damnit! Now I have to give credit to her.”

“She knocked out electricity to the whole store,” says Tim.

“And caused a display to collapse in front of me. I tripped,” admits Dick.

“You have fought off assassins while poisoned, and executed advanced acrobatic maneuvers with broken bones, and you tripped over a toppled Swedish store display because of the dark?” Bruce knows he’s trained his children better. Why in the world did this go so sideways on them?

Dick braces his arms against the table and roughly slides his fingers through his hair. ”I know. I know. I was right there. Any other day and I wouldn’t have blinked about jumping right over it, but this time it felt… off. Bad day?”

“You’re getting old Golden Boy.” Jason takes a sip of his drink, doing nothing to hide his shit-eating grin as he teases his older brother. “I guess it’s all downhill from here ain’t it.”

Dick flips him off.

Jason sticks out his tongue.

Bruce’s headache takes on a twinge of my-children-are-immature-brats feeling (generally categorized by a sharp sting right at his temple) and holds in an exasperated sigh.

“So, after magic girl shuts the lights off with her mind or whatever, I escape the security guards by an inch. One emergency exit later, and I’m back in the store proper. People are freakin’ the fuck out about the lights. By the time they turn on again, I’ve lost Damian for good, and now I just try to stay off security’s radar. I settle in a nice little blind spot right outside the children’s toy area and keep myself out of any trouble.” Jason looks over at Dick, fighting to keep a smug grin off his face. “Course I did see a woman go off on a poor employee. I kept my nose clean of it ‘cause it wasn’t my business.”

“Oh, ha, ha very funny. That woman was a menace,” groans Dick.

“Woman?” Bruce questions, almost scared to ask.

“Jessica Merope-Laverne, fifty-five, resident of Pleasantville. Married twice, has two children, a restraining order, and a police file with multiple notes about disturbing the peace,” Tim rattles off. “Thoroughly unpleasant.”

“That’s an understatement,” mutters Dick.

“Practically dragged Dickie Bird away by the ear.”

“Right as I was about to nab Marinette too. She’d hidden in one of the wardrobes in the room, and I was this close-” Dick positions his fingers scant centimeters apart from each other, “-to cornering her, and I got dragged away.”

“Shit, would have loved to know that,” mutters Jason. “Anyway, I stood around, making sure nobody was on my tail, soon I heard rumors about a ruckus in the atrium-”

“That would be me,” Tim admits with a grin.

“Well, I didn’t know that. I was hoping demon spawn and Frenchie were involved somehow, so I headed over, and then-”

“Oh, I know what happened from there. I saw the video.” Bruce pins Tim and Jason with a stare. “I respect both of you have opinions-”

“Opinions? Opinions? I have justified grounds for calling out his revolutionary bullshit! His entire life embodies nothing but the anthesis of systemic poverty, and he argues for class cooperation!” shouts Jason. Bruce always marvels at how eloquent Jason becomes when angry.

“Violence isn’t the answer,” counters Tim. “You would harm the very people you try to uplift in the process.”

“Sure, it is! It’s the natural response to a gluttonous, greedy, overburdened, bureaucratic system that’s leeching off the populous and perpetuating its own supremacy.”

Tim slams a hand against the table, raising to his feet, exhaustion clearing from his eyes. “It’s an option, not the option. We can do better than violence if we work at the cause's root problem without pulling out a fucking guillotine.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “Oh of course you would argue for that, you’ve never had less than six figures in your bank account in your life.”

“So says the self-proclaimed drug lord!”

“That was ten years ago!”

“A bag of heads on the steps of the GCPD!”

“Oh, get over it!”

“If it matters,” interjects Dick. “Probably doesn’t, systemic economic issues are hard to fix when we have bigger problems like an actively insane criminal population that likes destroying important city infrastructure on a monthly basis.”

“Which Wayne Enterprises does its best to counter,” adds Bruce, not bothering to chide his children back on track. This particular topic turned them into a bunch of unherdable cats.

“Funneling more money into the one percent’s hands!” Jason’s bordering on manic at this point.

“We are the one percent, Jason!” counters Tim. “And we stay that way, despite the copious amount of infrastructure projects, that we hire Gotham citizens for, and pay at least a living wage to all of them. Not to mention every other single employee we hire who also are paid a living wage, with benefits, and support. I know I am privileged. I am trying here.” The last sentence came out as a distraught cry, as he collapses back into his chair.

“Are… are you okay?” Dick asks tentatively, ready to cross the table to comfort his brother.

Tim shoves his hands into his hair and mutters, “I need an espresso.”

“No, you need sleep,” says Bruce, mentally calculating where all the caffeine in the house is so he can hide it. “Can we return to the recap, so your brother can go to bed?”

“My side of things is much shorter in comparison to Jason’s,” says Dick. “As long as nobody interrupts.” Casting a pointed glare in Jason’s direction. Jason shrugs casually and crosses his arms.

“I waited at the children’s play area. Now, a man my age would attract attention without a need to be there, so I’d ducked into the employee-only area, and grabbed a shirt to disguise myself. I hung out in the Starbucks for a good forty-five minutes trying to look like I was on break while observing the play area. Although I couldn’t tell where the vent entrance was, I figured two adults Damian and Marinette’s size would be easy to spot coming out of an area meant for children.

“When an hour and a half passed by, I’m nervous, because neither Jason nor Tim has sent any word. I called them both. They didn’t answer.”

“Yeah, 'cause the French phone napper took our phones,” mutters Jason.

“So, I decided to do some reconnaissance. The lady at the front desk looked bored enough, and so I went over to… chat.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “You mean flirt.”

Dick glares. “Shut up. So, I hang around the front desk for half an hour at most, before the kids went crazy. Like plastic balls being thrown everywhere, kids shrieking, this one little girl, later we learn her name is Abby, she’s doing this whole speech about a revolution-”

“Tim…”

“Not me, I’m not here at this point.”

“I stand there in shock, wondering what the heck set it all off. This one little girl runs up to the daycare worker, Melinda? Melody? Something. I don’t remember. And the little girl’s nose was bleeding, so there immediately goes my peaceful cover. I back up into the crowd, which at this point has gathered around pretty thick.”

“You know I wondered why there were so many people hanging around in that front lobby area,” says Tim.

“I’m almost sure the commotion has something to do with Marinette and Damian, so I keep my eyes peeled waiting for any adult-sized figures to emerge from the play area.” Dick sighs, rubbing a hand across his face. “I was right of course, but I missed Marinette slipping out, and she approached me from behind.”

“This is where you get pickpocketed too!” crows Jason.

“Really, Richard?” asks Bruce with a raised brow. This is ridiculous.

“Okay, look, I was distracted, off my game, there was a ton of screeching, and it had been a long day. And she was very good. The technique was flawless, minus a bit of overacting and a touch of obviousness. Which was her goal because-”

“~It was a trap~” Jason and Tim sing together.

“It was bait,” Dick corrects. “Leading me to a trap, that didn’t even work. So really, I did the best between the three of us.”  

“You all will complete remedial awareness training, so a situation like this never happens again.” Bruce massages the bridge of his nose with a long-suffering sigh. “Just… just please continue.”

“I can’t full-out chase her or anything, but she keeps out of reach through the store, until we reach the place where they set the trap. Obviously, Jason already tripped it, so she turned face and ran in the opposite direction. I followed, trying to convince her to stop and talk. But at this point, she’s full-on outpacing me and doing well too. I’m hesitant to say trained, but she had practice.”

“She’s gotta be a spy, or maybe she’s working for the League?” muses Jason.

“Damian would see right through that,” interrupts Bruce. He knows his youngest son has an instinct when sniffing out undercover League members. Talia certainly sent enough of them over the years.

“Maybe she’s just that good?” says Tim. “I certainly can’t find a damn thing on her, and being a League plant would explain that.”

Dick shrugs. “We’ll figure out her deal later. She calls Damian, and they talk briefly, but I couldn’t hear the conversation. Soon after Jason does his whole intercom takeover Marinette pulls out her little magic electro bursts and short circuits the electricity to the entire store.”

“And then caused you to trip.”

Dick wearily nods. “And then caused me to trip. By the time I detangle myself, she’s long gone. The lights come back on, and I’m stuck wondering where the hell she’s gone. I try to avoid getting clocked by security, so I keep to blind spots, which is how I eventually spot her doing the same.”

“Suspicious,” mutters Tim. “More evidence for the ‘League plant’ theory.”

“Or she could know security is looking for a woman of her description and she’s smart, either way, I tail her and corner her in a display room, no idea why she chose that one, but when I walk in it’s empty.”

“She teleported, or vanished like a ninja,” gasps Tim, eyes wide, pupils smaller than pinpricks. Bruce is now counting the seconds until he passes out.

Dick shakes his head. “No, she hid in the fucking closet. Tim, you need sleep.” Tim sticks out his tongue.

“I was this-” Dick places his fingers centimeters away from each other “-close to nabbing her, and then the whole Jessica situation happened.” He rubs a hand through already messed up, fly-away hair. “She drags me away screeching about lawyers and customer service, and it had been a very long day, so the second her back was turned I bolted. I couldn’t risk heading back to the display room, although if I were Marinette I’d be long gone, so I backtracked to where I stuffed my actual clothes and headed towards the atrium.”

“Yes, I saw your arrival as well,” Bruce confirms with an exasperated drawl. The videos spread out across multiple platforms gave an all-around idea of what happened in the atrium. “You all know better than to escalate things in public. We have an image to maintain after all." The boys nod, cowed and guilty. "That being said, things wrapped up rather neatly.” He eyes the boys with a paranoid weariness. “Too neatly.”

All three sag into their seats and gaze at each other with sheepish grimaces.

“Yeah, B, we noticed that too,” says Jason. “But at the time…” he trails off.

Tim continues, his speech sluggish. “It felt normal, to accept what was going on. The fight, the crazy lady, the little kid with the ball pit balls, her uncle being Dick’s old friend, and the store manager, and they let us go. It was easy to go along with it.” Grimacing, he gestures to his assorted piles of papers. “You know, besides for all the work I have now.” Crossing his arms on the table he lays his head in the middle. “Too many people, so little sense.”

“Damian hasn’t said a word about any of it.” Dick slouches lower in his chair.

“Kid was all smirks when he and the little liar approached us after we left the store,” grumbles Jason. "Had fuckin' ice cream and everything." He spins the almost empty bottle of alcohol coke on the table. “Of course, they made us wait, because after we left and booked it to the car, Dickie realizes his keys are gone too. So there we are standin' in the parking lot, Timmy doesn't have his shoes, and all we got between us is one nerf gun, no phones, no keys, and no fucks left to give.” Bruce, too tired from the absolute rollercoaster of emotions and information his children just sent him on, can do nothing but muster up a stern and disappointed glare. He trained them all better than to let a civilian pull one over on not just one of them, but all of them.

“Yeah, yeah, I know situational awareness. We’ll work on-” Dick breaks off his sentence, and sighs softly. A small soft smile overtakes his face, and he raises a single finger to his mouth. He nods in Tim’s direction.

Tim’s head, previously cradled in his arms, now lolls to the side. Neon blue light from his laptop highlighted his closed eyes, and the purplish bags underneath.

“Finally,” Jason mutters. “I swear he has the survival instincts of a wet paper bag. He’s been up for way too long.”

Bruce is just grateful he won't need to physically drag Tim off to bed and force him to get some desperately needed sleep. “Now we just need to get him to his room.” He would have done it himself if his ribs didn’t spasm the second he thought of the idea.  

“Not it,” Dick whispers so quickly it’s practically a rush of air.

“Not it,” says Jason, barely a millisecond behind.

“Ha!” Dick impishly grins. “You do it.”

“But-”

“Nope, I said it first. You got to carry him.”

Jason turns his head towards Bruce, big bluish-green eyes looking for support.

Bruce doesn’t get himself involved in the decision-making games his children play. “He said it first.”

Jason’s hopeful glance turns into a disgruntled snarl. “I hate both of you,” he spits.

“Love ya too, Jay.”

“Thank you, Jason.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, wrinkling his nose. Jason pushes back his chair, and although he’s annoyed, the solid wood chair doesn’t scrape against the floor, so he can’t be too mad. Despite drinking his entire liter of mystery-alcohol-diet-coke mixture, his footsteps pace steady and strong. “Come here, ya little coffee-addicted gremlin.” Jason slips his arms around Tim’s body. It’s a testament to how exhausted his son must be, that Tim only flutters his eyes and protests incoherently at being lifted out of his chair.

“Quiet down, Replacement,” Jason murmurs, his voice soft as he speaks to his sleep-deprived brother. “All your calls and research will be there when you return from the land of nod.”

“But…”

“You can go willingly, or I can grab sedatives from the med bay and forcefully put your ass to sleep. I’ll put a bet on who’ll win that brawl.” Jason stands a good six inches taller than Tim, who looks like little more than a bedraggled rag doll in his older brother’s arms. Bruce knew who would win that fight too. Tim sighs and relaxes another inch into Jason’s arms. “There ya go. You can go back to bein’ insufferable once you’ve had some fucking sleep.”

“Hmm…” Tim's eyes fully flutter shut. Jason shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but softly traverses the room so as to not jostle him. Looking back over his shoulder one last time to shoot an I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this look at Bruce and Dick, before walking out of the room.

Silence overtakes the grand dining room as the last of Jason’s footsteps fades into the echoing halls of Wayne Manor. A light rain drizzles outside, the faintest patter hitting the tall arched windows letting in a soft grey light.

Dicks groans, pulling himself out of his slouch gracefully and into more of a respectable position. “I’m getting too old for that.”

“If you’re old, I must be ancient,” Bruce responds. He’s not, really. Only forty-seven to Dick’s thirty-two. What he’d been thinking taking in a ten-year-old at twenty-five, he couldn’t really quite say. The only thing that mattered at the time was the aching echo of loneliness reflected in the eyes of a child who had just lost their parents.

Now, look at them, all these years later.

“Nah, you’re not ancient, B. We’ve just been through enough shit in our lives to age a person twenty times over.”

Bruce gives him a look of high disappointment. “Stunts like this do not help, Richard.”

Dick has the decency to look properly ashamed. “I really didn’t mean for the situation to get so out of hand,” Dick insists in a soft, quiet tone. Bruce doesn’t quite believe it. His sons thrive off of chaos. Even if they didn’t mean for things to get out of hand, they tended to actively encourage it once in the middle of the undertow. “I know, I know, but how was I supposed to anticipate Damian teaming up with a… witch? Magician? Whatever she is.” Dick mutters the last sentence, but Bruce hears it clearly.

His sons certainly think the young woman is dangerous. Tim is thoroughly confused and stressed by her existence, although deciphering his third son’s emotions through his fog of exhaustion is a vexing endeavor Bruce still isn’t sure he accomplishes all the time. Jason clearly hates her or at least is holding a very large, very deep grudge against her. He wonders what exactly the content of the conversation was when she threatened Tim and Damian. He wonders if she knew the effect it would have on Jason.

Flickering light from the chandelier above pierces his eyes like a particularly vicious game of stab-the-vigilante, but this conversation is important, so, despite the full body ache accompanying his you’ve-pushed-too-far-and-now-you’ll-suffer-the-consequences migraine, he pushes through to ask, “What do we actually know about her?”

Dick sighs heavily, rubbing a hand across his face, and suddenly he looks every inch of his thirty-two years. “To be honest? Only a little. Tim wasn’t the only one to look her up. I did my searching too.”

“And?”

“Practically nothing. Basic info, but school records sealed tighter than Fort Knox, and firewalls grow tighter every time I try to hack ‘em. School activities, online media presence, and even pictures; all of it is whisps in the wind. Every time I try to look deeper, something...” Dick shudders as if shaking away a bad feeling. “I come up short and I can’t find a reason why. Even trying to think about Paris as a whole feels off and I can’t put my finger on it.”

“I can see if there’s anything in the League’s database about the city the past few years. It was Diana’s home base for decades until…” Bruce trails off, his mind an unexpected blank. Diana moved to the US from Paris eventually. Sometime within the last decade, but he can’t quite remember why. Surely, she must have told him at some point.

“She’s a fashion designer, I know that much. She has a website but it’s very bare bones. Commission work only. And her current course of study at Gotham U is Fashion and Business Management. But-” Dick’s hands flail into the air. “She’s from Paris! What on earth possessed her from moving from one of the fashion capitals of the world to here, to study fashion is beyond me.” 

“Hmmm…” Bruce’s brain whirls at a million miles a minute. Connections forming and rearranging on his mind’s case board. The incongruency is so stark, there must be a reason. They haven’t found it yet.

“As for her magic…” Dick shrugs. “She said her powers mostly affected situational outcomes, and from the incidents I saw, she told the truth. But I’ve never seen magic like that before. Magic that just… happens. She didn’t say words, she didn’t make hand gestures. She used tiny little - I want to call them mechanized balls, but we never came close enough to tell – to kickstart the magic.”

“A techno-mage then?”

Dick contemplates the idea for a moment before saying, “Could be. But it felt more than that. As soon as she became involved the whole day felt… left of normal. Which I suppose aligns with situational outcome manipulation. The day certainly went their way…” Dick shrugs. “I just don’t know.”

Bruce hums, finally asking the question that had swirled in his mind since the girl was brought up. “Do you think she’s a danger?”

Dick leans back in the chair, his face an avalanche of flickering emotions. Wind lightly howled outside the dining hall filling the intervening silence. Finally, he sighs and says, “No, I don’t think so. She was chaotic sure but genuinely enjoyed the game for what it was. Damian probably encouraged the more unhinged ideas. And yes, she has magic, but so do a ton of other, far more obviously dangerous people. Our system is tricked out for all types of magic users, and even if she can bypass them due to her own unique magic, we’d at least receive a warning. And as for our identities…” Dick half-smiles. “She didn’t even know we were the ‘Waynes’ until we were just about to leave, and she didn’t appear particularly star-struck. I doubt she’d make the jump from chaotic billionaire’s kids to vigilantes.”  

“As for Damian…?” Bruce hardly knows what to make of his youngest’s out-of-character reaction and hopes to receive some cohesive read on the situation from his eldest.  

Dick, being quite unhelpful, shrugs. “I think you should talk to him. Get his side of the story. Things may have been chaotic on our end, but he did genuinely have fun. And, yes, he’s acting out of the norm.” Dick pauses. “Way, way, out of the norm for him, but I don’t think he’s enchanted. I think he just has a crush.”

Bruce blinks. Isn’t that a hell of a thought?

Damian.

With a crush.

He doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with these kinds of realities. Reflexively he massages his temple with the tips of his fingers trying to relieve the paining, aching pressure.

“Headache again?” asks Dick with sympathy. After twenty years his son knows his tells well, and Bruce has always had headaches, although his reasons for having them have certainly increased over the years.

“Yeah, is what it is though. We’ll keep an eye on Damian, have you run him through the influence-affected protocols?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

Dick shrugs. “Nothing, it’s mostly why I think he’s fine. She may be a danger, or powerful, but I don’t think she’s doing anything to Damian. Besides making him run up the data plan on his phone. He really hasn’t stopped texting the past two days.”

They’ve spent plenty of time talking about Damian, but Bruce hasn’t seen a glimpse of him since he woke up this morning. “Where is he?”

Dick pulls out his phone. “On a date, according to Stephanie.” Pulling up a photo that’s taken in a long-distance setting. Damian is pictured, seated at a cafe table, drinking out of a white coffee cup. Across from him sits a girl, Asiatic features, black hair, clad in a colorful sundress. They’re both smiling at each other.

It’s normal and adorable. And slightly worrying. Damian doesn’t smile like that unless looking at a fluffy four-legged creature.

“Stephanie trailed him?” 

Dick flips the phone away. “Actually, she and Cass both followed him when he left this afternoon. Not sure what they planned, but they’ve sent some nice pictures.” He pauses for a moment and smiles fondly. “If she’s not a danger, or a League plant, this could be really good for him.”

Bruce hums, unsure, and hating himself for that unsurety. He’ll make a call when he has more information, and less of a migraine. “Go wash up and grab some sleep. I’m out until my ribs heal, so I’ll need you to take point on patrol.”

Rising from his chair, Dick stretches and shoots him a grin. “It took you twenty-five years, but damn, you’ve finally learned to call it quits when you need a break. Proud of you B.”

Bruce doesn’t bother to disguise his roll of the eyes. Dick would know he did it regardless. “Get on.”

Dick shoots him a lazy salute. “Sir, yes, sir.” He ambles to the door, and Bruce calls out again before he’s gone.

“And next time, Dick, please try to keep the antics out of the paper, and off the internet.”

The shit-eating grin betrays Dick’s real thoughts when he says, “Of course Bruce, won’t happen again.”

Liar.

Bruce shakes his head in reluctant bemusement – should he honestly have expected anything else – and Dick ducks out of the door without another word. Finally, the dining room is quiet, except for the pitter-patter of rain on the window panes, and the soft hum of Tim’s computer.

Carefully, Bruce rises from the chair, his side twinging, head throbbing in what is now a full-on migraine.

He should have stayed in bed.

Ah, well, he’s suffered worse, and now he has a good idea of what happened with his sons that caused a headache so insistent he felt it halfway across the galaxy.

Gently closing Tim’s laptop, he doesn’t bother to touch the articles and paper, knowing his son’s organizational system may appear a mess to outsiders – even him on occasion – but that it has meaning for him. He observes the rest of the room; collecting Tim’s coffee mugs, and Jason’s empty plate and coke bottle – no need to have Alfred do it if he was right here – and ambles slowly to the kitchen taking care not to drop the dishes or disturb his ribs.

Placing the dishes away, Bruce leans heavily on the counter. Mind whirling, analyzing, and connecting the information as he has always done, however, it battles for dominance over the present, persistent, migraine. His body screams for more rest, and as much as he wishes to dig to the bottom of these problems right now, he trusts Dick has given him an accurate read of the situation. Later he can pry information from the girls, maybe they’ll have a less biased view of Damian’s… friend than his sons do.

He flicks the lights off in the kitchen, for now though, he’s heading back to sleep.

-line break-

A nap, a full meal, and hours later, the pitch black of the night concealed a heavier storm than the light drizzle which draped over the manor earlier in the day. Bruce, knowing damn well he wasn’t fit for patrol, sat in his office, a bottle of forty-year whisky perched next to a crystalline tumbler and a box of chocolates. A minor indulgence, especially as he should stay far away from alcohol at the moment. But if he hadn’t died from insane nutcases, aliens, or his children’s antics, mixing medicine and alcohol probably wouldn’t kill him.

Bruce snapshots a picture of the newspaper Alfred gave him this morning.

The front-page cover contains enough of the story to showcase the significant amount of drama his children had caused.

He texts the images to both Diana and Clark.

All he adds is, ‘I always know, and I’m always right.’

He pours another finger of the amber liquid into his glass and swirls it around as the computer turns on. Just because he wasn’t out and about, didn’t mean he intended to take the night off. Bruce stretches his fingers and opens up a blank case file template.

Time to find out who exactly is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. 

#maribat #damian x marinette #maridami #mlb crossover #daminette #damimari #marinette dupain cheng x damian wayne #ml x dc #marinette dupain-cheng x damian wayne #damientte #damianette #mlb x dc #the ikea verse #ikea verse #headache classification system #the great ikea game

[saltygilmores]

I've been stalling on my episode recaps lately. I'm really really stuck. I want to get my creative juices flowing again and I still have a mighty need to continue Looking at Things and Talking About Them. So I present to you: Pastries Admist Fire Hazards While Watching Gilmore Girls. Pictures I found on Instagram. Inspired by @vindieselsfacebook-blog's similar post from several days ago. I wil be rating the assorted hazards and dangers present in these photos. We will always assume the coffee is scalding hot.

Title: Tipping Starbucks Cup Over Foot and Open Laptop. Fire Hazard/ Coffee Spillage Rating: Undetermined. Although it appears to be tilting dangerously downwards towards our subject's foot, laptop, and books, my intuition tells me that the coffee cup, much like the cups on Gilmore Girls, or Dean Forrester's braincase, is completely empty and devoid of matter. Our Gilly Girls viewer was wise not to light the candle seen in the background. I will not alert the fire department.

Title: Completely Phoning It In. Hazard Rating For Human: 0. No open flame, no body parts visible within distance of hot beverage. Hazard Rating For Tablet And Sheets :10. Hot beverage teetering perilously close to a tablet and white sheets. A stiff breeze or a cat jumping onto the bed and that tablet is toast with a capital T. Points awarded for using donuts instead of cookies or pastries AND for the fact that Lorelai is on the screen instead of the same exact Gilmore Girls With Leaves thing everyone else is doing. We like a rebel.

Title: Gilmore GIrls and Cwassont Fire Hazard/Coffee Spillage Rating: 10. Open flame inches away from laptop, set on top of a flammable flannell blanket (say that one three times fast) and she's got some nice kindling ready with those two little journals. Coffee cup positioned directly above digital camera and perilously close to laptop, croissant in danger of recieving a soaking.

Title: Very White Fire Hazard Rating: 3. Open flame inches away from tablet but, I'm calling this one borderline. I think this person should be safe. Interesting use of fruit in addition to pastries. Is that a very large mug of coffee off to the left? I can't tell what it is. No spillage hazard, if so. No flammable bedding or paper. I will not be alerting the fire department.

Title: Oh The Pumpkins Hazard Rating: 0. Scalding hot beverage and lit candles present, but no techology or humans in danger. Candle is safely positioned away from blankets and pillows. I will not be calling the fire department.

Title: Pumpkin Flambé (aka More Fucking Pumpkins) Fire Hazard Rating: 11. Open flame positioned directly on top of sweater, inches away from towel, inches away from technology and wooden kindling (the tray), scalding hot beverage inches away from laptop. As soon as there's a jump scare (like Dean Forrester showing up in an episode and giving them a jolt) that candle is going to tilt and they're totally befucked.

Title: Orange Cookies Fire Hazard Rating: 6. Candle is perilously close to tablet, kindling (leaves and books) and a blanket but the candle looks sturdy enough not to tilt if this person is careful. No scalding hazard; no body parts present and the mug of cocoa looks half finished and is probably lukewarm. Athough the cookies are untouched at least we finally have our first piece of evidence that these foods and beverages are actually being consumed occasionally. Unlike the hot dog that Milo only pretended to eat during Lorelai's Graduation Day.

Title: Tub Time With Grapes Fire Hazard: Undetermined. Can't even snark on someone bringing their tablet or phone into the tub which is practically a daily ritual for me. I've only dropped my phone in water once in 15 years, when I dropped it in a hot tub (it survived). But, I somehow trust myself holding it above water with my hands more than I would some stand on a tray. Since your legs are presumably laying underneath the tray, what happens if you stand up from the tub and forget to move the tray first? Plop goes your tablet. Plop plop plop go your grapes. Points for using grapes instead of pastries. If some grapes plop in the tub your bath can be salvaged. Grapes are a safe Bath Food. I can't say the same about that tea, which is absolute teetering on the edge of that tray. You're gonna have some pretty gross water there. A lot of candles, sure. The one on the tray could tilt over and ignite that tray or your tablet, but hey, easy access to water.

We are left with one last burning (pun intended) question. How many of these people are actually in the act of watching the show further than the title screen? We may never know since they all likely perished in their own fire traps or are still nursing third degree burns from their spilled coffees and are in too much agony to tell us.

#gilmore girls #there a kajillion of these on Instagram #sorry for not crediting anyone #I'm not gonna bother #but if you see your Fire Hazard here just ask me and I'll add your handle to it

[discordiansamba]

shows up three years late with starbucks and an update. as one does.

#at least you didn't have to wait five years like some of my detco followers lmao #when I say nothing is abandoned!!! i mean it!!!!

[detestedmuppet]

all of the emojis!!! 👀

DAMN thanks for the ask akfjskgjs

📷 What’s set as your phone’s lockscreen?

a benjamin denton aestheticy edit a discord friend made for me for my wallpaper

🍫 Cheese or chocolate?

dont make me choose 😭 ill go w cheese tho cause then theres no residual sugar on my teeth, and ive had alot of cavitiy problems in the past so thats a bonus lmao

✨ Do you have any nicknames?

yeah!! thanks to a misspelling of “muppet” in a discord server im in, ive got an online nickname of “mulpey” or “mulps” which i love, and a nickname my cousin gave me when i was younger that i went by for a while in school cause my name is RLY common, and there was always at least one other person w the same name as me in class

🎵 Last song you listened to?

“Corn Rigs” by Magnet from The Wicker Man lmao

✏️ Have you ever written fanfiction?

yeah! i rly need to write/publish more, but ive written and published like two so far

😏 Are you on discord?

yep!

 💛 Do you have any piercings?

yeah, just regular lobe piercings

🐰 What do you think says the most about a person?

how they work in group project cause it rly shows how they regard and respect other people

🍪 If you were a cookie, what kind would you be?

ooh, white chocolate macadamia nut cause thats one of my favorite cookies and im very biased towards it lmao

🐶 Are you more of a dog person or a cat person?

ooh, probably a bit more of a cat person, but i adore both dogs and cats

🎧 Headphones or earbuds?

special one type of over the ear headphones cause theyre like the only ones i can wear comfortably cause my ears stick out alot lmao

🌼 What’s the last thing you said out loud?

“yeah i bet!”

🙃 What’s a weird fact that you know?

your guts know how theyre meant to be arranged, so when gut surgeons close u up, they dont need to be super specific w the placement of the intestines, cause theyll move back to the places they need to be

🦉 Are you a morning person or a night owl?

probably a night owl, i love staying up late at night its rly fu

🧸 Favorite place to nap?

my parents bed lmao its HUGE and its rly comfy

🏳️‍🌈 Are you a member of the LGBTQIA+ community?

yep! im trans masc and aromantic asexual

🦋 Describe yourself in three words.

direct, excitable, fun

👖 Jeans or sweatpants?

probably jeans, cause sweatpants are comfortable, but i overheat in them way to easily

🥤 What’s your go-to Starbucks order?

i dont go to starbucks, but at home i have ALOT of yorkshire gold tea w a bit of milk and one sugar

🧡 A color you can’t stand?

less a specific color and more a type of color, i cant STAND obnoxious neon colors, especially when thwyre on their own

💎 What’s your most prized possession?

a little stuffed polar bear toy ive had since i was like 6 ish, his name is puff puff (cause he was rly fluffy, not weed reasons akjdksjd) and whenever i travel anywhere i take him w me

☕ Coffee or tea?

tea! i rly dont like how the bitter aftertaste of coffee clings to my mouth lol

🦖 Favorite extinct animal?

i volunteer at a natural history/fossil museum i rly should have one 😭 tragically i dont, but ig ill go w a stegosaurus cause we’ve got a wooden skeleton model of one at the museum that the kids get to build themselves and the absolute horrific creations that come out of it are hysterical lmao

🌙 How long have you been on tumblr?

ooh, ive had an actual account for a bit over a year now? but went on tumblr w/o an account for like a year before that till they made me sign up to view posts

🌴 Desert island item?

probably a hiking water filtration thing, then i could run the water thru that, then boil it to be sure its safe to drink

🐸 Describe your aesthetic.

kinda alt ig?? its mainly just nerdy tshirts or creepy earrings lmao

🔮 What’s your dream job?

id love to research/teach history or fictional media studies, im rly passionate about both those things

💙 Relationship status?

extremely single and extremely happy w it

🌿 Describe your favorite outfit.

ooh this is a fancy one but black jeans, darker red button shirt, black waistcoat, black boots, and anatomically correct silver heart dangly earrings, plus the necklace i always wear which is a silver ring thats pseudo matching w a friend on a silver chain

🎤 Is there a song you know all the lyrics to?

yeah theres a couple! the most definitive one is i could probably do suburbia by will wood as long as i had the music

🤎 What color is your hair?

its a dark/chesnutty brown, but because i dye it a darker red alot theres a red tint to it now thst the dye has faded

💌 Do you talk to yourself?

yeah, mainly when im upset/angry, i feel like i have to say what im feeling out loud, or ill feel worse

💄 Do you wear makeup?

sometimes! i almost daily wear a tinted lip oil, i think its from nyx, but when i wear more when i get dressed up it’s pretty much only concealer on my acne and some shimmery white eyeshadow pressed in the very corner of my eyes

🌸 Best compliment you ever received?

honestly just being called handsome cause it gave me massive gender euphoria, but a more specific best compliment would be being told by my culinary teacher that im one of her favorites

💞 @ your favorite blog

@ds-sparrow-manufacturing-co hiya pookie <33

#muppet’s answers #this took me way to long to do lmaoo 😭

[podfic-pals]

We are back with another birthday special! This time we are celebrating the birthday of our wonderful Emmu, also known as @londonfoginacup and we're not just back with three fics read by the other members of the Podfic Pals, we also have a very special guest star who joins in on the fun and reads one of her favorite fics. Thank you so much @allwaswell16 for contributing to this birthday episode!

Evi will read To Be Gathered Round (AO3 | Fic Post) from 00:51 into the episode.

Liam Payne is the worst witch at Mossbridge Boarding Academy and he absolutely knows it.

It’s not his fault that his potions always bubble over and his hat tends to disappear and more often than not his spells come out a little flat. He’s only a half-witch after all, he hasn’t grown up in the witchy community and his mum talks all the time about how it was a miracle that he was even able to get into the academy in the first place.

He’s trying his best, he really is. And he wants to be a good witch, he truly does! It’s just that he started out behind, and he only got more behind, and the other witches decided early on that he would only hold them back, so here he is going into his fifth and final year, the only witch in his class who isn’t part of a coven.

Mossbridge Boarding Academy for Young Witches is just not where Liam wants to be.

Mia will read To the late night double feature show (AO3 | Fic Post) from 28:49 into the episode.

It’s the tap on his shoulder that notifies him. 

Louis jumps, whirling around and pulling one earbud out. Clifford barks in oblivious excitement. 

“Sorry!” says someone. "I just wanted to know if I could pet your dog?”

Louis squints. He backs up a step. He wonders if the punch at the fancy dress party was spiked, or if one of the brownies Zayn gave him had a little something extra in it, because there is definitely someone there but there is also definitely not someone there.

“Uh,” says Louis. 

“Your dog,” says someone. “What’s his name?”

Tabby has chosen to read Don't Bring the Starbucks (AO3 | Fic Post). You can listen to it from 41:30 into the episode.

The one where Niall is a perfectly normal university student, until he finds himself an ocean away in the middle of Ohio with a strange man telling him to stop wandering off. Then he's in space. It's a whole thing.

And Anitra has chosen to read Moon Dances Over (AO3 | Fic Post). You can listen to it from 67:51 into the episode.

Louis knows that his tail is, frankly, stunning. His iridescent blue scales shimmer in even the slightest sunlight, and his fins have grown since he presented, delicate and almost transparent in their webbing.

He also knows that that means he’ll be one of the first to pick tonight, as the most beautiful omegas are blessed to pick their mates first. It’s considered a huge honour, since the guppies they’ll eventually birth will certainly be beautiful as well, bringing favour on the whole clan.

Louis has a stubborn streak, though. He’s always been rather a fan of mating for love, and there’s someone he’s had his eye on for a long time now.

Listen now on your favorite Podcast app: Anchor | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | or check out the Episode posts on AO3 here. You can also download our episode on Google Drive here.

#s1e12 #episode 12: an emmu birthday special #author: londonfoginacup #60+ minutes #harry/louis #no pairing #rarepair #boarding school #magic #witches #established relationship #halloween #crack #science fiction #royalty #memory loss #space #witness protection #merpeople #abo #podfic #1dsource #trackinghome #hlcreators #hlficlibrary #hljournal #trackinghappily #podfic-pals

[always-wizu-you]

WITH Winter Live 2023 Rehearsal Log (part 1)

WITH's seiyuu (Yamashita Seiichirou, Kobayashi Tatsuyuki, Tsuchida Reiou) have been meeting up for Winter Live rehearsals since earlier this month. Here's their tweets translation!

November 7th

Kobatatsu: Rehearsal today It's been a while since I danced this much and it was fun I secretly took a picture of a certain someone who's busy drawing something 😀 His eyelashes are so long 🏅✨‼️ It's our first live after a long while, so WITH is really excited!! We'll take a pic of us three next week ❤️🫰 Reiou: Guaranteed muscle pain [pic of him and Seichi] Kobatatsu: So you were taking pics after all! 😆🫰🫰🫰🫰 Reiou: If I don't, he might sulk, so 😉 Kobatatsu: Oh my Seichi is a baby 👶 huh ✨✨🥹👶 Seichi: What a dull face I worked hard all day today

November 10th

Kobatatsu: We've been rehearsing (^^)! Can't wait for Winter Live ✨‼️😆 It's really calming to be with these two after all 😉 The three of us drank Starbucks on the way home (lol) We were like "It feels as if we're high school boys huh" but saying that actually makes me think we're getting old lololol Look forward to our performance 😍 Reiou: We're the best~✌️ [pic of low-res starbucks with decorative texts "hanya? (huh?)" "LJK (last-year joshikusei/high school girl)" "Isshou nakako (BFF)"] Reiou: I intentionally make it low-res so that it looks like flip phone photo quality Kobatatsu: The "Hanya?" is too much lololol This is so good lmao also the "Isshou nakako" is too funny lololol Seichi: This Winter Live is very maji yabe. Seriously 🤭 Stay tuned ❗️

November 15th

Pretty Series: ⛄#Winter Live 2023⛄ Rehearsals for each member for the event are progressing smoothly♪ Today we are showing you off-shots of WITH's #Seiichiro Yamashita, #Reiou Tsuchida, and #Tatsuyuki Kobayashi👀 They are very excited for their first appearance after so long🌞🌌🕛 The live will be held on Sunday, December 3rd at Makuhari Messe✨ 👇Venue tickets are now on sale!! Seichi: ※After this [rehearsal], I had muscle pain Reiou: This is the photo where I was told to look serious Kobatatsu: Please give us lots of "IIZE!!!" calls on the D-day! ❤️😆

Bonus: WITH talking about flip phone

This happened in late October, likely before their first rehearsal.

Seichi: WITH's LINE group interaction has been very Y2K-themed lately Why are those two kids so excitedly talking about their flip phones from their school days? Looking forward to see you guys in Winter Live Seichi: These past few days, I've met some Winter Live performers in the dubbing studio. "Can't wait to work with you on December" I'm so happy to be able to say it, it feels very nostalgic like some kind of a tradition. Reiou: This guy [Seichi] is only lurking in the chat, as usual 🤷‍♀️ Kobatatsu: I talked about old flip phones on WITH LINE group 📱 lmao Even though we were talking about Winter Live at first lol By the way, the one I used was docomo's What about you guys??? lol Reiou: Facts about people who spent their youth using a docomo flip phone: they usually remember the model name Mine was the blue F905 🟦 I watched TV a lot back in the days, so I really enjoyed 1seg* 📺 *) 1seg is a broadcasting service that allows flip phone users to watch TV programs Seichi: It's amazing how the model numbers of the flip phones they used when they were both students came out so easily. Yabbe Everyone… Do you know… About vodafone…? ✋

Bonus 2: Seichi comments about Kobatatsu's Primagi

Seichi: I can't stop thinking about Kobatatsu's Primagi pretend live during the rehearsal Seichi: Sorry, I said it was pretend But he actually sang about 3 songs

#danpri #idol land pripara #pripara #yamashita seiichiro #yamashita seiichirou #kobayashi tatsuyuki #tsuchida reiou #translation #can't wait for winter live #tweet archive

[redgoldblue]

[@itwoodbeprefect submitted:] showing up late with starbucks etc for the wip tag game: can i. can i say 1, 2 AND 7 for h50? because i was going to say 1 and 2 from the things that hadn’t been picked yet and then i saw 7. (and also. if you want to. i’d love to hear anything at all about huggy & pete!)

-

me? turn down an opportunity to talk about my wips? it’s even less likely than you’d think (also tbf i very much did also send you four so. fair turnaround)

Spinning Faster Than The Plane That Took You (I Don’t Want To Miss You Like This)

You’d expect this to be post-Aloha, wouldn’t you? but ha! it’s not! tricked and fooled! it’s intra-Ka I'o, which is a far more depressing place to be. Basically there’s this one very very brief shot of Danny, when he first hears Steve’s voice over the phone after he’s been dark in Mexico for months - this one - and the sheer emotion Scott Caan conveyed in those three seconds pushed me into writing an entire ficlet of Danny’s POV on those months. it’s. well let’s be honest it’s sad and one of those fics that comes out of the woodwork to challenge my assertion that I don’t write angst. But we all know that plotline ends in hotel-bed sharing h/c (…as I’ve already written) so it’s okay. also i know i said they were all / in the heading but there’s actually a decent chance this will be one of my trademark ‘could be & or / shrug emoji up to you’ specials.

Danny usually changes his phone background pretty regularly, cycling through new and old photos of his kids with occasional cameos from other family and/or ohana members. When Steve left, it had been a shot of Grace teaching Charlie to balance on a surfboard at the edge of Steve’s beach, with Steve in his stupid low-slung swim shorts hovering just out of arm’s reach watching them. It stays as that for one week, two weeks, a month, two months and more. Until Danny’s pushing down the feeling that it might be an ‘in memoriam’ photo every time his phone lights up, and still can’t bring himself to change it, because what if the next time it lights up with news that Steve’s safe? What if keeping this moment of Steve at his most antithetical to whatever it is he’s doing right now – soft and happy and paternal, with sandburn the greatest danger in mind; but simultaneously with a stance borne from exactly the same instinct that drove him to Mexico in the first place – concern for and protection of his family, whether necessary or deserved or neither –  what if that’s somehow the only thing reaching across the miles between them and tying Steve to life? It’s a stupid thought, and Danny should know better by now than to tie his anxiety to stupid superstitions, but any time he’s clicked into his photos he’s just been presented with the absence of Steve from the last months. The absence of any photos from the last months, really, apart from a couple of Charlie, because when you spend your days working and your nights trying to stop yourself from falling back into a bottle and from there into a pattern of alcoholism you thought you’d left behind ten years ago, there’s not a lot of photo opportunities.

(Four) Seasons of Love

Okay, this one is a lot more usual fare. I haven’t worked on it for a while bc state of disrepair’s been taking up the longh50fic portion of my brain but I will go back to it eventually bc. undercover as honeymooners! they’re undercover as honeymooners! at a resort! to catch a husband-wife jewel thief team! Steve comes into it going 'oh, this is the perfect opportunity to push one of us (Danny) into some kind of action on the thing we both obviously know about but won’t admit (that we’re in love with each other)’ while Danny, who’s POV, spends the entire time going 'why is Steve being so absolutely painful in aggravating my definitely unrequited love/lust that he definitely doesn’t know about’ until Steve finally breaks and calls him an idiot. There’s a creepy fish lamp (which is a real thing in the actual Four Seasons Lanai suites, where they are) that Danny instantly develops a grudge against.

“The point is-” Danny said, and was about to hit Steve in the chest with the back of his hand to emphasise said point when, in rapid succession, three things happened: the boat hit an outlandishly large wave, Danny lost his footing and almost his champagne, and Steve’s quick reflexes and occasional chivalrous instincts kicked in. The combined result of which was that all of a sudden Steve was holding two champagne flutes with one hand and Danny with the other.

Well, that was a slightly unfair description. Steve’s hand was on Danny, specifically on his lower back, but he was also using his entire arm and somehow most of his torso to hold him.

Meaning Danny was essentially plastered against Steve.

And, this being a reciprocal relationship, Steve was plastered against Danny.

And if anything, the hand on his back seemed to be pressing him even closer.

 Behind them, someone let out an ‘aww’, and Steve’s expression twisted up into something that was half-smirk and half-fond grin. He held the champagne flutes out to Danny, and Danny took them numbly and without protest, because his brain was spending all its focus telling his body not to react to having Steve pressed against him through what he was rapidly realising had to be the world’s thinnest t-shirt.

Doing anything without protest was a mistake when it came to Steve. Danny was reminded of this fact when the next thing Steve did with his now-free hand was raise it to Danny’s face, lean down, and kiss him.

The Irritating, Annoying, Infuriating, (Effective) Seduction Techniques of One Steven J. McGarrett

Okay, so this one was directly inspired by Deus Ex Girlfriend sending me round the bend, and doesn’t currently have much other than the title and what-will-end-up-as-the-blurb actually written down, but it’s on the back burner of my mind as a Fun Easy one to fill up one of my Fun Easy slots next year. it starts out with Danny accidentally getting Steve to taste pasta sauce off Danny’s fingers and ends up with Steve hand-feeding Danny Indian takeaway because like I said Deus Ex Girlfriend drove me insane. the aforementioned blurb:

Danny manages to gather enough breath to ask, “How…?”

“Oh, it’s good, Danny,” Steve husks, low in the back of his throat, maintaining steady eye contact.

[…]

He definitely wasn’t talking about the sauce.

Steve didn’t actually get nicknamed 'Smooth Dog’ for nothing.

Huggy & Pete

my best friends Huggy and Pete…. Pete starts fairly unobtrusively hanging around the Pits every afternoon, and Huggy’s like… okay. sure. guess I’m babysitting now. and then notices that Pete seems to be taking specifically a lot of interest in the queer denizens of the Pits, and goes 'ah. okay. I’m queersitting’. Eventually Pete comes out as nb to Huggy before anyone else. Basically this is just an excuse for me to write a) genderqueer Pete and b) Aunty Huggy Bear and his Known Queer Safe Space The Pits

“Who’s that?”

Huggy follows her gaze to the corner booth, where a stocky woman in straight jeans and a collared shirt with an open-to-closed button ratio to rival any of Starsky’s is sitting. She’s got one arm flung out along the back of the seat and the other around the curvaceous, dark-haired lady sitting close enough to in her lap that her flared skirt is draping over both their legs. “That’s Bertha,” he tells Pete with a deliberate blandness. “And her girlfriend, Andi.” He doesn’t really expect a bad reaction from a kid with Pete’s fashion - and nickname - tastes, who spends half their time around Starsky and Hutch and who clearly came to the Pits with some kinda crisis of her own, but Hug hadn’t got where he’d got by not being careful. He didn’t get where he’d got with bad instincts, neither, which was backed up well enough when Pete’s response was a breathy, “She’s so cool.”

(also, just for you:)

“Ugh. My guinea pig never has to think about this stuff.”

Huggy still wasn’t sure precisely what the stuff in question was, but that’d play out eventually. Meantimes, “You have a guinea pig?”

Pete looked up at him, brightening slightly. “Yeah. Uncle Starsky gave her to me. He’d called her Louise, but that was a stupid name. She’s called Flamer now.”

#Hawaii Five 0 #Starsky and Hutch #Starsky & Hutch #McDanno #Danny Williams #Huggy Bear Brown #Pete Edwards #my writing #itwoodbeprefect #mine

[disregardcanon]

i know that i showed up to the yellowjackets fandom three years late with starbucks or whatever and i get that it probably was hard NOT to hate travis while season one was airing and he was just being frustrating every week, but as someone who joined when season 2 was all the way out i just. can. not. under. stand.

this is the everyone's fucked up show i feel like we can give travis a pass for being a bit of a jerk when he was stuck in the wilderness with a team of intimidating girls that his dad that he didn't like but is now dead was in charge of

#personal ranting