#Ensuring brand consistency | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saintobio · 7 months

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sincerely yours. (8)

↳ gojou satoru/reader

when a twist of fate led their marriage to the path of a quintessential tragic romance, two past lovers go through another series of experiences on love, heartbreak, identity, illness, and trauma along the road to a happily ever after.

genre. heavy angst, amnesia, modern au, 18+

tags/warnings. profanity, mentions of cheating, implied suicide attempt, toxic relationship, explicit smut

series masterlist -> episode nine

9:21 AM.

Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound of your index finger drumming a slow and steady cadence against the table was nearly in perfect synchronization to the tick tock of the clock above the wall behind you. An icy, uninviting atmosphere was the best way to describe the current situation inside the conference room at this time of the morning, with the gelid detachment between the boss and her employees as you built a wall—an impenetrable wall—around yourself to keep the inner turmoil you had in your head.

So, you listened. You succumbed to silence as a result.

“I’d like to present this new idea that we, along with the ecommerce team, have come up with to increase engagement on our website.” Even as the marketing manager started to speak, you remained frigid. “We did go through some feedback that people have been posting online and they’re mostly saying that the current web theme is too plain and that they’re hoping to see a more engaging website, so we would love to propose some ideas that could improve Hearte’s overall online presence. We know that keeping the brand’s look consistent is very important, especially now that Hearte is still establishing its own name in the fashion industry, and we have currently done a phenomenal job with our brand style. However, as the online website is our visual storefront, not only is its functionality critical, but we also have to ensure that the web design is in line with our aesthetics.”

9:26 AM.

You leaned back on your chair with your arms crossed, looking up to speak to the manager from across the conference room. “Let’s keep the unnecessary introduction short and just go straight to the point,” you strictly announced, receiving curious eyes in return as it was their first time seeing you becoming all stern and unamused. Such an odd sight to see from a boss who used to have the brightest of sunshines reflecting on her smile. “What’s the proposal?”

The marketing manager cleared her throat and moved her presentation onto the next slide. “Yes, Ms. Y/N. So… uh, based on the data that you can see on the screen, our online sales increased by 15% for the past two weeks, but we still have about 10% of shoppers abandoning their shopping carts. Earlier this week, we set up email campaigns and social reminders to decrease our abandonment rate and urge shoppers to return to their carts. While working with the IT team, we did some A/B testing to determine which version would drive our business metrics. We’ve also reached out to The Society Management and added Kendall Jenner to our PR list so that possibly, in the future, we can get her as a model for our landing page and attract the western market,” she continuously explained in a manner to convince you of how much effort their department was doing to increase Hearte’s sales, “But what we believe could bring a tremendous improvement on our website engagement is by introducing style guides. This will capture the interest of the audience now that they can mix and match some outfits based on their own style, and—”

9:32 AM.

Sigh.

“Ms. Ono, I have to be honest, but I expected more from you,” you cut her off by leaving a frank comment on her presentation, “Fashion brands have been doing style guides for years. You make it sound like it’s unique, but it’s nothing new. How sure are we that it will actually bring a dramatic improvement on our website engagement? I doubt most of them would even browse through it.”

“Well, uh…” The marketing manager faltered, glancing at the head of the social media team for some help, which she didn’t end up receiving. “I think it’ll work the way we want it to as long as we introduce engaging copies that make buyers fall in love with the designs.”

“You think?” You criticized her word of choice. “Ms. Ono, I gave you enough time to brainstorm with your team, so the moment you step inside of this conference room, you should have prepared whatever strategy you had in mind. I don’t settle for ambitious words like ‘I think’ or ‘I believe’. I want to hear a proposal that’s original, unique, and captivating. I want you to be a hundred percent sure that you know what you’re doing before you waste everyone’s time like this. Do you understand? Am I being clear? I want a proposal that would definitely get us somewhere and not just by assuming we will.”

Were you being too harsh? They said that the fashion industry in itself was harsh, so what was so surprising about seeing you being strict, candid, and business-like? This was the nature of your job. This was normal.

9:47 AM.

Very timidly did Nobara raise her hand beside you to chime in on the discussion. “I know I’m not in the position to make suggestions, but…” She pressed something on her laptop before carefully sliding it to your side of the table, showing you what appears to be a classic early 2000s ‘dress-up game’ with a base model and a selection of outfits that were inspired by your designs. “I just wanted to show you this, Ms. Y/N. I do agree with Ms. Ono’s idea to introduce style guides, but maybe we can do it in an interactive way. I know the dress-up game idea may look childish and unsophisticated, but I was kinda hoping that we can just make certain adjustments so that it could match Hearte’s classy and simplistic style. We can have base models in different body types and skin tones to show our brand’s diversity, then we can have shoppers try dressing them up using the outfits on our current collection. That allows them to easily visualize how the pieces would look on a certain skin tone and body type.”

The way everyone else in that conference table looked at Nobara was very obvious that they were expecting you to reprimand her for even having the guts to offer such a farcical idea. What does she know? They were probably thinking that. You’re just an intern. You knew they were saying that in their minds. On the other hand, you surprisingly liked her proposal and enjoyed the unique idea of introducing it to the website because her proposal actually did make sense. People would be curious, people would try it out by interacting with the website, and that means the engagement would rise up.

“I like that idea. We can go with that,” you said, sliding the laptop back to her while nodding at the marketing and social media managers, “I need the team to discuss Nobara’s idea further and polish it thoroughly before we can start adding it onto the website. Make adjustments as needed and ensure that everything is still in line with our brand. If you notice any flaws with this proposal, you can flag them with me and I’ll review them.”

9:54 AM.

Just as you were about to wrap up the meeting, a certain someone entered the conference room in haste—panting out of breath with her long, wavy hair and creased red pants. “I’m so sorry, I’m late.”

Her casualness made you clench your jaws tightly, fueling the fire to your already terrible day. You could no longer stop yourself from unleashing your rage as you looked up at her with a critical squint. “Ms. Hirai, what time’s it?”

“It’s ten, I know. I’m so sorry,” she repeated her apologies and paid an apologetic bow to everyone in the meeting room, “I’m sorry, everyone. I was caught up in heavy traffic today.”

You let out a silent scoff and ignored her compunctious act. “How long are we gonna keep using that excuse, really?” you questioned her, earning the intrigued eyes of your employees who were all sensing the sudden tension between you and your best friend, “As the fashion merchandiser and my second-in-command, you should’ve been here in this meeting with me, but where were you? You anticipated that there would be heavy traffic, yet you couldn’t be responsible enough in coming to work early knowing that we have a meeting? Or was it because you’re too busy doing other things so you’re no longer interested in showing up to work on time?”

Akemi shook her head, contritely. “It’s… It’s not like that.”

“Not like what?” Your icy stare bored into her. No trace of compassion was present in your eyes. “I’m sure you’re living a very blissful life outside of work and I’m glad you are, but is that also why you don’t bother with anything else anymore?”

“Y/N—”

“Miss Y/N,” you corrected, “I’m your boss, so treat me like one.”

Wide, chocolate brown eyes greeted you in response. It was clear that she was at a loss of words and could only repeat her meaningless apologies a thousand times. “I’m really sorry, Ms. Y/N. It won’t happen again.”

“You didn’t even let me know that you’ll be coming in late,” you continued and ignored the pitiful expression on her face, focusing on her swollen red lips and her dewy, rosy cheeks. She must have had a really good morning to look like a cherry blossom on a spring day. Was she so preoccupied being all lovey dovey with your ex-husband this morning? Did she sleep comfortably on the same marital bed you used to share with him? Your jaw tensed visibly. “You’re just coming in whenever you want. You don’t respect people’s time. You don’t respect my rules. You don’t respect me.”

Yes, you were overreacting by taking things too personally and it was the reason why you got up from your seat and bolted out of the conference room upon realizing your unusual outburst. You could hear the clicking sound of your stiletto echoing across the corridor as you stomped towards your office, swinging the glass door open and heading straight towards the ceiling-to-floor window to have some peace of mind. Peace? How ridiculous. How could you find peace? You couldn’t even grasp the fact that your best friend was acting like everything was normal. You couldn’t understand why she was rubbing her relationship to your face as if she wasn’t just a placeholder to somebody’s ex wife.

“Y/N?” Akemi’s voice cut you out of your toxic trail of thoughts—your mouth thinning with displeasure while you didn’t bother turning around to meet her gaze. Breathe. You had to breathe and think rationally. “I…I understand you’re really angry right now, but I was hoping we can have this much needed talk.”

You could feel her reaching for your hand at the height of your frustration and your defensive instinct led you to angrily swing your arm away, accidentally hitting her cheek as you pivoted on your heel to face her. It took two seconds for your eyes to shift from glaring in frustration to widening in surprise after seeing the small cut your diamond ring left on her cheek. “Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah, no, it’s fine,” she insisted with her palm pressed onto the right side of her face. “I deserved it.”

Good lord. What was happening to you? Despite having all these unspoken rage and unresolved conflicts between the two of you, you would still drop everything and be concerned for her. You would still let your walls collapse. You were the villain that couldn’t stick to being a villain. Why? Why did you feel this way? Was it because you knew she wasn’t technically doing anything wrong? Or was it because you were just projecting your personal frustrations onto her? Was betrayal really the issue here? Or was it the huge possibility that she could in fact be Gojou’s one true love? You had thought of this before, but the same questions in your head never stopped. And never did they stop from invading your headspace as you made your way towards the small fridge to grab an ice pack that you soon offered to Akemi, leading her to one of the couches while finally coming into your senses.

Yet there was silence and nothing but awkward silence when you two sat at a safe distance from each other.

“I’m shameless.” She was the first one to break the uncomfortable atmosphere. “I know you’re thinking that and I do agree with you. I really am shameless to even look you in the eye right now.”

You sighed and looked away, only to keep yourself from the furnace of pain that you had been bottling inside. “Stop. You’re making me seem like a villain right now. I’m tired of seeing myself this way.”

She closed her legs and sat humbly, reaching forward to squeeze your hand. “You’re not. You’re not a villain and you never were,” said the same woman you accidentally smacked a few minutes ago, “I understand why you would feel a certain way towards me. I’d even understand if you hate me so much that you wanna murder me. I’m your best friend and I know about your history with Satoru, yet here I am seeing your ex-husband behind your back. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t plan it. I truly didn’t. Even though you’re not together anymore and I’m technically not homewrecking anyone, I’m still putting us—you and I—in a really awkward position. You didn’t deserve any of that and I’m very sorry.”

At least, she was self-aware. But looking at the brighter side of things, you were getting calmer now that you were hearing her side of the story, though that didn’t stop you from feeling any less horrible. “I don’t really care who you date,” you claimed, adamantly, “And I most definitely do not care who Satoru chooses to date. We’ve been divorced for three years.”

“It’s still not right that I’m seeing him.” She let her guilt speak up for her.

And you let your resentment speak for you. “Then, why him of all people?”

“It’s…”

“Complicated?”

“Y-Yeah…”

You decided to keep a straight face. “How did this happen?”

Akemi looked as if you had just forced her to be on the hot seat because of the apathy on your visage. “It was a drunken mistake at first and we kinda just…”

“I’m not asking about when you two started fucking,” you replied, bluntly. Something you had never done before in your usual sophisticated vocabulary. “I’m asking when you realized you have feelings for him. When did you fall in love with him?”

She had trouble finding the right answer. “It just happened. I d-don’t really know. Whenever you asked me to look after him, I guess the bond he and I developed from that made me see him in a different light.”

You disregarded the pain in your chest and let the volcano explode on its own, because her answer only meant that she was already growing feelings for your ex-husband at the same time you were confiding to her about him. That was the worst part of it all.

“Why do you like him?” you questioned further, “Despite knowing what happened while I was married to him, why did you still end up falling in love with him? If that’s so hard to answer, then don’t think about us or me or our friendship. Just think about the decisions you made for yourself. Why are you with Satoru?”

Her gaze found the floor. Hesitance. Guilt. Shame. Those emotions were all dancing in her eyes in a complete roundabout. While she took a moment to fully reassess her decision, you weren’t sure if you deserved to still feel hurt when she gave you an honest answer. “When I met Satoru, I didn’t meet the toxic, cheating ex-husband that he was known for,” she said, slowly, “I met a man who holds such a high respect for his ex-wife, adores his son like his greatest gift of all, and values his marriage more than anything else in this world. I met a vulnerable man who isn’t afraid to open his heart to strangers. A man who gave me emotional support even when he’s the one who needed it the most. I… It’s hard to explain, but…”

Was there really anything left to say? Her point was clear, and your silence while she was speaking was more so because you were trying not to let the tiny pricks in your heart affect you further than it already did. The fullness of her voice and the way her eyes shined when she talked about him were enough to tell you that your best friend had truly fallen in love and you would be cruel to take that away from her. Even from him. They would not have been involved in such an intimate relationship if there had been no attraction between them to begin with, so then… Why did it feel like you were being cheated on? She was no Sera, and he was not the Satoru that only used you for his corporate ambitions. It was just Akemi and Satoru—they were each other’s right person at the right time. The only thing blocking their path to a loving relationship was you.

You. The irrational and spiteful ex-wife. The ex-wife who always played the ‘victim card’. The selfish ex-wife who wanted all the good things to only come her way.

Well, god be damned, because you were beginning to confuse yourself with the version of you that wasn’t even remotely like you at all. She was just a mirrored image of yourself that you thought people perceived.

“You can do what you want.” The moment you spoke again, you were already creating a huge wall between you and your best friend, making sure that there were boundaries that none of you should ever cross now that she had chosen to be with someone you had sincerely loved in the past. It may sound like you were letting go, but truth be told, you just didn’t think that you even had the option to hold onto anything. Satoru wasn’t yours and you weren’t his anymore. You were two individuals living separate lives. “If you wanna be with him, that’s your choice. I don’t plan on intervening. It just… just really surprised me that you didn’t have the decency to tell me at all.”

Akemi nodded, apologetically desperate. “I understand how you’re feeling and I’m sorry. I really, truly am sorry, Y/N.” Her voice and her countenance did show the genuineness in her plea to be forgiven, but you were too numb to feel anything else. “I hope we can stay friends despite everything.”

How could you even stay friends in a situation like this?

First option was to keep pretending that their relationship wasn’t bothering you. Second option was to focus on your own relationship with Toji to the point where everything else just didn’t matter anymore.

Yeah, you thought. You could certainly choose the latter.

“Our friendship isn’t my top priority at the moment,” was your straightforward response to her, “I wanna focus on my son and his relationship with his father. That’s all.”

Any regular person would have thought: ‘Wow, Y/N. You handled that well.’ ‘You’re so mature.’ ‘You’re a lot calmer than we expected.’ The thing was, you really did think that you had been way too calm about it. In spite of the scene you caused at the conference room, or the dramatic exchange you had with Akemi in your office, you still handled it much better than one would think. In TV shows or movies, the ex-wife would have dragged the best friend to the ground, slapped her face, pulled her hair, started a nasty catfight, and called her all the terrible labels you could think of. Look, part of you wanted to do that. And the other part of you—the sympathetic, altruistic part of you—thought you shouldn’t do that. You would only look pathetic.

Of all the negative things Satoru had made you feel over the course of your failure of a marriage, this aftermath was probably the toughest.

You just weren't in the right state of mind to justify why.

You also couldn’t justify why you had been looking for unhealthy ways to cope with stress and anxiety. If anyone from your family saw you standing at the smoking area near the parking lot right now, they would have given you an earful of how you must be out of your mind for even putting a cigarette stick between your lips. How exactly could tobacco be good for you? You would say, first of all, that nicotine does in fact cause pleasant feelings to distract you from unpleasant ones. You couldn’t find any other way to relax your mind any faster than one cigarette stick could. Besides, staying in the office and seeing Akemi around was getting too suffocating and you couldn’t afford to have your negative mood lingering in your mind for the rest of the day. One stick wouldn’t hurt. Another one wouldn’t, too. And another one should be fine, right?

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The irony. You didn’t even have the time to recoil before the main cause of your stress showed up in front of you, frowning after he snatched the cigarette stick out of your lips. He was quick to throw it to the ground, stomp on it like he would do with your heart, and give you a questioning look that made you scoff at the ridiculousness of this situation. This could be a dream for heaven’s sake. Or a hallucination. There was no way Satoru Gojou would be standing right in front of you just as you were thinking about him.

“Since when have you been doing this?” he questioned again, holding your wrist this time to make you realize that his presence or this interaction wasn’t just a figment of your imagination. It would have been better that way, but the reality was, Satoru was there and he wasn’t the least bit pleased. “I know you’re mad at me and this isn’t the right time for me to chew you out like this, but…” he paused, taking your cigarette pack. “I can’t believe you’re fucking smoking right now, Y/N. Did you get this habit from Toji?”

Okay. Gojou could be way out-of-line sometimes, but this was the apex of it.

“Don’t bring Toji into this,” you snapped back, shooting him a glare that could easily kill. “What are you doing here?”

You could see how deep his inhale was just by the loudness of his sigh after it. His face showed a combination of yearning, regret, frustration, and pity as if he was deciding which emotion should dominate him more. But among the multitude of emotions that were drowning him right now like a tidal wave, he looked all the more exhausted. Whether it was dealing with you, trying to make amends with you, or simply being around you—you could tell that he wanted to drop his constant need to care for you because it was beginning to tire him out.

He didn’t really answer your question, and instead, asked one of his own. “Are you smoking because of stress?” he asked, trying to mask the sympathy in his eyes. “It’s bad for you. Set a good example for Sachiro.”

You’re bad for me, you wanted to say. Why did it even matter to him, anyway? You were nothing more than just a mother to his child. Anything outside that role was completely not his business anymore. The fact that he was even within the vicinity of your office was ridiculous, because you were already having a bad day and his presence was adding further into it. “Don’t you dare talk about setting a good example to my son like you’re so righteous yourself.”

“Y/N, come on.” He reached for your hand once more as if trying to show how much he cared or how worried he was with what you were doing to yourself because of him. “I don’t want you to—”

“Keep your fucking distance, Gojou. You’re not in the place to give a damn about me anymore,” you raged, withdrawing your wrist and breathing heavily as you tried to keep yourself from further exploding. You would have. You were so close to cursing him off, but you saw the flash of pure shock in his eyes, and that was how you realized what you just did. All these violent reactions, these unusual outbursts—these were not you. This was not the meek, soft-spoken ex-wife that he was once married to.

“Toru?”

Unfortunately, Gojou no longer had enough attention span to listen when he looked away, only to turn to his new woman with a genuinely worried expression painted on his face as soon as he saw her coming out of the building with a hand on her cheek. You realized that he was actually here to pick her up and was doing everything that a caring boyfriend would; checking every inch of her face to see how bad she was hurt and asking her what happened and whether she was okay. You didn’t know how to react the moment he turned back to you with his tired, yet passively accusatory eyes. “Did something happen?”

You knew that his question actually translated to: ‘Did you slap her?’ With your thorough knowledge about his acquired trauma from physical violence, you felt the sudden need to clear your name, but you didn’t know if you should be grateful that it was already your best friend who did the part in doing such. “Nothing happened. It was an accident.” Her tone was almost begging before she started tugging his arm. “Let’s just go, please.”

Satoru didn’t want to let it go, but decided that it was best to just leave it be as he glanced at you with a slightly detached gaze. “I’ll see you in a couple of days,” he reminded, referring to the dreaded New York trip together with Sachiro.

A conflicted look from him and an apologetic gaze from her. That was all that you received before they got inside the car and left you alone and miserable in that parking lot. You watched his car fade into view with her on the passenger seat and him probably holding her hand as he drove through the street. Just when you thought you could actually stomach the sight of him and her together, it would be a big fat lie to say that it didn’t sting. It stung worse than the times he ran after Sera than to stay behind with you. Worse than when he used to treat you like a mistress rather than a wife.

You must be going crazy, indeed. Who in their right mind would cry over her ex-husband in the middle of the parking lot? Why would you even shed tears when you were the one who wanted him to find someone else and move on? This was becoming a never-ending loop because you were letting yourself be affected by it. It shouldn’t be that way. Never.

“Toji.” You were doing your hardest to conceal the weakness in your voice as you pressed your phone into your right ear. “I-I need you… right now. Please.”

“Hey, I was just about to pick-up Sachi from daycare. Is everything okay?”

Wiping your eyes, you looked at the dull skies wondering if the universe was trying to reflect all these emotions running inside of you. “Yeah… Can you come soon?”

He didn’t really hesitate to answer, quickly understanding that he had to drop everything else right now and be with you. “Alright, I’ll be there.”

Satoru was conflicted, but he didn’t know what exactly made him feel that way. Was it because he saw you smoking in the parking lot? Or was it because he could tell that you gave Akemi a tongue-lashing after catching her half-naked at the penthouse a few days ago? Either way, both options were not very you. And he couldn’t understand why you were slowly starting to look less and less like the person he knew, which was confusing on his part because you had been adamant on telling him to forget about you. You were rigid on your decision to not let him enter your life as your husband for the second time around. He told you he still loved you, but you said you loved another. He told you he wanted to work things out and make your family complete again, but you said you were already doing that with someone else. Gojou knew his hands weren’t clean and the reason you may be acting that way was because out of all the women he could have been with, it had to be Akemi Hirai. Your best friend. Your confidante. Your business partner. She was a territory he shouldn’t have crossed, yet he did.

But, at the same time, she was the only person who had been there for him during his lowest. She was the company he needed when his heart was the loneliest. He couldn’t even remember the amount of times she came to his aid when he was crying over his memories of you, memories that he could no longer hold onto. Akemi brought peace to his heart, and if there was anyone else he could be with, it would be her.

It was becoming more and more clear to him how he felt about her.

Although, voicing that out loud was a different story. Keeping it in his thoughts was for the best because he didn’t want to lead Akemi on. She didn’t deserve that nor did she deserve to feel like a substitute for someone else. He wanted to be a hundred percent sure about being with her before he could fully confess his real feelings for her. It could still develop through time, perhaps far better and more passionate than what he was sharing with her right now, but until then, settling for what they had at this moment in time was for the better. What was important was that both parties were clear about diving into this relationship.

He wasn’t ready for commitment and she understood that. She was willing to wait for him. She was helping him move on in the least painful way. Where else could he meet such a person like her?

She was gentle, motherly, sensitive, and intuitive. She was classy and sophisticated. She knew how to dress nicely. Her nails were always clean and pretty. Her smile was very charming. Her laugh, endearing. She was the perfect woman anyone could have.

“Why’d you suddenly want to go to the mall?” she asked, intertwining their hands together as she looked up at him with her beautiful doe eyes. Her question made him cut out of his trance, remembering that they were strolling around the galleria.

He touched the small wound on her cheek as if stroking it could make it heal faster. “Nothing,” he said. “Just a last minute idea.”

Truthfully, Gojou wasn’t sure why he had brought her there. All he knew was that he had a lot going on in his mind while he was driving through the city and the next thing he knew, he was already pulling up at the galleria out of his natural instinct. But since they were already there, he might as well buy her a little something. Anything. And then his eyes caught sight of Chanel as if the high-end boutique was pulling his feet with such gravity that it led him to go inside the store while hand-in-hand with the woman next to him.

“Mr. Gojou, how are you?”

Right. The staff knew him so well, especially for the amount of times he had been there with his ex-wife when you two were still married.

“Are you looking for anything specific?” One of the familiar ladies that used to assist you approached him with a lingering stare towards Akemi. “Perhaps for your…?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, can you… uh,” he turned towards the rack of tweed sets, “Do you have any new collections?”

“Yes, absolutely,” said another lady, “Right this way, sir.”

It was easy to notice how the staff were exchanging glances at the sight of Satoru and Akemi together, but his mind was far too distracted by the nostalgia of being in that place alone to even care about his surroundings. All he did was look back at Akemi and encourage her to try out the newest collections that they had, thinking that she was oblivious about what was going through his head. “You go and pick whatever you like.”

Although she was clearly not used to it, Akemi did eventually try on some of the outfits he specifically had chosen for her. They were Chanel’s signature tweed sets that he always found to be very elegant, and he definitely wasn’t wrong that they would suit her when she came out of the dressing room to show him how the clothes wrapped her small frame perfectly.

He could see your smile through her face, your excitement when you tried the outfits on, and the shine in your eyes when you looked at yourself in the mirror. Except, Gojou had to remind himself that you weren’t her. That his mind was just messing with him.

No, this was wrong. Why was he thinking about you while he was with her?

He had to have some sort of distraction. Something so tangible that all of his senses would go numb.

The one way he was able to overcome that dilemma was by sharing yet another steamy exchange with Akemi later that night. He couldn’t remember who initiated first, but it must have been the equal desire that they had for each other when they dove straight into a heated makeout session the moment they stepped inside his bedroom. One thing led to another. First he was kissing her lips, then her collarbones, then her inner thighs—devouring her completely with his lust-driven actions, doing the most by pleasuring her body using his own.

She was a giver just as she was a receiver. Not that he didn’t expect her to be so experienced when it came to sex, but she definitely knew what she was doing without any guidance from him. Perhaps he just wasn’t used to it anymore. Perhaps he had just forgotten how it felt to have sex with someone who didn’t rely on him to initiate the next steps they should do. Fuck, he couldn’t even remember the last time someone stared at his eyes while putting his hardened member inside her mouth the way she did. She knew her power over him while at his most vulnerable state, ruining his masculine ego and destroying it with her own feminine pride.

And in the midst of their intimate session, Gojou was zoning out while he was sliding a condom across his shaft, ready to enter her from the back. His mind was giving him a flash of memory, not a distant but recent one from two days ago.

“I still can’t believe you did that, Mom. You’re being ridiculous.”

His mother wasn’t exactly showing the slightest hint of regret on her face despite knowing full well that sending the custody claim almost made you lose your mind. She was keeping a straight face as she sat on the barstool next to him, taking a sip of wine from her glass while he, on his own, was downing a glass of scotch. “She had it coming.”

Satoru sighed his frustration away. “Don’t do that again or today’s the last time you’ll ever see me.”

“What are you talking about?” His mother frowned. “Who was there for you when you were trying to end your own life because of the lies she told you, huh? You’re feeling bad for her now, but did she feel bad for you back then? You missed three years of your son’s life because she was being too spiteful towards you.”

He had never met someone more stubborn than his own mother, but maybe this was a clear sign for Satoru to realize where he must have acquired that one similar trait of his. After all, people always made it seem that he was more like his dad even though he despised being compared to his father. To say that his mother was a complete angel was a lie. But neither was he. “Whatever, just don’t… Just leave Y/N alone. She’s still the mother of my child and I don’t want us to keep fighting. At least, for Sachi’s sake.”

His mother finished her glass of wine before turning the stool towards his direction. There was a minute of silence that passed between them before she spoke again. “I just don’t want you to get back with her, darling. You two are toxic together.”

Funny, because he could say the same thing for her and his father. “Well, it’s not gonna happen now. Y/N’s gonna hate me forever.”

“What, ‘cause she rejected you again?”

“No,” he countered, shaking his head and chugging all the remaining liquor on his glass. “She knows about the thing I have with Akemi now.”

Her mouth fell open, gasping as she did so. “Y-You… and Akemi? Are you together?”

Satoru expected this reaction from her, but didn’t think she would actually be more fixated on his new relationship than the effect it would bring on her ex-daughter-in-law. “It’s not something to be proud of, Mom.”

“Well, I’m proud of you,” she still stressed that fact, “It’s nice to hear that you’re finally moving on, Satoru. Y/N is not good for you, but I know Akemi will be. I like her and I know she’ll make you a lot happier than Y/N ever did.”

“You’re still awake?” Gojou let out a yawn as he felt the heaviness of his eyelids telling him that it was time to sleep. He tried checking the time on his phone, but realized that he still had the photo of you and Sachiro as his lockscreen. He wasn’t planning on changing it anytime soon, but considering that Akemi saw it, he was expecting that she would have something to say, yet nothing came out of her mouth. She simply stayed silent while laying on his chest, letting him touch the slope of her naked back as she slightly raised her head to meet his eyes. He had already closed his phone and placed it back on the nightstand. “What, did I not tire you enough?”

“Shut up.” She hid her reddened cheeks and smiled on the crook of his neck. Her hand was placed on his chest, fingers tracing his collarbones. “No, I’m just thinking about how you’re gonna manage New York and all.”

Satoru’s breathing was still for a few seconds, keeping his eyes glued on the ceiling as he held her on your marital bed. “You’re scared that the infamous cheater is gonna cheat on you or something?” he joked, a distasteful one, but still meant to ease whatever was burdening her mind. “Not gonna happen even if we’re in an open relationship.”

“That’s not it,” Akemi quickly replied, denying his claims, “I’m more like hoping that you’ll be patient with her. She gets angry a lot these days and we know we’re the main cause of it, so please. Please don’t try to argue with her, okay? If she says hurtful things, learn to understand her.”

He wrapped his arms tighter around her smaller frame. Gojou was certain that he was about to doze off soon now that he had closed his eyes and let the exhaustion pull him into a good night’s sleep. “I won’t,” he spoke his words slowly, drifting off to dreamland, “I won’t make her angry.”

“Okay.” He felt her lips kissing his jaw just before the both of them gradually matched the calmness of each other’s chest. One heart, one soul, two bodies. “Good night, ‘Toru.”

…

In the middle of his sleep, he mumbled, “Good night, Y/N.”

On the other side of the city, you woke up in the middle of your slumber, facing the handsome face of your fiancé, Toji Zen’in, who had already drifted off to dreamland while holding you in his muscular arms. No wonder people were jealous of you for having such a refined man like him in your bed every night you go to sleep. The thing was, you had no reason to feel discontented with your life since you already had everything. You were wealthier than the average person, you ran a business that you were passionate about, you had an adorable son who meant the world to you, and you had Toji. There was nothing else you could ask for. And if by remembering Sera’s words back then, you would be selfish to ask for anything more because others didn’t even have half the fortune you had.

So, in that sense, you should be happy.

You had to be happy.

You were happy, right?

“Go to sleep,” whispered a half-awake Toji, stirring from his sleep as he held your waist tighter like you were his comfort pillow. “You alright?”

Sighing inwardly, you traced the scar on his lips. “You’re so gorgeous.”

His lazy, boyish smile came into view. “I know that,” he joked, closing his eyes as if succumbing into a few more minutes of sleep. “Don’t tell me you’re turned on right now ‘cause I can go all night. Doggy. Missionary. Cowboy. Reverse cowboy.”

Were you? Maybe a little. And maybe you had to have a distraction from your ‘source of happiness’.

“That’s very naughty of you, Mr. Zen’in,” you replied, cheeks heating up from his vulgar words. Your hand was finding its way to his toned chest, while his were traveling to the curves of your waist and hips. You could feel him angling his body to make sure he had access to slide your underwear just a little above your knee, gliding his hand along your thigh before letting his fingers touch your sensitive bud. “T-Toji—”

A smirk appeared on his lips. “Hm? I thought you wanted this?”

You nodded, taking a deep breath. “Y-Yeah, I…” There was no use holding back from moaning because his fingers knew how to move perfectly well, playing with your clit in circular motions before sliding two of them into your entrance. “...Fuck.”

“Feel good?” His hot breath tickled your neck, moving his mouth from your collarbones down to the valley between your breasts. “Wish you knew how delicious you are.”

Another moan, much louder this time around, escaped your lips when he attached his mouth onto your breast, sucking the round mass with his tongue doing God’s work. You were so high into sexual desire that your back arched on its own, dominated by the pleasing sensation all over your body. You could barely even respond to him when he started asking why your mood had been so down when he picked you up after work or why you still wouldn’t tell him whatever happened back there.

“It’s nothing,” you replied, disregarding the painful encounter you’ve had with your ex-husband and your best friend. “...Just work stuff.”

As you closed your eyes, you could feel Satoru’s fingers entering deep inside of you, deep enough to have reached your g-spot and have you moaning wildly. It felt unreal. It felt goddamn out of this world. But since Satoru was familiar with every inch of your body, his touch alone could easily send you to seventh heaven. He was heavenly. He was saintly. That mesmerizing gaze of his paired with his sky blue eyes and messy white hair. His beautiful, beautiful face, watching you beg for him to do more. More. More…

“Satoru…”

The intense feeling suddenly stopped, awakening you back to your senses as you opened your eyes and saw the dark, animalistic gaze of Toji Zen’in. “What’d you say?” he asked in a deep voice.

Out of panic, you slightly pulled away and shook your head. “N-Nothing. What did I say?”

“I thought I heard you say his…” he trailed off, pulling his fingers out of you and instead, placing a tight grip on your hip. “Did you?”

“No, no. Not at all.” Your voice came in a hushed tone, looking at his eyes intently. “Why would I do that?”

He let out an exasperated sigh, falling back into the bed with one arm under his head. “Don’t play games with me, Y/N.”

Desperation led you to climb on top of him, sitting on his crotch before encasing your lips with his soft ones. “I’m not,” you mumbled, kissing him again. “I never did. I promise.”

Yet, despite your attempts at inviting him for an open-mouthed kiss, he had already lost the interest to engage in sexual activities with you. He didn’t say anything nor tried to argue about the shit that you said, but he did stay silent for a couple of minutes, simply holding you on top of him without another word to utter. It scared you to think what was going through Toji’s mind, but this was also all your fault. Why, in the first place, did you even let your mind imagine that white-haired toxic ex-husband of yours when you had Toji Zen’in in front you?

Perhaps in this relationship, you were the toxic one.

You were the poison that could kill the life out of the man who only wanted to love and heal you.

“Toji, I’m sorry…”

He held his breath. “Should I be concerned that you’re going on a trip with him?”

“No, it’s…” Pulling away, you gave him a look of combined sincerity and denial. “We’re just gonna fix Sachiro’s papers, you know that. We won’t even be staying in the same room.”

Fixing Sachiro’s papers. Dealing with his dual citizenship. Changing his last name to Gojou. Solidifying your son’s identity as the son of Satoru Gojou. That’s all there is to it. All the technical matters.

“Is he staying at a hotel or are you letting him stay at your apartment in Manhattan?” he asked, although there was no hint of suspicion in his voice. Or at least, he must be good at hiding it.

You chose to be honest. “I have to let him stay at my apartment,” was your answer, leaning your head on his shoulder. “Only because Sachi wants his dad around all the time. We’re just trying our best to co-parent.”

Toji’s dry humor took over. “You sure you’re not gonna let him fuck you senseless?” His tone was laced with resentment. “And then you’ll come home to me crying about how he got you pregnant for the second time. You’d better kiss our marriage goodbye if that happens.”

“What kind of person do you think I am?” you retorted, annoyed by his word of choice as if you were a cheating scumbag. “If he’s gonna get someone pregnant, that won’t be me.”

His eyes sparked with curiosity. “What do you mean?”

Deciding between telling and not telling, you figured that the latter would only cause more drama to bounce back at you like a boomerang. “He’s with Akemi.”

It looked like Toji didn’t hear it right. “Akemi? How’d that happen?”

“I don’t know what kinda relationship they have, okay?” you snapped, no longer wanting to keep up with this topic further. “I just caught them. They said they’re seeing each other, but it’s complicated or whatever—I don’t really give a damn. But he’s with her is all I know.”

Toji went silent for a few minutes, unable to determine whether he should find the situation pitiful or humorous. One thing for sure though, was that he found it unbelievable. “That son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath, smiling in disbelief, “So this is what’s ruining your mood these days, huh?”

Your eyebrows furrowed in response. “It’s not.”

“Your ex-husband slept with your best friend. Yeah, I’d be mad, too.” His comment wasn’t really meant to irk you, but he successfully did so. Minus the intention. “Getting mad is understandable, getting jealous is questionable. Which one are you?”

Fuck it. “I said I’m not jealous. Will you stop now?” You sunk yourself under the covers, turning your back on Toji. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Now that he knew and you saw his reaction, you wondered what it would be like if Gen and Ian knew. Or if your dad knew. What would they think of Satoru? What would they think of Akemi? No, nevermind that. What would they think of you? Another fool in a deck of cards? Another game that was played with?

You didn’t want to know.

Ideally, you and Satoru really shouldn’t have gone to this New York trip together as if your family was still intact, because as much as you wished that that was true, you were far from that. You were only playing house for the sake of your son, but that also meant putting you in a painfully awkward situation together as ex-spouses. He had a girlfriend back home and you had a loving and loyal fiancé who proved the whole word that he was loyal to you. And although your respective partners were supporting the whole co-parenting situation, you knew by yourselves that this was nowhere to near to being comfortable for them, too.

“Everything okay?” You heard the familiar voice of your past, only to see his dull, blue eyes taking a peek at you.

“Yeah,” you replied, almost inaudibly. You just boarded the plane while Satoru was talking to the pilot, and found your spot on one of the beds in his private jet. It took a few minutes for him to get to where you were now. “Why?”

He shrugged, eyeing a sleepy Sachiro next to you. “Just wanna make sure you and Sachi are comfortable.”

You didn’t know what else to say, so you just looked back at your peaceful son who was hugging his elmo plush like the cute angel he was. Even though he was growing so fast, you could still remember how he was just as small as a puppy in your arms when he was first born. The memory of it caused you to press your lips on his forehead, caressing his soft, white hair. At some point while observing the scene, your son’s father thought it would be a good idea to slide the blanket further up your shoulders, acting as though he was only doing it to keep Sachiro warm. And later, he sat on the reclined airplane seat, drinking the coffee that was served to him by the stewardess.

It was crazy.

Crazy that Toji could be lying next to you and you would feel nothing. But Gojou was meters away from you and your mind was on a never-ending race.

Just before noon, the airplane landed safely at JFK airport and Satoru’s driver took you straight to Central Park Towers, treated like a V.I.P. by security just because your ex-husband was Japan’s third richest person and second most influential businessman. At times like these, you would almost forget the power Satoru held even before he was the chairman. You two were almost royalty. Now that he was leading the Gojou Group, his reputation only grew more despite the scandal of your broken marriage. He knew not to share his relationship publicly anymore nor did he expose Sachiro to any of his social media. It was a mutual decision for you to keep your son away from the spotlight knowing the scrutiny and the lack of privacy that would enter your lives once again—all the unnecessary noise, the unwanted comments, the unruly attention. Besides, for safety reasons, Sachiro had to be hidden from the public since he would become the sole heir to his father’s conglomerate, inheriting his parents combined assets that could one day make him the richest and most sought after bachelor in Japan.

“Mamaaa!” A lively Sachi came running to you as soon as he entered the lobby of the apartment suites, his father following him behind.

“Careful, baby!” you said, standing at the lobby while talking to your housekeeper, “You might trip.”

Satoru decided to carry his son after noticing your worried expression and immediately walked towards you. He was all smiles as he looked at Sachiro’s cheerful blue eyes. “He seems a little excited, isn’t he?”

“He lived here for almost three years,” you answered, signaling a quick ‘thank you’ to your housekeeper before guiding your boys to the elevator. “He must’ve missed the place. Did you, Sachi?”

“Yes, mama~”

It was a little bittersweet for your ex-husband, though. Especially the moment he stepped inside the apartment, looking at every corner and realizing that it was the same place you had lived in back when he was suffering from emotional distress on the other side of the world. This apartment was where his own child grew up in and he had no idea he had even existen then. Not only did that make you a terrible ex-wife, but it also made you a heartless mother. You had separated them and now you were taking him to the place where you had his son hidden from him.

That wasn’t your intention. That was never your intention.

“I’m glad you chose a nice place,” he complimented, acting as casual as possible. “Does your father own this place or?”

“Gen loaned it to me,” you said, holding Sachiro’s hand while letting Satoru follow you closely. You stopped at one of the guest rooms and urged the tall man to feel at home. “You can stay here for the meantime.”

“I don’t wanna make things uncomfortable for Akemi.” He looked away, avoiding your eyes. “I can just stay at a hotel—”

“Dada!” His mini-me tugged at his hand along with yours. You already knew that those puppy eyes would look back at the both of you. “Sachi wants Dada to stay.”

Frankly, you weren’t upset a while ago, but since he had to bring up Akemi and make it seem like her feelings were his priority, you lost all the will to be kind. Was their relationship that deep for him to act like such a loyal, righteous partner? Where was that same loyalty when he married you? “Do whatever.”

Noticing the tension between his parents, Sachiro’s eyes started to well up with tears and that was all it took for you two to completely focus your attention back to your 3-year old.

“Sachi…” Satoru tried to reach for his son, but you (spitefully) beat him to it.

“It’s okay, my baby. Don’t cry,” you comforted your son, picking him up and carrying him in your arms, “Daddy will still visit you every day even if he's staying at a hotel.”

Satoru, as guilty as ever, shook his head and wiped his son’s eyes. “No. I’ll stay here for Sachi, okay? Don’t cry anymore.”

It felt like hours sitting on that enormous sofa, staring at the television screen even though your mind was miles away. You had already texted Toji good night and reassured him that everything was fine, but you still couldn’t stop thinking about what he was doing back home. Sachiro had fallen asleep almost half an hour ago, and how you wished you could also enjoy your slumber while snuggling under those heated blankets, but how could you? How could you be comfortable in the presence of an ex-husband who was coming out of his room, freshly showered in his low-waisted sweatpants and tight-fitting black shirt? Not to mention how he was obviously flexing his arms while drying his mop of messy, white hair with a towel. Ridiculous. A little seductive, but definitely ridiculous.

“Still up?” His sky blue eyes met yours as soon as he looked up.

You adjusted your position on the sofa and leaned on the corner, pulling a small cushion to place above your thighs. “Can’t sleep.”

And the night went on just like that. You, sitting on the couch. Him, sitting on the other end as if going near you might suffocate him. It didn’t help that the silence was beginning to be too uncomfortable. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking of. Perhaps Akemi? Perhaps you? You doubted the latter.

“I think…” You cleared your throat to escape from the awkward tension. “I think I’m gonna go for a night swim. You can go to sleep next to Sachi tonight, just make sure not to wake him up.”

Satoru’s curious gaze trailed on you as you got up and tightened your robe. “It’s a little too late at night to go for a swim, no?”

You couldn’t even face him as you responded. “I need to clear my mind off some things.” And by things, you meant him and this whole mess of a situation that you had put yourselves together. Two divorcees staying in the same living space wasn’t exactly a brilliant idea to begin with.

“Want me to join you?” asked Satoru, and he himself could not believe he asked that question. He may have asked it out of his innate care for you, probably worried for no damn reason. What he didn’t realize was how wrong his suggestion was, especially that you two were dating other people now.

If only you were such a cruel person, how ironic would it be if you allowed Satoru Gojou to join you for a quick night swim?

How ironic would it be for you to feel each other’s warmth under the crystal pool, getting carried away by the romantic lights that lit the city?

How ironic would it be if the intense sexual tension ended with you doing things under the sheets, completely disregarding the fact that the both of you had respective partners who were overthinking this exact NYC trip?

How ironic would it be if, for once in your life, you became the cheater?

Thankfully, you didn’t have the mindset of a cheating person.

However, it was Satoru who took back his initial offer. “Never mind. Forget I even asked that,” he muttered, sounding annoyed more so to himself rather than at you.

You offered a nonchalant shrug. “Okay.”

And as you were heading to the poolside, you could sense Gojou’s presence behind even though he just very clearly rejected the idea of going on a swim with you. He was still the same confusing man that you married before. Only now, he was ten times worse. “Wait, Y/N.”

“What?” You turned around, annoyed at his push-and-pull behavior. At this point, you didn’t really care what he was thinking of anymore. All you did was to take off your robe, leaving yourself with only your underwear on before you slowly got down on the pool.

Gojou, on the other hand, was ridding himself of his shirt and sweatpants to join you in the pool with just his boxers on. What even was this situation? You two had that same question in your head despite swimming at the edge of the pool to stare at the cityscape. “I only asked to join you because I wanted to talk. That’s all.”

You wanted to laugh at how he was clearing his intentions to you.

“Why do you sound defensive around me?” He couldn’t see it, but you were rolling your eyes as you leaned against the pool coping. “I never knew Akemi would be the jealous type.”

Satoru looked surprised by your claim, seeming as though he didn’t recognize the kind of person you were anymore. You were never this unreasonably sarcastic nor acidic with your words during your marriage even at the height of his affair with Sera, yet you had just become the worst version of yourself. “She isn’t,” he muttered, finding his spot next to you, “But I don’t wanna give her a reason to be.”

You huffed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You make it sound like I’m gonna make a move on you or something.”

“I never said that.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“Says who?”

What is it about Satoru Gojou that makes him so irritating? Was it the way he talks? The way he thinks he’s always right? The way he acts like he’s such a clean person?

“Please,” you retorted, bitterly. “Toji isn’t comfortable having you around me, either. Just so you know.”

“Can we just—” There. His last string of patience finally snapped and his true colors came to show when he grabbed your wrist and made you face him. The spiteful Satoru. He was back, even just for a second. “Y/N, I’m not trying to argue with you here. I’m trying to talk to you like a civilized person. You’re the mother of my child and I respect you. I’d still care for you and will always protect you, but I want you to at least act like a fucking person around me. You’re a grown woman.”

Wasn’t it bad that he, of all people, was basically telling you to grow up? Memories of your marriage and all the back-and-forth arguments that you had with him flashed before your eyes. He should be the last one to say such a thing. “You’re the one who’s been crossing the fucking line with me since day one, Gojou. Don’t tell me to—”

“And do you wish I had just killed myself for you to forgive me?!” The ridges of his neck became prominent, making his anger much visible now. He was staring down at you intensely, backing you against the edge of the pool, trapping you in between his arms. “I’d have probably done that. But you…You did unforgivable things to me and look how easy it was for me to forgive you.”

You looked away, not trying to have this conversation again. Not trying to have your guilt eat your heart out. Maybe your behavior really had become too much and it was about time you take a step back and realize how ridiculous you had been acting because no way was this man trying to make a better point than you.

“I slept with Akemi, I know. She’s your best friend, I fucking know. But I never did that to get back at you,” his voice bore so much authority in them. “I begged on my knees just to be with you again. Swallowed my pride just for you to be my wife again!” His breathing became ragged. “But you chose to move on. You said you love Toji. You said you’d be happier without me, so why don’t I deserve to be happy without you?”

The inability to speak wasn’t because you were at a loss of words. The problem was choosing the right ones. Words that wouldn’t put you in a disadvantageous position. Words that wouldn’t make you look like an unreasonable person.

“You wished me well when you first found out about Akemi and I. You said you don’t care who I choose to date even if that choice is her,” he said, much calmer this time. He was placing his forehead against yours, body pressed against each other. “If that was true, then why are you still so angry with me?”

Your heart raced as you locked eyes with him. His eyes were the same kind of blue that reflected off of the surface of the pool. Anyone could easily get lost in it, but you knew where to place yourself in order not to. “I’m… not angry…”

“Baby, you and I both know that’s not true,” he said with a serious gaze, lifting your chin with his hand.

But you swatted it away, averting your eyes. “Don’t call me baby. You’re being ridiculous.”

With a loud sigh, Gojou gave up and simply placed his forehead on your shoulder, letting you feel the weight of his head and the warmth of his breath. “If you were still my wife, I’d have kissed you right now,” he declared, breathing heavily as if stopping with all of his will to do what he just said. “I’d touch every inch of you, tell you how much I love you, carry you back into that room, and make more beautiful babies with you…”

“Satoru,” you warned just as he pulled away, smiling despite the sorrow in his eyes.

“…But I won’t do that. I’m not gonna do that,” he claimed and sounded like he was convincing himself rather than clearing it up. “Akemi doesn’t deserve a partner who can’t move on from his ex-wife, so I’m doing my best to forget about you.”

Your breathing took a halt. You weren’t sure where those tiny pricks in your heart came from. Toji needed the same. He deserved a wife who wasn’t pining for her ex-husband. Satoru was just being true.

“Then, forget about me,” you gave a barely audible reply.

Gojou pulled away and kept his distance now, showing that he was indeed trying to stick to his words. “I will.”

Why did it hurt when it shouldn’t have?

“Good.”

He looked at you with eyes that carried a million emotions. But what was most visible was him seeing the light, probably realizing that he truly was doing the right thing and that he was proud of himself for being able to resist you. Because then, that only meant he was only a few steps away from the path of moving on. That if he could let you go, then he could live a better life.

It only made sense why he pulled that little stunt back there—being close enough to you was probably his way of differentiating how his body reacted to you versus how it reacted to Akemi. And now that he was able to determine whatever difference that might be, it would be easier for him to know what exactly to avoid.

After all, you two would be spending the rest of your lives as a present mom and dad to Sachiro. Co-parenting was your only connection and the only way to make that work without falling for each other was to rid yourselves of any kind of attraction towards one another.

Good for him.

“Let’s be good parents, Y/N.” Satoru looked at you from across the pool. “Let’s set a good example for Sachi and show that divorced parents can still be good parents. Let’s not be toxic to each other, especially not in front of him.” His words were coming from his personal experience and as you knew the whole history behind the mess within his family, you were truthfully considerate of his words. His traumatic experiences were what shaped him to become the problematic man you once married, and he was doing his best not to let his own son be the same. “I’ll provide Sachiro with everything he needs and I’ll always be present in his life, so please let me have as much time with him as possible. I’m making up for the three years I lost with him.”

You nodded. “I don’t have a problem with that.

As the established relationship you had with Gojou became more professional and strictly transactional, the distance between you two also grew more and more. There was no longer any space for love and intimacy. There was only familiarity and acquaintanceship.

“Go to sleep soon,” he said without sending another glance your way, climbing out of the pool and reaching for his clothes, “We have a long day tomorrow.”

#gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n #gojo satoru angst #gojo angst #jjk angst

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tastesousweet · 4 months

Text

⭒ the girl with the tattoo (ii) - pt 1 here!!

matt sturniolo x fem!oc / reader

summary : matt is still a grumpy ass but y/n can't seem to get him off of her mind.

warnings : idk uhhh matt’s rude but in a love hate kinda way 😋! also alcohol/drinking (i headcannon everyone 21+!)

mickey speaks : shes finally hereeeee and shes kinda long. im hoping to post more consistently!! luv u guys enjoy <3 ignore the fact that the pic above has a yt girl in it this story is for everyone i promise !!!! i just liked the little green vibe ok? ok.

THIS IS PART TWO GO READ PART ONE FIRST DUH!!!!

AND of course you see matt again.

only a month ago, you were introduced and forced to spend an hour of your time in close proximity to him, no matter his disinterest. yet, also, only a month ago, were you gifted with the cutest tiny tattoo that continues to surprise you a little whenever you lift your shirt before a warm shower.

it hasn’t bothered you nearly as much as you'd assumed - only disrupting your life with the caution you now take to avoid irritating the skin at your lower stomach. though some nights you grow lazy, you’ve maintained a very disciplined attitude of incorporating time in your morning and nightly rituals to ensure the tiny hello kitty inked on you is properly cared for.

contrary, your interactions with matt bothered you far more than you assumed. your sub-concious must've held onto your attempts to break past his careless attitude (that greatly opposed your own people-pleasing nature) just to pettily haunt you. but you've you forced yourself to get over it at this point. you just had to after one night, the week following your tattoo appointment (and after a long day of rude professors and pretentious customers blaming you for their own mistakes), you broke down to andrea:

you sniffle before your voice breaks again, "everyone's just mean. and- and i was so fucking annoying last saturday. it keeps playing over in my head. i'm so embarrassed and i just know he hated me, but i dont know why?! i thought i was nice enough. he could've just smiled or maybe just- i-"

andrea pauses from petting your head, "honey, you're not still talking about the guy who tatted you, right?" you look up at her from your head's soft spot in her lap with glossy eyes and a quivering lip.

"dre-" you choke.

"oh my god! no! y/n, you can't take shit like that personal. not everyone enjoys talking or happiness for that matter, you can't hold on to something like that. i promise he's not too hung up on it himself." she wipes away one of your pitiful tears.

and here he is, standing across the room from you at a party.

you definitely did not expect to see matt (who’s mild attitude was clearly fueled by socializing) in this scene but you guess that la parties are just like that. as long as you know someone who knows someone you’re easily in, that's how you tend to get into these events at least. though an insta stalk would tell you matt has enough clout to get himself in, he and his brothers have built quite the brand for themselves among la socialites.

once your eyes spot him over the shoulder of some guy who just introduced himself to you, they can’t seem to move. you watch as matt smiles for a photo with a few others. matt. smiles. okay, so maybe it was a you problem. he doesn’t hate everyone maybe just you.

though, your thoughts are denied as quickly as his face drops. he doesn’t even care to look at how the image may have turned out like the rest of the group. instead, his eyes opt to watching the people around him as he sips his weak drink.

great, now you’ve become the weirdo watching him watch other people.

until his eyes catch your cautious yet curious stare from across the room. your cheeks heat and you’re immediately shifting your eyes back to the man in front of you.

matt almost smirks at his luck. no fucking way the scared sweetheart he’d tattooed just a few weeks ago is here. he looks away when someone lays a hand on his shoulder to bring him back into the conversation. you're surprised that he continues to look back over to you after adding his input.

the guy finally acknowledges your disengagement with the story about his new motorcycle and turns to see what exactly you’re staring at. he sees matt and turns back to you, “you know him?”

“yeah. well not like know-know we only met once, he gave me a tattoo.”

“oh, cool,” he looks back over to matt and turns back to you once again, “is he bothering you?”

your face scrunches initially, “no, it’s fine.” you smile at him, not wanting to give him the impression that matt did anything but exist (which apparently is enough to capture your attention).

“good. wanna go grab another drink and tell me more about this tattoo?” a charming smile morphs on face and you nod your head easily, taking his hand and leading him towards the bar outside of this large home. and away from matt.

“two-” you look over to the man beside you, “wait is this an open bar?” you ask him genuinely and he laughs a little at your aloofness.

“yeah,” he nods.

“perfect, we’ll take two kamikaze shots pretty please!” you smile at the bartender who seems to be enjoying her night quite a bit and squeeze his hand when you realize it’s still in your own. he looks down at your attached hands then back to you.

you turn your body to face him more directly and lean up to his ear, cupping your hand and whispering, “i’m so sorry, i think i forgot your name.” you were starting to feel bad and just had to confess.

you lean back and bite your lip to hide an awkward smile, and he somehow smiles harder than he already was, “it’s-”

“ashton!” you hear a voice yell hurriedly and now some dark haired guy is pulling him away from you and repeatedly saying “code red!” in his face. and suddenly, without any indication he’d enjoyed your short lived time together, he’s gone.

you try not to sulk but he was an attractive guy with easy conversation, so you at least hoped to get his number by the end of the night.

instead, you’re left leaning against the bar hoping those shots come around soon. you decide to update your friends on your night:

Y/N

cute guy lefttttt :(

REMI

noooooo he was so cute 😫

Y/N

don’t remind me

ANDREA

where r you now???

Y/N

outside bar, im waiting on shots

Y/N

come find me💔💔

your head shoots up from your phone when three guys practically ram themselves into the bar near you, a few people around them laughing obnoxiously.

"god damnit, chris! we said we were going slowly!"

"shhhh. you are so loud, matt!"

“excuse me, can we get some water? none of the sparkles or bubbles and shit, just water, please.”

“next time i'm speaking for myself! what if i wanted the bubbles?”

you lean your head a little to get a full view of the three recognizable faces. chris, with his arms dangled over his two brothers’ shoulders clearly obliterated and slurring his words (but excited to be there nonetheless). a blonde one, you haven’t gotten the chance to meet yet, with two nose piercings and a commanding voice. and matt, with his signature pout, even poutier now that chris’ weight is causing him to hunch over slightly. you guess you were bound to run into them.

you wonder if andrea was right in saying matt hadn’t held onto your exchange. you wonder if when he saw you earlier he remembered you for your friendly smile rather than your annoying nagging. or did he even remember you at all? did he only look at you because you were staring him down first? okay, where the fuck are those shots?!

“no way!" you hear chris’ voice screech upon recognizing you from across the bar, "y/n!?”

you look over and see him shockingly excited to see your face again. you smile in an attempt to not allow your nerves about matt get to you. you are never one to deny a conversation after all.

“oh my god! hi!” you reply as chris unwraps himself from his brothers and moves closer to you.

“how’s your tat treatin’ you?” his eyes express so much excitement he reminds you of a little kid. you’re very flattered to see someone feel so much emotion due to your mere presence.

“oh, it’s still so cute, no regrets so far. i love it.” you smile and he nods while you’re speaking.

he turns around and sees his brothers and a few friends remaining in the other side of the bar talking amongst themselves. “yo, get the fuck over here! why are you guys so far?” he encourages them with a hand wave.

you wave as well, trying not to be a total stranger- even if you are.

the blonde guy leads them over and hands chris a glass of water that must’ve been waiting on him.

“cheers,” chris smirks and takes a sip before a disgusted look takes over his face, “gross. my god! why do they make this shit so bland?”

the blonde boy rolls his eyes in amusement, mumbling, "just drink it," before approaching you kindly. "hey, i’m nick by the way."

“y/n, nice to meet you! i met chris and matt when i got my tattoo done at your shop a while ago.” you explain kindly.

before nick can get another word in a female voice is squealing, “you’re y/n?! hi, i’m asha, i don't know if your remember but we talked on the phone that one time!” a tanned girl with soft cheeks and dark loose curls moves herself in front of the boys.

“of course i remember, how could i forget that insane frog story? it's so nice seeing you in person finally!” you gush.

suddenly chris is beaming, “aww wait guys this is so cute! i’m feeling like we should all hug!” he nods to his brothers who are quick to shake their heads no.

“i don’t think..” nick starts.

“nooo! let’s hug!” chris argues and opens his arms wide gesturing for everyone to hug him.

౨ৎ

after sharing a very drunk and messy group hug you all continue to talk until chris finally blurts, "i gotta go pee so bad guys, " he laughs, "but i need people with me because if i walk in on someone puking, then what? i'll die from my severe" (its not severe at all) "emetophobia and no one will ever know?"

you and asha (who you've found is actually so similar to you) both laugh at his crisis.

matt just breathes a laugh.

"chris, there’s no reason to go further with the fear factor when no one said they wouldn't come with you. i’m coming, so you're not gonna die, let's go." nick shakes his head.

“you don’t understand, nick i would be dead and covered in- i can’t even say it, dude,” chris’ voice fades as they walk away.

"wait, i'll walk with you guys inside! 'm... getting cold out here!" asha suddenly says removing herself from your side and waving goodbye with a drunk smile.

"it's not cold at all, she's trippin'" matt speaks watching her run and practically jump onto nick, causing the three laugh while leaving the crowded yard.

you just shrug and lean onto the bar again, making eye contact with the bartender who looks as if she only just remembered your existence but also seems to mentally question where the other guy went and how you managed to replace him that quickly.

"are you always so nice about everything?" matt questions, leaning his forearms on the bar, still looking at you.

"what?" you look over to him now, feeling almost sick at his proximity.

he mocks you with a high tone in his voice, "'it's soooo nice to meet you! it's soooo nice seeing you!' it sounds exhausting, to be honest."

"didn't realize having manners got you jail time," you breathe.

"and i never said it did."

"well, i don't have to be nice to you if it bothers you so much," you shrug.

"aw, sunshine, you'd do that for me? you're too sweet." he almost laughs at his own sarcastic comment.

you lick your bottom lip out of habit, "why are you still here? don't you have friends you should be ignoring?" you hope he can't tell just how frustrated he's making you.

“you must think you know me.”

“i know you don’t like me.”

“wrong, again.” he smiles and points his finger at you.

“oh, you just don’t like anyone then?”

he glances away before responding, “what's the fun in telling you?”

you huff in defeat, wanting nothing more than those shots right now. though your subconcious hopes the bartender continues to prioritize her flirting customers over you just so you can continue this addicting back and forth with matt.

"you know, that’s the thing with people like you. you think everyone owes you everything." he shakes his head.

"people like me?” you scoff under your breath, “matt, why are you still here?"

he can pick out the offense in your tone, "oh shit, that was true? i was fucking with you, sunny!"

"you don't know anything about me," you laugh and shake your head.

"alright there are those kamikaze shots for you! so sorry about that major delay, honey!" the bartender sets the shots in front of the both of you and smiles at you apologetically.

"don't worry about it, thank you!" you hand her a spare five dollar bill from your back pocket.

when she's gone you finally notice matt's widened eyes.

"what's up with your face, now?"

"you gave her a tip for pouring you some rankydank, fuckin' low level shots after you've waited long enough for her to apologize?" he seems genuinely shocked.

"she only makes money off of tips," you roll your eyes, picking the shot up and gesturing towards the second shot for him to take.

"that's all you," he raises his hands towards his chest.

"oh my god, do it, matt."

he shakes his head and points to you, "you take your shot, sweetheart."

"i knew you wouldn't, pussy," you say under your breath before smirking as you down the alcohol you've been craving since you first saw his face.

upon your insult matt is immediately taking the shot along side you. and just as both of your faces adjust to the taste, matt's phone begins to vibrate.

he grabs it and you attempt to hide your own curiosity by asking the bartender for a lime to suck on (not daring to ask for alcohol again because you simply don't want to be hung up at this bar for any longer).

"yeah, yeah still here," matt plays with his bottom lip and looks down at you with your mouth full of lime. he thinks you look pretty adorable, especially under the blush pink fairy lights hanging above the bar. "'kay, i'll be quick. alright, nick. i will. bye."

he puts his phone away and wipes his mouth, "that shit was fucking vile, by the way."

"okay, drama queen."

"mhm," his face falters back into his usual pout, "well i gotta go, but, um, nick wanted me to invite you to this get together thing we host at the warehouse, it's in like a month but, you know, come if you want." he shrugs.

"tell him of course i will, but only because he asked." you smile sarcastically.

౨ৎ

ANDREA - 12:39 AM

y/n where are you we are both so confused rn help

ANDREA - 12:45 AM

hellooo????

ANDREA - 12:47 AM

GIRL WE'RE OUTSIDE AND WE DONT SEE YOU TF

Y/N - 1:06 AM

WHERE ARE U GUYS RN I JSUT SAW TATTOO GUY AGASSN IM LOSUNG MY MIND JUST A LUTTLE BIT

Y/N - 1:06 AM

I WAS AT THE OTHER OITSIDE BAR IN THE FRONT(?) YARD!!!!! but its ok im gonba find u guys

౨ৎ

a few days later matt comes across your instagram story, forgetting he had followed you in the first place. it was a picture of you and your friends from the same night he had seen you again. it's a simple mirror photo where you're all smiling but besides your soft skin and cute outfit, matt's attention focuses on frank ocean's pyramids playing over the story.

you see the notification later that day when you finally get time on your phone:

matthew.sturniolo liked your story

꩜⋆ ˚｡⋆🎱˚

#SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG #sturniolo triplets #matt sturniolo #sturniolo triplets fan fiction #sturniolo triplets smut #sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #matt sturniolo fanfic #matt sturniolo x you #matt sturniolo smut #matt sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo fanfic #nick sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #tattoo matt n yn

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toychest321 · 1 month

Text

Ugh, I've been meaning to post about this doll for what feels like ages! Allergies have been pretty bad this week, but I've finally been able to pull myself together enough to post about Fulla's prayer dolls!

According to the Islamic blog Alhannah.com, "The purpose of a prayer outfit is twofold – to respect the sanctity of prayer by covering one’s ‘Awrah’ (parts of the body that should be covered in public) and to uphold the principles of modesty".

"A prayer outfit typically encompasses a long, loose-fitting skirt paired with a top that has a head covering (Hijab), collectively ensuring that the body remains concealed during prayer". The website also states that there are one-piece and two-piece versions of the outfit, the choice between the two often coming down to preference of the wearer (in this case, it seems Fulla prefers the latter)

Muslims pray five times per day: once in the morning before dawn (Fajr), once at midday (Dhuhr), once in the afternoon (Asr), once after sunset (Maghrib), and once in the evening (Isha).

As far as I can find, there have been three prayer dolls of Fulla released. Two are for the Fajr and Isha prayers respectively, and one is for a process connected to all five!

Fulla's first prayer doll was released in 2004 with a doll-sized prayer mat and prayer beads for yourself!

Prayer mats are used to ensure the ground is clean while praying. Prayer beads, meanwhile, are used for dhikr, a process of prayer recitation after each of the five daily prayers. The beads are typically counted for each of the 99 names of Allah recited, however with certain prayer beads consisting of 33 beads instead (such as the one included here) they are counted 3 times over. The first 33 recitations are "Subhan Allah" (Glory be to Allah), the second 33 are "Al-Ahamdulilah" (Praise be to God), and the final 33 are "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest). After these you must pray "Laa ilaha illallah wahdahu la sharika lah lahul mulku wa lahul hamdu wa huwa ala kulli shay in qadir" (There is no god worthy of worship except Allah alone, with no partner or associate) once.

Her next prayer doll was released in 2006 for the Morning Prayer (Fajr)! While I can't definitively say the same for the prior Prayer Dress Fulla, this doll wears indoor clothes underneath her prayer outfit to start the day! She comes with a prayer mat and bag, and (it says on the box but its hard to read) a prayer booklet of the Morning Prayers! And I hadn't even known this until now for this doll or the next, but apparently there's a button on her back that makes her recite them (batteries included)!

I like how much the pink pops against the white! Although the outfit is decent, it looks a bit plain compared to her other indoor looks (although that could have been intentional). I don't have any particularly strong feelings on her fashion, but it's decent!

The same year a doll for the Night Prayers (Isha) was released as well! Underneath her prayer clothes she wears a pair of pink pajamas with gingham detailing, with matching pink slippers! It seems she also came with a prayer mat, bag, and booklet (this time for the Night Prayers) as the Morning Prayers Fulla did! And yes, she also has a button to make her pray them with you!

I love these pajamas so much, they're so cute!!! And the way they match her prayer outfit too??? Indoor-fashion-wise, I probably prefer this one over the Morning Prayer's indoor outfit.

Overall, I love how all of these dolls not only represent a significant Islamic religious practice, but encourage children to do it with her! Between the prayer beads and voice button, I can easily see this doll joining in prayer with her owner :)

And not too difficult to imagine either, since Fulla has also made officially branded prayer clothes in 2005, 2007, and as recent as 2024!

Anyway, I'm glad I was finally able to dive deep into this topic like I'd been meaning to look into for a while (now to get some sleep as it is currently 4am)

Ramadan Kareem!

#dolls #dollblr #muslim dolls #fulla dolls #fulla prayer dolls #long post

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justagalwhowrites · 4 months

Text

Wonderland

You and Joel get away for your first wedding anniversary.

A canon Lavender No Outbreak AU one shot inspired by a request for a fic based on the song "Your Body is a Wonderland." Can be read as a stand alone fic with the understanding that Joel and Reader have been together for years and are married with a daughter. You can find the original Lavender here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader from the Lavender No Outbreak AU (AKA Joel and Doc)

Length: 6.9k

Warnings: Smut :D! Oral sex; unprotected P in V sex; reader is described as being post-pregnancy and having a different body as a result but no broader description of her body beyond the fact that she has hair; age gap (reader is late 20s, Joel is late 30s.) No use of Y/N. Minors DNI, 18+ only.

January 2005

“Baby.”

Joel’s hand found the small of your back but you didn’t look back at him. You stayed focused on the child in your arms, on her brown eyes and dark curls and skin so soft all you wanted to do was nuzzle into her and breathe in her sweet, baby scent.

“It’s gonna be fine,” your husband pressed a kiss - gentle and slow - to your temple. “We’re only gonna be a few hours away…”

“I know,” you said softly. Evie made a breathy little baby sound and you smiled. Couldn’t help it.

“Tommy’s watched a baby before,” Joel continued as you swayed with your daughter. His hand shifted so it was below your shirt and on the bare skin of your lower back. “And Sarah will be here, too. And it’s just for two nights.”

“But she’s never been apart from me,” you said softly, tears pinching at the back of your throat as you brushed her hair away from her little forehead. “What if she’s afraid? She’s going to look for me, she always looks for me right when she wakes up and I won’t be here and what if she can’t calm down and she doesn’t keep food down when she isn’t calm and…”

“Hey,” he said, taking your chin delicately in his fingers and turned your head to face him. He smiled gently, his brown eyes soft and crinkling at the edges. “I promise, it’s gonna be OK. We can be back here real quick if something goes wrong and she’s with family. It’s OK.”

You looked back at your baby girl. She wasn’t even a year old yet, it seemed too soon to be going away for a weekend, no matter how much you really wanted to.

One of the downsides to getting married just a few months before having a baby was that you didn’t get much time to enjoy married life before it became all about the new life you’d brought into the world.

Of course, Sarah had always been top priority for both you and Joel but, since she was a teenager, you could rely on her to look out for herself some so the two of you could get quality time. Before Evie was born, you and Joel regularly went out just the two of you. You could leave Sarah at home with cash for a pizza or she’d go to sleep over at her friend Lizzie’s place and you and your husband could go and make out at the back of a movie theater like teenagers.

A baby was a whole other story.

You’d always loved children, loved spending time with them and seeing how they experienced everything, all of it brand new in their eyes. It was a joy to watch them discover themselves and the world and you adored hearing their thoughts as they puzzled through everything from basic societal rules to trying to figure out if there was a meaning to life. But you hadn’t been prepared for just how attached you’d be to your own child, who was both so much larger than she’d been when you’d given birth to her but still so impossibly small and fragile that even having her in another room made you anxious. It took months longer than it really should have for her to consistently sleep through the night because you kept checking on her, ensuring that she was still breathing and lying in the position that was supposed to be safest and that she didn’t seem bothered by dreams or colic.

Being a few hours away was terrifying.

But it was your first wedding anniversary with Joel and you really wanted it to be special. Wanted time just the two of you that you hadn’t had in the months since your daughter had been born. You missed being able to spend hours and hours with nothing in the world besides you and your husband.

You just needed space from the baby to get that.

So Joel had booked the hotel you went to for your wedding night the weekend of your anniversary and gotten Tommy to agree to stay at the house with Evie and Sarah for the two nights you’d be gone. You’d overheard him talking with his brother about it a month earlier, when Tommy was over for dinner and you’d gotten up to change Evie.

“I’ll leave good instructions but you can’t be callin’ all the time,” Joel was saying as you made it to the living room, Evie squirming in your arms. “She’s gonna be a nervous wreck, rather just stay here if…”

“Joel,” Tommy said, voice soothing. “I got your girls, it’s alright. Handled Sarah when she was that age, right?”

“You’re why I can’t do exponents,” Sarah said dryly. “Dropped me on my head a few too many times…”

“Someone needed to reel you in,” Tommy replied and you could hear the teasing wink in his voice. “Can’t have you being too smart now.”

“Mean it,” Joel said, tone serious. “Need you to actually do this…”

“Joel,” he replied. “I got her. It’s alright.”

It wasn’t that you didn’t trust Tommy. You did. You just didn’t know how to be this far away from your daughter, knowing how vulnerable she was and how much she needed you for everything.

But you needed time for you and your husband, too. You were so dangerously close to getting lost in your identity as a mother, already struggling to remember just what you were before Evie existed. You needed a weekend away. Some distance would be good, for the both of you.

“Come on, Mama,” Tommy smiled, holding his arms out. “Gimme that one and you two love birds get on the road. I promise if something goes wrong, I’ll call.”

“But you won’t need to,” Joel said, raising his eyebrows at his brother. “Right?”

“Course not,” Tommy waved him off. “We’re gonna have the best time, Uncle Tommy is going to be her favorite person, just you wait.”

You sighed and nodded, pressing your lips to Evie’s soft little forehead and breathing in her sweet baby smell before passing her off to Tommy’s waiting arms. He pulled her into his chest and smiled, wide and open mouthed, making a happy coo. She cooed back, reaching her tiny hands up toward his face.

“I know,” he said, voice high and childish. “I’m so much better lookin’ than your daddy! Yes I am! And so are you!”

“Be a good girl,” you said as Evie totally ignored you in favor of her uncle. “Love you so much, big sister will be home soon and…”

“Kid,” Tommy looked up from your daughter in his arms to meet your eyes. “I’ve got this. Go have fun.”

“Thanks again, Tommy,” Joel said.

“But…” you began but Joel just shook his head and looped an arm around your waist, tugging you to his side and guiding you to his waiting truck.

“You grabbed the bags?” You looked up at Joel and he smiled a little.

“Sure did.”

“And Tommy has the number for the hotel in case we don’t have signal?”

“The hotel and the restaurant we have reservations at tomorrow and even the diner next door with the good waffles since I figure we’ll end up there at least once.”

“And…”

“Baby,” he cut you off, opening the passenger door of the truck for you. “It’s going to be fine. There’s a stash of your favorite snacks in the truck and if you just get in the truck, we can go.”

You looked back at the house, biting your lower lip and twisting your fingers around on themselves.

“OK,” you said, climbing in the front seat. Joel smiled, leaning in to kiss you before jogging around to the driver’s side door.

The drive felt longer than it was, you seemingly hyper aware of every mile you were further away from your baby. But there was something invigorating about it, too. You had your husband all to yourself for the first time in almost a year. You’d had a few date nights, of course, and the two of you made a conscious effort to spend quality time together, even if it was just watching late night TV in Joel’s arms while Evie slept in her bassinet a few feet away.

But this? Two nights with no obligation to anyone but each other? It seemed like the purest form of indulgence.

“How we doin’ over there?” Joel asked about halfway into the drive.

“Good,” you smiled. “The snacks have helped.”

“I know my wife,” he smiled back. “Lookin’ forward to getting to know her a bit better the next few days…”

Your cheeks got hot as Joel’s hand found your knee, gently trailing his fingers over your inner thigh.

“Is there anything you want to do when we’re in Galveston?” You asked, suddenly feeling oddly self conscious. It had been so long since you’d last had this much time just you and Joel, what if things were different now?

“Mostly?” He asked, brow cockily raised. “Spend time with you where no one else can get to ya. If there’s something you want to do we can but if it’s up to me, we’re stayin’ in that room.”

“Joel!” You gaped at him, trying not to laugh.

“What?” He glanced over at you, smiling a little. “I’m selfish. Don’t wanna share the best thing that’s ever happened to me with anyone else on our anniversary.”

Joel pulled up to the hotel and parked under the overhang by the door, squeezing your knee as he turned off the truck.

“You stay put just a second.”

“OK,” you laughed, watching as he got out of the truck and jogged around the front of it to open the door for you, offering you his hand to help you down. You laughed again. “My my, so attentive.”

“Least I can do,” he winked, giving your fingers a squeeze as you got out of the truck.

He wouldn’t let you carry any bags besides your purse, either. When you tried to go with him to the front desk, he put a hand on your lower back and nodded to the lounge across the lobby.

“Why don’t you go there,” he said. “Get yourself one of those flowery cocktails you like so much.”

He steered you in that direction before you really had a chance to argue, so you went and took a seat at the bar and ordered a drink you’d never heard of but there was honey and lavender syrup in it so you figured it’d be good. You sat there sipping your cocktail, listening to the pianist in the corner and watching your husband in line at the check in counter, just admiring the shape of him. He was so tall and broad, his shoulders pulling a bit at his flannel shirt, and he was probably three weeks past when he usually liked having his hair trimmed but you’d been so busy with Evie’s first Christmas and everything that came after you hadn’t had a chance to cut it.

But you liked him a little on the shaggy side. You smiled a little at the thought of running your fingers through his curls while kissing him and feeling him deep inside of you.

The pianist changed to a new song and you fished your phone out of your bag, flipping it open and texting Sarah.

Made it! How’s it going?

Mercifully, Sarah responded quickly.

Good! Tommy hasn’t dropped her yet.

You laughed a little.

I’ll take it. She eating? How was school today?

Yup! Some baby food chicken and peaches. Tummy time now. And school was fine. All is OK Mom.

“In town for business or pleasure?”

You looked up from your phone and flipped it shut to find a man in khakis and a button down leaning against the bar next to you.

“Oh,” you almost jumped at his proximity as he looked you up and down. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he smiled. His hair was blond and his eyes were blue and he looked a little bit like a Ken doll. Definitely not your type. “Can’t remember the last time I saw someone as pretty as you drinking alone at a hotel bar.”

“Oh,” you said again. “Um…”

“So I think you must be in town on business,” the man continued as though you hadn’t said anything. You tried to peer around him to see where Joel was in line but he followed you, cutting off your view. “No way you’d be here by yourself otherwise.”

“Well, I’m here on vacation,” you said, fidgeting in your plush high top chair. “And my…”

“Must be here with friends then,” he smiled. “Girls’ weekend?”

“Well, no,” you laughed a little. “Actually…”

“I know you can’t be here with a boyfriend,” he said. “If you were my girl, I’d never let you out of my sight…”

“She’s here with her husband, actually,” Joel said from behind the man, who stood up straighter and turned, slowly, to find your husband at his back. Joel smiled. “Hi. Appreciate you keepin’ my wife company while I got us all checked in but, if you’ll excuse me, you’re in my way.”

“Sorry, man,” he shoved himself up off the bar. “Didn’t know she was spoken for.”

He trudged off to the other side of the lounge and you watched him go, making sure you didn’t audibly laugh until he was out of ear shot.

“Oh my God,” you half laughed, half whispered to Joel.

“I know,” he kissed your temple and laughed into your hair. “Leave you unattended for half a minute and got guys tryin’ to steal you out from under me.”

“No accounting for taste in hotel bars, apparently,” you teased, going to polish off your cocktail but Joel put one of his large hands on your arm.

“Take your time,” he said, taking the seat next to you. “Wouldn’t mind a beer after that drive. They’re gonna put the bags in the room, anyhow.”

“Oh,” you gasped in faux shock. “So fancy!”

“Only the fanciest for Mrs. Miller,” he kissed your cheek as you giggled.

The two of you had some drinks and you were pleasantly tipsy for the first time in almost two years, only a glass of wine here and there since Evie was born and you were nursing. She’d only weaned about a month ago but you’d been too busy to indulge. Joel put an arm around your waist and guided you to the elevator and you draped yourself over him, giddily kissing him as you held yourself against him.

“So,” he said between kisses. “Been thinkin’.”

“Have you now?” You smiled against his lips.

“There is something we could do to keep random men from tryin’ to pick you up the second you’re out of my sight,” he smiled back as the elevator dinged.

“Really?”

He turned you around and pointed you at the doors and kissed the side of your head before nudging you forward.

“Room 1023,” he said. “And yeah, think there’s somethin’ that’s pretty easy to arrange.”

“And what’s that?” You asked as he steered you down the hall toward the end of the building that faced the gulf. He pulled a room key card out of his pocket and swiped it at the door, opening it for you.

“Well,” he said, nudging you into the room. “Bet they’d leave you alone If you had ring.”

“I have my wedding band,” you frowned down at your hand and the simple white gold ring that matched Joel’s. “I like my wedding band.”

“I know,” he said, closing the door behind him. “But thought you could use something with a little shine.”

You made it all the way into the room and gasped, a bottle of champagne on ice, chocolate covered strawberries and a bouquet of roses waiting for you near the door leading to the balcony.

“Joel!” You gasped, your hands flying to cover your mouth. “What….”

You looked back over your shoulder to see him down on one knee, a little box open in his hand.

“Joel!” You yelped it this time.

“Never did ask you properly,” he smiled a little. “Figured I was overdue. Especially since you’ve given me the entire world, only fair that I get on my knees to ask you to do me the honor of continuing to be my wife for as long as we both shall live.”

“Of course I will!” You dropped to your knees next to him and kissed him, pressing yourself against him.

He more beamed than smiled against your lips and pulled the ring - a diamond-encrusted band with no center stone, the gems making an almost floral pattern all around your finger as he slid it into place.

“If you don’t like it, we can pick somethin’ else,” he said as you gaped at the ring. “Thought this was more your style and would be out of the way with the girls and then medical school…”

“It’s perfect,” you whispered, the stones reminding you of the flowering vines you painted on picture frames and table legs. You sat down fully in the floor and tore your eyes away from the ring to look at Joel. “But… I mean, can we afford this? I love it, I really really do, but…”

“I had some money set aside for it,” he sat down next to you. “Wasn’t joking when I said I should’ve asked you years ago. I’d been saving up for a ring for a bit but then…”

You looked back at your hand and just nodded, not wanting to think about the few weeks the two of you had broken up because Joel thought he was holding you back.

Then your eyes went wide, looking back at Joel.

“But I didn’t get you anything! We said the trip was our gift to ourselves and…”

He laughed.

“Didn’t want you stressin’ about it, Baby,” he said. “Now, why don’t we go get some dinner without worrying about the kids waiting for us at home?”

You got changed into a dress that had been a little big before Evie and now was a little snug and hoped that it didn’t look too noticeable once you put a cardigan over it. But Joel didn’t seem to mind, looking at you with warm, soft eyes as he sat across from you at the restaurant. He put his hand on the table, fingers reaching for you, and you put yours in his. He smiled bigger when you did and gave your hand a squeeze.

By the time you headed back to the room, you were having a hard time not ripping his clothes off in the elevator, his arms around you, holding you tight against his front as you kissed him deeply, his cock hardening against your stomach.

When you got to the room, you dropped your purse on the dresser and tugged off the cardigan before going to turn out the lights but Joel caught your wrist, running his thumb over your pulse point. You frowned.

“Joel…”

“Was thinkin’,” he said, tugging you close to him. “If you wanted to give me something…”

“I do,” you said, a little breathless as he trailed kisses over your forehead.

“You don’t have to,” he said, his lips still against your skin. “I don’t want to make you feel obligated or uncomfortable but…”

He trailed off, working his way down your jaw to your throat, your shoulder, until he lifted your wrist to his lips and kissed you there, too.

“I’d like it if we left the lights on.”

You frowned a little, looking up at him.

“Really?” You asked. “That… I don’t know…”

“Miss seeing you,” he said quietly, kissing your wrist again.

“It’s different now,” you said, chewing on your lower lip. “I don’t look how I used to look…”

Before becoming a mom, you’d never really been shy about your body with Joel. He made it very clear that he thought you were the most beautiful, most sexy woman on the planet. You might have questioned his judgement but you never doubted that he felt that way. But things were different after having a baby. There was just more of you now. You were hyper-aware of it, the fact that - even almost a year after giving birth - you weren’t anywhere near wearing your pre-pregnancy jeans and that, the more of you there was wasn’t exactly sculpted and smooth. You weren’t stupid, you saw the kind of woman who was on magazine covers and in movies, the kind of woman men liked. You’d never been further from that kind of woman than you had been in the last year.

The last time you remembered being naked in front of Joel where he could actually see you was just after Evie was born, when he helped you in the shower while you recovered. It wasn’t like you’d been trying to turn him on then and that had felt strange enough, your husband’s hands on a body you didn’t fully recognize as your own.

Ever since, you always put on a robe as soon as you were out of the shower. You’d stopped styling your hair and doing your makeup naked, even at the height of summer. And, while you and Joel had found a good groove with your sex life even with a baby at home, you always turned off the lights before you started undressing.

“I know,” he shrugged. “I don’t, either. Didn’t have quite this much of a belly when I first conned you into bed with me…”

You scoffed but smiled a little.

“I like your belly.”

“And I like your whole body,” he said, his hand going from your wrist to trace over your arm to the curve of your breast, down to your waist. “Love it, actually. Every damn inch of it.”

You crinkled your nose at that.

“But I have stretch marks,” you said. “And…”

“Baby,” he smiled gently. “You’re my wife. Most beautiful damn woman on Earth. I love lookin’ at you. Loved it when we first got together, love it now. Hell, if I had my way, all I’d do would be look at you and our girls.”

“Really?” You asked, brows raised. “Even right now?”

“Especially right now,” he nuzzled against you before kissing you gently. “I know you don’t look like you did when you were 21 but I fuckin’ love that. Your body got you through college and helped raise Sarah and grew our baby girl. I want nothing more than to be able to really look at you, especially while I’m inside you.”

“And that’s what you want for our anniversary?” You asked. “Just… me with the lights on?”

“More than anything.”

You took a deep, shaky breath.

“Well, let’s pop that champagne because I think I need some liquid courage,” you said. “But OK.”

Joel kissed you, gentle and deep, before opening the wine and pouring you each a glass.

“To the most amazing wife anyone could ask for,” he said, tipping his flute to you. You touched the edge of yours to his with a quiet clink.

“And to the most perfect husband.”

You drank two glasses of champagne and ate a strawberry before you put your glass down on the table and took a deep breath, standing in front of your husband and feeling almost like you did the first time you got undressed in front of him.

“Promise if I’m not what you want, it’s lights out?” You asked, stomach tight and heart pounding.

“Oh, Baby,” he gently brushed your hair back before cupping your cheek in his large hand. “There’s no world where you’re not what I want. You’re exactly what I want. Promise.”

You swallowed hard and nodded, holding his gaze as you reached for the zipper at the side of your dress, tugging it down slowly.

Joel’s hand traced down your throat to the strap of your dress, slipping it down your arm until it hung near your elbow. He did the same with the other side before delicately tilting your chin to kiss you. His lips were soft and gentle, not desperate for you so much as savoring you. You moaned into his mouth and his lips grew firmer against you as he nudged you back toward the bed. You shrugged out of the straps entirely, your dress only held up by the fact that you were pressed tightly against Joel. He pulled his lips from yours just enough that you could look in his eyes.

“I’ve got you, Baby,” he said softly. “Promise.”

***

Where the hell you’d gotten it in your head that he wouldn’t want to see you, Joel had no idea.

He couldn’t imagine something more ludicrous. All he wanted to do was look at you. If he could buy a ticket to sit and just look at you all day, he would.

But you hadn’t let him in months and fuck, he missed seeing your body.

It took Joel weeks to even figure out what was happening. Immediately after Evie was born, everything was exhausting and hectic. You needed rest, Evie needed constant care, Sarah needed to keep on top of her school work and extra curriculars, Joel could only take so much time off work. Sex hadn’t been on his mind at all, he only wanted to take care of his daughters and the woman who has given him everything he could ever need. He didn’t notice the small changes that happened alongside the huge ones.

But as the two of you started to come back into yourselves as individuals and a couple - instead of just Mom and Dad - Joel started to notice a difference.

You never got changed in the bedroom anymore. At least, not when Joel was there. You always went into the closet or the bathroom. The closest you’d come was tugging on your pants under your robe and putting on your shirt with your back to him. You always put at least one of his shirts on after sex, never sleeping naked in his arms anymore.

And then he started noticing that you always turned out the lights before sex.

You did such a good job of making it seem romantic or flirty, he was worried, for a moment, that it was because of him. If you weren’t really attracted to him anymore. But he caught you watching him with a hungry look in your eyes as he looked for a clean pair of boxers when he got out of the shower one day after work. Evie had been napping and Sarah was out with a friend and Joel practically pounced you.

“You just got all cleaned up!” You laughed as he kissed along your throat. “You’ll get all sweaty…”

“Sounds great to me,” he growled before nipping at your neck.

“Here,” you pulled back from him. “Got a better idea.”

You nudged him down onto his back and you took him into your mouth, licking and sucking him until he came down your throat with a desperate groan.

“See?” You panted, wiping your chin clean. “Better.”

While it certainly wasn’t bad, it definitely wasn’t better. Joel didn’t want to just get off. He wanted you. He wanted the rest of the world to fall away, to feel you everywhere, to watch you come apart while he was deep inside of you. You sucking him off was fun but it wasn’t what he craved, what he really needed.

Once he pieced it together, he wasn’t even sure how to bring it up. What was he supposed to do, look at you and go “Hey, Baby, I’ve noticed you haven’t let me gawk at you like some stupid fucking teenager lately. Think we can make that happen?”

He hadn’t even intended to bring it up this weekend. He’d kind of hoped that if he could make you feel special, that if he could give you some evidence of how much he adored you, you’d just… forget to turn off the lights one night.

But then he was a few beers deep and looking at you from across the table, your dress tight across your breasts and eyes all but glowing in the candlelight and he couldn’t help himself. He needed you. He needed you to overwhelm all his senses, he needed to be able to worship at the altar of your sex. He needed to see you.

But you looked so nervous - as though there was a snowball’s chance in hell that he’d look at you and not want you - it made his heart ache.

“I’ve got you, Baby. Promise.”

You just nodded and Joel took the sides of your dress and pulled back enough from you that it fell away from your breasts, the soft flesh pressed high in your strapless bra. He tugged the dress over your stomach and hips until it fluttered to the floor around your feet and you looked at him through your eyelashes, your breaths coming quick and shallow.

You were so much more beautiful than he remembered.

The swell of your breasts, the soft curve of your stomach, the plushness of your thighs. He wanted to touch and taste and sink into all of you, every inch.

“Oh, Baby,” he breathed, not able to take his eyes off you. “You are fucking gorgeous.”

“Really?” Your voice was quiet, doubtful. He managed to pull his gaze from your body to look in your eyes.

“Really,” he said. “Most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.”

You still looked uncertain.

“Here,” he said, nudging you down onto the bed. “Let me show you.”

He unhooked your bra and delicately removed it before pressing gently on your shoulders so you were lying back. He unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt before he pulled it over his head and cast it aside. He desperately wanted to feel your skin, fabric was just going to be in the way. You watched as he crawled up the bed beside you, his hand skimming over the softness of your stomach to your chest. He cupped your breast, cradling the warm, plush weight in his large palm before he thumbed gently at your nipple, the flesh peaking and pebbling under his touch. You groaned and squirmed a little, your thighs pressing tight together as your eyes closed, face sharply focused and he smiled a little. Fuck, he’d missed this.

“Love how full you are here after nursing our baby,” he said, taking that firm little nipple in his mouth and sucking you gently as he held your breast, making your back arch. “So damn sexy, knowing I can make you feel good like this…”

He moved to the other side, giving you the same treatment there, too, looking up at your face as you whimpered and moaned beneath him.

After a while, he reluctantly moved down your body, trailing his lips over your breastbone to your stomach, his hands at your waist.

“Love how soft you are here,” he said. “Love that you’ve grown and changed with me and our family.”

He kissed slowly down your stomach, pausing at the top of your panties to tug them down, you lifting your hips from the bed to help. He dropped them to the floor and traced a finger over your glistening slit, making you gasp.

“Love how warm and wet you are for me,” he said, thumb circling your clit. “That it seems like you want me almost as much as I want you…”

“I do,” you were panting below him. “I want you, I want you so bad…”

“Good,” he said, leaning down and giving your slit a gentle, almost teasing lick. “Because I’m gonna make you come for me. Gonna make you feel so good, Baby. Gonna make you see just how much I want you.”

He sucked your clit into his mouth and you gasped, your back arching and your fingers knotting in the bedspread and he couldn’t help but smile against you as he looked over your body to how your head was pressing back into the mattress.

Joel released you and ran is nose over your slit, pressing between your lower lips to nestle against your clit as his tongue dipped ever so slightly into your dripping core.

“Joel,” you whimpered, trembling, body tense. “Fuck, Joel, I…”

He slipped his tongue into your tight, wet heat and you gasped, back arching as you ground your hips down against his face. He couldn’t take his eyes off you as he ate at your sweet, tight little pussy. One hand stretched up to your stomach, spreading wide over your impossibly soft skin, the other sinking into the flesh of your thigh to pull the supple warmth of you against his cheek.

Joel could feel you starting to tighten and tense around his tongue, your wetness dripping down his chin, and he was so fucking hard in his pants that he was rutting down against the bed. The taste of you, the heat, the musky sweet smell, the sight of you as you arched into him. He released your leg and thrust a finger into you alongside his tongue, pressing into the tender, deep parts of you he knew so well and you came with a choking little sob, your channel fluttering over him. He worked you through it, his touch easing as your orgasm did, until he slid himself from you as you lay, limp and gasping below him. He quickly removed his pants and underwear before kissing up your body, leaving a trail of your slick on your skin. When he reached your lips, he kissed you there, too, desperate and deep and you moaned into his mouth as his tongue slipped into yours.

“See?” He said softly as he gently traced your hairline at your forehead, your eyes wide and pupils blown. “You even taste fuckin’ amazing, Baby. Not a damn thing about you I’d change. Except maybe that you could see yourself how I see you.”

“Joel,” you whispered in that way you did when you were blissed out and couldn’t remember much outside of his name. He smiled a little and gently kissed your lips.

“It OK if I keep makin’ you feel good, Baby?” He asked, pressing slow, deep kisses to your cheeks and jaw between the words. “You have no idea how bad I need to be inside you.”

“Please,” you breathed. “I need you, I need you so bad…”

He slowly reached between your bodies and traced your sex, making you gasp, and dipped two fingers just inside your entrance, gathering your slick and bringing it to his cock. He spread his precome and your wetness over himself, moaning a little at the feel of both of you together on his skin.

“Here,” he said, pushing back from you so there was enough space between your bodies that you could look down and see where he was working his length. “Look, Baby.” You lifted your head just enough to obey and he looked down your body, too, as he brushed his thick head against your clit before he started to sink into you. “Look how good you take me with this gorgeous fucking body of yours. It’s like you were made for me, just to drive me wild…”

“I was,” you whimpered, still looking down where he was entering you. “I was made for you, nothing feels as good as you, nothing…”

“Love seeing how you take me,” he said as he stopped half inside you, thrusting shallowly in and out of you, the ridges inside your tight channel catching on his head. “Love seeing you like this, all bare and hot and wet for me.”

He sank all the way into you then and you moaned at the feeling of him stretching you, your pussy holding him so close and tight.

As he looked down at you, he couldn’t understand how anyone - even yourself - could look at you and see anything but perfection. Your body was paradise, wonderland, heaven incarnate. He longed to hold and kiss and memorize every inch, wanted to spend the rest of his life doing nothing but worship you and everything you’d given him.

Joel thrust slow and deep and hard a few times that way, where he could see him disappearing into you, your fingers digging into his biceps as you moaned and panted below him. But he wanted to see your face and feel your skin even more than he wanted to drink in your body. He pressed himself deep and lowered himself onto you so he could feel your skin everywhere on his. Your eyes latched onto his, your gaze looking almost as desperate as he felt and he worked his cock impossibly deeper into you, making your back arch up into him. You rocked your hips against him as you pulled him closer, your pussy already getting tight over him. You were so beautiful like this, all needy and so full of pleasure it looked like you might burst with it.

“Fuck, Baby, think you can give me another one?” He asked, breathless, as he set an aching rhythm inside of you. “Want to feel you come while I’m inside you, want to make you come.”

You just nodded, a little frantic, your hips working back against his, your channel getting even tighter around him, making him moan.

“Fuck, don’t think I’m gonna last,” he dropped his lips to your throat, kissing and sucking the soft skin there. “You feel too good, Baby, not gonna make it inside you…”

“Joel,” you whimpered. “Please…”

“Together,” he said, lacing his fingers with yours and pinning your hand to the mattress over your head. “Want to come together, Baby, love you so much, want to come with you. You just tell me when you’re gonna come and then let go for me, just let go for me.”

He adjusted his angle ever so slightly, his cock harder than he could remember it being anytime in the recent past, and he ground himself down inside of you, his hips pressed against your clit as he worked you from the inside. His head barely left the place deep within you that made your toes curl and your back arch, just giving enough room when he pulled back for each stroke to feel more intense than the last. Just when he felt like your channel couldn’t get any tighter, your fingers gripped his skin so hard he knew it would leave marks but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“I’m gonna come, Joel,” you sounded so desperate. “I’m gonna come, I’m gonna…”

Your orgasm took hold and your pussy throbbed and pulled around him, pulling his own release from him in hard, thick ropes as he emptied himself into your dripping heat.

“Fuck, Baby,” he pressed his mouth into your shoulder to muffle his moans as he held his cock so deep inside you it almost hurt with the intensity of it. “Fuck, you’re doing so good, Baby. Let it all go for me, just keep… keep milking my cock, just like that, doing so fucking good…”

You moaned, clinging to him as you came undone, this orgasm stronger than Joel remembered feeling from you in months. Eventually, you went limp below him and he collapsed, half on top of you, half beside you. You trailed your fingers through his hair and down his back and he could feel the thick, heavy thrum of your pulse from inside of you.

He wasn’t sure quite how long the two of you lay like that before he adjusted, bringing you with him so his softening cock was still held within you, making it so you were facing each other on your sides.

“Missed seeing you like this so much,” he said softly, brushing your hair back from your face.

“I missed it, too,” you whispered back, biting your lip for a moment. He frowned.

“You OK Baby?”

“Oh I’m great,” you smiled gently. “I guess I just… I feel a little silly for worrying about that now.”

He tugged you closer to kiss your forehead, breathing in the lavender scent of you as he did.

“We’re going to be together forever,” he said. “Forever’s a long time. There’s gonna be a lot that we see change but you better believe that I will always be crazy about you and this beautiful body of yours. Hell, every time you look at me I feel like the luckiest man alive because you’ll even breathe in my direction, never mind be with me. I’m always gonna want you, Baby. Can’t be helped.”

You smiled a little.

“Don’t think it’s silly for us to come all this way just to never leave the hotel room, do you?” You asked. “Because I’m not sure I want to go anywhere tomorrow.”

He smiled back.

“Sounds like the perfect day to me, Baby. Any day is a perfect day if I get to spend it with you.”

A/N: Thank you for reading and for still being here for Joel and Doc months after their main story wrapped.

Love you!

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #lavender #smut fic #joel miller x oc

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howieabel · 7 months

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“The ideological blackmail that has been in place since the original Live Aid concerts in 1985 has insisted that ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganization. It is necessary to act straight away, we were told; politics has to be suspended in the name of ethical immediacy. Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism - on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.” ― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

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therealhousewifeofharrystyles · 10 months

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Harry’s Home

(PART I.)

Pairing: Roommate!Harry // Nameless 1st-Person Femme Protagonist

Word Count: ~ 12k words

‼️Mature/18+‼️

⚠️ Content Warnings: Adult Language, Lots of Flirting, Pining, Love/Hate Dynamic, References to Body Weight (“Chubby” Reader), Body Objectification (M & F), References to Masturbation (F), Mentions of Body-Type Biases, Alcohol Consumption (Legal & Responsible Drinking), References to Ovulation & Implications to Breeding

**ANY & ALL IMAGES USED ARE NOT MINE**

Likes, Comments, Reblogs, and Follows are 100% welcome 💕

Weeknights deserve more credit. For many of us, it’s the peaceful resolution to our day. It’s the time when we come home after being excused from our lectures or meetings, or when we clock-out at the end of our shifts. We’ll safely make it back to our comfort zones and our open time slot can be occupied with whatever we want. Those few free hours are sacred. They give adults a necessary recharge. Personally, I share my humble homestead with an egotistical, British businessman—Harry Styles.

Harry was employed as a marketing executive for a unisex fashion brand located in Portland, Oregon. ‘Vol. 6’ started out as a small business, and had recently made waves in the industry with its diverse designs and overall style inclusivity. The company’s roots were planted by a few local, starving artists who set up an online shop with the most modest of intentions. The amateurs were blindsided by how their ideas blew up in overwhelming popularity via the internet. It was like winning the lottery. They eventually accumulated so many orders that they needed to expand their operations—hiring an A-team of designers, tailors, and legal professionals(for copyright purposes, of course). International sweatshops and inhumane labor conditions were far from what Vol. 6 sought to create. And so they stayed in Portland—keeping their focus upon ensuring exceptional product quality, as well as enforcing flexible, comfortable, and progressive working environments for its employees. Although an underdog in the fashion scene, Vol. 6’s excellent reputation continued to soar without a hitch. It turns out that a cohesive process of structured business management and clever marketing can be achieved without sacrificing empathy, creativity, realness, or substance. The only disadvantage is the limited supply of merchandise whilst there’s a metastasizing demand. It’s not like this kind of business structure is rare. High-status designer brands have been known to keep their stock low—or at least that’s what they say—for their popular items to seem more valuable and special. As an operation that works against those capitalist games, Vol. 6 values employee and customer satisfaction over profit. The company’s active attention and true kindness are what separates them from the rest.

So, as I mentioned before, Harry is a part of Vol. 6’s marketing team. He often collaborates with the designing team when he’s working on new promotions or adverts. Creative cohesiveness is essential to successful marketing. Hence why Harry and Mitch became close friends as they had consistently developed ads together for a couple of years.

Some have referred to the boys as yin and yang. One of the two tended to present himself as intimidating and pretentious, whilst the other was comparatively quite mild and personable. It was a mystery how these men befriended one another instead of becoming enemies. Harry was the type that wanted to complete tasks his way, and his way only. In total contrast, Mitch liked spontaneity—preferring to ‘go with the flow’ rather than planning ahead. That method of living was despised by Harry. He was set in his ways. It didn’t make sense to him how his friend could act so unbothered by the world’s chaos. Maybe it was just his hot temper, or maybe it was the way his natural responses to conflict were either instigating a verbal quarrel or using bitter humor as a defense mechanism…but Harry just wasn’t a people person. Mitch had thankfully brought him out of his comfort zone a few times—reminding Harry of his university days when his mates had turned him into a womanizer. The results, however, differed from those times due to Harry developing a bleeding heart as he progressed through his twenties. He was open to new experiences and fun banter with strangers as long as Mitch accompanied him. And so they became somewhat of a package-deal. Well, at least that had been the case before Mitch started dating Sarah Jones.

Harry had nothing to dislike about Mitch’s girlfriend. They got along just fine. However, Mitch became less and less available to Harry outside of work…Which meant Harry wasn’t going out much, and that was his issue. Of course he was happy for his friend—Mitch was supportive of him when he was in a serious relationship a few years back. There was no reason for Harry to be bitter. I personally believe he was just lamenting; that he was struggling to accept the fact that life would no longer be the same as it was. He looked back to when he was working towards a degree and reminisced about how he felt more socially fulfilled from living with, and eventually befriending, complete strangers. Those college memories had been the stepping stones of Harry’s development into true adulthood. He had no intention to ever stop growing and improving as a man. Thus why Harry sought to make a big lifestyle change in order to work towards branching out on his own accord. No more was he to reside in a bachelor-pad apartment with a shitty landlord who had never fixed the rattling air-conditioner. He was going to move somewhere more permanent. A place where he could enter his thirties as successful, single, and not lonely. A housemate would solidify the latter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Having met him briefly a few times, Sarah recognized a few of Harry’s traits as noticeably familiar. She knew someone personally with identical mood swings, a goofy laugh, and an annoyingly specific taste regarding every little thing. The combination of resemblances felt bizarre to witness up close. She felt like Harry had been performing as some sort of parody—speaking in hyperboles and absolutes as a joke. But she soon realized she was wrong and that he was just like that. Reacting emotionally was actually his genuine response to any sort of change. Sure, she’d interacted with the moody type before. She’d also certainly met plenty of picky control-freaks. Only, the person Harry reminded her of was unique in that she was entertainingly campy, yet sincerely empathetic; and Harry was the same. That person who’d come to her mind was me. And as soon as Sarah heard the news that Harry was looking for a roommate, her ears perked up and she reached out to me immediately.

But I guess I should probably explain the origin story of Harry and me, together, in more detail…here, I’ll start over:

My introduction to Harry was when a friend of mine, Sarah, gave me the news that her boyfriend’s officemate, Harry, was looking to lease a new place. The house was located in a nice suburban area just outside of Portland. Seeing that the neighborhood had been on the upscale side, he wanted to find a roommate to split the pricey rent with. Me, working full time and desperately seeking a replacement for living with my parents, saw this as the golden opportunity to finally have true independence. My initial excitement almost deterred me from wondering whether this ‘Harry’ dude was decent, or reliable, or if he was just some complete prick. I’d never met the guy. I didn’t know a single thing about him besides his name, and yet I’d already begun to mentally pack my bags. I still should’ve had more reservations about it. But then again, I was already aware of how uncomfortable living with a complete stranger was—thanks to college life in the U.S., of course. Also, Sarah’s boyfriend, Mitch, was (and still is) a respectable guy and I was sure he’d only surround himself with people of the like…logically speaking. After all, he was my closest friend’s boyfriend. If Harry stepped on my toes even once, Mitch would endure a hurricane of wrath from my Sarah.

The added layer of safety provided by my best friend’s loyalty was comforting. But this was still a gigantic step for me as a young adult. I’d be actually moving out of my parents’ house entirely for the first time ever. You could say I was blissfully naive of what challenges and obstacles my future held. Apart from all my idealistic daydreaming, I couldn’t help seeking a clearer picture of who Harry actually was (literally and figuratively).

Sarah had given me a basic description:

“He’s a sweet guy. But he tends to act kind of… ambiguous at times? His vibes go back and forth, you know? Kind of unpredictable. Hot ‘n cold…” she trailed on.

Ok. That obviously required significant elaboration—of which she’d eventually come around to providing after I sang the classic Katy Perry lyrics she’d unintentionally referenced.

“…Yeah, yeah, yeah…” She dismissed me, my sing-songy tangent coming to a giggly close.

“…But I’m serious—Mitch has told me all about Harry’s passive narcissism and how much of a stubborn grump he can be…I don’t know, maybe it’s a British thing. A stereotype, I know; but he switches from sarcastic to compassionate on the flip of a dime…” Sarah rambled.

I squinted at her and shook my head in disbelief. This was starting to sound a little sketchy. A grumpy, moody, narcissist? Awesome.

“Psh, so he’s a crabby geriatric divorceé? Wonderful…It’s no wonder he’s got that old-timey name, to boot. The guy just needs a caretaker…also, why would Volume 6 hire an old dude to handle their marketing campaigns..?” I joked.

Sarah shook her head and laughed as if I’d just said something utterly ridiculous.

“HA! Oh, god…I’ll have to remember to tell Mitch all of what you just said.” Sarah wheezed, entertained by my very false assumptions of Harry.

I blinked at her, not understanding why she found what I said so funny.

“…You have it all wrong, babe. He moved here from the UK, like, 10 years ago I think? Mitch said he hopped around from LA to New York City, then from New York to…um, well…to here, in sweet ole Portlandia.” She concluded.

As a young woman in her early-twenties, I wasn’t very enthusiastic about this living arrangement coming to life.

The look on my face must have revealed my doubts because my friend chuckled, waving her hands around for emphasis, and quickly clearing the air for me.

“Wait, wait, hold on! Before you tune out—He’s in his late 20’s! Just realizing how weird that sounded…Yeesh, I’d never let you live with some stinky, old, Englishman, you dummy!”

Phew…That sounded much better. It wouldn’t be too different from living with my older brother, then. But that one word, ‘ambiguous’—it wouldn’t leave my mind. Adjectives like that just leave too much to the imagination…well, to mine, anyway. What was Harry being all ambiguous about? My overzealous curiosity pushed me to spiral, conjuring up whatever dirty secrets that would be instant deal-breakers for me…

Did he smoke inside? Did he hate cats? Dogs? Or worse, was he the leader of some creepy murder cult? And if so, would he reserve our living room for their weekly meetings?!

...Would I be spared as a sacrifice because of my not-so-virgin blood?

Was he a fratty douchebag who peaked in college and succumbed to alcoholism?

Was he the type who’d refuse to be my roommate once he saw that I wasn’t a size-00? Would he feel catfished and tell me I looked “bigger in person?” …Not like that sort of thing really mattered to me—I’d just heard that before from a few guys around his age who were surely expecting to be faced with some petite porcelain doll…

Anyway, I guess I just hoped he’d be direct enough to tell me…you know…anything worth mentioning before I’d officially become his roommate. For all I knew, he was probably just a snobby little brat with an annoying, pompous accent.

Amidst my internal ramblings, Sarah added that Harry was a perfectionist.

So, I was right—he was a brat.

I wanted to stay positive, though. Maybe he was just a neat freak, and that’s what Sarah was implying. I mean, that didn’t sound too intolerable, right? And if he was moody, maybe he’d just keep to himself most of the time. I was perfectly fine with that. I tended to keep to myself most of the time, too...though, I never thought of myself as that moody…

Whoever he was, I just crossed my fingers that he wouldn’t have any attitude similarities to Simon Cowell. Just imagining that possibility made my head hurt and my self-confidence plummet. Whatever. That was probably unlikely, right?

Nonetheless, I was desperate for answers. Sarah just shrugged at me and told me to look him up myself if I wanted to know more. And so, I went to work.

Who was Harry Styles? Aye, that was the question…sorry, I’ll continue:

Doing some basic Googling, it seemed that Harry was at least somewhat active on social media…enough that he wasn’t untraceable, at least. This was one of those (very)few times where I was legitimately grateful for the existence of online social platforms. I scrolled and scrolled, and clicked, and scrolled some more…for probably 3 solid hours. Daylight had actually run out by the time I’d realized how badly my corneas were stinging. I’d looked at myself in the black reflection of my phone and could see the popped blood vessels in the whites of my eyes. At least I found what I was searching for.

Luckily for me, his—albeit, ancient—Facebook page looked genuine and free of any red flags. To my dismay, I had to send a friend request and a follow request to his socials in order to actually have access to the profiles. Did that make it obvious that I was in the middle of e-stalking him? Quite likely, yes…But I’d let my excitement and curiosity overtake my sense of self-preservation that night. Tiptoeing around so I could naturally stumble across a morsel of information would’ve been agonizing. My main objective was more important to me than playing mind games with that stranger, Mister Harry Styles. I wanted so badly to free myself from the confines of my childhood home, regardless. Ugh! I was the only one in my friend group who still lived with their parents, and the lack of privacy only weighed heavier on me as time progressed. My dear friend, Sarah, kindly gifted me my long-awaited chance at freedom by sending Harry’s offer my way, and I wanted to run with it.

Yes, I may have been diving face-first into a serious commitment with a complete stranger. Sure, I’ve never lived with a man who wasn’t related to me. And, yeah, I was nervous that this guy was going to reject me because I was younger, eager, and…kinda on the chubby side, to be honest. I know, I know…

My size shouldn’t matter, I knew that, and I still know that. It never truly matters. I knew my situation wasn’t the same as meeting a lousy Tinder date or whatever, but I felt paranoid regardless. All sorts of men have burned me in the past with their shallowness, so I wasn’t about to hold onto a false guise of confidence just for my big break to disappoint me in the end. The age difference felt somewhat significant on top of that. I’d been made aware that Harry was a few years my senior, but it didn't bother me. I hoped it wouldn’t bother him, either…that, and everything else about me, of course…I just had to wait and see.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He accepted my friend/follow requests immediately, and I dove head-first into research (lowkey-stalker) mode. From awkward prom photos and blurry, live music performances, the innocence of his Facebook profile finally put my worries at ease. His most recent profile picture was of him, his mother, and his sister. The candid, selfie-style photo successfully pulled a smile out of me. It’s not a secret that there are wolves in sheep’s clothing out there. But my gut assured me he was safe—that he was a decent guy. The back and forth comments on those family photos were friendly enough for me to assume a close bond between the two siblings, especially. My cheeks started to ache from my incessant smiling and giggling. The pictures were just so cute, I had to message Sarah about it.

[Text Messages]

Me: stfu this guy is adorable 😫

Sarah: HA I’ll have Mitch let him know u think so 😏 ❤️

Me: Oh my god, fr pls don’t

Sarah: Too late 😉

Me: Alrighty 🙂 Brb…gonna go play in traffic 🤪

Sarah: Ur such a drama queen lol

Me: Yep, that’s me 😚

Sarah: xoxo 😘💋

** one week later **

Sarah told me Harry was a bit different than the way he seemed in those family photos. She said he had tattoos and that he was a total frat boy at heart. All shyness aside, “…his true colors shine their brightest when he’s riled up…I’ve seen it. Little crabby pants man-child.” It was safe to say that Sarah was explicitly giving me a warning for Harry’s hot temper. I looked past it at the time because–as a sensitive crybaby myself–I assumed he was just in-tune with his emotions. I saw nothing wrong with that. I actually found it to be quite refreshing. A handsome man who isn’t an emotionless narcissist or a bird-brained himbo? Sounded pretty exciting to me! I looked forward to possibly cohabitating with someone who had a solid connection to their empathetic side.

Also, basically everyone and their mom has a tattoo or a sleeve. Harry wasn’t different or special in that way to me at all. I completely shrugged it off. Who cared? Still curious as all hell, I scrolled around for a link to his Instagram. The link was right there on his Facebook profile.

Nice.

This is just too easy, I thought. I’ve got all this information on this man at my fucking fingertips.

Wow wow wow wow…

So, uh…Needless to say, Harry presented himself as a little less, um…well, I definitely wouldn’t have pegged him as a “mama’s-boy.” I mean, it wasn’t like he was unrecognizably different or anything. Sarah’s depiction of him, although vague, was right on the nose. All of this was meant for research purposes only. But it was objectively true that he was insanely gorgeous. It was just a fact. Pretending like Harry was average in attractiveness…I mean, why would I do that? Why would I lie to myself when the man was just an innocent sight for my sore eyes? That’s all he was…he was cute. Handsome. Adorable. It was as simple as that. I just don’t know why I couldn’t stop coming back to his Instagram time and time again. No matter how paranoid I’d been about accidentally liking a post from like…5 years ago…I still kept clicking on his profile for more.

He had a few videos of him working out—pull ups, bench presses, deadlifts—all of which featured a very sweaty, and very shirtless Harry.

He also had a few group shots with friends. Sometimes there would be a picture of him with his mom or his sister.

The latest posts revealed his plethora of tattoos to my unexpecting eyes. It was obvious that he knew he was attractive. He knew he wasn’t some average Joe. And I swear he had to have known I was looking. Surely he was looking at mine, too. But I was quite conservative and innocent on my instagram profile—similar to the way he looked on his Facebook. I had to admit, the general vibe of this virtual scrapbook was indeed leaning on the fratty side. Sarah was right. He also seemed aloof in some ways. It looked like he preferred small gatherings to larger ones. He didn’t post very often, and it was hardly ever him who’d be taking photos of himself. Someone else would capture Harry’s beauty.

The contrast between the two online profiles distracted the hell out of me. Specifically, I found myself gawking at him in his sweaty workout videos. His defined shoulder muscles quickly caught my attention, my gaze drifting across the defined blades until I ventured lower. The butterfly on his abdomen was both creepy and beautiful. It reminded me of the moth from Silence of the Lambs. Its wings glistened with a layer of moisture as he pulled himself up and down on the steel bar. Beads of sweat made his chestnut curls cling damply to his skin. I salivated watching this man strain and flex continuously; and I felt myself arch my back while I sat, pressing and grinding my clothed core against my mattress.

Jesus…What was happening to me?!

So, uh…the truth is…I thought Harry was really fucking hot. There was no point in lying about it. His hair just looked so soft and silky, and I wanted to run my fingers through it. I wanted to pull at it. I wanted to slide my soapy hands across the art on his body under a steaming hot shower. I wanted to kiss my way down until I was met with what I was 10000% convinced would stand a girthy, 7-inch masterpiece. Oddly specific, I know. But it was obvious he had a gorgeous dick to compliment the rest of him. He just had this vibe—this aura about him. It’s hard to explain. What was worse was how it seemed as if he knew he exuded that ‘big-dick energy,’ too.

So why 7 inches? Well, the dildo I’d been using for a while was about 6 inches—which was very nice, don’t get me wrong. But it just didn’t quite fill me…completely. And so I’d begun to fantasize about how Harry could stuff my holes instead. Fantasy Harry was a motherfucking dreamboat, let me tell ya. I couldn’t stop daydreaming about him—from carrying heavy boxes into the house and helping me unpack, to flat-out forcing me onto all fours, spanking my ass, and fucking me to tears. The fantasies only evolved over time, no matter how hard I tried to push those perverse thoughts away…but to be honest, I didn’t want to…

Nevermind his admittance of vanity, he still had a gentleness about him…hiding somewhere beyond those pale, teal eyes. Or maybe it was my overwhelming attraction to him that cast a rosy hue to how I perceived his character. I guess that was possible. However, I tended to have a good radar for these sorts of things—people, I mean. Harry made me feel excited, secure, comfortable, and very horny. I had no intentions of backing out from signing that lease, and I decided it was time to officially confirm that with him.

My addiction had only worsened from there. I’d begun to shamelessly use his posts as some sort of spank bank for my regular sessions of alone time. My body reacted quite positively to the change in routine. I couldn’t get too into it, though, as I hardly ever had the house to myself. That was one reason why I wanted out of there. Of course, I was still able to have my fun; I just needed to keep quiet. But fucking myself to Harry made staying quiet extremely difficult. It was like masturbating on Hard Mode. I was constantly hyper aware of how I handled my phone with my one free hand—so as to not double-tap. Then there were some photos of him where I’d pinch and zoom in closer, straining my eyes to see if I could make out the outline of his bulge. He wore black athletic shorts a lot of the time, so he was usually protected by the camouflage of the dark fabric. In one of his weight-lifting videos, though, he brought the bar up from the floor up to his knees, then slid it up just below his hips, and—oh my god. The metal pressed so closely to the tops of his thighs that he had his whole package propped up. His shorts tightened perfectly around him. It was so subtle, most people would probably miss it upon first glance. But I didn’t. I saw it. And now I can’t unsee it.

Oh…but he wouldn’t post him with a…or would he…?

Ugh, that cocky little smirk…Fucking asshole.

I hated him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Of course, I felt really dirty for thinking about my new roommate like that.

Oh, yeah…Sorry, uh, I forgot to mention: the two of us had e-signed the lease. I know, I know…but I needed to take the offer! How could I pass up the chance to 1.) move out of my parents’ house, and 2.) move in with a sexy, brooding, successful British man whom I could trust because he was a mutual friend AND…I honestly loved the house. It was old, but not broken or in shambles. The floors were amber hardwood, and the whole house was finished with matching carved, wooden railings and accent wall paneling. Having recently been remodeled, the kitchen was in excellent shape. Appliances were updated. The property was managed by an association which handled the lawn, utilities, and small, miscellaneous amenities. We had our own driveway, a connected two-car garage, and our mailbox was labeled with both of our last names.

The charming little cottage condo was now officially, and contractually, mine and Harry’s. I was ecstatic about it, honestly. We still hadn’t met in person yet, which I knew wasn't the smartest approach, but we’d at least chatted a bit over text and shared some friendly phone calls. His voice was insanely sexy, might I add. I knew he was from the UK, as per Sarah, and so of course I was expecting to be greeted with that accent. What I was not expecting was this slow, deep…rough…

Eek, sorry—um, I wasn’t expecting a voice like that to come out of the speaker, that’s all. Dare I say it, he actually sounded nervous to talk to me on that first call. He’d stutter his words whenever I posed a question, and I could practically hear his boyish smile through my phone. It also took forever for him to end our calls—our goodbyes resembling the never-ending midwestern kind that I was unfortunately very familiar with. They didn’t feel nearly as painful or awkward, though. Listening to his accented mumbles on the other line released a flutter of butterflies in my belly.

I later learned that Harry had performed his own research on me. The only difference was that he’d done most of it a week or so before we’d e-signed the lease together.

It was simple. At work, Mitch mentioned me in a conversation regarding the house Harry had his eye on. He was interested the moment my name was suggested, a gut-feeling making him latch onto me. Once he’d discovered my online profiles by searching through Mitch’s mutuals, his infatuation with me soared. He had a juvenile crush on me from the get-go.

Feeling 17 again, Harry would look for openings in their casual discussions so that he could bring me up. Mitch, being a good sport, spent day after day playing his role as the messenger between the 4 of us. He wished Sarah had just given Harry my phone number straight away instead. If she did, Mitch would’ve been able to eat his lunches in peace. Not only did Mitch lack the answers to those questions, but he’d also only interacted with me a handful of times. He struggled to provide Harry with even the barebones descriptions. How was he supposed to know whether I was a morning or a night person, or what my thermostat preference was, or which days I did my laundry, or how often I had guests over? My private social media accounts offered better information about me than that of the fleeting memories my best friend’s boyfriend stored in his brain.

Harry intended to use somewhat of a surreptitious approach to voicing his curiosity to Mitch. But his sly efforts were useless, as Mitch caught onto his scheme quite easily. There wasn’t anything indicating to me that he was interested in me in any way. Well, not until Sarah let it slip that Harry couldn’t keep my name out of his mouth whenever he spoke to Mitch. But I thought he was just curious…I mean, I was a random, younger woman whom he was going to be living with. It made sense to me that he wanted to know so much about me. I was just as curious.

Casual lunch conversations between the two men had begun to form a particular pattern of redirection. At first, Mitch thought Harry was simply just eager to send in his deposit before anyone else could. The rent cost was a steal for how nice the house was and for the lovely neighborhood it was in. However, he knew all this enthusiasm was directed towards me, in particular, when Harry’s eyes were perma-glued to his screen whilst scrolling through my photos. I didn’t really have that much to scroll through, but apparently Harry spent enough time staring at each individual picture that one may have assumed I had an endless gallery. He’d even taken the liberty of digging further and eventually found my LinkedIn page. I remember how the week before our first phone call, I’d gotten a notification from LinkedIn telling me that someone viewed my profile…I didn't even know why I kept the app on my phone since I was content with my current job. Nevertheless, Harry’s investigation wasn’t as covert as he’d hoped.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Harry was scrolling around on my LinkedIn profile in the Vol. 6 breakroom. Without thinking, he outwardly deduced to Mitch, “She must be the commitment type,” referring to my short, yet impressive résumé. He promptly followed up his inference by chiming,“She’s lookin’ for something’ serious then, hm?”

As soon as the words escaped his lips, Harry’s nonchalance disappeared.

Mitch stopped in his tracks as Harry decided to drag the comment out further.

“I-I mean, like, for a serious living arrangement, y’know?” Harry squeaked.

Mitch cringed in discomfort as the cracking of Harry’s voice pierced his eardrums. To the man’s dismay, his friend didn’t know how to shut his mouth.

“…Some people can be quite fickle ‘bout it, yeah? And what, she’s 24? Surely she’s been disappointed by dozens of pricks by now. Must be dying for someone she can actually rely on, dontcha think?”

Mitch pursed his lips and half-heartedly agreed, “Mhm, probably sick of the fear-of-commitment type.”

Harry nodded and pulled at his lip with his thumb and forefinger. He then continued to ramble on.

“Now tha’ I’m edging on 30…I dunno…’guess I’m just looking—” He paused to clear his throat and scratch his nose with his knuckle. He looked considerably anxious. “—looking forward to, uh, commitments, and all tha’.”

Mitch’s eyes narrowed towards his friend who kept fidgeting with his hands on top of the table and dodging all eye contact. He found Harry’s clumsiness entertaining. He wanted to see how long he could get him to chase his tail. Instigating, Mitch said,“Yeah…So, uh, did you find anything else interesting about her?”

Harry lifted his head up to meet with the other man’s suspecting stare.

“Huh? Well, y-yes, definitely! ‘Course I did. She, uh…well, she’s—”

“—She’s a pretty girl…yeah, H?” Mitch interrupted, cutting him off from his stuttering. Harry swallowed dryly in response. At that point, it seemed to him that Mitch had finally picked up on his crush.

“Uhm, yeah…yeah, I think she is. Quite lovely, now that y’mention it.” His eyes blinked down at the zoomed image of me in a bridesmaid’s dress displayed on his clutched phone screen. Mitch patted Harry’s shoulder, heartily laughing at the glassy-eyed brunette in front of him.

Except, Harry wasn’t laughing. The shells of his ears turned red hot and his knee bobbed awkwardly under the table, unintentionally knocking on the hard surface a few times.

“Ah! Fuck.” He cursed under his breath, holding his nervous knee down.

“Harry, it’s ok if you have a lil crush on her...” Mitch assured him. Harry gnawed on the inside of his lip as Mitch kept on. “…God, y’know, I haven’t seen you down this bad since…well, since Cam, I think...”

Harry gulped at the mention of the woman’s name…the woman who broke his heart several years earlier. His discomfort with the subject was apparent to his friend who then swiftly rephrased. “Shit…Sorry…I just mean, like, you’ve got heart-eyes for a girl you’ve never even met. You don’t know her. She doesn’t know you…”

Harry stayed silent.

“…Honestly, I’m surprised. ‘Used to you always going for the Barbie-type. It’s nice to see you’re, uh, broadening your horizons, hm?” He smirked and drew an exaggerated hourglass in the air with his hands.

Harry furrowed his eyebrows and got defensive at the suggestive implication. “Besides having dated all women, I’ve never had a type, Mitchell.” He scoffed. “And another thing—” Harry quipped, his pupils swallowing the soft green of his irises. Mitch, unintimidated, seemed quite amused by his friend’s sensitive temper.

“—You shouldn’t talk about her like tha’. Inn’ she close with Sarah?! That’s your girlfriend’s best friend. ‘S fucked up.”

Mitch nodded in agreement with a dismissing chuckle. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sarah’s known her for years, but I was just messing with you, man. Relax.”

The men were quiet for a few moments before Mitch sent a warning Harry’s way.“Don’t fuck around with her, ok? ‘less you’re looking to mop up the poor girl’s tears every day. You’re signing a 3-year lease, remember? Try not to think with the wrong head.”

Harry glared at Mitch.

Wha—mopping up tears?! That’s a bit dramatic…

Contrary to Mitch’s assumptions, Harry wasn’t planning to create an uncomfortable living space. That’s the last thing he wanted. Sure, he was attracted to me and felt little butterflies fluttering in his belly when he read my posts and my texts. So what?! That’s his business if he had a teeny tiny crush on his potential housemate. It felt like Mitch was deliberately egging him on, and that’s precisely how the conversation escalated.

“What—? What are you going on about?” His voice strained to release the words. Mitch was done beating around the bush—he realized how the aftermath of Harry’s pursuit of me could end with lots of crying on my part; and worst of all, a very angry Sarah Jones. He wanted to avoid that outcome as much as possible.

“H, you’re stalking her Facebook and shit—”

“—Oi! ’S not like tha’! I just wanna know who I’m asking to move in w’me!”

“Ok, well I’m pretty sure you don’t keep looking through all her photos because you wanna know how good she is about washing the dishes.”

“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about…” Harry huffed. “…’Sides, you know it takes me a bit to get comfortable with people. Not to mention, I've never had a bloody roommate befo’, either.”

He was telling the truth—omitting some personal details in the process, but that didn’t matter. Not to Harry, at least. He knew Mitch was terrible at keeping secrets and that Sarah would be in the know before he could even finish a confession. There was no way he was going to risk jeopardizing such a safe and pleasant option with sharing his feelings so soon.

“Okay…” Mitch trails off. The air in the room was still and it made him uneasy. Harry scratched the shadow of stubble adorning his jaw. His impulsive mouth thankfully filled the silence that was suffocating them previously. As grown men and friends, the boys seemed to act like stubborn adolescents when it came to women—specifically, when it came to Harry and women.

“Um…so, you said you’ve met her before, yeah?” Harry couldn’t let it go.

Mitch drank from his water bottle and gave Harry the thumb’s up with his free hand.

“Then uh, why don’t you tell me ‘bout her? Like…Wha’s she like in person…?” Mitch took a deep breath and screwed the cap back onto the bottle. He then rubbed his thumb and forefinger against his chin mockingly. It was like Mitch was searching for ways to further tease Harry about his crush. Harry chose to ignore it this time.

Despite lacking approval in Harry’s newfound love-interest, Mitch offered him his honest knowledge anyway.“Hmm…well, I first met her at Sarah’s birthday party a few years back…She was nice, just a little on the quiet side. Seemed like she was holding herself back in that way, you know?”

The sincerity of his recollection shocked Harry. He was expecting to be turned down or mocked once again—he was even planning in his head what to send me via DM to further get to know me, assuming Mitch would’ve ended the conversation by that point. Luckily, he was mistaken.

“I remember her, like, tearing up at a picture of Lexi’s daughter. I thought that was a bit dramatic—the crying, I mean—but, I guess she hadn’t seen Lexi and her baby in almost a year or something..? I dunno…”

Harry frowned, empathizing with my reaction. It broke his heart whenever he couldn’t see his godchildren for long stretches of time, too. Mitch then tapped his fingertips against the table, traveling deeper into his memory to provide more details for Harry.

“…I’d say she’s sensitive in general, though. Sar told me how she’s always the one crying at movies, crying’ in arguments…cries whenever she sees a cat video on TikTok. Kind of a hot-mess, if you ask me…”

Harry’s lips twitched into a smile imagining my expressive emotions.

“...OH!” Mitch clapped his hands and chuckled before proceeding.

“She’s got this laugh that’s, uh, it’s like low-key really loud. Like, sometimes it’ll be this crazy wheeze and then, right away, she’s as red as a fuckin’ tomato. Sarah thinks it’s hilarious and they’ll basically laugh at each other for an hour. But yeah, you can tell she gets all weird and embarrassed after she laughs, though—and she apologizes for everything, all the time. Always sayin’ sorry when she literally didn’t do anything. I swear, dude…Someone could knock her onto her ass and she’d be the one to apologize. Wait, I think she’s from somewhere in the Midwest—like the northern nicey-nice states, y’know, so maybe it’s that? I’m not sure.”

“That’s…kinda cute.” Harry mumbled, his cheeks turning rosy.

Mitch grinned. “Oh, you think so?” A pink hue then washed over Harry’s skin entirely and he bashfully ran his hand through his loose curls. “Yeah, she seems quite lovely—I mean…”Harry stumbled over his admiration, trying his best to sound cool and detached. He failed miserably.

“…I-I dunno…Jus’ forget it.” He then buried his face in his hands, shamefully admitting defeat.

Mitch rolled his eyes and chuckled at his lovelorn friend. He guessed Harry was only randomly feeling things for me because he’s lived in a bachelor’s paradise for too long. It was also a known fact that he’d only have short flings once every blue moon. Those flings have become fewer and farther between as of late. Romance and commitment weren’t really Harry’s forte.

It’s not that he didn’t want a partner, but that he viewed the whole relationship-building process to be strenuous and stressful. Life and work were already difficult enough to balance. And so, for the past few years, Harry let himself be completely occupied by his job at Vol. 6. The go-to excuse to his friends (and especially his mother) for not settling down yet was that he carried a heavy workload, and he didn’t want to be an absent partner because of it. He’d end those conversations with a snippy “‘S as simple as that” phrase.

Even so, Harry was praying to God in the privacy of his lonely bedroom that he’d have the chance to settle down soon. All his adult life, he’d aspired to meet ‘the one’ and for him to give that one all his love and all his babies—a hopeless, hungry romantic Harry was. Dreams like these passed through his subconscious more frequently the more he aged. The British businessman was famished, desperate for love and connection.

Dating around was disappointing and redundant, and one-night-stands made him feel gross. He wasn’t simply a dumb, horny teenager anymore, he wasn’t even much of a dumb hornball of a man in his early adult years. Nay. He always kept an underlying craving for passion and compatibility. Harry was going to enter his 30’s in less than a year and he desired more than lackluster, meaningless sex with boring strangers. He needed more than arm candy. He needed more than a weak flame. He longed for an all-encompassing wildfire to eat away at his flesh from the inside out. He wanted to feel someone’s presence consume him.

Recently, Harry’s dreaming intuition had been signaling to him that he wouldn’t have to wait much longer to finally find his person. He was so needy for someone to genuinely love, and he felt overwhelmingly drawn to me from the very start—to my smile, my innocence, and my bleeding heart that matched his own. My lucky arrival into his life had only increased his determination towards lifelong romantic and sexual fulfillment. He just knew.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The time had come for us to meet in person. We’d gone out for drinks with Mitch and Sarah one weekend. It was a safe choice. This way, no one would feel uncomfortable, left out, or excluded. But in all honesty, it felt more like a double-date than a friendly gathering at a local bar.

I had been somewhat apprehensive about drinking around Harry knowing how I was a bit of a flirty(slutty) drunk. All it took was 1.5 cocktails for me to be a giggling, cock-hungry devil woman. Sarah knew this about me. She’d witnessed my nymphomania from the sidelines whenever we’d go out for a girls’ night. Yet, this knowledge did nothing to prevent her from ordering the 4 of us tequila shots before I’d even stepped into the establishment.

Of course, I was late—I’m late to everything. But that night, it was different. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown with hangers and loose clothes strewn across my bed and crumpled in clumps on the floor. Even my mother felt the need to knock on my door after one of my particularly loud outbursts of frustration—making sure I wasn’t actually in pain. I was fine. I just needed to look my absolute-fucking-best when I met my dream guy face-to-face for the first time! Was that such a crime to try and accomplish?!

My mom didn’t get it.

I’d finally slipped into a pair of high-waisted, dark wash jeans that made my ass look like a big, juicy peach, and a red, ruffled peplum-blouse that deliciously hugged my curves—my large breasts, especially. I topped it off with a tin cup choker and a pair of black, knee-high, heeled leather boots. My self-confidence switched from plummeting to soaring once I’d done a final mirror check on my way out the door.

I knew I had the ability to somewhat ‘make an entrance’ (in dim lighting, at least). However, as soon as Harry and I locked eyes, I saw his mouth hanging open as if I was an A-List celebrity approaching him. My stomach glittered with butterflies at witnessing the effects of my gorgeously buxom appearance. The high-pitched ring of Sarah’s playful wolf-whistle pulled me back to reality.

There he was. He was real. And he was even hotter than I thought he was. Yet, it was him whose features reacted to me with lusty enchantment.

His pupils were devouring me as we stood in a lull. My hand extended towards him for a cordial handshake. But as his large hand gripped mine, he pulled me into his chest for a hug—planting a soft kiss on my cheek. What was even more unexpected was how natural it felt to have his arms around me. The four of us then did a few rounds of shots that night. As a (heavy-weighted) lightweight, I was giggling like crazy after the first two throws. Harry laughed every time I did, and vice-versa, and so we’d run out of breath repetitively—basically falling to the floor on top of each other. We looked like a goofy, touchy couple out on a double date, but we were completely ignoring the other couple. Sarah found our loopy mingling to be quite entertaining, as did Mitch. They both had intimate knowledge the other didn’t. The night eventually wound down and the snoozy (actual)couple left for home via car service. I definitely wasn’t sober enough to drive, either. Thinking back, I suddenly remember sharing a private moment with Harry around that time. Nothing R-rated. Not even PG-13, really.

Our friends had already parted ways, leaving the two of us drunk and cozy at a corner-table in the back of the bar. He ordered us some ice water, of which I’d gratefully accepted. I was mid-gulp when I felt his fingers tuck a section of my hair behind my ear. In hindsight, that was a cheesy, 90’s romcom thing for him to do. However, it felt so gentle and sweet in the moment, I didn’t care. My eyes blinked up at him, my mouth occupied with chilled fluids, and he smiled dreamily down at me. Swallowing and setting my glass down, a soft giggle escaped my lips.

“You’re even prettier in person, y’know.” Harry drawled. More light laughter came out of me before I returned the compliment. “Mmm, you too, Mr. Styles.” His cheeks dimpled and he shook his head at me. “Tha’s cute, but I’m serious.”

I raised my eyebrows at his accusation. “So am I.” My arms folded over my chest in playful defiance. We sat there for a few beats, deeply drinking each other in as if the other person was the bartender’s last call. Harry broke the trance first. “Need t’get ya home, love.” His hand moved to cover mine on the tabletop. Out of instinct, my glassy eyes followed his touch. He was cold, clammy even, yet I could feel my skin flush red-hot in retaliation.

Harry seemed hardly intoxicated or loopy anymore. He had more to drink than me, for sure. However, I had to hold onto him for stability in order to exit the building. Leaving the bar that night gave me the same satisfaction as going home after an amazing first date. I hadn’t met a guy so instantly enamored by my presence since high school…back when I was a size 8! As a size 16 in my early twenties, I’d gotten used to men talking over me and looking right through me. There was no reason for them to treat me that way. I’d always been told that I’m the nicest person in the world—that I was beautiful and hilarious and passionate and brilliant. None of that mattered, though. I was either met with pure indifference or blatant, manipulative narcissism from the opposite sex. But Harry was the diamond in the rough. He treated me better than just decently. He made me feel like a person deserving of much more than the bare minimum—more than just mere kindness—worth love, attention, effort, adoration, and affection. I hadn’t felt that in a long time…if ever.

And don’t worry, neither of us drove home. Harry ordered an Uber for me and rode along so that he could make sure I got inside my parents’ house safely—escorting me to the door like a proper gentleman would. I’d only really experienced that kind of ‘chivalry’ once or twice before. Not that every guy I’ve dated was a complete asshole to me, but the bare minimum was certainly a chore for some…It was refreshing to be treated so delicately—by someone who hardly knew me, to boot.

That entire first impression…it was a solid confirmation for me.

I liked Harry.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Harry and I have grown to be quite friendly with one another since we first met a little over a year ago. However, we sure as hell didn’t start out that way—yeah, the amazing time at the bar was a false first impression. Sure, Harry would still have his moments where he was genuinely caring and gentle. But for the most part, his demeanor changed into that of an antagonistic older brother. So, you could say the initial acquaintanceship was tense.

For starters, we had that 5 year age-gap; and so Harry used that as a pass to be an arrogant, cynical, pretentious know-it-all. It was like he always needed to be the one and only expert on everything. And I’m certain he’s always gotten off on every rare instance where I’ve shown to be naive. Yelling-matches would occur every so often for months as both of us are sensitive hot-heads. We ended that streak of arguing when Harry’s big mouth had inevitably put me in tears. I think it was around the 6-month mark (of living together) when it happened. What’s silly is how his comment didn’t even deserve my dramatics, really. I’d already been in a piss-poor mood that night, and I’m just a crybaby in general. So you betcha any joke about me and my body, no matter how innocent the intentions behind it, throws just enough of a punch to unleash the hysterics.

I was in our living room watching YouTube when Harry came home from work. The video on the TV had pulled a full-blown guffaw out of me a minute or so before the door opened—which felt like a wave of relief after a long, miserable day at my job. I typically would spend more of my time enclosed in my bedroom, but I guess I just felt like switching things up that day. Besides, Harry acted as if he owned the whole goddamn place. The house was 50% mine, too (per our rental agreement). I had every right to venture away from my compact sleeping quarters for the evening. There was still a high probability that Harry would be a grump about it.

Fucking whatever.

If I wanted to enjoy our shared entertainment room, then I was gonna fucking enjoy it! My confidence was torn out from underneath me the moment that prick made his entrance. The door swung open, and there he was—white-collared, spotless, and as smug as ever. He released a generous sigh, an attempt at drawing my attention, but I refused to acknowledge his homecoming. What? Did he want a freaking ‘welcome home, honey’ from me or something?! Being a part of Harry’s House’s Greeting Committee wasn’t in the fine print of our lease. Plus, the last time I kindly acknowledged him after work, he brutally mocked me.

[“Hi!!!” I exclaimed with a sweet smile.

He raised an eyebrow as he slipped his shoes off. “Uh, hello.”

I was in the middle of stowing the last of the groceries away. I’d been in a pretty good mood that afternoon. I don’t know why or what made me so excited for Harry to come home, but I just was. Typically, I wouldn’t be keen on asking him to talk about his day. But, again, I was just feeling good. I didn’t understand why that deserved such an adverse response from the man.

“How was your day?! Oh yeah, you had that big meeting, or whatever, right?”

“Mhmm.” He muttered, unbuttoning the wrist cuffs of his shirt and rolling the sleeves up to his shoulders.

I grinned brightly at him and opened the fridge. The way Harry looked with his stuffy work clothes always made me melt. He kept his tattoos well-hidden, but simply pulling his sleeves back would reveal the art…and that was something he’d do as soon as he got home. The action was so small and innocent, but witnessing it so closely—whilst simultaneously inhaling the faint notes of his expensive cologne—sent rushes of heat down to my core. He had no idea how hot he was when he did that…actually, he probably knew exactly how hot he was…little shit…

“So…Did your presentation go ok?”

“Uh, yeah, ‘went fine. It was fine...glad to be home, though.” Harry sighed, but I saw him fighting a smile once I’d turned around to face him.

“Oh? Just fine?” Judging by his subtle cheekiness, I had thought he had some news to tell me. It just seemed that way to me, at least. Or maybe that he was hiding something, or about to make a joke. My latter suspicion was quickly confirmed as true.

“I dunno…It went well, I guess…couldn’t wait to get home...” Why was he smirking at me?

I giggled and continued the banter.

“What are you being so modest about? I’m sure the reps at Gucci fell in love with the designs.”

Harry slipped onto one of the bar stools and watched me unpack the remainder of paper bags from behind the kitchen island. He leaned back against the seat’s backing with his arms folded and resting comfortably atop his abdomen. After making silent eye contact for a moment, I resorted to laughing lightheartedly and raising my eyebrows at the man.

“Eh?”

Harry just smirked.

I’d begun to fold up the empty paper bags. My cheeks were definitely blushed pink, reacting sheepishly to his stare. To conceal my submissive appearance, I reached up—pushing up onto my tiptoes—to stack the paper bags above the refrigerator. It didn’t matter that my back was facing him. I could still feel his eyes following my every move. Why did he have to intimidate me so much?

“Fine, be that way. Just so you know, I bought cookies for us, but now I'm not gonna share!”

“Oh really?” He hummed, leaning up to rest his forearms on the counter.

Scoffing, I stepped forward to face him from the other side of the island and grabbed onto the edge of the countertop. My upper half was angled towards him so that I could talk more directly to him.

“Really, really.” I purred, not realizing my voice would sound so erotic. Instead of backtracking, I just ran with it. Harry’s pupils expanded much like a feline’s when they’re hunting their prey.

But he just sat there smirking at me. My pleasant mood wasn’t to be ruined by his teasing. I wasn’t going to allow it. I could play, too, Styles.

“What kind of cookies did you get us, hm?” His low, British drawl sent chills down my back.

“Oreos.” I didn’t sink into that ‘subspace’ as they call it. Not yet.

Harry basically moaned a hum out in approval. I swallowed, still combating my natural instinct to surrender like a desperate little puppy. This was getting more difficult.

“You know those are my favorite, don’t you?”

I blinked. “Uh huh.”

“I bet you got’em just f’me…you weren’t gettin’ them for us...” He paused for a moment. “…were you, sweet girl?”

“I…maybe…” I squeaked, earning Harry’s immediate amusement.

“I’m gonna take a guess at something real quick, a‘right, doll?”

“Ok…” He was so close to me. I was just thankful I’d been chewing gum at the time…

“Are you ovulating right now? Is that why you’re being so doting and domestic?”

My face fell.

“Wha—Excuse me?!” I stepped back from the counter and put my hands on my hips. What kind of guessing game was that?! Who even asks that?!

In the most annoying way, Harry stood up from his stool and copied my stance. He was using far too much sass and flamboyance to be accurate, though. I did not look like that…

“Oh, don’t you give me that look, sweetheart.” Harry chuckled, walking over to me. He then reached his long index finger up to *boop* the tip of my nose. I huffed in response. The breaking point was nearing closer with every word he’d spoken. But submission was not an option.

I knew that he knew. He had to have known. He must have caught onto my shyness, saw how much he made me blush, sensed how bratty I’d become whenever he teased me. I was putty in his hands.

“Awe, You’re cute…” He mumbled under his breath. His hand rose to my shoulder and he twirled a lock of my hair around his finger.

I was furious. It was obvious he was just trying to rile me up. That’s all this was…reaction bait.

“Harry…—”

“—I’m just sayin’, one might think you were trying to sweet talk me into letting you milk me dry and put a baby in ya. I’m sure you’re just as fertile as you look, aren’t you, babe?” He grinned and drummed his rings back against the marble counter, now leaning back all cockily.

There it was again—that smug little smirk on his stupid, perfect, dimpled face. What did he mean by, “as fertile as I look?!” God, a woman can’t be mean or nice without a man having some bullshit to say about it. Whatever. I told myself at that moment that the next man who dared to comment on my missing smile would be a dead one.

I gave him a dirty look and hustled my ass up the stairs to my room. Thankfully, I was finished putting all the groceries away. There was no reason for me to stick around playing this silly game with Harry. As I was making my way up, he called out to me, “I may have a high sperm count, but I’m not quite ready to be a daddy, yet, love!”

“Shut up!” I groaned and slammed my door shut. I think I could still hear him snickering to himself downstairs. Such a dick. Also, how the hell did he know I was ovulating..?! Ugh!

Oh, and Harry wasn’t even finished with his jokes yet, because he’d leapt up the steps in long strides and knocked on my door…just 5 minutes later. I opened it, having then changed into a crop top and pajama shorts in the meantime. Not only was my round ass falling out of the shorts, but my heavy, unsupported tits were also threatening to peak out from the bottom hem of my shirt.

Typically, I wouldn’t want to be caught dead wearing that kind of getup in front of anyone. However, I thought I looked deliciously thick and absolutely, downright-fuckable that night. Of course I’d been aware of this, as well. And so I used my innate feminine sexuality to my advantage. As soon as I opened the door, Harry’s eyes (unsurprisingly) flickered back and forth between my chest and my face. How classy… I took the liberty of folding my arms together in front of me to feign some modesty.

Looking back on it now, I definitely watched a similar scene in porn...

He just stood there at my door, all of a sudden at a loss for words. I wish that silence would have lasted longer. It took only a few seconds before he was flashing me his signature dimpled smirk again. He then mirrored my body language and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” He teased, plucking at the hem of the shirt sleeve that hung loosely past my shoulder.

My back straightened up, an attempt at asserting a smidge of self-confidence amidst my pink cheeks and pounding pulse.

“What do you want, Harry?” I tried to act annoyed, but I think I sounded too timid…and to be honest, the idea of Harry filling me up with his cum had caused my panties to dampen significantly. They were surely leaking through my shorts, but fortunately my thighs were meaty enough to hide it.

“Hmm…No bra? Tha’s interesting…” I could tell he lowered his canter when he said that, but I still heard him.

“Gross, you pervert.” I spat, squeezing my arms closer against my chest.

“Ay, hold on, little miss sunshine. What’s with the bratty attitude, huh?”

“Shut up, mister big loads. Go impregnate a sock.” My expressive irritability only further inflated his ego.

“Hmm, I’ve gotta say, tha’s tempting, but…I wouldn’t wanna make you jealous.” I wanted to scream.

“Ugh! Get out of my room!” I pushed at the door, but Harry held it open with his hand—and there was no way I could win against him in that impossible match of strength.

“First of all, I’m not in your room.”

I closed my eyes and tried to control my breathing.

“Second,” he held his finger up. “Would you like f’me to order us some dinner?”

I huffed. “What I’d like is for you to leave.”

He shook his head and tsk’d in response. “Mm-mm, tha’s not what I asked.”

My teeth clenched at his audacious snark.

“I don’t care, Harry.”

His rings then tapped awkwardly against the smooth wood.

“Ah…” he sighed with his head bowed. “…Look, I’m sorry. I was just tryin’ to mess with you...I didn’t mean to make you feel embarrassed…”

Even though I couldn’t stand him, I’d begun to feel my heart soften at his puppy-eyed expression. Why did he have to be so irritating and so adorable at the same time?! Just choose one!

Hmph…whatever.

“…Well, I know you’re hungry…I’ll pay…?”

I sighed and chewed at my lip. I was starving…

His boyish apology was reluctantly accepted, but I made a point out of picking something expensive. He could afford it.

We ate and watched a movie on the couch together. To my surprise, there were no more stupid comments coming out of his mouth for the rest of the evening. Impressive. I noticed his eyes turned basically black. It wasnt like we had all the lights off; plus, it was August—the sun didn’t set completely until 9pm. I felt those pupils following me.

It was apparent that Harry found me attractive. That night he certainly did. Or maybe he was just high? Either way, after he’d pointed out my lack of undergarments, I decided to brush him off as simply horny. At least that was the best explanation I could come up with for all the sneaky eye-fucking. There was no way I could’ve convinced myself he was actually giving me that kind of attention consciously…

After we’d finished eating, he went out of his way to fetch me a blanket(our good one, no less) and then proceeded to drape it around my back and shoulders, tucking me in as if he’d done it a million times before. Look who’s the doting one now, Styles!

I also remember how he basically bolted for the bathroom and took a shower as the film wrapped up with the end credits…Ok, ok…so, I may have purposefully bent over in those shorts while cleaning up the coffee table…but surely he just had a long day and was desperate for a hot shower…Surely.]

It’s safe to say that I toned down the ‘domestic’ part of me from that point on. Even though Harry just likes to get my goat, I still wanted to make it more difficult for him to have a reason to tease me. The night when our door to the garage swung open, his voice echoed through the house with such vigor that it sent yucky chills down my spine. Oh, the irony...

“Well, shit—Mitch wasn’t kiddin’ ‘bout y’laugh being loud as’ell! ‘Could hear ya from the driveway!”

This man survived off of my agitation, I swear. I shifted in my seat to face him and my eyes narrowed at the sight of his stupid, cocky face. I’ve always felt embarrassed about my somewhat-loud, slightly obnoxious laugh—and the thought that it’s been a main point of discussion between Harry and Mitch (and who knows who else) stung even worse.

It’s fine. Don’t listen to him. Don’t react. Just…breathe…

“Hi, Harry.” My intonation was as unimpressed as I could make it sound. He of course snorted at my brattiness, slipping his shoes off and tossing his wallet and keys onto the kitchen counter before taking long-legged strides in my direction.

“Good evening, doll.”

I huffed and waved my hand half-assedly. Something that drove me mad was how he was fiercely antagonistic towards me, and he insisted upon giving me little pet names. I knew he was just teasing me. That’s why I made sure to always swallow my bashful giggles whenever he said them. My subby-ness was not to be easily accessible anymore.

“So, what’s this, hm? Grown tired of hiding from me all the time?” He casually gestured to me with his flat, open palm.

I exhaled through my nose in aggravation as he plopped abruptly down onto the couch—his arm propped up next to him and one leg resting on the opposite knee. His draping arm was stretched out towards me. I refused to take part in Harry’s game at that time, and so I returned his question with silence. But it didn’t even matter because he could tell I was holding my anger in.

“Oh, I get it. It’s some sort of opposite day or summat.”

He stretched his fingers closer to where my head was resting on the back of the couch. They wrapped themselves around a smooth lock of my hair and twirled it continuously. This man thought it was absolutely hilarious to get even the faintest reaction out of me. Harry was generally the ‘touchy’ type of person when he’s around those he’s comfortable with. It made me feel special whenever he went out of his way to be affectionate towards me because…well, I had a crush on him for a while. And so, at first, I naively understood those soft touches as hints for his deeper feelings. At least that’s how I perceived things privately. But the more time I’d spent living with him, the more I had to come to terms with the fact that he was out of my league, and that he probably only viewed me as a little sister. My mind convinced me that Harry just enjoyed taking advantage of my innate submissiveness. He would never be attracted to someone like me. In order to protect my heart from the shattering effects of rejection, I chose to play into the little sister dynamic and behave as though Harry Styles was just a stupid fucking boy, and nothing more.

My behavior shift from the bashful sweetheart to the indifferent recluse somehow drew him closer to me anyway. I was so fucking pissed. I was sick of his games! Most of all, I hated Harry Styles. I hated him, and I hated his wandering hands, and his cockiness, and his giant ego.

My hair is not a toy, and I am not a doll reserved for Harry’s cruel amusement. And yet I kept living with all these antics because I…

…Because I liked his attention…honestly, I loved his attention. I’ll admit it! There was no way he could ever find that out, though!

That night when he (once again) twisted a piece of my hair around his long fingers, I pretended it didn’t make my heart flutter. My face stayed emotionless. It had truly been an award-winning performance by yours truly. To an outsider, this scene would’ve looked as if Harry and I were a bickering couple. They’d probably assume I was just a crabby girlfriend punishing her partner with the silent treatment. To be honest, that’s what it felt like for a second before I caught myself leaning into his gentle contact. I smacked his hand away from my hair and he just smiled at me.

Ugh!

He smiled at me, and then he poked my cheek with his index finger. I swear to God, my skin was on fire.

“So what’s next on the opposite day schedule? ‘You gonna go for a run?” Harry snickered and let out an amused sigh. “That would be the shock of the century, wouldn’t it?!”

He kept laughing at his juvenile dig. I let out a weak scoff, unable to swallow my pride that time. The air in the room was stale. Harry faced the television screen and sunk further back into the cushions. I sat there in mopey silence.

So I live a sedentary lifestyle, so what? And yes, I’m overweight—I’ve been struggling with my body my entire life, so there’s no need for anyone to give me a reminder. Regardless of the obvious and regardless of Harry’s ‘opposite day’ joke, I wasn’t in the right mindset to just brush it off…not that night. Starting a fight wasn’t the route I wanted to take either. I was exhausted. A retreat into solitude felt like my best option.

But, God…why did he have to fucking say that?

My bottom lip quivered and I was unable to blink back the tears for a moment longer. Every last ounce of patience I had left was dried up at this point. My long hair shielded my face whilst I bowed and dabbed my dripping eyelashes with my sleeves. Noticing the lack of verbal retort from me, Harry turned his head back in my direction. His breath hitched in his throat and his sage irises washed over to stormy blue.

“Oh, shit…” he muttered.

I sniffled and got up from the couch, making a beeline for the privacy of my bedroom. He never meant to make me cry. It was obvious Harry was just poking fun at me, but words can still hurt regardless of the speaker’s intent. It was too late for him to consider that now. Harry quickly jumped in front of me. He leapt into action so fast that I was physically startled back against my bare heels.

“What the fuck, Harry? Move!” I whined frustratedly at the man as he stood there with similarly glossy eyes.

Then he reached out and held my shoulders in his strong hands. His thumbs did that rubbing thing that most people only do when comforting their loved ones. Back then, I wished so badly that the simple gesture hadn’t sent such soothing goosebumps down my arms. It was so infuriating how this man held that kind of power over me.

“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, love. Please don’t cry. I—”

I gritted my teeth at his pity.

“—why? Are my big, fat tears too loud?! Or are you worried I’m so huge that I’ll get stuck, and my arms and legs will burst out of the fucking house?!”

Harry’s brows furrowed at my imagery. “Uh, wait—are you trying to reference…Alice in Wonderland—”

“—ALSO! Last time I checked, YOU were the one who ate all the cookies last night—YOU and your RABBIT TEETH fucking decimated my Oreos! So why don’t you go for a fucking run!”

Harry seemed amused with that one. His stupid dimples popped out at me and I was fed up.

“Get out of my way!”

I pushed against his chest, but he stood firmly on the carpet in front of the stairs. I remember fighting my urge to stomp my feet like a toddler. He wasn’t letting me retreat. He wouldn’t get out of my fucking FACE!

“I know you want to yell at me, so do it.”

“No, I don’t want to yell at you! I want you to move so I can go to my room!”

“Cmon, love. Talk to me…Give me all y’got. I know you have it in ya.”

“MOVE!”

Then he laughed. Why? Because I actually stomped my fucking foot—just like how I’d previously forbade myself to. And I’m sure the performance was quite entertaining for him.

“Don’t you throw a tantrum on me, sweet girl. Use your words!”

“You’re such a fucking smartass.”

“Oi, don’t talk about my ass like that! I’ll have you know, it’s quite dumb!” He grinned.

Un-fucking-believable. I can’t believe that got me to crack a smile. Harry instantly mirrored my surrendering, his hands drifting down from my shoulders to my elbows. My arms were crossed over my chest, but he wiggled them loose.

“YES! There’s that pretty smile…”

I huffed and groaned, feeling like a total child.

“…Don’t you be teasing me for my teeth—Y’look like a bunny just like me, babe.”

I giggled and playfully shoved his chest. “I do not!”

“Uh-huh! You definitely do!”

My hand rose up to cover my mouth and Harry just laughed at me. Lowering himself closer to my height, he *booped* my nose which caused me to scrunch it up in response.

“Aww, you are just a lil’ bunny, aren’t you?”

I squirmed and whined, annoyed as all hell with his patronizing.

“Don’t you start stomping your feet again, sweet Bunny. You’re better than that!”

I couldn’t help myself from just letting my guard all the way down at that moment. Inhaling deeply, I circled my arms around Harry’s middle and buried my face against his chest.

“Sorry…I just want us to get along, H.” My small voice was muffled against his shirt.

Harry frowned and wrapped his arms around me, reciprocating my surrendering embrace. My ear was pressed against his chest. There was a strong beat beyond his hard surface–my head pulsed with each fierce thump. That was the closest we’d ever been to each other. One of his hands slid up to my hair and combed through it.

“I do, too…I’m sorry.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sharing a house was less expensive for both of us 20-somethings, and rent has thankfully stayed reasonable and affordable since we two moved in a couple of years ago. I’m happy in my living space with my roommate. It’s a platonic situation between me and Harry—regardless of what family and friends want to believe. And I doubt it will ever venture beyond friendship any time soon. It can’t. Things are perfect right now…exactly the way they are. I keep my little fantasies to myself within the privacy of my bedroom. Harry can never know.

I’ve been single for a while. It’s possible that my holes are the tightest they’ve ever been, and that it might feel like I’m losing my virginity again whenever I do get some dick. So what, sometimes I think about what would happen if I just accidentally sent a racy photo to Harry…

…Whether he’d keep it and pretend he never saw it (as a way to be gentlemanly)…if he’d be disgusted and laugh at my body…or if he’d turn feral like I hope he would, bursting through my bedroom door and finally taking all that I’ve unconsciously reserved for him…

Don’t fret, my pet — smut will come in part 2 😈

Writer’s Notes: Hi, everyone🥰 Phew…well, there she is! Part 1! Thought I’d celebrate my birthday today by posting my first H piece💕 I’ll start off by saying…I’m kind of an obsessive perfectionist when it comes to my writing…so I won’t be super speedy when posting updates on my work, as I really want to be certain that I’m posting exactly what I want you to read. I know that other content creators on here are excellent at keeping a quick, reliable posting schedule—and I will be trying my best to do the same(I hope to make it in the same ballpark as them, at least). However, please be patient with me💕🙏🏻 💕 I have devoted a lot of time, love, and creativity into my work just so that I can share it online with strangers for free. I greatly appreciate any and all support, suggestions, criticism, questions, etc., so please don’t hesitate to comment or send me messages/asks. (Anons are welcome!) I’ve been working on this piece for a while now and I’d really like to get your feedback on it. If you would like to be tagged in future updates/parts, please let me know!!!👏🏻💗👏🏻🩷👏🏻💖 👏🏻

xoxo ~ Regan 😘💕

@victoria-styles @harrystylessmuttyfics @therealhousewifeofharrystyles

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beardedmrbean · 10 months

Text

What’s an acceptable tip for a driver who delivers a $20 pizza?

A TikTok video purporting to show a DoorDash delivery driver in Texas swearing at a customer over the $5 tip she gave him has gone viral, sparking fresh online debate over tipping culture in the U.S.

“I just want to say it’s a nice house for a $5 tip,” the driver can be heard saying as he walks away from a home in the door camera video posted to TikTok earlier this week by a user under the name Lacey Purciful.

“You’re welcome!” the resident says, appearing surprised by the remark. “F--- you,” the driver responds before walking away.

“So how much should I be tipping for a $20 pie?” Purciful, who, in a separate post said she herself has worked in the service industry for over 10 years and tips “very well,” wrote in a caption.

Purciful, who did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment from NBC News, said the driver was fired by DoorDash following the incident.

A DoorDash spokesperson confirmed that the worker had been removed from their platform. They said the company had also reached out to the customer regarding the incident.

“Respectfully asking for a tip is acceptable but abusing or harassing someone is never acceptable,” the spokesperson said.

“Our rules exist to help ensure everyone who uses our platform — Dashers, customers, merchants — have a safe and enjoyable experience,” they said. “We expect everyone to treat others with respect and we will enforce our rules fairly and consistently.”

The video added fuel to a growing debate in the U.S. over tipping culture, with some complaining current trends may have reached a tipping point.

“Tipping is out of control,” one social media user said, commenting on the video. They said they felt $5 for a $20 order was “more than” enough.”

“I doordash and most (not all) pizza delivery orders don’t tip. That was a Rockstar tip,” another user said.

Not everyone agreed, however, with some branding Purciful a “Karen” for contacting DoorDash over the incident.

One poster said they felt the driver should not have lost their job over the exchange, writing: “What he said was not right, but he didn’t have to lose job over it. Everyone is trying to make a living.”

Another commenter noted that the driver may have been concerned about mileage, writing: “Maybe $5 wasn’t enough.”

The COVID-19 pandemic brought consumer willingness to give tips, particularly during times of hardship, into fresh focus, with many ponying up to pay higher gratuities during the crisis, according to research.

Figures provided earlier this year to NBC News by payment processor Square showed the frequency of gratuities at full-service restaurants grew 17% in the fourth quarter last year from the same period in 2021. Meanwhile, tip frequency at quick-service restaurants, such as coffee shops and fast-food chains, rose 16%, according to the company’s data.

The apparent rise in tipping came despite a period of record inflation, which has eaten away at many consumers’ discretionary income.

While the pandemic appeared to spur widespread changes in tipping culture, the growing use of point-of-service, or POS systems, to process payments also appear to have made it easier than ever for customers to provide — and for businesses to ask for — tips.

In a survey of restaurant executives by industry group Hospitality Technology, 71% of respondents said using data to “understand guest preferences and behavior” was their primary reason for facilitating POS system upgrades, while for 57% enabling new payment options was the priority.

A recent Lending Tree survey found that 60% of Americans felt they were tipping more, NBC Boston reported. Around 24% said they felt pressured to tip when the option was presented, while 41% said they had changed their buying habits due to gratuity expectations and 60% felt tipping expectations had gotten out of hand. _________________

Door dash fired him, your opinion on tips aside that's not how you act to customers unless they are directly rude to you.

#nunyas news

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femmefatalevibe · 11 months

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What are traits of high value woman?

Prioritize Your Self-Respect Above All Else: Get goals and standards that align with your needs in every area of life (career, finances, physical/mental/sexual health, emotional well-being, friends, family, intimate relationships, self-development). Express and act in alignment with your standards and dreams. Don't allow the displeasure of others to dictate your actions or daily activities.

Set & Uphold Clear Boundaries in Every Area of Life: State them calmly and clearly. "No" is a complete sentence. Reciprocate this effort to others. Practice the art of discernment, differentiation, and interdependence. Get to know yourself, and learn how to observe your needs independently of others' expectations and desires.

Make A Deliberate Effort To Discover Your Values, Passions, & Boundaries: Figure out what matters most to you in life. What activities, topics, aesthetics, art, clothing, hobbies, sounds, movements, books, television shows, movies, songs, and types of conversations most light you up inside? Here are some resources to guide your self-discovery journey HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Build A Strong Personal Brand & Cult of Personality: I have more tips on building your personal brand, creating your persona (or ‘Dream Girl archetype’), and an ultimate Femme Fatale playbook linked HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Center All Aspects of Your Health & Well-Being: Physical, Mental, Emotional, Sexual, and Spiritual. Celebrate your needs – they make you human. Eat a healthful, plant-based diet, exercise and walk daily, meditate, read at least 10 pages a day, journal, make to-do lists, declutter your space, self-pleasure, recite your affirmations, lean into shadow and mirror work, create morning and nighttime routines. Feeling in alignment is essential to allowing your magnetic aura to shine through. Find all my tips to cultivate self-regard in every area of life HERE.

Read, Study, & Build A Strong Skillset: Designing the life of your dreams is an inevitable aspect of living in your queen energy. Stay informed, read books and articles on your industry, interests, current events, cultural happenings, history, and any other topic that brings you joy or you would find intriguing if someone brought up the subject at a dinner party. Mastering an evergreen skillset is essential for succeeding in your career or building a business. Living in your queen energy means living in abundance. While queen energy is a mindset, it is impossible to fully live in this dream reality without having passions and your finances in order. Start with my entire Femme Fatale booklist HERE and guide to building your dream career HERE.

Consistently Invest in Your Appearance: Choose between investing time, money, or extra effort into upkeeping a polished style, beauty, grooming, and physique-maintaining routine. Wear clean, wrinkle-free, well-fitting clothes – styled and accessorized in a way that appears thoughtful & put together with impeccable grooming (clean hair, nails, skin, etc.). Stay consistent with your beauty/makeup/skincare routines, smelling nice daily, and maintain a scheduled routine (weekly, monthly, every 6 weeks, etc.) for specific treatments that make your life easier and make all the difference. These practices don't need to cost a lot of money. You choose to spend more money, time, or effort on these practices, depending on your personal preferences and based on your lifestyle and circumstances.

Remain Dedicated To Lifelong Learning: Make it a priority to read a few articles and 10 pages of a book daily. Ensuring keep up with your learning & education on different topics and the world is fulfilling and enables you to enter into a wider pool of conversations. This practice also strengthens your mind, sharpens focus, and helps your brain relax.

Personalize Your Interactions & Learn Proper Etiquette: Address people by name, and offer a firm handshake. Maintain eye contact. Say "please" and "thank you." RSVP promptly. Communicate clearly and compassionately. Make the person feel special and like the only individual in the room while introducing yourself. It’s the secret to leaving a lasting impression,

Master The Art of Engaging Conversation: Prioritizing self-presentation, learning how to listen, holding your own, and encouraging others to feel relaxed are the secrets to becoming magnetic in any social situation. Be mindful of how much you listen (more) and speak (less). Carefully consider your tonality and word choice. Remember and recounter the small details of another person’s anecdote that felt important to them. Acknowledge their emotions and validate them. Read more of my tips HERE.

Become Extremely Discreet Yet Utterly Shameless: Do as you please, but keep your business (or pleasure) to yourself. Privacy is peace, power, bliss, and radiates quiet confidence – the greatest telltale sign that someone is living in her queen energy. Learn to hold your own. You will be guaranteed to earn respect within seconds of gracing anyone's presence.

Embrace Growth Without Succumbing To Your Perfectionist Expectations: Remember that every skill, successful relationship, and goal takes time and experience. No one has it all figured out. It’s okay if you’re not where you expected to be or desire to be at this stage of your life. Stop comparing yourself – we all have our own paths. Choose to do one small thing every day to make your life better – either a step towards reaching a goal or indulging in a deep desire. Ensure there's a healthy (not necessarily equal) balance between the two. Leave your future self better than you found your past self. Express compassion towards yourself and acknowledge that you’re doing your best. Everything starts to make considerably more sense in hindsight.

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hmfaysal99 · 7 months

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New Business Marketing Tips And Tricks for Success

Starting a new business can be an exciting endeavor, but it also comes with its fair share of challenges, especially in the competitive landscape of today's market. Effective marketing is crucial for the success of any new venture. Here are four essential marketing tips and tricks to help your new business thrive.

Define Your Target Audience: Before diving into marketing efforts, it's essential to identify and understand your target audience. Define your ideal customer persona by considering demographics, interests, pain points, and buying behaviors. Conduct market research to gather valuable insights that will guide your marketing strategies. Tailoring your messages and campaigns to resonate with your target audience will significantly increase your chances of success.

Once you have a clear picture of your audience, choose the most suitable marketing channels to reach them effectively. Social media, email marketing, content marketing, and pay-per-click advertising are just a few options to consider. Your choice of channels should align with where your audience spends their time online.

Create Compelling Content: Content marketing is a powerful tool for new businesses to establish their brand and build credibility. Develop high-quality, informative, and engaging content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. This content can take various forms, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts.

Consistency is key when it comes to content creation. Develop a content calendar to plan and schedule regular updates. Providing valuable content not only helps you connect with your audience but also boosts your search engine rankings, making it easier for potential customers to find you.

Leverage Social Media: Social media platforms have become indispensable for marketing in today's digital age. Create profiles on relevant social media platforms and engage with your audience regularly. Share your content, interact with followers, and participate in industry-related discussions.

Paid advertising on social media can also be a cost-effective way to reach a broader audience. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer targeting options that allow you to reach users who match your ideal customer profile.

Monitor and Adapt: Marketing is an ever-evolving field, and what works today may not work tomorrow. To stay ahead of the curve, regularly monitor the performance of your marketing efforts. Analyze key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI). Use tools like Google Analytics and social media insights to gather data and insights.

Based on your findings, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics. If a particular marketing channel isn't delivering the expected results, reallocate your resources to more promising avenues. Stay up-to-date with industry trends and keep an eye on your competitors to ensure your marketing efforts remain relevant and competitive.

In conclusion, effective marketing is essential for the success of any new business. By defining your target audience, creating compelling content, leveraging social media, and continuously monitoring and adapting your strategies, you can position your new business for growth and long-term success in a competitive market. Remember that success may not come overnight, but with persistence and the right marketing approach, your new business can thrive.

#business #digitalbusiness #digitalmarketing #seo #market analysis #data analytics #marketing #management #sales #learn digital marketing #Digital marketing course #seo expert #business success #businessgrowth

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thecrazygamingzombie · 6 months

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How Viviziepop kickstarted the third wave of indie animation.

Okay, I've been seeing a lot of people talk about the tweet below and how Viv doesn't deserve to take credit for the success of other indie animation projects online but the fact of the matter is...she does, in an indirect way at least.

First, let's start off with a brief history of indie animation:

everything started out on a site called newgrounds, I'm sure you've all heard of it. Created by Tom Fulp in the 90s to show case some of his half baked game ideas. Which eventually evolved into a place where indie creators could post anything they wanted without fear of censorship; the rating system that automatically removed any posts that dropped too low being the only source of quality control.

This gave indie animation it's initial foothold online but without any way of obtaining a revenue stream it never really moved beyond a fun hobby done to practice one's art/coding skills or just screw around with friends online.

This problem got more significant as time went on and many of the teenage artists that gave newgrounds it's inital success, such as RicePirate and Tom Fulp, grew into young adults who needed a revenue stream. Luckily they found one in the form of youtube.

With these monetization policies, many indie animators were actually able to go into animation practically full time. Their pre-existing income bolstered by that of youtube and what followed was a golden era of animation, just an explosion of content across the board. You had stuff like Eddsworld, Salad Fingers, ASDF movie, and tons of other creators bursting onto the scene.

all putting their content out there on Youtube for the world to see. All bolstered by revenue coming in from Youtube...but the good times never last

See, back then youtube's monetization policies were pretty simple: the more views your channel got, the more money you'd make. Great for short form animators and also great for clickbait youtubers who abused the system with deceiving thumbnails and titles!

To combat this, Youtube changed it's monetization policies in March of 2012: instead of being rewarded on view count, monetization would instead reward the time watched during a video. Which created a system where longer videos with frequent uploads were rewarded

In theory this was supposed to stop clickbait videos as people would just watch for a few seconds and leave. But in practice? It meant that animators were put at a heavy disadvantage as now they'd have to put in significantly more work for the same result.

This caused a complete and total crash of indie animation online. Between an unfair algorithm and the rise of gaming channels, most indie animators couldn't gather the same level of funding they could before and had to either quit or scale back.

Only the big name animators who could coast by on brand recognition such as Harry Partridge and TomSka among several others, or larger channels with dedicated teams similar to tv studios such as Mondo Media and Rooster Teeth. Were able to keep going.

This started a brief dark age for online animation until the advent of story time animators. People like Jaiden Animations, Swoozie, and TheOdd1sOut who relied on simplistic art styles with minimalist animation that focused on content reminiscent of old vlogs where the animators simply share stories from their everyday lives that allowed them to put out longer videos faster; thus working around the monetization system that had put so many animators out in the cold.

While they didn't solve the problem, in some ways they made it worse by starting a trend that attracted countless copycats, they did help sustain an interest in indie animation online and ensure there was a consistent audience for such a medium.

Now it wasn't a total wasteland mind you, as I said there were still plenty of animators who survived the purge. There were even a few channels such as Shut Up Cartoons and Mondo Media, again, that helped produce dozens of animated series from indie creators.

But even at it's best, these series were still very amateurish. The passion was obviously there but these were still very simplistic flash or stop motion animations with low budgets and small teams, focusing more on episodic skits than any sort of overarching plot

This environment of amateur passion projects, where animated series were usually very small scale and never really escaped from the limited sphere of youtube, went on for several years and kept the animation community alive. Until Viv posted Hazbin Hotel and brought about the third wave of indie animation.

Unlike the previous examples, Hazbin Hotel was a VERY different beast from most indie animation. Not only did it have an extremely distinct visual style but the animation was so fluid, so professionally made, it felt like something you'd see out of a mainstream studio. It felt leagues above the average indie project in terms of quality.

Now Viv had already a decent audience from her Zoophobia webcomic, her speed draws, and the die young video. So it wasn't like she was starting from nothing. But there was no denying that this new form of animation caught people's attention and caught it FAST.

You all can probably recall the explosion of discussion that surrounded the original pilot and how it was all the internet was talking about for awhile. Viv road that wave and used the momentum to launch 'Helluva Boss' another indie production with a similar style.

This made her even more popular, especially when she started cranking out new episodes of the latter series with the same high quality as before, and soon her fanbase swelled to millions. A fanbase that was more than happy to crowdfund Viv's work through patreon and merch sales. Then other animators saw this and realized that there was a sizable audience for animated content; one that could not only sustain professional level animation, but was desperate for more content of this scale. Soon several other series started cropping up like MurderDrones, Lackadaisy, Monkey Wrench, and the Amazing Digital Circus. All of which followed Viv's lead of producing high quality, fluid animation with overarching plots that drew funding entirely from legions of online fans.

For the first time in a long time, indie animation was breaking out of it's original platform and reaching far more mainstream audiences than it ever has in the past on a scale never before seen and it's all because Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss kicked off this new animation renaissance!

Now I'm not gonna say Viv was solely responsible, the series we enjoy now have thrived primarily on their own merits and the creative minds behind them.

But as it stands, her work played a big role in setting the stage for other indie animation projects and creating the perfect conditions for them to thrive amidst the current digital landscape. Like it or not, Viv is the catalyst for modern indie animation. To deny Viv her rightful place in history out of spite is nothing short of historical revisionism.

Give the gal her due, she's done some amazing things for this crazy world we live in.

Here's the videos I got most of my info from, it's important to cite one's sources after all!

youtube

#helluva boss #hazbin hotel #vivziepop #animation #indie animation #long post #tumblr essay #Youtube

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busyskin · 2 years

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Twinges

Day Three for @bruclarkweek (Day One - Day Two)

Word Count: 2737

Warnings: mild descriptions of violence/injury, mention of scars, swearing

Description: where soulmates feel each other’s pain

Clark always knew he had a human soulmate. The bruising and somewhat frequent paper cuts he felt throughout his adolescence were enough confirmation of that; he was immune to receiving such ailments himself, and they didn’t show on his skin the way a human’s might, but they meant all the more to him for that. It was the regular twinges until his twenties, and Clark was grateful to his soulmate for making him feel just that little bit more normal, that little bit more connected to his family and his Earth. There was the occasional strikes of grief that ripped through his chest, the same he felt when he looked up into the vast expanse of space for too long, but Clark only rarely needed his Ma’s comforting embrace to get him through them. It was all a perfectly regular soulmate experience; his Ma and Pa said so, the internet said so, all the books and friends and teachers said so. And Clark was content with it. Happy to wait in quiet excitement for the day when he would find his soulmate. Sometimes - especially in the first couple months of moving to Metropolis, when everything was shiny and unfamiliar - the small twangs of pain would be a guilty comfort, a reminder that he was never truly alone.

Until the night, when Clark felt beyond feeling, a pain so raw and intense and encompassing that he truly thought his soulmate had died and was dragging him with them. Clark was terrified. Beneath the horror, his brain fought to hold onto consciousness as every nerve he had underneath his bulletproof skin stung like it had been branded with a white-hot poker, before being submerged in artic water until even his eyes were numb, only to be hoisted out and branded again. He clawed at his cheap duvet as the cycle continued to drag him through and under. His mind felt like paper being unfolded, and he could only half register the pain subsiding before he passed out on top of the bedsheets, ripped in two.

It was with panic in his voice and lungs that Clark recounted the events to his mother the following day. And it was with wide eyes that she went to him while he was running words from his mouth like water from a tap, and reached up to touch his neck. He instinctively crouched down, even while he descended into incoherent sobs, and Ma pushed back his untamed curls from the space behind his ear.

She sagged in relief. “It’s still there, darling.” She whispered softly, and Clark, for all his super-hearing, could barely comprehend it. “Your soulmark’s still there.”

Clark was dizzy. He rested his head on his Ma’s shoulder, breathing in the smell of flour on her apron and hay in her hair. He collapsed into her embrace without any weight.

In the years since, there had been a steady stream of agony from his soulmate. Less grief perhaps, or maybe now it was just inseparable from the other hurts. Clark struggled to sleep for the first however many times of feeling his soulmate in so much pain, and he flew back to Kansas just to break down in front of Ma more times than he’d care to admit, even to himself. But his soulmark was always there; an unbroken circle raised like a scar, hidden behind his left ear and ink-black curls. For a long time, his hand would wander to the mark, the tips of his fingers tracing it round and round, ensuring it was still there, that his soulmate was still alive. He reassured himself in this way so much that his colleagues at the Planet began joking about how it was a wonder he could get so much work done when his hand was apparently glued to his neck.

It became something of a distraction, the worry. And beyond the anxiety that came with feeling so much injury coming from someone you knew you’d one day love so much - already did love, intensely, in Clark’s case - the consistency of the instances and the fact that pains kept coming meant his soulmate was alive, and apparently pretty strong if they could take such thorough beatings. Clark reasoned that maybe they were a boxer or a martial artist or something like that. The regularity checked out, and a lot of the wounds felt like punches and kicks as far as Clark could tell.

It was only when more superheroes started cropping up - on the streets, in the news - that the idea occurred to Clark that his soulmate might be more suited to him than he could’ve hoped.

…

Bruce Wayne didn’t have a soulmate. He had a soulmark, of course, but it was long since interjected by all the other markings and scars that criss-crossed his chest, hidden like a needle in a haystack. It was a fluke. A cosmic mistake. Not once in his life had Bruce ever felt even a flicker of pain from his supposed soulmate; not a scrape, not a headache, not even a paper cut. He’d been through his share of semi-frantic research sessions on people who’s soulmates have paralysis or other forms of numbness, other reasons for loss of sensation, lack of feeling, but they could still feel pains that were inflicted on their soulmate, whether their soulmate felt them or not - there had been some very extensive but utterly inhumane studies done by an English scientist in the eighties. Bruce, however, had never felt any hurt that wasn’t his own.

So he didn’t have a soulmate. And that was suitable. Brucie Wayne got to be a ditzy, debonair playboy without worrying about getting caught up in accidental attachments. Batman got to go out every night and protect his city without having to worry that someone else was feeling every attack on his body. And Bruce, he had Alfred, since always and through everything. And then he had Dick too, who was bright and quick and brought smiles in bundles. After him, there was Jason, who was so full of life and intensity. And then Jason was gone, and he took a bit of Bruce with him to the grave. And Tim was observant and put what was left back together as best he could. And then Jason was back, and he was changed, and he was pissed, but he was back, his boy was back, and Batman had a problem with his methods but Bruce had his son alive again, so he could do the fighting and the rage and the disappointment because his son wasn’t in a coffin anymore.

And it was enough. He’d made himself a family: a proper family. One that fell apart every once in a while, like it ought to; but mended itself in clumsy seams, like it ought to. When the grief hit him out of the blue, mourning for his parents - and sometimes someone he’d never known, while the stars smirked down at him, like they were playing a joke, like they knew something he didn’t - he could deal with it. Not just shove it aside and throw himself fist-first into a fight. Not just pull on a fancy tux and devil-may-care smile and wreck a bed that didn’t belong to him. No, he could deal with it in a vaguely normal way. He could wander down to the living room with the biggest tv and find at least one of his children there, and they could watch a movie together and not talk as much as they should; which was apparently the average way to engage with family, so that was reassuring. And then, undoubtedly, more of the flock would gather, and interrupt, and leave more things unsaid that really ought to be said, but it wasn’t the right time, and it would never be - and it was perfect.

Brucie didn’t want a soulmate. Batman couldn’t have a soulmate. And Bruce didn’t need a soulmate.

It was a Thursday night and a Friday morning, and the fog had rolled in from Gotham’s docks. Some gang had made a spot of the chain of alleys that ran down to the southern port. They’d dragged a handful of bankers out of their cars and had them kneeling in the wet cracks of tarmac, trying to intimidate them into some heist by pointing guns at their heads. Crouched on a warehouse roof, Batman readied his grapple. Beside him, Robin did the same.

“There’s more of them than I was expecting.” The boy muttered as he shifted his position on the wet, corrugated steel. His eyes squinted behind his domino mask. “Seems like multiple gangs from the area have collaborated for this. They’re being led by someone.”

Batman grunted his agreement before taking off towards the ground, landing between the guns and the victims. Disarm. Kick. Disarm. Punch. Kick. Swipe. Disarm. Robin’s getting the hostages out. Kick. Kick. Kick. Knife coming from the left. Dodge. Punch. Duck. Punch. Elbow. Swipe. Kick. Two thirds of them incapacitated. Punch. Robin’s back. Kick. Kick. Swipe. Tired. Punch. Not tired, weak. And sore. Kick. Missed. Fuck. Dodge. Dodge. Fuck. Sprained wrist. Swipe. Duck. Dizzy. “Batman?” Aching. Last man hits the ground. “Batman, can you hear me?” Tim. Stars.

Bruce woke up fully coherent. “Gleurgh beurgle.”

“Mm, indeed.” Dr. Thompkins’ face peered down at him, white hair reluctantly confined in a tight bun. Her eyes were gently assessing as she sat by his bed. In his room. Bruce’s room. He sat up. Why wasn’t he in the cave’s medical bay?

Leslie read the furrow of his brow. “Alfred insisted, I’m afraid. After I told him the only physical harm was a sprain, and that your bloods came out fine, he was adamant on you resting in your own bed.”

Bruce closed his eyes in mild frustration before fixing Leslie with a questioning look. “My bloods were normal last night?” He could hardly believe it; the pure exhaustion he had felt, the draining of all his strength, it was like he had been drugged, drunk in the worst possible way.

“Mhm.” Leslie regarded him attentively, but with more interest than concern. She had a hypothesis. Bruce sighed as he flexed his wrist. The pain flared up his arm, shooting through odd corners in his bones. That wasn’t the worrying part. What scared him was how he’d got into such a state to let a mistake like that happen at all. And Leslie was looking at him like she could see through him. If she was going to suggest he was overworked-

“I reckon last night must’ve been rough for your soulmate.”

Bruce’s eyes widened minutely, expression unguarded as it could only be in his own home. He flicked his gaze to the doctor, but she was lost in thought at a point just below his collarbone, pursing her lips at his soulmark.

He stared resolutely out the window behind her. The fog was only just dissipating, and the light still had a grey quality. His voice was empty. “You know I don’t have one.”

Leslie hummed like she didn’t know anything of the sort.

…

Batman and Diana were stood talking at the farthest end of the steel table when Superman entered the Watchtower. Well, Diana was talking; Batman was sort of just making assenting grunts. Clark half-smiled and shook his head in familiarity - for a second, the stresses of the past week became minuscule. Diana turned to face him fully in greeting, whereas Batman only flicked his eyes over Clark. Rao, his eyes were so pretty, the lashes so delicate even smudged with that black industrial strength face paint. Clark suppressed a shiver.

“Superman.” Diana’s voice was always strong, and it carried to every corner of the wide room. Her smile was strong and carrying too. “Are you well?”

Clark was about to ramble off the same Midwestern script response that he always gave to that question, force of habit as opposed to any desire for privacy, when Batman cut him off.

“No. He’s not.”

Clark turned to face him in question. He didn’t know exactly why he gave the dark figure a puzzled look. Even all the impenetrabilities of his body couldn’t hide a hair out of place from the cowled man, it was no wonder he’d noticed whatever he had; maybe a tightness of expression, or a heaviness in feet. They stared at each other. Clark could see Diana looking him over discerningly and trying to pick out any injuries with a worried crease between her brow. Batman’s eyes were hard and boring and still so pretty. Clark folded.

“Kryptonite.” He sighed, rejecting his sight to a far corner. Continuing, ignoring the slowly pulsing pain in his wrist. “A few days ago. I’ve had a good few shots of sunlight since, so I’m A-OK now.” He turned back to his comrades with a winning smile, before it turned mildly teasing. “I was going to tell you myself but-“

“That’s not all.” Batman finished his sentence completely in the opposite direction Clark was intending. His wrist twinged and his heart skipped a beat. If Batman knew - no, the trio had never talked about their soulmates, not even Diana, who was the most open of them by a mile; the only one to have shared her identity so far. It was entirely possible that Batman knew about Clark’s; he’d made no indication thus far, but Clark wouldn’t be surprised. But he trusted Batman implicitly. Except, right now, Clark felt so vulnerable to the man contained in Kevlar; if he could he would’ve willed the lead lining of the suit to cease existing, just so he could finally see him beyond his eyes, and so he could have any chance to protect himself and his soulmate if it came to that.

In the first time of Clark’s knowing him, the Batman broke eye contact first. Maybe he saw the terror in Clark.

“I know what you look like when your soulmate’s hurt.” It was startlingly honest and entirely too revealing to have been said by Batman. And yet it was. Clark stood in jittery awe; he would’ve looked the pinnacle of strength to anyone other than those currently in the room. Or his Ma. As it was, his colleagues knew him too well, and Diana, after an unwavering glance between the two of them, put an unarguable end to the conversation.

“The other members of the League attending today will be here shortly. I have an upcoming - mercifully short - period of unavailability that I’d like to discuss. Superman, debrief as far as you believe is needed on the circumstances surrounding your recent encounter with the Kryptonite. As far as the other members…”

Clark kept half his hearing on Diana, and half tuned in - as it always was - to the rest of the world. But neither had his focus nor attention. As he took his seat at the table next to Wonder Woman, his thoughts were consumed by the man on her other side. His eyes avoided Clark’s throughout the meeting, and even given the situation Clark was saddened by the deprivation of such a sight. Batman’s mouth stayed the hard line it always was; he’d forever look more unbreakable than Superman. A solid stone gargoyle. Clark’s thoughts had calmed slightly; Batman knew his soulmate was hurt - apparently knew every time his soulmate had been hurt - but he didn’t have any desire to use that information vindictively. Of course he didn’t, Clark reminded himself. He’s a good man.

It was when Batman was using the table’s projector to highlight a network of jaded supervillains that Clark noticed something. Batman was holding the clicker in his right hand. Nothing unusual there, that was his preferred hand - though Clark was fairly sure he was ambidextrous - and straying from such an innocuous preference might arouse suspicion in a room full of people as observant as them. Might alert them to an injury, give away a momentary weakness. So Batman used the same hand he always used, and kept the same blank expression he always kept, so that none of them could know of the sprain he harboured. But Clark did, and it made something flip in his chest. Because every time Batman pressed the clicker, a tiny flicker of pain settled in Clark’s right wrist.

#bruclarkweek2022 #superbat #bruclark #superbat fic #bruce wayne #clark kent #batman #superman #soulmate au #dc #busyskin writing #bruclark fic

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