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lucifers-horror-harem · 4 years

Note

Heyy so I was wondering if you could do a nsfw alphabet for Brahms? 🥺

Hey I’m sorry it took me a hot sec to post anything in a while but hopefully you enjoy! I love doing these alphabets cause it helps me get a better feel for the character.

Brahms N/S/F/W Alphabet

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Brahms is a clingy boy after sex, typically wrapping himself around your body and refusing to let go. You’re his teddy bear and he’ll throw a tantrum if you refuse to snuggle with him afterward. He loves leaving kisses along your neck and jaw and humming so deeply it reminds you of a purring cat.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

His hands are probably his favorite part of his. Especially after meeting you and reveling in how you react to his touch. No matter your size he will always see you as smaller and more fragile than him and seeing his big hands gripping your wrists or holding onto your waist always get him going.

While he would love every part of his partner unconditionally, his favorite part would be their eyes. There’s so much emotion he can see from them, he can tell when you’re happy, worried, upset, or needy. He can’t get enough of the way you look at him with such softness when he is at his most gentle and desire when he is teasing you. And sometimes, he gets a thrill out of the look of fear in your eyes when he is being more dominant and direct with you, liking to see just how much of an effect he has on you.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Brahms will certainly make a mess out of you if you’ll allow him. He really can’t decide where he likes to come the best. A few of his favorite places would be your chest, along your stomach and thighs, and inside of you. He gets a rush seeing you covered in his come like he’s laid claim to you.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Brahms has loads of dirty secrets, he's lived in the walls for most of his life so everything of his is a dirty secret. But one of the dirtiest that he has is that before he revealed himself to you, he would steal your underwear and watch you through the walls. You wouldn't have to be doing anything explicitly erotic, but anytime his urges got the better of him and when he felt he might lose himself and lunge out of the walls to grab you, he will take your underwear and jerk it off along his cock, the fabric adding much-needed friction for him to satiate his urges and come before he does anything too rash. As he usually makes a mess of your underwear, you find you're missing a lot of pairs frequently, both clean ones and ones from the hamper. Because you know Brahms is a dirty boy and would definitely get off on inhaling your smell as well.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He is a virgin, no question. The most experience that Brahms has is what he's read in the books on his shelves. He most likely hasn't read actual erotica but the books that he's read might have some sexual scenes or descriptions of such things (albeit probably only from very older books that use way too many euphemisms and flowery language). He is also aware of reproduction and how to have sex through diagrams in stuffy anatomy and biology books. As a lot of his knowledge is in a scientific context, he will really need you to guide him the first few times. After that, it's no holds barred.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

He has a hard time deciding. Brahms really enjoys missionary so he can pin you down and watch every expression on your face as he pleasures you. However, he is also partial to doggy style because sometimes he gets so worked up that he can’t help but want to take you as roughly and deeply as possible.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Brahms is always more serious during intimate moments, the most he might do is a little laugh as he teases you. He’s not one for joking during sex simply because he is still a little insecure about his abilities, though if you’re with him for long enough he might start to loosen up a bit.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Have you SEEN how hairy this man is??? Brahms has probably never used a razor in his entire life so he's a full wolfman. He also never really had opportunities to clean himself fully like in a shower (the most he probably does is a makeshift sponge bath if even that) so you're most likely going to have to get him used to proper hygiene unless you like a very stinky wall boy. He also wouldn't bother with his body hair on his own unless you offered to trim it for him. A full shave anywhere right off the bat might not be too good either, because he will feel naked and itchy for days. You will have to get used to some hair on him because even if you were offering him kisses as rewards for shaving he wouldn't let himself be completely shaved head to toe. As it is, it'll be an absolute pain trying to get Brahms to agree to you manscaping him below the belt because it is certainly a mess down there.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Brahms is always romantic during intimate moments. Or at least, what he believes is romantic. Most of the time he is simply overwhelmed by his desire for you and if he can manage it in the heat of the moment he will grunt how beautiful and lovely you are in your ear as he thrusts into you, praising and telling you that you’re all his and no one else’s. His heart is in the right place but you might need to help him understand the nuances of romance.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Absolutely. While he might have associations with it being a dirty act from being punished by his mother, he still finds he cannot help himself when he first saw you through the walls. Mostly it’s a way for him to calm himself down and take control of himself again when he feels the urge to reveal himself to you. At first it might begin when he sees you changing or showering, but it could escalate to him just jacking off to you doing simple tasks around the house.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Brahms might have a hard time putting words to describing what his kinks are because he has been so sheltered, but he has far too many to count. Essentially when he finds his perfect person to be the nanny at the Heelshire mansion, his kink will be everything about you. You yourself are what turns him on the most. He’s a huge voyeur, no surprise there. He also has a bit of a size kink because of his size compared to you. Essentially if his partner is involved, he will be down to do or try anything.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

He loves dragging you in the walls and having sex with you pinned flush against the wall. While he’s thrusting into you from behind, he’ll make you look through one of his peepholes and tell you exactly what he does while he watches you through them. His bed in the walls is another favorite place, mostly because he can keep you between the wall and him and you would have to get through him if you wanted to get up. He likes having you all trapped for himself.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Honestly, anything can turn Brahms on when it comes to you. You could show this boy a bare ankle and he would instantly nut. But if you really want to drive him crazy, wear revealing clothing. Lingerie, booty shorts, crop tops, leggings, skirts, anything that covers you while also teasing what is underneath. He won’t be able to control himself and he will either pester you all day about giving him attention or simply tackling you on the spot and giving all of his love right then and there.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Absolutely will not share you with anyone else. He refuses to even entertain that notion. On a similar note, he wouldn’t be interested in public sex, not that he leaves the Hillshire mansion anyways, but he refuses to even think about someone other than him looking at you in such a vulnerable position. You’re his and his alone.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

He is usually more of a giver. Brahms always wants to make sure you’re taken care of, and as someone who is horny for praise, he gets off on getting you off. And if you tell him what a good boy he’s being? Instant nut. Though he will never turn down oral from you, though he might be a little twitchy about it at first. He’s not used to someone pleasuring him.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

When he’s horny and in more of his man persona, he’s all sorts of feral and rough with you. It’s not that he doesn’t want to take his time, he’s just usually so pent up and has such a high sex drive that he can’t help himself. It’s possible for him to go slower but it will take a lot of urging him and a bit more willpower on his end, as well as the promise of rewards if he does.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

All. The. TIME. Since he’s been so pent up for years upon years in the walls, any small action from you will get him needy. If you’re not careful, he’ll bend you over every surface in the house, and then when he’s done will scurry away while you’re sitting there trying to process what just happened, all the while cursing him for making you horny in the process, thus continuing the cycle.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Brahms is hardly a risk-taker in his own life and any sort of change will upset him. Even spending more time outside the walls is tough for him, but once he’s grown used to you the risky behavior he will have is having sex outside the walls or your bedroom. For someone so used to sneaking out of the walls without being spotted and getting reprimanded by his parents, it’s a thrilling experience for him to be so naughty out in the open with no one scolding him for it.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

While he isn’t one to last a long time, he can go for as many rounds as he can stand. Since just about everything about you gets him in the mood, he could have just orgasmed and will start getting hard again.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Brahms doesn’t personally own any toys but if you do he won’t protest. The only thing he might not like is if you use them by yourself. He wants to be a part of the fun too, whether he’s using them on you, you on him, or both of you using them together.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He LOVES teasing. Any opportunity to see your flustered expression while you try to scold him is one he will take. Plus he loves seeing just how needy he can get you.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Brahms usually isn’t loud at all especially if the sex is slower. He might make a few moans here and there. But when he’s needy for you he will make all sorts of animalistic grunts and groans. He’s less talkative except to tell you how good you’re being for him. He usually gets so carried away that he can hardly speak and mostly just moans in your ear as he ruts into you.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Brahms is a curious boy, and on some occasions when he steals your underwear he’s attempted to wear it. Especially anything soft and silky you might own, it’s a different sensation on his body that he isn’t used to and the whole debaucherous act leaves him unable to contain himself. You might have to invest in buying him his own undies. But even then he would prefer to steal yours because they smell like you.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

He is slightly above average length but he is also endowed in the girth department. Again, lots of hair down there.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

The easiest way to explain his sex drive is that he is the kind of guy to get hard over any bare bit of skin not covered. He will settle down more the longer you're together, but he still acts like a feral animal anytime he sees you.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He will be out like a light as soon as his head hits the pillow. Get used to falling asleep with his arms and legs wrapped around you and his chin resting on your head. Good luck if you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

#brahms heelshire x reader #brahms heelshire #slasher x reader #the boy 2016 #anon

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livesincerely · 3 years

Note

I’m very sorry for all of the asks Madam Sincerely, but I’ve just recently gone on a binge of all of your fics, and I don’t think there’s any more questions on the ask game, so can I ask here: Do you have any ideas on future works that you haven’t started writing yet? If so, can we hear some? I was scrolling back through your tumblr to cheer myself up yesterday (my country’s gone back into lockdown) and saw you mentioned a few ideas, like the one in the SubDavey ask? Sorry, just curious <3

No need to be sorry, the asks are lovely! I’m sorry to hear that things have shut down where you are, I’m sure that’s incredibly difficult. Sending all the positivity your way 💕💜✨⭐️💕💜

The Domestic au is the QUEEN of inspiring random story ideas and dangling plot threads. There’s several floating around in the domestic au/ideas for later tags but if I was going to narrow it down to a handful of ideas that have a good chance of existing in the near-ish future, then I’d say 1) the Jack and Davey preparing for college fic 2) the Davey picking Race & Charlie up from the elementary school because Jack’s sick fic 3) the Race and Charlie needing a cuddle pile fic and 4) the bedsharing fic where Jack is struggling under the pressure of fighting for custody and needs some comfort.

I’m just in the mood for some stuff set in the high school/college era of that au, probably because ‘it’s beginning to look a lot like...’ has got me in the mindset. All of these would be one shots, just showing more landmarks in the boys’ history since ‘it’s so easy (too easy) to love you’ sort of just drops you right into the ocean as far as circumstances lol. And also, there’s a lot of family building that goes on before Jack and Davey get together that I’m very interested in exploring! I think Race describes it as ‘eight years of waiting for Jack and Davey to get their shit together?’ Yeah. So definitely lots of domestic au in the upcoming year.

I’ve talked the tiniest bit about ‘there’s you and me (and everyone else)’ and ‘a few letters off’ but after doing the first bits & bobs for each of them, I got distracted by other projects as I so often do, 😅 so I’ll talk about them here. Actually, I’m not even sure if these had working title ideas last time I mentioned them here, it’s been that long lol.

Anyway, these two fics are very similar, but just different enough to need separate fics. The first is a modern, high school au that features different examples of Jack and Davey being the accidental co-parents of their friend group while obliviously pining for each other. I’m thinking it will be individual scenes tied together by the theme; I’ll put the original idea post here and the bits & bobs here. Besides what I already talked about, I also think I want to include a scene where Albert and Crutchie are going on a first date (a pairing that is absolutely inspired by @agentsnickers, you’ve converted me) and they both separately approach Jack and Davey for advice on what to do/wear/etc. Like, a total ‘our-kids-on-their-first-date-get-the-camera’ type thing, plus Jack being an overprotective older brother and giving Charlie a curfew because he’s ridiculous.

“Be home by nine,” Jack says, a little surly. “Nine?” Davey asks, incredulous “They’re seventeen not seven. Eleven o’clock.” “I’m supposed to trust Albert with my baby brother at eleven o’clock?” Jack asks, scowling. “That’s just asking for trouble.” He says trouble in the sort of ominous tone other people reserve for imminent nuclear meltdown or battlefield heart surgery. “What do you think Albert’s gonna do, stick his hand down Crutchie’s pants the moment they walk out the door?” Davey says with a scoff. “It’s Albert.” “Ten-thirty,” Jack eventually offers. Davey nods, then looks back at Albert and Crutchie, who have been following this exchange like a tennis match and are both now a little pink in the face, and shrugs, trying to convey something like ‘pick your battles’. “Great!” Crutchie squeaks out, sounding absolutely mortified. “Great, ten-thirty it is, oh my god, Albert let’s go before theykeeptalking—“

Oh! And I want Davey to full name someone in the ultimate you-fucked-up-and-mom-is-pissed move. I even went and made full names for everyone just to be prepared 😊

Then, ‘a few letters off’ is the Jack-and-Davey’s-friends’-perspectives-on-the-nonsense-that-is-Javid fic. I’ve basically finished the Buttons scene, but I’m also hoping to include one each from the povs of Katherine, Crutchie, Racetrack, Spot, and Albert at minimum.

I’m thinking:

Katherine - catching Jack painting/drawing Davey while Jack tries to cover and deny

Spot - The aftermath of him and Jack getting into a fight with the DeLancey’s and him watching Davey fluttered worriedly around Jack, scolding him for being a reckless but still dabbing carefully at his injuries.

Racetrack - comes home to find Jack and Davey watching a movie, except that Jack’s fallen asleep halfway through, head in Davey’s lap, and Davey is adamant that Race doesn’t wake him.

Crutchie - watching Javid eating lunch together and noting how totally domestic it is: stealing food from each other’s plates, Jack gives Davey his extra fruit cup then swipes his milk carton and Davey doesn’t even say anything because it’s so routine, and how they’re able to move in and around each other effortlessly while eating and holding two separate conversations.

Albert - watching Jack and Davey flirt/bicker from the backseat on the drive to school.

And then some sort of culminating/getting together scene at the end.

There’s the infamous quarantine fic, which I waxed poetically about for all of two seconds and then never expanded on. (Here and here) The reason I haven’t done anything with it yet is because it will be a multi-chapter and between tie fic, take a shot fic, and now the domestic au holiday fic, I’m really at my limit for multi chapters at the mo’. But I do still want to do something with this once I finish tie fic and DAUHF, as take a shot knows no bounds and cannot be quantified by earthly means.

Then, as for the idea I mentioned in the sub!Davey post.... I think I’m going to be able to repurpose the general scenario/concept I was imagining for the final, E rated chapter of Tie Fic, so I don’t think the original idea will ever make it to a final cut. (I won’t say never because anything’s possible lol) But, I’m happy to put the bit I have here! Things don’t quite get E rated in this excerpt, but they’re definitely a solid M. This would’ve been an addition to the Tease series and I think this has been sitting in my drafts for almost as long as the letterman fic, and it hasn’t been edited in at least two years, so yeah 😅

00000

“I really wanted to work on my thesis proposal, that’s why I was in the library most of the day,” Davey says suddenly, pushing Jack down against the couch and straddling him, his voice light and conversational. “It was nice of you to check on me so often, though I’m sorry I wasn’t very good company. I was trying to stay focused, you know how it is.”

Davey looks at Jack expectantly, making it clear that he’s waiting for a response. Jack stares up at him, his expression equal parts confused, transfixed, and aroused. He swallows heavily, then nods.

“But I did warn you, didn’t I?” Davey continues, bracing himself with a hand on each of Jack’s shoulders, rolling their hips together as he presses closer. “That I had a lot of work to do? That this paper is really important to me and that I wanted to get a head start? That I really needed to focus and didn’t want to be distracted? I distinctly remember warning you about all of that.”

He nuzzles down the curve of Jack’s jaw, then nips at his neck. “But you didn’t listen,” he says against Jack’s pulse point. Davey smooths his hands down Jack’s chest, then back up to his throat, tugging at his collar. He unbuttons the first few buttons of his shirt.

“In fact, one could argue that you did the exact opposite of what I asked you to do,” Davey says, working his way slowly through the buttons on Jack’s shirt. “Trailing your fingers across my arm, rubbing a thumb across the nape of my neck, sneaking a hand up my shirt… I would call all of that distracting, wouldn’t you?” He finishes unbuttoning Jack’s shirt and pushes it off his shoulders, admiring his muscular chest.

Davey glances up sharply. “Answer me, Jack.”

Jack blinks himself out of his daze. “I-uh, what did you ask me?”

Davey leans forward. They’re so close that he can feel the warmth of Jack’s breath against his face. “I asked you,” he starts, wrapping his arms loosely around Jack’s neck, “whether you thought constantly caressing someone while they were trying to work would distract them.”

It takes Jack a long moment to respond. “Yeah.”

One of Davey’s hands trails up the back of Jack’s neck. “You agree that doing something like that would be impossibly flustering?” Davey asks in that same, unaffected voice—as if clarifying a statement for a news article—threading his fingers through Jack’s hair. “That it would thoroughly divert that person’s focus? That it would leave them feeling unbalanced, frustrated, and downright agitated?

He leans impossibly closer, so close that the barest tilt of his head would press their lips together. “That it would drive them so crazy that all they could think about was how desperately they needed to be fucked,” Davey growls out, and his voice low and rough.

“Christ, Davey,” Jack groans, his pupils blown wide. He leans up to kiss him, but Davey anticipates this and tugs sharply on his hair, holding him in place. “So, we’re in agreement?” Davey continues in his casual voice, letting go of the dark strands and pulling away slightly, ignoring Jack’s groan of disappointment, “that all of those actions would, in fact, be extremely distracting.”

He trails his hands lovingly across Jack’s shoulders and down his chest, his movements unhurried. He licks a hot stripe up Jack’s neck, then sucks hard at a spot just under his jaw.

“Considering both of these facts, I can only conclude that you were distracting me on purpose.” Davey presses a line of kisses along Jack’s collar bone, delighting in the moan that tears its way out of Jack’s throat. He scratches lightly at the tanned skin of Jack’s chest, then sucks a bruise just above his collarbone.

“Were you doing it on purpose, Jack?” he asks, then before Jack can answer, rolls his hips hard and slow against Jack’s, grinding their erections together. Jack’s hands spasm, then tighten, clenching hard against Davey’s sides. Davey continues his ministrations, circling his hips against Jack’s, teasing him with the friction. Then, just as Jack seems to catch on to Davey’s rhythm and starts to move with him, Davey stills. “Were you teasing me on purpose?”

Jack’s mouth opens and closes, his throat working furiously. “I-yeah.”

David hums in acknowledgment, then continues his slow perusal of his boyfriend’s chest. He nibbles lightly across his sternum, then draws the flat of his tongue across one of one Jack’s nipples. Jack arches into him but Davey pushes him back, using his leverage to hold Jack down against the couch cushions. He sits up, admiring the mess he’s made of Jack’s neck and torso.

Jack stares up at him, chest heaving, waiting for Davey’s next move.

....

Davey runs his hands down Jack’s stomach and between his hips, fingers brushing gently against the front of Jack’s jeans.

Jack lets out a guttural noise. “God, Davey, let me—“ he starts, one hand slipping back to kneed at Davey’s ass, the other inching towards Davey’s fly.

“No,” Davey says firmly, moving Jack’s hands back to his waist. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

00000

That’s all that comes to mind at the moment! Oh, and the Brooklyn Davey AU idea, but I got a different ask about that, so I’ll just link it. (Here)

@saysflora

#*editor's note #*ask #ideas for later #*the writing desk #this was a lot but hopefully it was interesting!#thank you for the ask #blessings and good vibes on your house

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ohemgeeitscoley · 4 years

Text

Rey doesn't think when she calls Ben to go into her emails to send off her draft email with her final to her professor.

It isn't until she's off the phone that she remembers all the other draft emails are to him and vary from confessing her love to him and describing in detail what exactly she wants to do to his body.

No, Rey didn't think this through at all.

These letters to you (1/1)

Fandom: Star Wars

Pairing: Rey/Ben Solo (Reylo)

Note: This came from this prompt from the ReylosPrompt Twitter account.

Curious Cat Prompt: "Ben finds a draft on Rey’s email addressed to him confessing her love and lust for him."

@andyouweremine and @storiesofimagination are some of the best betas a girl could ever ask for. They make sure that my tenses stay correct and reassure me the entire time that I’m writing. They are the best cheerleaders and I wouldn’t know what to do without them. <3

Read below or on AO3.

Please pick up. Please pick up. If there is any sort of fairness in the galaxy, please pick up your fucking phone--

"Hello?" Ben's voice is low, deeper than usual. It's his mostly asleep voice. Rey hates that she has thought enough about the variances of Ben's voice to know the different tones almost as much as she hates the fact that a sleepy Ben Solo is almost always her favorite version of Ben.

Ben had been one of the first people Rey had met when she transferred in as a sophomore. He had been in his first year at the law school. They both fought for the right to study under a specific tree toward the edge of the campus. It was quiet, far enough away from the hot spots to really attract much attention or noise. The leaves were big and provided plenty of shade from the sun. The ground was soft and mostly free of any large rocks or bouts of even landscaping.

It was Rey's favorite spot.

They fought over the tree for two months, both of them refusing to leave and each attempting to annoy the other into giving the spot up. It didn't take long for them to realize that when they were just sitting under the tree, quietly, together studying, it wasn't so bad.

It was actually nice, not being alone.

Rey moved into Ben's apartment the following fall and they'd been best friends ever since.

Rey's fairly certain she's been in love with him for roughly the same amount of time.

Not that she has the time to be getting lost down that particular rabbit hole.

"Thank God, you answered," Rey responds, twisting the cord of the phone around one of her fingers. Everything about the diner she works at is a little bit kitschy and old, but having to make a call on a phone actually attached to a wall with cords is a whole different experience. "I'm so sorry I woke you up. I know you were up late studying."

"Rey?" Ben asks while yawning. Rey can hear him shuffle around in his bed. "It's not even 6 AM, is everything okay?"

"You answered," Rey smiles, hoping Ben knows that she is practically beaming at him through the phone. "Everything is going to be fine. My final paper is due at 6. On the dot. I was too nervous to send it last night when I finished it. I was going to send it in this morning, after I had a chance to at least look over it for grammar and spelling, but I'm me and I--"

"Slept through your first four alarms and barely made it out the door for work?" Ben interrupts.

"Yes." Rey sighs, rolling her eyes. "Anyways. You know I can't use my cell at work, I'm probably going to get shit for this call, and you're the only number I have memorized. So I really, really need you to get on my computer, go to my email and send in my paper. I have a draft saved and everything. All you have to do is get in my drafts folder and hit send."

"Sure," Ben agrees. "Password for your laptop?"

"Capital d-y-at sign-d-hashtag-number 3-exclamation point."

"I'm on it." Rey can hear Ben's door open, the same squeak sounding over the phone that she complains about every night when he's anxious from studying and walks back and forth from his room to the kitchen every twenty minutes. "Consider it done."

"You're the best roommate, slash friend, slash just all around hero of my life," Rey blushes, stopping just short of adding 'probably the love of my life' at the end of her sentence. Thinking about her feelings for Ben is definitely a rabbit hole she is better off to avoid. "I don't know what I would do without you."

"It's the least I can do if I'm really the only phone number you have memorized."

"It's 2020, Ben," Rey teases. "The fact that I have your number memorized is really impressive."

"Why mine?"

Rey can hear water running in the background, a cabinet opening and a drawer shutting. Rey hates that she can clearly see Ben in their kitchen, making coffee, probably with a slightly grumpy look on his face because Rey knows that she put the grinder and the filters back in the wrong spot. She hates it the same way she hates knowing that Ben won't say anything about the misplaced items to her, and that if she were home he would make her cup of coffee first.

The way Ben always takes care of her first drives Rey crazy most days.

"I figure the only time I'm ever going to need to call someone without having access to my phone would be in a real emergency. And you're the person I would want to call." Rey bites her lip, shaking her head as if she could shake away how vulnerable she sounds to her own ears. "Or, if I've been arrested. And if that's the case, you're the only lawyer I know."

Ben snorts. "I have to actually finish next semester and pass the bar to be a real lawyer."

"You're going to pass," Rey gently reminds him. It's the same conversation they've been having since the beginning of the year. "And then you're going to kick legal ass all over New York."

Ben's laugh is warm. "You should go back to work, don't worry about your paper. I won't let you down."

"I know you won't. Text me what you want for dinner. I'll pick it up on my way home from my last final."

Rey hangs the phone back up on the wall and walks back out into the diner. She smiles, grabbing a rag to wipe down the front counter. Her nerves finally calm knowing that Ben wouldn't let her down and she no longer had to worry about failing one of her last classes.

Ben would just go into her draft emails and send the email on to her professor.

Into her draft emails.

Her draft emails.

Fuck.

***

Ben is not surprised when he opens Rey's email and sees that she has 37 draft emails. It's honestly exactly what he expects.

He blows across the top of his mug, watching as the steam from the cup scatters. The coffee's still too hot to drink, but it's 5:57 in the morning and Ben's only had 2 hours of sleep.

If he survives law school and passes the bar, Ben is going to need a three week long nap.

Taking a drink from the mug, Ben grimaces as the too hot liquid burns his tongue and throat, and yet at the same time warms his soul. Ben opens the draft emails, seeing the one at the top to Rey's professor. It's easy enough to look at, make sure that there's an attachment attached and that Rey's message isn't full of 2 AM Rey snark.

It's sent by 5:59.

Ben's glad that he woke up to his phone going off and that he answered. Usually, answering unknown numbers isn't something Ben does, but he's always a little more cautious when Rey is gone and it's a local number. Just in case.

Answering a spam call and wasting 5 seconds but knowing Rey is fine is worth it.

Everything about the call fell into the 'reasons to tell Rey about his feelings' column in the pro/con list he kept in his mind. Rey had his number memorized in case of emergencies.

Somehow Rey Johnson had decided that he was worthy and could be trusted to be someone she could rely on.

And for Rey, with all of the abandonment issues Ben knows about, to trust him to be there for her… it means more than Ben can say.

Falling completely in love with his best friend was not on his list of things to complete before finishing law school.

Though he thinks it might be the most worthwhile thing he's done in the three years. If he wasn't absolutely terrified of Rey not feeling the same way and ruining their friendship, Ben knows that loving her, being loved by her… that would be the honor of a lifetime.

Tilting his head back, Ben reaches for his mug and takes another drink. These are the kinds of thoughts that Ben knows he cannot dwell on so early and on such little sleep. He's going to fuck up one day and send her a text message confessing that he does actually reorganize their kitchen cabinets sometimes just because he thinks that the way she scrunches her nose when she's confused and angry is the cutest thing in the world.

Maybe he'll just text her that he loves her and not in a friend way. But in a ‘very real, very romantic, wants to take her on dates, and make her toes curl in pleasure’ kind of way.

Which is why Ben needs to go back to bed and try to sleep before studying again. His last final is tomorrow and if he isn't smart enough to list ten reasons why texting Rey about how pretty he thinks her freckles are in the sunlight, well, he has no idea how he's going to pass his trademarks and false advertising final.

Ben is just starting to close the laptop when he sees his email on one of the draft emails. He knows that he shouldn't snoop in Rey's draft emails, but it's addressed to him and it's probably just a dumb meme that she forgot to hit send on.

Because Rey sends Ben a lot of dumb memes. It's one of the things he loves about her.

Ben pushes the screen up and is stunned to find that there are a bunch of emails to him.

Before he can think his way out of doing it, Ben opens the first email.

Dear Ben:

I came home early from work and you were shirtless and exercising in the living room

First: rude.

Second: I've decided it's unfair for you to ever wear shirts and you should be shirtless all the time

Third: actually, no one else needs to know about this gross injustice and you should only not wear shirts around me

Fourth: have you always been so... big?

Fifth: I need to go to bed and think more about this.

Yours,

Rey

Ben takes a deep breath. That was not a dumb meme.

That was the furthest thing from a dumb meme.

Ben slowly releases his breath, closing out of the draft email. He should stop. He knows he should shut down Rey’s computer and that he absolutely should not open another draft email to him.

But he needs to know what else they say. For the first time in three years, there's a spark of hope inside Ben that maybe Rey feels something for him. So he looks down the list of drafts and opens one from 6 months ago on his birthday.

Ben,

It's your birthday. I know you aren't comfortable with attention being solely focused on you, but I'm so glad that you seemed to be enjoying yourself tonight.

You deserve it. You're always so hard on yourself. I wish you could see you the way I see you. How kind and caring and thoughtful you can be. It never fails to amaze me, just how wonderful you really are.

You looked gorgeous. I had to stop myself from telling you just what seeing you in that suit did to me. I almost told you how badly I want you.

I drank too much. I hate that you thought you had to leave the club to make sure that I made it back home okay, but I also… God Ben, you are always taking care of me.

No one else has done that for me.

You got me in bed, made sure I could change out of my outfit (which did you like my outfit? I thought you looked like you appreciated it when I walked out of my room, but you didn't say anything. I mean of course you didn't say anything. But I hope you did. I wore it for you.) you even brought water and aspirin for me to take tomorrow morning when I wake up.

You kissed my forehead when you tucked me in.

I just want to kiss you.

Well, I want to do more than just kiss you. But kissing seems like a good place to start.

Which is how I ended up here. Reading all of these unsent emails to you. I almost hit send on the first one I wrote. My feelings for you haven't changed.

But I'm so so scared.

I am terrified Ben.

I can't lose you. You've become the one constant in my life and I don't know what I would do without you in it.

What if you don't feel the same way? What if I ruin everything?

I should go to bed. I just wish that I were in your arms instead of alone.

I'm so tired of being alone.

Anyways.

Happy birthday, Ben.

Yours,

Rey

Ben reads the email four times before it really clicks in his brain that Rey likes him. Rey has apparently liked him for at least six months, but maybe even longer since she referred to sending her first draft email and that her feelings hadn't changed.

Her feelings. For him.

His birthday had been the best birthday he could remember. Rey had planned the entire event. She had been so excited to celebrate him that it was hard not to embrace it.

Ben's birthdays usually consisted of a phone call from his parents, maybe lunch or dinner if they were in the same city, and a few text messages from others.

Rey woke him up with pancakes and waffles, because no one should have to choose between the two best breakfast foods on their birthday, and a detailed itinerary of all her ideas for the rest of the day.

She spent the entire day with him doing whatever he wanted to do. Watching his favorite movies, ordering lunch from his favorite restaurant, confirming with everyone the dinner plans and post-dinner drink plans she had made.

Ben had almost told Rey about his feelings for her that night. After reading her email, he wishes that he had.

How much time had they missed out on being together because they were both scared?

Ben shakes his head, he still isn't sure that this all is real. Maybe Rey hadn't really called and he is still asleep. Maybe this is all a dream.

He downs the last of the coffee in his mug, running a finger across the chip on the side.

Rey had tried throwing the mug out after she moved in, saying something about how they could just use his mugs. Ben had ignored her, placing the pastel colored mugs, chips and all, next to his glossy black ones in the cabinet. He told her the blue one was his favorite and it wasn't going anywhere.

The smile she had given him lit up the entire room.

He sets the mug back down on the table, scrolling down until he finds the first draft to him. I almost hit send on the first one I wrote. The email is dated the day before she moved in.

He opens it.

Ben,

I will probably never send this email, but I also don't know that I won't. I know that I want to send it. I want to be brave and to know the truth.

The thought of doing it is just scary though.

You know that you're my best friend right? It's hard for me to imagine a world without you in it, which for me is a lot. You haven't even been in my life for a year and you've already managed to make it so that I don't know what I'll do when you decide to leave.

That's what people do, Ben, they leave me.

It's just a fact in my life and knowing that, honestly, has kept me safe. I keep people at a distance, which wasn't hard growing up because I just bounced around from foster home to foster home and school to school. But now I'm here and I'm not going anywhere new anytime soon.

And then there's you.

For some reason, I believe you're not going anywhere either.

Which is scarier to me. I've never had anyone stay before. I don't know what to do with that.

A part of me needs to believe that you're going to leave. So when you do eventually move on and leave me behind it'll at least be something I knew was going to eventually happen.

Anyways. I've gotten really sidetracked here.

I've been going to therapy. Which you already know, since you're the one who kept telling me that it was something I should look into. Thanks for that by the way. You were right.

She suggested that I write letters to the people who have left or hurt me. Not to send, but to just, get my thoughts and feelings out of my head.

It helped.

Which is why I'm writing this email to you, even though I'll never be brave enough to send it. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about you, Ben. I need them out of my head.

I love you.

I am in love with you.

Not in a platonic way. In a very romantic way.

Almost everything you do drives me crazy and makes my heart warm and my face glow.

I want to kiss you and hold your hand. I want to find out if my head will fit in the crook of your neck when you hold me the way I think that it will. I want to commit the taste of your skin to my memory. I want to know the marks on your body better than I know my own. I want to know what you look like when you lose control and give into pleasure.

It's really apparent, I think, the way I feel about you.

Only you don't seem to notice. And I need to admit to myself that it's because you don't think of me that way.

Which is fine. I get it.

You're you… and I'm just, well, I'm just me.

But I'm moving in tomorrow and I just needed to get these thoughts out. Otherwise I'm a little worried I might just blurt it out when you help me wash the dishes or eat dinner with me. Which I'm sure sounds a little strange, but after a lifetime without these moments…

I imagine living with you is only going to make me fall more in love with you.

Maybe I'll just have to write you more.

Yours,

Rey

Ben doesn't bother to count how many times he rereads the email. He just keeps going back to the top as soon as he reads her name and starts again. He doesn't stop until he is sure he could repeat every word without looking at the screen.

And then he continues to read the email again, just to make sure.

Rey loves him.

Even with the words clearly on the screen for Ben to see, it's hard for him to believe. He's been in love with Rey since before she moved in. The idea that Rey has felt the same way the entire time doesn't make sense.

Ben is objectively smart. He isn't even shy about his intelligence. In fact any given classmate of his would likely describe him as an insufferable know it all. Rey loving him without Ben catching on for over two years is inconceivable. He would have noticed. He would have seen the signs. Certainly he would--

He reads the email again. And again. And again.

Every time he tries to find a way to read anything into it beyond 'Rey has admitted in three different emails, to various degrees, that she is physically attracted to you and that she is in love with you' he rereads the emails.

He doesn't read any more beyond the three. There are plenty of drafts to him that are unread, but he grasps the threads between them to form the overall picture without needing to read the individual emails.

He feels guilty if he thinks for too long about reading the ones he did. He has information now that he didn't have before. He reasons that it is information that he should have though. Because now that he knows and he thinks to any given memory of Rey, with just a tiny bit of certainty that Rey loves him…

Well it's the easiest thing in the world to see.

When he really thinks about it, Rey doesn't hide the way she loves him, she shines with it. He can see it in the way she smiles at him when he pulls the blanket from the back of the couch and tucks it around her during a movie. Her face soft and warm as she instinctively burrows into the heat.

He can see it in the way she keeps finding reasons to touch his arm when they are walking. Her hand guiding his elbow when she's giving directions. A finger tapping on his wrist when she wants him to follow her gaze. Her arm interlocked with his when she's had just a little too much to drink to still be steady in her heels.

It's certainly the way she trusts that he won't let her fall.

Ben closes the laptop, stretching as he stands. He places the empty coffee mug in the sink, rinsing out the small drops of coffee lingering in the bottom of the glass. The time on the stove clock mocks him.

7:34.

Rey isn't going to be home for hours. She'll go straight from the diner to her final. And he doesn't want to worry her by texting her. Especially when he knows she won't have a lot of time, if any, to text him back.

He isn't even sure what he would say to her.

He could study. He should study. He tries to study, but it's pointless. He can't really focus when at least half of his brain is still focused on Rey's emails.

Ben waits. Impatiently watching the clock and attempting to will time to pass faster. He reads his note cards in between planning the possible ways his conversation with Rey may go when she finally, finally gets home.

It's a long day.

***

Rey glances down at her phone for approximately the millionth time on her walk from the diner to campus. She's almost run into ten different people while walking because she's too focused on her phone and not where she is going.

There are no messages from Ben. No missed calls either.

Maybe Ben didn't see the emails. There's no way Ben would see the draft emails to him and not read them. And if he read them he absolutely would have texted her about them by now.

Right? Right.

Unless he thought that letting her down over a text message or a phone call is too impersonal. Maybe he is just waiting for her to get home to break her heart.

She should have just turned in the paper late. So what if she failed and had to retake the class over the summer and figure out a way to pay for it out of pocket? At least she would still have her best friend.

A drop of water hits Rey's face, Rey looks up from her phone and glares at the darkened sky. She doesn't remember rain being mentioned in the weather forecast, but that hardly matters as it starts raining harder.

Rey checks one more time for any messages before sliding her phone into her bag and running the rest of the way to class. She makes it inside of the building just before a large round of thunder and the rain starts to pour.

She sits at her desk, waiting for the rest of her classmates to show up. She pulls out her phone, debating if she should send Ben a message.

Hey! By now you probably read the emails. This is really embarrassing and obviously I should have deleted them instead of saving them. I'm an idiot. Please let me know when you need me to move out by. Sorry for making this so awkward.

You find two years worth of love letters and you have NOTHING to say to me??????

I assume that if you felt anything similar toward me you would have said something by now. Can we just pretend that you never saw them? I don't want this to change everything.

The professor walks in, handing off the test packets to another student to begin passing around.

There's not enough time for Rey to address any of this with Ben in a message. But she can't stomach the idea of not hearing from him at all before going home.

Rey: Hey! Getting ready to start my final, you never said what you want me to grab for dinner on my way home?

***

Rey hands in her test to her professor with a tight smile and a small wave. She's pretty sure she passed, which at this point, is all she can hope for.

She spent half of the time thinking of different scenarios that could be a possibility when she went back to the apartment. Anything near passing would be fine.

She walks out of the classroom and pulls out her phone. She has two messages from Ben.

Ben: Actually, I was thinking I would make dinner. Something to celebrate your last final.

Ben: Maybe something to distract me from studying.

Rey sighs as she walks toward the exit of the building. Maybe Ben didn't read the draft emails after all. Even if he didn't have feelings for her, surely they'd be enough to at least distract him.

Rey had poured her heart out in some of those emails. She knows there are at least a few where she went on and on about what she thought about Ben's body and the way his hair looked with him growing it out. A few where she made it clear about her thoughts about how kissable his lips looked, how she wondered what his fingers would feel like tracing her curves.

Even if he didn't have feelings for her, certainly he would be distracted by some of those emails.

Maybe she won't go home. Maybe she can avoid Ben long enough that she won't have to find out if he read the emails or not. She won't have to find out if she's ruined one of the best things in her life.

The sun is bright when Rey steps outside. The sidewalks are a darker grey, small puddles pooled around the cracks and uneven slabs.

Rey zips her jacket up, shivering slightly as the wind picks up speed.

She spends most of the walk home trying to fight against her disappointment at the thought that Ben hadn't gone through the emails to him. She had spent so much of her energy imagining Ben breaking it to her that he didn't feel the same way, but a part of her had been hoping that maybe, maybe he felt the same.

The idea that Ben just didn't read the emails was worse.

Maybe Rey should just tell him. Get her feelings out in the open and see what comes from it. There was a chance, a small chance, but still a chance that he felt the same way. Or that he could be open to the idea.

Rey: Sounds good! Need me to stop for anything? Dessert? Wine? Hard alcohol to help with the studying?

Ben doesn't respond until she's almost home.

Ben: No. The only thing missing is you.

***

Ben fidgets with the pen in his hand, twirling it in between his fingers. The pasta is done, the french bread is in the oven.

The only thing that is missing is Rey.

He glances down at his phone to check and see if Rey had responded, but there's no notification. She should be home soon and Ben still doesn't know what he's going to do when he sees her.

He knows what he wants to do. He doesn't want to waste anymore time. He wants to tell her that she's beautiful, because she is, even if she'll fight it because she always complains about how gross she feels after a shift at the diner when she has to head straight to class. She’s always beautiful though, and now he just wants to tell her that. He wants to be able to tell her that when she wakes up in the morning and she’s scrunching her face up against the harshness of the sun sneaking in, or when she is passionate about something and it lights up her entire face.

He wants to tell her that he loves her. That he has been in love with her the entire time too. He’s just not sure how.

It doesn't seem like enough to just say that he loves her. She wrote him fucking love letters. And even though Ben only read three, he knows that there are more and that they are just as lovely and somehow all about her feelings for him. She deserves more than just him saying that he feels the same way.

She deserves to know about the day he realized he was in love with her. She deserves to know about the way the slope of her neck into her shoulder drives him crazy. She deserves to know that he pretends to fall asleep during their movie nights because then she'll fall asleep and curl herself around him on the couch.

The oven beeps and Ben stands from the table, he closes his book, grabbing his note cards and pens and highlighters. He dumps the items into his bedroom, before walking back into the kitchen to pull the french bread out from the oven.

Ben's sliding the bread onto a cutting board, knife in his hand, when the door opens and Rey walks in.

Ben struggles to remember how to breathe as he stares at her. She looks beautiful. But she's nervous, her fingers are playing with the sleeve of her jacket, pulling and twisting at the loose fabric. She shuts the door, taking a step into the kitchen.

She's staring at Ben and he can see it now. She loves him and he can see it. How had he never noticed it before?

Maybe he really was an idiot.

He had spent all day fighting his own nerves, trying to come up with the perfect plan on how to tell Rey that he never thought about what she must have spent the entire day doing.

Obviously, she knew that she sent him into her draft emails and that there was a chance that he would see the emails.

Did she know that he read them? Is that why she is looking at him with wide eyes, her mouth slightly open, as if she is almost about to say something, but she doesn't.

Of course she's worried that he doesn't feel the same way. Why else would she keep writing him draft emails while not saying anything or giving him any real signs about her feelings?

He sets the knife down next to the bread and takes a step toward her.

"Dinner smells good," she says, a little breathless.

Ben doesn't say anything in response, he just takes another step, closing the distance between him. Rey glances up at him, her body tense as she takes a small step back.

Ben reaches out for her, his hand settling against her lower back, gently urging her to come closer to him.

"Ben," she breathes, stepping forward, her hand hovering over his bicep for a second before she commits and rests her hand against the sleeve of his shirt.

"It was the first night you stayed over," Ben says, brushing a stray piece of Rey's hair behind her ear. "It was… two, maybe three months before you moved in. You came over to study. We had dinner first and then you demanded that we watch a movie before we started studying. Something about how our brains needed a break and we'd be better off waiting for a few hours to get started on our all nighter."

Ben smiles, mostly for himself, remembering how cute she had been arguing with him.

"We didn't study," Ben continues, running a finger down her cheek. "You fell asleep twenty minutes into the movie. You looked so peaceful and beautiful and I just… all I could think was about how all I wanted in life was to share it with you. Because I was in love with you."

Rey's expression is soft and a little bewildered as he continues. She turns her head slightly, her lips quickly pressing against his thumb.

"I've been in love with you this entire time. I'm sorry I was too scared to tell you. I was nervous… I am nervous that I'm going to ruin this. I love you and I know, Rey, I know that nothing is ever going to change that. I'm going to love you forever. I can feel it in my bones. Be with me? I know it's scary--"

Rey pulls at Ben's shirt until he bends down and she cuts off his sentence by kissing him. Ben sighs against her lips, his eyes closing as he places her free hand on her hips. She deepens the kiss, her tongue running across his, her fingers burying themselves in his hair.

The way Rey feels pressed against him, the pressure of her mouth on his, it's better than he could have imagined.

It's over too soon, Rey breaks the kiss, a large smile spreading across her face. Ben's grin is just as large and toothy. He stares at her for a second, trying to memorize the way she looks in that moment to his brain. Then he pulls her into his chest and kisses her hair.

"I love you too," Rey says after a moment. "And I agree that it is scary. But I want to be with you. It's worth it."

***

Ben's kisses are something Rey could get addicted to. He kisses with his whole body, the way he angles in his legs to brush against hers, the pressure of his thumb pressing into her hip, his fingernails lightly scratching down her spine. And his lips.

God his lips.

She had been right about his lips. They were absolutely made for kissing.

He left kisses all over her face, her cheek, her jaw, just above her eyebrow. Rey tugged at the bottom of his shirt with one hand, the other quickly moving to run along the exposed skin of his stomach.

He is so warm and solid underneath her hand.

Ben pulls away just long enough to pull his shirt off. Rey spends a few seconds taking in the sight of him shirtless, his eyes darker than she has ever seen them as he watches her watch him.

"You're so gorgeous," she says because she can. Then she moves to pull her own shirt off.

The black bra, which was mostly see through mesh, that she had picked out that morning appears to have been a good choice, judging by the way Ben swallows at the sight, his eyes slowly moving down her body.

He places one hand over her right breast, gently squeezing before taking her nipple and rolling it in between his fingers.

Rey moans, pushing herself forward into his hand, desperate for more friction. he repeats the actions on her left breast and Rey can't control the needy sounds falling from her lips.

Ben pulls away then, dropping his hands to her waist as he takes a step back to put distance between them.

Rey whines, instinctively following after him.

"The food is going to be cold if we don't stop," he explains, nodding at the pasta that's on the counter.

Rey shakes her head, lifting up on her toes to kiss him again.

"Ben," she says, her fingers digging into his shoulder as she tries to find her balance. "I don't give a fuck about the food."

***

Ben groans at Rey's words, helpless to pull away when she's saying things like that and smiling against his lips.

He kisses her, while moving them until her back is pressed against the wall. His fingers making quick work of the button on her jeans.

This is going too fast. He knows that he should stop, that they should eat and he should ask her to go on an actual date, or to be his girlfriend, or fuck, his wife, whatever she wants.

But he can't stop kissing her. And judging by the way she's trying to undo his belt, she doesn't want to stop either. It's hard to argue against the side of his brain begging him to give into the pleasure and to take her into his room when she's pushing his pants and boxers down just enough to run her fingers down his cock.

"Rey, look at me," he begs, his hand grips the corner of the wall as he fails to stop his hips from pushing forward. The way Rey's hands feel wrapped around him, moving at a slow and steady pace as she raises her eyes to his face. Her hand picks up speed, and her eyes slightly narrow in concentration, like she's trying to decipher every twitch of his face so she can make him do it again is too much.

"Yeah, Ben?" Rey says as an answer, her eyes not leaving his. She looks like the picture of innocence as she holds his gaze, her eyes full of love, her cheeks slightly pink, and her lips turned up in a smile.

It's difficult to believe that she can keep that expression on her face while giving him the best hand job of his life.

"We should, uh, we should talk," he manages to get out, his grip on the wall tightening. "About all of this and what it means. I don't want… we don't have to rush into anything. We have time."

Rey's hand stops moving and if Ben was capable of holding on to more than a few of his brain cells he would have been embarrassed at the way he kept moving his hips long after she stopped.

She holds his chin in her other hand, tilting his head down so she can look directly into his eyes before she leans up. The kiss is chaste and short, it leaves Ben wanting more.

"I don't want to talk," she says, moving her hand down his length again. "I don't want to wait either Ben," he shudders at the combination of her words and the way she twists her hand around the head of his penis. "I just want you."

***

Ben doesn't say anything, he tilts his head and looks at Rey like he's trying to decide what he did to deserve her and what he wants to do next. He's all action once he's made up his mind.

He places his hand on top of Rey's, and Rey pumps him faster, feeling emboldened by the feel of Ben's hands on hers. He moves her hand away off of him, pinning it above her head and against the wall.

"Ben," Rey sighs, half heartedly fighting against his hold, "I wasn't done--"

Rey stops talking while she watches Ben push down his pants to the floor. He picks her up and Rey wraps her arms around his neck, and her legs around his waist.

Heat pools in her stomach when he starts to walk them towards his room. His mouth is on her again. Ben's room is only about 30 steps away from the kitchen, but it seems to take forever before Ben finally makes it to his door.

Ben holds her against the door, carefully shifting her in his arms so that he can move one hand from her to open the door. Rey uses that as an opportunity to suck at the skin just below his jaw. The arm wrapped around her tightens and Rey can hear Ben's sharp intake of breath once she's moved her lips away.

So she does it again to the skin below his ear, just to see if she gets the same reaction from him.

Ben carefully sets her down on his bed. He settles his knees on either side of her and bends down to kiss her. His mouth is hot and desperate against hers as he unclasps her bra. Rey leans back on the bed and helps him slide the straps down her arms.

Rey lifts her hips up so Ben can remove her underwear and jeans. She runs her fingers along the edge of his hip bone.

"You're beautiful," Ben says, his voice lower than Rey has heard it before. He drags his thumb along the curve of her breast and across her nipple. "You're so beautiful Rey--" his fingers trail down along her waist and stomach until he barely grazes her clit with the pad of his finger.

But it's enough to send small tendrils of pleasure throughout her body. He moves lower, running a finger through the wetness at her opening. She nods at the questioning look he gives her.

He pushes a finger inside of her, curling it up as he sets a slow, leisurely pace with his movements. Rey moans, trying to urge him on to go faster.

"Ben, please," Rey begs, though she isn't quite sure what she's asking him to do. "I need more."

Ben drops to his knees, hooking Rey's legs over his shoulder. He adds another finger, picking up speed while he places wet kisses on her thighs and hip bone. His nose brushes against her clit when he moves his head to pay attention to the other side of her body.

Rey whines, lifting her hips to try to find something to give her friction where she needs it most. Ben grins into her thigh.

"You're a tease," Rey huffs. "An absolute damn tease and I need--"

"I know what you need," Ben whispers, his breath hot on her center and then he finally, finally lowers his mouth to her clit.

Rey's brain ceases to function when he sucks and pleasure washes over her body. She lifts her hips up and she's only slightly annoyed when Ben's hand pushes her back down to the bed.

Ben works her up easily. He isn't shy about trying different things, and the way he manages to work his tongue with his fingers and his mouth is magic.

Rey threads her fingers in his hair, she tugs on the strands as he brings her closer and closer to the edge.

"Ben," Rey whimpers, her back arching. She's fairly confident the grip she has on his hair is actually painful, but she can't bring herself to let go and Ben doesn't seem to mind. At least, it isn't stopping him from devouring her.

She doesn't want to come yet. She wants to stay in this moment forever. She needs it to last longer so she can commit the way her nerves are buzzing with pleasure and her heart is swelling with love and comfort to her memory.

Ben sucks harder. The hand on her stomach moves up and he is pinching her nipple and she comes.

He works her through her orgasm. His mouth and tongue slowing their movements against her clit until she swats at his head.

"Too sensitive," she mutters, her eyes still closed. He laughs against her skin, resting his chin just above her pubic bone.

Rey leans up, pressing her elbows into the mattress. "Hi," she says, grinning down at him.

"Hi." Ben sounds a little breathless, but he matches her smile and presses a kiss against her skin.

His hair is a mess and Rey's stomach swoops with the knowledge that she did that. She's the reason this gorgeous man was out of breath and his usually perfectly tousled hair was all out of place.

He moves up her body, running his tongue along her exposed skin until his head is hovering just over her own.

"I love you," he says. And if it were possible Rey knows that he would be able to see her heart beat out of her chest.

His face is so open and honest it surprises Rey. Because she knows that he said he loved her earlier, but there's still a part of her that isn't sure that he can mean it.

But then he looks at her with such adoration in his eyes and she's not sure how she could doubt him.

"I love you too," she says, beaming up at him as he closes the distance between them.

She can taste herself on his lips, but she isn't complaining as he opens his mouth to deepen the kiss.

"Condom?" she asks, breaking the kiss before placing smaller kisses along his jaw.

He nods, moving off of her and moving to the other edge of the bed. He opens the top drawer of his nightstand and pulls out a condom. Rey just watches as he tears open the wrapper, pinches the tip of the condom and rolls it down his length.

"Come here," he says and Rey rolls over and makes her way to Ben. She settles herself over him, resting her hands on his shoulders and sinks down on him.

Ben let's her set the pace, but he meets her thrust for thrust and it makes Rey clench against him. He feels so good inside of her, and then he uses his hands, dragging them down on her spine, across her chest, down her stomach until he reaches her clit and he presses down and Rey starts to see stars. Her movements above him stutter and she knows she isn't going to last long if he keeps that up.

"That's it," he says, "Are you going to come for me?" He puts more pressure on his finger, drawing small circles on her clit.

Rey sighs his name, squeezing her nails into his shoulder. He's taken over, controlling the speed of her thrusts as she just let's him, too lost in the pleasure pulsing through her veins.

"Ben," she groans when his mouth wraps around her nipple, his teeth sharp against her skin.

She comes when he bites down, her vision blurring. He keeps fucking into her chasing his own orgasm.

He comes silently, his breath hot on her neck. Rey catches her breath, enjoying the way Ben can't keep his hands still. He runs his hands over her collarbone, a finger trailing across her jawline, another down her spine.

She rolls off of him once she feels like she can take a full breath without immediately trying to suck in another. He moves around, removing the condom and tossing it into a trash can near his bed.

Rey is glad to discover that her head does fit into the crook of his neck just like she imagined. She tastes the salt on his skin when she leaves an opened mouth kiss to his shoulder. She wraps her arm around his chest and curls herself around him.

"So, you read the emails then?" Rey asks with a small laugh.

Ben kisses her head. "I read three of them, yeah."

"Just three?"

Ben sighs, his fingers continuing to run across her body as if he can't get enough of her skin. "I felt bad. Reading through emails you didn't send me, it felt like I was invading your privacy."

"I'm glad you did," Rey admits, pulling him closer to her. "Otherwise we might not be here."

Ben hums, his chest vibrating underneath her hand. "You have a point."

"Which ones did you read?"

"Um," Ben hesitates. Rey can feel his heartbeat pick up pace. "A recent one about me working out? And then the one on my birthday and the first one."

"Those were good ones," Rey laughs. "You could have read the other ones."

"You could send them to me." Ben drags his fingers through her hair. "I don't want you to hide from me anymore."

"Maybe I will," Rey teases. "Now that I know you might feel the same way about me."

"I do feel the same way," Ben amends her words. "I'm crazy about you. I've been crazy about you."

"But will you be tomorrow?" Rey asks, hating how needy her voice sounds to her own ears. "And the next day?"

"Always," Ben answers. There's no hesitancy to his answer.

"Always is a long time," Reys says, kissing his neck. "Don't make promises you can't keep."

"I never do," Ben promises. "I'm always going to love you."

"Me too," Rey says, her voice heavy with sleep. "I'm always going to love you."

"Maybe tomorrow we can read the rest of them together?" Ben asks.

"Yeah," Rey smiles. "We can do that."

#reylo #reylo fanfic #reylo fanfiction #reylo fic #reylo au #my fic

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howlingsaturn · 4 years

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all the things i love about you

Every morning Callum wakes up before Ben, just when the first rays of sunshine sneak their way through the blinds and into their bedroom, bathing everything in a soft, warm glow. Callum loves mornings like this; mornings where he can stare at Ben until his eyes burn and his heart feels just ready to jump out of his chest. He never thought he'd be here, sharing a bed with another man, a man he loves and who loves him in return. Years of repression and not knowing who he is, Callum feels at ease here, finally. Reaching out a hand to move gentle fingertips along the bare skin of Ben's shoulder, Callum knows exactly where he belongs.

He shuffles closer, pressing a kiss to the nape of Ben's neck, and exhales. He shuts his eyes close, burying his nose deeper into Ben's skin, and thinks of a way to describe this feeling. He comes up short, his mind going blank when Ben twists in his arms and lazily blinks up at him.

God, Callum thinks, he's so beautiful.

He could paint galaxies of his eyes and speak poetry of his heart if only these things came easy for him. They don't, not at all, but Callum still finds himself trying to picture what it'd look like, how the words would feel on his tongue. He's fallen like that, wholeheartedly and all consuming.

Seeing the look in Ben's eyes, Callum's throat begins to itch with the need to say it out loud, to confess all the things he loves about Ben, all the things that drive him absolutely crazy.

Ben swallows and licks his lips, still blinking away the sleepiness, and there goes number one; Ben's lips. They can drive him wild and it's not just about the way they feel on his body, leaving goosebumps wherever they go, it's more about the way they move when he makes a joke, how they twitch in the corners when he smiles, the way they open in surprise when Callum makes him laugh so hard he can barely keep himself together. It's the way Ben speaks, rushed and often without thought. It's the way Ben's voice rises when he's desperate or quietens when he's distracted. It's in the way his lips curl into a pout when he wants something from Callum and Callum has to kiss the smirk that always follows right off of him.

Ben's eyes, as they finally clear, are dark, so dark that Callum thinks he's gonna fall into them and never find his way back out. They are tricksters sometimes, Ben has gotten too good at hiding what he feels, and sometimes they paint pictures Callum cannot decipher, no matter how hard he tries. They're too tense, too chaotic for Callum to make sense of. It's only when tears build in Ben's eyes, a crashing of waves that sweep away the colours he's mixed, that Callum can fully read him. He loves that moment of vulnerability, as painful as it is each time, but Ben's never as honest with him as he is in those moments. He lies himself bare, trusting Callum to pick up the pieces of whatever's been broken, and Callum can't help but soak in that feeling of being wanted, of being needed.

There's a sharp twinge in his cheek and Callum blinks rapidly a few times, eyes scanning over Ben's face in confusion. Ben stares at him with raised brows, a knowing smile on his face.

"Stop staring at me like that," he says, voice raspy and deep, and it makes Callum's stomach twist, "You're gonna give me an ego."

"Didn't think it could get any bigger."

Ben starts frowning and stares at Callum's lips intensely before he sighs, closing his eyes and turning his face into the pillow with a groan.

"Hey," Callum murmurs, extending a hand and stroking along his cheek, his palm coming to rest against his neck and Ben squeezes his eyes shut even harder. Callum calls out his name but when he gets no reaction, he leans over and presses a kiss to Ben's forehead, lingering. When he pulls back to look at him Ben starts moving. He blindly reaches for Callum's shirt amid the blanket and pulls himself close with force, tugging his face into Callum's neck with a pained noise.

Callum's a little shocked if he's honest. It's not that Ben isn't affectionate, he is, but he's never seeked out Callum's presence the way he does right now, breathing heavily into Callum's chest and clawing at his shirt like a lifeline.

Callum leaves him be for a moment, soothingly running his fingers along his back as he waits for Ben to speak. He doesn't. He tilts his head after a few minutes and seeks out Callum's lips instead, grabbing at his cheeks as if he can't get him closer quick enough. As Callum kisses him back breathlessly, he mentally writes another thing onto the list of things he loves about Ben. His boldness. Ben does whatever he wants whenever he feels like it, mostly without thinking of the consequences. He's confident and unapologetic about it and it used to drive Callum mad at first, the way he'd pushed and pulled as if it was all a game. Now, Callum has learned to see it for the way it is: an act of surrender. Ben risks a lot when he's being reckless that way, he opens his heart and lets himself be vulnerable. It's something Callum hasn't understood for a very long time but that he's learned to appreciate nonetheless. So he lets Ben kiss him senseless and opens his heart up in return.

Callum does eventually break the kiss, smiling as Ben chases his lips.

"Easy," he says with a laugh and Ben stares at him blankly, his eyes suddenly welling up with tears.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Callum asks and it seems to make Ben frustrated. He shakes his head with a frown and raises his hand with pleading eyes when Callum opens his mouth again.

"Please," he says, "Don't talk."

Callum bites his tongue, he's proper worried now, but there's something in Ben's eyes that makes him halt, something in the way he clenches his jaw as if he's in pain, that seems to tell Callum not to pry further. So he nods, stroking over Ben's bicep in a soothing matter, and Ben relaxes visibly. He closes his eyes again, making it impossible for Callum to read him but Callum sees his bottom lip tremble for a short second before Ben hides his face back into Callum's chest.

Number four, Callum thinks, makes him both love and hate Ben. He doesn't show it, doesn't ever want people to know about it, but Ben feels more than anyone Callum's ever met. Ben feels deeply and selflessly and Callum has experienced a fair share of moments where he's read it wrong, where he thought Ben had been self-centred and thoughtless when he's been the exact opposite. Callum counts himself lucky, being someone worthy of a love like that, but he also knows that it's the same kind of love he's feeling in his own chest, the same amount of love he's got floating in his veins.

Still, Ben's selflessness makes him angry sometimes, how he feels like he has to keep everything to himself so he can protect Callum from the inevitable fallout. It makes him angry right now, the way Ben hides from him and shuts him down, but it also makes that itch in his throat even worse. The itch that wants Callum to burst it all out, every tiny little detail he's obsessed over, every word and action that made him fall in love with Ben over and over again. He's not allowed to talk though and something in him is grateful for it, he's not sure either of them are ready to hear of the depth of his feelings. As Ben kisses the hollow of Callum's throat, Callum thinks about the trust Ben has for him; the kind of trust that lets him do what he does now. He knows Callum won't push, he knows Callum will patiently wait for him until he's ready and he knows Callum will stand by him no matter what.

And so here it is, number five; Ben's love for him. Ben lies about a lot of things, probably more than Callum will ever know, but not once has he questioned Ben's feelings for him. They had argued about it before but Ben had made clear then that Callum can be suspicious of everything Ben does but he should never, even for a second, think that Ben doesn't love him. Ben's both complicated and easy in that regard. He does these sketchy things to protect the people he cares about or to make his father proud and Callum understands that, to some extent. But Ben has the tendency to twist words in his mind, seek approval where it shouldn't matter and push away the people closest to him. He's a storm and Callum has found himself stuck in his gale more often than not but he also knows that there's more to it. He knows of the soft breeze after thunder, of Ben's tenderness and apologetic touches. He knows of the sunshine, warm and comforting in the depth of Ben's eyes. It's in the way he kisses the raindrops away, soothing and gentle, and Callum finds himself falling in love all over, every time. As frustrating and challenging as it can be sometimes, there's not a single thing that Callum doesn't love about Ben and nothing will ever change that.

#this might be a bit ooc but i couldn't help myself #callum's hearteyes looked straight into my soul okay #i have not seen the ep!!#ballum fic #ben x callum #ee #saturnsthoughts #howlingsaturnsfics

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wiener-blut · 4 years

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concert report, I guess

Idk if anyone wants to hear this, but here’s my memories from the Lindemann show in Leipzig, 14th february 2020. Keep in mind, all of this is my own opinion, I don’t mean to attack anyone here, and that I could easily be mistaken with some, my memory loves playing games with me :^) Also if you’re still to attend a concert and don’t want to be spoilered, avoid this, obviously.

Waiting.

Drove by bike to the venue, arrived at around 1.30/2pm. Around 15 people were already there, waiting. They were really nice altogether. Into 3pm, people started to form a disciplined queue. Shitty weather, but at least no heavy rain. Cold, though. 4pm; I decided to drive back home to get rid of our bag (on my way to the bikes a man in his fifties asked me who’s playing tonight, pointing at the crowd, bewildered, I responded “Lindemann, front singer of Rammstein”, he was like “I read he was born here!!” super excited that he knew – he was cute lol so confused by how crazy people are); got into a rather unpleasant rainfall on my way back to the venue. 5pm; people were told to not stand on the street, so people gathered all around us, ignoring the built queue from before; assholes tried to cut in line. Got really crowded, people in front us were still being really kind and considerate, people behind us not so much. Last hour went by quickly, good company around us, save for some idiots. 6.30pm; security let us in – people from behind were pushing, not cool. Inside the venue, it was really chill, I even waited for @haifisch-ohne-traenen, walked inside, people gathered around in the middle, low-key ran to our spot in the first row, right in front of Peter AW YEAH!!! Another wait til 8pm, filled with squeezing through people to get to the toilet and back, and chatting with the two guys behind us.

Jadu.

Shit, I’m so gay. She literally owned the stage so hard and her band mates were so cute and the keyboarder interacted with us a lot, he kept grinning at us whenever he saw us singing along; a perfect opening to an awesome night.

Aesthetic Perfection.

Surprisingly good tbh? Wasn’t the biggest fan after listening to some songs on youtube, but they’re a banger live. Really set the mood for the main act.

Lindemann.

Oh boy, where to start. First thing we saw was a video of Till in a diaper, with a bald head and the goggles from drsg’95 (at least I think it were those?), running and dancing around on the street, sucking his thumb (note: I reckon this video was shot a couple years ago). Actually hilarious, a surprisingly, and welcome, light hearted start to the show. I’m just gonna go through this song by song, because I suck at remembering things and need some kind of guidance lol.

Skills in Pills

Good song, good opener. The crowd went apeshit, it felt like the air was exploding, really unbelievably powerful. Peter was looking at us (naturally, because we were quite literally in his face), making faces, which he kept doing throughout the whole concert. Till was wandering across the stage, it seemed like he was noticing a lot of people, esp. in the first row, including us, huehue.

Ladyboy

One of my favorite Lindemann songs. Was so cool seeing and hearing it live, I went absolutely wild. I think this was the first time they changed places, and Jonathan (the one with the braided pigtails) came over to us, and whoops I fell in love.

Fat

Not the biggest fan of the song, admittedly. Still a good one. Good placement. The first time I glanced at the screen behind them, only did it one or two times more. I came here for the music, not some fucked up porn clips, I can easily find those on pornhub, thank you.

Ich Weiß Es Nicht

Never liked the verse, but the chorus is so touching to me, idk why. Sang my heart out at the chorus.

Allesfresser

Okay so I came prepared. I knew what was gonna happen. First half of the song was incredible, another fav song. Screamed my head off. Then, cakes were brought and ngl, it kinda took away from this awesome song for me. I really, really did not want to end up having cake smeared all over me by the first third of the concert. So I watched out for them, praying that they wouldn’t aim in our direction. Ended up with a few lil teeny tiny sprimkles on my arm and in my hair (that actually came from a cake Jonathan yeeted over our heads :3c), nothing too bad. Cake was actually delicious. Last cake was thrown by Sebastian, Peter’s son, Till was standing in the middle, in front of the drums, stealthily (so he thought) pointing to our side, but Sebastian didn’t catch it and threw it into the audience across from us and boy, you should’ve seen Till’s face lol. He looked so mad, internally. Also I was really happy to get to rewatch a clip from Hänsel und Gretel on the screen.

Frau & Mann

I have never seen a crowd go that hard to a song. Probably the loudest on the audience’s side. Was jumping a lot, Till came over a lot. Guess bobbing boobs really are an efficient Till-magnet. Actually, when the line “Kann dich nicht vergessen” (“Cannot forget you”) came on, Till pointed directly at us, like no fucking lie, we just froze. I know, I can’t be for sure, blah blah, but come on, just let me believe he pointed directly at us ok. There’s a video on youtube, where you see him pointing into the crowd at that line, that’s where we stood.

Knebel

Best choice they could’ve made regarding the placing of the song. Everyone was still hyped up from Frau & Mann, Knebel topped it. Starting out so calm and lovely, I really like the first half of the song. Beautiful lighting, they were so pretty in the blue light. Scream point hit, Lindemann hoaxed us into screaming MUND but made a break, Till shaking his head at us. Haha. Funny funny. Eh. I knew it was gonna happen, so it fell a bit flat for me personally, but okay I guess. Crowd went absolutely apeshit. So insane.

Home Sweet Home

Beautiful song, so heartfelt and a really good way to calm down after Frau & Mann and Knebel. Almost cried, ngl.

Cowboy

I. Fucking. Love. This. Song. Second time I looked at the screen and wow ngl, Till looked really good on the rodeo machine thing with his cowboy hat on lol. Also the song where Jonathan came over again and I made a heart with my hands and he smiled at me and :’)))

Golden Shower

Such a good song. My heart went big badum badum every time Peter shouted “Cunt” into the mic right in front of us, it felt like we were bonding just through shouting “Cunt” in unison lol. Also there was this part of them taking turns in raising their arms to the audience in time to the music, and I was laughing my ass off, because while Peter, Jonathan, and Sebastian all were perfectly in synch with the beat, Till always was a tad off and idk man, this shit was just so funny to me like c’mon Till, it’s not that hard.

Blut

Ah, yes. Like I said, we came prepared. We had our hoodies safely (and dryly) brought to the coatroom before the concert started so we were READY to get wet. The one thing I didn’t know though, the sprinkler system at the edge of the stage started right at the beginning of the song. I expected it to go off in like the middle of the song, or with the first chorus. So, sprinklers started, I saw the water coming. I thought “ah okay it’s just a little drizzle”, but boy, I was wrong. It felt like we were soaked after the second (and last) time we got sprayed. And actually? It was so nice. You know how concerts just make you all sweaty and drain your body from all water? I wouldn’t recommend trying to drink the water that was sprayed over us (it just had a weird smell to it, idk), but it was a welcome cooling, in that moment. Just imagine you feel like a little crop in the blazing sun, and then, finally, you get watered. Bye bye make up, but I just didn’t care lol. I don’t want to know what we looked like after that song. About the song itself; I didn’t mind the “interruption” at all, Blut is a decent song imo, but nothing more, so it didn’t bother me as much as the cake war during Allesfresser.

Platz Eins

Another top fav song for me. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but Till and Peter climbing into that balloon thing and shuffling “out of reach” actually heightened my hype?? Like I could concentrate on really letting go during the song, screaming the lyrics out like there was no tomorrow. Also watching Jonathan and Sebastian’s little choreography was so entertaining. Jonathan being lifted up high also was something for the eye, at least for me :^) Also I remember the light show because it was gay. As in, so many vibrant rainbow colors. When Till and Peter returned to their starting point, Till climbed out, and Peter was holding his nose like Till just farted lol. The balloon started deflating and Peter mouthed an “OH NO” and when he climbed out, he made jazzy hands like “hell yeah guys I made it, I didn’t die in here”. Peter is a good man.

Praise Abort

Tbh, I don’t have many memories for this one. For me, one of Lindemann’s weaker songs, although it still slaps, don’t get me wrong. Just not one of my favorites. Only thing I remember is being happy about seeing the ballerinas from the mv on the screen in the background.

Fish On

Here we go again. After Praise Abort, I asked @haifisch-ohne-traenen if we wanted to change places, she looked at me like “You sure?” and I was like “Yeah, absolutely” – “You know which song comes next?” – “Oh. Nevermind lol”. I like Fish On, it’s my ringtone, but like with Allesfresser, the anticipation of the chances of getting hit by a fish kinda ruined the song for me. I couldn’t enjoy it as much. Also I was wondering why they needed so much time between Praise Abort and Fish On just to throw on this stupid raincoat. We successfully avoided all fish. A lot of them were thrown back on the stage by the audience, two of them hitting Till on the leg and arm, and one of them bowling down Till’s water bottles that stood in front of the drums. Also, when all fish were thrown, someone handed Till a last plate of fish pieces that he threw into the audience, but it slipped out of his hands and the plate went flying across the stage, shattering on a speaker and almost hitting the security guard that stood in front of us. I swear, that guard looked like he wanted to murder Till right at the spot lol (Also, this security guard was cute; he greeted us before the concert like “hi I’ll be your guardian for the next three hours”, he took pics of some people from the first row for them, and before the concert started, he got himself some gummy bears which he stuffed into his pocket to snack during the concert).

Ach So Gern

I was so mad about this?? But at the same time I was not?? So when they started Ach So Gern, they played the tango version and I was like !!! YES and I got all hyped up because I low-key hoped that, maybe, for valentine’s day, they’d switch the pain version for the tango version, but they didn’t. I guess if they HAD played the tango version though, I probably would’ve been mad I didn’t get to hear the pain version lol. The pain version definitely is more suited for a concert, I guess. And I still love it. Praise Peter. Seriously, he’s a god of music, just accept it.

Steh Auf

Incredible energy in the room when everyone’s screaming “Steh auf” on the top of their lungs. One of the most powerful songs live. Also Jonathan came over to us again and [insert heart eyes emoji].

Gummi

Okay, everyone slander me, but I really didn’t like this song as the finishing song. I don’t exactly love this song and I always skip it whenever I listen to F&M, so this was the only song I didn’t know the full lyrics to. It just doesn’t have either a specifically “deep” feeling to it, neither does it have the power I would expect from the last song of this kind of concert, if you get what I mean. For me, it was just missing this last, final BANG. Either that, or have a nice, calming song at the end, that will make people cry and think “fuck man, I don’t want this to end, but it’s been such a good concert”. Gummi just fell really flat for me as the final song. The happier I was when they put on an instrumental of Wer Weiß Das Schon, even if I was really hoping to see that one live and in full length, but you know, life isn’t a bowl of cherries. Also I certainly would have cried. Alas, I did almost cry when they took their bows and thanked us. Till’s voice was so soft and he sounded so sincerely humble and thankful. I don’t know whether it did have any impact on him or not, but he was born in this city, after all.

Till The End Teaser

So instead of showing the video of Till getting sucked off under the Rammstein stage (which I’m still not convinced is real, but that’s another story, I don’t want to delve into it) they put on the first like two minutes of Till The End. This is gonna sound super snobby and ungrateful, but I just turned away. Like I said, if I wanna watch porn, I’ll open pornhub. The two guys behind us, however, were standing there, eyes glued to the screen and their mouths were literally half open, no lie, it cracked me up so hard like really? Shit, it’s gotta be hard to be a person with a dick instead of a brain sometimes.

Bottom line.

Everything was worth it. The hours of waiting, the mediocre weather, driving to the venue by bike, the “fear” of getting hit by a cake or a fish. The concert was amazing, outstanding, mindblowing. I don’t want to compare it to my first row Rammstein experience, because they’re so vastly different bands, and I want to keep them separated. But man. This was probably the best valentine’s day of all time, by far.

#lindemann #lindemann live #text

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linkspooky · 5 years

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Pls... your top ten nisioisin characters... i love your lists...

I LOVE TO TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH I LOVE MY FAVES. IF YOU EVER ASK WANT TO ASK ME WHO MY FAVES ARE FOR A SERIES FEEL FREE TO SEND ME AN ASK.

My favorite thing about Niosisin’s characters is how genuinely subversive they are. Not in the sense that he’s deconstructing tropes, but rather these are characters who would never get their story told in most other books, because they are not good, or righteous. Nisioisin breathes life into them, and allows those who cannot be forgiven, those who are deviant, those who have dropped out of society to still remain human. He tells their stories the same as everybody else, because their lives are just as fun.

1. Even if I’m hated, Even if I’m Despised - Kumagawa Misogi

He’s only my favorite character of all time so I’ve talked about him on this blog before, but let me find something new to say. Oh Kumagawa, how do I love thee, let me count the ways. Or maybe it’s Oh Kumagawa, how do I despise thee let me count the ways.

Kumagawa’s character is so interesting because it’s written in antithesis of everything a shonen protagonist is. For Kumagawa, his determination just makes him fail worse and worse. His desire to be involved and help people always guarantees the worst result for the people he wants to call his friends. His empathy is extremely painful for him, and is a trait that drives him insane rather than making him a kind and loving person.

A lot of time in manga empathy is like, a magic fix-it-all bandaid that basically makes the main character a saint by being able to emotionally relate to anybody. Kumagawa is the reality of that situation. He is empathic, and by relating so much to the humans around him he shows how ugly, and messy human emotions can really be. Recovery and saving others isn’t necessarily a beautiful thing, it’s complicated and sloppy.

Kumagawa is a character where getting stronger won’t solve any of his problems. Which is what happens in a lot of shonen manga, rather than trying to emotionally mature the main character will just learn a new fighting technique and develop that way. Instead, Kumagawa winning fights means absolutely nothing. The only thing that can free him is to grow up as a person, and the fact that Kumagawa’s arc is given equal weight to both of the main characters shows how accepting of weirdoes and broken off beat characters Nisioisin is as an author.

What I like about him is how genuinely broken he is, but not for monstrous reasons but for entirely human ones. It’s his genuine care for others that breaks him the most. He’s a character written to be insane, but also geniunely human. Kumagawa is not able to live properly, or even act like the main character like Zenkichi and Medaka are but he’s still able to find his own way to live.

2. I don’t feel any reality from you people - Ajimu Najimi

“Genius who is super good at everything, but is secretly sad and lonely on the inside” is a pretty common Nisioisin trope. It tends to be pretty hit and miss with me, but it also resulted in one of my favorite characters of all time. I tend to like these types of characters more when they’re allowed to be… what’s the word… unlikable. When the story isn’t trying to go on about how cool they are.

The reason why I love Ajimu is because she is just like Kumagawa, a subversion of the character you expect her to be. The same way Kumagawa suverts Zenkichi in a way, Ajimu subverts Medaka. The same way that Medaka is all loving, Ajimu is indifferent to absolutely everything. The reason she’s able to be kind to everyone around her is because she genuinely doesn’t care about you. Her real personality when not being apathetic, is to just be downright nasty and look down on absolutely everything.

She’s completely self absorbed because according to Ajimu she’s the only one who exists in the universe. She’s the only one she knows for sure is real. The opposite of Kumagawa, a character entirely lacking in empathy, not even thinking of herself as human in any sense of the word. Ajimu acts like she knows everything in the story like she’s reading off of the script, but that’s because she literally thinks that everything in this world is fiction and she’s literally breaking the fourth wall.

And my favorite part about Ajimu is that the story doesn’t glorify her meta fourth wall shenanigans. She’s not treated as someone who sees through everything in the end. She’s just pathetic, and suicidal, and dragging everybody else along into her trillion year long self pity party. She’s more of a human failure than someone who can’t possibly empathize with humans, and that’s why I love her.

3. There ain’t no meaning, got it? - Ii (Boku)

Ii-chan is the narrator of Nisioisin’s first ever series, Zaregoto (Lit. Nonsense). It’s not really until the second book you get a grasp of his character, but Strangulation Romanticist does such an excellent job of setting up who he is as a person. This is another one of Nisioisin’s character types (narrator who feels ennui, and really, really doesn’t want to be a person).

What’s great about Iichan is that he is special in a way. Just like he’s described in the books, when he’s thrown into situations everything goes a little bit crazy. He always gets dragged into mysteries, and has people die around him even though he tries to stay as uninvolved with people as possible. He’s actually a great look at what a character constantly caught up in murder mysteries like the main character of a detective novel would actually act like. He has this deep rambling narration that sways between nihilism and existentialism that makes him a really unique character to read about.

But at the same time Iichan is also kind of a normal dude. And I don’t mean in the sense that he’s an everyman, or has no personality, but he kind of just feels like one. The great twist of No Longer Human is that Yozo isn’t some inhuman monster, he’s just kind of a normal guy who drowns out his misery by taking advantage of women. Like, it’s not all that uncommon. The same thing with Iichan, as poetic as he gets he’s kind of a very petty person and most of his flaws are very mundane ones.

It’s basically very hard to care about other people in this world. Ii-chan doesn’t want to at all, he just wants to have all of his emotional needs fulfilled by the friend he both infantilizes and puts on a pedestal. He’s just super clingy about the one relationship he has in life, because he’s afraid of losing it, but he’s also afraid of being close to her. Ii-chan is just kind of a normal person reacting badly to trauma, but he presents himself as such a mystery that most people lose sight of that (in story). He’s kind of just petty and annoying, and that’s why I love him.

4. No Longer Human - Hitoshiki Zerozaki

Zerozaki is Iichan’s greatest character foil. Basically the best way to describe it is Zerozaki is Mersault. The flip that is switched on for everyone that prevents them from killing someone when the idea crosses their mind is turned off for Zerozaki, and so he kills. He doesn’t enjoy it, he doesn’t have a particular reason to it, he just can’t overcome his impulse to kill. If Ii-chan is restrained, then Zerozaki never restrains any of his impulses at all and lives following only those.

Once again this is another common Nisioisin character archetype “A murder, but they’re sad and lonely.” What I like about Hitoshiki is how much of a deviant he is to that archetype.

He wants a friend and somebody who understands him, but at the same time he hates himself so he doesn’t want anybody too close. He lives in a family of murderers and he’s somehow the rebellious child of the family. He’s constantly running away and wandering from place to place. What makes Zerozaki interesting is how self aware he is about all of this too. He rambles his thoughts and will just be like “Yeah, so anyway that’s totally fucked up (LOL).”

5. Is your life dramatic - Kaiki Deishuu

Kaiki is a character who I admire for his philosophy above all else. He’s another one of those “deviant” characters like Kumagawa who would just be a villain to be defeated in any other narrative, but in this one he gets fully fleshed out as a character.

What’s interesting about Kaiki is that he chooses exactly the way he lives. He decides to be a villain. Kaiki at some point sees through most of the lies of the people around them, and for how meaningless the things that you are told have value can be. He hates holding onto ideas like those.

But that doesn’t mean that Kaiki rejects everything. He doesn’t claim to see above society, or that he’s not a part of society. Rather, Kaiki just uses that awareness to realize he can give meaning to whatever he personally finds meaningful. Because it’s all meaningless anyway, as a human being he can create his own meaning.

So his want of money is not just simple greed, it’s what he’s decided to live for. Kaiki is an adult who willingly chose to become a conman because he finds that’s his place in society. He just doesn’t trust himself enough to be kind despite feeling the same desire to save others, so he decided to lie to them and trick them instead.

6. “I don’t know anything, you’re the one who knows” Oshino Ougi

Ougi is just interesting conceptually. They are literally Araragi’s own shadow, running away from him and given form and consciousness of their own. While Ougi themselves works as a common Jungian shadow archetype calling characters out for what they are repressing and also revealing the bare faced truth to them, which is why they are so heavily associated with mirrors, lights, and shadows.

My favorite part about Ougi however is not their connection to Araragi. It’s when Ougi starts to become their own character. An oddity with consciousness that begins to deviate from what they were made for, because they were allowed to live on their own.

Ougi did not become a fave of mine until Zoku because that was when they started to self reflect and realize their own strange existence separate to Araragi. The conversation scene with Araragi is one of my favorite in the whole series because it shows how Ougi is just a genuine tease, and a very clever and insightful person. That’s who they are, outside of just being an oddity that exists to criticize others and call out flaws. They’re ridiculous, and a little strange, and they enjoy screwing with other’s heads and messing around a bit too much. But Ougi Oshino is Ougi Oshino.

It’s just an interesting concept, to have to define who you are as a person when you were created out of all of the unwanted qualities, and insecurities of another person.

7. Why are you touching me without permission, you weed - Yasuri Nanami

Nanami is another one of those “I’m a genius and I’m good at everything but I’m secretly sad” characters, and once again what I love about her is how unlikable she’s allowed to be. None of what Nanami is capable of comes off as cool for very long. She’s basically framed and treated as a horror movie monster, always speaking in the same monotone voice. The one story that shows her true nature in chapter four is literally, paced, framed, exactly like a slasher movie with characters being hunted down and killed one by one.

Nanami’s just this horrible wretched existence that doesn’t even want to be alive. She basically acts like frankenstein’s monster, ie, the one in the book. She’s just this corpse that is barely even alive in the first place, constantly sick and in pain, and she’s also at war with herself. The part of her that wants to die and the part of her that’s lonely and wants to find some reason to live, or some connection in life are constantly at war with each other.

And as horrifying as Nanami is she also feels like the most human of Niosisin’s, super-genius characters. She’s riddled with weaknesses and flaws. She lashes out when he’s in pain, she felt bad when her parents told her to die. You get the sense that Nanami’s super genius isn’t what drove her insane at all, it was just how everybody around her treated her as some thing that was not human. Isolation made her this way. She was conditioned to act this way not born inhuman. There are characters that Nisioisin writes that are genuine sociopaths (as in the trope of an unfeeling person unable to feel human emotions), but Nanami is not one of them and so when she starts acting with sociopathic-traits in her personality it makes her all the more painfully human because we see how she’s been driven slowly to act this way.

7. *Yawns* Nezumi

Juuni Taisen is one of those death game stories where every character is defined by their one gimmick and written around their concept. In the original novel each character really only gets one chapter to be fleshed out as a character. I half suspect Nisioisin wrote it as a dare to himself on how much he could accomplish with one chapter.

The interesting part about Nezumi is his concept again. He can redo anything 100 times. You think this would make him amazing at anything in life because of his time loop ability, but physically having to live through all of those time loops exhausts him to the point that he’s too tired to do anything. You would think he could get anything he wanted out of life, but there are times he can ask a girl out one hundred times and get rejected one hundred different ways.

Nezumi is interesting because of how quietly he lives. There’s nothing he really wants out of life, and nothing he wishes for, like a rat he just scurries and survives.

9. I am currently being accused by everyone - Kakushidate Yakusuke

The same as Iichan and Kumagawa, Yakusuke is a guy who is just cursed by constant bad luck. What I like about Yakusuke is that he’s a full fleshed out character, instead of just an unlucky every dude protagonist.

He’s a contract worker who is constantly shifting between jobs. Due to this fact he’s got like 1,000 skills that he gained on his various jobs. He’s not smart, but because he’s experienced so much of life he’s incredibly resourceful. Which is why he makes a perfect counterpart and foil to Okitegami.

Yakusuke’s everyday life is him constantly being accused and blamed, and falling from one bad situation to the next. But, he has so much experiences that it’s what draws Okitegami to him who can only ever experience one day at a time because her memories will reset at the end of the day. He’s exactly my type of man, a total failure at all walks of life.

10. This is your last chance, let me make you happy! - Kugi Kizutaka

He’s so low on the list because his story “Magical Girl Ritsuka” only has one chapter published in english, but he’s so interesting he instantly became a fave. He’s actually a concept i have been looking for for a long time, which is basically what I describe as “Reverse Junko Enoshima.”

Basically someone as smart and manipulative as Junko Enoshima, who can make anybody into their toy, and predict things years in advance and control everything, but instead of using that power to send the world to despair, they use that power to give the world hope instead. Not out of any genuine good will or because they’re a good person, but because they’re obsessed with the idea of giving people happiness the same way Junko is with sending people to despair.

Kugi is a lot like that. He’s a genius ten year old who sees everybody for their potential to be used, and looks down on absolutely everyone around him. He’s made contact with a magical girl, because he’s pretty clearly planning on using her to enslave the world to him, so he can force everybody to be happy. And it’s absolutely adorable. He’s just such a genuine terrible little person while at the same time wanting to make everyone happy.

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crimeronan · 4 years

Note

Do you have any original writing published, or available to read, or plans to publish eventually? I’ve read all your trc fics and I love your grasp on the characters and I feel like anything you came up wholesale would be just SOOOO good and I’d really like to read it. I’d even take hearing about your ocs, if you have any of those!!! Please keep writing omg!!!

oh this is so flattering thank you!!

i have an original project in the works right now - it’s gonna be a while before it’s anywhere near publishable, and i’m not sure how to describe it. it’s basically about all my favorite things like polyamory and magic and psychological horror and codependence and learning to foster healthy relationships and power versus love and discussions of morality and ethics and political corruption and people screwing up and restlessness and religion and ghosts and decay

a little sample (involving two members of the main triad discussing the third):

“Her hurt is not my responsibility.” Ruby hesitates, then adds, softer, “Sol is wrong.”

“Sol isn’t wrong.”

He snaps this back too fast. They both recognize it. Her eyes narrow; his jaw snaps shut. He angles his body away from her, gazing toward the west of the city like he’s noticed something new and fascinating there. His face is furious, either with her or himself or both.

Because it’s defensive. Devin is never defensive, and if he is, he certainly doesn’t show it. Devin is always wholly convinced that he’s right, even when Ruby is sure he’s wrong. His moral absoluteness drives her crazy. He does not rationalize his beliefs. Instead, he believes only things he considers rational. If the information does not coincide with his experience of the world, he seeks answers. Independence. Faith in critical thinking alone.

But this - this screams of rationalization. This is a comet’s trail tracing the letters D-O-U-B-T across the sky.

Ruby probes people’s vulnerabilities for a living. One of the most important pieces is knowing when to solve a problem. Sometimes identifying the problem is more than enough work for one session. Sometimes bringing the problem into the light and examining the angles is ideal. Sometimes brainstorming solutions is the answer. Sometimes arguing and pushing at a base of self-deception is necessary.

But the right time is not always the present. Sometimes a client doesn’t have a strong enough foundation to stop clinging to the crumbling walls. Sometimes pushing too hard can cause catastrophic damage, a pile of useless rubble that needs clearing before anything can be built again.

She doesn’t think that pushing Devin about Solstice will cause him to crumble into a million pieces. But she does think it will make him shut her out, lock himself down, squander any future opportunity for growth. She could wound him, here. It’s more important to show that she won’t.

“Devin, look at me,” she says.

He doesn’t.

“Devin.”

“I’m not doing this with you.”

“I’m not asking you to. We will agree to disagree about Sol’s rightness.”

This, finally, gets him to turn back to her. There’s tightness around his eyes, the corners of his mouth. She raises her hand; it’s a question she’s asked before. Prior to now, his answer has always been a gentle grip on her wrist to push her away.

This time, he leans in.

She presses her fingertips against his cheek. She’s not wearing gloves, so it’s easy to memorize the texture of his skin, all pockmarks and stubble. He exhales like he’s been holding his breath.

“Sol can be right,” she says, “and so can I.”

The furrow in his brow says he’s not sure these two philosophies can coexist.

She steps closer to him, until she can feel the warmth of his body through the shirt beneath his open jacket. Her other hand rests against his upper arm. She strokes her thumb over his cheekbone, smiles a little as his lips unconsciously part. The physical aspects of her job are very different from Sol’s, but she’s equally good at them. And Devin, she can tell, is starving.

“Her home is not the only one that burned,” she murmurs. Her voice is very soft, now, barely a breath in this enclosed bubble of space between them. “Her family was not the only one lost. Her childhood, her innocence. If Nova’s life belongs to Solstice, then it also belongs to me. If Sol has the right to destroy her, then I have the right to save her. She’s mine.”

This is the argument that wins. Ruby knew it would. Devin can’t abide injustice, false equivalencies, unbalanced scales. The claim Ruby has on Nova’s life is just as complete as Sol’s. If Nova is innocent or at least a pawn - something Ruby’s beginning to suspect - then neither of them has the right to her life. But if she’s guilty, a fundamental truth Devin cannot face being untrue, then Sol doesn’t get to make the call alone.

That’s why Ruby’s always been here, anyway. Partners. In the end, Solstice is nothing like her, and Ruby loves her all the more fiercely for it.

“We can never tell her,” Devin says.

Ruby nods. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

#my writing #long post #original fiction #i'd love to talk about these three if people are interested. i just have no idea where to begin #feel free 2 invade my inbox with queries #replies #Anonymous

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xbaepsae · 5 years

Text

private tutor | part three (m)

“’We can take a break, if you want.’ ‘Are you sure?’ he asks, double meaning in his words and heat begins to pool in your body. ‘Yeah, I think I need time to process the information, you know?’ you say. ‘Besides, I think I’ll learn better with more of a…hands on kind of approach.’”

[tutor!namjoon x reader]

genre: college!au, smut, humor, fluff-ish

word count: 5.1k

a/n: and here it is! the final, thrilling part to this series. thank you to everyone who has been super patient with me. i love and appreciate all of you <3 xoxo

part one / part two / part three

You don’t see Namjoon again for a few days.

It’s not that you’re avoiding the guy, he did give you one of the best orgasms of your life after all, but you just haven’t had the opportunity to meet with him again. After the last study session, both of your schedules haven’t matched up. When you’re in class, he’s free. When you’re free, he’s too busy reading those damn philosophy books.

The two of you exchanged phone numbers—or rather, you coerced Yoongi into giving you Namjoon’s phone number with the promise of free Starbucks for the rest of the semester because the poor boy was out of money in his school account—but every text about possible study sessions has been in vain.

So, the little pink bullet vibrator in your bedside table has been relieving much of your end-of-semester stress instead. It also doesn’t help that you can’t stop thinking about your tutor either. You can’t get the image of when he was staring at you while giving you head out of your mind, and it’s been driving you absolutely crazy.

You told Ara about what happened in his bedroom after the game, and your roommate was shocked at how fast it all happened. “So, it’s that kind of payment.”

Were you some kind of prostitute now? You voiced this mild concern to Ara before she assured you that you weren’t a hoe now just because your tutor gave you oral in return for a study session. If anything, you should’ve given him head as payment. “I know—and I would have if not for your interfering phone call.”

“It’s not my fault you didn’t show up on time,” Ara said. “But on the real, is he really hot?”

Hot doesn’t do Kim Namjoon justice. There are no right or perfect words to describe him. You don’t know what it is about him, but everything concerning him just oozes sexuality. He knows all of the right words to make you bend to his will, as well as fiery looks that make you melt underneath his ministrations. And his mouth—that amazing, fantastic mouth—is magical. Your body becomes excited at just the thought of it.

It’s about a few days later when you get a text from him asking if you'll be free Friday afternoon. Lucky for him, the only class you have that day is chemistry, ironically enough, and you let him know this fact. Namjoon replies instantly, telling you that he’ll see you after that class.

Since meeting with Namjoon, you’ve been paying more attention in chemistry class. Things were starting to make sense—kind of, sort of—and you have an inkling feeling that you might pass. Also, in all honesty, you just really want to impress him with the new concepts you're learning. But trying to impress someone like him seems impossible.

When Friday rolls around, you cannot contain the excitement you feel. You sit in chemistry and take the most detailed notes you’ve ever taken, feeling determined to show how much you’ve improved since the first study session. Once your professor finishes her lecture, you leave class with a skip in your step and pull out your phone to send a quick text asking what time you should meet. As your typing away on your phone, not really paying attention to where you’re walking, you end up running into someone.

“Oops—I’m—” you look up, only to be met with the amused expression of your tutor. “Oh my god, Namjoon—I’m so sorry—”

Goodness, you are such a klutz. You were so focused on sending him a text, so excited to see him again, that you completely disregarded everything else. You realize that he has his arms on your shoulders, steadying you. Suddenly, embarrassment floods your body at the fact that you literally ran into him.

Shaking your head to collect yourself, you can’t help but notice that once again, Namjoon is dressed like he is some runway model—not a college student. Today, he’s wearing a plain black dress shirt tucked into lighter wash jeans. You don’t know how long you stare at him, but he coughs once, and you meet his eyes. That’s when you realize that he decided to forgo the glasses today. “You should watch where you’re going.”

“I was just about to send you a text,” you point to your phone. “I didn’t expect to run into you.”

“I actually sent you one too.”

Looking back at your phone, your message still in the text box, you scroll down and realize that Namjoon did send you a text just seconds ago.

12:49 PM | Namjoon: Hey. I’ll meet you outside your class today.

You look back at him, “Well, why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“My one o’clock got canceled, and I got out of my noon class a little early,” he says with a shrug. “Besides, I haven’t been in the science building since freshman year.”

“Okay, mister philosophy major.”

“Are you free to study?”

Nodding, you swallow the lump in your throat as you remember what happened during the last study session. “Definitely. I even took good notes today in class.”

He smirks. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Give me credit for trying,” you pout, walking away from him. Namjoon catches up to you in no time, arms slightly brushing against yours as he walks beside you down the hall. You become overly aware of how fast your heart starts beating and mentally curse yourself for reacting like a total noob.

“Isn’t that something you should’ve been doing all semester?”

You give him a look, but he merely laughs as you both walk out into the sun. You lead Namjoon to your dorm, walking past stares from the student body. As the two of you walk, you make small talk with him—clearly more interaction than what you guys did last time. He talks to you about his philosophy classes, which you don’t really get, but you appreciate his passion for it. “Honestly, I don’t really like philosophy.”

“Not many people do,” he says. “But I think people like Plato and Socrates were fascinating.”

“Is philosophy on the list of graduation requirements?”

Namjoon looks down at you. “I believe at least one class is.”

You groan at the thought of sitting through an entire semester of lectures about the mind and theories. “Great.”

“I could always tutor you, again,” he says, eyes still on you.

Your body hums at the thought of spending more time with Namjoon. Immediately, you want to jump and say that you want nothing more than to continue future tutoring sessions; but you decide to tease him a little. “Hmm…we’ll see. If I pass chemistry, then maybe. Like, I don’t want to waste my time if my grade doesn’t change you know?”

“Is this a challenge?” he asks with a smirk. “I already told you that I’m confident you’ll get at least a C. Why? Doubting my skills? Did I not make you cum hard enough last time?”

He says the last bit so quietly you almost don’t catch it. The two of you are still in public, which means anyone can hear the conversation you both are having, so you’re shocked that he’s being quite bold right now. Even though you don’t want to, you redden at the mention of last time because he’s right—he did make you cum really hard—so you definitely are not doubting the sexual prowess that is Kim Namjoon.

Before you can answer him, you’ve already reached your building. Rummaging through your backpack for your ID card, you swipe the metal lock on the door and open it up. You walk inside first and tell Namjoon that your room is on the second floor.

“Also, there’s no elevator in this building,” you sigh. “At least, no working elevator—the one we did have has been broken since labor day weekend.”

“Oh?” he laughs a little, following you up the stairs.

“Yeah, I think there were too many people on the elevator at one time, so it got stuck and maintenance hasn’t bothered to fix it. But at least I only have to climb one flight of stairs—I feel bad for the people on the floors above me. I don’t even want to think about the chaos that will be having to pack for winter break.”

Making it to your room, the first door on the left, you notice that Namjoon is awfully close to you and it sends little jolts of electricity up your spine.

“Cute,” he suddenly says, and you turn to ask him what. “The decorative names are a nice touch.”

You smile, looking at yours and Ara’s name that are creatively pieced on the door of the room. “Thanks—it was actually Ara’s idea though. She’s very into this kind of stuff. You know, doing the whole college experience.”

Slipping your key into the lock, you open the room and sigh in relief when you remember that you cleaned the night before. Ara was shocked that you were cleaning, not that you’re extremely messy or anything but you do have a tendency to leave empty water bottles around the room. However, when you mentioned that Namjoon was coming over to help you study, Ara would not stop shut up about it.

“Make sure to use protection, okay?” she said to you and you almost tackled her on the spot. “Also, make sure he discards the condom—I don’t want that shit to get on the carpet. I’ve heard that it’s hard to take cum off the carpet.”

Thankfully, Ara has a packed schedule on Friday afternoons, so she will not be here to disturb your study session. You invite Namjoon to walk inside first as you lock the door.

“Well,” you start, “welcome to my humble abode.”

“Your room is bigger than I thought it would be,” he comments.

“Why? Did you think it was going to be the size of a closet?” you snort. “This room accommodates two people, so it has to be decently sized.”

When you and Ara first moved in, you two tried to set up the room as practical as possible. You both decided to forgo the whole bunk bed situation because neither of you wanted to fight for the bottom bunk, so your beds sit parallel to each other with both bedside tables in-between. At the foot of your beds are desks, and by the door stands a sink and your closets.

You put your bag down on your bed and pull Ara’s desk chair from her side of the room. Setting it next to your chair, you sit down and beckon Namjoon to follow. You pull out your notes and textbook, handing them over to your tutor to look over.

“Are those the notes you took earlier?”

You nod once. “Yeah.”

Namjoon examines your notes, flipping back and forth over the pages you wrote today. “Did you understand everything the professor said?”

“Surprisingly, I did,” you say. “I’ve been able to soak up more information this past week than I have almost all semester.”

“That’s good,” he says with a nod and opens your textbook up. “Did you want to start from what you learned today, or where we left off last time?”

You tell him that you want the latter and Namjoon picks up seamlessly. With pen and paper in hand, you jot down everything that he says and ask questions when you don’t understand what he’s explaining. When he gets to the chapter about stoichiometry, you admit that you never understood what the heck this was. You even make Namjoon balance a simple hydrogen and oxygen equation five times because you really don’t get it. But, to your relief, you learn that Namjoon is surprisingly patient with you.

“Can you explain that again?” you ask with a sheepish smile, watching Namjoon write the current example you two are working on again.

“Okay, so the problem asks how many grams of nitrogen are needed to produce the 38.5 g of NH2 produced in the equation: 1 N2(g) + 3 H2(g) = 2 NH2(g)?”

You watch as he writes down the goal mass and then solves the problem using mass-mass stoichiometry. Through each step, he explains slowly what he is doing and why he is doing what he is doing. By the time he comes out with the answer, you feel a little lightbulb flicker in your head. He then asks if you feel comfortable solving the problem yourself, which you honestly don’t but what’s new, and you reply with an I guess so.

Without letting you see his work, Namjoon helps you start solving the problem before forcing you to do it all by yourself. After a few painstaking minutes, you show your answer and the smile he has lets you know that you’re not a complete failure. “So, I got it correct?”

“Yeah—just make sure you put the unit of measurement in your answer, as well as the atomic letters of the chemical,” he says, and you immediately add them to your answer.

“Thank you for being so patient,” you tell him. “I’m sorry that I’m so fucking slow.”

He only shakes his head, “I’ve tutored worse—trust me.”

Namjoon continues through different lessons and before you both realize it, nearly all of the afternoon has passed by and you’re starting to get hungry. Not hungry-hungry, but hungry enough that you know your stomach will probably start making noise. You will your stomach to not growl, but your body betrays you and the sounds coming from your stomach fill the room. Almost instantly, you wrap your arms around your abdomen and you feel your face flush. “Sorry.”

Glancing down at the watch on his wrist, Namjoon checks the time. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how long we’ve been studying. I also didn’t even think about whether or not you’ve even had lunch.”

“I’m okay,” you brush him away, knowing you can hold out until dinner. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah, but not for food.”

Your lips part in silent surprise. Oh. Slowly, your eyes meet his and you see that same dark look; this sends your body into a frenzy. Without even touching you, Namjoon has you under his spell and you honestly never want to be released from it. “We can take a break, if you want.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, double meaning in his words and heat begins to pool in your body.

“Yeah, I think I need time to process the information, you know?” you say. “Besides, I think I’ll learn better with more of a…hands on kind of approach.”

Humor laces Namjoon’s dark eyes and you swear that you’ve never seen anything sexier. “The next part of your payment?”

You’re so ready for this—anything and everything. You’ve been ready for a while now. “Of course.”

“Okay,” his voice is gentle. Namjoon brings a hand to cup your face, thumb running over your jawline before settling on your lips. He parts your mouth and you begin to suck on his finger. “Get down on your knees for me, baby girl.”

Your arousal skyrockets as you stand up and push your chair back. Falling to your knees, Namjoon’s hand never leaves your face. Looking up at him, you feel his hand moving to tangle in your hair. Suddenly, he pulls you in for a kiss, his tongue dancing with your own. You’re already getting drunk of a kiss, so imagining what's to come has your core aching.

As his lips move against your own, your fingers slide up his thighs and you can feel his muscle flexing underneath. He feels so strong underneath your hands and you can’t wait to see if he crumbles beneath you. Fingers find the belt holding his jeans together, and you begin to loosen the buckle. After, you begin to unbutton his jeans. Namjoon’s lips release yours when you lower his zipper. Shoving his jeans and boxers down in one smooth motion, your eyes take in his already half-hard member.

Namjoon surprises you when he brings a hand to his cock, holding it erect. “Suck my cock, baby girl.”

Your hand goes to replace his when he stops you. “What?”

“No hands,” he says, voice deep with lust, “put them behind you.”

A jolt of electricity goes up your spine and you almost let out a moan. Oh my god. You do as he says, fingers lacing together behind your back, and lower your head towards his groin. The first thing you do is extend your tongue out to lick the tip. A small smile stretches across your lips when Namjoon visibly shudders.

Then, your mouth envelops the entire head—sucking gently and tongue swirling around it. As you suck, you take more of him into your mouth. You have never been one to particularly enjoy giving head; you’ll do it without question, but it usually doesn’t do anything for you. However, you’re enjoying yourself; you want to please Namjoon and make him feel good.

Through your focused attention to his member, you can make out the few choked praises and curses that leave Namjoon’s lips. You moan appreciatively as you take him deeper into your throat. You release him for a moment to catch your breath before giving some attention to his shaft and balls. By this point, his cock as grown increasingly hard and you wonder for a brief moment if he’s going to fit inside of you.

Size has never been an issue for you; then again, you’re pretty sure he’s got the biggest package you’ve seen in real life.

“Fuck, y/n,” Namjoon moans, beginning to thrust his hips once you’ve taken all of him back into your mouth. You can feel your eyes begin to sting from the force of his cock hitting the back of your throat, and your gag reflex kicks in.

Even though you’re beginning to choke, he doesn’t stop slamming his cock down your throat. In fact, he tightens the grip on your hair and speeds up his thrusting. After a few hard thrusts, he releases you. Gasping for air, you can feel saliva dribble down your chin.

Wiping your face, you glance up at Namjoon. “Was that…?”

“Wow,” he breathes, “your mouth is fucking amazing.”

Pride beams inside of you and Namjoon takes this opportunity to crash his lips onto yours. He lifts you off the floor and helps you take your clothes off. As you strip, you also help him shed whatever clothes he is wearing as well. After the two of you are completely naked, you take in Namjoon’s bare body and just groan. How could one man be so damn perfect?

“Like what you see?”

You roll your eyes playfully, “No.”

He kisses you again and you become putty in his hands. Namjoon’s lips leave yours for a moment before reaching back down towards his jeans. Pulling out his wallet, you watch as he takes out a little foil packet. He tears the edge and rolls the condom onto his cock before sitting back down. “Sit on my cock.”

Usually, you’d bite back if someone ordered you around; but with Namjoon, you’ll do anything he says. But before you can straddle his lap, he brings his hand up to cup your mound. “Namjoon—”

He begins to rub your clit and you fall over, bracing yourself onto his shoulders. You moan into his neck as he slips a finger inside of you. And then another. With nails digging into his back, you grind your hips into his thrusting. Just as you’ve started building up momentum, he pulls his fingers out.

You curse, which only causes him to laugh. Unable to help yourself, you kiss him again—you really like kissing him, you realize. Wasting no more time, you hover over his lap and position yourself over him. Slowly, you sink lower. Just as your about to slip him inside of you, Namjoon stops you for a minute. Looking into his eyes, you find yourself getting lost in them. He kisses you again and begins to rub his head along your clit and down toward your slit.

“You’re so wet for me,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss against your jaw.

“Namjoon,” you choke on a cry. “I—”

“Do you want my cock inside of you?” he asks, continuing to tease you.

Your hands tighten around his neck, “Yes.”

“What was that?”

“Yes,” you repeat, another moan releasing from your lips.

His tip swirls around your clit again. “What?”

“Oh my god, Namjoon. Yes! Put your cock inside of me—oh.”

Your head tilts back and eyes roll as you feel him push inside of you. Unadulterated moans leave your lips as he slowly stretches you. Quickly, you realize that you were right—he is big, and you feel so full you can hardly handle it. You sink lower until you’re buried to the hilt, and it feels so good you might just explode. “I just…I just need a minute.”

Breathing into the crook of Namjoon’s neck, you allow your body to get adjusted before you begin to move your hips. As you ride him, you can feel your high approaching quickly and it doesn’t help that Namjoon has decided to tease you by pinching your nipples and sucking the sensitive skin of your neck.

“You feel so good on my cock, baby girl,” he practically coos into your ears and your hips slam faster; harder. “Fuck yourself onto me—just like that.”

Who knew you’d be such a praise kink hoe? You’re living for the sweet nothings coming from his lips.

He continues to pinch and pull at your nipples and just when you think you can’t take anymore, you feel his fingers right at your clit and that’s all it takes to push you over the edge. You scream his name, entire body convulsing in orgasm. Throughout this, Namjoon fucks himself into you still—helping you ride the high out.

“Oh my god,” you say once you catch your breath. “That was—”

“Who said we were done?” His voice causes you to raise your eyes towards him. “We’ve only just begun.”

Your mouth parts, core tightening with desire as he lifts you up and over to your bed. Still inside you, he lays your body down and begins peppering kisses all over your skin. Suddenly, you feel him pull out; you’re about to protest until you feel his hot breath caressing your thighs. Pushing your legs apart, he presses more kisses along the inside before his mouth begins to suck on your lips.

“Namjoon,” you moan his name, legs shaking at his ministrations.

There’s just something so erotic about him eating you out post-penetration—the thought sends your head spinning. Without much, you feel your insides tightening again; you’re going to cum again and your body is so ready for the toe-curling sensation. But it stops when Namjoon releases his hold on you. “You think you deserve to cum again?”

You lift yourself up on your forearms, breathing heavily as you stare at the man before you. Is he being serious right now? “What?”

“I don’t know if you’ve earned another orgasm yet,” he says, a smirk growing along his lips. “I mean, I haven’t cum yet…so why do you deserve more than one?”

“I…I…” you struggle to speak. Hell, you can’t even think right now.

But Namjoon doesn’t stop tormenting you. You watch as his hand returns to your cunt, fingers moving slowly along your wetness. A moan leaves your lips, and it only seems to make his smirk wider. “Tell me why, y/n?”

Your head falls back a bit when you feel that tightness building again. As his fingers continue to move, your hips match their rhythm. “I’m so…close.”

“Oh yeah?”

You nod feverishly. “Oh god…yeah.”

“You want to cum again?” he asks.

As Namjoon’s fingers move along your slit, rubbing delicious circles around your swollen clit, your hips move feverishly to match his pace. Clutching the bedsheets in-between your hands, you cry as your high comes. But as your body shakes, you feel him enter you again.

He fucks you hard—cock buried deep inside of you—and it feels so fucking good you swear you might actually pass out. Namjoon thrusts relentlessly, and another wave of pleasure crash over you as he hits your g-spot repeatedly. Your eyes roll to the back of your head and you feel completely spent. How many times have you come undone today?

You’re pretty sure that you can’t manage another orgasm, you’re already feeling sensitivity-overload; so instead, you wrap your legs around his waist and dig your heels into his back. “I want you to cum.”

“Yeah?” he asks, hair in a sweaty mess on top of you. God, he looks so good.

You nod. “Yeah…where do you want to cum? I’ll let you choose.”

Namjoon grunts at your words, hips picking up their pace. “Can I cum on your tits?”

Your body shakes at his request, and all you can do is nod. He continues to thrust a few more times, hips moving a little sloppier each with each thrust, before he pulls out and removes his condom. Strings of milky white hit your chest as he mutters fuck over and over again, painting your breast; however, the real sight to behold is Namjoon and the way his eyes are shut in pure ecstasy.

Sitting up, you pull him closer and mold your lips against his. As you both kiss in post-coital bliss, you realize that you can get used to this.

***

a few weeks later...

Namjoon paces up and down the empty hallway.

His loafers echo in the closed space, while outside there is a totally different picture. Mother nature has decided to be lovely as usual and snow—the first of the season. Although the snow is nice and all, he can’t but feel nervous as his eyes continuously return to the same wooden door; the door that leads to you. Well, to your chemistry class specifically. You’re in there taking your chemistry final right now, and it’s nearing the end of the three-hour exam session.

Shouldn’t you be done already? For the last hour, Namjoon has watched as other students have filed out of the room with their exams in hand. As each individual walked out, he searched for your face in vain. And as the minutes continue to tick by, Namjoon grows more worried.

He doesn’t doubt your preparedness—you two have done more than enough studying. Namjoon licks his lower lip at the memory of every study session you’ve both had, since they’ve all ended with the both of you in each other’s beds. Although the sex has gotten better and better every time, that isn't the only good thing that's happened. In the last few weeks, he has actually taught you a lot about chemistry too.

“What if I forget everything?” you asked yesterday, the both of you tucked in his bed.

Namjoon laughed, “You won’t forget.”

“I can’t even remember what mass is, and that is supposed to be the basic of all basic information.”

“It’s property of a physical body and a measure of its resistance to acceleration when a net force is applied, y/n.”

When he first met you, he said something about guaranteeing that you’d make a C on the final, but he was quite positive that you’d actually do better than that. You were able to soak up a semester’s worth of chemistry in a few weeks; if that isn’t impressive, Namjoon doesn’t know what is. And this is coming from someone who aces all of their finals.

From what he can remember about the chemistry final is that it’s about one hundred questions, and it's all multiple choice. There are different versions of the final, but all of the questions are the same—just in a different order to prevent cheating. And since the test is multiple choice, students get their scores immediately after. You both practiced more than enough old final questions, and you did well on all of them, so he was confident in your skills.

Now, he doesn't know what to think.

Just as Namjoon is about to worry himself sick, the door creaks open and you walk out. Immediately, you make eye contact with him and offer a small smile. He quickly scans your face and assumes the worst. “Oh god, did you not pass?”

“Sorry I took so long,” you avoid his question as you walk closer to him, “those one hundred questions took everything out of me.”

“Y/n, what did you get on the final?” Namjoon takes your face in his hands, searching your eyes for an answer. “Baby, I swear I really thought I prepared you well. I’m so s—”

Suddenly, you laugh. You laugh so hard your entire body shakes. Namjoon looks at you like you’ve grown another head. He asks you what’s wrong, but you can’t even answer. “You’re so funny, Joon.”

“Why are you laughing?”

You smile. “I’m laughing because you’re getting so worked up over nothing.”

“Nothing?” he asks, incredulously. “I’m worried that you didn’t pass. That’s not nothing.”

“You don’t have to worry.”

Namjoon frowns for a moment and you unfold your exam and reveal the front page to him. He blinks a few times to make sure the red letter is actually there. Slowly, a smile builds on his face and he lifts you off the ground. You laugh into his shoulder as he spins you around in circles.

As your feet meet the ground again, the smile can’t be wiped off your face. “I can’t believe I actually got a one hundred!”

“Did the professor think you cheated or something?” Namjoon jokes and you almost punch his shoulder.

“No, I just explained that you tutored me. That was all she needed to know.”

“I guess we both win, huh?”

“Win?” you ask, confused as to what he’s talking about.

Namjoon nods. “Yeah—you got the grade, and got my payments.”

You mock laugh, “Ha. Ha. I think you've gotten one too many payments from me, don’t you think?”

He takes that chance to pull your body close, so that you have to tilt your head up to meet his eyes. Namjoon looks down at you with a smirk, enjoying the way you squirm in his hold. Over the last few weeks, you’ve gotten a lot more confident in his presence and he loved it. However, he still enjoys messing with your anyway. “I think you enjoyed giving me all those payments.”

“Who said?”

“Your body,” he smiles.

“My body tends to betray my mind,” you say, fighting your own smile.

Namjoon’s hands move from your waist to cup your ass. Your eyebrows raise at his action, but you don’t object and that’s all the confirmation he needs to lean down for a kiss.

#armiesnet #networkbangtan #bangtan bookclub #bts smut #namjoon smut #bts fic #namjoon fic #rm fic #bts humor #smut #humor #fluff #rm #namjoon #private tutor #xbaepsae

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callioope · 4 years

Text

Good Things in 2019

@theputterer and @the-strongest-stars tagged me in the awesome annual end-of-year Good Things meme! I’ve done this in 2018 & 2017 and always think it’s a fun exercise of both reflection and looking forward.

Oh boy, though, my first thought was, what even happened in 2019? (Looking at a calendar helped! It reminded me of a few things I forgot)

It’s been a Rough Year, friends. Between OCD and basically travelling almost every weekend in the latter half of 2019, I am very much ready for a new year and hopefully a new slate.

But this is about the positives!

Personal

Played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons! I am now officially in two campaigns. This year, I endeavored to recruit more women to play, including the wonderful @allatariel. I play both my beloved cleric, Maritsa (who I’ve been playing her years now) and my new character, Noara, a ranger elf with a red panda familiar (yeah, my DM let me do that for funsies, so I could get an animal sidekick but also still try out the Horizon Walker subclass).

Speaking of red pandas, I accomplished my LIFE GOAL of meeting a red panda face-to-face. I got to feed Harriet at the Cincinnati Zoo for 30 minutes. She was adorable.

Completed all my dental work and had a clean bill of dental health two cleanings in a row!

Attended DC’s Around the World Embassy Day event, always fun

Attended Star Wars night at a local library, where I got to participate in a short demo/lesson on how to fence with a lightsaber!

Attended 50th Anniversary Celebration of Apollo 11 / landing on the moon (dude they projected the rocket on the Washington Monument and it looked so cool)

Returned to the NY Ren Faire and upgraded my ren faire garb

Celebrated at THREE friends’ weddings and got to catch up with old friends I hadn’t seen in awhile

Ate ice cream at the Ben & Jerry’s Factory in Vermont

Went to NYCC for the third year in a row. Got to wear 2 costumes this year: a 1920s flapper interpretation of an occamy and my Endor!Leia costume (repeat of 2017). Learned the True Pain of sewing. Created feather shawl for my occamy costume. Learned the True Pain of crafting.

Celebrated one year anniversary with hubbie down where we got married: visited the museum we got married in and actually got a chance to enjoy the exhibits, went to our favorite brunch place down there, got to check out Fleet Week and tour an aircraft carrier and uh... I think it was a missile cruiser?

Went up to PSU for a women’s hockey game for sister’s birthday (made embarrassing HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign for the cameras); also it was an absolutely wonderful fall drive on the way up there

Got to see The Rise of Skywalker in IMAX at the Smithsonian Air & Space Center with the awesome @allatariel! (thank goodness we had each other to get through that movie lol) also got to reuse my Endor!Leia costume. I did my own braids for the first time ever! (usually my talented sister does them) They looked like braids done by a n00b, but I didn’t care because they were passable and I did them myself and that was a Big Thing for Perfectionist Me (to not just... say screw it and undo it and just. give up. but to just let them be as is)

Worked hard at therapy and self care

Got a Sleep Number bed and holy shit let me tell you. i can actually sleep now.

OH! I almost forgot!!! Started playing Assassin’s Creed! I’ve only ever really played the LEGO Star Wars and Harry Potter video games so like. This was big for me.

Writing

Finally finished Learning Curve. TBH I was a bit shocked that this was in fact the only fic I published in 2019. What a travesty.

However! I have been writing

@allatariel & I sat down, overanalyzed You’ve Got Mail, and drafted up the outline for my in-universe AU, something I’ve been dreaming of starting for years. Have about 4300 words so far.

Just under the wire, I did manage to start my NatGeo AU, which I’ve been dreaming of since my honeymoon in Nov 2018

Started editing/revising my original young adult fantasy novel

Poked a little at my epic fantasy pirate travel novel idea

Books

I read exactly one book, Among the Red Stars, which I enjoyed. It’s about women fighter pilots in Russia in WW2. Inspired by real people.

Music

Saw Panic at the Disco! in concert. I went along with my sister. Not like a huge fan, but they put on a pretty fun show!

Saw Waitress on Broadway!! OH MY GOD. And Sara Bareilles was starring in it. Amazing. I freaking love her music (”How does she know / what a heart sounds like?” gahhh). She was so good, and the show was so good. I literally cried all the way through it just because I was so happy to be there, but also because of the content. Man.

Saw Sara Bareilles again, in concert, in Philly. I love her so much.

Television

Finished Critical Role Campaign 1! Oh man, what a ride. Gosh, I love that show. I really need to catch up in C2 now. I’ve started it but I’m only on episode 26 or 27.

I’m not sure whether I finished The Clone Wars in 2018 or 2019. I think it was early 2019. This show was amazing and this was the character development that Anakin Skywalker needed. I love Ahsoka Tano. I cannot wait for the last season.

Finished Rebels!!! AGAIN, what a ride!!! I still love Ahsoka Tano. I also love Hera Syndulla and Sabine Wren. Sabine’s Darksaber arc was fantastic.

The Mandalorian OMG BABY YODA!!! Yes, I have succumbed to the adorableness of Baby Yoda. Most adorable SW character forever. But also just an enjoyable story in general. This, this is how you craft a story. still NOT over the darksaber omg.

The Good Place is continuing to be good. Not as crazy about season 4, but I’m so glad they decided to limit the seasons.

Got my sister to watch Rebels!! And then even a few episodes of The Clone Wars!!! Mwahaha >)

Finally got around to watching The Great British Bake Off, what a sweet show!

OMG I ALMOST FORGOT Anne With an E!!! Gosh what a wonderful wholesome delightful show. No I haven’t watched S3 yet because I am Lawful Good to a fault and just patiently waiting for it to come on Netflix

Film

So, I woefully neglected to mention The Aeronauts in this post about my favorite movies in the 2010s and that was a Mistake. Because I really enjoyed this one

But otherwise probably check out that list. Because I don’t go to the movies that often, actually, and anything I really loved from 2019 is most definitely listed there.

Did I meet my 2019 Goals?

Writing: Fandom

Finish Learning Curve YES

...and How to Lose a Spy in 10 Days Uh, no, not so much

Begin and complete the in-canon universe You’ve Got Mail AU YES, it is begun but no it is not complete

Try to knock out a few other projects on my 30+ SW ideas Umm, I did start / poke at a few things in addition to the YGM and NatGeo AUs, but nothing really “knocked out”

Try my hand at creating more visual fan works (like moodboards/photosets, step 1, learn proper terminology) ahahahah, no.

Writing: Original

Query more agents for my completed original novel YIKES, No. But I wasn’t anticipating that I’d decide to heavily edit/revise my manuscript.

Actually get around to deciding which idea I want to work on next and work on it Yeah, sure, I decided. How nice of past!Liz to make this goal so reachable as “deciding” lol

Reading

Be more supportive in helping my friend run Book Club so that it can actually meet more regularly HA, oops. Book Club died, but kind of in favor of being able to start a second D&D campaign. At least that’s the trade off I’m looking at. I had some OCD-related glasses issues this year that inhibited reading a lot.

Try to read at least one book for myself outside of Book Club lol WELL the one book I read this year was not part of Book Club sooo

Goals for 2020

Writing

I’m not going to make this a completion goal, but instead...

...I’d like to just focus on creating a regular writing schedule/habit. Whatever the project, I just want to make sure I carve out significant time each week just to write. I don’t want to set a specific goal like “x hours a week” for now, but I want to make sure that I am writing each week.

To achieve that (because what are goals without maps):

If the words don’t immediately jump onto the page, then I’m going to try outlining or summarizing. I’m going to let go of overthinking how sentences are phrased, and just pretend I’m describing the story idea to a friend.

That blank page is staring at me and I’m just going to fill it with words no matter what I might think of them!

And I’m going to let everything else expand from there. And see how that works.

Edit my original manuscript

Query more agents re: original manuscript

Look into the idea of perhaps forming or joining a writer’s group for original writing oh gosh that is so scary

Other

Get back into reading

Develop a routine for working out

Eat healthier

Continue focusing on therapy goals

Get around to watching: Black Sails, Mad Max: Fury Road, Arrival

Get better at responding to things in general

Tagging: @allatariel, @magalis, @mythologicalmango, @skitzofreak, @threadsketchier, @brynnmclean, @ruby-red-inky-blue, @siachti and anyone else who sees this and wants to do it!

Happy New Year y’all!

#tag meme #the latest with liz #annual good things post #happy thoughts #for future reference #goals

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ghostbustermelanieking · 5 years

Note

1 and/or 58?

1. “Pull over. Let me drive for awhile.”

58. “You don’t have to say anything.”

---

He calls her on a Tuesday morning when he is supposed to be resting, only three weeks after his discharge from the hospital, with a proposal. He is supposed to be taking two months of medical leave, and she tells him “But this isn't exactly work-related, Scully,” he teases. She can practically see his eyebrows waggling, as if he was standing right across from her.

She bites her lower lip, putting her feet up on the desk. “This had better not be another proposal to run off to Scotland and look for the Loch Ness Monster,” she tells him seriously, pretending she wouldn't jump on that in a minute if it weren't for his head injury. She'd do almost anything to feel normal again. She pretends that the sentence I have a proposal for you, Scully didn't make her instantly, childishly think of marriage, of his voice over the phone in Maine. (Her cheeks are red with embarrassment.)

“No, not again,” he says coyly. “Well. Not exactly.”

“Mulder,” she says at length, knowingly.

“Scully,” he says, mimicking her, and she rolls her eyes gently. “I've been watching some sighting blogs lately, and I've noticed a pattern up in New Hampshire. Four sightings within the last two months.”

“Sightings of what?” she asks, suspicious.

“Sasquatch,” he clarifies. She bites her lip again, although she isn't sure if it's to stifle a grimace or a smile. She's missed arguing with him. “It's perfectly harmless, no danger or anything, and even you admitted that the Files are on a bit of a dry run right now. Which I'm guessing means you're as bored as I am.” She can hear his grin over the phone. “C'mon, Scully,” he cajoles gently. “I'll pay for gas. I won't exert myself past what you say I should exert myself.”

“Mulder, three weeks ago, you were in the hospital because some madman did botched brain surgery on you. You shouldn't be exerting yourself at all.”

“Then it's a good thing I'm inviting my doctor along.”

She can hear the tiniest pleading in his voice. She casts her eyes down on the paperwork covering her desk and swallows back a sigh. She has been bored. She's stir-crazy. If Mulder hadn't been calling her every single day, she probably would be making excuses to call him: just to check up, just to ask if he remembers this one detail for her report.

As his doctor, she should be more sensible. But as his partner, she can't help it. Sasquatch is a pitiful excuse for an X-File, but it is still an X-File.

“I'll be there within an hour,” she says.

---

Mulder makes food for the road as if he were an elementary school mother. Sloppy sandwiches—peanut butter for him and turkey for her—stored in brown paper bags, carrot sticks, almonds, and three bags of sunflower seeds. Plus a couple packets of peanut M&Ms. His bandages came off a few days ago, and the line of stitches at his temple are just finished under the thatch of regrowing hair, the bill of his baseball cap from two weeks ago. “You look all ready for a field trip, Mulder,” she teases, raising her eyebrows at him. He shakes his head ruefully and plops his baseball cap down on her head as he climbs into the car. Hands her a packet of M&Ms and takes the lid off of her water bottle for her while she drives. They bicker over the radio all the way to Baltimore.

---

Near the Pennsylvania border, Mulder reads aloud to her from print-outs from his sighting blogs. He starts with the Sasquatch sightings, but he's moved onto other cryptids and the like within a few minutes. “Hey, look, Scully, more Big Blue sightings,” he says, flapping a piece of paper in her face. A blurry picture is accompanied by equally blurry text, the ink smudged by the pads of Mulder's fingers. “Want to go to Georgia next?”

She makes a face at the road. “Mulder, I thought we agreed that the deaths in Georgia—the deaths in Georgia that occurred almost four years ago—were due to the alligator.”

“But look at that picture, Scully!” He waves the print-out again. “Does that look like an alligator to you?”

She squints at the photo in brief increments before looking back to the road. “It looks vaguely like a tree branch.”

Feigning insult, he pouts. She reaches over and pats his knee, partially in reassurance and partially teasing. “We may be partners, Mulder,” she says gently, “but I am not galumphing up and down the East Coast all these next few weeks with your head energy. Especially not back to the place where my dog died. Let's take it one sighting at a time, okay?”

There's a sudden, straggling silence following that, and she suddenly worries that she's hurt his feelings. (She doesn't blame him for Queequeg's death. She doesn't; and it was a long time ago, anyways.) She looks over at him, and her stomach twists at the guilt on his face. She's ready to apologize when he speaks, and his voice is even and steady. Not the self-loathing reaction she expected; a little guilty, but only a little. “I'll buy you a new dog, Scully,” he says. “Or a cat. Or some fish, even. Fish are amazing, Scully, I speak from experience.”

Something like fear curdles in her gut, something like a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. Discussions like this is the type of thing she desperately wants, but is too afraid to ask for. She remembers her lips on his forehead, his soft, slurred voice in the hospital as he described his brain surgery-induced dreams of a suburban life with Diana, the guilty lurch when he whispered, But I don't want that with her. The unsaid implications there. She grips the wheel hard. “We'll see, Mulder,” she says, trying to sound amused, but her voice trembles. “We'll see.”

---

They stop for dinner somewhere in New York. She checks his condition, leaning over the table and the basket of chips he talked her into ordering to check his pupils. She brushes hair away from his eyes and he looks up at her almost shyly. She sits back in her seat too hard.

Halfway through dinner, Mulder reveals a folded up map from the car and traces their route with his ink-smudged finger. He's marked the specific spots where there's been sightings, boxed them off, and she moves to his booth to look, unintentionally pressing their arms together. She's missed this. She's missed him at the office, she thinks, and is saying it nearly before she realizes it—”I've missed you in the office.”

He looks at her in surprise, blinking with huge eyes. She leans closer to look at the map, and her hair brushes across his jaw; she can feel his eyes on her, astonished and affectionate.

---

She starts yawning somewhere in Connecticut. She's not too tired yet—she wants to get as far as they can tonight—so she keeps going. But she keeps yawning, her mouth gaping wider and wider, until she feels Mulder's hand brushing over her cheek. “Pull over,” he says in a soft, gentle voice. “Let me drive for awhile.”

She blinks at the road, the blur of headlights stubbornly. She'd thought he was asleep. “Oh, Mulder, I'm fine,” she says. “And besides that, you shouldn't be driving.”

“You're tired,” he says matter-of-factly. “You've been yawning for forty-five minutes now.”

“I thought you were asleep, Mulder,” she murmurs. Her chest is warm, swelling with affection; she feels foolish and tired and strangely, deliriously happy.

“I was. Your yawn is pretty loud.” She shoots him a look, eyebrow cocked, and he grins goofily. “Endearingly loud. Endearingly.”

“Uh-huh.” She stifles another yawn with her fist, shaking her head.

“C'mon, Scully.” His voice is low and warm. “C'mon. Pull over and let me drive to a hotel, at least.” He taps her kneecap with one finger. “We don't have to get there tonight.”

She links thumbs with him on an impulse before he moves his hand away, wraps her fingers around his. “You're not driving,” she says sternly. “Not with your injury. Doctor's orders. You should get some sleep.”

He rubs a slow circle on her palm with his thumb. “You should get some sleep.”

They both should get some sleep. Scully nods, her jaw clenched. They pass an exit sign with a singular hotel listed. She flips her blinker on.

---

There is only one room available, she tells him at the car. He throws her a wry smile. “Of course there is.” (They've dealt with their share of the only-one-room-left in their time.)

“I went ahead and took it,” she says, shifting from foot to foot. “So we can get some sleep.”

He nods, a whisper of a grin on his face. “Good call,” he says. “We can head up to New Hampshire in the morning.”

The room is fairly nice, considering their standard accommodations. Queen-sized bed, mutely patterned comforter, striped wallpaper. Scully checks Mulder out again, examining his stitches on the edge of the bed. He's as tired as she is, his eyelids lolling. She sifts her fingers softly through his hair and he turns his head towards her touch, their foreheads nearly bumping. He swallows, his eyes dark, fathomless. “What's the prognosis, doc?”

“You're fine.” Her hand drops from his hair, brushing down his stubbly cheek. “But you need to sleep on the bed, okay? Not the floor. Absolutely not,” she tells him sternly. “Okay?”

He swallows. She can see his Adam's apple bobbing. “Only if you do the same.”

She nods. She looks away, down at the carpet under their feet, clustered together at the edge of the bed. She can feel his warmth against her side, resists the urge to lean into it. She starts to stand, their knees bumping together, and his hand curls around hers. “Scully, I, uh…” he begins, his voice warm with sincerely. “I have some things I wanted to—” He breaks off in the middle with an enormous yawn that surely rivals her own yawning, and she smiles. She cannot help it. That warm feeling, that anticipation is back, and there is no fear accompanying it. “... to, uh, to say to you,” he finishes, blinking rapidly as if to try to stay awake. He squeezes her hand.

She's still smiling as she shakes her head, still biting back her own yawns. “That's very sweet, Mulder,” she says quietly, “but I think it can wait until the morning.”

He shakes his head, nearly pouting, stubborn as always. “I don't want to wait,” he says, and he sounds half-drunk on fatigue, but somehow, it's one of the most serious moments she's seen from him. He lifts his free hand to thumb her cheek, the hair slipped out from behind her ear. “I… I-I've wanted to say these things to you for a long time, and I've… I've waited too long to say them. I need to say them now.”

Overwhelmed tears well up in Scully's eyes. In the past, over the course of their partnership, she's been so unsure—never knowing how to interpret the little things, never being confident in what an interaction means, in how much Mulder cares for her or in the manner in which she cares for him. But now she knows. She just knows; it feels like everything has snapped into place. They're exhausted and half-asleep in a hotel room in Connecticut, and he's trying to say something to her that she desperately wants to hear, but he doesn't even have to say it. They don't need it.

She wipes her eye with one hand, whispers, “Oh, Mulder.” He's shooting her a concerned look; she leans up to press a sleepy kiss to his forehead. “It's okay,” she says, and leans bonelessly into his shoulder. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.” I know, she thinks, the words on her lips. I know.

She worries, briefly, that he won't understand, that he'll be hurt or think her dismissive.

But he doesn't say a word. He winds an arm around her back and pulls her close. He puts his lips to her hair and doesn't say anything, and she thinks, Oh. He knows, too.

They sit there together, unmoving, her face hidden against his shirt and their fingers tangled together, some silent understanding between them: This is enough. It's everything.

#urghhhh i dunno where this came from or if i like it #but anyways #i finished it!!#xf fanfic #i wrote this

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megbox · 4 years

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2019 Year in Review

Previous Posts: (2018) (2017) (2016) (2015) (2014) (2013) (2012) (2011)

It’s actually kind of interesting how... less interesting these year-in-reviews get as I get older. Depending on how you look at it, 2019 was somewhat of an unremarkable year. I spent much of it tragically broke, I didn’t get the opportunity to do much traveling. But at the same time, not having these flashy, colourful experiences to write about all the time makes me value the easy, simple things more. It forces me to be a bit more reflective about how the day-to-day life I am carving out for myself teaches me things and about the person I am becoming.

Far and away, the most positive thing to come out of 2019 has been that I am real deals social worker now. I have the best job in the entire world. I have “RSW” in my email signature and on my business cards. I do work that is meaningful to me every single day. There is so much to learn but I’m in the right place to be learning it. And I am really proud of myself for getting here ❤️

January

Unlike the last few years, 2019 began on a high note. The millisecond that student loan hit my direct deposit, I took a little trip to Jasper to visit my friend Oliver who was teaching snowboarding at Marmot Basin for the season. I braved some very treacherous roads to make it to Jasper. It took me nearly eight hours. Highway 93 was closed so I had to take the long route and basically white-knuckled it the whole way. But it was so worth it. I found myself later that evening in a dorm room full of young Scandinavian people, downing American Vintage iced teas and feeling like I was at a frat party. We went to this club called Four Peaks and they played Rasputin by Boney M and everyone went crazy. I hooked up with this gorgeous Danish ski instructor named Rasmus. He was so beautiful. I am proud of that one, honestly. Oliver and I went skiing and hiking and we went to Earl’s and he tried a Caeser. By the end of the weekend, I think we maybe ran out of things to talk about. But it was really cool to see him and to hear about the last few years of his life and how excited he was to move to New Zealand to be with his girlfriend (whom he met on the same trip where he and I met, in Hawaii!)

On January 14, I started my second practicum. It was a sad transition. My time at CommunityWise had been so great that anything new was going to pale in comparison but my new placement was especially bad. It was so slow there. My computer hadn’t been updated in years and I didn’t have access to anything for weeks. My supervisor was barely around (not her fault, though. She was finishing her MSW, had two young children, was the team lead for both family centres in the city and had two practicum students to supervise. Girl was busy). I remember one morning while I was helping one of the caseworkers with some menial task like organizing the food pantry, and I was just so frustrated, I kind of asked her point-blank, “Is this practicum meant to be more self-directed?” and I just started crying as I asked it. I kind of… whimpered it. It was awkward but from that point on, they made way more of an effort to give me tasks and engage me in the work that was being done there. Lesson learned: you get what you ask for.

February The first weekend of February is what we would call a “power weekend.” Looking back on these actions now, I cringe. However, at the time, I was pretty stoked. I slept with a friend from podcast club after a house party. For ease, I will refer to him as W. W had asked me out twice prior to this happening. I actually said yes, and we had plans to get drinks, but his best friend ended up going through a breakup the night before and he cancelled last minute. So then we slept together. Drunkenly. And it wasn’t… good. I chalked it up to the drunkenness. We went out on a real date, I made sure to have like one glass of wine maximum. He was lovely and great company and he taught me how to play crib but… you know that feeling when you’re like god, I wish I was enjoying this but I am just not enjoying this. It was like that all night. And it felt heavy. If I am being completely honest, there was also this strange moment that night where I had the thought, “he kind of looks like my grandfather if he were younger” and there is truly no recovering from that kind of realization.

February was also a terrible month because I had no days off. I will go to my grave angry about being required to work for free in my practicums. I was doing 32+ unpaid hours at this boring practicum and then working evenings and weekends at Famoso whenever I could. And Famoso was dead, so I wasn’t even making good money. This was also where I began to start witnessing things in my practicum that started to fuck with me. At first, I thought I was just having trouble sleeping. But over time in seminar and debriefs with my social work friends who were going through the same thing I realized that it was the oh-so-pleasant combination of vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue.

Over the reading week, I went to Fernie with Maddy and her friends for a ski/party weekend and that was truly awesome. One of those weekends where your ribs ache for days once you’re back because you laughed so hard. Some highlights:

It snowed 60cm the night before we skied. It was powder up to your waist.

• Maddy’s friend Melissa liked our bartender at the hostel. She took his phone and texted herself from it so he would have her number and vice versa. Then she got so drunk that later the same evening, she was looking at the text and forgot that she had sent it to herself so she texted back, “Who is this?” Also LOL #Bryna.

• I took nudes of Maddy in the hostel shower to send to the guy she was seeing at the time. LOL. What are friends for?

• Maddy and I met this set of twins who are the definition of gym bros. Identical twins. We ended up hooking up with them. At the same time. In our bunk bed at the hostel. We high fived. I later fell off the top bunk. We gave them a beer for the road when they left. All year long, we send one another their Instagram posts and stories whenever it’s them flexing in the gym mirror and just laugh about, “we really slept with those guys.”

March

In March, I got the flu. It was very annoying. I had to miss practicum (meaning I’d have to make up the hours somehow later). I stated binge watching Grey’s Anatomy.

I ended things with W. It was kind of harsh but it needed to be done. I need to stop breaking up with people in the weeks prior to my birthday because we had a total Dave-Simard-2.0 situation where W told me he had purchased a birthday present for me and he still wanted to give it to me.

I also ran the St. Patrick’s Day Road Race again!!! Good times as always.

Practicum got much better in March. I had many things to do. I got to design the curriculum for and facilitate a six-week girl’s group. I assisted with the planning and running of a series of community tax clinics which was cool. Except the guy from the agency whose project it was is a creep. He kept telling me all of these stories that were incredibly inappropriate given the fact that we knew each other only in a professional sense. He made many comments about women’s bodies and appearances that were gross. And I got left in some pretty unsafe situations all by myself. AND he made me pay out of pocket for snacks for one of the tax clinics and never reimbursed me for that. I kind of forgot about that until just now. Wow.

April

April was a big month!

I went to Portland for my birthday weekend with Matt and Connor. When I think back to this trip, it was lovely, but mostly what I remember is a lot of beer, a lot of rain, and being hungover. Portland is a really cool city. I wasn’t totally expecting to be confronted with as much homelessness and substance use as I was but, that’s my privilege talking. Some highlights from the trip include:

• The “Flower in the Kettle” IPA I had.

• The mascarpone, corn and lobster agnolotti I had for my birthday dinner at A Cena. Recommended to me by a trusted friend I worked with at Famoso. So rich. SO FUCKING GOOD.

• Meeting this really drunk real estate agent at a dive bar and convincing her that Matt and Connor were both my boyfriends. I still have her business card in my wallet. I am unsure why.

• The Weezer concert was honestly awesome.

• Matt actually trying out the guyliner.

• Meeting some random guy when I went to get gum at a corner store. His name was Dan. He was old. His girlfriend had kicked him out and he was just walking around. He’d been in prison for a lot of his life. We had a good chat. I got his phone number and now we have each other on Facebook.

• In the airport on the way home, Matt and I were so overtired that absolutely everything was hilarious. The gif game (the gif of Kevin from The Office dropping the bucket of chili. “Me in Thailand”), and the beginning of when I got let in to the “KEVIN!!!!” joke. I had tears in my eyes.

• Connor yelled at me in a pizza restauraunt LOL (sorry Connor. I know you Ctrl+F your name. But this was memorable to me.)

In the middle of April, I FINISHED MY PRACTICUM HOURS AND EFFECTIVELY GOT MY DEGREE. I cannot describe to you how good it felt to be driving home from one of those tax clinics after my third twelve-hour day (making up practicum hours is fun) knowing I never had to go back. Knowing that soon enough, I’d get to work on all the same cool projects but actually get paid for my time.

We visited Saskatoon for Easter, which would turn out to be the last time I got to see my Baba. She was very ill, and both of us knew that it would likely be the last time, so I did get to say my goodbyes. It was very difficult and I sobbed for a lot of the ride home. It’s a weird feeling, when someone you love has been so ill for so long, and you begin to see their condition really deteriorate. When the idea of life without that person starts to become a reality. There was almost an… acceptance? It sounds so callous to say and it’s way more complex than this but also somewhat of a relief in the finality of it. I don’t know. It was a lot.

April was also when I started interviewing for social work jobs. I had two interviews. The first one was at CCASA, essentially for what I thought was my dream job. I have never psyched myself out so hard for anything in my life. I thought about that interview and that interview alone for weeks. I studied harder than I have for any test ever. When the time came for the interview, I was so nervous. I became this meek and mild version of myself. It was honestly devastating. But of course, had I gotten that job, I would never have interviewed at the University of Calgary. My boss-to-be called me for a pre-interview while I was on shift at Famoso. It was busy, too. But I just said fuck it and ducked into the back and talked to her on the phone for twenty minutes. She invited me for an interview a week later where I had to give a five-minute presentation on managing stress as a student. Rock on.

May

On May 1, I got offered THE JOB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY! It was truly one of the happiest moments of my life. There is nothing more satisfying and exciting than actually attaining something you’ve been dreaming of for so long. It was for a one year contract on a maternity leave coverage, facilitating community trainings around suicide prevention, helping skills, all that good stuff. I was going to be on salary. I was going to have benefits. I WAS GOING TO BE ABLE TO WALK TO WORK AND HAVE A REAL CAREER THAT I WOULD BE PROUD OF AND EXCITED ABOUT.

I hung up the phone after accepting the job, texted all the requisite people about the good news, and then immediately drove to Famoso to quit. My boss at Famoso was angry with me because I did not give two weeks notice. I said I would work out the rest of my scheduled shifts. He was a jerk, he yelled at me in frustration saying, “You work here for five fucking years, we accommodate every trip, every vacation, every practicum and you don’t even have the courtesy to give me two weeks notice?!” It wasn’t a big deal though. He was just being an asshole. And hey, Steve, you’re still an asshole!

So my last day serving tables at Famoso Westhills was May 3, 2019. I’m usually not good with goodbyes but it was the easiest thing in the world to just walk out of there at the end of the night knowing I would never be back. I had ten days until I started my actual job at the University (a bit of an oversight on my part because I had ~no money~ so what the fuck was I going to do with ten days).

My grandmother passed away on May 19, 2019. Back to Saskatoon on May 28 for the funeral. It was really fucking sad and really fucking weird to see all of my cousins crying. My grandma also had a big Catholic funeral and none of us are particularly religious and as the direct relatives of the deceased we were at the front of the church and it was really obvious none of us had any idea when to kneel vs. stand and didn’t know any of the words or tunes to the songs.

On a happier note, my brother was accepted into medical school in May. Not that I ever doubted my brother would be a successful person, but this just really solidified it. Dr. MacKay.

June

June was rather uneventful. I was honestly so cripplingly broke at this point, and it was so long before I actually saw a full salaried paycheck. I had to borrow money from my parents just to like, function. And pay my bills. It was embarrassing. But I was working full time and learning so many cool things about the job that it made it alright.

I walked the stage on the first week of June and accepted my BSW degree. I didn’t want to go but it was actually a pretty awesome and happy occasion.

The other big thing that happened in June is that Maddy moved to Australia. It sucks that I only met Maddy in the summer of 2018. She is so awesome and we became so close so quickly. I genuinely love her so much and spending time with her is so easy and fun, it was really sad when she left knowing that it was highly possible she may never return or at least not for several YEARS.

July

By July, my new job was in full swing. I was facilitating trainings every other day (so much public speaking experience!), I was sitting on a committee, every day was new and challenging and exciting.

My dad had a giant party for his 60th birthday, with some friends even coming from Saskatoon. They rented a limousine that took us to the Black Diamond hotel because apparently my parents have some kind of significance there. I did a shot with my grandfather? We played pool and Big Buck hunter? None of my friends came but all of my brother’s friends came and I honestly think that it turned the tables in terms of who my parents’ favourites are in terms of friends.

I also had an awesome weekend at Folk Festival mostly with Kendal and Lachlan but also featuring guest appearances from Chad and Gillian. Podcast club pals. There is just nothing better than folk festival, honestly. Food trucks and music in the sun and drinking sangria from a flask and admiring everyone’s cool outfits and getting a tan and listening to concerts all day. I had a nap in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday and it was like the most glorious 45 minutes of my entire year.

August

Oh, no. August. I was still cripplingly broke (it takes a long time to catch up to a point where your entire paycheck is not just going to paying back things you’ve borrowed) and I made the utterly stupid decision to go to a music festival.

Big Valley Jamboree, baby. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the best weekend that I am never ever doing again. Some highlights:

• Mere minutes after arriving, I watched a man vomit.

• The “Tony Keith” joke really took off. Lucas and I were so #inone on the Friday night we kept yelling and trying to start chants (“old man graphics!” is my personal favourite in response to Toby Keith’s random, pro-military Americana concert graphics).

• I gave my phone to somebody and then wandered off in search of this stupid boy’s campsite. I got very, very lost. The BVJ campground is a large place. I had no idea where I was going and was literally just stumbling through the dark and the mud. I ended up in the middle of some middle-aged Newfoundlanders’ campsite. They welcomed me. They offered me and sandwich and several beers. We chatted for like an hour. It was the best. I walked for SO LONG and finally found my own campsite. But we’re talking literally hours of walking around blind and disoriented. There were a few moments when I genuinely thought I was going to have to wait until the sun came up.

• A few less-than-classy moments in porta potties.

• The HANGOVERS. Jesus lord. I couldn’t survive.

• Airwaves guy was great and I also had a really good buffalo chicken poutine thing that I remember fondly.

In happier and much more professional news, I facilitated my first Community Helpers training in August. I was very nervous. Like, stay up all night the night before nervous. And we had some technical difficulties with setting up. But my coworker / work BFF Jeannie was there and she was a great support to me. She ran and got me a coffee and a banana bread because I hadn’t eaten and was so so stressed. And she encouraged me through the whole thing. It went really really well. I almost choked up at the end while thanking the participants for coming and explaining how it was my first training and they were such a great group to do it with.

The squad was all super broke so we turned to free activities. It was very wholesome. We spent many afternoons and evenings reading in Prince’s Island Park with snacks. We went to Shakespeare in the park. We went hiking.

A lot of my friends moved away in August. Such is life when your friends are all academics or have bright futures that are not confined to the Calgary city limits. Sydney moved to Victoria to start her PhD and we had a nice day at Elbow Falls eating berries and then having dinner with my family. Adam and Kendal both moved to Ottawa to start a fancy new government job and an MSW degree, respectively. I am really really proud of all of my friends but I miss them, too. Calgary is not the same without these people.

On the flip side – a new roommate moved in! Maddie left to move to Red Deer to be with Joel and so our new roommate was a French exchange student named Aurore. She arrived and was shocked to see that none of the advertised furniture was in her room except for one limp mattress. Karla and I hadn’t even known she was coming because my landlord sucks, but we helped her get her things together and then ordered her some Skip the Dishes. She was exhausted. And sweet. And was starting a block week MBA class the next day in her second language. I felt for her.

September

In September, the inklings of me moving into a different role at the university were planted. My boss called me in to her office one afternoon and shut the door. I was terrified but she said to me, “you’re not in trouble. Actually, just the opposite.” She brought up the recent vacancies in the job I now hold (lol: spoilers) and said, “Just think about it. I just want you to know that there would be no hard feelings if you chose to apply for the role.” I was flattered but also caught off guard. I did not think I was qualified for the job. I had virtually no client experience in either of my practicums. I wasn’t even registered with the ACSW at this point. And I loved my old job and my health promotion coworkers so so much. But also… I was on a twelve month contract. And the person away on leave was definitely coming back. I was “strongly encouraged” to get registered with the college.

It was honestly such a mess. They gently nudged me towards applying for the role, I was torn. Then they told me it probably wouldn’t work because I wasn’t yet registered with the ACSW, and even if I did register would still only be provisional. I felt an odd sense of relief at that, and had totally psyched myself out of being able to do the job at that point. At the last minute, I was told “just submit an application to keep our options open.” I did so. I got an interview. I interviewed (and it was SO fucking stressful…. Interviewing with people you already work with is 10x worse than interviewing with strangers. I tell ya.). And… I got the job!!! Not only did I get the job, I got a full-time, permanent contract (there were two positions, one full-time and one on a longer contract. I was told from the beginning I would just be applying for the longer contract but I ended up getting the FULL TIME ONE.) It was a HUGE boost to my confidence and again, one of the happiest days of the year.

September was also just absolutely insane for work. So many orientation presentations, students reaching out wanting to get involved, starting all of the volunteer programs, planning. I was so, so, so SO FREAKING TIRED. But we did lots of fun things. Like we took Aurore and her friend Cecile to Banff, had them try Caesers and Beaver Tails and all kinds of Canadian things.

October

On my last day in my old role, my coworkers decorated my desk with a homemade banner and got me desserts. We went to McDonald’s for a feast and sat in the Hub and made jokes. It felt really special and I was really touched.

On October 7, I started my new-but-also-kind-of-the-same job. I was very nervous and there was a lot to learn right from the get go. And it was so… strange. I HAD MY OWN OFFICE. WITH MY NAME ON THE DOOR AND EVERYTHING. The imposter syndrome hit me like a tsunami. I was extremely stressed, extremely overwhelmed. But my teammates and my boss are great. They understand I’m new not just to the role but to the field. They were (and are) so kind and patient with me and answer all of my questions.

For Thanksgiving, we went to Banff. We had beers and did a little bowling at High Rollers and then went to the Rimrock for dinner. It was very nice. A few weeks later, I hosted my own friendsgiving dinner and roasted a turkey! And spent all day decorating my parents’ house and the table to look fancy. Everything turned out really really well. I was super stoked. Note to self: throw more dinner parties.

November:

What I recall from November is just… stress. The case management / social worker life came at me real hard, real fast. I had to call CFS for the first time. My client did not want me to. It was hard. I did not cope well. My coping strategy was to fuck off to Lake Louise (?) for a weekend in a hostel and drink two bottles of wine with some random sorority girls from Chicago. And tears.

The cooking phase was in full swing at this point. Eggs benedict, soft pretzels, curry, French onion soup, gnocchi, prosciutto apple blue cheese chicken, apple and chai galettes.

The third week of November was also when I decided to start training for the half marathon. I found a plan online and set out to follow it and honestly, it’s been great. I usually don’t stick to exercise routines for longer than a month because I tend to go too hard, too fast and I overdo it and I let one hungover day derail me. But this plan wasn’t focused on distance but rather time spent running. So rather than, “I have to run 5km” today it’s, “I have to run for 45 minutes today.” I thought I’d hate that but I actually really like it. It encourages me to go a little slower and just run out the clock, at whatever pace. And the speed is building gradually, and naturally.

December:

Aaaand December!

December has been so much marathon training. Today, I am entering my seventh week of consistent running and exercise. That is a badass accomplishment for me. I am very pleased. I even managed to do my runs in Saskatoon on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Aurore left back to Paris. She had a birthday party at the house with all of her international friends and we went for sushi and looked at Christmas lights in the rich people neighborhoods before she returned home. She ended up being so wonderful. I will miss her.

I went to Radium for a weekend with Kennedy, Matt, Amanda, and their friend Katie. The takeaways from this experience are: I am excited to get to spend more time with Kennedy and Amanda and to become better friends with them, I think I like smoking weed now, and skiing is the best.

2020:

To be completely honest, my life is pretty good. I sometimes wish I had somebody to share it with, and that’s something I hope to be a little better about in 2020 is putting myself out there in more of a meaningful way.

I also am super excited to continue down this path with my career and to develop personally and professionally as a social worker. There is truly so much to learn and I’m really motivated and excited right now to do well at this which is an awesome feeling. I do need to work on not taking my work home with me so much, about separating the social work life from the personal life. Setting boundaries and all that good stuff.

I’m hopefully going to run my first half marathon in 2020. May 31. The countdown is on. Excited to cross that item off the bucket list and experience the rush of crossing the finish line! That endorphin high is going to be insane.

And I want to keep developing my cooking skills. Though they may be small, they are mighty. I want to try and learn how to make fresh pasta dough. LOL. Simple goals.

Anyways... thank you 2019 for all you have brought me and taught me. I am grateful for the life I get to the live and the experiences I get to have. And I’m super stoked to see where 2020 takes me.

#megbox #personal #year in review #2019

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borhapstyles · 6 years

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Two Weeks

Prompt: “Could you do an imagine where the reader and harry broke up a week ago but he already has a new girlfriend and the reader gets upset but he tries to explain shes a fake girlfriend but the reader doesnt listen. Happy ending please !” -anon

Changed it to a couple of weeks instead of just one, hope you don’t mind!

Warnings: None (At least I don’t think?) Word Count: 4.2k

A restless sigh escapes your chest as your eyes scour the room. The familiar feeling blankets itself upon you once again, the feeling of impotence. Your mind is moving a million miles a minute, dictating to do with your day.

Laundry, reply to emails, finish season two of Queer Eye, read up on recipes and finally cook for the first time in weeks.

But your body cannot seem to get up from the edge of the bed.

It still feels too much like him, the room. The crumpled bed sheets beneath you aren’t even really yours; they belong to him but became yours when you moved in together.

Your fingers tap on the mattress as you shut your eyes, tears building up.

It had been two weeks which in your eyes was a bit of time, yet no time at all. You could still hear the door shutting from that night and feel the stillness of the room after things had quieted down.

Your eyes peek through to the bathroom, where three weeks ago that day he was standing with just a towel around his waist and a toothbrush in his hand. He moved fervently and you just chuckled to yourself at the abuse the pink toothbrush was receiving. His cheeks turned up at the sound and he turned to you with bright eyes.

But those bright eyes are no more.

Harry’s dull eyes examine his drained visage. The water from the faucet below him runs and it takes him a few moments to register that he’s left the sink on. Dark circles seem to pack on even more than usual- Lou is going to have some strong words with him today.

He glances out the door of the bathroom into a room that is comfortable but not home to him. Three weeks ago he would’ve found you sitting on the edge with your cheeks dyed rose, gazing at him with admiration. Now all he sees is an empty, unmade bed, burning in the sunlight.

A hollowness furnishes his chest as he thinks back to the time. God, he misses you like crazy. But the words exchanged between the two of you were so harsh, perhaps too harsh. There’s no turning back from that. Or is there?

“Harry!” Thundering knocks permeates his thoughts. “I’ve got to head out today but I‘ve left you some french toast on the table! Make sure you clean up afterwards!”

A faint smile pokes at Harry’s face. He had gone to stay with Gemma for a bit after your break-up, just until he could find a new place to move into. The flat, as decided the night you two parted, would be yours since his home in LA, in your words, “has seen more of him in the last eight months than she or their flat have.” His sister, no matter how old they got, would always make sure to look after her baby brother.

“Thanks Gem! I’ll see you later!” He shouts back before throwing his toothbrush back into its holder.

Perhaps. He thinks to himself whilst staring at the bed. Perhaps.

“How are you holding up?” Your best friend echoes through your phone. You stand with a cookbook open in your kitchen, flipping through pages to try and find a meal that looks appetizing but easy to make.

“Well, you know.”

Your friend sighs through the phone and the honk of a car horn in the background.

“What am I supposed to do, Y/BF/N, it still hurts. And it doesn’t help that some of his shit’s still here.”

“You need to go out, okay, or do something fun at least. And maybe sell his things, you can make a lot out of that.”

“I am doing fun things!” You defend yourself. “Cooking is very entertaining.”

“It’s been two weeks, Y/N. At least come out with me today-” Your sigh cuts into her plea. “Come on, just for a couple hours, and if you decide that your couch and Netflix needs you more, then you can go home.”

“Alright, alright. I’ll go, but give me an hour to get ready and everything.”

“I’m already on my way with breakfast for the both of us, I’ll just let myself in.”

Nothing can describe what Harry is feeling right now. Absolutely nothing.

“And you two are going to take a stroll down the Mayfair district...” The PR’s coordinator’s voice is saturated by the immense displeasure that is now occupying the whole of him.

A fake girlfriend? Harry wasn’t 18 anymore. He thought getting out of One Direction also meant getting away from the bullshit of fake-dating for the press, but everything comes at a price apparently.

His head shakes feverishly as the press manager’s words register in his brain.

“Your breakup with Y/N is sad, yes, but imagine how much will stir up if you’re seen with someone else two weeks later! The amount of people that will Google your name, you won’t even believe...”

Anger? Grief? Agitation?

There are no words, as perhaps it is a mixture of all.

His phone in front of him buzzes and he hopes for a second that it’s you. But why would you call? After what he said? It’s just Niall, checking up on him.

“Harry?” His head shoots up to meet the eyes of his own manager. “You alright?”

The manager of Clara, his fake girlfriend for who knows how long, looks at Harry with an expectant face.

“No.” He firmly replies, tangling his hands together. The rest of the employees in the room whip their heads around, studying his next move.

“Is it really necessary for us to hold hands?”

Clara’s manager, Leslie, purses her lips, exhaling. “Yes, Harry. You do, how else are you meant to prove that there’s a relationship between you two?”

“I’ve seen people assume the worst from a lot less, the press can write what they will but I’m sure they can take a lot from us walking around.” Harry reasons. As much as he doesn’t want to sound like he’s pleading, he truly is desperate to do as little as possible in this situation.

“It’s true.” H’s manager steps in, trying to defend his client. Though he wants the best for Harry’s career, he doesn’t want him to suffer either.

“I-I don’t know.” Leslie sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Hold hands, don’t hold hands, as long as it gets the message across, do whatever it takes.”

From the other end of the room, a silent Clara makes a small noise of exhaustion as she stares at the ground. Harry peers at her for a moment, empathy creeping in. She just wanted to be an actress and be known for her own talents, not written in as Harry Styles’s girlfriend. He frowns, understanding her position.

“I think we’re all set here, yeah? We all ready to head out?”

No, but I’m going to have to anyways. Harry thinks to himself.

“See! This is nice, right! You’re in the car, we’re driving around London...” Your best friend nudges. You roll your eyes but smile at their efforts, resting a hand on the window to hold your head up.

“I’m not seeing anything I haven’t seen before.”

“Oh come on.” They groan. “We’re going out to buy you new shoes! It’s going to be eventful, at least more so than sitting at home and rewatching Thor: Ragnarok!”

“Hey!” You shout. “Watching Ragnarok is the best thing I can do for myself. Thor is-”

“Okay, okay. I know, Thor is everything.”

The conversation continues on to other TV shows and before you know it, you’re in Chelsea for a bit of shopping.

“What are we doing in on Oxford Street? Westfield not enough?” You ask sarcastically before shutting the car door.

“Not for a break-up like this.” Your friend replies and you laugh, realising for at least the entirety of the car ride, you did not think about Harry.

As you are making your way to the first shop, you see several paparazzi lounging around, as if waiting for someone to arrive. You shrug, thinking it must be for the Beckham family or someone else as it isn’t unusual for celebrities to be shopping in London.

“Try not to look so grim.” Harry’s manager instructs through the phone as he exits the car. He hangs up before sighing, tugging his coat closer for the upcoming task.

His eyes case the area, noting the several paps already getting their cameras ready. Bystanders shoot their heads up and Harry makes eye contact with some, waving with a short smile. Some wave back, most simply stare in shock.

“Ready then?” Clara’s voice breaks through to him. He looks at her and nods before they begin their walk. Much to Harry’s pleasure, they had agreed that holding hands was a bit too much and would seem unnatural, so they opted to stroll close by each other, pretending to be in deep conversation.

“What sort of films do you act in?” Harry asks.

“Oh, nothing big just yet, I’ve mainly been doing TV appearances. I did a bit for BBC and a couple things in The States but I’m really trying to get into a dramatic role sometime soon.”

Harry nods. “I see, I see. I wish you luck with that.”

He tries his best to be interested but her soft voice reminds him too much of your sweetness. If only it were you walking by him, then he would have no trouble looking in love. He wouldn’t have to pretend.

"So, I saw Dunkirk when it premiered...” Her voice drowns out once he hears something else.

No, oh no it couldn’t be.

But it is.

It’s your laugh, live and in person from a few meters away. He’s never shot his head up so fast.

For a moment he’s stunned. He can see from your face that you haven’t exactly been having the easiest couple of weeks either, but by the sound of your laughter and the looks of you with your best friend, you were okay.

He watches intently as you enter the shop. Clara’s urgent voice prods at him.

“Harry? Harry?”

He snaps his head towards Clara, brows furrowed.

“Ye-Yeah, sorry. What?”

“I was asking about working with Fionn Whitehead.” He blinks for a few seconds, trying to get back into the right headspace, not that the one he was in before he saw you was any better.

“He’s great, he’s fantastic. I-uh...” The two walk past the shop you are now in and he catches a glimpse of you trying on some shoes through the window.

“He’s what? Haz?”

“Please don’t call me that.” Harry speaks sharply, sending Clara in a frantic, apologetic state.

“I’m sorry, it’s just, I’ve seen Y/N call you that-”

“No, no, I’m sorry as well. I’m not in a very happy mood at the moment and hearing that, especially since Y/N used to call me that... it isn’t very good for me I don’t think.” He solemnly replies.

Photographers begin their session, keeping their distance but shout vulgar things.

“Are you guys dating now? What happened to Y/N!”

“Is it true that you were cheating on Y/N with Clara Hughes?”

“Wow, two weeks and you’ve already moved on? That’s quicker than the Kardashians! Bravo Styles!”

Harry seethes and Clara makes note of his demeanour, placing an arm on his shoulder. The flashes increase with the gesture and Harry stiffens.

“Let’s go inside the cafe.” She nudges and he only follows her movements.

“Jeez, who the hell is that?”

You glance over at your friend whose face is scrunched in displeasure.

“That swarm over there, is that the queen or something?” You follow your friend’s gaze to the large cluster of paparazzi. You remember being in that swarm, clutching on to Harry tightly as he wraps his arm around you, trying to shield you from all the words and flashes.

You grip the shopping bag in your hand tighter.

“Dunno, maybe.” You reply. For a second you think you see Harry’s boots underneath the group but they disappear into the coffee shop before you can even tell.

“On to the next shop?” Your friend suggests and you nod slowly, moving past the cafe and past Harry.

Hours later you return home with your best friend. Your body aches from a day full of shopping but you’re thankful that your friend convinced you to go out. Walking the streets of London never fails to do wonders for your soul, even if this time it’s without Harry.

“Thank you for agreeing to stay over, by the way.” You say to your best friend whilst locking the apartment door behind you.

“Oh please, if I wasn’t around I don’t think you would’ve gotten up today.”

You shake your head laughing at the half-truth before opening the fridge. “I’m going to get the pasta started.”

“Fantastic, I’ll just be in the bathroom for a bit.” Your best friend calls out and you reply an “Okay”.

Whilst waiting for the water to boil, you grab your phone and out of habit, click on twitter. You are on private and didn’t have a wide range of followers but you did still have one person following you to your surprise: Harry. You quickly click to see your timeline and wait patiently as it refreshes but before you can look at the first meme, your best friend runs out to you in a panic.

“Y/N! Y/N Y/N!” You almost drop your phone at the frantic tone of her voice.

“What, what?! Is something wrong? What’s happened?!”

“Don’t check twitter, please don’t.” She breathes out heavily, her hair a mess from rushing out of the bathroom so quickly.

“Okay, but why did you have to tell me n-“ “Just, don’t check it. Or Instagram, don’t. Or even snapchat. You know what, just don’t use your phone tonight, okay?”

“Would you mind telling me why it’s so bad for me to?” She bites her lip and sighs, contemplating if she should even bother. It would kill you to see what she saw. Hell, it killed her as your best friend when she saw photos of Harry with another girl. She can’t even imagine how you would feel, considering it’s only been two weeks and she just got you in a better mood.

“I-I can’t, not right now. After I shower, maybe. But please, don’t check your phone while I’m gone, okay?” You reluctantly agree. Your best friend wouldn’t go through all this trouble if it wasn’t important.

Now if only she could shower faster so you could find out what was so troubling.

“Harry!”

Harry’s head whips up at Gemma’s shout. He climbs out of bed to greet Gemma for the first time since this morning.

“What is this?” Gemma shoves her phone in his face which, much to his displeasure, is remnants of today’s events. “It’s literally only been two weeks, Harry, and you’ve already gone out with someone else? I thought Y/N was the love of your life?! I know mum-“

“It wasn’t by choice, Gem!” He shouts. “It wasn’t by choice.”

Gemma’s mouth closes at her younger brother’s words. She steps further into Harry’s room, slumping down on his bed.

“I guess, they’re trying to get some more news out there about me and apparently capitalising on my breakup by setting me up with someone else was the thing to do.” He utters, voice laced with disgust. He felt used. He felt confused. He felt like he didn’t know himself. It almost makes him chuckle- a couple weeks without you and he’s almost lost himself.

“I tried to fight it but I just couldn’t, Gem.” Harry speaks. The bed dips as he takes a seat next to his sister. “I didn’t have it in me to. I felt so powerless. I haven’t felt like myself and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Oh, Harry.” Gemma frowns, wrapping her hands around her brother. Tears fill the brims of Harry’s eyes and he leans over to his sister. “Now she’s going to see them and she isn’t going to speak to me again.”

For the first time, Gemma is at a loss for words. She wants to help Harry but if she knows anything about you for the two years you’ve been with Harry, she knows you’re almost as stubborn as he is and won’t have any of this explanation.

But if she also knows you, she knows you and Harry are still very much in love will eventually go back to each other.

“Why did you two break up in the first place?” Her brows furrow as she realises that Harry never gave her a firm explanation. He just showed up at her doorstep one day, eyes red and hair disheveled. “I never pushed for an explanation but it’d be nice to know so I can help.”

“We got too busy for each other.”

“Harry, that’s no reason to-”

“It is. Or rather, it was. I’m on the road like seven months out of the year and if I’m not touring I’m in the studio or doing something for the press. Obviously with her new job she can’t leave as much if at all like when she was in uni.”

Gemma stares into the hardwood floors of her guest bedroom. Her brother’s managed to make this room feel lonelier than ever in a span of just a few days.

“A few days after I got back, we got into an argument over something small, something petty. I can’t even remember what it was about. But she just went off on me about how we hardly see each other and I guess it was buildin’ up for her because she sat me down and eventually said she can’t do it anymore.” Tears tumble over Harry’s cheeks as he thinks back to the day. “I mean, can you blame her for not wanting to be with someone who’s never ‘round?”

“Harry-”

“I should’ve fought harder, Gem. But I didn’t...” He sniffles, wiping away tears with his wrists. “and now she’s going to see those photos and think I’m some womanizer, just like all the papers.”

“She will not think that, Harry.” Gemma states firmly. She lays a hand onto his shoulder before reaching over to give him a tissue. “If she paid any attention to you over these two years, if she knows you at all, then she knows you are far from a womanizer.”

Harry’s lips purse together as his slouch grows deeper. He doesn’t know what to do with himself and he’s scared to do anything else.

“I don’t believe anyone would just throw away two years together unless there was some bigger reason. And for you two, there isn’t. She knew what she was getting herself into and obviously she loved you. Loves you, still.” Gemma pats Harry as he continues to stay quiet. She can see the gears turning inside his head and holds back a small chuckle.

“You need to go see her.” She whispers into the silence of his room.

“Rumours have it that Harry and Clara are moving in with each other as today they were looking at furniture in the Mayfair district?!” You screech, reading the article from People magazine.

“Please don’t throw-” Your best friend is cut off as you slam your phone down into the couch before shoving your own head inside a pillow to scream.

“It’s been two fucking weeks! TWO! Who the fuck does he think he is?!”

Your best friend shakes her head. “A bastard, that’s who. He’s a complete dickhead and honestly, I can’t believe you ever went out with him.”

“I can’t believe that this is actually him now! Going out with ‘Clara Hughes’, whoever the fuck that is. Did our relationship mean nothing to him?! Did he just- oh my god.” You stop yourself mid-sentence. You huff and turn to your friend, who stares at you with confused eyes.

“Do you think he was cheating on me even before we broke up?”

Your friend opens their mouth to reply several times before words actually come out. “You can’t assume that.”

“He was so distant before he came back home to London and when he did, he picked fights over the littlest things and... oh my god. It makes sense. Now that I think about it, it’s like he didn’t even fight for our relationship when we broke up.”

You sigh and stare out the window quietly. Part of you doesn’t believe in the theory but the other half doesn’t know what to think anymore.

A knock interrupts the silence of your living room and you look to your best friend for answers.

“Did you order anything?”

“No...” You stand up and grab a knife from the kitchen just in case. Whilst looking through the peephole, you almost roll your eyes.

“Who is it?”

“It’s... Harry.” You utter. You haven’t said his name in days.

“I’ll be in your room, let me know if you need anything, okay?” You nod at your best friend before setting the knife down and opening the door.

“I hope you have a good reason for coming here at a quarter past midnight.” You seethe. Harry looks at you with sad, puffy eyes and for a moment you feel bad for your tone of voice.

His voice is raspy when he replies. “I-I want us to talk. If that’s okay.”

You bite your lip, considering the situation in front of you.

“Please.” Harry pleads and so you open the door further. He steps in, admiring the flat he once shared with you. Nothing’s really changed, but then again, he wasn’t there too much for him to put his stamp on things.

He sits down on the couch and watches you intently as you take a seat a few cushions away from him.

“Those pictures today-”

“Were you cheating on me while we were together?” You snap.

“What? No, no! Of course not! What do you think of me?” Harry frantically responds.

“You tell me, Harry.”

“I was going to say that those pictures which I’m sure you saw today, they’re fake. Management has set me up with some fake girlfriend for some shit reason but they mean nothing to me, she means nothing to me.”

“Well that’s rude.”

“It’s the truth.” He says staunchy. He scoots just a bit closer, fearful that you’ll move away.

“I meant, your management. That’s rude of them to force you to go out there and date someone else just like that. It’s just going to make your “public image” look worse.”

Harry sighs in agreement. He pushes hair back from his face before he looks to you. In an ideal world, he’d hold you closer to him and criticize the world of PR. But for today, opposite ends of the couch will have to do.

“I’m sorry.”

“For?”

“For being a terrible boyfriend to you over these last few months. For not making enough of an effort to see you or even just facetime you. I’m sorry my schedule makes it difficult for us to even have a phone call because you sleep when I’ve just woken up sometimes and I’m moody even when we chat.” You chuckle at his last statement, not even noticing that he’s moved even closer to you.

“I’m sorry I didn’t fight hard enough that night for you, and I’m sorry that there came a point in our relationship where you felt unhappy enough to breakup with me.” Harry continues, shaking his head at the last statement. Tears are now brimming in both your eyes as he grabs your hand. “It should never have gotten to that and I can’t believe I let it.”

You stare into Harry’s green eyes and almost smile. Almost. That’s the one thing you loved about eyes, no matter how old a person got, they are one of the things that never change.

“You are the best person I know and you deserve the best in this world. I’m sorry I was not that for you.”

“I’m sorry too.” You whisper. Harry’s brows cross at your reply. “I’m sorry I haven’t been as understanding. I think I demanded too much of you but I forget that it’s just you out there doing things now. The boys aren’t with you anymore so the pressure is higher for you to produce and make things for this world.”

This time, you find yourself scooting closer to him.

“So much has changed in both our lives and I think we’ve forgotten that if we don’t grow together then we just grow apart.”

“I don’t want that for us.” He utters, squeezing your hand. He watches as tears roll down your cheeks.

“I don’t want that either. But I don’t know how we can make this work if you’re out here and I’m here and-”

Harry cups your face and you lean into his warm hands. “We will figure it out. I know we will. I will make sure that there is time at the end of my day to speak to you, to be with you.”

“And I will make sure to bribe my boss into letting me take more time off.” You joke and Harry laughs. You feel a smile creep up onto your face, not having heard that laugh in far too long.

“I love you, and I need you to remember that, darling.”

“I love you too, Haz.”

Still cupping your cheeks, Harry leans in for a kiss that is long overdue.

Suddenly, you hear your bedroom door open with your best friend peeking their head out.

“Have you two finished fucking yet?!”

—

le fin!

I started this imagine back in January and it’s now July. I’m so sorry to the person who requested it all those months ago, but here it is now! I haven’t written creatively in such a long time so I’m sorry it’s a mess. I’m also sorry I haven’t been active as a writer on here lol but I do read a lot of things on here. I’m mostly an Avengers girl now, specifically Thor, Steve Rogers and Wanda Maximoff. I may write about them soon. In any case, I hope you all enjoy x

Love to you all, Iz xx

#harry styles #harry styles fanfic #harry styles x you #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles one shot #harry styles fic #harry styles story #one direction #one direction imagines #harry styles x reader

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anundefinedwoman · 6 years

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Dissociation - Getting Lost Inside Yourself

What is dissociation? What does it mean to me? In an earlier post from the other day I had started to write about dissociation because I have found myself doing it more. The word has terrified me in the past. I never finished that piece of writing. I actually dissociated. Honestly I don’t know what these things mean for everyone. I can only speak for myself. Maybe I am wrong. But the term for me has had a certain stigma that sounds kind of split personality like. If I read the definition of it in articles I cannot relate to much of it. For me it is different. I think I have probably always dissociated to cope. I’m going to try to explain this without sounding too crazy but first I am going to define it according to http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/dissociation-and-dissociative-disorders (link appears to not be secure at the time of publishing, so please be careful if you feel inclined to donate any money):

“Dissociation is a mental process that causes a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memory and sense of identity. Dissociation seems to fall on a continuum of severity. Mild dissociation would be like daydreaming, getting “lost” in a book, or when you are driving down a familiar stretch of road and realize that you do not remember the last several miles. A severe and more chronic form of dissociation is seen in the disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder, once called Multiple Personality Disorder, and other Dissociative Disorders.”

A lot of people describe it as watching themselves in a movie or floating.

I tend to get it whilst driving quite a bit. I’ve become I’m aware I’m doing it. I am on auto-pilot. I often wonder how I got from point A to point B. I won’t have a memory of the journey oftentimes. I can’t describe watching myself in a movie or from above. I go deep within. I retreat. I am still me though. There is still some awareness because I can have thought but I’m going deep, deep in trying to avoid thinking about what’s triggered me but feeling absolutely so worthless and trying not to tell myself “you’re worthless!” It’s almost like a zombie like state. I do that often at home too. I just phase out. Tune out. I tune out the world around me. Sometimes I hear nothing. I remember when my boys were little and we would have Disney or Cartoon Network on TV and they would go to school and hours later I would have this awareness like “Oh my gosh!! This annoying shit has been going for hours and I have not noticed! How is that even possible?” I had no memory of it. I would be engrossed in something quietly. There have been times even where I have looked in the mirror and it’s like seeing myself for the first time. This has occurred maybe a handful of times. When it has occurred it has felt like MAYBE I am seeing myself from a movie or through someone else’s eyes IF saying I feel like I’m seeing myself for the first time. It’s hard to describe. I remember twice actually during very traumatic events, something triggered a response (maybe a fight or memory), but looking and seeing myself and wanting to punish myself. The first time I was probably 13 or 14 and I took a pair of scissors to my bangs and I cut my hair to the scalp. I don’t think I actually meant to go that short. I remember my mom being so incredibly mad at me. She had wanted to do family photos that Christmas and I ruined her plan. We didn’t get it done. The second time was maybe 10 years ago. I saw myself with such disgust. I had always wanted to shave my head and that’s exactly what I did. I did it to punish myself. And then my husband told me I looked like a dyke or I looked butch. He was so mad at me. So in trying to punish myself I guess I did. I pissed other people off. I really digressed here. Actually that is kind of a funny memory for me. That took balls. I felt like GI Jane. I know people thought I had had my crazy Britney moment and maybe I did.

Or if I sit here and I start to think about certain things, my past…my childhood, my family, some aspects will be so painful that I will want to avoid it. To avoid it I’ve learned to pick a spot, glance to my left maybe and just stare and phase out. Completely phase out. I can phase out for a really, really long time this way. And I can be thinking about stuff. I have no idea what to be honest. I can actually do it on will. But that’s kind of silly. Not like when I feel threatened and I’m in flight or fight mode. I go inward, I retreat because it feels safe.

There are YEARS, I mean YEARS in my childhood that I don’t remember. I hardly remember any of it before the age of 12. I think that amnesia is a dissociative, self preservation capability.

But I don’t have a dissociative disorder. I have what is common with complex trauma. Ugh. I hate this so much. Trying to get past my past is so hard. It’s necessary. I wish more than anything I could just leave the past in the past. I’m sure that’s what anyone who would read this would think. Why can’t she just leave this alone? Why can’t she just let this go? Get over it, right? Live and let live!? Well I have tried! I have been to therapy before. There have been 2 suicide attempts. It landed me in an inpatient facility. Gosh I was hypnotized, and imagined my inner child walking through meadows. I beat a plastic chair with a towel because I had been too afraid to get angry. The anger was supposed to be directed at the boy who sexually abused me and maybe my mother. I can’t remember that part. I wasn’t allowed to be angry at my mother though. I remember her coming to family nights and saying that. So I doubt the chair symbolized her. I start to think back and like an automatic response my mind takes over and automatically zones out. It doesn’t want me going back. It’s almost like when you see double. You know when your eyes start to go from ok to seeing double? That’s how quickly and automatic the response is. I’m trying to attune myself to noticing what it’s like. When it happens. I’ve noticed myself drifting more and more lately. I think it’s because I’ve felt pushed and pressured to do something I don’t want to do. I feel uncomfortable. It is really, really triggering me. Even now just saying this sentence, I feel a physical response in my chest. I can’t fix what’s broken inside of me and heal my marriage simultaneously. I’m not equipped. I’m not even equipped to to heal myself at the moment. I feel so helpless and hopeless and lost. And I am so afraid. I’m used to carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. Allowing guilt and fear to shame and control me. I cannot allow any outside forces to manipulate me at the moment. I want peace. I want to be understood. I want to be loved or rather I want to feel worthy of that love and I don’t want to be haunted by the ghosts of my past anymore. Only then, can I heal. Then I can begin to heal the rest.

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#dissociate #dissociation #cptsd #spilled words #complex trauma #detachment #Feeling Broken #thinking in song #infj #healing #journey to healing #Feeling hopeless #spilled thoughts #healing from trauma #trauma #feeling crazy #childhood trauma #letting go of the past

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iliyovunjika · 6 years

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Did you lovelies really believe that I, Leo, wouldn’t get all sappy and sentimental on a holiday? C’mon now, I always get all mushy as heck. Plus its just fun to shower you beautiful phenomenons in affection and adoration!! Truly each and every one of you deserve a whole lot of love and I am always so so proud of you guys!

To you, my beautiful and magnificent starlings, I thank you. For your existence, for your warmth, for your kindness, for every little thing you do that makes you happy. I am thankful for you!! You are all such phenomenal creatures, surely created by the brightest of stars upon their explosions into stardust. In every way you are wonderful. From your ups to your downs, you are strong and kind even in the moments where you feel weak. To the new year, for you my lovelies, I wish you nothing but the strongest will and the kindest heart. Unto you I hope for your newest year to be your best year and every year following to be your brightest each time.

You are a divine creature worthy of nothing less than absolution in wonder and hope. I am so very very proud of you for making it this year despite anything that might’ve tried to tear you down.

Now while I usually go on to do a massive blogroll, I unfortunately, cannot do so because Tumblr won’t allow me to mention so many bagels all at once. (Though I’d very much love to do so.) So I’ll be mentioning a few of my beloveds and by no means should you feel left out if you’re not there. Why? Because you should already know that this rabbit loves you to pieces and would gladly gush on you any day!

@transgenderlavi : My husband, my cute snickerdoodle. Through the years you have been my solace and my heart. You are without a doubt the most patient and kind significant other I could ever ask for. Despite all my very obvious flaws you’ve been nothing but brilliant in handling them and for that I am grateful. Without you I would not find myself smiling randomly throughout my 4am shifts as I look at your photo on my phone and wonder what you’re dreaming of. The new year brings yet another 365 days that we’ve been together and I cannot think of anything more I could ask for.

@emvolo : My Kitten, my lovely angel. Truly I cannot believe you even accepted a dork like me. I mean, I asked you out with a poem how could you believe me anything less than an absolute dork. I’m grateful for you. You who understands my momentary disappearances, my silence that is only listening, are my moon. Without you I would find myself lacking in joy because you bring so much of it. From the way you laugh to the way you hide your face when you’re embarrassed is all divine and I can’t help but to find myself smiling at 2am even though I’m tired. This new year will bring more and more moments of joy and love and I’m very very thankful that you’re the cause of it.

@volcrc : Onyx my Goddess!! You sweet and precious angel who so bravely brandishes the threat of Sally alongside me! You are the greatest friend anyone can hope for. You’re brilliant, beautiful, phenomenal, magnificent, and all around amazing. Without you I’m sure I would’ve already gone a wee bit crazy with anger more than a few times. Having you in my life has been an absolute treasure and I would never ask for anyone else to be my winglady in combat, tbh. I’d trust you with my beanbag gun. (That is a serious thing u know.) The new year will surely bring more adventures of booty and arms and wonderful things of goodness~ (As well as, y’know, our beautiful friendship that I’m hella thankful for mate.) You’ll always be my GG, you can’t escape that nickname ever.

@minugahanax : WIFEY!! Seriously what the fuck man, we’ve known each other for so long now?? I can’t believe I was ever intimidated by you and your gorgeous self? Tbh first time I ran across your bagel I was just “Well fuck hello there” but now its just: I SEE YOU THERE, I SEE YOU MY STUNNING LADY OF THE WEE HOURS. ‘Cause, y’know, you arrive when I’m just getting to work and liven up my dash in like .2 seconds so you gotta be the Sun ‘cause damn lady you bring the glorious life to my mornings. Without you I’m pretty sure I would’ve stopped writing a while ago. With all my bagel changes and what not, I expected half my muses to go bye bye or to just stop writing all together at some points but lo’ and behold, YOU’VE INSPIRED ME SEVERAL TIMES TO KEEP WRITING!! I’m very thankful for you~ The new year will definitely bring more muses and beautiful bara tiddies.

@fiercysoul : Roberta, my sweet sweet beaut! Gods, have I told you how absolutely gobsmacked I was to find that you’d been sneakin’ on me while I was sneakin’ on you? That was the funniest thing ever to me ‘cause I was, once upon a time, super dropped by your existence?? Why?? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure, even now, I was starin’ straight up at the vast sky! Seriously, you are an endless commodity of ever changing and multi-faceted magnificence that continuously floors me. You’re such a wonderful and warm person I just can’t imagine myself having ever been intimidated by such a cute smol? You give me such inspiration and wonder every day that I see you on my dash and talk to you. Its a perplexing event that I haven’t collapsed already from the dizzying reality of your blinding existence. This new year will definitely, should definitely, bring us to talk all the more~ And definitely should include wild antelopes and cute smols getting carried.

@haxuss : BATS. Seriously, I think that’s become ingrained as your nickname in my head ‘cause its either “OTTER BABE” or “BATS” as soon as I see you around. What can I say that I haven’t screeched at you already??? I don’t know but I’ll just screech at the top of my lungs anyways because I GOT SOME THINGS TO SAY TO YOU. From your beautiful art to your intricate writing and dedication to your muses, you are PHENOMENAL. The devotion and time you put into everything is absolutely wonderful and I cannot help but to find myself floored by you in general. You’re such a cute person too?? Like damn?? Where have you been all my life?? We should’ve been friends in grade school okay ‘cause I’m p sure we would’ve been raising hell and bringing bats to nap time. You’re an absolute divinity and I am so thankful I met you!!! This new year will definitely be a great one for you ‘cause its gonna be full of wonderful things and happiness.

@ardenssolis : Clears throat. YODELS SHIIIIIII . I always wanna like, scream your name (haha, innuendos) ‘cause it just sounds so nice. OKAY WHAT TO SAY TO YOU. Or scream. I mean that’s kinda the theme here. Rather, what I should say is what am I not gonna say ‘cause boy howdy I’m about to say it all. YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL. I’m always so delighted when you’re on my dash and I’m constantly gobsmacked by your writing and your in depth analysis and portrayal of characters??? You drive me nuts ‘cause I wanna just sit on your bagel and go through all your HCs and stuff at random points in time?? JUST LET ME SQUISH YOUR CHEEKS AND LOVE YOU. You’re such a sweet person and you’re a wonderful individual all around that truly brings nothing but warmth and kindness to everyone around you. Lemme love you ‘cause this new year will definitely bring you joy and good juju.

@corazcnazul : WHEEZES. BABE. SUGAR. SWEETS. I weep upon the stars because they have gifted me with such a bright and unstoppable force of pure goodness aka YOU. From the moment I met you, you have been kinder than a kitten and sweeter than unicorn cupcakes. You’re an amazingly talented writer and you’ve got nothing short of a phenomenon of a golden heart. I’m always so happy when we talk and I’m thankful you’re there when I’ve had some pretty rough moments. You’re such a treasure in this world that I cannot imagine it fairing well without you and I’m so proud to have gotten the pleasure to know you. I mean, you’ve seen me go off and ramble for like 20 years and rambled with me, that’s friggin’ friendship at its finest and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The new year is definitely gonna be full of wonderful things and us definitely gushing more, I’m excited~

@skyvar : Makes incredibly dramatic gestures. YOU. YES YOU, WITH THE CUTE FACE. Seriously I cannot describe how gobsmacked I am by your very existence?? Like how in the fuck did the universe come up with you?? From your incredible art to your amazing portrayals and writing all around, I just can’t believe that such a magnificent creature exists in this world??? Just let me poke at you and plot with you and doodle for you and JUST LET ME LOVE YOU. You’re incredible all around and I’m just, floored that I’ve gotten the gracious chance to know you. This new year will definitely bring make out sessions and long haired boys with aggressive cats. (Yeah that’s right, I SAW DEM TAGS.)

@inastris : I s2g YOU. YOU THERE. I’MMA SMOOCH YOUR LOVELY FACE AND CARRY YOU EVERYWHERE YOU MAGNIFICENT BEING. Flo, you seriously make me so happy and giddy when ever I see you or talk to you. Be it writing or just all around existing, you are without a doubt, flawless. I cannot even begin to portray how wonderful it is that I got the chance to know you and laugh with you. You are a divinity that exists to bring warmth to this world and it would be all the worse for it if you weren’t here. I love your writing, your personality, your devotion to your characters, everything. You’re an amazing individual and this new year will definitely bring you happiness. (Otherwise I’mma get a brick and beat 2k18 down.)

@frystsnow : TEA MY LOVE. Seriously I just. Lemme. SCREECHES AND CLINGS TO YOUR FACE. Weeps why are you so precious and wonderful and lovely and kind and sweet and beautiful and-- Okay I could go on for years like that, lbr, there aren’t enough words in the dictionary at my disposal in all languages to describe how amazing you are and how great it is that I got the pleasure to know you. You are without a doubt, the most bright hearted person and wonderful commodity I’ve ever gotten the absolute pleasure to meet and know. From your writing to your graphics to your personality and your all around in depth care for your muses, you are unmatched. You’re comical and kind but tough as nails and lbr, I’d totally go to bat for you in a heartbeat with a beanbag gun and potatoes to defend your honour. This new year better be bringin’ you all the good stuff or its mcfuckin’ on.

@blackcuttingmoon : EXCUSE ME, WHO THE FUCK GAVE THE UNIVERSE THE RIGHT TO CREATE SUCH A FLAWLESS BEING OF DIVINITY??? I want a fuckin’ refund ‘cause I came here to not be floored and sent spiraling but damn that’s all I get with you~ You are such a hard working and beautiful soul, darling. From the moment I met you, you were so welcoming and kind. You’re always bright and trying your best to get things done even when you’re surely overwhelmed. Our conversations are always fun and inspiring and you as a whole inspire me to do better with my writing. You’re such a wonderful influence and kindness that I just can’t even be bristled up when I’ve had a bad day when you’re around. I am so thankful for you sugar. This year will definitely be easier on you and will be full of absolute joy~ ‘Cause I’mma make sure of it.

@scngre : GRABS YOUR FACE-- Did u think for a second I wouldn’t be addressin’ u sweet stuff? ‘Cause if u did, HAH YOU WERE WRONG MATE. Alright so lemme just lay it out for ya: you are without a doubt, absolutely phenomenal. From your in depth analysis and portrayal of your characters to your startling activity rate that never seems to ever die-- you seriously floor me. I’m always happy as heck when I see you, write with you, talk to you; why? ‘Cause you are a wonderful existence that brings joy with everything you do and I am so thankful for your existence. You always make me laugh or screech at our babies and I’m just all about that good stuff aka you. This new year will be better darling, ‘cause you’re in this year and that in and of itself, makes it magnificent!

Some mentions of A+ starlings ahoy!!

#NY2k18;#I LOVE YOU GUYS #Haha if u thought I wouldn't #u should always know I ALWAYS QUEUE SOMETHIN' UP #Especially if I know I ain't gonna be here to do it like right then~#OOC #L: ᵍᵃʳᵈᵉᶰ ᵏᵉᵉᵖᵉʳ | ˡᵉᵒ ;;#Q|ᵘᵉᵘᵉ ᵃʳᵉ ᵃ ᵠᵘᵃˢᵃʳ | ˡᵒᵛᵉ ʰᵒʷ ᵇʳᶤˡˡᶤᵃᶰᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ˢʰᶤᶰᵉ ;;

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