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lifewithdavefarts · 2 months

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DaveFarts - Episode 29 “Ripped Ripper” [Episode List] Dave’s gym is closed due to maintenance so he decides to do some working out at home. Lazy Tim doesn’t want to join him, but Dave knows how to make things more… interesting for his kinky bro.

POV: Tim

Ripped Ripper

Another lazy Sunday evening, a great reward after a busy week like the one both me and my friend/roommate Dave just had. I was in my bedroom minding my own business, reading stuff on my laptop, listening to some music: perfect pre-Monday night for a guy like me, now 30, too tired at the idea of doing something that demands a bit more commitment than, well, this. I even closed the window shutters this morning so the Sun couldn’t bother me with its very inappropriate life-bringing light.

Luckily, Dave is a fellow lazy man, so I know I have a good roommate when it comes to just chilling in silence, without even interacting, after a long week. I’ll ask if he wants pizza though, least I can do for not, well, not making up any plans for tonight.

“Babe, come here!”

Speak of the Devil.

I heard my bro from his room, next to my own. I know him, he probably didn’t even need me for anything important, as his voice had that tone he uses to mess with me (and our other buds) like the idiot prankster he sometimes can be.

“Here I come.” I replied, very maturely putting a lot of emphasis on that last word.

I… took my time to actually go on check on him, ‘cause I liked the song I was listening to. Once it was over, I managed to get up, almost tripping on my own sweatpants and slippers somehow.

I walked to his room, knocked a couple of times on the door, which was open, and looked at him with the most bored expression I could muster.

“You rang?”

Faint rock music was coming out of Dave’s smartphone on a desk while he was sitting on his bed. He was wearing a blue t-shirt, a pair of grey basketball shorts, and sneakers.

“Not interested.” I then said, walking back to my room.

I heard Dave laugh and then his own footsteps right behind me. He grabbed my left arm and pulled me back to his room. I didn’t fight back ‘cause I know I couldn’t; not because of Dave being strong or anything but because I knew he won’t leave me alone the whole evening.

“Not gonna let you dump me for the fourth time this week.” he said.

“I said I’m not interested.” I replied.

He let me go, sat again on his bed and looked up to me.

“No, you said you wanted to exercise.”

“…eventually!”

“You didn’t say ‘eventually’, you said ’next week’.” He got up and patted my shoulder. “Come on, give it a shot.”

I sighed, defeated, but I still wanted to slip my way out of that situation in a way or another.

“I already tried the gym with you once and I got bored pretty quickly.”

“Oh shut up, you stopped showing up because you were too busy crushing on that hot guy, so much so you got too afraid to work in with him.”

I looked at him with a puzzled look, pretending to have no idea of what was he talking about.

“Also I’m way hotter than him and I’m very offended by your poor taste.” he joked.

I rolled my eyes in response, even though, yeah, I do think Dave is quite hot, regardless of my kink obviously.

“Look.” I said. “I just don’t feel like it today, I hav-“

“I have to work tomorrow” he completed my sentence, also doing a very poor imitation of my voice. “So do I, man. It’s not even 4:00 PM. The Sun’s still up. Do you even look outside of your window sometimes?”

I literally shook my head in disbelief.

“Wait, what?”

I sincerely thought it was, like, almost dinner time. Maybe Dave’s got a point, after all.

“…maybe you’re right.”

I noticed a small exercise mat on the floor by Dave’s bed; I simply sat there, waiting for my friend’s instruction.

“Alright, lead me to a healthy life of wellness where I don’t trip on my own slippers.”

“Well you’re in the wrong place!” Dave excitedly said, in a bit of self-irony since he’s not super fit himself, but he’s better than me at this no doubt.

The room was big enough so the two of us could lie on the floor. He pretty much lied on his back next to me as a way to “guide” me through the first exercise, one I was actually familiar with: crunches.

“Should I do some warm-up first?” I asked.

“Yeah, you should have, but since you’re right here just… give it a shot. It’s not like you’re gonna die.” He placed his hands on the back of his own head, starting the exercise. “…I think.”

Even though the fact that I’m into farts and that my friend right here constantly blasts me should be the most embarrassing thing about myself, my performance during this first, relatively easy exercise was definitely more painful to watch: I couldn’t even finish a set (around 20 crunches), while Dave was humiliating me. I struggled so much and felt pain in my chest for some reason; I was already sweating and panting.

Not even 5 minutes in and I already wanted to quit.

“Yeah.” I managed to say, lying on my back, as my bro kept crunchin’. “Not my cup of tea.”

“The hardest part is getting started.” he commented.

“Wow. Thanks Master.” I replied, sarcastically.

He stopped mid-crunch, and turned to me, looking me at funny.

“Tim, blasting you with my farts doesn’t make me your Master.” he said, with a mocking tone.

I instantly sat back up as if I woke up from a nightmare.

“What the fuck.” I turned to him, as he resumed doing his crunches. “Where did that come from?!”

“It’s fine bro.” he kept teasing me. “You can keep calling me ‘Dave’ if that’s fine for you.” he laughed.

Hearing my straight friend just casually making references to my fart kink, let alone the fact that he constantly face-farts me, will always be wild to me, like a fever dream. And also insanely hot, dammit.

“Is this because I suck at doing crunches?” I asked, not very politely.

“No, it’s because you’re already giving up.”

“It’s just…” I sighed. “That’s just my thing bro, sorry. But thanks for trying to help, really.”

I lied on my back again, defeated, as Dave kept exercising. I could sense my friend looking at me, probably with his usual smirk, completely unfazed by me moping around, exhausted.

“Well… maybe I can do something to make things a bit more interesting for your lazy ass.” I heard him say, finally breaking the silence.

A silence that soon became a distant memory as the sound of Dave’s sudden, loud fart shook the entire room, easily surpassing the faint rock music coming from his phone. I’m used to my bro’s blasts and trust me, they are almost always loud, but this one felt even stronger somehow. It was also, but that goes without saying, long, like 9 seconds long.

As ridiculous as I may sound… I had to see it.

I sat back up one more time so I could get a good view and I saw Dave still lying on his back, one leg up to ease the blast out. How the grey fabric of his basketball shorts could endure that stream of gas is a mystery to me. His eyes were closed: he had the facial expression of someone surprisingly struggling to keep that blast going, a sign that he was holding that gas in for a while, which is unusual ‘cause my friend usually can rip monstrously long and loud blast with relative low effort.

Whether the case… that was a very hot sight, the tent I pitched in my sweatpants being the undeniable proof.

As the fart kept going, Dave lifted his left leg even more, as if there was a recoil, making it even louder.

The fart lasted around 14 seconds and my friend let out a quick sigh of relief as he ripped one last toot out. That sounded (and looked) more exhausting than me trying to do crunches.

The teasing bastard winked at me, ‘cause he knows how to press all the right buttons of my fetish.

“You know what I’m capable of…” he said. “Now imagine my skills, like, powered up by protein shakes.” he laughed and let another loud, but shorter (around 3 seconds) toot out to prove it, not that he needed to, as his farting skills are always jaw-dropping.

Still, he’s a teasing bastard.

The scent of his ass polluting the room reached my nose and I coughed a bit for how rancid that was.

“Are you seriously… bribing me with farts?” that’s a sentence I just said, fuck my life.

“Maybe.” another quick toot followed. “Is it working?”

“I’m going to punch you.”

“Can’t finish a set of crunches and he wants to punch me.” he laughed. “Pissing you off is so easy bro.”

“I’m not pissed off.” I wanted to clarify. “You… you’re just making me hard.”

Even though Dave knows about my kink and fully accepted me, I still have a hard time letting him know that his farting skills (and teasing, nonetheless) never fail to give me a massive boner.

Dave looked at me funny, faking a serious expression. Then let out another loud rip in response, around 4 seconds long. Why do I even worry…

“Of course.” I simply said, too embarrassed to even look at him though.

As usual, he didn’t care, and only found my awkwardness hilarious. Disgustingly hilarious.

“It’s fine… at least you tried.” he then said. “We’ll give it another shot tomorrow.”

I turned to him, appreciating the encouraging words.

“Still.” he said, adjusting his position. “I’m still gonna need a spotter to count those.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, without thinking. “I can do that.”

He let out an evil cackle in response, with that smug, hot smirk drawn on his face.

“So, what are we counting? Pushups? Crunches? Stars?”

I remained seated on the floor as Dave stood up, easily towering over me. He looked down to me and I, silly me, realised too late where this was going, even though I should have known.

“Who said anything about pushups and crunches?”

My gassy friend turned around and, simply put, sat full weight on my head as if it was a stool, his very gentle way to force me to lie down, with yet another loud toot thrown into the mix for good measure, one that I could properly smell this time.

The protein shakes are a powerful fuel and the scent reminded me of rotten eggs, which made me cough again as I lied down, letting my bro’s ass crush me.

However, that didn’t happen, not as violently as I expected at least. Dave’s ass was actually hovering only inches from my face; he could easily simply sit on me and let his ass roar but for some reason he didn’t.

“One.” I heard Dave say.

A fart quickly followed, loud, high pitched and wet-ish. I had to close my eyes as I literally felt the rancid gas erupting on my face, the thin grey fabric of Dave’s basketball shorts being the only thing separating me from his raging anus.

After a couple of seconds, the fart ended, and my bro got back up, but he wasn’t done at all. He let me took some breaths of (relatively) fresh air, only to bend his knees again mere moments later.

He was squatting over my face, basically, his ass barely tickling the tip of my nose.

“Two.”

Yet another impressive fart, the stench adding up to what was left of the previous one. Things were already getting too exhausting even for my trained nostrils: this is why I should never leave my room again.

But as much as I could “hate” what was happening, as Dave’s ass roared all over my face, my boner only got harder. My bro is not the hottest man in the world but he is quite hot and having a guy like him blasting me so effortlessly, no strings attached, will never cease to amaze me.

I was definitely enjoying the sound more than the smell however, which made me feel like I was drowning in a sewer.

“What the fuck did you put in that protein shake, man?!”

I managed to ask, my voice being almost nothing compared to the loudness of the fart Dave was still ripping all over me. However, he did hear me, as his ass “bounced” a bit over my nose, a sign that he was laughing like the jerk bully he sometimes can be.

After a total of 12 seconds I was greeted with newfound silence and my bro got up, but before I could do or say anything or, you know, breathe, he squatted again.

“Three.”

Another loud rip, this time shorter, about 4 seconds, but still extremely dangerous stench-wise. Also, those were getting wetter and wetter. The sweat dampening Dave’s asscrack through his grey shorts didn’t help at all and only made the fart wetter and the stench stronger.

My bro’s ass went silent and I quickly asked a simple question.

“How many squats are you planning to do exactly?”

Dave laughed in response, as usual. “You tell me, it’s leg day.”

The second part of his answer was him squatting again on my face, this time making sure to crush my skull. He then made sure to shove down my throat and nostrils another powerful, protein shake-powered blast.

A wet one, a fully wet one, but Dave was a pro, so I knew it was just very nasty gas. Still, a good challenge to test the limits of my already disgusting kink. The blast was so powerful it made droplets of sweat from his ass rain all over my face: whether Dave was sweating because of the squats or the endeavor of pushing such big farts out I shall never know.

What I did know, is that after 9 seconds, Dave got up again, and at this point I couldn’t even remember what pure oxygen tasted like as not only my face, but the entire room was now basically engulfed with gas.

Dave instead, towering over me, proudly took a deep breath, showing off his muscles (which wasn’t a lot, but he definitely looked ripped when compared to me) and then stared down at his victim.

“And you wanted to quit.” he stated.

I couldn’t even come up with a proper comeback because his ass was already in my mouth, hastily erupting yet another fart, one I could actually taste.

He kept squatting on my face, repeatedly, each time ripping a fart, a loud wet rip, each time sweating more and more. My friend was wearing a pair of grey basketballs shorts but all of that sweat made his asscrack completely visible, basically proving he went commando for some reason, which also meant that there was basically nothing between me and the sheer force of Dave’s anus.

My bro farted so many times in my face over the last months I couldn’t even count it, but things rarely got this… filthy.

I got my face soaked wet in sweat which wasn’t even mine, but rather from Dave’s ass, fart-scented and fart-flavoured sweat; kink or not, my limits were being tested here.

And apparently, Dave’s job is completely ignoring such limits.

For his 20th and final squat, he just completely sat on my face, spreading his legs wide, so my nose could easily fit in his sweaty, ripe asscrack. He wiggled his ass as if he was wiping the sweat off of it using my face, and then I felt him push.

Bubbles, that’s how I can describe it. That display of flatulence was as wet and disgusting as you imagine, a mix of gas and sweat engulfing my nose and nostrils, making my entire head shake, so rancid I could smell it without even breathing in.

The fart was so thick I could taste it and my eyes were burning for all that gas.

I feared that Dave’s limit were also being tested here, given how wet that fart was; but no, it was just terrible, terrible air coming out from his sweaty ass.

After almost 20 seconds of torture, I was done.

The sewer comparison I made before was now in full effect: truth to be told, I couldn’t take it anymore, I was drowning, suffocating, and I wanted to get out of there, I needed air, like actual air, oxygen.

Mustering all the strength I have in what passes for “muscles” in my arms, I managed, not without struggle, to actually push Dave’s roaring ass away from my face, which actually surprised him as he tripped over.

I coughed my way to freedom and took deep long breaths. The air in the room was still filthy but it felt like pure fresh air compared to the source, the depths of my friend’s ass who, in the meantime, actually stopped farting. I remained there, lying down, wondering how I could even survive those blasts.

Despite being disgusted, pre-cum leaked from the tip of my hard cock, so I guess this wasn’t beyond my limits after all.

As I kept trying to clean my nostrils by taking more deep breaths, I heard Dave, lying next to me just like before, slow clapping, as if he was some kind of villain of a heist movie being (falsely) impressed by the heroes.

I scolded him with an annoyed glare. “What the fuck are you doing now?”

“Not bad for a first day, huh?” he simply said, with a smirk. “You managed to lift me, that’s impressive.”

“Those were my survival instincts kicking in.” I remarked.

I lied down, exhausted, staring at the ceiling, Dave doing the same. I could once again hear the faint rock music coming from his phone on the desk: good, I was afraid today’s ass-thunders made me deaf.

“I wanna try again tomorrow.” I admitted. “No farts though.” I quickly added.

He laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

We remained silent for a few moments, as I tried to ignore the massive boner I still had.

“Look at us.” Dave said. “Covered in sweat, panting. It’s like we just had sex.” he joked.

“You wish.” I replied.

A few more moments of silence, a silence that Dave broke one last time by doing a deft leg-lift to rip a quick, loud, wet toot.

“Told ya it’s leg day.”

The End

#eproctophilia #fart kink #fart story #malefarts #davefarts

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fizzigigsimmer · 5 months

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Moonwood Part 4

|Part 1|

Just in case Steve somehow missed the fact that Schiller takes its basketball team very seriously, there’s a big plaque above the gymnasium door the proudly proclaims he’s in the home of the Schiller High Timberwolves, state champions!

The memo about the coach only drafting moonie guys doesn’t seem to have gotten around because Friday afternoon tryouts come and it looks like every guy in school who can tie his own shoes has had the same idea as Steve and has come out to try and earn their spot on the bench - even some guys who look like they can’t tie their shoes. He does see a good handful of moonwood guys though - including two of the guys who tried to jump him.

The number of guys he’s got to compete against doesn’t make Steve too nervous, but the amount of people who seem to have shown up just to watch makes him a little jittery as he leaves the locker room and heads into the gym. He saw at least a dozen kids sitting up in the bleachers on his way in and there’s bound to be more by now. The bleachers were never empty at a game back in Hawkins, but everyone knew that had more to do with the limited number of thrills to find in their small town on a friday night than school spirit. It’s different when he knows people are watching because they expect the team to be good. Better than good - state champions!

Steve warms up and joins a couple of the guys who are shooting hoops at one end of the court, showing off while they covertly scope out the competition. It helps actually. Once he’s got a ball in his hands and has made a couple of shots it’s easier to relax and have fun. He makes most of the shots he takes, unlike some. This kid Hank is clearly the best though. Guy is easily six feet tall and sinks shots from half court like it’s easy, but Steve’s far from the worst. He can totally do this.

It’s fifteen after when a shrill whistle finally interrupts the sound of balls thudding against the hardwood. Steve tosses Hank the ball and turns towards the sound, and his heart skips a beat when Billy strides onto the court, flanked by Dave and Chet. Billy stops at about half court and blows the whistle between his lips again as if he doesn’t already command the attention of everyone in the gym, and Chet sets a box full of red and blue numbered jerseys on the ground at his feet.

“Alright listen up closely guys cause I won’t repeat myself. If you don’t already know I’m Chet, co-captain, and this here is Billy,” Chet gestures to Billy with a sardonic twist to his lips. Cause everybody there knows who Billy Hargrove is. “He’s team captain. There are only a few spots open on the team and a lot of you so come over and take a jersey.”

There’s an immediate scramble for the box. Steve doesn’t get what the rush is, but there’s something about the energy in the room that has him pushing forward without thinking and elbowing his way into the crush to make sure he can snag a jersey. It turns out to be a good thing, because the box empties and there are six guys left empty handed looking like they might cry.

“Red team you’re home court, blue team you’re the visitors side. Hopefully we don’t have to tell you which team you’re on.” Chet instructs, and there’s some nervous laughter. Steve pulls his jersey over his head - he’s B3. He’s excited to see that Hank is also on the blue team. They’re giving each other high five’s and clapping each other on the back as one of the guys who got left out, clears their throat and asks what the rest of them should do.

Steve’s mouth falls open in shock when Billy scoffs and sneers, “I don’t know, jerk off? I don’t care what you do. Scram.”

Billy being an ass isn’t the shocking bit, it’s the way the extra guys actually start to leave and nobody stops them.

“Wait a minute. They don’t even get to try out?!” pops out of Steve’s mouth before he can stop himself, and it’s like darts to the chest when blue eyes snap to him and Billy stares at him like he’s trying to peel back his skin.

“They either didn’t want it bad enough or weren’t strong enough to fight for it. So no they don’t get to try out. But you’re welcome to give up your shot if you want to.”

Steve can feel six pairs of hopeful eyes shift towards him. He grits his teeth and guilty does not meet any of their gazes. His gaze snaps back to Billy when the other teen speaks again, full of smug delight. Steve wants to be there, too much to give it up to someone else and Billy seems to relish that. His gaze is too intense and too probing.

“Any more questions Princess, or can we get on with the next test?”

Yeah Steve’s got questions. And he’s gonna ask them too cause fuck Billy Hargrove.

“What do you mean test? And where’s the coach? I’m not here to get my chain yanked Hargrove.”

Hank gives Steve a look, obviously shocked that he has the nerve to go up against Billy but kind of low key impressed too. Steve doesn’t get it. Yeah Billy’s built and he’s top of the food chain, but Hank’s not small. Six foot, wide shouldered, and muscled, Steve doesn’t even need to ask if he’s from moonwood. He just has that look. Steve’s starting to get used to it and the more he does the weirder it is to him that everyone acts like they’re scared to cross Hargrove.

Sweaty palms and weird heart palpitations aside, Steve is not afraid of Billy Hargrove. But the dark glower Billy fixes on him at being challenged warns him that maybe he should be.

“Aww, don’t say that. You’re gonna break Billy’s heart Harrington.” Dave teases, and a couple of the other guys snicker. Those watching in the bleachers follow their cue and the gymnasium buzzes with amused sounds.

“Shut up Dave.” Billy grumbles without venom. He saves all of it for Steve as he snaps out, “Lap-ups, now! All of you pipsqueaks. Anyone who stops before I blow the whistle can hand over their jersey and take their sorry ass off my court.”

There’s some groaning but the guys immediately start shuffling towards the boundary lines to start their laps around the court. Steve hesitates for a fraction of a moment, caught in Billy’s gaze. Billy stares back at him unblinking, daring, and Steve thinks for a fraction of a second that his eyes don’t look human anymore. It’s like staring into the gaze of a predator. It sends a shiver down his spine.

He’s snapped out of the moment by Hank’s hand landing on his shoulder, the taller boy leaning close as he urges Steve to come on, explaining, “the team captains always run the first half of try-outs. It’s tradition.”

Steve frowns. It seems odd to him, especially for a winning team, for the coach to be absent for half of the try-out but what does he know? The Hawkins Tigers never won a regional title, let alone a state championship.

The red and blue teams run laps around the court. Dave passes each of them a ball to dribble under the visitors basket and Chet catches their rebounds at the home basket. He passes them to Billy, who passes them back to Dave in between his shouts for them to pick up the pace or stop dribbling like grandmothers.

Steve and Hank fall into stride next to each other, until one or the other has to pull ahead to catch a ball or take a shot. But they always fall back into step after, and Hank makes conversation with him. It makes it easier to ignore the burning in his legs, and the eyes he can feel digging into his back, so that Steve can just focus on showing off his control of the ball and making his layups.

He’s a cool guy Hank. Laid back and confident with none of the usual highschool awkwardness. He kinda reminds Steve of his grandpa, which makes more sense when Hank admits he’s lived in Moonwood his entire life and has never been anywhere else.

“Really? Like not even on vacation?”

Hank shrugs his big shoulders and grins.

“What for? Got a beach if I want to swim and a whole national park on my doorstep. Plus it’s hard, you know, for folks like us planning around the cycle.”

Steve has no idea what he’s talking about or what he means by ‘folks like us’, and he doesn’t get the chance to ask because a ball comes flying towards Hank fast and hard. The other boy just barely manages to catch it, but the loud way it THUDs against his chest makes Steve wince in sympathy. Hank stumbles and his head snaps up, and Steve swears an honest to god growl rumbles out of his throat as his eyes lock with Billy.

“Stay alert ladies!” Billy mocks before he brings the whistle to his mouth and blows it sharply for everyone’s attention. “Alright game of knock-out, red against blue. Follow me!”

Billy sets off toward center court without looking to see if anyone will follow - knowing they will.

Hank mutters something under his breath that Steve doesn’t quite catch but it sounds like ‘alpha, dick-head’.

They don’t get much chance to talk after that. Billy announces that only the winning team will make the cut and continue on with the tryout.

“That’s not fair Hargrove, they’ve got Hank!” one of the guys on the red team complains. It’s this big lunkhead named Brian, one of the guys who tried to shove Steve into a locker. His pal Virgil nudges him in the side and shout whispers for everyone to hear.

“Yeah but they also have the pipsqueak. Harrington will be an easy out.”

“Not as easy as your mother Sanchez. I’d watch how I was running my mouth if I were you.” Billy drawls in reply. Not even a snap or a bark, but still there’s something in it, like a growl, that makes the hair on Steve’s arms raise and his throat feel tight like there’s a hand squeezing the back of his neck. And he can tell it’s not just him by the way Virgil and Brian immediately clam up and avert their eyes.

The game starts, one player from each team taking a shot from the key line at the same time until one of them makes a basket. It’s up to the next player on their team to try and out hoop the opposing player and knock him out. The last team standing wins.

Steve tries to just have fun with it, but pretty soon it’s a whirlwhind. Steve’s ears are full of the sound of pounding feet and his frantic heartbeat. A strange electric rush fills his blood as the competition heats up, the stands alive with cheers and heckling as the game becomes a chaotic scramble to try and stay one step ahead of the guy in front of him. It’s dizzying. Steve can barely focus and Billy doesn’t help.

If it’s not - “What was that? Come on Harrington! My little sister could have made that shot with her eyes closed.”

Then it’s - “You’re damn lucky Reeves has got his head up his ass today Pretty Boy. You’d be out if you were shooting against anyone else!”

Fuck you, man. Steve thinks more than once. Nearly says a couple of times. Has to bite his tongue to keep the words in when they are three blue and two red and his first shot falls off the rim and he’s a hair too slow on the rebound.

“You’re out!” Billy snaps before the red player’s ball has even made it completely through the net. “You deserved that Harrington. You call that a hustle?”

Steve calls this cruel and unusual punishment actually. He has sweated through his shirt, his face is flushed, and his chest is itchy with heat. He’s got the strangest urge to march up to Hargrove and sink his teeth into him.

He can just imagine his mom’s humiliation if she gets called to the school because ‘Stevie bit another boy’ like this is the second grade all over again. And then he remembers that he’s eighteen and technically an adult and he could get sued or worse, and keeps his teeth to himself.

Even without him the blue team wins, largely thanks to Hank. While the rest of his teammates celebrate, Steve can’t help but feel a little glum. The hour is ending, the coach never showed and he knows there’s no way in hell he’s making the cut. Not after the way Billy rode his ass the entire time. He’s kinda bummed about it because despite everything he had fun. It was challenging, but in a good way. Like it made him wake up or something. There’s something about this place that makes Steve feel more alive.

After the red players have filed off the court in defeat, Billy, Dave, and Chet have the blue team line up and congratulate them on their win.

“Really good job guys. We saw some great stuff out there today.” Chet praises and the tension in the room releases. Steve can feel the way the other guys start to relax, chests puffing out with pride and trading tired grins.

“The good news is, all of you are moving on.” Dave leads and Steve jolts. He can’t believe he heard that right. Does this mean he’s on the team?

“The bad news is that means you’re going to have to spend a week smelling each other's farts.” Billy adds dryly and some of the guys chuckle.

Steve frowns in confusion. He doesn’t understand. The try-out isn’t over? And what does he mean they’ll have to spend a week smelling each other’s farts?

As if he can hear Steve’s brain racing Hank leans down and whispers, “The basketball team goes on a retreat at the beginning of the year. It’s like boot camp. Coach will finalize the roster after the retreat.”

“They let the basketball team take a whole week off school to go camping?” Steve asks a little weirded out. It just seems unusual to him, but this wouldn’t be the first example of special treatment he’s witnessed the basketball team getting.

Hank nods.

“The volleyball and soccer teams too. Though the soccer teams go in spring. Don’t worry. Most of the teachers will give you your assignments in advance so you don’t fall behind.”

Steve supposes that makes sense since it was early in the semester. And he supposes when the athletic teams are actually good, the school sees it as an investment in the students' futures. He’s willing to bet there is a lot of scholarship money to go around for state champions.

“Basketball camp is mandatory for the entire team, not just the rookies.” Chet explains to the group. “Dave is passing around a permission slip. Your parents need to sign it for you to get on the bus.”

“The bus leaves at seven A.M. sharp Sunday morning. If you’re not on it, tough titties.” Billy finishes.

Sunday morning…right after the bonfire.

|PART 5|

Friendly Tags for those who expressed interest: @darleenjade @sweetwaterangel @dragonflylady77 @natchula @tip-tap-tired @sparklingsprinkles @adelacreations @bluetree76 @deadfromtheneckdown @heavensfinest @marklee-blackmore @slightlydepressedmelon

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #steve x billy #harringrove fic #stranger things #Moonwood series #werewolf au #teen wolf -ish #Billy Hargrove is a werewolf #Steve Harrington is a half blood #soulmates #fizzi writes fic

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gainingfiction · 2 years

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Office Hours

Summary: Dave has never been much of a reader. But when he finds himself enrolled in an English course with a hunky TA named Cole, Dave discovers plenty of newfound interests... especially when Cole’s weight starts climbing.

As the professor shuffled through some notes at the front of the room, Dave let his mind (and his eyes) wander. There were so many electives he could have taken: Art History, Intro to Human Sexuality… and he chose English. It had always been his worst subject in high school. Dave could understand numbers, the tireless cycle of hypothesis and experimentation, but… words? Words weren’t exactly his strong point.

But he’d been late to register, and he needed a humanities credit. So after grumbling all the way to class, he found himself seated in a musty corner of the Arts Building, playing solitaire on his laptop and flicking through social media. At least there were a few cute guys in the room—sensitive, artsy types, laid-back stoners, fit gym-bunnies....

Maybe this would be the year he actually mustered up the courage to talk to one of them. That was a side of his life he’d been neglecting. He’d spent all of high school and so much of university focusing on schoolwork and lacrosse… on getting his scholarship, and then on keeping it. This English course certainly wouldn’t help...

Dave tuned out as the prof went over the syllabus, and he didn’t think his focus would improve during the rest of the introduction. But then, the prof introduced the course's TA.

Cole was beautiful, with just-slightly-overgrown brown hair and charming, boy-next-door good looks. There was something so impossibly enticing about him, the way he perched on the razor edge between pretty and dashing. His eyes and lips, his glossy hair, it was all so damn adorable, but then he had that sharp, powerful jawline and a nose that seemed to belong on a Renaissance sculpture. He filled out his chinos and a grey t-shirt like he was modelling them for a billboard.

Dave felt a crush starting to form almost immediately. He had to look away to keep from staring.

Throughout September, he spent English class gazing at the stunning graduate student in the front row. Cole was exactly Dave's type, with messy, silky hair and an athletic build, his broad shoulders tapering into a narrow waist. Did he row? Was he a football player? Whether he was gliding across a pristine lake or pulling off his helmet after scoring a touchdown for the home team, Cole acted out all sorts of fantasies in Dave’s imagination.

Although, as September gave way to October, Dave started to notice that Cole's waist wasn't looking quite as narrow as it once had. Anyone who wasn't paying close attention probably wouldn't have noticed, but as he looked across the lecture hall, Dave had the distinct sense that Cole's back was looking a little broader, his collared shirt just a little tighter as it pulled across his torso.

Dave put English class on the back burner to focus on lacrosse practice and lab assignments, but he couldn’t put it off forever. The first assignment was due in early October, so Dave used that as an excuse to visit Cole during office hours. On his way, he bought a muffin from the coffee shop in the lobby, tucking it into his backpack as a snack for later.

Dave tried not to be too obvious about the facts that he hadn't been keeping up with the readings, but if Cole noticed, he didn't seem to mind. He was easygoing, with a great sense of humour, and Dave got the sense that he really cared about his students. Which was sweet, given how little the university paid its teaching assistants. Dave had gone into Cole's office with absolutely no idea how to do the assignment, and left with… well, at least something he could work with. He was so grateful he even offered up his muffin as a thank you; Cole declined, at first, but gave in when Dave repeated his offer. He watched with interest as Cole tore into it, eating more enthusiastically than Dave might have expected.

After that, Dave came to office hours more often. In fact, he dropped by practically every week. And for reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on, he started bringing food. At first it would just be a muffin or a cruller from a nearby coffee place, but as October slipped by, he got a little more generous, whipping up batches of homemade cookies or brownies for his crush.

And it started to show around Cole's waistline. He wasn't particularly tall, so all those extra snacks soon found their way to his middle, until his form-fitting tees and button-downs clung to a pair of budding love handles and his stomach, once flat, started to put some stress on his buttons. When he wore a collared shirt, the lower buttons now spread slightly apart under the weight of his starter belly, the surrounding fabric wrinkling in a desperate attempt to compensate for the excess calories that now padded his stomach.

Dave noticed Cole’s pants getting tighter, too; his thighs had always been sturdy and impressive, but they seemed to be getting thicker, gathering mass at the same rate as his stomach. If thick thighs save lives, Dave was in need of Cole’s salvation. Not to mention his butt—Dave was lucky they spent the lecture sitting down, or he would never get anything done, since that round, perky booty drove him to distraction. It filled out the seat of Cole’s pants perfectly, swaddled tight by a pair of dress pants or khakis or sometimes jeans, all of them getting put to a very vigorous test. Dave made a point of loitering in his seat after class ended, just to watch Cole walk away.

He tried channelling his pent-up sexual frustration into sports. It was something he’d had to do before, but never with a singular focus on one gorgeous guy. Dave started to feel a little embarrassed about how hard he was crushing; he’d even turned down a couple of guys since the strapping, husky TA entered his life. Well, if ignoring unsolicited dick pics counted as “turning guys down”, and inasmuch as a TA “enters your life”—Dave couldn’t escape the feeling that Cole didn’t even know he existed.

Pouring his energy into the game worked for a little while, but he could feel his level of distraction increasing. Dave didn’t even know guys like that existed outside of movie stars and airbrushed influencers, but there Cole was, in the (increasingly ample) flesh.

By November, Dave was starting to seriously reconsider his taste in men. He'd always gone for fit guys, but lately, there was something about a soft belly and chubby thighs that was driving him crazy. It was like Cole had taken him by the hand and started leading him away from the traditional Hollywood hard body, into the world of dad-bods and beer bellies. Dave spent more time thumbing through recipes than he did reading English books, and Cole seemed almost overwhelmed by his generosity—every week, Dave would bring a new and fattening treat, sometimes two: a tray of homemade cupcakes, a new kind of pie... but Cole never complained; he only accepted the desserts with gratitude.

And he seemed to be eating them, too, if his climbing weight was any indication.

Dave was practically drooling by December at the sight of how much Cole had thickened up. When they got back from Thanksgiving, the TA had upgraded his wardrobe, but even that wasn't enough to hide how much wider he'd grown. His belly now pooched out in front of him, his muffin top bulging over the waistband of his pants, forming a tasty pair of grabbable love handles. And his lower half... Well, that was a work of art. His butt remained perky, keeping its round shape even as it widened and thickened and expanded, growing juicier and more prominent with every passing class.

“Dude, how’d you miss that pass?” Dave’s friend Grayson asked one day, as they changed after lacrosse practice. It was a fair question; Dave had been wide open, and Grayson’s pass had been perfect. But instead of catching it, he’d gotten checked hard and slammed onto the field, losing possession of the ball.

Dave didn’t want to admit it, but he’d been daydreaming about Cole, thinking about what he was going to bake for him that week, thinking about his growing dump-truck ass and starter gut. “I dunno, man, must’ve been distracted.”

Grayson arched an eyebrow but didn’t press the issue. He just tapped the side of his head with his fingers. “Gotta keep your head in the game, bro.”

But his head was somewhere else.

Feeding Cole had become a hobby for Dave, and he spent hours each week crafting new and rich offerings to lavish on him. And he actually started trying in English class—over Thanksgiving, he'd gone back and done the readings he'd been putting off, and he honestly enjoyed some of them.

"Are you TA-ing any courses next semester?" Dave asked Cole, at the last office hours before the exam. He had brought a pan of cheesecake brownies and a tray of fat, fluffy cinnamon buns dripping with cream cheese frosting; Cole could barely restrain himself, digging into a cinnamon bun during the review and making Dave's cock strain against his pants.

"Yeah, I'll be helping out Professor Glazner again," he said. He gave Dave the course number. "Why, have we made an English student out of you?"

"Who knows? Maybe I'll do a double major, or something." That seemed like a stretch, but if it meant spending more time with Cole, Dave felt like he could be the next Jane Austen. The thought made him smirk.

The exam went better than Dave could have hoped, and he left for the holidays feeling energized. His grades came back, and he’d ended up with a pretty decent mark in English, despite his general… distraction. With the rest of his grades, he’d keep his scholarship by the skin of his teeth.

It was good to catch up with his friends back home, and to spend time with his family, but Dave spent the whole break thinking about Cole. He knew it was silly to have such a desperate crush on a guy who, at most, saw him as an over-eager student, but he couldn't help himself. His attraction was stronger than ever. And, irrationally, he kept wondering whether Cole was losing weight over the break—and hoping that he wasn't.

When Dave settled into his winter semester English class, he realized that he had nothing to worry about. Cole's replacement clothes looked skintight, with his porky thighs and plump backside overloading the seat of his pants. Dave didn’t know whether to pity those pants, faced with the impossible, Sisyphean task of containing Cole’s fat ass, or to be jealous. His burgeoning gut burdened the front of his shirt, and his love handles had plumped up nicely, looking thickset and husky. Dave noticed that his pecs also looked bigger, beefier, like they were starting to blossom into full-blown man-tits. Even his face was softer, rounder.

Dave's arousal was through the roof. When he wasn't studying or working out to get ready for the lacrosse season, he was thinking about Cole, dreaming up new ways to spoil him. He went to office hours every week, having to hold himself back to keep from throwing himself at the increasingly chubby grad student. Tiramisu, banana bread, cheesecake... all of it made its way from Dave's kitchen, through Cole's office and into his expanding belly.

“You’ve been baking a lot,” Dave’s roommate, Kristen said, as he rolled out a pie crust. “Who’s it all for? Because I know you’re not eating all that yourself.”

Dave smiled. “Just this guy,” he said. “You know, study snacks.”

Kristen frowned, “What guy? You haven’t brought a guy back here in ages.”

Dave chuckled at her bluntness. “Thanks for reminding me. We’re just friends,” he said. He wished Cole was more than a friend, but for now, he was forbidden fruit. Even if he was looking particularly sweet and juicy….

February meant the start of lacrosse season. Dave was far from the top of his game, but he managed to hold his own, and he didn’t let the team down. He used to love discreetly checking out his teammates in the locker room, but lately their gym-hardened bodies just weren’t doing it for him. Sure, they were hot, but lately, there was something about a guy with some extra padding, with a big butt and a fuzzy beer belly that really got Dave’s heart beating. Slender jocks just didn’t have the same power over him anymore.

It was close to Valentine’s Day when Dave showed up at Cole’s office with a homemade chocolate torte and a batch of peanut butter brownies. He considered bringing a card, but thought that might be a little much.

Cole gave a slight groan when he saw the amount of food Dave had brought. "You're too good to me," he said. He patted his bulging stomach, already starting to fill out his wardrobe after he'd upgraded it once again. "I'm not blaming you, Dave, but I've gained, like, 60 pounds since September."

Maybe you should be blaming me, a little, Dave thought. He did the mental math: that was almost 12 pounds a month! Cole was exploding! Hearing him talk out loud about his transforming body, hearing his name used in the same sentence as Cole’s weight gain, made Dave pulse with desire; he crossed his legs in an attempt to be discreet. What has gotten into me? He wondered, as he tried to keep from blushing. He didn’t know where this fascination with Cole’s weight gain was leading, but he wanted to find out.

Dave sized him up, admiring the way his buttons seemed to positively ache over the curve of his gut. His shirts were getting tight everywhere, around his chest, around his paunchy middle, even around his increasingly doughy arms… and he was wider, too, his back broadening to accommodate his added girth. That broad back led down to a seriously chunky set of hips, large and well-insulated.

“You look great,” Dave said, cringing at how excited he sounded. He tried to recover. “I mean, like, I know lots of girls go for that sort of build.”

Cole chuckled. “Well, they’ll be disappointed to hear that I’m gay,” he said.

Dave tried not to swoon. Not only was the object of his desire ballooning before his eyes, he was also gay! Of course, Cole seemed too straightlaced to date a student… but Dave wouldn’t be his student forever. And he already had a pretty good idea about the way to his heart.

So when he wasn’t blasting his pecs or quads at the gym, playing lacrosse, or finishing up a lab assignment, Dave was whisking lemon curd, filling eclairs and piping out beignets. It was getting expensive, but he had his scholarship and some student loans to fall back on. And as hard as it was hitting his wallet, the excess calories were hitting Cole’s waistline even harder.

Dave looked at the clock one night, and realized that it was after 1, and he had an 8 AM lab the next morning. He looked at himself in the hallway mirror—same slender, easygoing face, same smooth skin, but with flour in his hair and a distinctly bleary-eyed look. He’d have to frost the cupcakes tomorrow… He couldn’t have Cole going without.

As March slipped by and the air started to warm up, Dave realized just how much winter weight his favourite TA had piled on. In just six months, Cole had gone from trim and toned to downright fat. His dad bod—perhaps more than a dad bod, at this point—was evident, with a prominent belly that looked soft and pliable beneath a dress shirt that was pulled as tight as a drum over his broad, round gut. There was definitely still some muscle in his chest, but that chest was rapidly transforming into a pair of meaty man-tits, with nipples poking against the fabric. His arms looked thicker, softer; Dave imagined his slender body getting wrapped up by those burly arms, cradled against that soft torso as he cupped Cole’s big, round butt.

And what a butt it was. Cole’s whole lower half was a masterpiece… Dave wanted nothing more than to rip off Cole’s tight pants and bask in the glory of his blubbery thighs, to clasp and grip and jiggle each plump ass-cheek, to hold him by those broad hips and pull him into a kiss. Each step sent a definite, noticeable ripple across his buttocks, and his thighs had gotten large enough that they were starting to rub together when he walked. God, he was so dreamy…

“Hello? You there?”

Dave was snapped back to reality by his prof, and he realized that everybody was staring at him. His cheeks reddened. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

“We were talking about theme. And what Melville was trying to convey through the character of Ahab?”

“Uh, obsession,” Dave said. “And the destructive power of his obsession with the whale.”

The professor nodded, returning to his lecture, and Dave breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that he’d just barely gotten away with his daydreaming. He was shocked he’d managed to go so long without getting called on by Glazner; then again, he did sit pretty far back.

Dave overheard a particularly juicy conversation on his way out of class. A pair of girls in front of him were chatting, and his ears perked up when the conversation turned to Cole:

“What has he been eating?” one of them asked, as she packed up her bag. “He’s like, seriously letting himself go.”

“Ugh, I know right?” her friend said. “He used to be super cute, but now… God, look how fat he is! He’s practically waddling!”

Dave followed their gaze, staring at Cole as he walked over to the lectern to talk to the professor. He was starting to waddle a little bit, meaty thighs fighting their way past each other as his bulbous rump bobbed up and down, sending his saddlebag hips swaying from side to side. His pants were almost obscenely tight, the seam separating each beefy butt cheek looked very strained indeed.

“Seriously, he’s turning into a blimp.”

“Aren’t gay guys supposed to be, like, super fit?”

“Yeah, like that one guy. The lacrosse guy. What’s his name, isn’t he in this class?”

“Danny? No, uh, Darren?” she scoffed, “I wish my boyfriend looked like that.”

Dave made a show of clearing his throat, and the girls turned around with predictable embarrassment. After an awkward chuckle, they quickly turned to enter the stairwell.

But it wasn’t their compliments, or their mind-numbingly reductive view of gay men, weighing on Dave’s mind as he walked out of the Arts Building. He practically had to hold his backpack in front of his crotch to hide his boner, locking himself in his bedroom as soon as he got home and frantically rubbing one out. He’s turning into a blimp.

Cole wasn’t in his office at the start of office hours that week. Dave waited outside the door, clutching a plastic tupperware container and a pan of brownies. He was hoping the object of his affections would show up in time for their weekly one-on-one.

A moment later, he saw Cole bounding down the hall, his blubbery middle quavering as he plodded along. “I’m—” he huffed. “I’m sorry… I’m late.”

He was out of breath and sweating; Dave was amazed to see that a guy who’d looked to be in tip-top shape just six months ago now seemed far from it. He must have been doing absolutely nothing since school started, aside from sitting on his ass and eating. Cole pressed a hand against the wall, panting. “My bus was… late,” he explained. Dave imagined him jogging up the stairs to his office on the third floor, wishing he had been a few minutes later so he could have taken in that sight.

Inside his office, Cole stripped off his jacket and slung it over the back of his chair; Dave took in his pit stains, watching the way his chest and belly expanded in and out with each heaving breath. God, he was out of shape. Dave set his baking on the desk and took out his notes while he waited for Cole to get ready. Eventually, they got down to business. Dave studied Cole’s handsome face, dusted with a perfect layer of stubble, as he read over the outline of Dave’s latest assignment.

“I see someone’s been doing the readings,” he said, as he chewed on the homemade fudge that Dave had brought him. “Either that or you found a good online summary.”

Dave laughed. “No, I really did do the readings,” he said. “Well, some of it I read, some of it I listened to. Sometimes I listen to audiobooks at the gym.” And when I’m baking.

Cole offered a wry smile, “Sounds like an English nerd to me,” he teased.

Dave flushed. They’d built up a pretty good rapport over the course of two semesters. He was going to be sad to say goodbye after exams.

April snuck up on Dave, as usual, and he was in exam mode before he knew it. Even if the constant noise in the kitchen drove Kristen crazy, baking was a good outlet for his stress, and he swung by Cole’s office for their usual Thursday sitdown with his arms laden with sweets: a chocolate pie, a batch of snickerdoodles, and a full box of raspberry scones.

“This is so much,” Cole said, as he took it all in, wide-eyed.

“Well, you’ve just been such a big help to me,” Dave said. “I want to show my appreciation.”

Cole smiled. “Just doing my job. It’s rare to have a student so engaged. And so generous!” He laughed, making his round, sprawling belly jiggle.

A few weeks later, Dave slid the final essay into the dropbox. He was done another year of school; only one more left before he graduated. It was exciting, but he felt a twinge in his chest: he had gotten so used to spending time with Cole. He was really going to miss him.

It felt strange showing up to his office empty-handed. He almost wished he had brought something, even as a token. But Dave didn’t want to risk leaving for the year without saying goodbye. The door was closed when he arrived. After a moment’s hesitation, he gave a knock.

Cole was bent over when Dave entered, reaching into a filing cabinet. Dave took in the sight of his vast, wide posterior, a great, spherical ass that jutted out behind him, resting atop a pair of broad, hulking thighs. If he was still piling on the pounds as fast as he had been in February—and Dave guessed that he was—he must have been at least 80 pounds heavier than he had been in September. And judging from the size of that ass, 80 may have been conservative. On a fairly short frame, that amount of weight made him look nothing less than huge.

“Hey, Dave,” Cole said, spinning around to face the door. He looked bigger than Dave had ever seen him. His fat belly flooded out in front of him, not quite fully contained by his thin sweater, which pulled tight across an expanse of abdominal fat. Even the white undershirt beneath was riding up, unable to contend with so much extra weight. Soft love handles bulged out at his sides, stretch marks exposed and visible, and his breasts cleaved against his sweater, round and perky from the muscle beneath.

Dave drank in Cole’s large, thickly-upholstered torso, in awe of how paunchy and overfed he looked. There was a time when his tight shirts showed off the outline of abs; now, it was his navel that was outlined by the overworked fabric. And his pants looked almost painted onto his vast legs. He dropped himself into his office chair, which gave a furious creak, his big butt pressing against the chair’s arms. He smiled, “What can I do for you?”

“I just, um… I wanted to say thanks,” Dave said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. He felt like an idiot, but he was starting to get emotional. “You’ve been really great.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” Cole said. “You have my email.”

“Yeah,” Dave said. His heart was pounding. “I, uh… you know, I really like you.”

Cole seemed surprised. “I like you too, Dave.”

“No, like, I really like you,” he said. He cringed at how childish that sounded; he was talking to a guy who was mostly finished his masters degree in English, and Dave sounded like a high school jock. He still was a jock, but Cole had opened him up to a whole other side of himself. His eyebrows knitted together as he struggled to convey the full strength of his feelings. “Like, I don’t want to stop seeing you, that’s how much I like you.”

Cole searched Dave’s face, eyes widening as the realization dawned on him. Dave didn’t know how much more obvious he could have been; he’d been practically throwing himself at Cole all semester. Short of doing a striptease in his lacrosse uniform with an Oscar Wilde anthology, he didn’t know how he could have made it any clearer. Did Cole know he was gay? Or did the idea of having that kind of relationship with a student not even occur to him? “Oh, you mean…”

Dave nodded. “I don’t know if this is totally inappropriate or if I’m way off base here, but… would you maybe want to hang out sometime? Outside of your office, I mean?” He bit his lip, his gaze flickering from the floor to Cole’s face, his perfect, luminous eyes.

“I’d like that a lot,” Cole grinned. “Although I don’t know if that’ll be good for my diet plans.”

Dave laughed. “It definitely won’t,” he said. He could only imagine how many more sweets he would stuff into Cole over the course of the summer, and the sort of massive proportions he’d balloon up to. If those girls thought he was a blimp before, just wait until fall semester, he thought. The university had better upgrade their chairs, widen the doorways, reinforce the floors… If they started dating, Dave knew that Cole’s weight was going to get seriously out of hand.

“How about tonight?” Cole asked. “There’s this Korean barbecue place downtown that I’ve been dying to try.”

Dave couldn’t say yes fast enough.

#weight gain #male weight gain #gay #weight gain story #wg story #realistic gain #gaining fiction #belly #bhm #fatboy

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iateyourcatnom · 9 months

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"She said she wish there was two of me"

Ciara Duggan

Mainstory sim =￣ω￣=

->Prounouns: she/her ->Sexuality: Bisexual ->Age: She's 21 ->Employment: none lmao odd jobs ->Friend of the world, and up for a good party, anytime! ->Aliance: The Newbs

--VOICE CLAIM-- (Spicy Warning)

->Birthday: May 2nd ->Zodiac sign: Taurus ->Caribbean ->Black-asian ->Traits: daredevil, endurant, active, bro, cool

(Edited part)

Desc: From official school report author

There's no official report for people like her. She's a newb, one of the few who moved into our little town that never went to Harvey High School, unwanted & unasked for. Hangs around Rylie & Weslie a lot though....

Other Facts!!!

+She's really sporty (Gym rat+++) +She came from McHarvey's highschool, sorta a bad copy of Harvey's basically. +She lives next door to Lisa's Orphanage +If it ain't comfortable she ain't wearing it. +She actually never completely finished highschool in one school, she got kicked out for bullying at 18 and got out of rehab at 20 +She's a better person now, & has a weird thing for bible camps +She doesn't dislike Rylie, but hangs out with her mainly because of Weslie. +Her mum died at birth, her dad was suposed to raise her but went to jail because of scadalism issues, she lived with her uncle Dave who she loved dearly, but when he died of cancer a little over her 20th birthday when she was finally out of rehab, she moved to town because the city had nothing but bad memories for her. +Has a crush on Weslie but won't tell her cause W's too busy cheating on her bf & gf 😭☕

Also a big thanks to @lazynectarine, @rhdweauni0, @losieee, @sxmmisims, @invisiblequeensibleq, @kimorasimz, @dizzyscabiosa, @pessimistic-traitmistic, @moonriesims, @faetheegrey, @amms8f, @sweetearts, @milanissims, @cloudmonet, @o0faye0o for making my simblr journey awesome and so worth it! ily guys<3

(also, sorry if I didn't get your name here, I spent a lot of time on this, just dm and i'll add you!)

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kolbisneat · 2 months

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MONTHLY MEDIA: February 2024

A real grey month broken up by the colours and beauty of art. Here's how I spent the month of February.

……….FILM……….

The Beekeeper (2024) Perfect February movie.

……….TELEVISION……….

Succession (Episode 1.01 to 2.04) Wasn't sure I was going to like this (every single character is just awful) but now I'm keen to see how these awful people are increasingly awful to each other. So far I'm really appreciating every shot that shows the staff and just the sheer number of people responsible for making the lives of these awful people as low-friction as possible. We 100% need to tax the rich more.

Delicious In Dungeon (Episode 1.05 to 1.08) Now having seen more episodes, the shifting animation styles feels more consistent overall and I love the frenetic style during the high-stress/combat scenes. If you like this show then know it's a near 1:1 with the manga but still worth reading.

……….YOUTUBE……….

Pinocchio is a Story About Art and God by Jacob Geller This opened me up to a wholly new interpretation of what the story of Pinocchio is about. Also go watch the Del Toro adaptation on Netflix it's truly a work of art. VIDEO

Vape-o-nomics: Why Everything is Addictive Now by Tom Nicholas In short: everything is a subscription now and it's making everything worse. Worth the watch and looking forward to further installments in this series. VIDEO

This Experiment Undid Our Cities. How Do We Fix It? by Strong Towns Push back against any local government that doesn't want to introduce mixed use zoning into neighborhoods. The suburbs are subsidized by density, it's as simple as that. VIDEO

……….READING……….

How To Watch Football: 52 Rules for Understanding the Beautiful Game, On and Off the Pitch by Tifo (Complete) So I actually read this over the course of a month or two. I'd read a rule or two, process, then read a couple more a day or two later. I don't even really watch football but this helped so much and now I expect I'll crush the fantasy premier league I'm in.

The Big Four by Agatha Christie (Complete) Only my second Christie novel and this felt SO different. Turns out that's because it really is an outlier amongst her other works. So that was reassuring. Not terrible but I wouldn't exactly recommend it as it felt thoroughly disjointed (a result of stitching together a series of unrelated short stories).

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett (Complete) Hey I love the Discworld series. You know this. I know this. But there's always gotta be an entry that goes on the bottom of any list. I love Rincewind, but prefer the other wizards in a less prominent role. Not one I'd recommend when trying to get into the series and probably not one I'll revisit. Oh well.

Catwoman: Lonely City by Cliff Chiang (Complete) Big fan of Chiang's artistry on Paper Girls and really enjoyed this interpretation of an aging Gotham. It has such a clear and singular voice it covers so much in just four chapters! Really great read.

Silver Surfer: Black by Donny Cates, Tradd Moore, and Dave Stewart (Complete) Every time I read this I love it more and more. It's truly what I pictured comics to be when I was a kid: vibrant, dramatic, and a little bonkers. Why does the villain ride a dragon? WHO CARES it looks cool. I love it all.

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 4 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) Watching the series and rereading the manga is really making for a great experience. This volume really highlighted that Senshi isn't a man with all the answers. In the upper levels of the dungeon, he's competent, but as they go deeper and face more dangerous monsters, the rest of the party take more of the lead. It's so good. This series is so good.

……….AUDIO……….

Wolves of Glendale by Wolves of Glendale (2024) Comedy music is always tricky but for me, the comedy is second. If I don't enjoy the music having no understanding of the lyrics then I probably won't stick with it. Some tracks strike this balance better than others but I found The Gym to be a good introductory track.

……….GAMING……….

Disco Elysium (ZA/UM) On one hand, I tend to prefer more...active games. Something that requires hitting buttons at the right time. On the other hand, I'm really digging the mystery and complexity of the game. It really feels like I can play this detective however I want without being forced to follow any one playstyle. Not sure how far into it I am but I read the review that it's less a detective game and more a game about being a detective and that really feels right. But I do have to say that it's...rather buggy on the Switch so that might not be the recommended way to play it.

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The Tuesday crew is working towards ridding the island of a competing group of adventurers. Hook wants them gone, the Gnomes want them gone, heck even the Moss Mother wants them gone. But will they be able to do it? And the more lengthy recap is over here.

Oz: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The Mof1 D&D crew found a (literal) underground magic item shop so did a bunch of shopping after their big funeral heist. Everyone loves a good shopping session!

And that's it. See you in March!

#Monthly Media #Kolbisneat #Andrew Kolb

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homeahoy · 1 year

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Black Coffee & A Smile

Fluffy Fluff. Bill x Mike

Not beta read or spell checked cause am lazy.

Eoin leaned over Bill where he stood at the counter staring out the window at the car garage opposite. "Whatcha looking at?" Eoin asked in a sign song voice. He knew exactly what Bill was looking at or should say who he was looking at . A certain blonde haired mechanic that had seemed to have grabbed Bill's attention some months back perhaps. Eoin’s voice had startled Bill out of his fixated staring. It was maybe a good time as the lunchtime rush was about to start and it was always busy in their little cafe. A Cafe that had been a roaring success since he and his best friend Eoin had decided to open it a good few months back. It helped that it was on a busy street with plenty of businesses nearby. There were the newspaper offices and bank down the street, with the library next door. The gym where Eoin’s boyfriend Paddy worked was three doors down from the Cafe. Opposite was the car garage where the object of Bill’s current crush worked. There were other businesses up and down the street but they didn’t hold much interest.

Blushing furiously, Bill stood up and muttered “Nothing” Before turning and busying himself putting fresh coffee into the coffee machine. Eoin laughed “ You sure you weren’t staring at a certain mechanic across the road again?” Bill’s crush was a great source of entertainment to Eoin. It had all started when two of the men from the garage came in one day not long after they had opened and ordered coffee and about a dozen cakes between them. Eoin had noticed a red flush creep up the back of Bill’s neck when he had served the one who had introduced himself as Mike. The other who introduced himself as Dave didn’t quite seem to have the same effect. This little nugget of information had followed with Eoin grilling Bill about what he thought of the two men. Which resulted in Bill blushing and stumbling over his words, trying to deny he had felt anything despite the opposite being oh so obvious.

This first meeting followed many more visits from Mike, visit’s in which Eoin always miraculously disappeared leaving Bill to serve him every single time. It wasn’t like Bill was going to complain about it any time soon. He had butterflies in his stomach everytime MIke came in . The kind that felt like the air had been sapped from your lungs and only returned when he had left. It had gotten to the point that Bill knew his order off by heart, it was the same nearly every single day. Black coffee, two sugars and a danish. Bill knew today would be no different and made sure to put aside a danish just for the man who had captured his heart and imagination. Even if the only things he had learned from their short encounters were that he liked his coffee black with sugar and that he had a kind smile and always smelt of engine oil and soap.

Mike Sadler had worked in the Garage since he had left school, he had always been interested in cars, and travelling to discover new places. He couldn’t really think of himself doing anything else. He had started as an apprentice with two other boys Dave Kershaw and Thom Berry, only He and Dave remained. Eventually they had taken over the garage. Going into business with each other, that had been over three years ago now. It had been hard but they had made a good go of it and were doing okay for themselves. When the bakery called for old times bake of all things, opened across the road from them he could have sang from the rooftops. Despite being a pretty capable man Mike hated cooking and making his lunches had been the bane of his life. What he hadn’t expected was the tall awkward yet handsome man behind the counter and his glorious smile. He had barely paid attention to the other man who had learned was called Eoin, no Bill was the one he cared about.

From that day on he had made sure to go to the bakery every lunchtime. Dave had teased him about it relentlessly. That was until he got his fair share of cakes, which always seemed to shut him up, well for a few minutes at least. Dave took the gentle ribbing in his stride, he wasn’t someone to get worked up about that sort of thing anyway. He was surprised however that it was always Bill who seemed to serve him, Eoin always seemed to disappear as soon as he set foot in the place. It wasn’t until he had spoken to Paddy who had known for a while and had discovered was Eoin’s other half that it was done on purpose, because a certain blonde haired baker had a crush on him. Mike would be hard pressed to say the feeling wasn’t mutual. He liked Bill’s hair that was so obviously styled in the morning but a fluffy mess by afternoon and his smile that was like a beam of sunshine. So he continued to visit but he never pushed the matter, waiting for Bill to maybe make a move himself if it was more than just a simple crush.

Only one simple afternoon would change all that. Mike wasn’t sure what was in the water that day but there had been non-stop services, MOT’s and a clutch that had somehow gone missing. It was looking likely that he wouldn’t be getting his lunch anytime soon. Bill had served multiple customers when the lunchtime rush came in that day but there had been no sign of Mike. His heart had dropped a little and it was all over his face. Eoin had noticed the sad look upon his face and asked “What’s wrong?”. “Mike hasn’t come in yet. I hope nothing bad has happened, "he replied. He knew he was working; he had only been staring at him an hour or so before through the window. Sensing Bill’s concern and anxiousness Eoin suggested “Why don’t you go take them their lunch, am pretty sure they are just busy and working through lunch not that something bad has happened” Bill immediately brightened up at the idea. Making up their usual order he placed the coffee in a cup tray and the pastries in a bag and made a beeline for the garage across the street. Well that didn’t take much convincing Eoin thought to himself.

Bill entered the garage tentatively not really sure where he should go and where might possibly be a bit dangerous to wander into, so he headed towards the office area. As he did so he heard a familiar voice cry out “Hey, what are you doing here?” Turning around he saw Mike coming towards him cleaning his hands off on a rag. Bill, trying to play it cool and failing, said “I saw you hadn’t come in yet so I thought I would bring you your usual order” As he spoke he held up the tray and bag. “That’s so kind of you, We haven’t had a chance to have a break yet. But don’t make a habit of it. I might get used to pretty boy’s in aprons bringing me lunch” was the reply, “I’ll also pay you back for this” he added as he made to take the items from Bill. Bill who was now nearly a violent shade of red from blushing at Mike’s comment. Waved his now free hands and said “It’s on the house, for our best customers”. Mike grinned and said “Well how about I do something for you, like take you out to dinner sometime?” He stood for sometime waiting for an answer and watching Bill practically malfunction on the stop before finally spitting out “Yes, yeah, cool , sure” “It’s a date then, I’ll drop by tomorrow to arrange something with you but for now I’ll let you get back to work”

If he could have floated back to the bakery Bill would have but being only human he had walked in a daze, pushing open the door and then walking back behind the counter and standing in a stupor while Eoin asked “How did it go?” “He called me pretty” was the reply. Grinned and giving Bill a little shake he asked “Anything else?” Turning to Eoin and now looking a little bit distressed Bill said “ I think he asked me out on a date.”

#sas: rogue heroes #sas modern au #mike x bill #fluff

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paradoxkinspace · 1 year

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heyyyy. i guess i will also post a canon call because. i wanna talk to people. i'm open to just chatting, but i'm mainly looking for canonmates! i have several timelines, so i guess i'll just list general details for each.

(FYI: i am a minor, so please be wary of that.)

JADE STRIDER (daveways) - i found the other beta kids, (john lalonde, rose egbert, and dave harley), so i'm looking for anyone but them. (if there are any terezi zahhaks, hello. I miss you although i'm not entirely sure why). i have a dump of info on my profile that i won't list here for the sake of not making this too long. I'll at least say that i had shoulder length wavy/curly hair, wore round black sunglasses, a red baseball tee, and typically black pants although i do remember wearing a long skirt sometimes. also a pair of worn out red sneaks. my guardian was bro strider (aka jake strider). i was a witch of time. my symbol might have been a cassette tape.

JOHN HARLEY - i'm looking for any of the beta kids (rose strider, dave lalonde, and /or jade egbert)! i don't remember a heavy chunk of stuff other than what swaps the humans were and bits and pieces of our session and prior to it. i had messily cut shoulder length hair, wore square glasses, and freckles. i tended wore sweaters despite it often being humid although id occasionally decide to wear a tee. i had a pair of cargo shorts and black gym shoes, although i did sometimes wear a long skirt instead. i made lots of bracelets and other jewelry with beads and rubber bands. we started our sessions when we were older, so we were like? 15? or 16. i lived on an island with my dad. i was a heir of space. my symbol was similar to this: 🌱 and also i may have had a crush on dave, haha...

MEULIN MAKARA (kurlozways) - looking for: porrim megido, kankri maryam, kurloz leijon, damara zahhak, mituna ampora, and horuss peixes. i know it's a bit of a list, but i remember you guys the most. i had black, curly and poofy hair that often got tangled in stuff. my skin was a dark grey and i had sharp, pointy horns. i was kind of lanky and tall. i often wore a purple vest with my symbol, a collared black t-shirt, and loose black pants w/ black boots. oh, and fingerless skeleton gloves. i also had a nostril piercing on my left side. i had tiger-themed facepaint but i didnt always wear it. i hung out with ampora and peixes a lot. had a flushed crush on porrim and i think i was moirails with kankri. probably was a prince of heart. my symbol was leo.

DIRK LALONDE (ROXYWAYS) - looking for any of the alpha kids (jane english, roxy strider, and/or jake crocker). my memories are also a bit dense here too. i had light blond hair, a couple of beauty marks, eyebrow slit and piercing, and my ears were pierced. i often wore this one short-sleeve sweater with a black tank underneath and some black cargo pants w/ white shoes. i programmed stuff and dabbled in robotics like once. i was a prince of void. my symbol was a cat similar to canon roxy's i'm pretty sure. i definitely had a crush on jake crocker. it was…pretty bad.

(sorry about the long ask! hope it's alright. ^^;)

as i said before, feel free to message to just chat or see if we have anything in common. :D

- @stupidkinbs

you got it buddy! o7

🃏

#mod clownbae #homestuck kin #hs kin #kin canon call #homestuck canon call #bloodswap kin #kidswap kin #jade strider kin #john harley kin #meulin makara kin #dirk lalonde kin #dancestor kin

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growup-thatbeautiful · 7 months

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Okay, now that you've introduced us to gym crush Dave, what about gym bf Dave where he's a lot more confident in watching you do your sets, and being a total hype gym bf <3

(Sorry if it's not descriptive enough... it's late asf and I'm tired)

aww this is adorable! thanks for the request lovely 🧡 sequel to this fic but not necessary to have read :) short n sweet for this one

The gym isn’t crowded today; you thank the early hour for the emptiness. It’s not your preferred time (5 A.M is a little too early for you), but Dave couldn’t find any other room in his schedule, and it’s always better to have a built-in-boyfriend/gym partner.

You’re benching, the rhythmic movement up and down timed with your breathing, sweat making your hair stick to your forehead. The burning in your arms has already started, a feeling on the edge of pain. You already finished one set, following the plan that you and Dave made this week for your goals together. If it was anyone else, you would’ve told them to fuck off for talking about your workout routine; but it’s how you and Dave connect, among other things. Somehow, it’s easy to listen to his guidance and his encouragement. It helps that he’s always the most sincere, quietly supportive person that you know.

He’s beside you now, scrolling through his phone while he takes a break. There’s a layer of sweat covering his body, the black material of his shorts and tank-top doing nothing to hide his muscles.

Through the haze of your music, you hear Dave’s voice, always patient and calm. “You can do more than that.”

“What?” you ask, frustration seeping through your tone. Ever since you started working out with him, your routine has become decidedly harder, which you’re both thankful for and tired of. It’s undeniable that Dave pushes you past your limits in the best way possible. He takes a step closer to you, leaving his own weights on the ground.

“Come on, baby. You can do more than that. Here-” he helps you rack your weight and adds another five to both sides “you go. Try now.”

“Dave,” you start, peeling yourself off from the sticky plastic of the bench, “I could barely do what I was already doing.”

“But you did it,” he points out. “You go until failure, right? So add more.”

Reasonably, you know he’s right. You’ve got more in you, even though you may not feel like it, but the heaviness of your breathing and the shakiness of your limbs protest.

“Fine,” you huff, ignoring the grin on his face. “But you have to spot me, bub.”

“Of course.” Easily, he steps around you to get into position, ready to help if you need it. There’s no one you trust more than him to spot you; he’s always unfailing protective of you. Quietly, when you lift the bar from the resting position, he urges you on. “You got it, honey.”

Breathing in, you bring the bar to your chest and pause before pushing it back up, breathing out. One rep. Two reps. Dave’s voice steadily counting as you keep going, encouragements littered in-between. You finish the first set and take a breath, sitting up.

“There you go, baby,” Dave cheers quietly, his headphones around his neck, curls sticking out in all directions despite your attempt to pin his hair back. “See, you didn’t even need my help,” he points out.

“Asshole,” you grin, popping the knuckles in your hand. He sees it and takes your hand in his own, massaging your knuckles and giving your wrists a squeeze before helping you lay back down on the bench.

The next set passes and the next set passes, until you can’t lift anymore and Dave has to help you rerack your weights. Your arms are bone tired, burning, and shaking.

“Good job, baby,” he says once you’re sitting up, your face flushed and heated with sweat. There’s pride on his face that makes you feel proud of yourself. “I knew you could do it.”

“That makes one of us,” you reply, taking his hand when he offers it to you. He grabs your water too and hands it to you, and you gratefully take it.

“Come on, have a little faith. You’ve got a great coach, you know.” Running a hand through his curls, Dave starts his own set, not waiting for you to start again, which you appreciate.

When he takes his next break, you take a look around the gym to make sure that no one else is looking your direction. Once you’re satisfied, you wrap your arms around his neck, sweat be damned, and peck him gently. “Thank you,” you whisper before pulling away, leaving Dave to stare at you, open-mouthed, his eyes wide and surprised.

“You’re going to pay for that later,” he warns breathlessly, a half-grin on his face.

“Yeah?” you ask, pulling his headphones back up to cover his ears. “I’m counting on it, coach.”

#gym crush dave #dave lizewski #dave lizewski x you #dave lizewski x reader #dave lizewski x y/n #dave lizewski fanfic #dave lizewski fic #kick ass #kick ass fanfic #kick ass fic #atj #atj x reader #atj x you #aaron taylor johnson #nova writes

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jazzstarrlight · 2 years

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I've forgotten about this. I'm not sure to add it to the wattpad story.

Carol's notepad (1st person POV):

I continued to monitor the security cameras. As I wrote down my speculations in my notepad. Mainly about the ones I suspected to be killers.

Reading my handwriting through a mutter.

Who is it?

General - has had contact with aliens before (protective attitude - possible mask)

Ellie - too... human? (She seems alright enough. I don't think she'd attack her crush)

Henry - Very sus (the quiet ones are the most dangerous)

Charles - Marshmallow (literally wouldn't hurt a fly. I've seen it happen in gym class)

Dave - Scaredy cat (there's no way he's faking)

Rupert - most likely (been a lot more defensive since finals, I find)

Sven - nope (I would know if he was an imposter)

Burt - don't wanna think about it (has been a lot bolder since they hooked up)

#henry stickmin #henry among us au #carol cross #thsc

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incorrectdnb · 1 year

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Kurl breaks his legs compilation

(Bambi accidentally knocks over a tower by crashing a car into it. The tower falls over and lands on Kurl’s leg)

Kurl: MY LEG!

----------------

(Kurl is sitting on some stadium bleachers, legs out, when Cuble Gooble drives over them.)

Kurl: MY LEG!

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(Kurl is at the gym and decides to place his legs under his weights.)

Kurl: MY LEG!

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(Kurl is fishing when he accidentally hooks his leg.)

Kurl: MY LEG!

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(Kurl is participating in one of degnupxE’s magic shows. degnupxE does the box separation trick with Kurl’s leg.)

Kurl: MY LEG!

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(Kurl is watching TV when he finds a show about his leg.)

Kurl: My leg?

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(Kurl gets his legs crushed by a steamroller.)

Kurl: MY LEG!

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(Kurl gets his leg caught in a sink’s garbage disposal.)

Kurl: MY LEG!

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(Kurl is wearing a dress and standing on a vent blowing air upwards.)

Kurl: My legs.

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(Bombalunio are examining Kurl’s anatomy, pulling off his leg.)

Kurl: MY LEG!

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(Decimated Dave is taking a laser to Kurl’s leg.)

Kurl: MY LEG!

----------------

(Kurl is sitting under a tree when a leaf falls on his leg and shatters it.)

#Dave and Bambi #Bambisona Mayhem #dimensional deep end #Strident Crisis #Diamond Edition #Dave #Kurl #Cuble Gooble #degnupxE #Bombalunio #Source: Spongebob #tw: violence #Bambi

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mustrreadalaska · 2 years

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100 Things Will Smith Could've slapped instead of Chris Rock

Will Smith slapped for love so I’m slapping this ever older topic with my long E.T fingers. Should you slap someone? No, probably not. I wouldn’t recommend it. Often slapping someone tends to make things worse but that being said lets pretend what else he could’ve slapped if it was limitless.

Hitler

The Editorial Board of (any news organization)

Hillary Clintons need to be heard

Whoever said Pelosi should write a poem

Donald Trumps Ass

Superman

Isis

The KKK and the fashion director

Sith

Mosquitoes

people at the gym who sit on their phone not using the machine

Josh Hawley as he put his fist up on January 6th

Milo Yiannopoulos to make him gay again

Dick Cheney

Elden Lord Bosses I can’t beat (all of them)

George RR Martin so he will write faster

The Lich King

Elon Musk’s Bank account so we can all pick up the money off the ground like peasants

The primordial earth

All the dinosaurs

Ted Bundy

Anyone who wrote a letter to Ted Bundy

Putin

Racism formed into an evil god

Richard B. Spencer after he was already punched

Jesus but the slap brings him back to life

The concept of war

Journalists who want nuclear war

Glenn Greenwald every time he says the word Russia

Tucker Carlsons home windows so he has to spend hours cleaning

Godzilla

Maxine Waters for shoving and murdering Michael Tracey

Transphobia

The world of Harry Potter

Disneyland Prices

The homophobia out of Dave Bronson of Anchorage Alaska

Winter

The gay need to take a selfie

Kanye West each time he complains about Kim

Remixed music that only adds clapping

Pregnancy pictures

Kathy Griffin so she has another story to share

The American forefathers

Chris Rock again

The Rock and Vin Diesel well they fight

The Shark from Jaws

Cheeks

The beat for any song

God

Chris Rocks shadow self

Lactose Intolerance

The Poor

The Rich

Willow Smiths hand because her music career is fantastic

The walls of a house where the Ghost Adventures bros are walking around being scared

Another comedian with a bad joke

The ninth cup of coffee out of someone's hand

Naraku’s decapitated head after he tries to flee in battle

Alex Jones really thick neck

Meat

Tim Pool’s beanie

Captain America’s Ass

Chris Evans Ass

Thanos

The Marvel Universe to end it all

Gwyneth Paltrow vagina candle

Adam Carolla for every bad joke

Julius Caesar after he was stabbed

Someone in need of cpr

Independence day alien ship

Abusive League of Legend players

Britney Spears Dad

Medusa

Zeus

Cher after she says do you believe in life after love

someone who won’t wake up after their alarm goes off

The Terminator

Jay Z for thinking even for a second he should cheat on Beyoncé

U2 for putting an album on everyone's phone

Nicki Minaj cousin in Trinidad to help his balls

Lorne Michaels for every bad snl sketch which is most of them

Corporations that advocate for the gays and then donate to people who would alt delete them

Secretly gay republicans who use glory holes

The opponent in the new Olympic slapping sport

Marsha Blackburn’s hair

Devimon in digimon for each pun made

people who steal memes

NFT People

Scammers of NFT

People who ignore the scamming of NFT

NFT celebrities

Anyone who says they are “just asking questions” as they push conspiracy theories and not actually try to answer the question

The chess game you’re losing

Martha who is being racist to the waiter after church

Lucifer

The governments incredibly slow process of getting anything done

Santa for giving you coal every Christmas

The Gym crush for not crushing you

E.T

Will Smith

#politics #will smith #oscars #oscars 2022 #writer

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aaronhotchstan · 2 years

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Too old for this...

Chapter 10 final

Cena di famiglia

Aaron Hotchner/ David Rossi

In the end they managed to scrape together a pair of jeans that were slightly too small and clung to Aaron's ass almost obscenely and an old gym shirt from back when Dave bothered with the masochistic practice of attending. He probably could have found something more appropriate if they hadn't gotten sidetracked with a steamy shared shower but this was never going to be a regret for him, they were helping the environment after all.

Garcia was jumping up and down on his doorstep ringing the bell insistently and balancing a large tupperware container on her arm. He could hear her excited squeals through the hallway even over the sound of the bell. He took one long breath to brace himself before letting her in.

"I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT" She screamed as she rushed inside dropping off her wares before circling back and dragging Dave into a bone crushing hug.

"So you said last night jellybean." Dave replied with a chuckle despite being winded from Garcia's crushing grasp.

Aaron chose this moment to appear in the hallway his hair still messy from a hasty towel dry and looking so cute dressed down in Dave's old clothes with the glasses that make him look like a shy law professor. Dave wanted to wrap him in a hug, or in bubble rap or wrap him in bubble rap then hug him. Garcia seemed to have similar plans as he was released from her grasp in time for her to hug Aaron tightly.

"Aw sir I'm so happy for you both you deserve the world I can't believe that you guys finally came to your senses." She had happy tears running down her cheeks that made Dave melt.

Truly the entire team had him wrapped around their pinky fingers but Pen was one of the sweetest and most loyal friends he could ever ask for and he was so glad she decided to meddle in his love life.

Aaron glanced over Penelope's shoulder to see Dave misty eyed and let out an awkward chuckle.

"Penelope you have to stop crying you've got Dave started and if you both continue I'll start."

Penelope laughed grasping Aaron's hand and reaching out for Dave who complied once he had dried the stray tears off with his shirt sleeve so he could regain his crumbling macho persona.

"Come and see what treats I have for everyone!" Garcia led them to the kitchen and unveiled her feast.

Aaron and Dave groaned with the hunger that hit them all at once, after they cleaned up failed pasta and spilled wine they had decided that toast would have to do before they collapsed into bed together. This in hindsight was not a filling meal for either of them especially with the vigorous extracurricular activities they had been partaking in. Garcia had brough ordinary and veggie bacon, plenty eggs for her to fry or scramble, sausages, tomatoes and fresh bread for toasting. She and Dave began digging out pans while Aaron made a pot of coffee and started laying the table.

"Oh by everyone Garcia who do you mean?" Aaron enquired as he was counting out forks.

"You know, Emily, Derek, JJ, Reid and maybe some paperwork for HR." She grinned with mischief as Aaron and Dave laughed.

"You must have been confident in my ability to woo Hotch because usually that paperwork takes a couple days to be sent." Dave chuckled eyeing Garcia with mock suspicion.

"My Italian Stallion I have had these papers since three days after you were staring at Boss man while he made his coffee. Maybe I wasn't as confident in your wooing abilities but rather my cupid abilities because I was this close to borrowing Derek's handcuffs and locking you two together!" She said holding out two fingers just barely touching.

Dave laughed "You have no idea how Glad I am that you didn't need to do that."

Soon after the rest of the team arrived in dregs the joy was visible on all their faces as they exchanged hugs and laughs. When it came time to take their seats not one dinner guest was without a smile plastered to their face. Emily clinked her teaspoon against her glass of orange juice and stood up.

"I just want to say that I am so happy these idiots finally decided to stop being stupid and get on with it already! It was definitely a team effort and although I think some of our schemes were better thought out than others." She gave all her team mates a meaningful glance. "We fuckin did it!"

Everyone applauded laughing as Emily gave a deep curtsy before sitting herself back on her chair.

"Okay, okay, I'm not usually a fan of meddling especially when I'm the focus of it because as a team you are always so...exhaustingly persistent on whatever you collectively set your minds on. In this case however you encouraged us to be honest with each other and to take a leap of faith, also not something I'm one to do with relationships but all the alcohol Garcia provided throughout definitely helped. Anyway thank you all and you can each ask Dave one question about our relationship and then our private lives are once again officially private!" Hotch announced raising his coffee in cheers with everyone.

His declaration was met with some cheers and some arguments on whether just one question was really fair once everyone settled down they all looked to Rossi.

"Why am I suddenly the spokesperson for our relationship." He said while mock glaring at Aaron.

"Well you did spill wine on my best shirt last night so I think it's only fair." Hotch said with a cheeky grin causing Dave to smack his shoulder lovingly.

"Okay fine you got me there...Okay Garcia you figured me out first you should get to ask first."

Garcia giggled in delight "So! What EXACTLY happened last night?" she asked waggling her eyebrows suggestively at them.

Dave could only laugh he knew she was going to ask that. He explained most of the events from the night before barring the adult moments they teased him relentlessly that he had been clumsy enough to throw wine over his crush and burn the meal he was preparing on the same night

"Hey! Go easy on the man I think we all know what kept him so distracted from his stove." Derek announced with a wink at Dave his statement causing Aaron's cheeks to take on a dashing strawberry tone.

"Okay Emily your question please before Aaron passes out!" Dave laughed getting a cute little glare from Aaron. "These were your terms baby you did this to yourself."

"So how good was the sex?" She asked with a laugh over her third mimosa.

"Good enough to burn the pasta for! Okay JJ next!" Dave announced.

"So it's early days but do you think you've found the next Mrs Rossi?" JJ asked teasingly.

"Hey! Why not the next Mrs Hotchner who said I'm taking Dave's name?" Hotch inserted with little true disgruntlement.

"That's a discussion for later baby but to answer your question, I am cautiously optimistic on that front but one thing at a time. Now Derek!"

"Hmm, is our big scary Boss man a cuddler?" Derek asked causing Prentiss to almost fall out her chair.

"He is in fact a massive cuddler and a snuggler also it's like owning a cat that actually likes you." At this Aaron hides his face completely in his borrowed shirt but they could all see the blush had heightened to his ears.

The statement earned some awws from the ladies at the table finally Dave looked to Spencer and nodded his permission to ask his question.

"Why do you think you were so scared to tell each other?" Reid asked innocently with his own small smile.

"Because they are dumbasses when it comes to love." Emily chipped in causing Dave to laugh.

"I was definitely a dumbass and way too afraid to fail and ruin our friendship but really I can't believe I was ever scared, nothing has come so naturally to me than us."

Aaron finally peeked from the t-shirt and smiled at Dave so warmly that he threw caution to the wind and leaned over for a kiss that had the team once again cheering them on.

This was always supposed to happen to them and it couldn't have come together any more beautifully if it hadn't been a team effort.

#hotch #aaron hotchner/david rossi #aaron hotchner #criminal minds fic #criminal minds #fanfic

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coochiequeens · 2 years

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The Cut could have chosen from many articles if they wanted to cover “cancel culture”. They published one that made a 17 year old boy who released his ex girlfriends nudes look like a victim. And this shit was written by a woman?

Twenty months after he developed a crush, 18 months after he’d fallen in love, Diego, who is enormously appealing but also very canceled, boarded the bus with Jenni and Dave. They were going to the beach, and it wasn’t a big deal — except for the fact that pretty much all of Diego’s friends had dropped him, so, yeah, it was. The three, all 17, sat in a row of orange seats that ran the length of the bus, Diego’s eyes dark, goofy, and sad; his body freshly stretched to almost six feet; his oversize Carhartts ripped on skateboard ramps. This could have been in any American city this past January, on any bus. (First names in this article are pseudonyms.) Jenni kept her face tilted down toward her lap, hidden by a scrim of shoulder-length hair.

Then, a stop away from school, another high-school student boarded the bus. Just one more kid with a backpack in a hoodie, and at first Diego waved and Jenni smiled. Diego because he wanted to show he wasn’t scared, as this kid had thrown accelerant on a stupid mistake Diego had made, thus blown up Diego’s life. Jenni because she’s pragmatic enough to play along with social rules, plus this kid sat right in front of her in AP Statistics. But instead of waving and smiling back, this boy just stared, his eyes flat and certain. Jenni began to hyperventilate.

When, the month prior, Jenni first befriended Diego, he tried to warn her: You really don’t want to be canceled. It sucks. No one looked at him during the day at school. His teachers marked him present, then sent him to study by himself in the library because kids changed seats if he sat next to them in class. Diego no longer wanted to get out of bed. But he had talked to Jenni at the climbing gym, where he’d started going after the skate parks filled up with “opps” — kids who hated him. She noticed that Diego was surprisingly sweet and funny given how much his life had turned to shit.

She also asked him what had happened, which almost nobody did. She decided hanging out with Diego was okay.

This okay did involve putting a jacket over her head when she rode in Diego’s car near school. But it was too late to hide now. After the kid got off at his stop, he took a picture of Jenni through the bus window. Jenni started crying.

Later that night, Jenni, whom Diego described as “a solid, solid woman,” tried to do some damage control because, as she explained, if you get an Instagram post about you, your life is over. “I know what this looks like …,” she texted the boy. For months now, he had played the role of self-appointed enforcer. In Statistics class, he’d announced, “There are not many people that I would bash in the head with a hammer. Diego is one of them.”

“I was on the way to the beach,” Jenni wrote. “And I saw Dave, who I know.”

Dave attended a different school, but he was such a good wingman — his earnestness was so disarming, his golden curls fell so adorably into his eyes — that everyone, boys and

girls alike, was at least a little smitten with him. Dave was the one friend of Diego’s who had never disappeared. “It never even crossed my mind, like, Am I able to handle this?” Dave said. “Diego is like my brother.” Still, he kept their friendship quiet — which is to say he didn’t post pictures with Diego on Instagram. That seemed to appease his peers.

The boy from the bus left Jenni’s message on read overnight, meaning he’d seen it and not responded, a very bad sign. In the morning, he wrote back, “Yeah, I know Dave, too, but I don’t go sit with him and Diego.”

Jenni wrote again: “I’m friends with Dave and I can’t help it.” She wasn’t involved in the situation, she explained, and she didn’t plan to be. Still, the day after the bus ride, the enforcer turned around in Statistics and said as a threat, “Fuck Diego. I love cancel culture. If you were to cancel anyone, who would you cancel?”

This nightmare began sweetly. Diego — fan of Nivea deodorant, Air Jordans, and Taylor Swift; dragged on annual camping trips by his parents; his father white, his mother Filipina; 8.5-by-11-inch prints of every school photo of him and his sister hanging in his family’s upstairs hall — started high school and met a girl. They dated for a month. (According to Diego, this doesn’t really count.) They broke up. He spent a lot of the next year hanging out in skate parks, learning to do frontside 360s. Summer after their sophomore year, the two started going out again. Fiona was Diego’s first real girlfriend, and she was almost psychedelically beautiful: pale, celestial skin, a whole galaxy of freckles, a supernova of red hair. This made everything, even the pandemic, okay. Diego would do online school and skate and hang out with Fiona. Sometimes she broke plans with Diego to go on hikes with her parents, which Diego’s mother loved. He said, “I know, Mom!” when his mother, who taught college courses on parenting and child development, reminded him to ask for consent.

Then, in the middle of last summer, Diego went to a party. He got drunk and — Diego really fucked up here: Everybody, including Diego, agrees on that, so please consider setting aside judgment for a moment — showed a nude of his beautiful girlfriend to a few kids there.

Three weeks later, school started — senior year, finally back in person after 18 months at home, woo-hoo. Within days, teachers and administrators started noticing that the ninth- and tenth-graders were acting like middle schoolers — wrestling, invading one another’s personal space. “It was really clear a lot of them hadn’t been in school since seventh grade,” said the principal, who had held her job for only seven months before the pandemic closed in-person classrooms. Juniors and seniors, she noticed, also had “big gaps” in the skills they’d need “to navigate complexity” and “a very low tolerance for relational discomfort.”

Everyone seemed scared of each other’s bodies and breathing and out of touch with each other’s boundaries. Soon students started streaming into the glass-fronted administrative offices asking school staff to intervene in their relationships with one another, saying they felt unsafe. Students also wanted their administrators — the principal and the two vice-principals, all young women who led with a big-sister, let-me-make-you-a-cup-of-tea vibe — to investigate interpersonal incidents from years prior, stuff that no longer felt right after 18 months stuck at home.

Yaretzi, a young woman in Diego’s grade with walnut skin and a gentle voice that masked her intense focus, started attending school-board meetings on Zoom and speaking up during public comment about how disregarded students felt by the way the district handled sexual harassment and assault. “We were given the space and a lot of time,” she said, half-joking, “to reflect on why that kind of behavior was tolerated at school.” No way was she just slipping back.

This was a common pattern: the isolation of the pandemic producing both pain and insight, followed by a need to assert new power dynamics as people gathered up the shards of their social lives and tried to reassemble them. Diego’s school began working up a curriculum on harassment, a “tier-one intervention,” as one of the vice-principals called it, meaning the whole community needed help.

Two and a half weeks into the school year, a friend of Diego’s approached him between classes. He was like, “Yo, I heard this kid was walking around bragging that he was gonna tell your girlfriend that you showed some random dude her nude.”

Diego was like, “Broooo, what?”

Then the kid did.

Fiona dumped him, which, frankly, good for her. She felt humiliated, betrayed, and startled that someone she trusted so much respected her privacy so little. “I had put so much care into our relationship,” she told me. “Then I got screwed over.”

Diego offered Fiona a raft of apologies — “ ‘I’m so sorry, I’ll never do that again,’ that kind of thing,” Fiona said. He then holed up in his bedroom, ashamed, heartbroken, and furious with himself. He started writing songs with bald lyrics: “It’s all my fault / I hate me for that / And I’ll do anything to get you back … / You’re beautiful and perfect / I’m sorry.”

Over the course of the next three days, everyone in Diego’s old friend group stopped talking to him, which he didn’t really notice at first because he was too disgusted with himself to pay much attention. But by the following week, most of the other students in his grade had stopped talking to him as well. Diego’s parents reached out to the principal for the first time on October 4, 2021, to alert her that students were broadcasting their son’s “errors” and telling kids throughout the school that Diego was an abuser and if they remained friends with him, they’d be condoning rape culture. The principal, who was still planning the anti-harassment summit for November, did not respond.

A vice-principal walked Fiona through how to file a Title IX complaint. Title IX established a quasi-legal protocol meant to protect students’ right to access public education without discrimination or harassment. Every public school is required to have a Title IX coordinator. The principal and a vice-principal both held this job at Diego’s school. (“There was so much to share this year!” the vice-principal said.) In terms of securing equal access to school sports, Title IX works well. But with regard to preventing harassment in high schools? The regulation is a sieve, a piece of ed code, the vice-principal admitted, that is “not really written to protect students” but instead “revolves around protecting district and school from liability.” The result is a law that both does a poor job of stopping harassment and leaves students feeling ignored and enraged. “Students come in saying, ‘I feel harmed and uncomfortable and sometimes unsafe,’ ” the vice-principal told me. What Title IX mandates from there is that the students fill out a form. That form is sent to lawyers at the school district’s Office of Equity. A verdict comes back in legalese. The lack of shared vocabulary between students and the adults meant to protect them created an added layer of hurt. “Assault has a very specific meaning in the ed code,” the vice-principal said. “So sometimes difficult conversations arise when we say, ‘I acknowledge you feel uncomfortable and unsafe, and we should attend to that. This wasn’t assault.’ ”

Through the end of October, Diego remained heartbroken and depressed. While half his school canceling him seemed a bit much, he hated himself too. He spent a lot of time alone with his pet rat, Toe (named because he didn’t like the rat at first, but she grew on him), sitting under his lofted bunk bed, composing music on his mini Korg synth-vocoder, staring at the haute-adolescent mash-up on his walls: family water-park photos, concert-ticket stubs, Junior Ranger pins earned at national parks.

He also wrote Fiona a letter, but it was too much “pleading love letter” for her taste, too little “straightforward apology.” Besides, she thought, he’d brought this extended exile upon himself. He’d acted like a jerk that past summer, partying a lot, even breaking up with her for a bit. That had left Fiona feeling, she said, like “this person patiently waiting for him to come back, when he seemed he couldn’t care less about how I felt.”

Diego’s father, a high-school teacher in a different town, took the day off work on November 1 to try to dig his son out of his dark hole.

That same morning, posters with blood-red lettering that read GET ABUSERS OFF CAMPUS started appearing around school. “I just got really fed up,” Yaretzi, who made them, said. “My friend had called me to tell me about how her abuser wasn’t being held accountable after multiple reports were made about him.” She’d heard this from other friends too. “I printed like 60 posters in an hour and ran around the school and slapped them on the walls.” She herself had suffered through the fear and humiliation of sexual abuse, but her abuser did not go to the school — a “privilege,” she said, in that this made her worry less about retaliation. Yet she saw how girls on her campus felt more unsafe than ever. So she taped the posters up in the long, locker-lined hallways, in the bright stairwells, in the girls’ bathrooms, in front of the fishbowl of an office where the administrative staff worked.

That afternoon, around five, administrators learned students were planning a walkout the next day over the school’s handling of sexual misconduct. They also found a list on the girls’-bathroom wall labeled PEOPLE TO LOOK OUT FOR. Scrawled on the off-white tile in black Sharpie were seven names. DIEGO was one.

The list caught Yaretzi by surprise. “On my way home from school, I started getting calls,” she told me. “I’m like, ‘What the hell list are you talking about?’ ” Her intent was to lay blame at the feet of the school district, not specific young men.

Administrators phoned the parents of all the students named to tell them about the list and the walkout, which immediately got paired in everybody’s mind. School staff also locked the girls’ bathroom and repainted the wall, but it hardly mattered. Photos were already bouncing around social media, accompanied by tags like “stay safe please look out for these people” and “I wanna add [names] to this list.”

November 1 was also Diego’s mother’s birthday. When a vice-principal reached her, she was heading to meet her husband and Diego, along with a friend, for dinner. She pulled her husband aside to alert him, then they limped through the meal for the friend’s sake. Afterward, Diego’s parents sat him down.

“This is serious. I don’t want any surprises,” his father said. Diego laid out the facts: drunk at a party, showed the nude. His mother was relieved he hadn’t done something worse. His father was pissed.

“It was not good, actually really terrible,” he told me. “It’s embarrassing as a parent. You thought you raised your kid differently. You wish you had done things better.” Diego’s father was upset with himself, upset with Diego. He wanted his son held accountable, though he wasn’t sure what that looked like yet.

At 11:39 p.m., Diego’s mother wrote an email to the school:

Subject: My Son Is Not a Rapist. This situation with my son has gotten out of control and needs to be stopped. I’ll be heading to campus tomorrow with my son to help him file a Title IX Violation for those “Spreading a series of sexual rumors about a peer.”

Early the next morning — the morning of the walkout — a classmate texted Diego and said, “Bro, you shouldn’t come to school today.”

On campus, from the moment students arrived, administrators tried to stay on top of the situation, but even the simple task of keeping the bathroom walls clean felt exhausting and futile. Lists went up; administrators scrubbed them down. Lists went up again, not always with the same names. Nearly 20 students (not even the principal knows the full count for sure) were named in all. “People would put names on the wall and then other people would cross off names. And then people would write on the wall, like, ‘How dare you take that name off’ and ‘You don’t know the story,’ ” the principal told me. Fiona herself did not write Diego’s name. The principal’s whole focus became “How do we stop the bleeding?” As she saw it, “students are acting as judge, jury, and executioner for other students.”

At 10:30 a.m., 500 kids walked out of class, many dressed in red, as the organizers, most of whom were girls and queer people of color, had urged. Some had red-inked NO ABUSERS ON CAMPUS signs taped to their bodies. Others had written in pen on their skin: MAKE SCHOOL SAFE on an arm, I AM A SURVIVOR along collarbones. In the quad, Yaretzi led the crowd in ten minutes of silence to honor survivors. Then everybody walked up to the parking lot for speeches. Students punctuated these by banging on drums and rattling keys. They chanted “No abusers on campus!” and “Fuck admin!”THE PRINCIPAL’S WHOLE FOCUS BECAME “HOW DO WE STOP THE BLEEDING?”

“I have been here for four years,” one of the organizers told a local newspaper reporter. “I’ve walked people, hand in hand, up to the office to go report their assault, and a lot of times, they were turned away or they said, ‘Okay, here’s a piece of paper, fill out this report, and talk about what happened to you.’ ”

“There are known abusers in that crowd right now,” Yaretzi added in that same interview. “There’s so much protection for the abusers rather than the victims. We’re just sick and tired of it.”

“It was a wild day, a wild day,” the principal told me in her office, choking up, her back to the treadmill desk she had started using to ease her stress. “I’m having a hard time talking about it even now.” She had students screaming, the calls for systemic change wrapped up in very public accusations against specific young men, a disturbingly high percentage of whom were boys of color, almost none of whom she knew anything about. She had a whole student body aching, telling her to fuck off. Just two weeks before, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association had jointly declared a state of emergency in child and adolescent mental health.

In the popular imagination, the evolution of the crimes of the boys on the wall was rapid and steep. “You’re an abuser” quickly morphed into “You’re an assaulter,” which soon turned into “You’re a rapist.” The truth, according to Jenni, was most people didn’t actually care what they’d done. “Someone goes, ‘Oh my God, I heard he’s a bad person — don’t talk to him.’ And then people are scared to be on the wrong side. So they just do it. They don’t think about it. They’re just like, ‘Oh, I don’t know him, so I guess I won’t talk to him.’ ”

The unifying rally cry on campus was “We’re not safe here.” Even for students who’d never felt that way themselves, “suddenly there was a very compelling narrative to buy into,” the principal said. “There was a lot of social capital and relational capital to be found suddenly — I don’t wanna say it was a lie — in understanding your own experience within the context of this narrative.” That story line rested on the idea that the administration failed to do its most basic job. Parents started emailing the principal, asking if students were getting raped on campus.

This was not just Diego’s school. This was all over the country. A boy touched a girl’s waist without consent at a Spirit Week rally — shunned by his community and called a sexual abuser. A student accused a boy of touching her at a school dance — major investigation, lawyers on all sides. A student outed by the friend of a girl he tried to feel up after she reciprocated his affections while cuddling and holding hands — threats on social media, thoughts of taking his own life.

The case of Kathleen Kurtz and Robert Straub v. Lewisburg School District,in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, reads like a horror story in the form of a civil-action complaint. The plaintiffs were parents of a 14-year-old boy, Minor JX. In November 2020, classmates at school started calling JX a “rapist, pedophile, and child molester,” according to the complaint, and encouraged other students to do the same. Then, on March 19, 2021, a girl at his school made an anonymous report to ChildLine, the State of Pennsylvania’s child-abuse hotline, accusing JX of being a rapist. When a classmate was asked what JX had done, another girl said, “You know what you did, JX,” and refused to elaborate. JX started begging his parents to let him skip school. His parents sent a letter to the school principal:

JX is a sensitive soul and we fear this is damaging to his confidence at a very crucial time in his life where he is building his own Self-worth. These horrific verbal attacks he is undergoing can make or break what kind of human he becomes.

The local police investigated the ChildLine call. As the complaint reads, “the allegations were entirely fabricated.” Still, the bullying continued. “JX’s Mother reported that, given the ongoing bullying and name-calling from November 2020 to the present, the School was no longer an emotionally safe place for JX to be educated,” the complaint reads. He told his parents “his life was so bad right now that he can’t see how it can get better anytime soon.” JX’s parents sued under Title IX. The judge tossed the case, explaining the facts failed to prove JX’s harassment was based on his sex.

At Oakland School for the Arts, vigilantism drew the attention of the NAACP. Before the pandemic, a group of students had been swapping nude images of female classmates. The administration disciplined the ringleader, but many felt his punishment was light. Then, while stuck at home for remote learning, some students formed a group chat to share experiences of sexual abuse and harassment and frustrations with reporting them to the school. They requested a Zoom meeting with the dean about how to make the campus feel safer. But the meeting was a disaster, two of the students told me. The dean wanted to talk about vaping, not sexual misconduct, and the students were incensed. “It’s hard to have somebody not necessarily believe you, but it’s even harder when it’s like somebody should be really concerned about you,” one of the students said. The group chat organized itself into the Student Safety Committee and in late September planned a walkout and rally in a park across the street from the school. The event devolved. While students, primarily women of color, shared their personal stories of sexual violence up front, students in the crowd screamed at specific boys, most of whom were Black: “Rapist!” “You need to go die in the ditch.”

The rally ended early, one of the organizers told me, after a school administrator approached her. “He was crying and was like, ‘You’ve got to shut this down,’ ” she said. “We don’t have the mental-health support for this.”

The organizers spent the next day in the school administrators’ office. “It was just, like, a horrible experience,” one said. “It was like talking in circles or like talking to a wall.” Parents of accused boys showed up as well.

“How are you going to put that genie back in the bottle?” a Black woman whose sons were called rapists asked the dean. She had no doubt that the girls who had singled out her sons had experienced real pain. “I’m not saying that they’re not harmed,” she said. “What I’m saying is that hurt people hurt.” No individual had accused either of her sons of any specific abuse or crime.

In the weeks and months that followed, parents and grandparents began showing up at Oakland School for the Arts board meetings, saying they were scared to send their children to school because of all the sexual violence. Families of the accused boys reached out to the local NAACP chapter to talk about consolidating a case. Parents told Black children about the Central Park Five. “This can ruin your life simply because she says so … The school empowered a group of teenage young ladies, little mini-Karens,” one of the mothers said. Another mother told me her son struggled with returning to a place where everyone thought he was a rapist. “To survive every day, going to school like that,” she said, “having to prove he’s worthy, a good person, when he feels like he’s going to a school of hundreds of kids who think otherwise?”

Oakland School for the Arts eventually sent a letter to the school community acknowledging that most of the “allegations of sexual assault against a number of predominantly African American boys” were “either not backed by evidence, unfounded, or in some instances a result of mistaken identity or assumed guilt by association” and that the community had real healing and soul-searching to do.

On November 4, Diego lost his job with a youth organization in town. “You suspended my son due to graffiti on the wall that you saw on Social Media?” Diego’s mother wrote to his bosses. “NOT ONE person has accused my son of sexual assault.”

One of the bosses wrote back that she was “not in a position to say that Diego has sexually harassed or assaulted anyone,” but the truth was not the issue. Other kids in the program, which was entirely online, now said they felt unsafe with Diego. The program had to distance itself from him “based on the fact that this has gone very public and has compromised the way participants feel and/or interact.”

The Title IX claim about Diego ended up with the incident being declared outside the school’s purview. The vice-principal told Fiona she could file a police report. She didn’t want to do that. In communication with her family, however, the school made a plan to help Diego and Fiona repair. Fiona’s family, the vice-principal wrote in an email to Diego’s, made two requests:

1. That all pictures are deleted from every possible device, cloud, storage/media platform, etc. 2. That it be made clear to Diego and his family that this was a serious violation that is having an impact on the student’s overall well-being.

Done and done. As individuals, at the beginning, the two had managed this incident okay. Fiona had no interest in getting back together. But a couple of weeks after their breakup, when Diego was still eating only a handful of peanut-butter pretzels a day, they’d met at the beach and talked. “I was like, ‘I don’t appreciate getting treated like an abuser,’ ” Diego said. “And she’s like, ‘I don’t think you’re an abuser at all. I know that.’ ” But this had grown way beyond them.

The public conversation recast Fiona’s view of Diego’s actions in a worse light. She was mortified knowing that every time people thought about Diego now, they thought about her nude photo. Still, she felt validated and supported by the list. After the clinical and pointless Title IX claim, “it was refreshing to know that, like, Wow, someone else is standing up for me,” she said. “Someone does care about my story.”

Everyone hoped that after Thanksgiving break Diego would feel comfortable returning to school. That didn’t happen. Other boys whose names had been on the list were doing horribly too. One had hitchhiked away from home earlier in the year after his ex-girlfriend called his mother one morning to tell her she was going to cancel her son that day. Then she did. He returned a day later at the ex-girlfriend’s urging. (“They couldn’t stay away from each other,” his mother said. “She didn’t want him to leave.”) But being in a town where everybody shunned him, except for the person primarily responsible for that shunning, was just too painful. His mother stayed up all night with him so that he didn’t slip into the bathtub with a kitchen knife. Then he ran away again.

Yaretzi tried to keep the focus on systemic change. One simple ask, which Fiona would have appreciated, too: more counseling support to complement the reporting process. Yaretzi spoke with the superintendent and the Office of Equity, pleading with them to, at a minimum, connect students with outside mental-health resources. “They’re like, ‘Well, what would you propose?’ ” she told me they said right after she made her pitch. “And then I just started laughing. I was like, ‘I just told you what I proposed!’ I mentioned the possibility of a Linktree. Have you ever seen a Linktree? It would take ten minutes and cost zero dollars.”

A scarcity mind-set — not just in terms of money but in terms of care, morality, and protection — set in. Students kept coming into the principal’s and vice-principals’ offices “upset over the fact that in the days after the protests, the school helped create safety-and-support plans for some of our male-identifying students who have been named,” the principal said. “And our female students saw that as ‘Who are you protecting? Whose narrative is more important to you? Who do you believe?’ ”

For instance, the school put Diego on independent study for the month of November. “The guy who caused a lot of pain to me now gets kind of like a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card?” Fiona asked. Shouldn’t there be “something offered in the other direction?” (The school did offer her a safety-and-support plan, but she declined because she didn’t share any classes with Diego.) Meanwhile, some of the families of accused students had started deploying what has become the standard legal tactic in the Me Too backlash, displayed most publicly at the Depp-Heard trial: going on the offensive. The families demanded disciplinary action against the students shunning their sons. “But I can’t make your kids be friends,” the vice-principal told those parents. “I can’t stop kids whispering and laughing when your kid walks into the classroom.”

In the worldview that set in, being kind to a canceled kid is all downside. If you’re kind, you’re an apologist, then you too will be shunned. As another canceled kid told me, he’d really tried to press his ex-friends on why they ostracized him, but there was no point. “They were like, ‘You know why.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know why.’ And they’re like, ‘You know why.’ And then I just ended up leaving because how can you argue with that?”

The school’s official protocol on how to deal with ruptured relationships was to use restorative practices. This usually meant a facilitated conversation among the people directly involved, with the goal of creating empathy and coaxing kids out of angel/devil, black-and-white thinking. But Diego’s school had a countervailing policy: You couldn’t use restorative practices in cases of sexual misconduct. You also couldn’t make anyone participate in restorative practices. Given that the students existed in a universe where just talking with an alleged abuser made you an apologist — where you could lose all your social capital simply for suggesting that someone might deserve compassion — who would agree to restore?

It was an impossible situation, a whole world supersaturated with emotion, starved for common ground and facts. The school tried to get the stalled anti-harassment training back on course, but the advocacy group it had hired to run the workshop declined. “This is not the time for us to come,” its representatives said. “People need an open mind to learn.”

Diego barely ate for weeks. He slept 12 hours a night. He wrote bad poems. He stared at the pink Post-it note he had put in his phone case on November 1:

Reminders — Compliment people always — be kind and respectful to everyone regardless of previous encounters — be generous — Not wish for more or better — Think before acting — “He who is not satisfied with what he has will not be satisfied with what he would like to have” — don’t talk shit ever

What else did he do? “Cry? I don’t know,” he said. Eventually, he agreed to go with Dave to Dave’s family’s cabin for the weekend. On the way there, they stopped at a taco truck. Diego said, “Bro, I’m not hungry.” But Dave made him order three tacos anyway and stood there while he ate.

Diego’s parents kept pressing the school to do something, to at least use restorative practices with Diego and the students threatening their peers with social ostracization if they talked to him. Yet on December 2, 2021, the vice-principal sent an email explaining to Diego’s parents that a restorative circle was not going to happen. Those students canceling him, she wrote, “have no personal ill-will toward Diego but that the social pressures on them are so great that to be associated with Diego would cause too much harm for them.” She also said she’d reached out to “their peer groups, teachers, or classes but they believe these interventions would cause more conflict (at least at this point).” So that was that.

The bullying and harassment complaint that Diego’s parents had filed in November was closed on December 17. The outcome letter acknowledged “that the situation” — which in this case referred to Diego’s cancellation — was indeed “both severe and pervasive” and, as such, violated the district’s bullying-and-harassment policy. To remediate this, the letter continued, school officials had counseled the offending “students to stop that behavior.” Yet in a tacit admission that this made no difference, Diego now would be excused to eat lunch early and leave campus early so he could avoid interacting with other students. His teachers would also excuse him from class because they couldn’t stop the bullying.

Over Christmas break, Diego’s sister, two years older, came home from college. The whole family got in the car, as they did every year, to chop down a Christmas tree.

Diego’s sister had made the best of shelter-in-place, which she’d spent in her apartment near school — she pulled through all her STEM courses. She even earned a commercial driver’s license and now worked as a public-bus driver. Diego’s friends used to tell him they were jealous of how close he was to her. Now her politics, according to Diego, involved spending a lot of time on Twitter and, according to her dad, thinking he was a privileged white guy with a beard. He’d taken to saying to her, “Key word: Nuance!”

Diego drove the family car to the Christmas-tree farm. On the way, his sister called him a bad driver. He told her to shut up. She then said, “Abusers deserve to be canceled.” Like virtually all young people in their town, she’d seen the image of her brother’s name on the school-bathroom wall, posted and reposted many times.

Diego: “Bruh, that was a little out of pocket. Get the fuck out.” Sister: “Oh my God, I don’t want you in my life anymore.” Everyone started crying. Their parents kicked her out of the car and told her to find her way home.

New Year’s came. Then February. The experience kept rooting in the dark rut of its own logic. A kid spat on Diego in a stairwell. (It wasn’t clearly caught on security video, so no one took disciplinary action.) Diego’s mother started losing her own friends. (“There are levels of abuse, you know,” they’d tell her. “You don’t know what your son did.”) She started making Diego drive her to work to get him out the door to school. But he often drove to school and just sat in the car. His whole day was working by himself in the library anyway. Why enter the building at all? On occasion, he’d see other boys in the library whose names had been on the wall, and they’d sit together. But mostly he felt invisible.

Race remained a topic almost too toxic for the school to touch. “You are telling us that most of the boys that were accused were Black and brown students, and all of the kids who are canceled are brown or Black, and the white boys were able to walk back on the campus, no problem,” Diego’s mother said to the principal. “And yet you’re not telling these white kids this? That’s called white fragility and being afraid of these girls.”

A reprieve finally came in February, when Diego and Dave traveled to the South on a trip organized through Sojourn Project, a social-justice nonprofit that takes groups of students to places like Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham to learn about the modern civil-rights movement. It felt so good to be in a different place with different kids, tune in to the arc of history, focus on justice with a capital J. They talked a lot about how people use and respond to negative power. Diego described the trip as “one big therapy session.”

The universe snapped back into perspective for a moment. Diego had fucked up and hurt someone; people had ostracized him. That wasn’t the whole world. But the good feelings did not last long. Emboldened from their travels, Dave and Diego posted trip pictures together on Instagram: the two of them goofing off on buses; Dave, smiling, his body held up parallel to the ground by Diego and a pack of kids. This got Dave fully canceled. Within two weeks, he, too, was eating lunch out of his car, thinking about an MLK quote he had learned in the South and half-remembered now: “It was something like, ‘It’s not about what will happen to me if I help this someone,’ ” he said. “ ‘It’s about what happens if I don’t help them.’ ”

“When we’re home,” Dave said, “I feel like we’re in a bubble of hate.”

By this point, the guardians of the social order had changed. “Boys are worse, I’m not going to lie,” Diego said. “Guys just want to feel powerful, and they feel entitled to be mean to other people.” And they really didn’t want the girls to think they stood with abusers.

“My friend Ethan — I mean, my previous friend,” Dave said. “I have three classes with him. And he made it clear. Like, ‘I miss you. It’s just, like, this situation is so dumb, I just can’t hang out with you.’ ”

Dave tried to get his school to help. He approached “the counselor, dean person, I forget what she is, really,” he told me. “She said, ‘Canceling is very new to me, and it’s a very hard thing to deal with.’ ” He asked if she could set up a restorative conversation. “And she said, ‘Well, I can ask, but I can’t force them to do it.’ And so she asked and they said no.”

Reason and control felt like distant concepts. Diego and his sister pretended the fight had never happened the next time she came home, but Jenni was still putting a jacket over her head when she rode in Diego’s car. “I feel bad for putting my reputation before my friend,” she said. “But, ummm …” A boy threatened to beat up Diego while he was visiting Dave at school. Diego’s father thought about going over to this boy’s family’s house because the school district, obviously, was not going to intervene. Everybody was exhausted. Diego’s principal had decided to quit.

The absurdity of the situation caused something in Diego to crack, and that release allowed for new clarity: You’re only canceled if you’re trying to hang out with the people refusing to associate with you. The rest of the world doesn’t know — and probably doesn’t care. Diego and Dave started taking the bus to the beach on Friday nights and talking to anybody who looked their age. “Everyone I met, I was like, ‘By the way, this is what is happening at my school right now,’ ” Diego said. “ ‘It’s better to hear it from me than from some kid: ‘He’s a certified abuser. Oh my God.’ ” But almost no one met his disclosure with much besides sympathy. “They were all like, ‘Don’t worry, bro. You’ll get through it.’ ” Or: “ ‘Your school is wack as hell.’ ”

Let’s just come out and say it: It’s a horrifying time to be a young woman. The world is burning and bleeding out. Adults are not fixing it. Teenage girls are poised to have fewer rights over their own bodies than their mothers had. The sane response — the awake, healthy, non-nihilistic response — is to feel panicked, frantic, hung out to dry, devalued, and unsafe. Who are they supposed to believe is looking out for them: the schools? The courts? Elected officials? Will anything get done to make the world better if they don’t do it themselves? So we can ask, “How is this mob justice possible?,” and leave it there. Or we can ask, “What happened to this cohort to unleash what Northwestern legal scholar Deborah Tuerkheimer described as ‘a primal scream’?” — a scream that conveys in its raw, messy, full-of-collateral-damages way that “we don’t trust our institutions, we’ve been betrayed by our institutions, and so all that’s left for us is to do this.”

The principal at Diego’s school had not just quit her post; she was considering leaving education. “I have a lot of love and empathy for people who are trying to run schools and work in schools right now,” she said. How was anybody supposed to hold teenagers together through this? The mental-health crisis? The country’s convulsions around race and misogyny? The threats to democracy? The school shootings where adults in bulletproof vests stay in the hall while kids whose classmates are dying cower under desks and call 911?

Six weeks before the end of the year, students at Diego’s school taped up posters again: WALKOUT TO GET RAPE CULTURE OUT! THIS ISSUE IS STILL HERE — AND SO ARE WE! At 11:45 a.m. on April 15, 75 kids left their classrooms and gathered in the concrete quad. Diego stayed home from school that day. The principal was on vacation. The tribal, exorcistic energy of the fall walkout had burned off. The agenda included a teach-in on Title IX and how to work through school-district bureaucracy. How can students exercise their rights if they don’t even know what they are?

Yaretzi was clear-eyed about how the year had unfolded. She’d raised awareness and created social cohesion more than she’d fixed anything. “I’m gonna be so honest with you,” she said. “I’m so sick of the walkouts. They are calls to attention, but they aren’t effective when it comes to long-lasting change.” The list on the wall had derailed her efforts for real change too. Nobody wanted their name attached to this admission, because parents had threatened organizers with lawsuits, but students acknowledged that some on the list were falsely accused. The whole thing was a distraction, counterproductive, pulling focus away from the school district’s failings. This is not to say everyone was innocent — they weren’t. Students at Diego’s school were sexually harassed and harmed. Yet this is also true:

Rather than, like, the actual perpetrators, a lot of names put on that list were just random people,” a student told me. Classmates wrote them “out of anger and pure emotion.” This made the act reckless and destructive but not meaningless. “We need to look,” the student said, “at why those emotions are there.”

A few weeks later, Diego decided to attend his prom. He bought a black suit for $79 at H&M, pulled on fancy white sneakers, and took a girl with cupid’s-bow lips who lived in a town 45 minutes away. “It was like a Disney movie,” Diego said. So much buildup, “hella drama.” While there, a student pulled his date aside to tell her that Diego was an assaulter. “We had fun after we left,” he said.

The school hadn’t healed. The vice-principal announced she was quitting too. So was the principal at Dave’s school. Fiona rejected the narrative that Diego was canceled. That made it sound, she thought, like other people had done something to him. Time had caused her view of Diego’s actions to harden, not soften. She didn’t think he deserved to be friendless. “I guess it is harmful when people are jumping on the bandwagon,” she said. But his behavior had really hurt her. In hindsight, maybe he was emotionally abusive? Was it wrong to warn other students to stay away from him?

One morning in May, after sleeping late — because why hurry to get to a class you’re not going to attend? — Diego sat alone in the library in his ripped Carhartts listening to songs he’d written over the past nine months for his final capstone project: a presentation for his teacher “on the emotional roller coaster I went on this year.” He played all the instruments, wrote all the lyrics, sang all the vocal tracks, one song after another about love and regret: “I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as you.” “I really shouldn’t have done that / It was asinine of me.” “It’s all my fault.” “My frail heart has crumbled — no one has seen it / Your incandescent glow could help me find all the pieces.”

A girl walked up and said hello. “She’s canceled too,” Diego said. That girl’s boyfriend’s name, he explained, had been on the bathroom wall, and she didn’t break up with him. It later came out that his name had been written entirely by mistake. His accuser meant a different kid with the same first name. But it didn’t matter. The photo spread. The story turned into he kidnapped someone and raped them at gunpoint.

Around lunchtime, another student, this one in braids, overalls, and a black beanie, sat down with Diego. “She’s canceled, too,” he said. At the start of the school year — her sophomore year — she had made a comment to a new Black friend about his “monkey ears.” The remark was dumb, full of implicit racial bias. She caught herself in the moment and apologized. The two discussed it. Then, on the second day of school, her second day in a building with students since the middle of eighth grade, he called her a racist in a crowded hallway. Now, despite all the public and private apologies she had made, all the months of therapy and reading, she was still “that racist kid” and probably would be until she graduated in two years.

“There’s no room for growth,” she said, eating the quesadilla she brought for lunch. “You do something wrong, therefore you’re a bad person.” There was no community that, as part of holding you accountable, made space for you to learn; no presumption that you could — and will — change. Who could survive adolescence like that? “My brain isn’t fully developed,” she said. “None of our brains are fully developed.”

She was stoned all the time now — her way to manage her anxiety and get through the day. “People are trying so hard to, like, be the good person in the situation. They always want to be the bigger person. They want to feel like they’re right.” Some girls recently tried to fight her in the bathroom. “I was just like, ‘You need to calm down, you’re acting like a child, please grow up.’ ” She waved to her ex–best friend in the hall.

All around us, kids were falling asleep on the library couches. Staring. Flirting. Scrolling through TikTok. Being teens. Sometimes, Diego wondered what his peers would think when they were older. “If they’ll look back with their kids and be like, Damn, I was so hateful in high school.”

Diego skipped his own graduation. He attended four proms, and after the last he found some drunk kids from his school waiting on his block, at 1 a.m., just to tell him to fuck off. Soon after, the school emptied for the summer, nothing fixed, the clock run out. In three months, Diego was leaving town to go to college hundreds of miles away. He didn’t know if he’d return.

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