#one of the best worst ideas we've ever had

[katiekatdragon27]

Being an artist is fun cuz I can draw whatever whenever as long as I have a group of people peerpressuring me /j

This all started as a joke talking about THANOS Muffin and sorta escalated/derailed into just sorta assigning OSC characters as a whole to the DSMP characters.

My gc and I had no real idea what we were doing, and this is honestly just for shits and giggles, lol. Everyone was assigned on dynamics and vibes instead of being logical. PLEASE DON'T BULLY ME FOR MY SPELLING, IT WAS SUPER LATE AT NIGHT WHEN I DID THIS.

The culprits: @always-just-down-the-street and @friiskuz (the main two), @mambari, and @glitchtypes

(Also keep in mind that I have never watched a full stream of the DSMP, I only watched certain content creators outside of the server. I barely had any say in this so don't blame me if you don't like iiiiitttt.)

Specifics under the cut:

Firey from BFDI is Tommyinnit. This was decided because of his main characterness, him being one of the most important characters in OSC history, and his mildly chaotic nature.

Leafy from BFDI is Tubbo. This was decided because of Firey being Tommy. Also, because I find the ship between Tubbo and Ranboo cute and this universe's equivalents really funny to pair up.

Taco from II is Wilbur Soot. This was decided because of the betrayal stuff, the violence and manipulation, and because we thought it would be fun.

Top Hat from TNM is Ranboo. This was decided because of vibes, trauma maybe(?), and some other stuff that my friend said. Also, something about hallucinating probably and just being in a general sense of not okayness.

Muffin from THANOS is BadBoyHalo. This was decided because this is litterally BBH. He is literally based on BBH clips from his videos cropped together to make a character. He started this whole thing.

"Blood" Diamond (although their built like Aquamarine) from BFDI (ABCDEFG) is Skeppy. This was decided because Skeppy's skin is literally a diamond. They're a "blood diamond" because of the egg arc, and they are probably a brother instead of sister since that short isn't really canon to anything. They're a blank slate, we can do what we want.

Oodle from AIB is Slimecicle. This was decided because of his omnipotent god powers (immortality) and just being a silly goofy guy in general. We considered Goo for a bit, but Goo's a little too young to have been around since the dawn of the server. Maybe before becoming Oodle he was Goo? Idk.

X from BFB is GerogeNotFound. This was decided because of who we made Dream XD. That's really it (they might have also had some weird romantic stuff happening in the stream before???).

Four from BFB is Dream XD. This was decided because of the revival aspect of Four's power and also their scary and overall powerful nature. The rainbows are because of Infinity being a rainbow in canon.

Call me cringe all you want; I can take the heat. If you want to feed into this hellhole, be my guest. Have a great day bros >:)

#one of the best worst ideas we've ever had #there might be more idk #crossover #osc #osc au #inanimate insanity #ii #bfdi #battle for dream island #bfb #battle for bfdi #tnm #the nightly manor #the historical and nice object show #thanos osc #aib #animated inanimate battle #ruby's 35 sisters #object show community #object shows #bfb four #bfb x #bfdi firey #bfdi leafy #ii taco #aib oodle #thanos muffin #tnm tophat #dsmp #dsmp au

[gobspeaks]

sometimes i think about ideas for characters/story beats and then i'm like Wait. The Family Tree. (<-fills me with dread to update)

#babbling #putting together a family tree for Liesel was the Worst idea i've ever had #there are multiple sets of twins #multiple sibling-cousins #there's so much adoption going on that anyone in aa could assume that anyone else is related to them somehow and they'd probably be right #every oc we've made is on the tree with one (1) exception and that is nora #queen of staying in her own god damn lane #she sees all the nonsense going on in her best friend's family life and is like Thank God I'm AroAce. #and she's based for it tbh

[81folklore]

dress - SV5

pairings: sebastian vettel x famous!reader (fc: taylor swift)

summary: its known that seb has been married for a few years now despite the public never seeing is wife, its also known that yn is in a committed relationship and has been since she disappeared from public eye. maybe they are more connected than people realise

authors note: i have had this idea on my mind for SO LONG so im very pleased to finally be writing it. essentially in this, yn is taylor and seb is joe but no one has ever seen him nor know his name, if that makes sense? honestly i have no clue how this will turn out but i needed to write it

authors note 2: this is set in the midnights era however i switched the songs a bit so ‘dress’ is on midnights instead of ‘sweet nothing’ and vice versa!! also ‘dress’ is going to be a single. i also apologize for how all over the place this is, especially the tweets

authors note 3: just pretend whatever says taylor swift says your name and the photos with her hands have a wedding ring!! i also got so confused when trying to screenshot the twitter stuff so the timeline ones are backwards

authors note 4??: haha didnt realise there was a 30 pic limit... pt 2 here :)

masterlist

ynupdates

liked by user3, user18 and 10,628 others

yn on her story today, possibly posting song lyrics! thoughts?

view comments

user3: NEW ERA INCOMING

user18: OH I AM SO READY FOR THIS

user13: NEW MUSIC NEW MUSIC

user66: is this hinting at her reputation era?

user13: i was just thinking this, more specifically the time just before reputation

user72: MUSIC ABOUT LOVER?? OH I AM SO HERE FOR IT

user55: if it is about lover and the time before reputation this will BREAK ME like,, HE SAW THE BEST IN HER EVEN IN HER WORST TIMES😭😭

yourusername

liked by gracieabrams, ynupdates, olliebearman and 7,277,739 others

everyone thinks that they know us, but they know nothing about…

this album has been such a rewarding piece to create and im so glad that soon enough you will all be able to listen and enjoy it with me! one thing i love in particular about this album is the song ‘dress’

dress was originally a piece i started to write when making reputation however i felt it was right to keep it to myself, to keep it between my partner and i for a little while longer. however recently our lives have been changing for the better, and while that lid of privacy will still be on, i want to share more with you guys

you have all been on this journey with me and you have treated my partner and i with the upmost respect and for that i thank you. for me dress is a letter, its statement, its a declaration of my love for him and im very grateful to be able to give this to you all

this song is one im very proud of, i really enjoyed writing this the first time, and getting to revist and polish it up felt very special to do.

dress out now on all platforms🖤

comments on this post have been limited

sebupdates

liked by user34, user5, user88 and 23,683 others

seb in suzuka with the grid at his turn 2 bee (insect) hotels,, we've missed seeing him at the track :(

view comments

user3: of course the grid come together for him :’)

user5: im not crying!! just hay fever!!

user5: oh i have missed him SO MUCH

user7: NO BECAUSE YOU DONT GET IT HES BACK

user88: DID YOU GUYS SEE THE VIDEO OF HIM HUGGING CHARLES😭😭

user34: the way he was like a teacher throughout the whole thing😭

user18: does anyone know if hes staying the whole weekend or is it like monaco??

sebupdates: we believe hes staying the whole weekend but unsure if hes with a team or not!

user18: ok thank you :)

user77: the way the first thing lewis asked him was if his wife was okay, oh what if i cry😭😭

user66: im kind of new here, have the grid met sebs wife?

user77: i know they all at least know about her and know who she is, i dont think everyone has met her but i know lewis has met her quite a bit!!

part 2!

#f1 x reader #f1 instagram au #f1 smau #f1 social media au #social media au #formula 1 insta au #formula 1 social media au #sebastian vettel x reader #sebastian vettel fanfic #sebastian vettel #famous!swift!yn

[onlyhuis]

to-do list

member — coworker!joshua x f reader genre — smut (18+ mdni) word count — 1.7k synopsis — all you need to make a boring afternoon at work more fun is a hot coworker and an insane amount of sexual tension. warnings — descriptions of female anatomy, oral (joshua receiving), implied other sex positions, as usual joshua himself is a warning notes — i wrote this on my phone while (you guessed it!) bored at work, sitting next to my (unfortunately not very hot) coworker. @onlymingyus is to blame for the creation of this and for making me suffer

you're grateful to have the most boring job in the world. 

the days when your supervisor has nothing for you to do are simultaneously the best and worst days of your job. on the one hand, you get to sit at your desk and get paid to scroll on your phone or read a book or listen to music or play solitaire on your computer. on the other hand... without anything to distract you, you're acutely aware of your hot coworker sitting at the desk right next to yours.

you can't help but steal glances at him, dark hair falling in his eyes as he stares down at the phone in his hand, furiously typing something. the barely audible sighs he lets out as he reclines in his chair, flexing his arms as he stretches out and giving you a split second view of his stomach when his shirt lifts up.

you can't help but wonder what he's doing on his phone to occupy his time, but you refuse to let your curiosity get the best of you. it'd be so easy to just turn your head and stare, but you're not going to let him have that satisfaction.

instead you take what you hope is a nonchalant sip of your drink, some fruity smoothie you grabbed from the cafe downstairs before your shift.

"you've got whipped cream on your nose," joshua says suddenly without looking up, his voice cutting through the silence of the office. the sound of the clock on the wall ticking away each uncomfortable second is the only thing keeping you going at this point, taunting you with the promise of a lunch break and some time to yourself to reset away from the thick tension hanging over the office.

your face flushes, quickly wiping your nose against your sleeve and mumbling a quiet "thanks" as he looks over at you. the room suddenly feels way too warm as his gaze follows your movements for a few seconds too long before he turns back to his own desk.

"you didn't bring a lunch today," he says without looking up from his phone again, all too casually considering the way he was eyeing you just moments ago. "planning on leaving early?"

"no. just left it at home," you rush to say, your voice coming out less confident than you'd like. 

"you're welcome to join me," he grins, still looking down.

you squeeze your thighs together unconsciously, the idea of spending an hour alone with joshua sending your imagination into a frenzy. "sure," you manage, clearing your throat and trying to regain some semblance of control over yourself. "wanna take an early lunch? we've got nothing better to do."

he turns off his computer monitor with a skilled flick of his wrist, standing up to face you. "sure," he repeats, parroting your words back to you. you nearly start to melt at his full attention on you, but luckily he breaks the silence before you have a chance to embarrass yourself. "my car, or yours?"

"oh, i- i walk," you say, hurrying to turn off your computer and grab your bag, following him to the door. "i don't live too far."

he holds the office door open for you, ushering you out with a smile. "well, if you ever need a ride, you have my number. i'd be happy to be your chauffeur."

you're stunned into almost complete silence. yeah, you had his number from a work group chat, but you'd never tried to reach out. you were still surprised he even knew your name.

"your sweater is pretty, by the way," he comments as you cross the parking lot to his car, holding the passenger door open for you to slide in.

"thanks," you stumble over your words, still trying to convince yourself that you're not dreaming. your coworker that you maybe (definitely) have a crush on taking you to lunch, offering to give you rides, and he thinks your outfit is pretty?

"you seem nervous," he chuckles, pulling you out of your thoughts. "do i really fluster you that bad?"

"i'm not flustered," you argue, but the warmth in your cheeks betrays you. the february weather is still chilly, so you could easily blame it on the way joshua's car heater is turned up to the maximum, but you're pretty sure he knows better. "i'm just fine," you repeat, pursing your lips and staring out the front windshield.

silence fills the air again. he puts his hand on the back of your headrest, glancing over his shoulder as he turns around to back out of the parking lot. it's disgustingly hot and you can't help but stare, his arm so close to your face that you can see the veins bulging in his wrist.

"who are you texting when you're on your phone all the time?" you ask suddenly, a rush of boldness overtaking you. "girlfriend, maybe?" it's shamelessly, blatantly clear what you're asking, and joshua smirks knowingly.

"jeonghan," he says, glancing over at you and flashing his stupid dazzling smile at you as he pulls out of the driveway. "best friend. he keeps asking when i'm gonna take the pretty girl from work out on a date."

"and what did you tell him?" you say, trying to hide your eagerness to hear his answer.

"right now, if i'm lucky," he replies smoothly. he's so fucking good at this and somehow you don't hate it.

you fix your gaze outside the window, forcing yourself to look at anything but him. "well, you can tell him it worked," you reply, hoping he doesn't notice your embarrassment. you don't look over at him, but you already know he's wearing that smirk again.

the rest of the ride to the restaurant is quiet. but the uncomfortableness about the silence is gone, replaced with a tension so palpable you could cut through it with a knife.

but joshua doesn't need a knife; he slices through it easily with just a hand on your thigh. it sends shivers down your spine, and it takes every ounce of your restraint you have not to move. your skin is on fire as you cross your legs, hoping he doesn't notice how on edge you are. but of course he notices, the ever perceptive joshua knowing exactly the kind of heat that's running through your body.

you don't even know what restaurant he's taking you to— for all you know he could be taking you to his house to murder you, but frankly you don't give a shit as long as he keeps touching you. god, you haven't felt this needy in months, maybe even years, and he can probably tell, too.

but luckily for you it seems he's not a murderer, because soon he pulls into the parking lot of some restaurant you've heard the name of before but never cared to try. for midday on a tuesday the lot is surprisingly empty, but it seems to work out in your favor as joshua turns off the car and noticeably keeps his hand on your thigh, making no moves to unlock the door or get out.

you finally drag your gaze away from the window to meet his eyes, and the rest happens in a blur. you can barely keep your thoughts going in a straight line because oh his cock is so hard and he's trying to hide it but also not trying to hide it and why is it so big and please for the love of everything that is holy in this world let me get railed in this parking lot right now. 

joshua says something that you won't remember later, something along the lines of "can we skip lunch and i'll eat you instead". or actually, maybe you're the one that said that because he starts unbuckling his belt with a grin, but he's going way too slow so you decide to help him by unzipping his pants for him. and holy shit yeah it's big, but you're so eager to take the entire thing down your throat that you barely even notice the tears filling your eyes and the way you gag on him. 

what you definitely do notice are the strained groans he lets out as your tongue swirls around his cock and the way his hands clench and unclench in his lap before you grab his fingers and push them into your hair, urging him to adjust your head how he wants.

it's not long before his hands tug upwards on your hair instead, pulling you off his cock with a wet sound. you inhale a deep breath, pretty lips smeared with spit and precum and eyes wet with tears, and what you find when you finally look up at him is a shock but also the most satisfying feeling you've ever had in your life.

the only word you can think of to use to describe him is broken. his brows are knit tightly together, beads of sweat forming at his hairline as his chest heaves with shallow breaths. his normally perfect smile has vanished, nose scrunched and jawline slack.

it takes him a second to collect himself, blinking as you smile up at him proudly. "fuck-" he starts, his voice higher and shakier than you're used to hearing from him. "fuck, i'm so glad you said yes."

before you even have time to process his sentence he leans across the console and pulls you closer, crashing his lips against yours with a whine so desperate you can't tell which one of you made the sound. you can feel his tongue inside your mouth, eagerly tasting himself on your lips.

it doesn't take long for the both of you to fall into the backseat of his car, moans tangling together as he holds you against the window. with the speed and intensity he's fucking you with, if you were to venture a guess you'd say he's probably been waiting for this moment for months. but the pleasure is too overwhelming for you to dwell on it as he expertly draws orgasm after orgasm out of you, the restaurant you're currently outside of the farthest thing from you mind.

when you finally climb back over to the front seats, neither of you question it when you simultaneously pull out your phones to text your boss that you're taking the rest of the day off.

i hope you enjoyed this!! if you did, consider reblogging or leaving a comment or an ask :) it shows me this is something people want to see more of, and knowing people like this makes me want to write more of it! thanks for reading!!

taglist | @wonderfulshinee @noniestars @just-here-to-read-01 @darlingvernon @wonuziex @enhacolor @yourfavoritefreakyhan @dkakapizzaboy @zozojella @rainyjeno @jwnghyuns @uwuheeseungie @miriamxsworld @synthetickitsune @simeonswhore @junhour @foxdaisy @honglynights @limesorbets @98-0603 @fairybinie @anthropologymajorkpopmultistan @mingminghao @jeanjacketjesus @luvwonyy @tinkerbell460 @novalpha @ronnie97b @ohmygodwhyareallusernamestaken @usari @hyneyedfiz @honestlydooetree @ktackore @k-drama-adict @cloecard @valentxi @aaniag @aaasia111 @crvs4vldtn @seungkw1

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#kvanity #kflixnet #k-labels #caratlibrary #[📌] — june.writes #joshua smut #svt smut #seventeen smut #joshua hong smut #joshua imagines #joshua fanfic #joshua x reader #svt fanfic #svt scenarios #svt x reader #svt imagines #seventeen imagines #seventeen fanfic #seventeen scenarios

[youunravelme]

the worst wing-woman

author's note: just like all my other fics, we are existing in an alternate plane where tito was never traded. also i've never worked for the nhl, so i have no idea how accurate being a photographer is but guess what. idgaf. also sorry for the amount of italics in this fic, i have no self control apparently. and shoutout to my new friend @dani746 for helping me with this monstrosity.

summary: you've been in love with mat barzal for as long as you can remember, so what do you do when he asks for your help to win over your friend?

pairing: mat barzal x islanders photographer!reader

warnings: cursing and low self esteem

despite working for the isles for two years now, you still got nervous walking into work.

you weren't a stranger to the team, some of them you knew quite well. anders and marty being two players you were friendly with (mainly due to the fact that you were somewhat friendly with their wives). but there was always one player who eluded you, who you'd only ever had professional interactions with.

mathew barzal.

and it shouldn't be surprising, you were a measly photographer whereas he was the star player of his team, the winner of the calder trophy, an nhl heartthrob. why should he pay attention to you?

media day was one of your favorite days, mainly because it was the closest you ever got to holding full conversations with him. not that the conversations went anything beyond "look right here" or "great job, mat."

you didn't even think he knew your name.

the longest conversation you had with him consisted of him asking to see the photos you took and patting you on your back when he liked what he saw before he went off to talk to tito.

"you having a good day?" you nearly jumped a foot in the air when your staring was cut off by anders walking up to you.

"yeah," you said when your heartbeat returned to normal. "just busy is all." you held your camera up as if that was enough of an explanation.

anders nodded. "any of the boys giving you a hard time?"

you shook your head rapidly. "nope, they've all been on their best behavior."

"even barzy and beauvillier?" at the mention of their names, the duo turned their heads and locked eyes with you and anders.

you wanted to dig a hole and die in it.

"what about us?" mat asked, sauntering over with his best friend right behind him.

"you haven't been giving her a hard time, have you?" anders crossed his arms. and if you weren't panicking at the closing distance between you and mat, you might've noticed the shared smirk between the three hockey players in front of you.

"us?" tito asked. "why would you think that? we've only ever been angels."

before anders could ask you to corroborate tito's story, your name was called. you awkwardly waved to the three men before walking over to another set of props, ready to photograph another hockey player.

"done embarrassing yourself?" your coworker tyler asked.

you lightly shoved his shoulder. "shut up."

"seriously, you're not his type," he added. "he's not gonna go for you."

tyler might as well have stabbed you in the gut with how much his words hurt you, but you put a smile on and nodded. "yeah, i know. i know."

and you did.

you knew.

but you'd be delusional for a little while longer if it meant going to work wouldn't suck every day.

later that night, you found yourself at a bar with a group of your friends. you didn't want to go originally, but when alexa said she needed to go out to get over her ex, you felt like you had no other choice.

which is how you found yourself sipping a soda water in a booth while your friends danced and took body shots.

your gaze wandered around the bar aimlessly before you checked your phone for the time.

you'd only been there for an hour.

it took all self restraint not to bang your head against the table.

"having fun?" your head snapped up at the familiar voice only to see anthony beauvillier standing at the edge of your booth with a self satisfied smirk.

"i--"

"i didn't take you as one to go out drinking on a weeknight," he said.

you slumped into your seat. "i'm not. my friend alexa wanted to go out because her boyfriend just dumped her and she wanted a distraction."

anthony took the seat opposite of you. "and that is...?" he gestured at your drink.

"soda water," you answered. "i'm the DD for tonight."

"oof," he groaned before taking a sip of his beer. "that's rough."

you shrugged. "it's not that bad, i'd rather my friends get home safe than get drunk and show up to work hungover."

anthony nodded in a way that you'd seen other men do, the type of nod that comes right before someone looks around for someone more interesting to talk to.

"but what about you?" you rushed out, nearly tripping over your own words.

tito smiled. "what about me?"

"why're you here?"

he shrugged. "mat wanted to come out and didn't want to go out alone, so here i am."

mat.

you wanted to vomit.

"oh," you mumbled. "mat's here?"

tito nodded and gestured with his bottle to the bar. "he's over there talking to some brunette."

you followed with your eyes and when you finally locked eyes on him, you wished you hadn't.

he was talking to alexa, smiling at her the way you wished he'd smile at you.

maybe you could leave the bar and get hit by a taxi on the way out, that would be less painful than seeing the man you're in love with flirt with your friend.

"you okay?" anthony asked, nudging your leg with his foot.

you turned your gaze back to him and attempted to give him your most convincing smile. "i'm great!" you said before throwing your soda water back and coughing when the carbonation burned.

anthony didn't say a word.

when you looked back at the bar, alexa was nowhere to be found while mat was fiddling with one of his wristbands. you looked around to find alexa, thinking maybe she was in the crowd dancing or perhaps she was in line for the bathroom.

but she popped up at your table, sweaty and smiling.

"you good?" she asked before fixing her eyes on anthony who was sipping on his beer. "who's this?"

"anthony. i know him from work." tito gave her a small wave before taking another sip of his beer.

"alexa," she smiled before her attention focused back on you. "i actually met one of your coworkers, mat right?"

you forced a smile and nodded. "the one and only. what did you think?" though, to be fair, you didn't really want to know her opinion on him. not when you thought the world of him.

alexa shrugged and tossed her perfect hair over her perfect shoulder and gave a perfect smile that was a healthy balance of nonchalant and mildly interested. "he was alright, he knows he's attractive which is rather unattractive if you ask me."

tito choked on his beer while you stared in awe.

of all the words you'd use to describe mat, "alright" was not even close to the top 25.

"something funny?" alexa asked.

"nope," tito supplied, shaking his head. "nothing at all."

alexa looked at him, unconvinced, but didn't let it bother her. "i'm gonna go dance, you coming?" she asked.

you shook your head. "not really my scene."

alexa nodded and pranced off to the dance floor where the rest of your friends were grinding on strangers to the tune of some 2000s pop song.

"she's a delight," tito said.

you sighed. "she's practically miss america." you were too busy staring at her having fun to notice another person walk up to your booth until he was standing right in front of you with a question posed on the tip of his lips.

mat.

your mouth went dry at the sight of him.

"you know her?" he gestured over his shoulder to where alexa was laughing with one of your friends.

you nodded.

"are you two close?"

you shrugged.

mat sighed. "are you capable of speaking?"

tito spoke up. "mat, you just bombarded her without a single hello, chill."

mat pinched the bridge of his nose. "sorry, i just--she rejected me and i don't know why."

"you're too attractive and you know it," you blurted out before you could stop yourself. you quickly slapped a hand over your mouth like that would stop any other bullshit that might come out.

mat tilted his head and leaned in. "huh?"

"her words, not mine," you said like it would absolve you of any guilt.

"what do you mean by being 'too attractive' and 'knowing it'? how does that even make sense?"

you shrugged for what felt like the twelfth time that night. "alexa's not really into guys who are obsessed with their appearances. she just got out of a relationship with a guy like that," you explained.

mat ran a hand down his face before placing both hands on his waist. "so what do you suggest i do?" he groaned.

"i--"

he snapped his fingers and looked at you for what felt like the first time. it sent a chill down your spine that you had a problem suppressing. "can you help me?"

your mouth dropped open. "huh?"

"you're friends, right? can you help me win her over?"

you could list about a thousand other things you'd rather do. you could think of five just off the top of your head.

but he looked so earnest and willing and how could anyone possibly resist him when he looked at you like that--

"of course!" you smiled.

of course?! yes would've sufficed but now you've got him thinking you'd enjoy this. which you most certainly wouldn't.

oh who were you kidding? all attention was good attention when it came to mat barzal and you'd give anything to keep him looking at you.

"thank you!" he smiled before clapping tito on the shoulder. "ready to head out?"

anthony nodded before addressing you. "i had a nice time. see you tomorrow?"

you smiled and nodded, giving them both a small wave as they walked away. the second they were out the door, you thumped your head against the table.

playing wing-woman for mathew barzal.

what the fuck was wrong with you?

how to be a wing-woman: a guide

usually when you went to work, you kept your head down and stayed out of the way. occasionally, you'd run into anders or marty, or maybe even tito, who would say their polite hellos, but for the most part you stayed out of the way during practices.

you were looking at the photos you just took when someone banged on the glass. a quick glance (that turned into a double take) let you figure out it was mat based on the 13 on his jersey and the fact that you could pick him out of a crowd anywhere.

he waved and smiled (and you might've died inside). "can i talk to you after practice?"

you nodded frantically before gaining a semblance of self respect and slowing down.

"great! meet you outside of the locker rooms!" he said before skating away.

"what was that about?" tyler asked. you turned, not even realizing he'd made his way towards you considering you thought he was on the other side of the arena.

"what? can't i talk to the players?"

tyler laughed. actually laughed. "considering barzal has never so much as looked at you, i'd say him approaching you during practice is pretty strange."

your shoulders sunk at the weight of the truth. "if you must know," you started. "he wants to date one of my friends, so i'm helping him out."

tyler laughed again and walked away without saying another word while you scrolled through the photos you took again until practice ended.

you headed towards the locker rooms only when the last player had been off the ice for ten minutes, you didn't want to chance waiting around too long looking like an idiot.

as you waited, you made a mental note of all the editing you'd have to do when you got back to your cubicle. you got a few good shots earlier, but they'd need some tweaking before you sent them to the social media team. in fact--

"hey, what're you doing here?" you glanced up and saw anders, hair wet from whatever brief shower he took.

you shrugged, not sure if it was your place to give away mat's intentions. "just waiting around."

"for?" he pushed.

"barzy needs her to play wing-woman," tito said from over anders' shoulders. "he wants to get with her friend, but her friend isn't interested."

anders threw his head back and laughed. "barzy not getting a girl? that's fucking hilarious."

tito smirked. "tell him what your friend said" he told you.

"she doesn't like that he knows he's attractive," you mumbled.

if it was even possible, anders laughed even louder. "un-fucking-believable."

"what's so funny?" mat walked up, running a hand through his damp hair.

you said "nothing" at the same time anders asked "you got rejected, barzy?"

mat's face dropped before looking at you and tito accusingly. anthony sighed and nudged his best friend. "chill out, barz. she didn't bring it up, i did."

mat's shoulders relaxed before he punched tito in the arm. "dick," he mumbled.

anders looked between the three of you and sighed. "i don't have time for this shit," he said. "i'll see you later." and he was off down the hallway.

"so what's the plan for today?" tito asked.

"you're not included," mat said. his gaze focused on you. "can i have your number?"

you blinked. "what?"

mat laughed a little and you could feel heat and shame running up your spine. he asked you one fucking question and you had to go act like a weirdo. "so i can text you? i think we should sit down and create a strategy."

you nodded and read off your number as he typed it into his phone. "great," he gave you his megawatt smile. "i'll text you."

"okay," you breathed out as he walked away without a thought.

tito kept standing there, smirking to himself. "you're so fucked," he said.

you nodded because there was nothing else to say.

step one: talk him up

you and mat got lunch two days later on a saturday when he didn't have a game. it was rather surreal, sitting across from him in public. the delusional part of you was begging you to imagine this as a date instead of a meeting to set your friend up with mat.

when did your life turn into something so pathetic?

"okay," he started. "tell me about your friend."

you would rather do anything else.

"she just got out of a long term relationship with this guy named jared. he was a bit self absorbed which is probably why she didn't like you knowing how hot you are." you paused as the words left your mouth, ready to set yourself on fire if he reacted. but he didn't, he only leaned in closer to listen. "she uh--she likes daffodils and goes to the farmer's market at union square every saturday."

"but what's she like?" he asked. "what's her personality?"

how would you say she's the trademarked cool girl? the girl every guy wanted, that mat was one man in a long list of men who tried and failed to win her over.

"she's sweet and affectionate," you started. "she pretty girly on the outside but knows her way around a car. she grew up with three older brothers so she knows a fair bit about sports, just not hockey, but if you wanted to talk stats about football or basketball, she's your girl. in college, she held the record for fastest shotgun in her sorority."

you racked your brain for more information about your friend, but it was difficult under pressure to sum up someone you'd known since freshman year of college.

"what else?" mat asked.

"she's a bit of a partier, but knows how to settle down and just chill. she's a really good friend, like last year i dated this guy who was cheating on me the entire duration of our relationship, which i should've known about because he said he had to go on business trips all the time but he worked as a barista, and she held me while i cried for three days straight and even threatened to fuck up his car."

mat stared at you without saying anything in a way that made you want to sink into a hole, never to be seen again. "you dated a barista and thought he needed to go on business trips?"

you blinked. "that's what you got from that? me dating a shitty barista?"

he shrugged. "i heard everything else, but that was definitely the funniest part. how long did you date him?"

"six months," you replied quickly. "but that's not the point! alexa is going to play hard to get because she doesn't want anything too serious right now."

"great! neither do i!"

"but she's not a one night stand kind of girl anymore. so if you want her, you have to prove to her you can be serious enough for a relationship but not serious enough that you get clingy and overbearing and propose within six months."

mat blinked at you. "how the hell does that make sense?"

"believe me, there's a balance."

he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "and you would know this how?"

"well i uh--" you sputtered. your nerves were only encouraged by his light chuckling. "all girls know these things! we don't want overly possessive boyfriends but we also want someone to care. it shouldn't be that hard to comprehend."

"it's not," he defended. "just a little...complicated, don't you think?"

"alexa's a complicated girl!"

he sighed and ran a hand down his face. "okay so how do i show her i mean business but that i'm not looking to settle down and get married?"

"i guess i could talk you up to her in passing conversation?"

"what would you tell her? we don't know each other very well."

"i know more than you think!"

"please, share with the class."

shit.

do you confess that in the two years you'd worked for the islanders that you watched him borderline obsessively?

"well, i know you're good with kids, if your interactions with young fans is anything to go by. you don't like dogs, which is a bit of a red flag in my book, but alexa shouldn't mind. you're a fantastic hockey player, and a great teammate."

"is that enough to convince her?"

you grimaced and shook your head. "she's a bit more personable. she one time broke up with a guy because he was rude to waitstaff. she would want to know how you treat non millionaires and authority figures. for instance, how much do you tip a server?"

"25%," he replied. "but why does that matter?"

"alexa used to be a server throughout college and couldn't stand people who she knew had money but would cheap out on the tip because she didn't greet them fast enough."

mat opened his mouth, presumably to ask another question, when his phone started ringing. "shit," he mumbled. "listen, i gotta go. it was nice talking to you, i'll be in touch." he pulled out a few twenty dollar bills and put them on the table before getting up and walking away.

you waited for the server to come back before paying the bill and told them to keep the change before you got up and walked home.

when you got back to your apartment, alexa was already standing at the door, waiting to be let in.

"finally," she said. "i was wondering when you were gonna come home."

"you could've texted me," you said while unlocking the door.

she followed you inside and shut the door behind her. "i could've, but your phone was on do not disturb for some reason, so i doubt my texts would've gone through in time. where were you anyway?"

"getting lunch with a friend from work," you replied.

alexa groaned as she all but collapsed onto your couch. "please tell me it's not tyler. i hate how he treats you."

you dropped your bag by the door and headed back to your room, but not before calling over your shoulder. "he's not that bad, he's like that to everyone!"

"doesn't make it any better!"

you changed into some comfortable clothing before joining alexa on your couch. "did you have fun the other night when we went out to the bar?"

alexa looked at you weirdly.

shit. you must not have been as subtle as you thought.

"i did," she said. "but what makes you ask."

you shrugged. "i know it's been rough with your breakup lately, but i saw you talking to mat and you looked happy."

alexa groaned and sunk into the couch. "i thought we talked about this already. he knows he's attractive, it's such a turn off. you should've seen the way he was talking, it was like he knew that if he gave me a look, i'd be going home with him."

"well he's really nice, i promise! you should see him with kids at the stadium--"

"you mean the kids who idolize him? yeah i bet he's real nice to them."

okay, switch strategies.

"he tips waitstaff really well!"

"with what he makes? he better." alexa sighed. "listen, i'd be more impressed if he could tell me anything about you, but seeing as you've worked there for two years and he couldn't tell me anything other than your name the other night says all i need to know about him. so can we talk about something else?"

you nodded, ignoring the jutting pain in your chest at her words. you knew well enough that mat knew nothing about you, why would he? but to hear it come from the mouth of someone else stung.

getting them together was gonna be harder than you originally thought.

step two: get them interacting

you were dreading the next time you saw mat for the first time in your life. you were in your cubicle editing photos from the game that night to be posted tomorrow to distract yourself from the inevitable conversation you'd have to have with him. tyler, unfortunately got the shot that was posted immediately to the islanders' instagram account to celebrate their win over the rangers and he had no problem letting you know it. and while it was annoying, it served as a great distraction from your other problem.

"maybe you'll get it next time," he sneered as he packed his bag. most days you hated the fact that you were cubicle neighbors, but neither of you were powerful enough to request moving spaces. and even if you could, you knew it would just make you look hard to work with.

"have a good night, tyler," you replied, not even wanting to give him any ammo to use against you.

the door shut behind him with a click, locking you into sweet sweet silence.

until a minute later when your phone went off with a text message.

mat barzal: where ru?

mat barzal: wanna go to a bar with me and tito and you can bring alexa?

you scoffed. "you can bring alexa," you mocked under your breath. "like that's not the sole reason for you asking me to go out tonight." you packed your bag up and shot a quick text to alexa, asking if she wanted to go out. she replied with an immediate yes, asking where to meet you, which prompted you to reach out to mat who sent you an address in response.

which is how you ended up on a sidewalk in front of an incredibly busy bar with alexa next to you.

"i've never been here," she remarked. "how'd you hear about it?"

"oh, a coworker mentioned it," you said in what was hopefully a nonchalant manner.

she looked at you a moment too long before grabbing your hand and pulling you inside. "you find us a place to sit and i'll grab our drinks!" she shouted over the music.

you quickly looked around for mat and tito, the former who'd texted you the second they arrived. you saw a head of dark hair and immediately knew it was mat. you hurried over, panting when you arrived from having to shove your way towards them.

"you made it!" anthony said. you looked at him and mat, eyes bouncing back and forth between them, when you realized your first problem.

they were sitting on opposite sides of the booth.

which meant you would have to sit with one of them, and alexa would have to sit with the other. if mat had it his way, he'd sit next to alexa, but you knew your friend wouldn't have that. she'd feel manipulated and uncomfortable.

"is there a problem?" tito asked.

you gestured to the booth. "alexa will want to sit by me. she's still not convinced about you, mat."

mat, to his credit, didn't look shocked or offended, he just shrugged and moved to tito's side. "this work?" he asked as you sat down.

you nodded.

"so what's the plan? how should i approach this?" he asked.

"keep the conversation on her, when she tries to turn it on you or about your career, focus on other people, applaud your teammates, your coaches, but whatever you do, don't talk about yourself too much. she already thinks you have a big ego."

"to be fair," tito started. "he does."

mat didn't even dignify that with a response. "so keep the conversation on her and others, got it."

alexa found you a moment later and didn't do a great job covering up her disinterest in sitting with mat and beau.

"i couldn't find anywhere to sit," you explained.

alexa didn't buy it if her eyes bouncing around the bar to find empty tables said anything. but she sat next to you anyway, placing your drink in front of you.

"you remember mat and anthony from the other night, right?" you asked.

she just hummed and took a sip of her drink.

"so, alexa," mat started. "what do you do for a living?"

she stared at him and sighed. "i'm a vet tech," she said, but offered no other information.

"she especially loves the cats," you added.

"cats are great!" mat said a little too enthusiastically.

alexa drained the rest of her glass and got up, leaving the three of you behind.

the second she was gone, beau broke into laughter, slapping his own chest. "that was fucking hilarious," he said.

"yeah yeah yeah, laugh it up," mat grumbled, swirling his cup around instead of making eye contact with anyone.

"i'm serious, i don't think i've ever seen you fail so quickly. it's kind of amazing."

mat focused his eyes on you. "what did i do wrong? i tried asking about her life and she seemed wholly uninterested."

you shrugged. "i don't know! maybe she feels cornered?"

tito took a sip of his beer. "i think you need to workshop this. clearly, neither of you thought this through."

you groaned and rested your head on the table.

this was already harder than you anticipated.

step three: reevaluate and regroup

you met mat in a booth of a coffee shop after you got off work. he was staring at his phone when you walked in, completely unaware that you even existed.

which wasn't abnormal considering you didn't even think he knew who you were a few months ago. but the second the barista called your order out, his head whipped up.

you could've sworn time stopped at that moment.

you made your way towards him and plopped down in the booth opposite of him.

"hi," you smiled. "what's up?"

"i don't know what to do, she doesn't seem interested in me." he groaned into his hands before running one of them through his hair.

god he was so attractive.

you snapped out of your reverie. "listen, you've got what it takes, we just need to reevaluate our strategy. i think the bar thing was a bad idea, she felt ambushed and it probably set us back a little, but i have an idea."

he leaned his forearms on the table. "let's hear it."

"practice dates," you said.

mat blinked once. twice. a third time before he spoke. "practice dates?"

"okay hear me out," you said, pulling a notepad out of the bag you brought. "i have a list of things that alexa likes to do and i was thinking, you and i can do them and work on conversations and how to approach her. so when the time comes, you don't feel out of your element."

"who said i feel out of my element?"

you stared at him. "you said last night 'cats are great!' and expected conversation to flow naturally."

"okay so not my best moment."

"not even close." you sighed. "listen, i wanna help you, and i feel like this is your best bet in winning her over."

mat ran a hand down his face. "okay fine. what's the first date?"

practice date one: pumpkin patch

to be quite frank, you were nervous when proposing the idea, scared that he wouldn't be willing to sit in a car with you for three hours just to get to the pumpkin patch. and maybe he would find it childish.

when in fact, he said nothing about the long car ride, he even offered to pick you up from your apartment, and laughed when you offered to pay for gas. when you finally arrived, you jumped out of mat's car like an excited child. mat stepped out like he knew he was the romantic lead in a movie, suave and collected.

you two could not be more opposite of each other.

it took everything in you to focus on the task at hand, and not fall deeper in love with him. but how could you not? when he looked so boyfriend in a coat and flannel and beanie and jeans that hugged his thighs just right--

you were getting ahead of yourself. you were doing this for mat and alexa, not your own selfish ambition.

"so what's the plan?" he asked after locking his car with the key fob.

you shrugged. "what would you do if you were here with alexa?" the words tasted bitter in your mouth. it was such a painful reminder, knowing that this wasn't real and was in service to hook him up with your friend.

mat looked around and shoved his hands in his pockets. "corn maze?" he pointed. you must've made a face because he spoke up again. "what?"

"alexa hates corn mazes."

he paused. "to the pumpkin patch then?" you nodded and followed his lead. "so how did you meet alexa?"

"she was my first roommate in college, we shared the smallest dorm in history."

"that sounds like an exaggeration."

"says the man who never went to college."

he laughed. "i don't need a college education to identify a hyperbole when i hear one."

you gasped and looked at him with wide eyes. "a hyperbole? what a word."

"laugh it up," he said. "but i'm not a complete idiot, you know."

"never said you were. i just haven't heard anyone use hyperbole in a sentence outside of my english lit classes."

"well, you should know i'm full of surprises."

the two of you approached the pumpkin patch and started weaving between families and the occasional rogue toddler. mat had to tug you out of the way a few times when you about stepped on a child because you were gazing at pumpkins.

"if you don't mind me asking," mat started. "why are you helping me? you don't owe me anything. i feel like i'm taking advantage of your kindness."

you shrugged. "you wouldn't be the first one."

"what's that supposed to mean?" you looked up from the pumpkin patch to see mat's brows furrowed together and his mouth twisted in a cute frown.

"well, i mean, i've been told i have a habit of being a doormat at times."

"who said that?" his tone had changed to a softer one.

"huh?" you asked.

"who called you a doormat?"

you shrugged again, that seemed to be your go to move around him. you squatted down to look at a particularly fat pumpkin, inspecting all sides of it before you responded. "i've heard it all my life, some have said it in meaner ways, others have been nicer about it."

"i'm sorry," he said.

you stood to your full height which was still much shorter than mat's. "why? it's not like it's not true."

"what if i helped you?"

it was your turn to frown. "help me? with what? ice skating?"

mat rolled his eyes. "no, with confidence. maybe even get you a date."

you guffawed, mouth opening and closing like a fish. "what?"

mat pulled you out of the way of yet another child and kept his hand on your elbow until you were clear of the pumpkin roots. and if your heart stopped for a few seconds, that was your business, no one else's. "you heard me. you're young, single, and attractive and you spend all your free time at the office or DDing for your friends. we can work on your confidence and get you out there."

"i don't know..." though your mind was still focused on the fact that he'd called you attractive.

"what about that other photographer guy? tony?"

you cackled. straight up burst into laughter. "tyler? that's fucking hilarious mat."

"what?" the two of you continued down the patch, occasionally gazing at the pumpkins, but mostly just talking. "you two are always talking."

talking or being insulted?

you shook your head. "enough about me, we're here for alexa."

mat nudged you with his elbow. "actually we're here for me to win alexa over."

you kicked a small stone with the toe of your shoe and said nothing. the tragedy of your own personal situation wasn't lost on you, neither was the idiocy of your plan. what were you thinking, spending your free time with mat? to win over your friend?

it was textbook self inflicted torture.

"where'd you go?" mat nudged you again. "i lost you there for a second."

you bent down and picked up a smaller pumpkin. "what do you think about this one?"

"it looks fine. you're ignoring my question."

you juggled the pumpkin back and forth in your hands to determine if you liked it or not. "what question?" you looked up just in time to see mat roll his eyes, but he dropped the topic anyway.

the both of you walked over to the stall to pay for the pumpkin. you reached into your tote bag to grab your wallet, but mat was already holding out a five dollar bill to the vendor.

"you didn't have to--"

"do you wanna get some cider?"

you could've started drooling at the idea of drinking cider. "yes!"

mat chuckled and started walking towards the cider stand where a small family waited in front of you. "does alexa like cider?" he asked.

"what a random question."

"well you're not giving me anything to work with!"

you almost groaned. because he was right. you got caught up in the idea of hanging out with mat outside of work that you forgot the real reason both of you were there in the first place.

"she loves cider, especially when it's spiked. she also loves mulled wine." mat scrunched his face up. "not a fan?" you asked.

"warm wine? no thank you."

mat paid for the cider, going as far as having the cash ready before you could even order.

"you really don't have to keep buying things. i can pay!"

"oh this is all a bribe to get you to go through that corn maze with me."

your face dropped. "alexa doesn't like mazes."

"so i won't go with her next time, but you're here now and i wanna go."

you let him drag you along until you were in the thick of the maze. you let him guide the both of you through it like he knew what he was doing even though you were pretty sure you hit every possible dead end in the maze.

two little kids ran past giggling and smiling. "we found the end, mama!"

you almost laughed at the look of irritation on mat's face.

it took an obscene amount of time to get through the maze, and mat was in a much worse mood when it was all over.

needless to say, the ride home was quiet.

practice date 2: dinner at mat's

you weren't quite sure what mat was planning on making for dinner, but you were willing to bet the smell of smoke wasn't a part of the plan.

the scene when you walked into his apartment could only be described as chaotic. the smoke detector was going off and when you walked into the kitchen, mat was going between waving a towel under the detector and opening every window in his kitchen.

"you weren't supposed to be here yet!" he shouted over the noise before darting past you into the living room to open the windows in there.

you dropped your things on the counter and took over waving the towel under the smoke detector.

"what happened?" you asked.

"i suck at cooking!" he came back in the kitchen and took the towel from you. "i'm taller," he said like that was an explanation.

the beeping ceased and left the two of you in a hazy apartment. when you looked around the kitchen, you saw what had to be charred meat and veggies in a skillet.

"okay so when you cook dinner for alexa, don't. just hire a chef."

mat held up his phone. "or order pizza. you in?"

"do i get to financially contribute?"

he gestured to your belongings on the counter, one of which was a bottle of red wine. "you already did."

"you can't keep buying everything," you said. "it's not fair."

"why not? i'm the millionaire here, i'd look like a dick if i made you pay for anything. besides, when i date alexa, it's not like i'm gonna let my girlfriend pay."

girlfriend.

right.

that was the end goal for him.

you kept forgetting.

you cleared your throat and dusted your hands on your pants despite them being clean.

"you can go pick out a movie or something while i order the pizza?" mat suggested.

you had no choice but to nod and wander into his moderately decorated living room. it definitely still looked like a bachelor pad, but if a bachelor had enough money to hire someone to say he needed artwork, decorative pillows, and a couch that wasn't brown.

you were scrolling through netflix when mat came into the living room and plopped on the sectional beside you, shucking his shoes off. why he was wearing shoes in his own apartment was beyond you, but you weren't one to judge.

"you look nice," he commented, as if just noticing you for the first time that night.

you looked down at your own outfit. it was a pair of jeans and a nice blouse. "this?"

"are you wearing something else that i'm not seeing?" he teased.

before you could die of embarrassment, you switched subjects. "what do you want to watch? i haven't made a decision yet." you handed the remote to him, hating being the one to make the decisions.

he shifted on the couch so he was sitting up instead of lounging on the chaise and took the remote. "what's alexa's favorite movie?"

"birdbox."

mat did a double take. "she likes birdbox?"

you shrugged. "she's into suspense."

mat was about to select birdbox until he took one look on your face. you don't know what you looked like but it made him pause. "but are you?"

"why do you care what i like?"

"because you're here, alexa's not. i don't wanna make you watch something you'd hate." mat shifted on the couch. "why don't we work on those dating tips i talked to you about."

"oh i don't think--"

"why not?" he asked. "you're always so jittery whenever we talk about it."

oh.

was he referring to the other day after practice when he saw tyler tormenting you and mat misinterpreted that as flirty banter? mat had come up to you afterwards to give you pointers but you practically ran away.

"it's not that simple, mat."

"i think it is."

you threw your hands up. "well then, by all means you must be right."

"what's with the attitude?" he asked. "did i say something?"

it was a good question. one that shouldn't make you want to cry, but life felt overwhelming in all the worst ways. between tyler harassing you every second of every day and pretending like you weren't in love with mat so you could set him up with your friend, and taking photos for games and practices, you were exhausted.

"i'm not sober enough for this," you said before getting up and popping the cork on the wine bottle and drinking straight from it.

it was another thirty minutes before the pizza arrived and the both of you were well on your way to wine drunk, you more so than mat. who could blame you though? your life was a sad excuse for a single twenty-something and you were tired of thinking about it.

"truth is," mat started with a mouth full of pizza. "you just need to act like you're the best thing that's ever happened to this city. guys love confident women."

"and that's your biggest issue with alexa right now."

"wanna switch personalities?"

you laughed.

"what?" he asked. "what's so funny?"

"i'm trying to picture you without an ego and i don't think it's possible."

mat rolled his eyes but had a smile on his lips anyway. it shouldn't have made your heart pound the way it did, but you were weak for that man, you had been since day one.

so you switched courses.

"okay," you started. "how do i make get a guy to wanna date me?"

mats eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "you're serious?"

you nodded. "as a heart attack."

mat sat up on the couch and faced you. his eyes scanned your face like he was looking for something but couldn't find it. maybe he was looking for a reason to change the subject.

"alright," he said. "you gotta be confident, even if you don't feel like it. most guys don't mind a little insecurity, they find it kinda cute, but a guy who wants an insecure girl is a red flag."

"should i be taking notes or...?" you took a large sip of your wine and smiled when mat rolled his eyes again.

"secondly, you can't be hiding behind your camera all the time."

you guffawed. "i do not hide behind my camera!"

"oh give me a break, you totally do! you walk around like it's a safety blanket or something."

"because it is!"

"exactly my point! thirdly, chivalry isn't dead. if he's not doing basic things like opening doors, walking on the closest side to the street, and he's only talking about himself? run."

"what? he can't be a good person if he doesn't do those things?"

"if he can't do a basic kind gesture, he's not going to do larger ones. sorry. i don't make the rules."

you blinked. "but you kinda are making the rules for me, right now."

"you're such a smart ass, just like tito."

"is that a good or bad thing?"

mat shrugged and took another bite of pizza. "hard to say, i love tito most days."

love.

don't be an idiot and read into things.

"so," mat leaned back into the couch. "i gave you advice, it's my turn. how do i win over alexa?"

you thought back to the conversation you had with her a few weeks ago about mat. and one comment stuck out the most. "i think the biggest sin you committed was not knowing anything about me despite working together for two years," you admitted shyly.

mat's brows furrowed in that cute way they always did. "what do you mean?"

"she said she's not impressed by you being nice to kid fans or tipping waitstaff. she would be impressed if you knew anything about me because i'm not a hockey player."

mat recoiled as if physically struck by your words. "she thinks that low of you?"

"no she didn't mean to say you were--" you paused. "me? you think she has a low opinion of me?"

mat crossed his arms. "she just insinuated that you weren't important enough for me to know."

"no! that's not what she meant! she was saying that you think you're better than me."

"that's not even remotely true." and he said it so confidently, you almost believed him. "it's not, you know that right?"

you hesitated and you might as well have punched him in the gut.

mat said your name so softly like it was precious. like it was something special. "you have to know, i have never, not once, believed you were beneath me."

you gave him a small smile. "you don't need to explain yourself to me, mat."

he reached over and grabbed your hand, tugging on it lightly. "no. i need you to know, you are important to me."

your heart fluttered at his words, or maybe it was the fact that you were holding hands and you could feel the calluses rub against your own palm.

you could've stayed there forever.

"jesus fucking christ, why does it smell like something burned in here?" the front door opened and slammed sending you and mat sprawling apart like you hadn't been locked in a staring contest and holding hands. tito rounded the corner and crossed his arms, a smug expression on his face. "what do we have here?"

"nothing!" you squeaked out. "i was just leaving!"

"no you weren't," mat started, eyes wide with an emotion you couldn't place. "beau was just leaving."

you looked as confused as tito was. "what? no i'm not." you glanced back at mat who could not have looked more annoyed if he tried. "or i can...?"

"no!" you said. "i need to get going anyway. got work tomorrow, long day."

mat stood up when he realized there was no convincing you. "i can walk you out--"

"don't worry about it! i'm a big girl." you were leaving when you heard whisper shouting. you couldn't fully make out what they were saying, but before you shut the front door behind you, you could've sworn you heard them mention "liking her."

you did your best not to let the talking break your heart even more.

practice date 3: ice skating

you made mat pick out the last date but he hadn't told you what it was, just asked for your shoe size.

aside from that?

radio silence.

maybe you should've seen this coming. you'd talked to alexa a few days ago and she'd suggested that maybe you should put yourself out there more, find a date, find a boyfriend, find some happiness.

after practice, you found yourself scrolling through your camera roll in one of the seats in the arena when a pair of skates came into your peripheral. you looked up expecting to see a mop of black hair and hazel eyes.

but it was tito with a sheepish grin on his face.

"hey," he said.

you put your camera down and smiled. it was always good to see tito, with the exception of the other night. "hey, what can i do for you?"

anthony playfully rolled his eyes. "you don't live to serve us," he said. "i don't need anything, just wanted to say hi."

"hi!" you smiled even brighter.

"i was wondering, what're you doing friday night?"

you jaw dropped. and it must've been funny because tito threw his head back and laughed. "what?"

tito smiled at you and gestured towards you. "i was wondering if you'd want to get dinner with me on friday. i don't know what time you get off work, but i was thinking 6:30?"

you blinked. you blinked again. "are you serious?"

"why wouldn't i be? you're attractive, single, and i like your company. i think we'd have a fun time."

"okay," you smiled again. have you ever smiled this much in your life? you were unsure. "okay yeah, friday at 6:30 is perfect."

"great," tito grinned. "can i have your number?" you handed your phone over rather quickly, watching as he typed his number in and texted himself. "i'll see you," he said.

"bye tito!" you waved until he was out of sight. and even then, you continued to stare at the spot he was once occupying.

"what the hell was that about?"

you jumped about a foot in the air when tyler made his comment from over your shoulder. "jesus fucking christ, tyler." you placed a hand over your heart to feel how rapidly it was beating. "are you some sort of lurker?"

"what did beauvillier want with you?" he condescended.

"it's none of your business." you rolled your eyes when your phone buzzed.

mat barzal: come down to the locker room.

"who is that?" he asked, peering over your shoulder, but you stood up and started walking away.

the both of you headed down to the locker rooms, though you weren't really enjoying the company. tyler kept talking about your lackluster photography skills like the both of you didn't have the exact same job title.

you were rounding the corner when you saw mat leaning up against the wall, still in his hockey gear. tyler, being confronted with an audience, immediately departed. if you had to guess, he probably went back to his office to scheme how else to make your life miserable.

"hey," you said as you approached. "what's up?"

mat reached down and tossed a duffle bag at your feet. "open the bag," he directed.

you squatted and opened the zipper to see a pair of ice skates. you looked up at mat who looked pleased with himself. "what're these for?"

"you ever been ice skating?" he asked.

the short answer? no.

the long answer? once in second grade for a field trip.

"kinda?" you said instead.

mat laughed, like an actual laugh. there was a shiver that went down your spine at the very sound of it. "it's a yes or no question."

"i would say yes, but i was like eight."

"yeah, doesn't really count anymore. grab the bag, let's go." he walked off without a second thought, leaving you scrambling with the bag and rushing after him.

"what's the point of this?" you called after him.

"you told me to pick the last date, this is it!"

you stopped walking immediately. "mat, i don't know if this is a good idea..."

as if sensing your hesitation, mat turned around and walked back towards you. he rested his hands on your shoulders and squeezed lightly, ducking his head down towards yours. "i'm not gonna let anything bad happen to you, i promise. you have nothing to be afraid of."

"what if my boss sees? what if lou sees? i'm a lot more replaceable than you are."

mat scoffed. "first of all, you're not replaceable. second of all, it's gonna be fine. i'll take all the heat if we get in trouble, which we won't because it's not a big deal." he reached down and grabbed your hand that wasn't holding the duffle bag. "now c'mon."

he led you out to the bench where you sat down and placed your camera on the bench. "take your shoes off and put these socks on." he tossed a pair of socks at your head that you barely caught in time.

"but i'm already wearing socks," you said.

"these are longer, unless you want the boot to cut into your ankle."

safe to say, you put the socks on.

mat knelt in front of you to help put the skates on, tying them up so they were secure on your feet.

you wanted to swoon at the sight of him before you. thankfully, he stood up and helped you to your feet before you could start imagining anything preposterous.

like him proposing.

you watched as mat slid over the top of the bench railing and onto the ice. he turned around and looked at you expectantly.

"oh hell no," you said. "where's the door, i'll use the door."

he cackled as you walked and opened the door, but skated to you anyway to give you some assistance when stepping onto the ice.

"easy does it," he said, chuckling when your grip was practically crushing his fingers. "you're okay, i'm not gonna let you fall."

"it's not you i don't trust, it's me."

mat kept a grip on your hands and led you out to the center of the ice. on the way to the center, you slipped twice, a squeak leaving your lips. you quickly latched onto mat who only laughed at your death grip on his forearms.

"it's not funny," you whined. "i'm terrified."

"you're right, it's not funny. but it is cute." he removed your hands from his arms and skated away from you. "okay, now come to me."

he was easily twenty feet away.

you glanced down at the ice and then back at mat. you would've sat down if you knew how to without eating it. "mat, i'm telling you right now, that's not gonna happen."

"it's not that hard."

"you've been skating since you were a child. i have not." you attempted to take a step forward, but thought differently of it. "besides, how does this help you with alexa?"

"easy," he said. "if i can teach you to skate, i can teach anyone."

"so your idea of a romantic date is a girl busting her ass over and over for an hour?"

"not quite," he said, skating circles around you.

literally.

"you're being an ass,' you whined. "why did the one practice date you pick out have to do with hockey?"

"because it's what i love. and if a girl can't hang with it, our relationship is doomed to fail."

you rolled your eyes. "that's a bit dramatic. you can appreciate and love hockey without having to ice skate. thousands of fans do it all the time."

"but my girlfriend won't be just a fan, now will she?"

your heart sank at the idea of alexa and mat in a similar situation. alexa actually trying to skate and looking beautiful while doing so. you pictured them laughing as she slipped and mat catching her before she could fall.

"you okay? i lost you again." mat skated right up to you, leaving maybe a foot of space between the two of you.

"yeah," you breathed. "just thinking."

mat smirked and skated backwards. "uh oh. that can't be good. less thinking more skating. would it help if i pushed you?"

"no!" you shrieked. "it definitely wouldn't!"

but it was too late. mat was skating up behind you and placing his hands on your waist. "relax," he murmured. "i'm not gonna push you without a little guidance."

relax?

relax?

when his hands were on your waist and he was mumbling in your ear?

how the hell was anyone supposed to live, laugh, love in these conditions?

mat added a little pressure to your back. and suddenly you were moving. "that's it," he praised. "now just move your feet."

it was easier with mat's hands on you, the sensation forcing you to focus on the warmth of his palms than the fact that you were skating on sharp knives.

"see? this isn't so bad, right?"

it wasn't too terribly bad, truth be told it was just like roller skating, just ten times scarier.

"yeah," you said. "not too bad."

"so you're ready to go by yourself?" his hands starting slipping away, leaving a burning sensation in their wake.

"i--"

but he was already skating away. he stopped about twenty feet away and smiled. "skate to me."

"mat--" your voice shook at the idea. skating with him was one thing, skating to him was another.

"hey," he said quietly. "eyes on me, okay? i'm not gonna let you fall, if i think you're gonna fall, i'll catch you. i was the fastest skater in 2020, remember?"

you nodded. "just like roller skating," you mumbled.

"except better," mat added.

you took a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other, slowly but surely gliding towards him. you started picking up pace the closer you got to him.

"mat?"

"you're doing great!" he smiled.

"i don't know how to stop!"

mat laughed even as he caught you. his arms gripped your biceps and his smile was a mile wide. "you okay?" he asked.

you couldn't help but smile. "yeah," you breathed.

there was hardly any room between the two of you. your heart was beating wildly in your chest at the proximity, the rush of skating alone, who knew? you surely didn't.

you looked into his eyes and could've sworn his gaze dropped to your chin, but you were known for your hopeless romantic delusions, so maybe--

"hey!" whatever trance you were in ended when you saw a man in coveralls standing at the end of the rink. "time's up, i gotta clean the ice!"

"sorry!" mat called. "we'll get out of your way!" he gently took your hand in his and skated the both of you back to the benches.

mat helped you take off your skates and walked you back up the tunnel towards the locker rooms. the both of you stopped just outside of them, considering mat still had to shower and go home while you had the rest of the day to do your work.

"this was really fun," you said. "terrifying but fun."

"i'm glad you enjoyed it." his smile just about made you collapse into a puddle.

but you got a grip on reality and nodded. "well, i hope this helps with alexa, i'll try to talk to her in the next day or so, see where her head is."

mat's jaw clenched but he nodded. "i'll be seeing you."

"bye, mat."

you might as well have been on cloud nine by the time you got up to your office. you were in a different zone, focused on the way that mat's hands felt on your body, in your own hand. the feeling of euphoria wouldn't leave your body, you were sure of it. nothing could take that feeling away.

until you got to your desk and saw tyler.

who was sitting on your desk and using a paper clip to get the dirt out from under his nails.

"what were you and barzal doing?" tyler asked, moving off your desk, instead choosing to lean up against the cubicle.

you ignored him.

"i asked you a question," he said.

"i heard you, tyler. but i have work to do." you signed into your computer and plugged your camera in, ready to start uploading and editing photos from practice and the game yesterday.

“do you really think sleeping your way through the roster will help you get your pics chosen for the social media accounts?” he sneered.

you froze, your fingers hovered over the keyboard. "what?"

"i said--"

"don't repeat it." another voice joined in and when you turned around to see who came in, you were flabbergasted.

mat.

"barzal i--"

"where do you get off talking to her like that? talking to anyone like that?" he stepped into the room, chest puffed out.

in all of your time working for the isles, mat had never been much of a fighter, but he looked ready to pummel tyler if need be.

"mat, it's fine," you mumbled.

"no, it's not. is this how he normally talks to you?"

you said nothing.

that only seemed to make mat angrier. "you need to go to HR about this. this is workplace harassment. now apologize," he directed at tyler.

"for what? speaking the truth? is this how you think you can get ahead in life?" tyler said to you. "first beauvillier now barzal?"

you and mat both froze. in the corner of your eye you could see his jaw clench before he looked at you.

"can you do your work from home?" he asked.

you nodded. "i just have a shit ton of editing but i can do that on my laptop--"

"great. i'll take you home."

"but my boss-"

"if anyone has a problem with it, they can talk to me. let's go." mat was spinning on his heel and walking out of the room as quickly as he came in. you were unplugging your camera and logging off your computer, packing up your things, before sprinting after him.

"mat! mat, wait up!"

he stopped walking and looked at you, an unfamiliar expression in his eyes. "can you wait for me outside the locker room? i still have to shower and change."

you nodded. "why did you come upstairs anyway?"

"to give you the skates." you glanced down at his empty hands. "i forgot the bag, and by that point, i was too lazy to go down and get them without you."

the both of you continued your walk until you got to the locker room.

"i'll be a few minutes and then i'll take you home."

true to his word, mat was only gone for ten minutes before coming out freshly showered and ready to go home. neither of you spoke until he was pulling the car out of the parking garage.

"what did tyler mean when he mentioned tito?" mat asked after moments of silence. his fists were gripping the wheel tightly, though you didn't know why.

"tito asked me to dinner on friday."

mat's fists tightened their grip on the wheel and his jaw clenched so hard, you were afraid he was going to chip some teeth.

"oh." was all he said.

"something wrong? i just figured for once i wouldn't be hiding behind my camera like you said and i thought it would be fun, you know? we get along fine. why? do you think i shouldn't go?"

"no!" mat said quickly. "no, i just, it just caught me by surprise is all. i'm sure you'll have fun."

"and i can give you alexa's number if you want to ask her out! she's coming over tonight so i can talk you up now that i know more about you, make it seem more genuine."

"yeah," he choked out. "yeah, that would be great."

mat pulled up to your apartment a few minutes later and watched as you got out. "i meant what i said in your office," he said. "you need to tell HR about tyler's behavior."

"i will." you probably wouldn't. "thanks, mat."

he nodded as you shut the door and waited for you to go inside before driving off.

you walked up the stairs to your apartment and unlocked the door. as you shut the door behind you, you felt the weight of today bearing down.

tito asking you out.

the moments with mat.

the slut shaming comment from tyler.

when did your life get so dramatic?

step 4: get her to say yes

you had alexa over that night, armed with a million reasons why she should say yes to mat.

and the one reason why she should say no was locked deep in your chest. your happiness and affection for him shouldn't deter her.

besides, you would eventually get over your silly little crush, right?

right?

"so what's new in your world? i feel like you've been so busy lately. it's kind of strange," alexa said before shoveling a forkful of pasta in her mouth. it should've been disgusting, but she made it look graceful.

"oh you know, just working."

"is that why you were in the middle of nowhere a few weeks ago? work?"

"what?"

"i checked your location, you were on a farm. didn't realize the isles was doing photoshoots that far out of the city."

"oh they're not," you explained. "i was with mat, we were just hanging out."

alexa blinked. "since when do you and mat hang out?"

ouch.

but true.

you couldn't come out and say it could you? that the reason the two of you started interacting was because he wanted to date alexa?

no, you couldn't.

so you lied.

"oh, the social media team wanted me to get some information on mat, like a get to know you segment. they wanted something outside of work, so we were just hanging out so i could write this article on him."

a complete lie. you haven't had to write anything on anyone since your college journalism class. but alexa didn't know that. you never told her what you do all day for work. for all she knew, you could be running the tiktok account.

alexa raised an eyebrow. "and how did that go? was he talking about himself the entire time?"

"no!" you said. but then you paused, realizing that getting defensive would just look suspicious. "he told me a lot about how he doesn't like mulled wine and loves corn mazes despite being absolutely shitty at them. he loves his friends and hockey, obviously. he refuses to let anyone pay for anything while you're with him because he has money and likes to treat people. and he sticks up for the people that are important to him. and once you're in with him, you don't have to worry about your place in his life or how important you are because he will keep reminding you."

alexa stared at you. "are you sure you don't want to go out with him?"

you guffawed and hoped that it covered up your embarrassment. "what? no! he's clearly into you, and i think you should go for it."

"give me one good reason why."

"because he's kind, and nothing like your ex. he cares, legitimately cares about people and their lives." you sighed, not sure if you were convincing her. “it’s just one date, lex. if you don’t like him at least you got a free meal.”

alexa chewed her lip, letting you anguish in silence. "fine. you can give him my number and we'll set up a date. i trust you."

"fantastic!" you were already pulling your phone out. "he'll be so excited--"

"only if you can look me in the eye and tell me you don't have feelings for him."

you opened and closed your mouth. "i don't have feelings for him," you said with as much confidence as you could.

"honey..."

"no! i don't! if i had feelings for him, would i be going out to dinner with his best friend on friday?"

alexa didn't look fully convinced, but your date with tito was a welcomed distraction as she started rattling off questions about what you would wear and where he was taking you.

alexa left two hours later, meaning you could go to bed at a reasonable hour. as you laid in bed, you grabbed your phone and opened mat's contact, drafting a text to him.

here's alexa's number. managed to convince her you were worth a shot. xxx-xxx-xxxx.

you locked your phone and put it on do not disturb before you could see his response.

when you woke up the next morning, you saw mat had simply liked the message and left it at that.

by noon, alexa texted you that her date with mat was on saturday.

step 5: let the dates begin

friday came faster than you were anticipating. you kept your distance from mat, unable to look at him without thinking about how he was taking your friend out the very next day and that your interactions from that point on would probably be through alexa.

tyler kept his distance, must've been the threat of going to HR (that you still hadn't gone through with) that had him treating you like a human being with feelings.

as for tito, you probably should've been more excited for your date that night, but all you could focus on was how mat and alexa would fall in love and get married and have beautiful babies and grow old together.

and you would be the sucker who set them up because you could never tell mat no.

a slam against the boards startled you enough to look up from your camera to see tito standing there with a smile on his face.

"you okay?" he asked over the sounds of his teammates on the ice.

you gave him what you hoped was a convincing smile and nodded. but he rolled his eyes.

"we'll talk later," he said before skating away. you smiled and waved at him before you made eye contact with mat who was clenching his jaw. at what? you weren't sure. you even turned around to see if tyler had entered the arena, but you were standing alone.

like you always were.

you were headed back to your desk to do some editing as practice let out, but your name was called before you could get away.

when you looked over your shoulder, you saw tito doing an awkward half jog half walk towards you with a tired grin on his face. "hey," he said. "how do you think practice went?"

you turned to face him fully. "you're asking me? a professional asking some photographer how practice went?"

tito rolled his eyes. "oh c'mon. you've seen our practices, by now you should be able to determine whether or not it was a good one."

"well, no one fought each other, so i guess that's a win."

tito shook his head. "nah, that's when the best practices happen. when everyone's pissed at each other."

you smiled. "shows what i know."

"i think you know more than you think. you've worked here for awhile now."

"i've just gotten better at motion capture photography and following the puck around the ice. doesn't mean i know shit about hockey."

"don't think we don't notice you getting riled up during games when calls are missed."

you tilted your head and furrowed your brows. "we?"

tito shrugged and laughed to himself. "mat usually points it out before i can." you must've made a face because he added more. "it's usually on the bench, he's focused on the game when he's playing."

the both of you turn your heads at the other players walking down the tunnel. when the both of you caught sight of mat, tito smiled.

"will you send me your address? so i can pick you up?"

your attention snapped back to tito. "yeah! of course!"

he nodded and started his walk towards the locker rooms right when mat walked up to you. "what was that about?" he asked.

you shrugged. "just going over details for tonight. he needs my address to pick me up."

mat clenched his jaw again and looked down the tunnel, nodding his head. "that's tonight?"

"yep. at 6:30."

he wouldn't meet your eyes. instead, he looked at your shoes, your camera, the hallway, his teammates, but would never look at your face.

"you and alexa go out tomorrow, right? where are you taking her?"

he ran a hand through his hair and nodded at anders as he passed by. "yeah, we're going out to this sushi place. did you ever talk to HR?"

"well no but--"

"do i need to talk to HR?"

"he really hasn't been that bad lately--"

"because i threatened to tell HR on his ass. he's gonna get comfortable and start insulting you again. it's just a matter of time."

you nodded, feeling a lump in your throat form at the idea of mat scolding you, in front of his teammates no less.

mat sighed and ran a hand through his hair again. "i'm not trying to fuss or tell you what to do, i just don't like seeing you treated like that."

"thanks, mat," you mumbled.

he still wouldn't meet your eyes, instead looking down the hallway to see most of his team in the locker room. "i gotta go, but um, good luck tonight. beau's a good guy."

with that he turned on his skates and walked away.

you felt every bit of pathetic as you watched him go.

that night, you settled on a pretty dress that wasn't too fancy, seeing as the only details tito had given you were that it was nicer than an olive garden but not a michelin star restaurant. you were strapping yourself into your heels when you heard a knock on the door.

your phone said it was only 6:15, but maybe tito was accounting for traffic. he never did specify when the reservation was.

"coming!" you called as you put your last heel on and made your way to the door. "i wasn't expecting you this early, you never told me when the reservation was--" your voice trailed off when you opened the door and saw who was standing on the other side.

mat.

he looked more disheveled than you'd ever seen him. it was clear he'd been running his hands through his hair repeatedly just by the strands sticking out every which way.

he still looked handsome.

"mat, what're you--"

"i think you're beautiful. and smart. and passionate about a lot of things. and i think anyone who tells you otherwise is an idiot, and i'd fight them if you'd let me." your eyes started welling up with tears. "i think you're perfect for me and if you'd let me take you out, i promise i'll spend the rest of my life proving it to you."

you blinked until the tears disappeared by sheer willpower, not willing to cry in front of him. "that's perfect," you said. "say that to lex and she'll be eating out of the palm of your hand."

you turned around to grab your bag and coat before you could see mat's face drop in confusion. by the time you turned back around, anthony was standing next to his best friend.

"you ready?" he asked, only glancing at mat out of the side of his eye.

you nodded and squeezed mat's arm as you passed; you couldn't help yourself. "get home safe, mat."

neither you or tito spoke until you got into his car. "what was that about?" he asked.

you shrugged. still not fully comprehending why mat showed up at your door in the first place. "he was telling me what he was gonna tell lex tomorrow, i think."

"really." he didn't sound convinced.

"why else would he show up?"

tito mumbled. "i can think of a few reasons."

after he parked the car, tito got out and opened the door for you while you were answering texts from alexa. he offered you a hand to get out that you took.

there were no sparks, no electric sensations going up your arm. just physical contact, just the warmth of his palm in yours.

he led you into the restaurant which was moderately fancy, like he said. the two of you were escorted back to a table in the corner, away from windows and therefore away from prying eyes.

like a gentleman, he pulled your chair out and helped you scooch up to the table.

"i can't remember if i told you this, but you look lovely," he said with a smile.

"thanks," you replied. "you look handsome." and you meant it. if you weren't in love with his best friend, in another life, you could see yourself falling for his blue eyes. and maybe you still could. mat was going on a date with your friend tomorrow so it was better that you just get over him already and--

"so how long have you been in love with mat?"

you choked on your own spit, and for a minute, tito looked apologetic. for his timing, you had to guess, not the question itself.

surely you heard him wrong.

"what?" you asked when you finally got your bearings.

"how long have you loved him?"

nope. you heard him correctly.

"i--"

he leaned forward, arms braced on the table. "you don't have to lie to me, i know. i've known for awhile."

"i--"

but the server came up and asked for drink orders. tito ordered a bottle of red for the table after asking for your thoughts.

you were still reeling from his question, safe to say you didn't have any thoughts.

"sorry," tito started. "i didn't mean to make you feel cornered, i just wanted to be honest."

"it doesn't look like you're the only who needs to be honest, it's me." you fiddled with the ends of your dress.

"why'd you do it? why'd you help set mat up with your friend?"

you shrugged. "i just wanted to see him happy. and i wanted alexa to find a good guy, i knew mat was one. they make sense together."

"even if it makes you unhappy."

"even if it makes me unhappy."

tito nodded, and looked at you like he could see something you couldn't. "let's forget about him for now and just enjoy dinner, eh?"

you gave him your best smile and nodded.

the rest of the night flew by. soon enough, tito was walking you up to your apartment and kissing your cheek before he left. you wished you felt butterflies, or something, but there was no special sensation. nothing to make you weak in the knees.

it was like a kiss from an old friend.

your phone buzzed with a text from alexa.

alexa: how'd your date go?

you typed out a quick response.

it was good. just got home.

you locked your phone and placed it on your nightstand before collapsing into bed. but your phone buzzed again. you thought about ignoring it, but if it was alexa, you didn't want her to think you were upset at her.

mat barzal: did you have fun?

you blinked before typing back.

yeah. tito's great.

not a second later, you got another text.

mat barzal: good. have a good night.

you fell back against your pillows and cursed at the ceiling.

step 6: let them fall in love

you woke up the next morning and stayed in bed until your bladder was about to burst. after the date with tito and the reminder that mat was going out with alexa tonight, it was all enough to put you back in bed as soon as you peed.

and you stayed there, flicking through netflix shows and wallowing in self pity. you usually weren't this pathetic, but the idea of alexa and mat getting cozy on their date that night was enough to warrant your sadness.

you'd pull yourself together by monday when you'd have to go back to work and see how happy she made him.

that's what you kept telling yourself, that at the very least, two of your friends would be happy.

by 7pm, you were sitting on the couch, waiting for takeout to arrive.

when a knock on the door signified your food arrived, you got up with your blanket burrito and walked to the door. you didn't even bother checking before yanking the door open and looking down at your doormat.

only to see a pair of shoes.

"what the hell," you mumbled. "i thought i said leave at the door...' your voice trailed off as your eyes lifted to meet a pair of hazel.

mat barzal.

he had your food in one hand while the other was in his pocket.

"mat?" you whispered. suddenly, you were throwing the blankets off your shoulders and behind you into your apartment where they'd be out of sight.

though it was then you realized you were in sweats and you hadn't done anything with your hair all day so you were probably better off with the blanket burrito instead.

"hi," he breathed. "here's your food." he handed it over, nodding when you murmured your thanks, and shoved his other hand through his hair.

you glanced at the time on the clock on your wall to make sure you weren't hallucinating. "why're you here, mat? shouldn't you be with alexa?"

"that's what i wanted to talk to you about, actually."

"oh no," you started panicking, your eyes widened. "did she not show up?" you turned back into your apartment and went to your phone, searching for texts from alexa to explain her absence. "i swear i thought she'd show. she told me she would and she's usually a woman of her word."

you turned around when your front door shut with mat standing in the middle of your living room, looking out of place and right at home somehow.

your phone was vacant of any text messages from alexa.

"no, she showed. i left early."

that caught your attention.

you set your food on the coffee table and turned around to face him.

"why did you leave early? was she rude? are you sick?"

mat shook his head. "no, i'm fine, she was fine. that's not why i'm here. i mean it is but that's--that's--i want, no i need to tell you something."

"tell me what?"

he rolled his eyes. "i'm getting to that." he started pacing your very small living room. you wondered if he knew how much space he took up in your apartment. you wondered if he cared how messy your place was. "i'm just gonna come right out and say it, and don't interrupt me this time." you nodded.

mat ran both hands through his hair for the twentieth time since he showed up. "when i said all those things last night, i wasn't talking about alexa. i was talking about you."

what.

but he continued.

"i'm not gonna pretend i've loved you this whole time, but i fell in love with you along the way. the way you kept analyzing every fucking pumpkin for the perfect one, or how you bring red wine to dinner unprompted because you can't not contribute to something, or the way you trusted me enough to take you on the ice and show you something i love, or how you laugh like no one has ever said something mean to you in your life even when i know that jackass tyler harasses you on the daily. you're kind to literally every person i've ever seen you interact with.

"but i hate the way you shrink yourself like you're afraid to take up space. i hate the way you act like alexa's better than you, like i couldn't fall in love with you when you're literally the most generous, kindest, passionate, and beautiful person i've ever met in my life. because i do love you. every fiber of my being loves you."

you blinked once. twice. and breathed.

"what?" you whispered as tears gathered in the corners of your eyes.

"i know you just went out with tito last night, and if you like him, if you love him, i get it. he's a great guy and you'd be great together. but i'm asking you to give me a chance, give us a chance. i've had fun with you the last few weeks and i cannot bear the thought of not calling you mine any longer." his chest was heaving as the words rushed out of his mouth.

you rounded the coffee table to get to him. as soon as you were in arms' reach, mat was pulling you to him. with your hips pressed together, your lips just a breath away, you spoke softly.

"please tell me this isn't a dream."

a small laugh escaped his lips and echoed over your own. "it's not a dream, baby. this is real. i love you so fucking much."

"i love you too, mat."

any words you had left to say were lost as he brought your mouths together.

you weren't sure how much time had passed before you separated from him with your hands pressed on his chest. mat tried to follow your lips, but you kept a firm hand on his sternum so you could speak.

"what about alexa?"

mat pulled back. "what about her?"

"you were on a date with her and just left her there?"

"i more than covered the tab if that's what you're afraid of--"

"what if she hates me?"

he laughed. like threw his head back and laughed before kissing you again. "baby, we were there for fifteen minutes and all i could talk about was you. she told me to come here and tell you the truth."

you smiled. "thank god for alexa."

"thank god for alexa."

mat led the two of you over to the couch where you immediately curled into him. he kissed the top of your head, seemingly addicted to having his lips on your body at all times. "you're fired, you know."

you would've pulled away had mat's grip allowed it. "what? fired from what?"

"the wing woman business. you're absolutely horrible at it."

"yeah, well i think it worked out pretty well."

he pressed his lips into your hair and mumbled. "yeah, i think so too."

#mat barzal #mat barzal imagine #mat barzal x reader #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #nhl blurb

[usereddie]

k but rewatching 2x01 and it's gotta be Buck's pov of ugh, this new guy who's all handsome and perfect or whatever

Be curious about Eddie's pov bc I feel like it would be 70% Panic like omg pls don't mess this up and also 30% Gay Panic like why doesn't the pretty guy like me :(

(fair warning, this may have spiraled past 2x01......a lot. bear with me.)

i don't think we've ever gotten eddie's pov the way we've gotten buck's (2x01 and 7x04 for example) HOWEVER i do think we more or less know who buck is from eddie's pov through his actions.

which, considering their characters, tracks so hard.

buck didn't realize he was queer until a man quite literally kissed him on the mouth. seeing eddie from buck's pov is safe because buck has no idea what his feelings are. we watched buck's complicated feelings of jealousy towards eddie unfold TWICE and neither time did he realize what the feelings actually were (physical attraction and y'know. being in love with the guy). buck's pov is one we're allowed to see through as the audience, because it's not actually gonna tell us much, seeing as buck hasn't realized anything.

eddie, though?

reservoir of catholic guilt eddie? the guy who had panic attacks about the idea of being married to his girlfriend? the same man who was diagnosed repressed by a cardiologist?

he knows. he knows and he's been pushing it down since he and buck met, and if we were to ever see buck through eddie's eyes it'd give away everything. the eddie we've seen through buck's pov is just. pure golden sunshine, laughter, love, and buck's best friend in the whole fucking world. buck's best friend that he's in love with, sure, but buck hasn't put those dots together yet, so we, as the audience, won't see that.

buck, to eddie, is home. is family and warmth and comfort. and, obviously, eddie is the same to buck, but eddie knows this. eddie is fully and completely aware of who buck is to him, he's just shoving it all the way down. eddie gave buck a place to land ("it's eddie's house, i'm not really a guest"), eddie trusts buck wish christopher more than he trusts his parents with christopher (ramon and helena saying to eddie 'don't drag him down with you' and him leaving for LA -> eddie saying to buck 'there's nobody in this world i trust with my son more than you' after the tsunami), eddie let buck in when he was at his absolute lowest.

and, you know.

the will.

we've talked about it a half dozen million times in this fandom but we're gonna talk about it again because it's brain melting. we've never seen buck through eddie's eyes but we've seen exactly who he is to eddie through his actions. eddie trusts buck. eddie needs buck to know he has a reason to stay, that eddie and chris are his reasons to stay. eddie told buck flat out that his life means something. that buck thinks he's not worth anything but he's wrong because he means everything to eddie. eddie loves him.

eddie loved him when he held his hand when buck got pinned under a firetruck and eddie loved him when he dropped chris off before the tsunami and he still loved him when the water went back to the sea and eddie loved him when buck sued the city because the worst part of the whole lawsuit was how much he fucking missed him and eddie loved him when he was trapped under a well and all he could think about was his son and how, if he goes too soon, christopher deserves to be with someone who will love him the way eddie does and eddie loved him when he thought buck was the last thing he was ever gonna see, bleeding out on the streets of los angeles and eddie loved him when he told buck in the only way he knew how to (because, evan) and eddie loved him through panic attacks and mental breakdowns and lightning strikes and new girlfriends and a broken ankle and a new boyfriend because there is no version of eddie diaz that isn't in love with evan buckley.

and eddie knows that.

which is why we don't see it.

#sorry this got so long but this makes me crazayyyy #buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #bia gets mail #anon #buddie meta

[esamastation]

Shizuroth, part five.

-

Sephiroth looks panicked. 

Genesis looks him over with an experienced eye, swiftly and with increasing concern.

Defensive stance with his back to a wall and the Restroom's only exit clear in sight. His face is pale - well, it's always pale, but now he looks practically grey. Shadows under his eyes, wide eyes, mouth slack. Well, for Sephiroth, anyway. The man has a resting face of a statue carved by the thirstiest of hands, and sometimes Genesis wonders if he has a partial facial paralysis, so little does it change. But he can tell the difference between Sephiroth with a resting face and Sephiroth with a spooked face.

"Sephiroth," Genesis greets him.

"... Genesis," Sephiroth says, and it doesn't sound even vaguely irritated. Mostly he sounds confused.

How concerning!

Side effects, then, bad ones. He'd managed to get out of Injections without being held back, so they're not physical. Mental.

No outward aggression, his pose is subtly defensive, shoulders ever so slightly curled in, holding his PHS in both hands. Was he messaging someone? Unlikely, with Sephiroth, he must've been reading something, trying to distract himself, misdirect whatever is going on in his head. Or…

Or it's that… other side effect.

Genesis had been gearing up to annoy Sephiroth back into sanity, but with this new information he quickly changes tacks. Sephiroth isn't about to lose it - he already did. "I heard you were locked up in injections for a full day. How bad was it?"

Sephiroth hesitates and his fingers tighten around the phone. Then he looks down. Demurely?

What?

"Three times the maximum dose," Sephiroth says.

Oh. "What, are they trying to kill you now?" Genesis asks incredulously. "See how far they can push the envelope before it bursts into flames? Questionable indeed is the wisdom of a professor, by the Goddess." Sephiroth's doses are already the highest in the program.

Sephiroth looks at him weirdly. "... Well, my heart did stop," he says finally. "Apparently."

Genesis makes a face. "Condolences," he says, wincing sympathetically. That was always the worst. "What's the damage?"

"I'm fine," Sephiroth says quickly.

"Ha! My friend, legend shall speak of this day," Genesis points out, motioning around them, at the restroom. "Of the greatest warrior - holed up post-op in the Restroom. You scared the poor Third Class who was here, he sent out an SOS."

Sephiroth scrunches up his nose at that, mouthing that, SOS. "And so you're here to save my soul?" he asks bitchily.

Heh, already he's starting to feel better. And to think Lazard panicked about Angeal not being in Midgar to take care of it. Little does he know - Genesis is the best at this.

"I shall be your hero of dawn at this hour," he agrees and steps closer. No defensive reaction, so he dares to reach out. "It's alright, my friend - we've all been there."

Sephiroth looks uncomfortable with Genesis' hand on his arm but doesn't try to knock it off. "I…" he says and then glances down at Genesis' chest. He looks resentful.

Being such a big man, he does small and defensive poorly. It's like watching a dragon curl in a corner. Tragic and kind of terrifying.

"Feel like you got a hole in your head?" Genesis says knowingly. "All your thoughts rattled, memories all up in the air? Any idea about how much you lost?"

"I'm fine -"

"Last year I came out of the labs and I couldn't recite half of the dialogue from LOVELESS!" Genesis admits bluntly. "It was unbearable, I was beside myself for a week - I had to re-memorise the whole thing."

Sephiroth looks confused at that, giving him a wary look. "That's…" he trails away, uncertain.

"A common side effect. Happens to everyone, to some extent," Genesis assures him easily. Honestly, he thought it happened most to Sephiroth. He has the personality of a man chemically lobotomised… like a lot of the early SOLDIER candidates. "Mako gives and Mako takes. In the wake of these crashing waves, we do our best to fill in the broken flood barriers of our minds. So. What is the damage?"

Sephiroth hesitates. "It's… nothing I can't figure out on my own."

Obviously, and even if he couldn't, it wouldn't matter - Shinra didn't keep them on Mako for their brains or their wit. Sephiroth could lose his mind and become a drooling idiot, and Shinra would still pump raw force into his veins, so long as he did their bidding. Which is honestly a shame - Sephiroth, when he could be annoyed into it, had a poetic sense of humour and came across as an intellectual.

"My friend, fates are cruel," Genesis says, shaking his head. "But we need not face their winds alone. What can't you remember?" He was obviously trying to look up something, after all.

Sephiroth looks away, his eyes troubled, and hides behind the PHS. "... My room," he admits finally. "I can't… figure out where my room is."

Genesis carefully doesn't laugh at that. It's not funny. It happens to a lot of fresh SOLDIER, and it's never not hilarious, watching baby Thirds bumbling around like lost ducklings - but it's not funny now. Sephiroth must be seriously distressed. He doesn't know how to get home!

A snicker manages to slip through, and Sephiroth glares at him, hard. "Apologies, apologies, my friend," Genesis says and grins. "Happens to the best of us. Apparently! Did you not check your key card?"

Sephiroth scowls and digs around his pockets, bringing our four key cards. He looks at them with embarrassed frustration and Genesis picks out the one to his private room. "Here - the floor and room number is written right here."

"... Ah," Sephiroth says.

Oh! Genesis didn't know Sephiroth could blush!

Oh… oh, that is terrible, that's utterly horrible.

Genesis clears his throat. "Come, my friend, let me escort you to your dwelling," he says and motions grandly to the door. "Where we shall partake in that awful tea you favour and lament our pride lost!"

Sephiroth, still looking a little flushed, makes another bitch face at him and then allows himself to be herded out of the sanctuary of the Restroom.

Genesis despairs.

This man, this most devastating of individuals, tall and broad and proud and terribly handsome, isn't supposed to be cute!

-

I have decided that Genesis has the emotional intelligence brain cell and that's how he convinced bunch of SOLDIERs to defect with him; he's the wine mom friend.

Also watch me headcanon SOLDIER lore up the wazoo...

#Fanfiction #Ffvii #Svsss #genesis rhapsodos #sephiroth #shen yuan #shen qingqiu

[darnell-la]

Hiii there! may I please request a Bellamy Blake mean and dark dom smut with !female grounder reader? An enemies to lovers thing with a lot of tension or anger and fighting m so they just give in and have hot steamy smut?💖 ty!

world count: 5,9K

pairing: Dom!Bellamy Blake x Grounder!Reader

————————————————————————

Hatred to love

Bellamy Blake’s pov

"This place is so shitty," I said as Murphy and I stepped through the overgrown woods. We've been here for let's say, 6 months, and I've never felt more used in my life. Now that the 100 of us helped the rest of the people on the ark, we can work to reduce our time away. 

To top off us being enslaved, we must deal with these people we call grounders. They’re violent and dirty, and think they own the place. 

“Better watch what you say before y/n hears you,” Murphy joked, making me scoff. Y/n’s the leader of these grounders and she’s a real pain in the ass. She’s always arguing and demanding things. They also protect her and do whatever she tells them to do. 

“Or what? Is she gonna stab me? We have guns and I don’t think they have treatment for that,” I said as Murphy shook his head. “I don’t understand why you don’t like her. She’s cool,” Murphy said. 

I rolled my eyes and stopped, annoyed that people kept saying the same thing to me. I don’t get what they see in her. She’s violent, dirty, and has the worst attitude you could possibly think of. 

“She’s not cool, she’s just some girl that thinks she has a say in everything,” I said. “First of all, that girl is 20, and second, she does have the day of everything. At least around here she does, and we choose to follow them since we landed in their territory,” Murphy said. 

“And if you have a problem with that, you can barge into wherever she lives, and argue with her. Hell, fight if you need. Anything to shut you up about her at this point,” he said. 

“Whatever man,” I said then kept walking, trying not to stay here all day and argue about how much I despise y/n. It just pisses me off how many people tolerate her. 

“You’re not gonna stop me, so save your talking,” I said to Murphy before pushing past him and a few other friends. I’ve had enough of y/n and her demands. 

I walked through the overgrown forest, stumbling over sticks and rocks, thinking about if fighting y/n is the best idea. 

She’s the best warrior they say and she shows absolutely no mercy. Even if I were to beat her, her people would kill me for making her surrender. I’ll have to get her alone. 

As I thought of things to do, I made my way through the forest until I was finally at the grounds of the grounders. They know me, so they let me in easily which was a big mistake. 

“Y/n?” I asked the guards of this small village y/n’s always at. They nodded their heads then turned around to walk towards, where I guess, y/n is. 

“Y/n!” One said as we walked upon y/n reading a book that my people gave to her, to little kids. They seemed happy and like they were having fun. I think this is my first time ever seeing her smile. 

“What did you come here for?” She asked. She always seems like she has a tone with me. Only me. “Oh, nothing. Just wanted to walk and talk. Only for 10 minutes or so,” I lied. I have to get her away from the guards. 

“Now you know I can’t do that. They always follow me. Where ever I go,” y/n said as I sighed. “I know, but, maybe they’ll make an acceptance this one time. Please,” I begged as she tilted her head. 

Y/n got up and walked toward me and the guards. She said something in her language that I still haven’t learned yet, then walked passed me. “10 minutes,” she said. 

“So what did you actually bring me out here for?” Y/n asked as she finally stopped somewhere a bit far from the village. “I was thinking we could fight,” I said. 

“Fight?” She chuckled. “Pathetic,” she added. “What’s pathetic is that you need a whole army to fight for you,” I argued. “That’s just how we work,” she replied. 

“What do you wish to fight for?” She asked, making me smirk. “If I win, you stop this boss act and I get to show people that you’re not as strong as you make yourself to me,” I said. 

“And if I lose, you can keep your little act going and I’ll be very, very embarrassing,” I said as she rolled her eyes, holding back a laugh I wanted to slap away from her. 

“Bet,” she said, a new word that she got from our kind as she jumped off of the log she was standing on and attacked me. I was almost unprepared but moved out of the way fast enough and kicked her back. 

“Good reflexes. But not good enough,” she said as she turned and kicked my legs, causing me to fall to the ground. “Fuck,” I groaned then quickly rolled over as she was about to kick my face. 

“Fighting dirty, huh?” I asked as I got up. “Nah, just want to get this over with,” she said before running towards me. She’s always been an attacker which is hard to fight against since she always makes the first move. 

“Already tried?” She asked, looking down at me after giving me the worst blow to my stomach. I hate her but I won’t ever doubt again that she’s a good-ass fighter. “Nah,” I said, about to kick her legs to make her collapse but I heard a gunshot. 

I quickly looked around as I stayed on the floor, hoping to see anyone but I can’t. “Y/n, get down!” I yelled-whispered because she still standing like she was in shock. She can’t be in shock right now. 

“Y/n!” I yelled. She slowly looked down as her hands lifted up towards her stomach. “Did your people use their weapon on me?” She asked slowly as she pulled her hand away from her stomach showing blood. 

“Ah, shit!” I said as she dropped to the floor. “No, no, y/n, you have to get up! Y-You can’t be out here. Shit! Fuck, uh, fuck. Y/n, get up!” I said as I tried picking her up, but another shot was fired but don’t hit us thankfully. 

“Hood your fire dumb fucks! I made her fight me!” I yelled out so my people can stop this madness. They just fucked up our stay here. Her people will never forgive us for this. 

“Bellamy, am I dying?” She asked, sounding like she was about to pass out. “Shit! No, no, you’re not dying. Just- Just stay still and hold this down,” I said as I took my shirt off, and lifted her ripped-up shirt to press down on her wound so she won’t bleed out. 

“Guys, stop it! She needs medical assistance!” I yelled back as I saw her trying to break correctly and keep eye contact with me. She still seems fearless. How could I do this to her? What did I do?

“Don’t worry, she’ll get it,” an unfamiliar voice said. “But that won’t be needed for long,” they added. I looked around until my eyes landed on people in a has max suits and a dude without one. Everyone had a gun. 

“W-Who are you?” I asked as I kept trying to push down on her wound. “We’ll get to talking once we get what I need,” he said then snapped his fingers. That’s when the people started making their way towards us. Towards her. 

“What? No. No, back away! Back up!” I yelled but they didn’t listen. “No! No!” I yelled as two people pulled me away. “Don’t you fucking touch her!” I yelled, making the dude without a suit on, chuckling to himself. 

As one guy went to pick y/n up, she lifted her arm and stabbed the dude in his neck causing him to fall back and bleed out. 

“Get her now! We don’t have time for this!” The man said. That’s when a few people attacked her, taking her weapons and then dragging her away. They’re manhandling her while she’s screaming in pain. 

“No, no! Help! Help us!” I yelled, hoping one of her people followed us so they wouldn’t completely have no eyes on her but they actually trusted me. Fuck. I kept repeating my yells until something knocked me on the side of my head. 

“What is this shit!?” I yelled at the man as he threw y/n on her stomach, onto this medical chair and then strapped her down. They didn’t even patch up her wounds. She’s bleeding out and groaning in pain. 

“I can see you’re not too happy. I assumed because of how you guys fought, you didn’t like each other but I see otherwise now,” he said as one sergeant pulled out some big needle that I’ve never seen in my life. 

“What the- Hey! Hey, get away from her! What is that!?” I asked the man as he took a deep breath, about to tell me the most inhumane thing I’ve ever heard of. 

“That needle you see is what we use to subtract bone marrow from the grounders who’ve been able to breathe on earth for hundreds of years,” he said as he sat in front of me after a guard placed a chair down. 

“You see, my people can’t survive the outside but they can. People like you can too which is surprising,” he said. “We’ve been studying you guys and we finally got one of you which will help another few of my people,” he added. 

“What? You’re gonna- You’re gonna fucking- No, let me go! L-Let her go! I swear to god-“ I went to say but he cut me off. “What will you possibly do?” He asked then snapped his fingers. Seconds later, his guards took me away as I yelled and demanded them to let me go but they wouldn’t listen.

Maybe an hour went by since the guards threw me into this clean and well-kept-up room. I’ve been thinking of ways to kill this man and escape. We can’t stay here. 

As I was about to start my banging on the door that I’ve been doing every 10 minutes, the door swung open to two guards dragging y/n into the room by her arms. 

She looked dead. My heart skipped a beat until I noticed she was alive by her whimpers. They patched her up but her blood is still leaking through her bandage. 

“Here,” a third guest said as he walked through the doors and threw a medical bag at me. “Fix her up, would ya?” He said then walked out with the other two after they dropped y/n on the floor. 

“Shit, y/n?” I said as I grabbed the medical bag and sped over to her. “Mhm?” She asked as I began to work on her. First I cleaned her up while keeping a conversation with her so she won’t fall asleep. 

“I need you to keep talking to me, okay baby? Keep talking,” I said after watching her eyes get heavy. “Hurts,” she said right before slipping away and passing out. 

“Y/n? No, y/n, stay up!” I said as I fastened my process before she looses too much blood. I’d she dies, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. I made her go out, far from her guards to fight her. 

I’ve always said that if I had the chance to kill her, I would but that’s a lie. Just a big fucking lie. I can’t do that to her. She’s one of the kindest, most responsible, and most thoughtful people I’ve met. I really fucked up…

“Guess I didn’t die,” I heard y/n say as she leaned up on the bed I laid her on. “Yeah, I guess,” I said as I quickly got up and walked to the side of the bed. “Hey, hey, chill out,” I said as I leaned her back to check her wound. 

“Why are you carrying for me? Didn’t you want to fight me? Maybe even kill me?” She asked after slapping my hand away from her. “Hey!” I slightly shouted as I grabbed her wrist. She tried tugging away but I tugged back to get her to stop. 

“Listen! You’re hurt and your people would probably kill me and think I shot you if they find your lifeless body bled out,” I said then pushed her wrist away and went back to slowly pull the big patch I placed on her. 

“It sent Straight through so that’s good. I didn’t know until I started patching you up. You’ll heal within a few months but it takes a good year to get back to your normal self,” I said. “A year!?” She yelled. 

“Chill, okay? I’ll take care of you and shit,” I said, making her laugh. “You? Take care of me? Yeah, it’s hard to feel comfortable around someone who got me in this situation!” She yelled at me. 

“I didn’t mean to get you shot! I just want to put you in your place and-“ I tried finishing. “Put me in my place? And what is that? Ruin what I and my people had going on for hundreds of years. We were doing good with and without you,” she said. 

“You need us,” I said as I leaned over her to intimidate her but she leaned up. I can tell that she was in pain but she kept a straight face because that’s who she is. She’s strong. That’s what I like about her…

“You don’t scare me, Mr. Blake, so don’t lean into my face and not do anything about-“She went to get aggressive but I cut her off by smashing my lips onto hers. She instantly stops talking. My eyes are shut but I can tell she’s looking at me with wide shocked eyes. 

I slowly lifted my hand up to place my hand on her cheek but she quickly gripped my wrist, stopping me. I kept my hand up, not giving up until she slowly let my wrist go, allowing me to place my hand on her face. 

Now she’s kissing me back and I can’t tell she’s probably never kissed anyone. She’s not bad or anything, but she’s flinching at new things I do like moving my tongue, she’s breathing heavily, and seems very needy. 

“You done being mad at me now?” I asked as she kept her lips on mine, kissing me in want. “Shut up and kiss me,” she said as she pulled my face into hers. I did. as told and pushed her down on the bed and hovered over her. 

Her small whines are the most beautiful thing I’ve heard. I love how needy, whiny, and sloppy she kisses me. How could I be so mean to someone like her? She’s perfect. 

Minutes into making out with her, I went to trace my hand down to her lower body but someone started punching in codes. I quickly got off of her as she quickly leaned up, snapping out of what we were doing. 

“Stay back,” I said as I got in front of the bed to cover her and defend her if they try grabbing and experimenting on her again until the door opened to Clarke. “Bell,” she said under her breath as she sped over to me and jumped into my arms. 

“I thought I lost you. We thought you ran away,” she said as I placed her down, not really comfortable with her wrapping her legs around me, right after I just got through making out with y/n.

“No, no, I was just out with y/n and then these people fucking-“ I went to say but she cut me off. “What were you doing with y/n alone? How did you even get her alone without her guards?” Clarke asked like she was upset. 

“That’s not the issue right now. The issue is, is that she got shot and they didn’t give her proper treatment,” I said as I walked over to y/n to show Clarke what I’m talking about. 

She walked over, seeming like she didn’t really care. “I tried my best but it’s not enough,” I said. “You touch her? Aren’t you like not allowed to? She barely had a shirt on,” Clarke said, focusing on the wrong things. 

“Well if I didn’t, she would have bled out, Clarke,” I said with a tone, pissed off that she’s so worried about how I’m taking care of y/n like me and her are dating. Clarke is just another girl to me. Nothing else. 

“Where’s the rest?” I asked Clarke so we could end this conversation that was going absolutely nowhere. “Making sure the guards don’t try attacking the people helping the people that are caged up,” she said. They caged people here? 

“They’ll explain to you. Let’s go,” she said, trying to pull me with her but I yanked my hand away. “We have to take y/n,” I said as I looked at her with a disappointed look. 

“She says she’s strong right? She can get up and get home herself,” Clarke said. “Nah, I think you can,” I said, causing Clarke’s eyes to widen. “You should go,” I said then began to help y/n get up. 

Clarke stormed out as I paid no mind to whatever she was fussing about. “You should have told me you had a partner,” y/n said. “She’s not,” I replied. “Doesn’t seem like it,” she said as she backed up from me. 

“I can walk myself,” she said then began walking. “Wait, y/n, it’s not what you think, okay? She’s into me. I’m not into her,” I explained. “But she still felt comfortable saying those things about me. You’re clearly showing her something,” she said as she limped out of the room. 

I stayed silent and still in the room, cussing myself out that I had something with Clarke. She just fucked up what I and y/n could have probably had. I should have known she’d be like this. 

Before I even pressed my lips onto hers, I thought about how all the women would feel about me and y/n being a thing. Clarke was the first to come to mind since she’s the more jealous type. The others have other people so they don’t need me.

SKIP SEVERAL MONTHS

3rd persons pov

It’s been months since y/n’s been shot and she’s doing pretty well. She still works out, trains, and talks to Bellamy but she never dares to speak about what happened between them in that room. 

She respected Clarke and Bellamy’s non-realistic relationship and Bellamy respect how angry she was at him. He understood how uncomfortable she could have felt in that situation once Clarke started acting a certain way toward her for no reason. 

Bellamy still tried to make small moves but it never really goes anywhere. They haven’t kissed each other since that day. The furthest it’s gone is touched around her clothing to ease her into him but she can’t forget how he made out with her and seconds later, Clarke came in like they’ve been dating for years. 

Today’s y/n’s birthday and Bellamy just found out that the grounders don’t celebrate birthdays since they use to lose track of times before the sky people came down. 

Bellamy is currently in y/n's room, decorating the place with old birthday decorations he found around the place. They had moved into the mountain men’s home after every one of them fled with suits to go someplace else, scared that the sky people and grounders would come after them for murder. 

“She’s back from hunting in a few minutes,” Murphy said as he walked into the room. “Good, and her guards won’t be sticking their noses around, right?” Bellamy asked. “Nope, so you’re good,” he said. 

“You really like her, huh? What happened?” He asked as he looked around the room, seeing how much work Bellamy put into it. bellamy was the one to even set up her furniture when they moved in a few months ago. 

“I don’t know. It’s like, right after she got shot, I noticed that I’d missed something about her a little too much,” Bellamy said as he sat down on y/n's bed and looked down at the ground. 

“I knew you didn’t hate her. It’s easy to tell,” Murphy said. “I read this book that was published back in 2023 and they said that people tend to get more annoyed about people that care about. That’s you to y/n,” Murphy said which is definitely true. 

“She’s here!” Monty and Jasper yelled through Murphy’s Walkie-Talkie. “Good luck and don’t be you please,” Murphy joked as he made his way out of the room. 

Bellamy chuckled as he got up and walked to the corner of her room so that y/n wouldn't see him when she first walks in. He wants to see her reaction. He loves watching her smile. 

“Why is my door open!?” Y/n yelled throughout the hallways. Dammit Murphy. “Hello?” Y/n asked before peaking around the corner to the surprise in her room. 

“Oh,” she said confused but slightly amazed. She’s never seen decorations like this before. “Who did this,” she said under he breathe as she took a step into her room with a smile on her face. Just what Bellamy wanted to see. He's never seen her smile this bright. 

“I knew you’d like it,” Bellamy said, making her jump a little. “Bellamy!” She shouted then covered her mouth. “You like it, right?” He asked as he slowly walked towards her. “Yes, I actually do,” she said. You could see her blushing. 

“Good, because it took me a couple of hours to find everything and put it up,” He smiled down at her. “Thank you,” she said as she began to scan the place and walk around. He can tell she really loves it. 

“You know, y/n. I’ve been thinking. A lot. I know we use to be enemies-“ Bellamy said but she cut me off. “You use to be mine. I never hated you but go on,” she joked. 

“Yes, yes, I know,” He chuckled. “But after that day in the room, I felt something. I’ve always felt it but it never came out until then. That’s the day I couldn’t force being angry at you or having some type of hatred towards you,” Bellamy said as she turned around and he walked towards her. 

“Y/n, I really like you and I’m sorry Clarke said those things about you but I don’t like her. I don’t see anything with her. But I do see something with you,” Bellamy said. He softly grabbed her hands and looked into her eyes. 

“So, could we please start over? Start something with each other?” I asked. “Bellamy…” she said as she pulled her hands back. “I can’t. You and Clarke have known each other for a while. I think she’s best for you,” she said. 

“But I don’t want her. I don’t feel anything for,” Bellamy said as y/n shook her head with a chuckle. “She still talks about you. She’s obsessed and loves you,” y/n said. 

“She doesn’t love me. She just hates the fact that I love you and now her. I’ve never loved her. I barely ever liked her,” Bellamy said making y/n shake her head. 

“Yeah, that’s not what she keeps saying. Apparently, you guys have been secretly dating for years and still sneak around at night in your room or go off somewhere where no one will see you,” y/n said, making Bellamy’s blood boil. 

“And who the fuck has she been saying this shit to?” Bellamy asked. “Me, Monty, Jasper, and maybe a few other girls,” Y/n said. “Well, that shit isn’t true. She just wants you away from me, that’s all,” Bellamy said, trying to softly grab y/n hands again but she backed up towards her bed. 

“Look, we can’t work out, okay? It’s not going to happen,” she said. “Why? Why can’t it work?” Bellamy asked with a tone, getting tired of excuses and other people getting in the way between him and her. 

“Because Bellamy! I don’t want you! You’re too different from me,” she said. “What are you talking about? No one who’s together is exactly the same, y/n,” Bellamy said as he stepped towards her. 

“You’re not for me, Bellamy so just- Just leave, Bellamy,” y/n said but he didn’t listen. “Y/n, you’re perfect for me. I love how different you are,” Bellamy said as he went to grab her waist slowly but she slapped his hands away, shocking him. 

Y/n walked passed Bellamy to get out of his face since he won’t get out of hers but he quickly grabbed her from the back and pulled her away from the door. 

“Let me go!” Y/n yelled at Bellamy. Bellamy threw y/n on the bed and then quickly ran over to her door, shutting and locking the door so that she’ll listen and stay where he wants her at. With him. 

“Bellamy, what are you doing?” Y/n asked, annoyed that he can’t just leave her alone. Why does he fight so much for her? Why does someone like her so much? She’s not someone who’s likable like this. 

“I’m here to show you love, y/n. I fucking love you and you know that. That’s why you’re pushing me away. You think you’re gonna hurt me or some crazy shit but you’re not. What’s going to hurt me, is if you don’t accept me and love me back. I know you like my touch and presence,” Bellamy said as he made his way toward her. 

“No, no, no! No, Bellamy! I-l don’t love you! I don’t!” Y/n yelled at him as she rushed her hands through her hair and rubbed her face, stressed that this is happening. She can’t run like usual. He’s got her trapped. 

“Stop lying, y/n. It’s getting annoying and makes you look more pathetic,” Bellamy said, getting angry. “Pathetic!? You’re pathetic! You have to trap a woman in a room to force her to love you,” y/n said. 

“I don’t have to force shit, and you know that. You fucking know it, so stop lying!” Bellamy growled at her as he grabbed her wrist tightly. “I’m tired of you fucking lying and denying. Admit it. Admit it now!” He yelled in her face, shocking her. 

“No,” she firmly said, hating the dominance someone like him can show over her. She’s never felt any kind of dominance against her but from Bellamy. She can’t seem to function right with him talking to her like this. 

“Get on the bed,” he demanded after letting her hand go, giving her a chance to listen. “No,” she said, once again with a tone, trying to stand her ground until Bellamy picked her up and threw her on her bed. 

Bellamy kept his silence as y/n began to yell at him. He didn’t care. He wanted to shut her for once and make her submit. He wants to get rid of the lies and excuses. 

“Bellamy, what are you doing!?” Y/n finally asked after noticing Bellamy’s shirt off. She’s never seen Bellamy with his shirt off. She’s seen his built-under wet clothes hut never more. This is a lot for her. 

“You like the clothes I gave you in a box? They’re perfect for you,” Bellamy said, making y/n think. Murphy, Monty, and Jasper said that they gave y/n the box so she’d have the best up-kept clothes since she’s the leader of her people. Now she’s finding out Bellamy chose them all. 

That explains the revealing parts, her panties, and bra that seemed a bit too pretty for Monty, Jasper, and especially Murphy to pick out for her. She knew they’d never do that. 

“Y-You picked these out?” She asked, knowing the answer already. “Of course I did. Otherwise, I’d have a talk with Murphy about what he picked out for you,” Bellamy smirked at y/n as he slowly climbed onto the bed. 

“Now will you finally let me taste you? I bet you’re sweet as a fresh berry,” Bellamy said as he tugged on y/n shorts. She tried slapping at his hands but she’s not really fighting him like she should be. 

“Look at that… You look so cute in these tiny little panties,” Bellamy said after getting her shorts off. She tried covering herself up but it was not enough. Bellamy laughed at her attempt as he began to pull her panties down, so focused on what he’s been dying to see. 

“Fuck, you’re wetter than I could’ve imagined,” he said under his breath. She had shaved today in the shower for the first time ever. She grew up thinking shaving wasn’t even a thing until Bellamy’s sister gave her something for her birthday. 

“No one’s ever touched you here, haven’t they? Tell me I’m the first, baby, and I’ll treat so you right. Better than your people. I’ll worship you more than anyone else can, baby,” Bellamy said, becoming full of lust by the second. 

“Bellamy, I can’t,” y/n has snapped out of what felt like a dream, angering Bellamy. “I’m tired of this shit,” he said as he quickly parted y/n’s legs and dived in without warning, lapping his tongue around her floss and clit faster than she could blink. 

“Bellamy!” Y/n moaned loudly at the foreigner feeling. She’s never touched herself in any type of way down there so everything she’s feeling feels too great for her. She’s too sensitive. 

“P-Please, Bellamy! Oh my!” She cried out, feeling her nerves hit her and her clit swell up. Bellamy began to suck any and everything he could reach. She grew wet, only making Bellamy eat her out sloppier. 

“I-I-I can’t Bellamy! I can’t!” She kept crying and shaking as she felt her stomach tighten. She’s never felt this before. She thinks she’s about to pee on Bellamy’s face but Bellamy knows he’s about to take the sweetest thing he could possibly taste. 

“Cum in my mouth, baby,” Bellamy said, and right after, y/n released all over his mouth and chest as she shook and rolled her eyes back. The moan she let out felt like music to Bellamy’s ears. He’s never heard of anyone so beautiful before. 

Bellamy backed away and hovered over y/n watching her eyes shut and her body shiver from the new feeling she just received.  

Bellamy began to take his jeans off as y/n lay there a whining mess, not being able to shake off the orgasm she just had. 

“Work with me and I’ll go slow. Resist and I’ll put you in your place, princess,” Bellamy said as she slowly moved in between y/n’s legs, triggering her kind as she felt his bare skin. Her eyes widen in shock at his size. 

“B-Bellamy, what are you doing? What is this? What is that?” Y/n asked, feeling a bit scared even though she knows Bellamy would never hurt her in any kind of way. 

“It’s yours, princess, and the only right thing to do with it is to get to know it and soak it with your heavenly sent sweet juice,” Bellamy said as he brushed his tip against her entrance to watch her jump a little. 

“Let’s see who’ll win this fight,” Bellamy said right before pushing balls deep into her cunt as she screamed and scratched at his chest and abs, feeling the pain but pleasure. 

“N-No, this is too much!” She whined as she tried pushing away from Bellamy but he’s not waiting any longer. Bellamy gripped y/n’s neck, placed his hand next to her ok the bed to keep himself up, and began to thrust. 

“Bellamy, Bellamy! Fuck, please! Please, Bell,” y/n moaned loudly, surprised at her language and the nickname she called him. “What’s wrong baby? You can finally not take something?” He laughed in her face. 

“You’ve been stabbed, shot, thrown off of hills I heard and you can’t take a cock?” Bellamy teased as he sped his thrust. “You can’t take a simple fucking cock, but you can take all of this other shit!?” He shouted at her. 

“You’re so pathetic,” growled in her face as her eyes rolled back and her moans got trapped by his tighter grip around her neck. “And you’re about to cum? Didn’t know you were a little slut to degrading, with the title you hold,” Bellamy chuckled as she squeezed his cock. 

“I-I’m not,” she whined, which broke into a moan as she came around Bellamy’s thick cock. “Fuck, yes. Cum on my fucking cock and I might treat you better when I fuck your little body,” Bellamy grinned down at her. 

“Bellamy,” y/n moaned as she softly grabbed his face and fucked up onto him. Oh, you’re horny? You like it, huh?” Bellamy asked, very surprised that she’s feel comfy with this so fast. 

“Y-Yes, I like it,” she whined. Y/n tried pushing Bellamy to the side but he was too strong. He watched her struggle until he let her overpower him and climb onto him. 

“Oh, shit,” Bellamy said shocked as y/n grabbed his cock and lined herself up to her own entrance until she dropped down on him with a loud moan. “Fuuuucck!” Bellamy bucked his knees. 

“So sexy,” Bellamy growled as he pulled y/n’s shirt and bra off. “Ride me, baby,” Bellamy said. Y/n didn’t waste any time to start. The moans leaving her mouth were nonstop. Her rhythm is as well. 

“You ride so good baby. All of that adrenaline in this sexy little body, coming to life,” Bellamy wrapped his large hands around her waist to help her. He gave her ass some smacks here and there, only making her sex drive higher. 

“Never knew your tits were so beautiful,” Bellamy grabbed one for a few seconds then began to pinch her nipple to give y/n a better feeling. “Bell,” she moaned as she leaned down in his face. 

“Right there,” he said, feeling his orgasm right around the corner. She stuffed his mouth with y/n’s free nipple and began sucking, only having her cum for the 3rd time with a wilder shake. 

She still tried to ride him but soon stopped as Bellamy held her down with one of his hands on her waist. Bellamy groaned loudly as he released a big load into y/n. He’s never shaken before. But this time it felt too good to hold still. 

Both pulled each other closer together as they rode out their orgasm together.

After cleaning each other up and talking about what the two should do further, they decided to officially be something. 

Y/n had to explain to Bellamy that if she were to date someone, within a month, they’ll have to do a traditional marriage because of her title of the leader. 

Bellamy couldn’t have had better news said to him. It was one thing for him to be her boyfriend but officially making her his is something he thought he’d have to wait years for. No, he doesn’t. 

Y/n and Bellamy lived life to be the best couple anyone could have imagined. They’ve grown both of their people closer and helped generations of people understand that no one is truly your enemy unless you make them out to be. 

#the 100 #the 100 fanfiction #the 100 smut #the 100 fandom #the 100 fic #bellamy blake #bellamy blake smut #bellamy x reader #bellamy imagine #x reader #pure smut #smut #imagine #one shot #fem reader #18+ fic #18+ content #18+ only #18+ #18+ minors dni #18+ post #wattpad

[galazry]

Down on one knee

pairing: scaramouche x gn!reader [established relationship] genre: fluff content: he brought you to your favourite place. as the sun begins to set, he decide to put his plan in motion. word count: 440 a/n: suddenly got the idea to write this because of my twt moot. Also bear with me, it's been a while since i wrote something...:")

It was like any other week; both you and your boyfriend made time to spend the weekend together. This time, Scaramouche brings you to one of your favourite place— a scenic spot where you can bask in the golden hour. As you both leaned against the railing, the sun sets in the background and everything looks ethereal with the golden glow. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" you whispered, watching as the the golden orb slowly sinks in the horizon. "Yeah, it is," Scaramouche agreed, though his eyes wasn't looking at the scenery before you— instead his gaze was on you.

His hand slowly begins to fidget with the hem of his shirt. You took notice and chuckled wondering what got him all so work up. Hearing you laugh had always calm him down, and the way you look — the wind playing with your hair, the sun basking you with a golden glow as if you were an angel, and eyes that seemed to twinkle with joy and wonder whenever both of your gaze meet— his nervousness had all slowly melted away and a look of determination was now on his face.

Your gaze was now back on the setting sun, though your attention was soon pulled once again towards your boyfriend as he softly called out your name. When you turned your head, you found Scaramouche kneeling on one knee. His eyes reflected his unconditional love for you as he slowly pulls out a small box from his pocket. Your breath hitched.

No backing out now, not that he was planning to do so, he takes a deep breath and slowly uttered the words— words that he had practiced a month prior to say to you. He just hopes he doesn't accidentally bite his tongue in the middle.

"[Y/N], we've been together for so long. Before I met you, there was a hole in my heart that could never be filled. Though that all change once you've enter my life. You've been with me through my worst and through my best and I can't imagine my life without you in it— I wish I could give you everything, but for now, I hope that this ring is enough."

As he said his speech, tears begin to prick your eyes. Though you wanted to blurt out your answer right away, you waited for him to finish his speech. Taking another breath as indigo eyes looked at the most precious treasure he had ever encountered, Scaramouche then uttered the last part of his proposal.

"[Y/N]... my love, my sunshine, the only one that I want to grow old with... Will you marry me?"

#gala writes #scaramouche #scaramouche x reader #scaramouche x y/n #scaramouche x you #scaramouche fluff #genshin impact #genshin impact fluff #genshin impact x reader fluff #genshin impact imagines #genshin x reader #kabukimono #kabukimono x reader #kabukimono x reader fluff #kabukimono fluff #wanderer #wanderer x reader #wanderer x reader fluff #wanderer fluff

[poguestarkey]

not in the same way- t.n.

back after a quick 8 month hiatus my b

decided to write a little blurb about reader not being in love with theo since i feel like it's always the other way around.

yes i am eating up the tiktok ideas of him being italian don't start w me

warnings: just angst on angst, destruction of a friendship, theo being sad (that's a trigger in and of itself tbh), sickly sweet adorable girlhood moment btwn the GryffGirlies, like one potty word, i plucked that one scene right out of TSITP don't come for me, horrifyingly unedited cuz i just dont care

theo nott x gryffindor!reader

-----

Dread.

That's all that washes over you when you finally meet his eyes. It runs ice-cold through your veins and you can practically hear what he's going to say before it even leaves his mouth. You're sure he can see the way your head shakes slowly as you realize because he reaches for your hand and holds it tightly between his. Not out of comfort, but as a plead.

Please, please don't do what I think you're going to.

Theo... oh, sweet Theo. Theo, with his huge blue eyes and endlessly large heart. Theo, always the first to celebrate the small wins with you. Theo, who in theory, should be the perfect man for you.

But Theo, who no matter how hard you tried, never made your heart sing the way your friends giggled about.

You never thought twice about the way his hands would linger over yours as he explained Arithmancy problems or how he always pulled you close in by the shoulder while chatting with his Slytherin friends, his fingers mindlessly tracing patterns into your sweater. His sweater. You've been friends since third-year, best friends. So many years of being close to him desensitized you to the constant comments of "That's Nott's girl," and "Would you look at the lovebirds!" They never hit home and you always scoffed them off with ease.

With ease, until last weekend in your dorm after an open-mic night at the Three Broomsticks. You and Theo had performed the most atrocious duet rendition of the new Weird Sisters song, "Why Can't You See."

"Y/N, do you even see the way he looks at you?" Parvati asked. Your head shoots up this.

"What?"

"C'mon, Y/N/N. The man is absolutely smitten with you. It's almost painful to watch, really," Lavender piped in, causing Hermione and Padma to sit up and join the conversation. Eyes widening, you realize who they're talking about.

"Theo? No... No, Theo and I are just-" You're cut off.

"Just friends. We've heard. A million times," Hermione sighs. "I mean Merlin's beard Y/N, you have to have noticed by now. Nott can't keep his hands off of you."

"'Mione, that's not- no, that's different. He just likes physical touch and that's fine-" You're cut off yet again by a slurry of teenage girls throwing evidence at you.

"-ever touch Malfoy-"

"-actually lights up when you enter a room, I've never-"

"-bigger heart eyes for you if they were cartooned on him in the Prophet-"

Your hands grow shaky and your breath becomes heavy in your lungs as the weight of what this means washes over you. Hot tears prick at the corners of your eyes and you fight the burn in the back of your sinuses with everything you have.

"Wait!" Hermione nearly shouts, and the cacophony of squeals and stories comes to a halt. "Y/N? Why are you crying? Are you alright?"

Her words make the first sob break out of your chest, and your hand shoots to your mouth to try and stifle the sound. Padma, ever the lover, is immediately at your side.

"I- I- I can't... I don't lo- if he really feels that way, it will destroy us," you cry, leaning further into her touch. Quickly, and with increasing amount of concern written on their features, the rest of the girls surround you.

"What do you mean, love?" you can't see her, but you know it's Lavender's breathy voice. "Isn't this a good thing?"

"No, no, no, no-" Your breath begins to hitch again, and 'Mione rubs gentle circles on your back. "Lav, him being in love with me is the worst thing that could happen."

"I don't mean to be insensitive, but the rest of us are quite out of the loop here and, er, well- why?" You let out a chuckle at Parvati's bluntness, but still felt the squeeze of the answer in your heart. You've known, deep down. You denied it as hard as you could manage but still, it creeped up on you, terrorizing your thoughts.

"He will never forgive me. I know he'll try so hard, but it'll never be the same, because he will never forgive me for not loving him the same way. Because he's done everything right. He is kind, and patient, and loving, and all of the wonderful things I've always said that I wanted but still, I just don't love him like that. And I want to- fuck, I want to so bad. It kills me that I can't. But he can never know that I know, because he will never, ever forgive me when I can't say it back." The last few words come out nearly inaudible as gasping sobs take over your body. "And I am so afraid to lose my best friend."

A squeeze from Hermione saves you from your thoughts. No one knows what to say, and Padma pulls your pillow and quilt from underneath you before grabbing her own, forming a pile on the floor. The corners of your lips perk up as you realize what she's doing, and soon the room is filled again with the sounds of girlish giggles and gossip and your four closest girlfriends do their best to keep your chin up for you.

The rest of the week, you can hardly look Theo in the eyes. You're not trying to avoid him, but every time you're in the same room you feel so overcome with guilt that it's hard to breathe.

On Sunday, you skip breakfast and hole away in the library under a stack of potions textbooks, shooing him away with a curt "Sorry, Teddy. Too busy."

Monday, you sit at Gryffindor's table for every meal and only speak in DADA to tell him it's his turn to practice defensive spells.

It's Tuesday night when you get the owl.

Y/N/N,

please talk to me. i need to see you, i'm worried. you're not alright.

i miss you.

-T

You write him back on the same piece of parchment, your shaking hands causing ink to splatter into tiny dots across his script.

I know. I'm sorry. Friday night.

Wednesday and Thursday are a blur of forced smiles to him and the burn of his stare from across the Charms classroom.

Friday comes, and you're damn near ready to pull Mrs. Norris' tail just to get a detention.

You know the exact bench in the courtyard he'll be sat at, and you count your paces as you walk. His eyes catch you and he swings his feet off the ledge, shutting his book.

"Y/N," He breathes, the sweetest smile on his face. "What's going on, cara mia?"

Every strategy you had for keeping him away from the elephant in the room goes flying out of your head faster than a Firebolt.

"It's nothing, really. Please don't worry. I know I've been distant but it's really nothing to be concerned about so-" your voice is getting louder and faster, a tell-tale sign that you're not telling the truth.

He cuts you off with your name.

"Y/N." You're eternally thankful that it's late enough that no one is outside with you. "Tell me what's happened. Please." His eyes grow even larger with pure concern and he moves his hand to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear. You pull your lip between your teeth while thinking about how to respond.

"I just... Teddy, I can't tell you. I just can't. I promise it's alright, I just don't want to talk about it." You're lying through your teeth and you're sure he knows it too.

"Alright," he whispers, voice dropping. His hand hasn't moved from the side of your face since he fixed your hair, and his eyes move to scan the slope of your lips. You can feel the pit in your stomach start to form as you fear what's coming next. "You are the most beautiful thing on this planet, you know that?"

His thumb is tracing the plane of your cheek.

"Theodore..." He smiles at his full name, and his eyes start to close.

No.

No.

This is what you feared so much.

That you would lose everything over one moment, just like this.

He can't be more than a breath from your mouth when both of your palms find his firm chest and push him away.

"Wait- wait, Theo. No. I don't- I'm sorry, but I-" His eyes snap open, that beautiful blue full of confusion. "I'm sorry, Theo." You can already feel hot tears threatening to spill over, and your stomach is churning.

"I.... What?" He says it so quietly you aren't even sure he meant to say it aloud. His hands move from your face, now salty and wet, to run through his hair, tugging on the strands.

"That's what I've been off about. I've been scared that you're gonna..." You gesture wildly between the two of you, not sure what to call it.

"Kiss you?"

"Yes."

"Why would you be scared of me kissing you, Y/N?" He looks genuinely, honestly puzzled.

"Because... because I don't... I didn't know, and then this weekend the girls were all on about it and I had no idea what they were talking about, and they told me, and I just panicked, Theo. I had no idea." He's stood up now, and you're seconds behind him, standing still in the chilly air as he paces and presses his hands into his eyes. "If I'd known sooner, Teddy... I would've- I could've done something, I don't know, could've tried-"

He stops, now just in front of you. "If you knew?"

"If I knew that you felt that way-"

"I thought you knew!" The crack of his voice splits your chest in two, unaided by the tears beading in his eyes. You've never seen him cry. "I thought you knew! From the moment I crashed your cabin on the train, I thought you knew."

The two of you just stand there, staring at each other, as cold, biting raindrops start to fall from the sky. You fight to form words but absolutely comes to your brain and you can't do anything but stare at him as he continues.

He hasn't even opened his mouth to start the next sentence when you realize what you're going to hear. You can't tell if it's the rain or the pure dread coursing through your veins that's turning your fingers ice-cold as you shake your head "no" to something he hasn't even said yet.

"I've been in love with you since I was 13, Y/N/N." He's holding onto your hand with both of his like it's his only lifeline while he desperately spills words. "I am so in love with you. You turn my world. You are my absolute everything. It consumes me. I can't hold it anymore, Y/N," He cries. Your eyes are squeezed shut and it's a wonder you haven't broken his hand with how tightly you're holding it between you. "Please, please, please say something."

"I love you," He sucks in a breath and you open your eyes to meet his. "I love you so much, Teddy. More than anything." His hands are now on either side of your face, and your fingers are laced around his wrists. "But I'm not in love with you," You choke out, grip relaxing.

His forehead presses against yours and he does nothing to quiet to sobs racking his body as you pull him against you, wrapping your arms around his warm frame.

You whisper dozens of apologies and "I wish I dids" into his ear before he releases you and sits back on the bench, moving the thoroughly soaked book to the side so you can join him. His head is in his hands and his elbows rest on his knees, and you think that you've never seen him look so defeated.

Finally, you tear your eyes away from him and stare straight ahead at the ivy covered walls, praying that the silence swallows you whole.

It's practically deafening, actually, because the sound of his heart breaking is echoing across the stone.

Eventually, you speak up.

"I think... I think I should probably go, right?"

He picks his head up but doesn't look at you as he replies:

"Yeah, I think that's for the best."

#theo nott #theo nott angst #theodore nott #theodore nott x reader #theo nott x reader #slytherin #harry potter #theo #nott #theo nott imagine #theo nott blurb #theo nott sad

[nisuna]

Hiii, Helloooo. I'm back :^)

I've made a separate post about how much this idea means to me, and I hope I did it justice. This is like my baby, one of the very first scenarios I've ever thought of. Something that motivated me to start writing in the first place and made me want to share my writing at all, so yeaaahh, please be gentle♡. I've made a detailed post about it, so feel free to check that one out here.

The gist of it is: It all happened one evening when your best friend came to pick you up from a party for the first time, being tipsy and sexually frustrated one thing led to another and you slept together and from then on it kind of became your guys' thing

You refuse to call him by his first name, but he'd really like you to. Even worse, you even add -san to his last name whenever you're tipsy

Oh, and no kissing, bcs that's too intimate am I right ha ha

What's the worst that could happen this time?

he miiiighhtt make you call him by his first name and maybe just maybe you do finally kiss???! who knows hahaaa

Without further ado Fwb!Suguru x f!reader, let's gooooo

<3masterlist<3

~2,4k words~ Strictly 18+ MDNI

TW: fwb!suguru x f!reader, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, cream pie, marking, biting, hickeys, multiple positions, get fucked stupid, first times, teasing, dirty talk, tit sucking, nipple play, multiple rounds, leg humping, so much happening did I miss anything?? lmk xoxo

He never understood why you liked going out to the most shabby and stuffed clubs. It reeked of alcohol and smoke mixed with all kinds of bodily fluids. As he was making his way through the dancing crowd of sweaty people grinding against each other, he finally found you sitting at the bar while some guy was leaning in your direction way too close for comfort.

He had his usual fit, hair half up with a black over sized sweater and loose black joggers. Making him look so huge that if there were any guys bothering you, they would leave you alone as soon as they saw him.

"Yo~ y/n", he touched your exposed shoulder and gave you his signature eye smile, before staring down the guy next to you that was trying to get in your pants or in this context in ypur skimpy little dress. The guys' annoyed look turned into a worried one after seeing who he was up against.

"Aahhh Geto-saannn you're here early" you mused, leaning against his hard chest. That damn honorific, he cursed but still managed to squeeze out a smile.

"Haha "-san", so you aren't her boyfriend then." the stranger snarled but soon gave up as Suguru raised an eyebrow at him and snapped a "watch it". "Alright, alright, I give up", he put his hands up in defeat. "Maybe next time, sweetcheeks."

As soon as the guy left, Suguru took both of your hands in his and knelt down in front of you. "Y/n we've talked about this. If you don't want to call me Suguru, at least drop the honorific. We've known each other for years now, don't you think it's about time. Also, don't you think it's weird when you call the guy you fuck by his last name, hm?" He turned his head looking at you expectedly.

"But Geto-saaaan-"

"Ah ah, what did I just tell you"

"Okay, okay, Geto" you huffed, "You know I'm not comfortable with that", you whined, squeezing his hands.

"I just want to hear you say it at least once. Say it and I'll fuck you real good tonight.", he smirked.

You considered it, after a hard week you really needed a good fuck. "Sugu-", is all you could manage before snapping your head away, "Nope can't do it."

He let his head drop with a loud sigh. "It's alright, I was just pushing my luck. C'mon, let's get you out of here." And with that, he rose back to his full height, grabbed your hand, and pulled you from the bar stool. While making your way through the crowd and to his car, your thoughts kept wandering.

Suguru... that's such a pretty name.

The car ride was mostly quiet, but as soon as you stepped inside his apartment, you were shoved against the closest wall and found yourself underneath him soon after.

"What's up with you today? If you keep squeezing me that hard, you might actually snap my dick off.", he chuckled. He's way too cocky. You have to do something about that.

"Have I ever told you how annoying you can be. If you don't stop talking, I think I might have to shut that mouth of yours up myself.", you whispered, putting your hands on his cheeks and pulling his face close so that it was right in front of yours.

His usually narrow eyes were blown wide open, his hips stopped moving and you became uncomfortably aware how close you two were right now. So, instead of the kiss he was so desperately awaiting, you opted for blowing on his lips and hugging him close.

"Just kidding.", you hid yourself deeper in the crook of his neck. However, when there was no remark coming from him, you pulled away to look at his blank face.

"Sorry I didn't-"

"You're really cruel, you know that", you felt goosebumps rise as he whispered against your neck. "It's payback time."

Before you could react, he pulled out, latched his mouth onto your neck and began sucking.

"Wait, ah- you're gonna leave a mark.", in a futile attempt, you raised your hands to try and push him away, only to have your hands pinned next to your head.

"If I can't have your lips, I'll take everything else.", he pulled away to take a look at you. "Tell me if you're uncomfortable."

Nod.

In between licks from your neck down to your breasts, he encouraged you to touch yourself. "Want you to cum from me playing with your nipples.", he smiled, oh so sweetly, while rolling the hardened nubs between his fingers.

Cheeky bastard, but you would lie if you said that he wasn't pushing all the right buttons right now. So your hand made its way down between your legs while you rubbed yourself in sync with his twisting and sucking.

"What happened? You're awfully quiet? Cat got your tongue?" and before you could snap back at him, he dared to smirk and pulled on your nipples making you moan.

"Fuck, stop teasing.", you whined.

"Say my name and I'll make you cum myself" he whispered after pulling himself off of you with an obnoxious pop. "What do you say? Good deal right?", he mused while kissing the skin between your breasts up your neck and to your ear. His hot breath kept hitting you as you arched your back off the bed, but to no surprise you remained silent.

"So stubborn for no reason", he shook his head in disappointment. "Then you better work for it yourself."

He really made you work for it. You always came so quickly when it was his fingers rubbing your clit, when it was his long and thick finger dipping into your dripping heat from time to time. Once you go Geto you never go back huh. Your fingers just didn't cut it anymore, so it took a lot of sucking and encouragement from him for you to tip over the edge with a silent scream of his last name.

He kissed your sensitive skin through it as you desperately clung onto him.

"Good job.", he grinned with a kiss to your cheek.

"Shut up.."

"Aww, don't be like that, c'mere", he mused, pulling you onto his lap. You let yourself fall forward against his sweaty chest as you tried to catch your breath. In your delirious state, you kept nuzzling your face into the crook of his neck, giving him a few cheeky bites, smoothing the area over with your tongue afterwards.

When you deemed him marked up enough, you pressed your forehead against his. As you were staring into each other, you mumbled, "Now we're matching."

"How cute. You're so kind, thanks."

You basked in eachothers warm embraces, breathing in each other until your hips grew impatient and started to grind against him.

'Someone's in a hurry, huh?", he quirked an eyebrow at you. You shrugged and whispered into his ear. "Gotta take care of you, too."

He expected you to go slow, but to his surprise you took a hold of his cock and slammed your hips way down meeting him in an instant.

"Whoa slow down you're gonna hurt yourself ah-" he looked at you in disbelief, "Is it okay? Does it hurt?"

You took a few deep breaths before continuing with overflowing confidence, "No, it feels really good. I can feel you all the way up here", you smiled, leaning back and tracing your fingers from your pubic bone to just over your belly button.

"Fuck, you can't just say those things out of the blue" he mumbled sitting up, finally starting to pound into you from below.

"That's what did it, huh?" you chuckled, arching your back and clawing at his shoulders. "How naïve, men are so simple." you kept that thought to yourself, tho.

As he kept bouncing you up and down you felt yourself go stupid on his cock. Each thrust was hitting your sweet spot just right and the stretch was to die for. You couldn't keep your voice down.

It didn't help in the slightest that he was playing with your breasts all throughout his mean thrusts. You went especially crazy when he fondled the fat of your ass and spanked the reddening flesh in between thrusts. As he felt himself get close he snuck a hand between your bodies to rub your throbbing clit. Your mewls and loud moans, slowly but surely pushed him over the edge.

He had to hold down your squirming hips as your breath hitched with the intensity of your orgasm and with how deep you were feeling him right now. He pulled you off of him and hugged you close, trying to calm you down.

"Shh, I got you, calm down you did so good", with a kiss to the top of your hair, you felt yourself relax. But that relaxation didn't last long, as you started to desperately grind against his leg. With your ass rubbing against his cock so perfectly he just couldn't help himself.

"Fuck, I'm hard again.", he admitted matter-of-factly.

"Then keep going. Give it to me until I pass out."

"Shit, you little minx." he cursed in his head but eventually gave in.

"Y/n?"

"Hmm?"

"Turn around for me."

You reluctantly got off his lap and got ready, face down ass up.

He really wanted to take you like this, but curiosity got the best of him.

"Fuck that" he thought as he flipped you and pulled your back flush against his chest, sitting down. After hooking his hands under your knees, he he picked up his pace as his hungry mouth ravaged your already sensitive neck.

"Feel good, yeah?", was the last thing you heard before he wrapped his huge hand around your neck.

Your mind went fuzzy as his hand was skillfully restricting your airflow from time to time. Which is exactly why you didn't register the next few words that tumbled from your mouth.

"Kiss me."

You made him stop dead in his tracks.

"What did you just say?", he had to make sure he heard you right.

Your hand was already at his nape, pulling him close.

"Kiss me..."

"Kiss me...", he gulped, "Who?", he was pushing his luck, and his heart rate picked up, afraid he might've pushed you too far. But the gamble paid off as he heard the words leave your mouth, that he had been waiting to hear from the moment he set his eyes on you.

"Kiss me, Suguru."

He wasted no time as he grabbed your jaw and smashed his lips against yours. It was so messy, so so nasty, teeth clashing against each other, but it was everything he could've ever wished for. He was on cloud nine. It was embarrassing how excited he got from just kissing you, but he couldn't care less at this moment. Your mouth fell open as you felt him spill inside of you. His tongue dipped into your awaiting mouth, while he fucked you through his second high.

He had to catch his breath while holding your limp form. He was sure you needed a break but when he tried to pull you off of his sensitive cock you stopped him. "Wait", you mumbled against his lips. "Don't pull out. Keep fucking me. Hurry up." How could he say no to you, even if he felt like he was about to die from overstimulation, he couldn't possibly deny you.

Which is how you ended up on your side, leg held up by his strong arm as he pounded into you from behind. Your sweet moans had him riled up impossibly more as his hips went to town on your pliable body. Even in this position, his eager mouth never left yours. The fat of your tummy and thighs kept jiggling so deliciously with each thrust that he just couldn't get enough of you. He soon felt you tighten around him and knew you were close, so he spurred you on.

"You feel so good like this, god you're so tight. Shit. About to cum?"

"Yeah, feels so good."

"Who makes you feel this good?"

"You do, Suguru. I love this so much. My god I'm gonna cum again."

"Yeah, yeah good, cum on my cock."

With a few delicate swipes of your fingers over your nub, your back arched as you came all over him. And he was there to swallow all of your moans with his greedy mouth.

When the heat of the moment subsided, you were a huffing and puffing mess. He held you close throughout and rubbed your lower back reassuringly.

After a while you were the first to break the silence.

"Holy shit, best sex we've had so far."

"Can't agree more.", he kissed your lips and continued. " Sooo, I assume you won't be calling me Geto anymore, right?"

You turned your head avoiding eye contact, but he stopped you, squishing your cheeks to look at him and raising an eyebrow. " Riiight, y/n? What's my name from now on? C'mon, don't break my heart."

"Suguruuuu....", you trailed off, but before he could celebrate, you quickly added, "-san.."

"Aah, so close", he chuckled, disappointment evident in his voice. "But it's a good start, so I'll take it.", he said truthfully, squeezing you tight. It was a huge step for your relationship. He was incredibly happy. He will make you drop the honorific no matter what. Now that he's got a taste, he will never let you go. Heck, he might even ask you out now that you're on a first name basis.

But he won't rush things. He's more than content with the current development of your relationship. You've come a long way, and only time will tell what it'll evolve into. The only thing he cares about right now is making you call his name over and over again, in one way or another. Life is good.

-----

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing this 🙆🏻‍♀️❤️ Please let me know your thoughts. See ya next time<3

#jjk smut #jjk headcanons #jjk x reader #jjk drabbles #takes with nini♡ #suguru geto x reader #geto x reader #suguru geto smut #geto smut #jjk geto smut #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru smut #suguru x reader #suguru smut #jujutsu kaisen drabbles #jujutsu kaisen smut #jujutsu kaisen headcanons #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen scenarios #getou suguru x reader #getou x reader #getou smut #jjk fanfiction #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #nini's takes♡

[ohnoitstbskyen]

On God of War and "canon" in Norse mythology

Playing God of War: Ragnarök and reading writing about it reminds me of something a lot of people have trouble internalizing about Norse myth, which is is that

The vast, overwhelming majority of Norse mythology is lost and

There is no "canon" in Norse mythology

The concept of "canon" in religion is, at least in the west, very much a Christian thing (yes, it's also a feature of other religions). The idea that there is an authorized, central, divinely ordained, "official" central set of facts which are true, and everything else is fanfiction at best or heresy at worst.

And this is something we've taken with us into our general media criticism, hundreds of thousands of words exchanged between people debating which parts of Star Wars or the MCU are canon, or endlessly cycling through interpretations of what parts of Tolkien's mythos apply to each part of the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit. I've participated in those discussions, and they can be a lot of fun, but it's worth remembering that this is only one of multiple ways to approach writing and narrative.

Norse mythology has no canon. There is no set of texts that have been declared by any central authority to be "the truth" of the Allfather, or the most correct depiction of Thor. Even in its own time, before its suppression by Christianity, Viking-age sailors, farmers and warriors would not have understood their religious practise as bounded by a finite and defined set of stories. It was an oral tradition, transmitted by telling and re-telling.

Your skjald knows some stories of the gods, maybe the guy the next town over knows some different ones, and maybe you go on a trading journey with a guy from Norway who knows completely different stories and you take those home with you where they become a part of the local rotation.

The primary sources for most Norse mythology (and certainly for God of War: Ragnarök) are the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, two collections of texts compiled in the 13th century in Iceland by Snorri Sturluson, a Christian poet and politician, as well as possibly other contributors at the same time.

They are limited by their geography, consisting only of those stories that survived in Iceland, and limited by their time period. The Viking Age is generally considered to have ended around 1050 CE, so Sturluson was compiling these stories two hundred years after the time when Norse paganism would have been the dominant religious practise in Scandinavia or indeed Iceland.

We have other sources than the Eddas, of course, but they are painfully limited: Runestones and archeological artifacts, as well as stories told about the Vikings by people who weren't them, which obviously comes with a lot of biases. The Viking-era Scandinavians themselves simply didn't leave any substantial body of written sources that survived.

Sturluson being a Christian, writing for Christian audiences, also introduces a lot of suspicion of tampering. He might have had incentive to avoid recording certain stories, for fear of being accused of spreading heresy, and he may have edited or altered aspects of the stories he did record to make them palatable to his audience, or to serve his own political purposes. This, of course, is a concern with any author writing anything ever, but since Sturluson is quite literally our only source for so many of these stories, it is impossible to check his work against competing narratives.

The consequence of all of this is that the vast majority of Norse mythology is lost. We do not know the vast majority of what that old religious practise was, we do not know the vast majority of its stories. This was a set of beliefs and stories told and transmitted across populations ranging from what is now the inland plains of Germany to the heights of the mountains of Norway to the shores and harbors of Denmark to parts of modern day Russia. These disparate populations would have had an absolutely enormous range of shared and local religious practises, they would have emphasized and cared about different gods, they would have absorbed and incorporated stories from neighboring religious groups.

This has a couple of consequences. For one thing, the whiny pissbabies crying about Angrboða being portrayed as a person of color in God of War: Ragnarök because "there were no black people in Norse mythology!" are, indeed, full of piss and expired baby oil. They don't know that, because nobody knows that.

Viking sailors made it as far as Constantinople and old Norse was once spoken in parts of Crimea. They even managed to make it across the goddamn Atlantic to found a settlement in Newfoundland, so the idea that old Norse peoples wouldn't know what a person of color is or tell stories about them is just absurd on the face of it. We have no direct evidence that they told stories about gods of color, but to look at the tiny snapshot provided by one Christian poet writing for a Christian audience in Iceland two hundred years after the Christianization of Scandinavia and confidently concluding that people of color couldn't possibly have existed in the Norse imagination is like finding the Q key off a keyboard lying on the ground and concluding there can be no such thing as vowels or the letter L.

The tiny sliver of Norse mythology that has survived to the modern day should to a modern reader be a prompt to imagine the vast possibility of what has been lost, not a reason to reduce the entire culture of my ancestors to whatever bits that were left by the time some dude in Iceland found it interesting and convenient to write them down.

Which leads us on to the other interesting consequence of the facts of Norse mythology.

It is an oral tradition, with no central canon and no central authority, whose religious practises were local and varied, whose stories were designed to be shared and picked up by whoever finds them compelling. Which means that any story we tell, now, about the gods that we find compelling is every bit as "canon" as anything that survives in the Eddas.

Which is to say: not canon at all, unless you decide to believe in it. Or, hell, even if you just find it enjoyable.

God of War: Ragnarök is as canon as Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology is as canon as Jul i Valhal that ran on Danish TV in 2005 is as canon as the MCU Thor, is as canon as the Prose Edda, is as canon as the half-remembered re-telling of Norse myth I heard from my Danish teacher in class in 1998.

It is often very difficult for a lot of modern audiences to free themselves from the idea of "canon." We seem to instinctively want a certain set of stories to be "the real ones," a certain narrative to be the "official" one, and set adrift without that sense of central authority to guide us, a lot of people exhibit what I would call an almost resentful anxiety. If none of it is definitely true, then what is even the point of any of it? If you can't know for sure which story is the most real, then all of it must be meaningless!

And yeah. It's easy to feel that way. We live in the Age of Canon, the era of the cinematic universe and the franchise, the epoch of copyright. But that is only one way to understand stories and narrative.

If you listen to the stories of the old gods, whether out of the Eddas or re-told in pop culture, and you take some of that with you, and you pass the good bits on to someone else, then you are participating in the oldest and most sacred tradition of Norse mythology. These stories do not belong to any one author (especially not the goddamn Mouse!) or even to any one people. They were telling stories of Thor along the rivers of Russia a thousand years ago, Viking sailors scratched their names in runes in the Hagia Sophia, Islamic artifacts have been found in Viking burials. Those who look at the tradition of my ancestors and feel compelled to do enclosure around them are fools and charlatans, fearful and small-minded.

Our stories are monopolized these days by capital. Canon to them is a tool of enclosure, a way to shut people out of participating in the modern mythology they are trying to build, except with their permission and profit in mind. But there is another way.

Listen to the stories and pass them on. The story you believe in won't be the one everyone likes, and the version you tell won't be the same version someone else passes on from you. But every telling takes the soul of the teller with it, and the stories we weave together in communal tradition become a picture of every storyteller who has contributed to them. And you spite the fucking Mouse.

#tb essay #god of war #gow ragnarok #norse mythology #norse gods #history #prose edda #poetic edda #loki #thor #odin #angrboða

[maxwell-grant]

So... Thoughts on The Penguin trailer?

I'm trying to reign in my optimism a bit and be a little more cautious, but so far: ahahahah oh man, oh man oh man, I'm really excited for this.

God I gotta get back on my Sopranos watch, I gotta start making time for it again. I mean, it's been a terrific show so far, I'm not just watching it because of this, but out of everything we've seen so far this trailer is the biggest "we're doing The Sopranos" thing I've seen from them yet.

I love the mention of Rex Calabrese here and the recontextualization of his character, and how Oswald views him. For comparison's sake: In Batman Eternal, Rex Calabrese was brought up as a brutal ruler who ripped throats out with his teeth and terrified all the other cops and crime families into obeying him and who understood the natural order through which he was supplanted by Falcone, who was then supplanted by Penguin. But here, he talks about Rex Calabrese as a childhood hero who helped people, who was given a funeral parade as a show of love from the people. That's the kind of person Oz idolizes, the kind of life he wants and is starting to think he will never get to have.

Here's one of the big reasons why this is already the best take on Gangster Penguin there's ever been, and the thing I love the most about this trailer, and something that absolutely defined him in the movie as well: Oswald is completely delusional about what being a gangster actually means.

Oswald here is a guy who had his heart broken in the movie because Falcone, the guy he followed and obeyed and looked up to with every breath, turned out to be a backstabbing piece of shit, with Oswald clearly kept in the dark about the nastier things Falcone got up to. He gets very offended at the suggestion he murdered Annika or that he did the Riddler's serial killer rat maze trap, and in that deleted scene where he tries to pay Selina and keep her from going underground, he clearly wants to be the guy who treats his staff allright and pays them what they need and tries to shield her from the grubby animals downstairs that he on some level finds disgusting (even though they're on his club, and he's providing them with what they want, and he's shielding the worst one of all).

And now he's sitting here talking about his old hero, a gangster from his neighborhood who reached out to people in the street and helped them, who died with his pride in hand and was beloved by his community for it. The kind of guy that Oswald emotionally talks about as someone he wants to be like, as he's getting ready to go to war and shoot and stab and blow up people in a crumbling nightmare city.

This is, in spite of everything, a guy who is very, very preoccupied with being some kind of gentleman, or at least more of a gentleman than the criminals he cavorts with, and a guy whose vision of himself doesn't match the reality of what he does, and a guy who has made a ridiculous cartoon of himself in order to try and forcing that childish idea into reality. This is a Penguin who lives and dresses and acts as an absurd child's idea of a rich and powerful man, except what that entails has changed.

Instead of wanting to be the romantic aristocrat, instead of playing the cultured gentleman thief, this Oswald wants to be the friendly gangster. He wants to be the neighborhood king who runs soup kitchens and helps old ladies cross the street and inspires beaten-down insecure loser kids like him to strive for more, the mafioso who looks out for women and kids and isn't scared of the cops and gets funeral parades for being such a swell guy who just does a little crime ova here every now and then, eeyy, c'maan.

Oswald here has the same dream as Giorno Giovanna, from JoJo Part 5, and he saw Rex Calabrese as the distant mysterious gangster who looked out for Giorno and invisibly kept bullies from picking on him and made the neighborhood treat him decently, who showed him what real power, power to protect himself and others, looks like, and he very clearly wanted to project that kind of fantasy onto Falcone, who is an actual gangster, and thus doesn't act remotely the way Oswald thinks they ought to act.

Oswald here wants to be the Depression-era honorable mafioso, just as outdated and fictional and mismatched a character in our time as the gentleman thief aristocrat was to the 1940s, and to me that feels like the first time anyone's really made Penguin-as-Gangster be a concept worth it's weight and play into makes him so engaging a character. It's just instead of being a burglar and crimelord who reads Raffles and quotes Shakespeare, this Oswald is a Tony Soprano who prays every night to be Don Corleone once he grows up.

And he might even get his chance! Because the way things are going in Gotham, with the city destroyed and in need of rebuilding, with the entire infrastructure crumbled and the mob having lost their figureheads and supply, and Oswald holding one of the few structures not completely totaled, he has the opportunity of a lifetime here to swoop in and play the Capone/Dillinger to this Depression-flavored Gotham.

And I'm really curious as to where he's heading within the show: whether he's going to make this fantasy of his work and be the reasonable flexible-but-unbeatable crimelord and the sole player remaining in town, or whether the downfall of organized crime in Gotham and the rise of the weirdos means that our beloved waddling freak is going to have to come to terms with what he actually is, and grab his colorful suits and his new name and make some umbrella guns to embrace and ride his bizarre awfulness into the sunset.

#replies tag #superheroes #dc comics #batman #penguin #the penguin #oswald cobblepot #colin farrell #matt reeves #hbo max #the batman

[anincompletelist]

rwrb fic recs! :D

I wanted to take the time to compile a few fics that have massively helped me over the last tough few months and never fail to bring a smile to my face (after the angst, of course)! thank you to everyone who takes the time to write for this lovely fandom, please keep it up! your words are so important and often change lives even when you don't realize it. I hope you're all doing well, and enjoy! <3

(please message me if for any reason you would like to be un-tagged!)

in no particular order:

he looks up grinning like the devil | @coffeecatsme | E | 38k

Henry can’t help it—he lets out a laugh and shakes his head. Beta Sigma Chi being a safe space is about as likely as the Republicans championing queer rights. “Right, and who’s this new president that somehow managed to turn around an entire fraternity?”

Pez winces. She hesitates at first, but then she must decide on something because her chin juts out. “Well,” she says slowly. “It’s Alexander Claremont-Diaz.”

Henry laughs so hard he almost falls off his seat.

Or, Henry Fox learns to fall in love with everything that is Alexander Claremont-Diaz, even if he insists on calling Henry "dude".

--

A Sporting Chance | @clottedcreamfudge | E | 126k

"Marry Henry - destination wedding. Combine all of our names so paperwork is a fucking nightmare." Henry stares at him and Pez rolls the dice, and-

"Congratulations to Alex and Henry Claremont-Diaz-Fox-Mountchristen," he says with a bright grin, and Alex punches the air and makes a 'whooping' noise. "Your wedding is attended by the Beckhams, the President, and several key members of congress. Henry is very gentle on your wedding night." Henry is going to fucking kill Pez.   "Fucking sweet," Alex says, because Henry is apparently the only one here trying not to have a coronary about all of this.

***

It had just been a party game, except now Henry is in way over his head.

--

a degree of fate | (locked) | lockedinmybody | E | 34k

Against the wishes of the palace, Henry decides to go back to university for a graduate's degree in Literature. And when you want to lay low, what's a better place than Austin University? It's not Henry's fault that Alex Claremont-Diaz is also there. Something must be his fault though, because despite having never met before and Henry only knowing him as the son of the Former President of America, Alex Claremont-Diaz clearly hates him. It's going to be a long two years.

--

the poem you make of me | @omgcmere | E | 91k

After being discovered on Instagram as a teenager, Alex Diaz is thriving as a social media influencer and model who just landed a high profile, high fashion contract with Calvin Klein. Alex can get any girl he wants, and he’s loving it. Meanwhile, British poet Henry Fox has just arrived in L.A. to kick off a North American tour promoting his new, steamy book of gay erotic poetry, and he’s attracting a lot of attention.

Bad blood is immediately sparked between them when Henry blows Alex off at their first meeting. Several tabloid rumors and an Instagram tantrum later, Alex and Henry are reluctantly thrust together to make nice, resulting in a grudging friendship and a magnetism between them that Alex can't explain. Why is Henry's poetry making Alex feel like this? And just what is it about Henry Fox that gets to him so much?

--

Mr. BodyPillow | @inexplicablymine | T+ | 21k

Two boys cuddling on a couch right on top of each other because they are in fact very gay™.

Inviting over a complete stranger for cuddles because you are touch starved might be the worst idea Henry has ever had, or the best.

--

More Amour | surveycorpsjean | E | 45k

Alex discovers something in Henry's closet that changes everything.

--

we've been here forever (here's the frozen proof) | @onward--upward | T+ | 12k

Objectively, I am aware that you – a stranger – cannot tell me my own sexuality any better than I can, however... Can you, please? Tell me? It’s 4am and I have been thinking about this for hours, and I can’t sleep.

Warmest regards, ACD *** It’s four in the morning, and Alex Claremont-Diaz has managed to follow a research spiral straight down into a personal crisis. It isn’t the first time.

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Oblivion | milowren | NR | 31k | please CHECK TAGS & NOTES prior to reading!

What if the moment in the hospital wasn’t a false alarm and the publicity surrounding the forced bromance between Alex and Henry had the adverse effect of them being kidnapped together?

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But I love him, whether or no. | @leaves-of-laurelin | E | 77k

Henry moves to New York City to help Pez with the opening of his new bar in the East Village. The location—fortunately for business, but unfortunately for Henry’s sanity—is directly across the street from a fire station. The sound of sirens is bad, Alex the gorgeous firefighter is worse. But when Alex helps Henry avoid a near catastrophe the night of the bar’s opening, the two form a tentative friendship that starts to develop into something more.

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we might just get away with it | (locked) | smc_27 | E | 21k

Alex is a model. Henry is a journalist, and a bit of an asshole. Alex wants him anyway, even when it doesn’t feel good.

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Hashtag Soulmates | @everwitch-magiks | E | 44k

Alex is perfect and handsome, the golden boy, everybody’s secret crush. So there is absolutely no way that he is the reader who screeches in caps lock every time that Henry posts as much as a drabble. There’s no way. Except Alex just closed his browser fast as fucking lightning, but not before Henry had gotten a good glimpse of the page Alex had open: AO3. ‘Don't Stop Me Now’, Henry’s current wip. The one that Henry literally just updated.

Sweet Jesus. Could it really be?

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the rubble or our sins | weather_stained | E | 14k

As the Emperor's grandson, Henry despises the gladiator games and resents being forced to attend them — that is, until he sees Alexander fight. 

It's a romance doomed from the very beginning, as Henry's family is already pressuring him into joining the army and finding a wife, but he falls hard for Alex nonetheless. Will Henry find a way to be with him, or will he spend the rest of his life looking back on their time together?

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that's all for now! I'd like to do this again very soon since there are so many new fics being posted that deserve love as well.

please let me know if there are any issues with the links, if you'd like to be un-tagged, or if you'd like to come and scream about these with me!

another good place for recs is @rwrbficrecs !

if you enjoy any of these (or any fic at all) please know - as someone who writes them as well - every single comment and kudos goes such a long way. it's not necessary, but it's always so much appreciated. <3

thank you for reading, and I hope everyone is having a lovely day/night! :D

-- anincompletelist / sarah

#rwrb fic recs #rwrb fic #red white and royal blue #fic recs #rwrb fanfiction #my fic recs

[hogwartslegacyreactions2]

Ok, I just found your wonderful blog and can't help myself, I have to ask for a request TwT One of my too many ideas would be: HLC's reaction - professors included - to Mc's Excuse after MC was really mean in an argument. I have an almost-Slytherin-but-then-Hufflepuff-MC, so...xD If you would like to do that - pls feel free to make it as fluffy or serious as you like - it would make me "Happy as Fig"....yes, thank you a lot! <3

A/N: I feel this one on a personal level. Let's make it soft with MC saying sorry

HLC REACT TO MC APOLOGIZING AFTER A HEATED ARGUMENT

MC: They know there's no real excuse for what they said. They could give their reasons, prescriptive and feelings at the time of the argument but they can't un-say what left their mouth. They almost wished they knew how to use the memory charm. Then they might not be standing there awkwardly awaiting the judgment from their friends and professors.

SEBASTIAN SALLOW: He sighs. "If we haven't been through what we have up to this point, I wouldn't accept your apology. But...we've both said things we regret. No point in dwelling." He smiles and offers the seat next to him for them to join him for study. When they sit down, he whispers out the side of his mouth. "Now, if you want me to forget, on top of forgiving you, you'll help me with my most recent relic discovery."

OMINIS GAUNT: He's been rigidly silent since the argument. MC almost walks away before he finally speaks. "I'm tired, MC. I'm tired of people hurting me. While I understand that words are difficult when emotions run high, please, don't say things you don't mean." His entire world is transcribed in sound, so people's words mean more to him than most. MC's apology better be sincere if they hope to keep him as a friend.

ANNE SALLOW: MC's apology leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, no matter how sincere they are. She's heard these types of "I'm sorry" speeches from Sebastian and her uncle before. Do they really expect her to forget everything just because they feel bad? "I'll accept your apology, on the condition that you don't speak to me like that going forward. If a conversation becomes too heated, I think at best if we take a break and let cooler heads prevail."

IMELDA REYES: "Oh, you're sorry? Go boil your head." She practically spits at them as she returns to what she's doing. She doesn't forgive easily. She's burned too many bridges in her life to care about one more. At least, that's what she keeps trying to tell herself. What MC had said really hurt and she hates the fact that they have that sort of effect on her.

NATSAI ONAI: "I'm sorry too. I shouldn't have let my pride escalate things the way they did. Maybe then we wouldn't be in this position. It is big of you to apologize first. Thank you, my friend." She opens her arms for a hug. If MC isn't a hugger, she just gives them a smile.

GARRETH WEASLEY: He won't admit it to them, but he had screwed up more than one brew from accidentally crying into it. What they said really hurt and now that they were apologizing, he was struggling to keep it together. "No, I'm not- *sniff* crying. I got batwing fumes in my eyes. I....I just want us to be friends again, okay?"

LEANDER PREWETT: He didn't have much self esteem before he met MC, and now that his worst fears were confirmed by them berating him because he disagreed with them, he felt worse than ever. Hearing them apologize to him felt surreal. No one ever apologized to him. Somehow, he was always in the wrong. He feels more vulnerable than ever. "So...does this mean you don't hate me?"

AMIT THAKKAR: He stubbornly holds on to his frustration with MC. He KNOWS he's in the right. They were being unreasonable and resorted to insults out of egotistical retaliation. They surprise him when they come back. "I'll admit, I didn't think I'd see you again for a while. It takes a lot for someone to swallow their pride and admit they were wrong. Thank you, for apologizing."

EVERETT CLOPTON: He thought that was it. MC didn't want to be his friend anymore. He couldn't look them in the eye, even when they needed to tell him something important. He's stuck in his own head until he hears them say the words "I'm sorry." He snaps out of it and stares wide eyed at them. "Really? You mean it? This isn't...you're not messing with me, are you?" He needs some reassurance, but afterwards he'll forgive it easily.

POPPY SWEETING: "Well look who came crawling back." Her eyes are full of malice. This won't be an easy apology. As soft spoken as she is, her heart is hardened to people who've wronged her. It's her defense mechanism. MC will have to do more than say, they'll have to prove it.

~~~

MC's got a lot of gall to think arguing with their professors was a good idea.

ELEAZAR FIG: He knows them better than anyone else in the school. They'd come around, they just needed space. He hadn't punished them for what they said. He smiles warmly when they come back and puts a hand on their shoulder. "It takes a lot of courage to admit you're wrong. Thank you, for showing how much you've grown and matured. I know plenty of adults who wouldn't do what you've just done. They would double down, if anything else. I'm proud of you."

MATILDA WEASLEY: She had taken SO many house points. No one argues with the deputy headmistress and gets away with it unscathed. "It isn't to me you should apologize. I'm sure your housemates aren't too pleased to hear that they are now in dead last because of you. Better get to work earning those back."

CHIYO KOGAWA: "Nothing like manual labor to bring out the regret of one's actions." She had them organizing and repairing the quidditch supplies without magic. "Thank you for apologizing, now get back to it. The quidditch season may have been canceled this year, but it needs to be ready for the next."

AESOP SHARP: He gives them an indeterminate reply to their apology, but, deep down, he's impressed. While they had certainly gone too far with their argument, they apologized for making it personal. He can relate to being so passionate about something that you're willing to defend it, tooth and nail. That didn't stop him from taking house points and giving them detention. They were stuck organizing and counting the alchemy supplies.

ABRAHAM RONEN: He hadn't taken house points or given detention. While what they said was certainly disrespectful, he did not believe that the lashing of adolescence should be so strongly punished. They were clearly passionate about their argument. He only wished he could understand their point of view better. He's proud of them for apologizing and rewards them with house points.

MIRABEL GARLICK: As much as she tries to keep her teaching environment positive, she will not stand for disrespectful behavior. She takes house points and dismisses MC before she gives them detention. Her heart melts when MC returns looking so sorrowful and full of regret. She forgives everything and is willing to let bygones be bygones, just don't let it happen again.

MUDIWA ONAI: MC's boldness doesn't surprise her. As long as it was just the two of them, she was willing to let everything slide. If MC had tried doing that in front of students, she would have to make an example of them. She doesn't take house points or gives detention, merely expresses her disappointment. It must have done the trick, because MC almost immediately apologized.

BAI HOWIN: MC must have been aching to muck out the beast pens by hand, speaking to her in such a way, because that's exactly what they got. Three consecutive days of detention just to clean every single beast pen. She nods curtly when they apologize.

DINAH HECAT: She isn't phased in the slightest by MC's outburst, but her eyes tell MC they have gone too far. There's a darkness in them warning MC to back down before she puts them down. "I suggest you get to your next lesson, MC. Wouldn't want you to get lost. Hogwarts is as unforgiving as it is beautiful to those who exploit it's patience." She walks away, not particularly accepting or denying any apology.

CUTHBERT BINNS: He was taken aback by MC so fervently accosting him. He had never been spoken to in such a way by a student in life or in death. He wasn't really sure how to handle it. He gives them a nod when they eventually apologize. "Very good then. Now...in 1252, the goblins-"

SATYAVATI SHAH: She gave detention. That's where MC surprised her with their sincere apology. She narrows her eyes, searching for any sign of weakness. They passed. "I'm sure you've seen the error of your ways, but you still have to finish polishing all of the telescopes by hand."

PHINEAS NIGELLUS BLACK: They're lucky they weren't expelled for what they said. He haughtily huffs and shoos them away like they're an annoying gnat. "Your detentions start tonight. I suggest you get going." He did have slight satisfaction that they were apologetic, but that was likely only because they had detention every night for the rest of the year.

#hogwarts legacy #hogwarts legacy reactions #hogwarts legacy professors #sebastian sallow #ominis gaunt #anne sallow #imelda reyes #natsai onai #garreth weasley #leander prewett #amit thakkar #everett clopton #eleazar fig #matilda weasley #aesop sharp

[rogueddie]

Steve and Robin making a pact- they have enough hush money that half of it would keep them comfortable without work for the rest of their lives. And they make a bucket list for the other half, travelling all over the country trying to complete it.

Robin calls it "The Top 10 Worst Ideas We've Ever Had".

Some of them they do together- like Disney or seeing the northern lights. Sometimes they do them alone and sometimes it's not even their own- Robin wanted to try swimming with sharks but backed out at the last minute. Steve wanted to try gambling in Las Vagas but the lights and noise gave him a blinding headache.

They have so much fun and consider it the best year of their whole lifes. They fill an album with polaroids and never run out of stories to tell the kids when they get together for things like Christmas.

Whenever anything big and good happens to one of them, someone will inevitably ask if it compares- the answer is always no. Even on Steves wedding day, when Robin is giving her best man speech, she jokingly asks how the day compares. He jokes that it's a tie (which his parner understands and takes as a big compliment).

#stranger things #steve harrington #robin buckley #platonic with a capital p #pwacp