#part of the reason why he got better is because he had to cook healthier food for his children (and ended up eating his own food)

[skeletoninthemelonland]

Springdad funfact !!! This is him before and after having a family. Bro got fluffier over time :]

#ahem ahem i made some springdad angst does anyone want to see it #part of the reason why he got better is because he had to cook healthier food for his children (and ended up eating his own food) #the main reason is cuz he has a family and that makes him very happy :D #springdad au #fnaf #springtrap #william afton #my art

[lover-of-mine]

No, but I could have so much fun playing with the perception of canon to lean buddie towards romantic, but mostly on Eddie's side because I stand by the fact that Buck doesn't realize what he's feeling. Because in season 3, Eddie basically tells Frank that he boxed his emotions so much he's not feeling anything, positive or not. And that begs the question of when did the box started to crack. We know it explodes in season 5, but that's because he couldn't contain it anymore, so when did it start to break? My bet, the well. What the did the well trigger? Eddie changing his will. And hiding it. The hiding it part is important because why would he hide it until he had an excuse to say it that was about Buck not himself? He almost died and his reaction is to give Buck the single most important thing in his life. And season 4 Eddie, he's more open but the box is still there, until the shooting. Say whatever you want, Eddie reached for Buck. He thought he was going to die and reached for him. That was Eddie oh! moment and I will die on this hill. But terrible moment to have an oh! moment, because he's, yk, dying. Then he used whatever energy he had left to ask Buck if he was hurt. Did he ask because he knows Buck enough to know he would ignore himself if someone he cares about was worse? Did he ask because he needed one of them to make back to Chris? Did he ask because he just realized he loves Buck and needs to make sure he's okay before dying? Who knows, I like the last one tho.

But then he wakes up in the hospital. With Ana, the girlfriend he was really intense for a second there but then we had doubt thrown on it by having Carla imply that the reason he's with her is Christopher. And then Buck tells him it would've been better if he was the one who got shot, and now he can tell Buck about the will while making it about Buck, not him (Edmundo Diaz say I love you like a normal person challenge). Maybe he was working himself up here to say something else, waiting for him to be healthier? I mean, he knows Buck associates pain with love so he wouldn't do a bedside confession. But then Taylor Kelly is in his welcome home party. And that's a reminder that Buck is straight (debatable) so he stays with the girlfriend we now have doubts about and who his doubts about will evolve to full on panic. Per season 6 he doesn't remember details of the shooting, but it would be great for dramatic purpose if he was lying because he can't say whatever he realized when he hit the ground.

But we keep going, he likes Ana, maybe he can love her, but that fails miserably. Isn't interesting that he needed Buck's permission to breakup with Ana? But then he swear off dating again. Which makes sense considering the fact that the box was about to blow and he was minimizing the amount of people that would be around when it did. But the box blowing up made him work on dealing with feelings in a healthier way. The first crack on the box made him sure of Buck, and Buck was with him all throughout him dealing with having no more box. And now there's no more Taylor Kelly. Eddie's single, Buck's single, and he's living in this bubble where he can pretend things are moving to the direction he wants them to, without actually doing something about it. Buck's is cooking dinner for him and Chris, he's asking Buck about things Chris hid from him. But then his bubble got popped. By Buck dying (if we believe Oliver, there was some sort of reaction shot from Eddie that we missed) but even with just what we got, he was acting like a grieving partner.

And after that we actually see Eddie being around Buck more. Does he want to be there if Buck breaks over dying? Is he just convincing himself Buck's still alive? Who knows. But he's also being pressured into dating again (after that poker game, tell me that wasn't a date, I dare you) but he's still ignoring it while hanging on to Buck. Until Buck blindsided him with Natalia. It's interesting that Eddie is hostile to every girl that shows interest in Buck, he looked like he could fight Abby, he looks like he poisoned Taylor. But he's not like that about Natalia, his main worry is actually if it's a good idea to date someone else he met in a call. And it is a choice to have Eddie looking that heartbroken while Buck talks about dating, then deciding he's ready to date (he's accepting the fact that he's gonna be Buck's best man and needs to move on). But he's settling, he's chasing what he knows (what he had with Shannon) to feel something. And to use that perception of the facts could be fun.

Also here I rest my case for Eddie fell first. But mostly because Buck is loud with his emotions and if he realized he's in love with someone that deeply he would start vibrating in such a frequency that there would be no hiding it. Dude is gonna have his oh! moment and have wedding rings later that day.

#anyway i just typed this out twice kspkspskapa #tumblr ate the first one kspakpakaoakoa #just a thought #911 #buddie #thoughts thoughts thoughts #buddie thoughts #otp: you don't need to pretend with me

[mannatea]

Break Open the Sky, a Tales of Symphonia ‘fic (Chapter 6)

Current Word Count: 43,035 Summary: What kind of “Hero” of Regeneration would she be to leave an infant to fend for itself? Someone had to have left it here for a reason. The question was, of course, why? But as she lifted the little thing carefully into her arms, the motion reminding her of nights so far in the past, now, the why seemed almost tragically clear: this baby was of mixed blood. Chapter Summary: First night in Altamira! Also, we get Regal's POV. Pairing/Characters: Raine, Original Characters, will also feature Genis, Regal, and Sheena. Endgame is Regal/Raine. Extra Info: This is technically an Accidental Baby Acquisition story, but I liken it more to “Doorstep Baby” literature because it sure ain’t cute. Rating: Mature, for themes. Genre: Eventual romance, gen, family, character study.

The title is the link to Ao3 for Chapter 6! If you read it please feed me a little comment. I love you x6. 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

Not too many notes this time but they're under a cut! (And not very organized.)

This chapter is kind of long and rambly but I consider it a necessary evil for the sake of the story.

--

Finally I got to write Regal's perspective, and it was very difficult because he has no idea what's going on.

Going off of the knowledge he had, he was literally assuming this could be a really terrible situation. I didn't go into the types of things he was thinking about exactly because there were too many to really cover, and I don't think Regal's the kind of person to jump into the deep end over speculation. That said, he's relieved the issue is as simple as "a baby was abandoned into Raine's care and she adopted the girls to get them away from a poor living situation in an orphanage" and not something like "running from an abusive partner" or "saved these children and/or herself from a trafficking situation."

--

What could be better than Regal running around shirtless all the time? Regal wearing a shirt. With the sleeves rolled up. Oh, and cooking.

--

The hardest part about this chapter was writing that awkward first few conversations. It's been 2.5 years since they've seen one another in person and she's just showing up out of nowhere to beg him for help in a bunch of little ways. Raine feels guilty and weird about it; Regal's just happy to see her (and eager to be useful).

I think if she was a lot healthier none of this would be so awkward (I think she'd just be straightforward about it) but she's unwell and struggling to keep it together. This makes her over-aware of asking him for things. I feel like the older you are the more this specific awkwardness will make sense to you. No matter how easy your relationship with someone is, it's at least a little healthy to be aware of if you're taking advantage of someone or not. Yes, Regal asked her if she would stay with him, but she knows he's asking because he knows she doesn't have any money or anywhere else to stay. So it's still a bit like her asking.

--

The mere idEA of a half-elf having to call anyone "master" gave me an anxiety nosebleed in real life. I felt like I had to acknowledge it because I feel like it would occur to Raine since George does call Regal "Master Regal."

--

Speaking of nosebleeds, Raine's having fun with those, and after writing about her getting nosebleeds I got a bunch of them too, so that was cool. (It was extremely uncool. After the period+nosebleed combo on the ship I got hit with that same one-two punch IRL and it's a 0/10 do not recommend situation from me. This was just a coincidence though.)

Obviously for Raine they're stress-related, if that wasn't obvious. Like, there's a medical/physical reason this happens too, but her current stress is triggering it. Regal's memories of her getting them in the past are also from stressful situations (mostly trying desperately to save someone's life and putting herself into a mana deficit while doing it).

--

Regal's house has a more or less high-ceilinged front rooms (living room, kitchen, entryway) and lower ceilings at the back of the house (for the dining room, for example) to make space for the upstairs rooms. The bedroom/bathroom setup is what we would commonly call a "jack and jill bathroom."

Like this maybe (thrown together to give a visual):

In other words, it's pretty fancy without being crazy. After all, Regal doesn't employ staff here inside the house and has to clean it himself; I don't think he'd want bathrooms for every bedroom even if he can afford it lmao.

--

The clothing situation: yep, it sucks. But the kids wearing Regal's huge shirts is such a funny image. You know they'd be so dwarfed.

Also, did you think Raine could escape the Meltokio party when she's sleeping in a bed in Regal's house and wearing his clothes? Heck no. She's gotta dream about it again. Maybe this time it's a bit more comforting, though.

#raine sage #regal bryant #tales of symphonia #mannafics

[primrosebitch]

My dad is such an interesting person, like he has had such a wide variety of jobs (i'm not gonna mention them to avoid doxxing myself) but i have no clue how he managed that because he went to college then law school and then did lawyering for over 20 years so WHERE DO ALL THE OTHER JOBS FIT IN, like i know one of them was concurrent with the lawyering and one was while he was in college but the others would be very hard if not impossible to do at the same time

And then this man used to take regular all nighters playing a goddamn video without realizing that he was taking regular all nighters, he has since stopped after i pointed it out to him, but like still wtf (one time he stayed up for like 3 or 4 days straight, i don't know how he didn't pass out)

I have no doubt that if he cooked his own food he would eat like a slightly healthier college student, why am i so confident in this you ask. Because when he was making his own food he would take a raw chicken breast, microwave it till fully cooked and then eat it, he did not add anything, he ate plain microwaved chicken for lunch, he did not see anything wrong with this. To add insult to injury he is a great chef, like he's really good at making great food, but he chooses to eat like this.

He somewhat recently got really into pickle ball and i have no doubt that he would play into the a.m.'s if it wasn't for the fact that the lights at the courts turn off and that everyone else leaves then, and by really into pickle ball i mean really into pickle ball, like he bought a good scale to weigh his rackets, he bought special shoes, he got lots of other stuff that i don't know the name or function of.

He once went through a philosophy phase and got really into this one philosopher, i can't say much about this endeavor of his because i am personally very uninterested in the philosopher he liked but i can say that he knew lots about that guy and was talking about him for several months.

He reads scientific journals in his spare time, which isn't weird or anything but in combination with everything else just makes him even more baffling.

When i started drivers ed he told me about how he passed the written part of the driving test, what this man did was he didn't study he took the test, failed, looked over his answers and checked what he got right and wrong, did the test again, failed again, looked over his answers again, did the test a final time, and passed. You were only allowed to take the test 3 times, and my father basically used the first 2 tries to figure out all the answers so he didn't have to study or put in extra work, I did not follow in his footsteps to say the least.

He told this story from when he was in college, he had developed insomnia and so he went to the doctor to help and the doctor asked about if he drank caffeine like coffee or coke etc and turns out my dad had been drinking a diet coke every day in the afternoon and he didn't know that coke had caffeine in it.

Another story from college, he was at a party and was offered cocaine and he decided to taste it (for some reason?) and his entire mouth went numb from just a tiny taste and so he decided not to do the cocaine because of that, i do not understand this man (fun fact, cocaine is a local anesthetic and used to be used in medical procedures before better anesthetics were discovered, so the cocaine numbing his mouth was completely normal)

He's recently gotten into ai like chat gpt and has started to learn to code, this man has so many random skills and knowledge.

It took him 56 years to find out he has adhd, i got diagnosed years before him, i have no clue how he didn't find out sooner because he presents pretty typically (ex losing his keys and them being found in the kitchen sink, the varied interests that change semi frequently, losing track of time, losing stuff often, forgetting to do stuff like he puts stuff on the stove and then it burns because he forgot about it, etc etc), tbh i had assumed that he had adhd and it was like a known thing that just didn't come up in conversation before he came home one day saying that he just found out he had adhd.

There are probably more stories about my dad that i don't remember at this time, so i might post them if i remember them, but i hope my fathers antics entertained you, my dads great but he's also weird as hell lol

#my father #true stories #funny #dad stories #like this adhd can help explain this #but it's still insane #i can't get over how he didn't know he's was taking all nighters #how does one do that

[whatremainsisnolongerhuman]

3.

Whether it be genetics or my environment, I feel like I turned 12 and a bomb went off in my fucking brain— like genuinely for the next 10+ years I was mentally unstable. Like unable to control my mood, constantly depressed or anxious or both or neither , I was miserable. While I was still in middle school what made me feel better was leaving more and more into Christianity as a stabilizing force.

I do think it worked, really well, and it wasn’t sinister or manipulative. People really supported me, I had community, I was engaged in learning. I loved to read, I love to interpret, and I love you feel loved. I liked to hear other people talk about things I didn’t understand. I liked all the cooking, and camping, and living. I liked all the new people that joined our church. I remember feeling privileged.

I think that if I were just a happy kid I wouldn’t have taken it to seriously— like I wouldn’t have had a reason to be in so deep. But I feel like this concept of this version of god gave me purpose. He is kind, fair, intentional, concerned, yearning, waiting. Involved. It made the rules make sense— that’s the fun part of Adventism when you are in it the rules make so much sense, and that’s why Adventist are healthier and wealthier.

So that’s why I got baptized at 13, and I made sure I agreed and understood it all. I was so loved too— I think people were really proud of me and they saw like that I was one of the good ones. I remember feeling really good too, but also really bad because I had all of these people and i still felt desperately alone. So after I was baptized at 13 when I was homeschooled for 8th grade, I got tired of the loneliness and decided to switch to real high school where I did in fact make friends and feel less lonely but at no point did I feel any less insane.

I did,however, feel gay. which was not ideal considering what I was being led to believe. And I remember that feeling— because it was less than 2 years after I “committed myself” to this lifestyle that I was very suddenly aware of it like we are aware that the lights are on, or that the color blue is blue, or that somethings will never be the same.

#deconstructing religion #deconstruction #journal #lgbtq #ex evangelical

[s-brant]

Cherry Bowl (3/8)

(gif: @kiekiecarrera) (PART TWO) (PART FOUR) (SERIES MASTERLIST)

Summary: When Kie cancels their plans together, Y/N asks JJ on a date to the Cherry Bowl Drive-In. Unsure of how to navigate his first ever date, JJ seeks out advice. Unfortunately, the night doesn’t go as planned, and both parties are left shaken by miscommunication.

Word Count: 10.6k

Warnings: Smut, public sex/exhibitionism, sexual choking, angst, depictions of mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and implied/referenced abuse.

A/N: Welcome back to Tokens! Slight trouble in paradise is brewing for these two lovers, so buckle up and read because it’s gonna be a rollercoster for a little while after what happens in this chapter. I hope you all like it, and if you did, feedback is very appreciated. Have fun!

"I'm just saying that oatmeal raisin is superior to chocolate chip, why is that such an egregious crime, Kie?"

The lunch room is filled to the brim with students going to town on questionably cooked frozen foods, soggy tater tots, and sugary drinks from the vending machines despite the Obama-era posters on the walls advocating for healthier school lunches that never seemed to make their way to Kildare County High. The extent of their healthy lunches extended to a serving of overcooked canned green beans served with the worst slice of doughy pizza known to human kind, so it was sort of contradictory.

Y/N sits across the table from Pope and JJ, the latter of which being the one who launched into a full-fledged debate with Kiara about which type of cookie was better.

The clear cling wrap sits, unfolded, on the table with one of her stickers neatly placed on the back of it. As consolation for his epic loss yesterday at the beach, she paid an extra .75 cents to get him it when she arrived first to their shared lunch period—one of only two class periods they have together, the other being gym. He was still in line when she peeled a surfboard sticker off of her sheet and placed it at the center of the wrapped up cookie as if to remind him of her triumph over him in the waves.

"Thanks, hot stuff," he said, voice somewhat quieter despite the fact that hardly anyone was in the cafeteria with them. Then his smile dropped into an deadpan expression as soon as he saw her choice of sticker and looked back up at her. "You're never gonna let me live that one down, are you?"

"Never in a million years. I'll be gloating about it until I'm elderly."

"That's my girl."

The sound of the constant chatter surrounding them from at least two hundred other people drowns out the memories of yesterday that threaten to haunt her when she watches him debate with Kie. The mere recollection of their night in the back of the van has her reaching to pull the collar of her cropped tee up to assure that the hickeys remain hidden on instinct, and he catches the action out of the corner of his eye. It has him fighting a smile.

Kie quips, "Maybe on another planet, but, here, I think we can all agree chocolate chip is better, right Y/N?"

Y/N's eyes widen around a forkful of mushy "green beans" at the sound of her name being said bringing her from the depths of her memories.

Usually, she's quick to jump in and give her two cents on whatever stupid back and forth they're all having, but her mind was elsewhere. Unbeknownst to Kie and Pope, she was mentally reliving every second of getting fucked in the van last night, so her attention to detail when it comes to the Chocolate Chip vs Oatmeal Raisin case isn't all too sharp.

"Uhhh," she stops for a second, looking at the half eaten chocolate chip cookie in Kie's hand, "If I say chocolate chip is better, can I get a piece of it?"

Kie's face lights up at her words, and she's already pulling off a generous chunk of the baked good to hand off to her. The sound of a certain someone whose lap Y/N's legs are outstretched onto from beneath the table scoffing distracts her from the first bite.

"I know you prefer oatmeal raisin, you traitor," JJ says.

Their brunette friend's brows scrunch.

"Why is she a traitor?"

They try to keep from making any faces or giving anything away, but Y/N has to stifle the sound of her choking on her mouthful of cookie at the question. You'd think one of them came out and asked if they were dating or something with how she reacts, and she feels JJ squeeze her ankle in a non-verbal way of telling her to hold it together. It was her idea in the first place, yet he's a lot smoother with keeping it under the radar.

Under it all, the aspect of keeping it a secret does unnerve him to a degree. He doesn't think he'd be brave enough to communicate it, especially not when their relationship remains undefined, but the darker side of his mind wonders...

He shrugs, saying, "Cause we were friends first. Duh. Other than John B, I've known her the longest."

None of them stop to acknowledge the identical aches in their hearts at the mentioning of his name. They skip right over it like it never happened. After the funeral a few days ago, they've filled their quota on mushy-gushy sad talk for the next week and a half.

The real reason is something far more complicated than him having a claim staked on her loyalty through having the longest friendship. It's something tied up in days of slowly getting pulled into one another's worlds like the tug of gravity itself, in how he has to refrain from slipping his arm around her waist in the hallway or kissing her goodbye after a sleepover at the Chateau. But until she gives him the go-ahead, he won't let it slip to anyone.

Pope speaks up from beside him, "You literally met her twenty minutes before we did."

"Still counts. Technically, I did meet her first, so her betraying Team Oatmeal Raisin is enough to be tried for treason in Pogue Court."

"Pogue Court isn't a thing."

He crosses his arms after he pops the rest of the cookie into his mouth.

"It is now. You can be tried for treason for breaking the rules. Rule number one is that all Pogues have to admit oatmeal raisin is superior."

He's about to ball up the cling wrap to throw away later when the surfboard sticker catches his attention again. It's the same color as his board, which he'd like to think is a result of her being an evil mastermind that went out to get this sticker sheet for the sole purpose of teasing him, but he's the one who got her the sheet as a gift for her birthday, so he knows it was pure coincidence.

Last second, he peels the sticker away from the cling wrap and looks down to place it over the top of her yellow converse that were once a vibrant, paler color when Big John got them for her, but have since turned into an ugly mustard/dirt-dusted color they heckle her over.

"What are the other rules?" Y/N asks.

One of the hands holding onto where her feet are casually planted in his lap, something that they've done long enough that their friends won't see it as anything odd, slides down to caress the stretch of skin beneath the frayed hem of her dark jeans. Something she didn't know about him before whatever it is they have together started was that he constantly needs to be touching her. She can't say she doesn't love it though.

Pope answers, "The oatmeal raisin rule is not official"—a pointed glance at JJ—"But I'd assume the rest of the rules of Pogue Court would be no lying and no macking."

"So, basically you two break almost every rule except the oatmeal raisin one, and I lie," JJ says and turns to look at her, "How does it feel to be better than everyone, Y/N?"

"Pretty good, not gonna lie."

He keeps caressing little circles and tracing up and down her skin beneath the flared out pant leg of her jeans while he swipes his phone off of the table top without attracting the attention of their friends, who continue on to a new topic. She isn't too focused on what it is. She only picks up that it has something to do with a class they're in that's more advanced that hers, so she promptly checks out of the conversation.

Ever since John B died, she hasn't been performing too well in school. She tries, truly tries, but her mind outright refuses to absorb any of the information. When she reads her assigned reading, she hovers over the same paragraphs over and over until she shuts the book in a huff and hides it in her backpack again. Losing someone you love has a surprising amount of side effects.

Her phone buzzing in her hand brings her away from the impending cloud of doom that often accompanies any thoughts of John B, and when she taps in her passcode, her brother's birthday, a message bubble appears with a banner displaying JJ's contact name.

JJ (Derogatory) ur a good liar. prob could've fooled me if i weren't the one macking on u

Their eyes meet for a second across the table, then he watches her thumbs move to type a response.

Kief Princess Little do they know I break every rule now that I've switched sides on the cookie debate. Kinda impressive ngl.

JJ (Derogatory) triple threat, baby

JJ (Derogatory) thanks for the cookie btw

She smiles to herself, so wrapped up in their own world that she doesn't notice everyone in the room starting to pack up their stuff in anticipation of the bell that is due to ring any second now.

Kief Princess Had to repay you for last night somehow ;)

When she glances up to see his reaction, she watches his chest rise with a particularly large inhale, and he chews on the inside of his lip in thought.

JJ (Derogatory) strategically bringing up last night so i'm turned on in physics? ur an evil mastermind

Kief Princess I try.

Kief Princess Apparently whooping your sorry ass at surfing isn't the only thing I'm good at.

She hears him scoff.

JJ (Derogatory) first of all, ouch. second, u barely beat me

Kief Princess I'm happy to challenge you to a rematch. I have plans with Kie tonight, so I can't till this weekend. All it'll prove is that I am the rightful winner, but we knew that already.

JJ (Derogatory) what r the stakes this time

Kief Princess No sexual favors. If you beat me (fat chance) I'll formally rejoin team oatmeal raisin.

JJ (Derogatory) :( sex makes it more fun but i still accept those conditions

JJ (Derogatory) team oatmeal raisin needs u, even if ur a traitor

Kief Princess Why bet sexual favors if you're just gonna fuck me after anyway?

JJ (Derogatory) good point

The sound of the bell ringing echoes through the cafeteria, and they both pop their heads up from their phone screens to see everyone, including Pope and Kie, already packed up and raising from their seats to scurry off in the direction of their next classes. Meanwhile, their stuff is all bestrewn across the table, particularly JJ's belongings.

The sight of Kie walking away makes Y/N ask after her, "We're still on for tonight, right?

She stops with Pope's hand interwoven in hers. The look on her face when she turns would make you think she got caught doing something she wasn't meant to. Something like forgetting about the plans they made last week to watch Fear Street together. The Cherry Bowl Drive-In is premiering the first two movies as a double feature for the horror movie buffs of Kildare, so they decided to get tickets. Kiara shares a fondness of horror movies with her. Since gory movies make the boys squirm, though JJ pretends they don't, it's their own thing.

"Actually, Pope and I were gonna go to the beach. I'm sorry."

JJ knows she's more upset about it than she lets on, but Y/N simply gives the pair a smile that doesn't reach the eyes.

The sound of JJ behind her makes them laugh on their way out, diffusing the minor tension lingering in the air from the awkward encounter, "Use protection!"

After their friends offer them a goodbye, they gather their stuff quite leisurely, not really caring about being late.

It's something they've talked about before here or there: her feelings surrounding Kiara and Pope's sudden relationship. It's not as if she harbors any ill feelings for them, she doesn't, but the ripple effects of their pairing on the group, and more importantly the girls' own friendship, couldn't be clearer from her perspective. Between the missed hangouts, forgotten plans, and the convenient way she never seems to have time to hang out with her and JJ unless Pope is there too, it's been building up for a month now.

What makes it sting the most is how close her and Kie used to be. They didn't hit it off immediately the way she and JJ did as children until her thirteenth birthday when no one she invited showed up to the party Big John helped her set up in the yard of the Chateau.

She was the one who rallied the boys together to walk to ask their school friends from the year above to come hang out for an hour or two, promising a slice of the wonky-looking but delicious strawberry cake her and John B spent the morning crafting together. She can remember the sound of their high-pitched laughs and the cloud of flour that hung in the kitchen when they high-fived over the finished product like it was yesterday. In her heart, it was yesterday.

That night was when she fell in love with her friends, and that was when she first knew Kiara was her best friend. They wove friendship bracelets on each other that night and wore them for years until they withered away. No one had ever done something like that for her before. Not even JJ.

"You okay?"

Feeling his hand on her arm, slipping down to take her hand for a moment in the seclusion of the empty cafeteria, makes her glance up at him with a distinct sorrow washed over her features.

You know what? Screw this. Why should she be torn up over Kie and let it ruin her excitement for the double feature tonight? There's no way in hell she's letting her best friend ditching her for her boyfriend get in the way of her plans.

"Do you wanna go on a date tonight?" she asks him abruptly, then adds, "To the Cherry Bowl with me instead of Kie?"

The question sparks a pause in his mind, a halt of hesitation in which he worries about her avoiding having to answer what he asked, but he attempts to play it cool and not fuss over her outwardly. There have been times where being treated like that has made her feel suffocated, so he doesn't want to risk it. When she's ready, she'll talk about it, and if she takes too long and buries her feelings, then he'll intervene. For now, he tries to keep his face neutral despite the frown tempting his lips at her disappointment.

JJ looks around once more before throwing his arm around her shoulder to walk her out.

"You bet your ass I do."

What is a person supposed to act like on their first date that's not actually a date cause everything between them is the same, but kinda is a date because they called it one? If you ever find out, please find JJ and tell him because he has no clue.

Pope wasn't too much help in the Instagram group chat he made for it seeing as his and Kie's relationship is too fresh, John B isn't even alive, so he's out of service for advice unless there's Ouija Board he can borrow, and, thankfully, Kiara was his savior.

Their phones began blowing up as soon as he reached his class after lunch period ended. He couldn't under any circumstances let it be known that this mystery girl he had a date with was their friend, but thankfully Y/N already had the alibi of going to the Drive-In alone. All he had to do was make up a fake date scenario and get basic advice.

danknugstickiestickies added kiara-c and popeheyward to the groupchat

danknugstickiestickies named the group HELP ME

danknugstickiestickies i have a date with this chick i met on the beach when i was out with y/n last week. i need ur advice

His phone screen lit up with the notification that both of his friends were typing, signified with the three dot symbol bouncing in the bottom left corner as he thought it through. They couldn't possibly figure it out, right? They'd been careful, he'd been respectful of her wishes, and they'd been too busy together to notice anything new with them. He figured it would work. It was a risk, sure, but it was worth it to him. He didn't want to fuck this up with her.

Knowing her, she probably wouldn’t even treat it differently than any of their other hang outs. It's not like they haven't been romantic or sexual with each other. They've done everything but go out on an actual date, so why was he nervous?

kiara-c ummmm

popeheyward Yeah, I'm gonna need you to ELABORATE!!

kiara-c did hell freeze over? since when does jj maybank go out on dates??

danknugstickiestickies renamed the group hell froze over

kiara-c very funny, I'm laughing so hard 😐

popeheyward Do we know her?

danknugstickiestickies don't think u do. she moved here last week and hasn't enrolled in school yet. her name's steph

popeheyward What about Y/N though?

kiara-c ^^

JJ's chest muscles tightened with the question prompting a rush of anxiety that made his breathing feel slightly harder. He glanced up at his Physics teacher, who was essentially dozing off behind his desk with his hand in a bag of chips and an educational video on the projector as an excuse to not teach, and looked back down at his phone without the added stress of possibly getting his phone confiscated.

Pope's message might as well have been a sucker punch. Forget butterflies, he set a wasp’s nest loose inside of his stomach to tie it into knots and flip it every which way. His neglected textbook served as a prop for his phone to lean on as he set it down to think.

Did they know? As far as he was aware, they were getting away with it. No evidence, concrete or circumstantial, was there to prove it. At least the stress of the situation killed any chance of him being turned on by her reminder of last night in their messages. This shit was boner repellant of the highest degree.

He played stupid. Better to let them volunteer whatever information they had before he went in saying anything incriminating that they didn't already know. If anything would sour the experience of their first date, it would be him accidentally making their strange in-between relationship public behind her back.

danknugstickiestickies ?? what do u mean

Three dots bounced in the bottom left corner of his slightly cracked phone screen.

popeheyward ...

kiara-c I mean, you don't see it?

danknugstickiestickies see what

popeheyward I guess we were wrong, but all of us always thought you two had some feelings going on.

"You don't say?" JJ murmured sarcastically to himself under his breath. "Never crossed my mind, Pope."

danknugstickiestickies bro that's jb's little sister

kiara-c so?

danknugstickiestickies forbidden fruit? making john b roll over in his grave? do those ring a bell or am i speaking in tongues

He was already a proficient liar in real life, but, fuck, it was easy in text messages. There's no chance at deciphering facial expression or tone, just a plain message with no room to budge. Thank God he didn't do this in person with them. He could've survived, but it wouldn't have been as quick and painless as the group chat was.

kiara-c jeez, sorry

Pope didn't voice it, but he noticed something.

He looked up from his phone and stared off at the wall in thought in his AP European History class. It piqued his interest that JJ simply said she was off limits, forbidden fruit as he put it, but did not outright deny having feelings for her. In fact, he didn't even address the question. He made excuses for why he shouldn't have feelings for her, but he never said he didn't have feelings for her.

Kie did not notice. Not because she wasn't smart enough to either, but because she was too busy hiding her phone behind her backpack to think too deeply about it. Her teacher was one of those teachers that would flip shit if they saw a cell phone turned off and faced down on the desk, let alone being used by a student during a lesson.

In his classroom across the hallway, JJ bounced his leg up and down beneath his desk in an absentminded urge to release the built up energy the anxiety produced in an over abundance.

popeheyward Our bad then. Even John B thought y'all were sus lmao.

Since when was that a known fact? Could he tell? Did he talk to Pope about him and Y/N before he died? Either way, it wasn't the time to pry about it.

kiara-c yeah you guys honestly could've fooled me if you wanted to

danknugstickiestickies well thank u, glad ur invested in our friendship but

danknugstickiestickies please help, i have no fucking clue how to act on a date and this girl is too cool for me to screw this up

That was when they finally dropped the interrogation session and started offering up tips. The best ones came from Kie, which made sense to him since women are more likely to know what other women like than two dudes who share one collective brain cell and never had real relationships.

Rule One: Be ready to pick her up five minutes early.

He wasn't ready to pick her up five minutes early. His bike broke down by the time he made it halfway down his street, so he had to push it back up the road and into the yard before setting off on foot to reach the Chateau quickly enough. And by quickly enough, it means he got there five minutes late, not early.

Rule Two: Compliment her after you get in the car.

She tossed him the keys to the Twinkie from across the hood, not giving him the chance to open the door for her, and it wasn't until they were setting off down the road that he remembered the next piece of advice he was given.

Side-eyeing her in his peripheral vision, he tried to find something to compliment her on specifically rather than the general compliments about her being pretty that she never fully believes when he says them. He was intending to say something about the skirt she had on, but when he chanced a glance over at her, she caught him and asked—

"What is it?"

Sent into panic mode, JJ blurted out instead, "I like your shoes."

He could've bashed his face against the steering wheel twenty times right then and there at the utter absence of reaction on her part for the next few uncomfortable seconds. It wasn't that it was a bad compliment. She appreciates any compliments at all...but her shoes were hidden from his view. Not to mention, they were the dirty, mustard yellow converse that the Pogues bash on a daily basis.

She laughed, lifting her leg to expose the sneaker on her right foot, and asked, "These? Dude, you roast me for these all the time. You and John B said they look like Big Bird shit on them."

The skin on the apples of his cheeks scorched hot with embarrassment, and he was never so glad that the overhead lights in the van were burnt out until that moment. He would've died on the spot if she saw him blush like that, face flushed pinker than sunburn. All he could do to save himself was murmur something about the color growing on him and keep driving in the direction of the theater with his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel he fantasized about banging his face into.

Rule Three: Insist on picking up the check.

In this case, it meant insist on buying the popcorn and drinks, and he miraculously managed to drop his wallet somewhere along the way when he ran over to the Chateau, so when he stepped up to the makeshift concession stand with her standing at his side, he felt around for his wallet in his jeans to no avail.

His thoughts echoed back to him, You gotta be fucking kidding me. Seriously? Is this actually happening right now?

"JJ, it's honestly fine," she said softly as he leaned over to search back of the Twinkie for the wallet. "We can look for it on your street right now if you want. It has your ID and stuff, you don't want a stranger to have that. We don't need to stay—"

It took all of his control to not shout it in reaction when he said, "No way. You've been waiting for this, and Kie ditched you, so I ain't ditching you too. We're staying."

His wallet could go kick rocks.

He came too far to be dragged down by the old leathery piece of shit anyway. Would he go out and search for it tirelessly the second the date ended? Hell yeah, that fucker had twenty dollars and his debit card in it, but he couldn't bear the thought of abandoning her or ruining her anticipated movie night by taking her out to search the streets with their phone flashlights for a wallet they might not find. He'd wait till the movies ended, take her home, then haul ass around the Cut searching for it after.

Thankfully, he found a couple bucks crumbled up in his front pocket while she scavenged for coins in the glove compartment, and they came up with enough to buy a water bottle and small popcorn to share together.

Rule Four: Don't have sex on the first date.

And it may sound easy enough to not act like a complete Neanderthal for the length of two movies, but the girl makes it pretty damn difficult if he's to say so himself.

That's what led him here, laying in the back of the sideways-parked Twinkie in the farthest corner of the outdoor theater with her practically on top of him. In any other instance, he wouldn't be opposed in the slightest, but with the cursed fourth rule in mind, he isn't too thrilled with the feeling of her hand rubbing up and down his thigh.

It isn't even meant to be sexual. They're constantly touching one another this way. She'll even slip her hands up under his shirt just to feel the warmth of his skin or when he asks her if she can get an itch on a part of his back he can't reach, but for some reason his brain is short circuiting right now.

The thing is, when Kie and Pope said he shouldn't do it on the first date, they meant it for his and Steph's made up circumstances, not his and Y/N's full-blown relationship without labels. When you've had sex with someone as many times as they have with each other, the hesitancy on the "first date" is nonexistent. It doesn't matter. But JJ, trying to follow the advice given to him to the letter for the sake of being the date she deserves, doesn't think about it that way.

It shouldn't be this nerve-wracking. They've been best friends since they were children, they've been flirting since they found out what basic attraction was in the first place, and they've been forming this relationship ever since John B died. Why can't he relax? Why is this so different compared to how easy it felt between them yesterday on the beach or today at lunch?

Rule Five: Be yourself.

It takes him another few moments of laying here with her before he realizes quite abruptly what went wrong in a quick flash of a thought that brings the fifth rule back to him. The problem wasn't the bike, or the weird compliment about her Big Bird sneakers, or the lost wallet.

The problem is him. The problem is that he's trying way too hard to make this something it isn't. The part about them that he adores so dearly is how they never have to try when they're together. With any other girl or guy, they'd have to fake something or act a certain way, yet when they're together, they can simply exist and everything is runs smoothly. That's not to say they don't disagree or bump heads, they do, but short of those outlier moments, it's easier than anything else they do in life.

His eyes flicker away from the screen for the first time since the movie began, which, by the way, is gruesome enough at times that he had to divert his eyes to prevent himself from seeing it happen. They land on where she lays, completely content with the night in spite of its mishaps, with her head propped up on the pillows they brought from the Chateau.

He wonders if she can tell he's acting differently. Surely she must notice. She's the type of person that typically never misses a thing, perfect for the gold hunt they went on in the summer with picking up the clues and helping her brother unravel the mystery, so maybe she noticed how flustered this date has him. Does it bother her? Does he bother her?

With a confirming glance back up at the movie to see nothing important happening, he can't fight the urge to speak anymore.

"Can I tell you something?"

His voice appearing through the darkness of the shut off van after spending the past half hour in complete silence makes her jolt at first before realizing who it was. Though she loves horror movies, she can't claim to not be affected by them. The night she falls asleep after watching one, she often finds herself compelled to turn a light on and keep her feet from dangling off the edge of the bed. It's worth the fear, though.

When she turns to look at JJ, there's a warm smile on her face. She's cuddled into his side with a hand placed casually atop his thigh, caressing with no purpose or intent, and her movement halts when the light from the movie on the projector allows her to see the expression on his face.

Anxiety has become an increasingly significant presence in his life with the recent events in mind; John B and Sarah, the four-hundred million dollars they lost out on, and dodging his father whenever he sneaks home to switch out the backpack of clothes and personal belongings he keeps at the Routledge house.

It manifests itself in jittery nerves, stomach pains, shortness of breath, and, at worst, panic attacks striking either at random or in response to a specific trigger. It's one of the few things he still tries to hide from her, and she tries not to push him too hard with opening up about it.

She abandons the movie for the time being and rolls onto her side to face him, upper body propped up on her elbow as she examines his face with downturned features.

"Of course," she says.

The words left unsaid are, "You can tell me anything. Whenever you need someone to listen, or to talk to about shit, you can tell me." He's heard her say it enough that he doesn't need to hear it now to know it's true.

There's a pause, then—

"I feel like I fucked this entire date up," he starts to ramble and cuts her off before she can think about saying what she wants to, "and I know it's okay to you. You have way too high of a tolerance for my bullshit, and I've been trying so hard to make this perfect, but all that did was screw it up."

She's left quiet for a second, taking it all in.

Maybe if he hadn't been so anxious about it, he would've realized what was wrong with his bike when he rode it home from school, or he would've noticed his wallet fall out of his pocket. The point is, he wishes he hadn't let the label attached to this freak him out so much. He isn't sure why it does, but it does.

But she doesn't do what he expects. She isn't drowning him in reassurances and, "It's okay's" because she knows he doesn't care for them much. When he, the most stubborn person she knows, apologizes for something he did, he doesn't want it to turn into the person accepting the apology coddling him.

Y/N sighs.

"Is that why you've been acting so different all night? I scared you with the whole ‘date’ thing, didn't I? It doesn't have to be a date if you don't want it to be."

What she doesn't know is that he wants it to be a date. He wants it to be a date so badly, he risked Pope and Kie finding them out for the sake of getting some proper advice on it, and now he's caught up in the same game of tug and war in his mind that always occurs when he wants to tell her the truth about his feelings for her.

Part of him doesn't understand why he doesn't outright say it. With every other girl he once showed interest in, he had no issues in letting them know he wanted them, but this is different. This isn't simply wanting someone, he thinks he's fallen for her. But whenever he says he's gonna grow a pair and tell her after all this time, he chokes. Involuntarily, he's reminded of his parents. Other than his friends saying it platonically, the only people to tell him they loved him were them, and with how they treated him, he sure as hell doesn't think that is love.

From his dad's brutal physical abuse to his mom's abandonment, he's too timid to tell her he loves her because of what could happen if she loves him back. Everyone else that has said that to him has either hurt him, died like John B did, or abandoned him.

He won't let that happen with him and Y/N. What they have, albeit undefined and codependent, is safe. It's the only thing he has left. Maybe it isn't right, and maybe he should open up about it to communicate the correct way, but somewhere in the misshapen logic of his mind, he correlates love to abandonment. And he doesn't want that to happen with her.

There are two sides of him at battle inside his mind. One side, the side that wants to do right by their relationship and actually communicate his feelings for once in his life, wants him to tell her everything. The other side, the side that responds based on the history of his past, wants him to hide it all.

"Will you be mad at me if we don't call it a date?" he asks.

She shakes her head.

The heavy sensation inside of JJ's chest nears a point of vitriolic violence against him as he starts to realize what he's doing to her, clearly letting her down, but he can't stop himself. Like a passive witness watching himself from outside of his body, the instantaneous trauma response to the sudden confrontation of his true feelings for her guides his actions without his permission. It shuts down any protest he has.

The sound of the movie fills the gap of silence between them the entire time. It’s a variety of bloodcurdling screams and disgusting sounds that would've made him gag if he weren't as distracted.

They can make out each other's faces through the darkness, but barely. It takes a flash of bright color from the film or a nearby car's lights turning on for them to fully see one another. Without the other knowing, they both put masks of calm and collected coolness on their faces despite the feelings raging beneath the surface—more so on his part than hers.

"Maybe," he says, pausing, "we should just keep things the way they've been."

As soon as the words leave his mouth, a soul-crushing amount of disappointment weighs her down. She said it was fine if he doesn't want it to be a date—and it is, she would never hold it against him—but that doesn't mean it can't hurt her. Things have been going so well, she almost thought...If tonight went well, she was thinking about no longer keeping it a secret, but if he said he wants things to stay the same, then maybe he isn't as ready for it as she is?

Meanwhile, JJ is on another page entirely.

She's embarrassed of being with you, a familiar voice in the back of his head croons. She's gonna leave just like everyone else does. If she doesn't even wanna tell your friends, why should you pretend you're dating?

The internal comments are the type that cause him to physically grimace when he's alone. Intrusive thoughts are just that: intrusive.

Sneaking into the guarded sanctuary of a person's mind, they set out to convince them the opposite of their reality. The only thing is, where most people's minds are guarded sanctuaries with walls of impregnable defense, his mind is the equivalent of a fortress blown to smithereens. The castle walls lay in rubble, the guards no where to be seen, and the path for these thoughts to slip past and straight to the vulnerability of his mind is left wide open.

In the privacy of his room, these thoughts attack him the most at night when he tries to fall asleep—when things get too quiet. With nobody around, when they get this bad there's nothing he can do except break down. It builds from the mere anxiety of attempting to force the thoughts away to full-blown panic attack mode. The more he resists them, the more aggressive they become. He'll gasp for air with tears streaming down his face, hitting his head with the heel of his hand as if that'd do something to stop his relentless mind.

But he can't afford to react in front of her, so the extent of his reaction is a subtle twitch of his face that she cannot see in the momentary darkness before the movie switches to another scene a second later. In a way, it does make the thoughts go away to have her here preventing him from spiraling alone. Having to focus on her keeps his mind away for moments at a time until the thoughts ease their grip on him.

When she hasn't answered for a while, he asks, terrified that he did something bad, "Are we good?"

The question seems to wake her up, snapping her out of the lonely direction her thoughts went into when he "rejected" her. It takes every bit of common sense she has left to force herself to understand that this doesn't mean he doesn't want her. He does, and not calling this a date doesn't mean they won't be together in the way they have been since John B's death, but she isn't perfect. She gets as unsure and insecure as he does.

As if the cloud of doom was lifted off of her, she makes her face lighten where she lays on her side next to him. Seeing this expression makes his chest feel less heavy, and he could let out a sigh of relief at the realization that he didn't break her heart and stomp on it. He should've known. Y/N is the sweetest person he knows, so she never would've flipped shit over him not wanting to label this as a date. That's not how she is.

And he's partly right. It isn't how she is. She would never hold it against him if he didn't want something further with her since she got herself into this position by pursuing him with his reputation with girls in mind, but she can't ignore it. Whether she wants it to or not, it had its affect on her as soon as he said it.

She leans in to kiss him, their lips meeting in the middle with the faint taste of popcorn salt mingling at the soft peck.

When she pulls away, she brushes the hair back from his face and says, "Don't worry. Nothing can change how I feel about you."

She has no clue what it feels like to hear that from her.

Despite the turmoil they unknowingly share beneath the surface due to this conversation, he could cry hearing her say it. It doesn't feel real to him that she feels the same way he does about her, because nothing could change how he feels about her either. That’s why he manages to work up the courage to repeat it back to her, and, for now, this is the closest he's physically capable of coming to telling her the truth.

"Ditto," he says.

It isn't what she wanted, but it's close enough, and if she dwells on this any longer, she might start getting too emotional and let the urge to tear up become too strong. Why does she have to be this sensitive? It's no secret that it's remarkably easy to make her cry, but this is insane to her. When all of this began with him, she didn't give a shit about him not wanting a label. She understood him, and she understood that he doesn't do this kind of thing, so why has it changed? Why doesn't she want to keep it a secret anymore? Why does she want this to be a date when she knows he doesn't want it to be?

Pulled by an invisible string back to him to silence her mind, she leans in to kiss him again with a hand cupping the back of his neck to guide him the rest of the way to her.

It shouldn't be laced with any sexual intention. She should be kissing him simply because she wants to, and, in a way, she is. Their kisses and touches are never lacking the motivation that is their underlying connection and mutual feelings for one another, but this is not the same. As he kisses her back with as much confidence and passion as always, she is reeling from the conversation that reminded her too much of a breakup.

It takes another minute of this for the kiss to heat up, their breathing becoming shallower in the moments they part to inhale, and she is undeniably the one instigating when she officially crosses the line between casual and sexual by crawling onto his lap. It's not hard for him to pick up on when their innocent moments take a turn. She's easy to read in that regard, and this has happened a multitude of times with them, so the shift of a mini make out session turning into something more is nothing out of the ordinary for them.

If he knew how shaken she is on the inside, he'd never want this. And the same would go for her if she knew what he was thinking before this. Neither of them wants to admit what they're feeling.

With her legs seated on either side of his hips, she kisses him like it's the last time she'll ever get the opportunity to. Her hands wander wherever they can, pulling at his shirt and feeling him up as his hands guide her hips to move against his in a steady grinding that she has no issue partaking in. It's an eagerness he hasn't seen from her in weeks. She's never un-excited when it comes to being physical with him either, but this is another level. The last time a girl was all over him like this, it was desperate touron at a party a few months ago.

In the span of time it takes her to glance over her shoulder to see if anyone could see them and reach to pull her skirt up until it bunches around her hips—no one can see them, by the way, since they got here late and were forced to cram the van into the back corner of the lot with no street lights illuminating the path—his brows raise at her presumptuous behavior. Not that he's one to complain, however, seeing as he's typically the one doing what she is.

Their next kiss clashes their teeth hard enough to make them wince, but he loves it. It makes him smirk into her parted mouth, alive with both the feeling her reassurance provided and the fuzzy-headed high that often finds him when they're together in this way. Incomparable to past flings or the high related to any drugs, she is the peak of everything to him. It's no contest.

His chest stutters against hers with a bout of amused laughter, asking within a brief pause in what feels like the most JJ thing he's said this awkward night, "Two for two in the Twinkie. What's gotten into you?"

Y/N's hand dips between where their bodies move together to unclasp the closed buckle of his belt in one smooth motion that has it falling apart with a clinking noise.

Her features are set with a look that tells him she means business. Whatever it is that sparked this, he wonders how the fuck to make it happen again another time. She's begged for it before, but never taken control so dominantly, and he can't deny what the role reversal does to him. The evidence is obvious in the distinct hardness she feels pressing up against the hand undoing his jeans.

"I was hoping it'd be you," she says, voice breathless and airy from the constant contact in a way that makes it ten times hotter for him.

If there were any chance of him not being in the mood prior to this, which wasn't the case anyway, it's gone now. He never wants to hear her say she doesn't deliberately try to tease him ever again.

He doesn't need to be told twice.

JJ surges forward to capture her mouth with his, this time with no intention of pulling away to breathe or speak again. No, he'll let himself get lightheaded and dizzy if it means he can stay with her for as long as possible.

With the circumstances of it all, them being visible to someone if they happened to pass by the open door of the van, they move at a pace quicker than usual. She's immediately helping him shimmy his jeans and underwear far enough down his hips to free his dick from the confines of his clothes, making him sigh out a breath of relief when her hand brushes against him in the process.

There's no opportunity to slow down, it has exploded into a full-throttle speed race that neither of them can halt.

His hand blindly flies out beside him to grope the floor of the van for the set of keys he tossed carelessly to the side once the movie started, eyes shut in the midst of the hot, messy kiss they share. His fingers find the fabric of one of the blankets they brought in case they got cold, then drifts again and lands on her Big Bird sneakers until he feels the sharp metal of her keys meet his calloused palm.

After the events of last summer, she bought a switch blade to keep on her key ring alongside the keys to the van, HMS Pogue, and Chateau. She may not like violence or weapons, seeing as she was a skeptic of JJ keeping the gun alongside her friends, but she saw it necessary. Between Rafe, Topper, and Kelce, how could she leave the safety of her and her friends up to chance knowing what some of the kooks did to them not long ago? What happened to Pope on the golf course alone was enough to make her skin crawl.

Right now, though, the knife flips out from the pressure of his thumb pushing the button to release it. He holds it out away from her at first to assure it doesn't nick her in the process, then uses his other hand to tug the side of her panties that hugs her hip far out enough to press the sharp side of the blade onto the inside of it.

She can hardly believe what she's watching as JJ cuts the delicate maroon underthings from her body as if he were doing something so normal, like it's something he's done before. Her forehead is pressed against his, her mouth parted both in shock and in a need to pant for oxygen, and she watches the knife ruin her favorite panties. The stitches come apart with a satisfying ripping noise that can hardly be heard over the sound of people reacting to the movie in the background.

Other customers of the Cherry Bowl Drive-In are too glued to the screen as a beloved character is chased down, reacting in shouts when she's seized by the killer and shoved onto the table of an industrial bread slicer, so they remain wholly unnoticed.

The lace, now ripped in half, dangles on the tip of the knife when he lifts it away from her, tosses it aside, and presses the button once more to retract the blade. It clatters to the floor, but is in no way forgotten with them resuming in a desperation to keep going until they both satisfy the need clawing at them from the inside. But her sense of need is different from his, and even with the fresh memory of him with the switch blade in mind, she's still somewhere else the whole time.

Her mind is faraway, muted through layers of sadness, anger, and disappointment as he reaches between them to line himself up to her entrance. The sensation of him running his cock, hard and messy with a few drops of precome, through her dripping pussy to coat it in her slick arousal is enough to make her moan pathetically. Yet when he's about to guide himself inside of her, she stops him.

"Wait, wait, wait," she breathes out rapidly, heart pounding so hard she can feel herself pulsating between her thighs, "Condom."

They were so antsy to get to it, they almost forgot.

"Fuck," he curses under his breath, and his eyes flicker from where they were trained between their bodies to glance back and forth around the van before it hits him. "I lost my wallet..."

But right when he thinks their public rendezvous in the back of the Drive-In is over due to his unfortunate mistake, she shakes her head and slips away from her perch astride his lap to crawl over to her bag.

She fumbles with the old tote bag and plunges her arm in to sift through the hodge podge of things that are purely Y/N in nature—stickers, glitter pens, a half-eaten bag of candy, etc—for the square foil package she decided to toss in before she left just in case. She usually doesn't keep them on her because he never fails to have one, but, thankfully, she had the random instinct to bring it tonight.

The only thing to bring her out of her cloudy, malevolent storm of feelings when she settles back onto his lap with the condom wrapper ripped open for him is him saying, "So you planned this, huh?" with his mouth tipped in a familiar self-satisfied grin.

She didn't plan it. In fact, she threw herself at him the second she sensed him withdrawing from her and can't stop herself despite the fact that she constantly feels two seconds away from letting a tear slip down her cheek. If that counts as "planning it", then sure.

"Maybe so," she answers, cool, calm, and collected—the antithesis of the truth.

They usually don't lie to each other.

They're thrown right back into it without any other hiccups once he rolls the condom on, and he takes in a shaky breath at her hand wrapping around him to align their bodies up. Before she can do anything, though, he takes chance to swipe the blanket he found a moment ago and wrap it around her back to keep her covered in case they get caught.

Y/N sinks down onto his cock with her lip caught between her teeth to stifle the sound that threatens to escape. JJ, on the other hand, doesn't bother concealing the sound of the groan he makes at the sensation of having her wrapped around him like this. The tension in her entire body from the anticipation and the looming threat of being seen by someone has her squeezing him so tightly, he can't help but be a little louder than he should.

Her soft palm slaps over his mouth with enough pressure to force his groan to quiet itself, and she watches his pretty blue eyes widen in reaction to the dominant action. Who is this girl and what has she done with his sweet, submissive Y/N? Don't get him wrong, he is very turned on by it, but it's unlike her to take the lead this way. He can't figure it out.

"What's wrong, angel?" she asks in a whisper into his ear, her hand over his mouth and her hips starting to slowly rock against him, "Watch the movie."

Once the words leave her mouth, she drops her hand, just in case he wants to stop and can't say anything because she had his mouth covered, and JJ is pretty sure he's died and gone to heaven.

He doesn't watch the movie, not at all, because he's too busy watching her. For someone losing their mind internally, she does not let it show, nor does she let it distract her from what's happening. If anything, the distraction in this situation is the sex, not what's going on inside of her head.

There's a moment of adjustment and going as slowly and gently as possible while waiting for the dull pressure of feeling him inside of her to fade away, but, for the most part, she doesn't waste any time. As soon as she feels comfortable enough with the ache between her thighs giving way to a spark of pleasure when she grinds her clit down on his pubic bone, she starts to ride him at a better pace than the initial slow movements of her hips.

She raises herself up and takes him again inch by inch, enjoying the sense of fullness she gets from having to fit him in spite of the slight discomfort at first, and she could swear that he'll leave bruises in the shape of his handprints with how tightly he clutches her hips. It's all he can do to prevent himself from moaning or saying something, ever the vocal lover she's come to know.

Unless his mouth is preoccupied like it was on the beach yesterday afternoon, JJ is usually impossible to shut up, especially in this context. With him always whispering dirty things to her, whether it be praises, pet names, or plans on what he wants to do to her, she has come to find it breathtakingly hot. He could likely get away with saying something if he wanted to, but he isn't sure he wants to risk it. If he opens his mouth to spew something filthy to her, he won't trust himself not to make a louder, different kind of noise that won't fit in the with background audio the other moviegoers are listening to.

The wet sound of their bodies colliding that fills the space of the van is drowned out by the loud and violent sequence occurring on the screen far ahead of them, and hearing it makes her bounce herself on him a little harder. She's fueled on by it all, and, strangely, what happened before she practically pounced on him is the main contributor.

Similarly to the nature of his intrusive thoughts, the harder she resists the memory of how it felt when he told her he didn't want this to be a date, the more forceful it is in its return. Her eyes trail down to watch where they connect with her forehead pressed to his, then she's thrown back into the feeling of helpless disappointment and insecurity. His head tips back against the window with his bottom lip dropped open and his brows furrowed just enough to create a crease on his forehead, and she's bombarded with the look of relief on his face when he realized he didn't have to be tied down to her with a label.

It makes her want to get rougher, harder, and she doesn't even care if it'll make her sore later on. She presses herself down so far every time she slides down on his cock, her teeth draw blood on her lip with how hard she must bite it to remain quiet. The pain of her hipbones rubbing against his doesn't even matter to either of them at this point. They're both too lost in the pleasure that has begun to take control of them to care about something as minuscule as that, or the burn in her thighs from the repetitive physical strain.

She grabs his wrist and brings his hand between them, flattening hers overtop of it and pressing down on the base of her abdomen in the midst of the increasingly feverish thrusts.

"Feel you here," she murmurs to him through a quiet moan, hoping he can hear it over the movie, and pushes down on his hand for emphasis. And if the way he reacts by cursing under his breath tells her anything, it's that he picked up on it. "JJ..."

He reaches out to grab her by the throat with his free hand and tug her forward to kiss him, as if something inside of him snapped in response to her doing that. The motions of her jolting up and down throws the already messy and uncoordinated kiss off-kilter, but they don't mind. It has them separating every time she lifts up, producing this heady little head rush from from them breathing in each other's air without actually letting their mouths meet in the middle.

Though they're trying their hardest not to alert anyone outside of what's happening, it didn't occur to him until now, when his eyes catch John B's old bandana swinging back and forth where it's secured around the rear view mirror.

They're worried about moaning while the entire fucking Twinkie is rocking with their movements. Well, at least it makes good use of the corny sticker he gifted John B last year as a gag gift. He tried to peel it off after JJ snuck it onto the side window to no avail. So, now Y/N is stuck with a sticker on her car reading, "If the van's a-rockin', come on in, we like orgies," rather than the more common phrase.

It almost makes him start laughing, and he prays no one takes that shit seriously, 'cause he is never intent on sharing this breathtaking girl. Ever.

Y/N isn't anywhere near laughing like he is, in fact, she's finding it difficult to keep herself together. She feels her eyes sting with the promise of tears, and she's never felt so pathetic before. Is she seriously about to cry during sex? Is she really that girl that is so ill-equipped to handle rejection, she can't get through it without tears?

She won't cry. Perhaps if he sees how glossy her eyes have become in a rare moment of good lighting, she can blame it on the hand around her throat putting pressure on the sides of her neck.

The worst part about her being near to crying is the timing of it.

The emotion of what she feels mentally mixes with the swirling, building sensation she feels in the pit of her stomach that tells her she's close to going over the edge, and it's so overwhelming. Was she imagining that their friendship had changed? More importantly, is this all she'll ever be to him? Sex is the only thing she's sure of with him, it's the only thing that doesn't require deeper emotions, and when the ground beneath their fragile relationship felt shaky...

He can feel her starting to unravel, and he knows that he'll come before she does if he doesn't do anything now, so he decides to take control.

JJ pulls the hand he had resting on her abdomen away as though he were burned by it, wrapping his arm around her waist to steady her body against his and using the hand around her neck for leverage to thrust up into her, effectively reducing her to a teary-eyed, moaning mess atop him. They both stopped caring about making noise the second he began to fuck her like this.

She cries out in ecstasy at the sudden change in pace and depth that has him hitting all the right places. Every time he thrusts up into her, just as rough as she wished for, the tip of his cock nudges into that perfect spot inside of her that makes her incapable of silencing her moans. This time, it's JJ that puts his hand over her mouth, letting the one he had around her neck move away to keep her from alerting everyone around them of what's happening.

There's nothing she can do to stop her climax as it barrels through her in its initial sweeping wave of bliss to contrast the venomous doubts in her mind. She's never felt such conflicting, yet powerful feelings before—the intensity of the physical pleasure that makes her whine into the palm of his hand, then the part of her mind replaying every word he said in their conversation before this.

Her body is rigid and tense through it all, squeezing down around his cock with the involuntary spasms of her orgasm, and he can't help himself anymore. All it takes are a few more frantic thrusts for him to bury himself inside of her one last time and spill into the condom, uncovering her mouth so he can drown out his own groans into a kiss.

Their skin sticks to their clothes on the inside with sweat from the exertion of their actions, and he can feel her stomach tremble where it presses up against his with each undulation of her hips that meet his as he rides it out.

But even with the added distraction of the sex, she can't rid herself of the feeling that started plaguing her as soon as things went awry. That was why he was acting weird all night. He must have been so worried about her thinking this was anything more than their typical hangouts that he couldn't bring himself to act normally.

She forces herself to look happy when they pull away from the kiss, panting, and JJ, unaware of what she's been thinking, doesn't notice the small deception.

Tag list: @gabiatthedisco

#jj maybank #jj maybank smut #jj maybank x reader #outer banks #obx #fanfiction #obx s2 #uh oh trouble in paradise #anyway that smut #kinda wanna get railed by JJ in the back of the van #don’t we all?

[cloakedsparrow]

RE Headcanon: Cooking

Chris couldn’t really cook for a long time. He could make cold cereal or instant oats for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and then ate out for dinner when he wasn’t eating his mom’s cooking or at the canteen in the USAF. The main reason why he could do that was because he wanted to make things easier for his mom after his dad died, so he’d make breakfast and lunch for him and Claire. After their mom died, he learned a lot of ‘mix, stir, heat’ types of food, like boxed macaroni and cheese or pasta and canned sauce. It kept him and Claire fed.

When he started putting on more muscle, he knew he needed to eat better. That’s when he finally learned to cook. He’s not the best, but its good and its a lot healthier. He’s a real ‘meat and potatoes’ kind of guy and he’s happy with his skills.

Leon is a pretty good cook. He started young because his mother died and if he waited for his dad to remember to feed him, he’d starve. He always made breakfast and dinner for him and his dad and packed salad or sandwiches for their lunches. He started really simple, like eggs and toast, and gradually tried more complicated stuff as he got more comfortable with it. They didn’t have much money, so he’d buy whatever was in season or sold in bulk and then make whatever he could from it. He looked up a lot of recipes online or in the library.

He still makes most of his food from scratch. It’s cheaper, healthier, and most of it stores better for when he’s suddenly carted away for work. Breakfast is his favorite and he’s been known to eat breakfast foods at any time of the day.

Jill is a good cook. She learned young, from her parents. They were always good about eating whatever she tried to make, weather it turned out good or not, so she got in plenty of practice before living on her own. She hates cleanup, so she sticks to stir-fries and one-pot/pan meals. She likes cooking for her friends and boyfriend (when she has one) when they come over. They usually volunteer to do the dishes since they know she hates that part.

Claire can’t really cook. Her skill is basically where Chris’ was when she was in high school. Mainly because that’s when he taught her to cook and she hasn’t tried to improve. She eats out or orders in a lot, or eats with Chris or Leon. Otherwise, its just ‘heat and stir’ kind of food. 

Hunnigan is a slow cooker/instant pot master. She works long hours so she either sets up something beforehand in the slow cooker, or whips up something quickly with the instant pot. She can make all kinds of dishes in them. She hasn’t once used the stove in her apartment. She uses the oven as additional storage.

Barry is a grill master. He has all of the tools/gadgets to allow him to grill just about anything he likes. He can also make salads and sandwiches. If he tries to make anything that involves the oven, his wife or one of his daughters generally takes over. If not, he will 100% forget he had something in there until the scent of it burning fills the house.

Sherry picked up a lot of hobbies growing up under house arrest. One of them is baking. She’s an okay cook, but she’s an amazing baker. Popovers, cakes, muffins, bagels, pot pies, challa, melon pan, pan de agua, babka, scones, potatoes, pudding... She’s tried and mastered it all. Simmons didn’t show a lot of interest in her hobbies, but the scents of her baking exploits always lead him to the kitchen. It made her experiment even more since it gave them the chance to talk.

Parker is an excellent cook. He has several aunts and uncles and his is one of those families where everyone is convinced their *name of dish here* is the best. As such, he had a lot of different teachers. He’s great with substitutions or variations. He likes cooking for his friends and family. If he finds out someone has an allergy or just doesn’t like something, then he’s happy to make adjustments to his recipes when they come over.

Piers went from home, to the military, to the BSAA -each where someone else cooked his meals- before dying, and he always had the money to eat out, so he never learned to cook.

#headcanons #cooking #Resident Evil #Chris Redfield #Leon S Kennedy #Jill Valentine #Claire Redfield #Barry Burton #Sherry Birkin #Ingrid Hunnigan #Parker Luciani #Piers Nivans #Capcom

[giaourtopita]

Hello! I’m a sucker for that sweet angst and I’m sorry in advance!😭So can I request the brothers with an Mc who has a few months to live because of an illness they were born with? How do they send their time with Mc? How do they react when Mc dies?

mc dies due to a congenital disease

first of all, thank you for requesting!! i didn't really expect a request tbh. and i really hope i did this justice, i even started listening to a sad playlist to get even more in the mood to write this!! i hope you'll like it <333

warnings; gn mc, angst, death, unhealthy habits, sad just so sad, slight medical talk, alcohol used as a coping mechanism but not to an unhealthy amount, lesson 35-36 spoilers in asmo's and beel's part, lesson 16 spoilers in belphie's part.

(first of all i would like to say that none of them would react well but all of them would try to spend as much time as possible with mc)

lucifer

- would not believe them at first, he would think this is just belphie and satan playing a sick joke on him.

- believes it only after seeing the mc talking to doctors and trying to find a course of treatment.

- throws himself into work, trying to convince himself the situation will resolve itself.

- once he comes to term with it, he would try to spend as much time as possible with them

- he would take them to as many new places he can, and try to give them many new experiences before it happens.

- would even ask barbatos if he can go back in time to find them a cure.

- when the inevitable happens he thinks his father is the one to blame, it's his fault for everything. them falling, lilith dying and now this. "why can't he just leave us alone?".

- throws himself into work again but only this time he's working so hard his brothers and friends had to talk some sense to him.

- diavolo gives him some time to pull himself together, and because he has so much time on his hands, he locks himself in the comfort of his room and drinks to feel just so he can stop feeling for a little while.

- only gets better when he sees mammon trying to take care of him and be responsible with money and around the house.

mammon

- "mc you're joking right? you're my human, you can't die! ya hear me?"

- he would be attached at the mc's hips. even starts staying in their room to watch them.

- acts like he's fine when they're around but when he's alone he gets overwhelmed, he can't imagine how his life will be after mc is gone.

- also gets mad at his father "why do you hate us so much?" *he yells at the sky while sobbing*

-he's so frustrated with this situation because who will be nice to him when mc is gone?

- will try to get the witches to help him but it's a lost cause, there's no cure magical or not.

- when it happens, he blames himself. he blames himself because he failed to help them, even tho they always helped him.

- his scheming will get insufferable, he will try to get as much grimm as he can so he can buy things that remind him of the mc.

- he hoards all those things he buys all around the house actually. and if anyone anyone tries to throw those things away he gets agitated and turns into his demon form to fight them.

- will get better once he sees levi trying to pick all the things mammon left in his room.

leviathan

- "what? why? no, you can't die! stupid normie, you can't just leave me all alone like that" ... "we need more time!"

- he feels useless because there's nothing he can do, "the lord of shadows would have find a way to help his henry".

- hates it when his brothers take away the mc from him and starts throwing tantrums when they're not around, the rest of the brothers can't imagine how it will be in the future.

- tries to go outside more with them so he has memories with them that don't include sitting in his room and watching anime, those times he went outside he actually appreciated being there.

- also makes them stay in his room, they sleep in his arms and he starts sleeping in his demon form, wrapping his tail around the mc so they can't go anywhere, he knows this is pointless.

- still tries to watch as much anime as possible but when a character he likes dies, he finds himself sobbing like a baby not because he's sad for the character but because he knows this will happen to his henry.

- when they pass away he feels numb, he did all the crying when they were still there with him, he becomes an even bigger shut-in doesn't want to meet any new people especially not humans, not because he hates them but because they remind him of the mc.

- the only reason he leaves his room is to go swimming, he does that even more than he used to. his younger brothers were worried but lucifer thinks this is a healthier alternative to anything else he could do.

- is so angry at his father that he threatens war to the celestial realm using the devildom's navy.

- only got better when lucifer tried to reason him, he knows the mc wouldn't want him to do that but he doesn't know what else to do or how to mourn the human.

satan

- does not believe them, they look healthy to him so what are they talking about?? only believes them when they start talking about symptoms or he sees the symptoms himself.

- starts looking for a magical remedy to make them feel better, or even a cure. but it's no use, he can't find anything helpful other than pain relief magic. he even asks solomon but he wasn't able to give him something useful to work with.

- reads to them books about characters who feel how he feels because he can't bring himself to actually tell them how awful he is feeling.

- tries to spend as much time as possible with them even if it's for the silliest, most insignificant things there are.

- is barely able to keep himself together, he gets agitated by the smallest things you can imagine.

- after their death he feels as if a big part of his identity vanished, he feels how he used to feel about himself before he made up with lucifer and he hates that.

- going to a cat cafe or a library don't cheer him up as much as they used to, he just wishes to be with them and nothing else.

- is angry at himself and at god. he's angry at himself because even tho he knows so many things he wasn't able to save them and he's angry at god because everything is his fault.

- asmo suggests he writes a book about them and their shared memories, since he loved them and he loves books satan finds this idea excellent, however it doesn't help much because whenever he starts writing he gets so into it that he neglects himself.

- is able to kinda pull himself together when he sees lucifer bringing him a cat for emotional support, they both know this is not a permanent solution but it will help him cope for now.

asmodeus

minor lesson 35 spoiler!!

- "what?? no no no!! this isn't happening mc!! we will find a solution i promise!"

- asks solomon and his fans to help but there's nothing they can do to help.

- buys them as many pretty outfits he can and takes photos of them to remember.

- is actually the first one to accept what is going to happen, after all he's used to losing the people that he loves, some leave due to jealousy and others die.

- does even more sleepovers in his room with the mc so they can have lots of fun together, even if this situation is very sad he tries to be positive and make the best memories he can with them

- though he still looks cheerful, he's so sad internally he doesn't know what to do after his mc is gone. he feels as if he won't be the same without them because he's one of the very few people who didn't care about his looks and loved him for him, he will miss this feeling so much that he's trying cling onto it as much as time allows him to.

- after it happens, he is also numb. not because he grieved before they died but because he tries to shut down his feelings by indulging in his sin, going clubbing and spoiling himself even more than before.

- though none if the above are as fun now that he can't do them with them, he gets to the point where he stops listening to lucifer and starts talking to everyone in a sarcastic tone.

- clings to solomon because even though he knows that solomon can't die, he can't help but feel like he needs to. solomon was able to talk some sense to him after lucifer told him about his behaviour. gets better when his brothers start aggressively pointing out his awful behaviour and how much they care about him and his well-being.

beelzebub

lesson 36 spoiler!!

- "NO! this can't be happening again! you stole lilith from us and now you're doing it again with mc!" *is sobbing while yelling*

- will also camp in their room to watch them and spend time with them.

- will take them to every single one of his games, and will try to take as many pictures as possible.

- takes them to every restaurant he knows of and makes them do taste testing, he notes everything they like in a cookbook, filled with every food the mc likes, and makes it for them when they're hungry.

- sad that there's nothing he can do to help and even sadder that mc was always able to help him when he needed to.

- feels guilty about this situation because mc had to use their life essence, their already limited amount of time, to save his life.

- he cuddles them to sleep, but most of the time it's not because they need it. he actually does it because he needs it and mc knows this.

- when mc passes away he goes out of control, always going on a rampage when someone from his team mentions how he's a free demon without a pact now, he misses mc so much.

- he is constantly in a bad mood and sometimes he's so sad that he forgets to eat even if he's starving.

- only starts to pull himself together when belphie tries to take care of him by cooking and forcing him to eat when he doesn't at least try to eat the most important meals of the day.

belphegor

lesson 16 spoiler!!

- "did lucifer made you say this? i know our last prank was a bit over the top but this is inappropriate" mc explains to him while showing him their test results.

- drags them to attic and cuddles them while yelling and sobbing, not wanting to believe it.

- he would stay awake more than his normal self so they can spend more time together, even if it's just cuddling or talking.

- he tries to find a spell to at least make them live a little longer, but it's hopeless there's nothing he can do.

- also feels guilty, not only does mc get to experience their death for the second time but so do his brothers.

- clings onto them as much as he can.

- when they die it's like he falls into a coma, when people try to wake him up he doesn't even flinch it's like he wants to be in a coma.

- has made it so that he gets such vivid dreams that he can visit mc in them and that's the reason he won't wake up.

- wakes up when he hears beel cry about him, mc and lilith. tries to get over it for beel.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me asmo #obey me beel #obey me belphie #obey me leviathan #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me satan #obey me x mc #obey me x reader #obey me headcanons #obey me angst #i broke my heart so many times trying to write this

[beelspillowpet]

Hello... Could you do some headcanons of the brothers reacting to MC having an ED? Like... Food restriction and p*rging, and, yeah... All of that... Sorry if this is very weird and/or uncomfortable... I struggle with that and I kinda seek comfort... Thanks

So I’ll be the first to say; you’re perfectly fine in asking for this request. You’re not alone in your fight with eating disorders; I have one as well. I try not to touch on it too much in my own media with my characters and such, but I hope you manage to overcome yours, anon. Learning to eat more (or less) is so important and it’s so hard to try and force ourselves to do it right. Please don’t feel like you’re a burden for this ask, it’s brave to even say it outloud, despite being on anon. You’re brave, you’re strong, and you can overcome this.

MC Has An Eating Disorder

CONTENT WARNING BELOW THE CUT!!!! Eating Disorders | Depressive Themes | Generally triggering - please be careful with reading this one.

PLEASE speak to a professional or call the hotline ( [phone] ) if you feel like it’s getting beyond your control. Take CARE of yourselves. I don’t know you personally, but I would be sad if you weren’t able to help yourself, especially with how harsh the world has been for the past year.

Lucifer

He notices you don’t eat much at dinner. Originally suspects it’s because the food palette is far from what humans are used to. I mean, brains? From a dragon? They may be Belphie’s favorite, but you weren’t Belphie, now were you? He decides to try and cook (and have his brothers do the same) much tamer foods.

It doesn’t seem to work at first, with how you barely seem to eat. Sometimes you can feel his eyes on you, so you force yourself to scarf down whatever you can before handing the rest to Beel. He keeps an eye on you closely. He invites you to dinners, brunch, the likes. He’s just trying to see what you will and won’t eat.

It’s amazing how he hadn’t caught on to such an obvious answer yet. What makes him realize it though, is after he’s cleaned up from your lunch with him, he finds you in the bathroom, emptying your stomach. He doesn’t fully understand it still. You’ve been found out to been doing this for a long time; even before you got here to the Devildom.

He suspected you were just a smaller person. Something in him just couldn’t believe you were doing this to yourself. He wanted to know why, but getting an answer out of you didn’t seem like a good idea. Chances are you didn’t know either. He brings it up carefully while you two are alone. He explains why he’s concerned, instead of being roundabout with it, choosing to be direct. He cares about you, not just for Diavolo’s sake. He wants you to be able to take care of yourself when he can’t look after you anymore.

Mammon

Is probably the first to notice that you’re starving yourself, save for Beel. He’s been in the business of being a model for long enough, he’s seen others starve themselves and purge just to look thinner. That’s exactly what he catches you doing one day.

He’s worried. He’s dealt with helping his fellow models out with this sort of thing in the past. Albeit not as sensitive, he always managed to get his point across with others. But you? You were eating fine one day, and then for the next three or four days you barely ate anything at all. It’s like you were punishing yourself.

His approach is similar to Lucifer’s but a little more experienced in his talk. He’s explaining that he’s worried about you, and that you need to get some food in you if you’re gonna be able to do anything. With each bit of resistance you give, any excuse you can give, he shoots it down quickly. Mammon has probably heard it a thousand times before. You’re not getting off easy.

He’s trying to be soft yet firm about this. You can tell even he is nervous about this confrontation. Regardless of how you take it, he’s patient and supportive. He even asks you if you’re doing this for a specific reason. He doesn’t expect you to be able to eat full meals the very next day. He catches you snacking on foods every once in a while. Thankfully, healthy stuff instead of junk food. It’s not much, but it’s something for your sake.

Leviathan

He knows almost immediately. He may or may not have a similar issue. Maybe not to the same degree, but he understands it. He decides to wait until you two are alone. Probably in his room. Still he waits, he waits until he can form the words in his head.

When he finally does pick the perfect moment, it’s probably not in his room while you two were watching anime or playing games. He’d likely chickened out in that moment, too afraid of upsetting you with the topic. Instead, he’s now in your room, standing at the door way. Like he’s an intruder, coming to scream at you for your problems.

His words are running together and he’s on the verge of tears. He practiced what he was going to say nearly a thousand times over, but he can barely get a sentence going before the dam breaks and he’s crying. How is he supposed to help you when he can’t even fix his own horrible eating habits? He gets so wrapped up in his otaku life that he sometimes forgets to eat. So who is he to lecture you?

He sits down with you, and you both look into how to fix this. While his problems aren’t as severe, yours definitely are. He doesn’t want to be dramatic, but you seeing a professional about this is probably the best course of action. Neither of you can build up the courage to ask someone else in the house for help, so you call a doctor together. Therapy is now on the table for options of seeking help, and while reluctant still, you wouldn’t bare to see Leviathan like that again. It was for you after all. You wanted to feel better, so he could feel better too.

Satan

Doesn’t pick up on it immediately, but once he does realize it, he’s on to you about it. He makes little remarks about it here and there, never teasing, but very curious. He’s trying to play armchair therapist and figure out what’s causing you to do this to yourself.

Eventually he comes to you while you’re alone and asks you about it. He’s calm and respectful the entire time, trying to get you to open up to him. Is it a lack of control in your life? He can relate to that. Not everyone gets forced to live in Hell for a year and be an exchange student.

He doesn’t exactly shut down each of your attempts of denial so easily as Mammon might, but he’s trying his best. The nonsensical pattern of your eating habits throws him through a loop, and he’s not sure if he’s able to keep up.

He does get one of his friends involved, who happens to be an expert in this field. He just wanted to wager for himself how severe the problem was before he got any help involved. He’s only hoping you can snap out of it and get yourself together. He doesn’t want you starving yourself for any reason.

Asmodeus

Like Levi, he may or may not have had a similar problem. Maybe to the same tune as a model, but it’s not a severe case. Regardless, when he catches you starving yourself, he’s unnerved by it. You said you weren’t hungry but your stomach is growling for food. Everyone thought it might have been Beel’s stomach, but it’s yours.

You’re only eating specific things at specific times. You can’t allow yourself to snack at all, and sometimes when you do, you withhold yourself from eating anything for the next day or so. Sometimes you won’t even leave your room. on those days.

Asmo is smart, so when you start wearing bigger clothes in vain hopes to cover up your skinny body, he steps in. He’s soft spoken and gentle, telling you how much he loves you and cares about you. He’s not afraid to tell you that your eating habits are hurting your body. He’s careful about it, and he’s trying to make sure you understand where he’s coming from. He’s doing this because he sees so many things that can go wrong with this. He doesn’t want any of them to become a reality.

With his help, you start to pick healthier things to eat. You aren’t eating full meals yet, let alone half your plate, but it’s more food than you were consuming before. He keeps you at it and overtime starts to see even more progress with you. He’s glad you’re coming around with his help.

Beelzebub

He for one, is glad that you seem to eat a lot. It’s not every day you see a human able to put food away like he does. Well- not quite like how he does, but close enough! You eat normally while in the dining room with the brothers, but then at night when everyone is in their rooms, you’ll go to the kitchen with him and eat the entire fridge’s contents.

You figured the last person to notice these issues is someone else who has a problem with their eating habits. While Bele isn’t exactly a human, you could consider his eating habits similar to just bingeing. Almost constantly, at that. Disappearing after eating with him is common practice. You’ll rush to the bathroom and purge your stomach of all its contents you had just consumed. Part of you is extremely guilty, eating all that food just so you could throw it up later.

Beel is a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them. At some point, he does catch you throwing up into the toilet. He was coming to take a shower before leaving for RAD when he found you doubled over the bowl. It was a few minutes after breakfast. He had figured by now, you’d been doing this for a while, long enough to where you’d start turning the sink on (sometimes flushing the toilet or turning on the shower) to hide the sounds. It didn’t work today.

He didn’t understand why you’d do this to yourself. He’d never really heard of eating disorders before, and always assumed it was normal to just eat whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. He figured trying to be careful with his own eating habits around you, would help you learn to eventually figure out how much you could eat. He’s patient, always talking to you while you eat with him, trying to distract your brain from the stress of eating. When you can’t finish all of your food that’s okay; he’s there to eat however much is left. It works out perfect for the both of you. He just wants to make sure you’ve at least eaten enough for your own body first.

Belphegor

Pica is a strange one. Belphie knows about these sorts of things. His twin brother is Beel, how could he not?

He’s almost certain you’ve got it. He’s never seen a human eat things like dirt, mud, or rocks. Beel, of course has eaten an entire pillar in the Demon Lord’s castle, but he’s not human. He’s not even a normal demon. You, on the other hand, are presumed to be a totally normal human. And humans don’t eat rocks.

He doesn’t know how to properly bring it up at first. He takes you up to the attic for a nap, and while you’re both laying there together, realizes that you two are alone. Now is just as good of a time as any, right?

Because it’s such a fatal things, Belphie is more than just determined to help you. As soon as possible, you’re seeing a doctor for this. He wants you to feel good about yourself, and your body can’t be feeling good if it doesn’t have normal foods to keep itself going. It may seem a bit selfish, but he wants to make it up to you. If you can’t properly care for yourself, he’ll make it his life’s goal to care for you. 

#obey me #obey me swd #obey me shall we date #om! #om! swd #om! shall we date #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me hcs #obey me headcanons #tw #eating disoder things

[wh33zy]

My Read on Terrorist: the Black Sheep of Junjou Romantica

Tonight, I wanted to do an analysis of the most controversial couple to enter Nakamura’s arena and to make waves in the BL world. I will be analyzing them both separately and then together. Through the scrutiny of all fans alike, they have prevailed and have become one of the healthiest as well as charming couples that Nakamura has created to date. This is all despite the fucked up situation that they’re in.

So, why were/are they vehemently hated? The main reason I found was because of their seventeen year age gap. As a refresher: Miyagi starts the story at the age of 34 and Shinobu starts at 17, months away from turning 18. Miyagi was more recently divorced from Shinobu’s older sister, Risako, who are both the children of the dean at Mitsuhashi University where Miyagi works as a tenured professor. Upon hearing about Miyagi’s divorce, Shinobu flew back to Japan from studying abroad in Australia in order to pursue him. Through Miyagi trying to get Shinobu to fall out of love with him as well as trying to help get him into college, Miyagi ends up catching feelings for Shinobu. This is where their relationship starts. 

Takatsuki Shinobu: He isn’t a terribly complex character, but one of the most interesting yet. He still remains quite mysterious, as he won’t share any details about himself unless someone asks, so for likes/dislikes as well as hobbies, I think he has a lot of potential to be even more interesting as the chapters go on. But, we do know that he is incredibly book smart from the way he excels in all of his studies/studied abroad/is bilingual and socially smart with the way he seems to make a lot of friends pretty easily. 

His emotions run incredibly deep, and each one he feels hits him incredibly hard where he can’t help but express it outwardly. He has a pretty aggressive way of doing it too. This is evident by the way he’ll throw a punch if he’s mad (not a serious one) or tackle Miyagi in a hug when he’s really happy. He’s an open book who’ll let you know what he thinks without any fear, no matter who you are. Not only does this make him the peak of direct and straightforward, but this can make him rather intimidating and come even more aggressive than he already does.

He’s a tough guy, doesn’t look it, but he is. He’s a little rough around the edges. I am of the opinion that he was sent to Australia to be tamed but only came back tougher. The Texas of Britain only made him even stronger and this is evident by the way he cowers when he’s fourteen when he’s confronted by three grown men. If adult Shinobu were in the situation, those three men would have their souls snatched. What this paragraph is saying is that Shinobu is the type of person who when thrown to the wolves, he comes back leading the pack. 

He’s also the most ambitious and determined in terms of getting what he wants out of life. If he wants it, Shinobu will try his damnedest to get it with no hesitation. He’s either all in or not at all. At the same time, however, he won’t waste his own time/energy. If it isn’t meant to be, he will completely change course to move on. 

I think this is what separates him from almost all of Nakamura’s characters; when he found out about Miyagi still having feelings for his sensei, he wasn’t willing to wait around. While he did love Miyagi with all he had, he took it upon himself to look out for his own best interests and move on. I think he realizes that love, more specifically with Miyagi, is an amazing luxury and a dream but not a necessity in his life. Shinobu wanted to be someone’s number one and someone to be ride or die for him as well, since he would be the same, so he only accepted Miyagi when became that someone. 

At the same time, Shinobu didn’t force nor want Miyagi to forget about his sensei because he understood that she was an important part of his life. While it does seem like he was acting in desperation, this is why I don’t think it was. Shinobu wanted Miyagi before his sister married him so when the divorce happened, he took his chance to pursue Miyagi, and was ready to back out (more than once!) when it didn’t seem like it would work. 

Here’s the thing that makes him more mortal: he’s kind of insecure. While he does have confidence in his abilities to do anything, he actually worries about what people think of him. He wants to be well-liked, he wants to be someone who people think is great. He also worries a lot about how Miyagi sees him, if he’s too immature and young for him. However, he turns these things into self-improvement instead of wallowing. He constantly works on improving cooking and being more social, smiling more, etc.

At the end of the day, Shinobu has a lot of self respect, a drive to improve, and is very considerate towards others (although it’s not obvious, he is!) and I found him to be pretty mature for someone just entering adulthood. All of the reasons above are why he is one of my favorites and why I find him a force to be reckoned with. 

Miyagi Yoh: He’s a pretty simple guy: Graduated high school, went to college, found his career, got married (then divorced), is a history buff, and an avid reader. He has pretty traditional leaning values and views and can be a jokester at times. There really isn’t a lot to Miyagi, but I personally don’t think there needs to be. He’s actually the more laid back one in the relationship, although he has his moments where he can be uptight and more reserved. 

He’s a more gentle person and definitely cares about being professional, about the proper ways to go about things. Although he is ambitious when it comes to the important stuff, he can sometimes be quite wishy-washy and unsure of himself. His confidence in his own abilities isn’t terribly high, but he does try his best. He does tend to go with the flow sometimes and struggles with handling difficult situations.

He also has his insecurities that are quite similar to Shinobu: his age and if he good enough. In the manga, you see these come up a lot, since he worries about these things pretty often. It’s why he gets so bothered by Shinobu smiling and getting along with girls his age. He can’t help but worry that maybe Shinobu might want that “normal” life and leave him for it. 

Which brings me to his main problem: anxiety. A lot of Miyagi’s acting out or on impulse stem from harboring a lot of anxiety. He tends to worry a lot about the future, if he’s doing enough, if he’s good enough, Shinobu’s feelings, Shinobu’s well-being, Shinobu’s future, and being left behind again. When he spirals into anxiety for one of these reasons, he tends to shut down and close himself off or act on impulse. 

While it does seem like he has a much better handle on controlling, hiding, and understanding his feelings/emotions, he really fucking doesn’t. What he really does with his feelings is not express them or acknowledge them and hold them in until they explode. I think this stems from the fact that he’s supposed to be the ‘calm and collected adult’, and having to hide his feelings for his sensei when he was with Risako. Now, let’s talk about his sensei for a moment: the sensei I’m referring to is the first women he fell in love with when he was in high school where they had a similar age gap to him and Shinobu now. Sensei was terminally ill and Miyagi helped with some of her care and was also there at the time of her passing. He never seemed to get over her for the next seventeen or so years after that. Miyagi squashed down his grief, so he never really coped or got through it. 

It and the divorce also left him with some abandonment issues which is another explanation why he was so upset when he found out Shinobu was planning to leave and went after him even though it collided with him not wanted to acknowledge his feelings. This also explains his jealousy when he sees Shinobu acting cheerfully with others; he’s afraid of being left behind again. 

So, I can confidently say that Miyagi doesn’t like dealing with his emotions and maybe doesn’t know how to. He’s also not confident in how he should go about them. This is especially prominent in the way that he’s not sure when/if he should be affectionate with Shinobu. He worries about the timing of it, what if Shinobu isn’t in the mood, if he should bother Shinobu with it in the first place, etc. This caused him to not really take any initiative in their relationship for a while until he realized it (with Shinobu’s help of course) and worked on it to improve. 

The Relationship: So, ironically, although they have the most problematic and drama inducing set up, they are the healthiest couple yet. They are healthier than the main couple on the cover (I have yet to see Romantica be as open with each other as they are but Romantica is on their way)! Of course, they’re not at Mistake level...yet. 

Whatever problems in their relationship, insecurities, inner most feelings, and needs are discussed. They are both big on communication, and have been irritated when one of them isn’t talking. They also don’t hide their feelings or issues from each other, so their level of understanding one another’s points of view is pretty high. If there’s something wrong, they talk it out and it’s solved by the end of the chapter. Showing affection also is not a big deal in the sense that no one is too embarrassed or too desperate. They can hug and kiss casually without it being a big thing. They never have to wonder if they’re wanted by each other and they make it obvious that they care. They also make an effort to spend time with each other and plan dates. They also are interested and invested in each other’s lives/interests. They are just plain sweet on one another.

Terrorist is what the title suggests: Pure Romance. 

But all of this is ignored, these two barely given a chance by a lot of fans because of their age gap. Because an almost middle aged man is dating his ex-wife’s younger brother which is the ultimate betrayal by a sibling and an ex. Which, I understand! I totally don’t blame someone for being uncomfortable with this sort of thing and it turning them off! But, don’t hate on them and then in the same breath uplift Egoist/Minimum or Nostalgia when they WISH they could be half as functional and sweet as Terrorist is. 

And that is the darjeeling!

#junjou romantica #junjou terrorist #miyagi yoh #takatsuki shinobu

[crossdressingdeath]

Every so often I’ll come across a fic that has a summary that essentially reads: “after JFM brings WWX to Lotus Pier YZY takes JC to MeishanYu where he becomes the sect heir” and it always acts like this situation is a fix-it for the entire plot of the novel. And I was thinking about this premise over the past few days and realising just how little it makes sense. (I would like to clarify that I have not read any of the fics with this premise but that is because they all look to be written by JC stans and I decided a while ago that I wasn’t interested in anything like that. I would also like to say that I have only the vaguest understanding of Chinese culture so if something is glaring wrong in here I accept corrections.)

So. The logistics of the events coming to pass. The summaries imply that YZY left Lotus Pier with JC in tow, marched into her natal sect and without question JC was named sect heir and never had any problems ever.

Firstly: if YZY is such an amazing mother to take her son away from the ‘awful’ environment of Lotus Pier under JFM, why does she leave her daughter there? There never seems to be any mention of JYL also going to Meishan so this really just feels like YZY doesn’t actually care about anyone other than JC (in a similar way to the author not caring about anyone other than JC).

Secondly: the actual inheritance thing. As far as I can tell YZY and therefore JC are so far down the line of inheritance for the MeishanYu sect that it doesn’t actually matter. JFM calls YZY ‘Third Lady’ which based on my understanding means that she has two older sisters who would be the First and Second Ladies. In the line of succession her eldest sister would be first, then her children, then her second sister, that sister’s children, and then YZY and JC behind them (this isn’t even taking into account any older brothers she might have). I think I read somewhere that marriage order is based at least partially on age so we can assume that the two older sisters got married before YZY, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the eldest child of the eldest daughter could be fifteen when JC is nine, so at the very least the eldest sister could have a child who is close to being of age (though I freely admit that I have little idea as to what is classed as ‘of age’ within this world) while the son YZY brings is a child who throws a tantrum over having his pets sent away for someone else’s mental health and being told he’s going to share a room.

(Sidenote: I know JFM has JC’s dogs sent away but for all we know they’re just taken out of Lotus Pier itself (as in the bit where the cultivators live). We know there’s a market area where non-cultivators live literally right outside so rather than sending three puppies miles away to other cities, couldn’t JFM have just found someone living outside of the cultivator’s part of Lotus Pier to give the dogs to? Wouldn’t that have been the easiest option? And one that could potentially allow JC to visit the dogs he was so upset about? Did he just not ask to see them so JFM decided that he didn’t actually care about them? Did JC go see them every week until they died and was just angry that he wasn’t allowed to own them anymore? What proof do we have that JC never saw those dogs ever again?)

Anyway, back on track. Thirdly: YZY married out of the MeishanYu sect and into the YunmengJiang sect. She was very insistent on this. She wanted this a great deal even though we know that JFM didn’t particularly want to marry her. I believe that by the culture of the time marrying out of a family meant you were no longer part of that family. Like you might visit or write and introduce your children to them but you weren’t part of the family in the sense that you weren’t in the line of inheritance for anything of that family. So YZY marching into her natal sect with her bratty son behind her, declaring that he would be the sect heir to MeishanYu honestly reads to me as YZY flat out not understanding anything about how family inheritance works. She married into YunmengJiang. By the rules of the time, she should be devoted to building up the YunmengJiang sect, not leaving and returning to her natal sect because she doesn’t like the mother of the child her husband brought in off the streets. JC especially isn’t in line for inheriting MeishanYu because he is a member of the Jiang clan. Honestly the best equivalent I can think of is if people expected Jin Ling, heir (and sect leader and the end of the novel) to LanlingJin to also take over the running of YunmengJiang even though nowhere is it implied that he’s in any way in line of that — JYL married out, any children of hers were part of the Jin clan with no inheritance in the Jiang clan (it’s also for this reason that I am firmly of the belief that Jin Ling was mostly raised at Koi Tower rather than Lotus Pier, who lets the heir to a sect be entirely raised by another sect? For all we know Jin Ling spends a couple of months a year with JC and the novel just happened to take place during those months, and it’s saying something if Jin Ling spends the entire time he has per year with JC running away on night hunts without JC there). So, to put a long point short: YZY married out of the MeishanYu sect and has literally no inheritance there and neither do her children.

Also, at this point hasn’t she essentially kidnapped the heir to YunmengJiang? I doubt JFM is going to say “oh you don’t like my best friends’ son so you want to take our son away. Of course you can do that I have no problem at all with losing my sect heir due to your petty dislike of someone who has been dead for years now. Goodbye.” JFM may not really stand up to YZY, but there’s some things even he isn’t going to tolerate from her. So YZY is causing a political disaster between her natal sect and the sect she married into by kidnapping the sect heir of one and attempting to make him the sect heir of the other. At the very least I feel like JFM could divorce her on the grounds of kidnapping his son and trying to depose the sect heir of her natal sect in favour of a child who by law cannot inherit that sect.

From what I can tell these fics look like they’re set up to be fix-its. Again, I haven’t read them, but I can feel just by reading the summaries and glancing over the tags that they’re intended to be stories about how without the father who ‘hates him so much’ and ‘that awful WWX who always held him back from his true potential’ that JC is so much happier and more skilled and also absolutely going to be the best person in their generation at everything and in at least one of these it looks like he ends up marrying LXC (which is just. No). Honestly it could be a fix-it for JYL and WWX who would no longer be being berated for their general existence (WWX) and hobbies (JYL, specifically how she likes to cook). Them growing up without YZY constantly breathing down their necks and having better mental health as a consequence? Yes please.

Honestly I wouldn’t mind seeing something where the concept was written by someone who didn’t think that ‘actually all the positive traits of other characters are JC’s character traits and also JC should have been the main character’. Something where it’s set up as YZY taking JC with her to Meishan, expecting everything to obviously work out the way she wants, only to be shot down. Her eldest sister is potentially sect leader if their parents have stepped down and has a fifteen-year-old child who everyone in the sect is pleased with as their sect heir. YZY and her expectations get shot down, it’s made clear that she and JC aren’t even in the line of succession since they’re officially part of YunmengJiang and not MeishanYu, and she’s told to leave. She returns to Lotus Pier, angry but still convinced everything there will go her way because JFM has never stood up to her before, only to get back and find JFM in the process of organising their divorce. This isn’t an internal matter due to her not doing the duties expected of the mistress of Lotus Pier anymore, this is a political matter where she kidnapped the sect heir and tried to depose the sect heir of MeishanYu. She’s legally part of YunmengJiang, her actions reflect on the sect as a whole and could be taken as hostile intent. Really the only way to keep this from potentially escalating is to divorce her so that everyone knows her actions aren’t condoned by JFM individually and YunmengJiang as a whole. The end result is that instead of JC somehow fixing everything as a result of having less political influence/lower status than before (sect heir of MeishanYu which is a minor sect compared to the sect heir of YunmengJiang which is a great sect) and without an extremely loyal WWX supporting him, YZY instead undergoes some consequences for once in her life and the family dynamic of the Jiangs + WWX might even manage to be healthier without her constantly being around to antagonise everyone.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure YZY’s children would be so far down the line of succession that they’d have to murder a bunch of people to stand a chance of ruling Meishan, and her taking JC, the heir to the Jiang sect, to another sect without his father’s permission and with the intention of deposing the rightful heir of that sect would be... just a bit of a problem, yeah. Also like. I suspect the reason YZY doesn’t canonically do that is because not even she is that stupid. That goes beyond being a bitch and straight into Actual Crimes. Also love the idea that JC, the most useless of all the great sect leaders, would be less useless in a position of infinitely less power. ...To be fair he would certainly do a lot less damage.

#lotus mom #grapehate #anon #asks

[graceedcoup]

Please tell me you're very detailed headcanon about Asmo holding the family together and raising Satan, because I headcanon that too.

Hi! I appreciate this literally so much I'm gonna kiss you on the mouth. Have a beautiful day ♡

I'd like to start off talking about this by acknowledging the fact that this entire very long headcanon hinges entirely on the fact that I'm ignoring canon details that support the suggestion that Satan was born as a fully grown demon and not formed as an infant who had to grow through formative childhood developmental stages. I would rather believe the latter because I lov..E Ba-biEs *ahem*.. because its more fun to think about.

Before I start I would also like to say that this is part of a much bigger more complicated idea about the dynamic each brother has with eachother and their own personal childhoods and histories, which I've went into some detail about with Levi just recently. But that was all still when they were celestial beings.

Let's fast forward to right after the fall. The brothers are all war damaged, bloody, grieving, guilty, humiliated. Lucifer has just basically been strongarmed into permanently pledging his loyalty to someone he doesn't yet trust or like at all just to get a second chance for his sister who he will never see again and is still effectively dead to him, and to make sure his family has some security. Which I think may be the piece of fuel in the fire inside him that finally expels this fucking hairball of repressed emotion into a living breathing little... infant demon. That absolutely no one asked for. Cue Lucifer having the worst cast of postpartum you've ever seen and resenting the fuck out of this baby and everything it represents and every bit more stress its gonna pile onto him.

But never fear, thats why family is here! Except they're not. They've all got their own shit to deal with. Mammon is already taking care of the rest of his siblings 24/7. He can barley make time to eat or sleep. Levi is very badly hurt, having been a target in the actual battle because of his former status in the army of angels and having gone through a very dramatic change to his body even compared to the rest of his brothers, he can't move very much yet. Belphie is struggling very hard with his newfound vice, he can rarley keep his eyes open, and when he can, hes grieving, hard. He was extremely close to Lilith. Beel... is an entirely different person. Quiet is an understatement. Hes nearly motionless for days at a time in his misery and deeeep in survivors guilt.

And Asmo is also hurt. They all are but him, not quite as badly. Emotionally he's taken a big blow, he's confused, he feels hideous and disgusted by himself, his new body and these new... feelings. He looks for a distraction. Hes been looking for days but his big brother just coughed out a little brother and Asmodeus instantly has stars in his eyes. If any of them have any kind of maternal instinct, its this one. Love is, after all, his whole thing. That horrible little tantruming ball of pure demonic fury is his new baby brother and hes never been happier to step up to the plate. Lucifer is almost too eager to let Asmo hold him the first time and from that moment on those two are inseparable.

-> Taking a pause from this pseudo fic to point out the thing that got me thinking about all this in the first place was a conversation about halfway through season one where MC refuses to make a pact with Satan the first time because he's doing it to spite Lucifer. They ask the brothers what the fuck is going on with that and they all have a little sit-down where they talk about his birth. All the brothers present look kind of uncomfortable but share the story as clearly as they can. But Asmo looks like this and gives this line:

He looks downright excited and this is the only line we get about actually raising him we get. For some reason it stuck with me, idk why. Asmo just seems so proud to share about how they taught Satan to be a person. Back to how I think that went

-> Asmo quickly learns about his ability to charm other demons and just as soon as he learns how to control that he feels comfortable using a very mild form of it to calm this baby the fuck down. And it works! Thank his cold uncaring father it works. Satan smiles for the first time in his life and he sheds a few tears both in relief and at how unbearably cute he is when he's not screaming. As soon as this baby is manageable and his brothers aren't in nearly as much pain, they all start pitching in. Doing whatever it takes to calm him down, finding things to make him happy. They make the disturbing discovery that its mostly gore that makes him smile. And yanking other peoples hair. His first giggle comes with a tiny fistful of newly-black strands he won't let go of.

Even with his brothers contributing to his care, Asmo still has a major part in keeping him company. Lucifer pitches in the most after him but if his favorite caretaker isn't around hes fussy as all hell.

Asmo, being blessed with the emotional intelligence the rest of his family seems to lack, is responsible for calming the kid down and teaching him healthier ways to manage his anger and stress. He teaches him meditation and yoga and self care. Hes the only one of his brothers with both the interest and patience to teach him how to read, how to cook, how to mind his manners. His anger never disappears. Hes still more prone to outbursts than any of his siblings ever were. Hes still much more violent when he does snap. But he can control it better than he could the day before and he keeps improving. Week after week and year after year, Satan grows into somebody all his brothers are proud of.

And hes still bonded to Asmodeus the most. Despite their clashing personalities they manage to get along perfectly and spend quite a bit of time together.

Theyre paired off in Devilgram and even the main body of the story quite a bit. Asmos even is Satan's background picture during phonecalls. I'm not sure if I'm reading way too far into that wait I totally am or if the writers are even aware they're doing that but I think its sweet and ive been thinking about it for months. Thank you for the opportunity to organize it all into one place ♡

#obey me #obey me asmodeus #obey me satan #obey me lucifer #bambi.answer #bambi.talk #nonny #its... so fucking long #and theres so many thoughts i didnt get to #so much meat i didnt cut #i tried to keep it on topic i swear #i just have a need to analyze satan as a character that lives in my blood #also i think this entire thing prevented asmo from having time to properly process and grieve his own fall #and that that had major psychological consequences #but thats a rant for a different time #god #nonny i wanna hear your thoughts on this too pls come back and dump them in the askbox

[avengerscompound]

The Hamptons’ House: 2009 - 2

The Hamptons’ House:  A Iron Man Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a coffee with Ko-fi Word Count: 1803

Pairing:  Tony Stark x F!Reader

Warnings: Angst, mentions of torture, illness, and PTSD

Synopsis: When Tony goes missing for three months in Afghanistan you grieve his death.  His subsequent return and outing as Iron Man means your first time seeing him in the Hamptons carries a lot of emotion and questions.

2009: Part 2

Tony woke just as the sun began to rise and he crawled out from between the pocket that you and Kurt had made around him.  He was reluctant to get up.  It was nice to wake up cuddled up with other people and he really relished his time with you.  He’d like to just lie there until you both woke and then spend the morning finding other reasons to stay in bed, but he had a few things to take care of before you woke, and it would be nice to take the time to watch the sunrise over the ocean.  He wasn’t completely sure he’d get another chance to see it.

He went to the workbench in his room.  It hadn’t changed much since he’d installed JARVIS.  The only new thing on there was the device he had made to check his blood toxicity level.

He’d known when he’d first made the miniaturized arc reactor having it embedded in his chest would be dangerous.  Palladium was toxic, but the toxins would kill him much slower than the pieces of shrapnel floating around in his chest so he’d hoped that he’d be able to find some alternative to the palladium, preferably before it killed him.  In the meantime, he was trying to live a little healthier.  He’d been drinking chlorophyll smoothies to try and negate the poisoning.

He pricked his finger and watched as the display lit up.

Blood Toxicity 06%.

Not too bad - he could work with that.  He would need to figure out how to get that under control though because at the rate it was going up, he was barely going to clear his next birthday.

He put the device aside and looked out the window.  He could worry about that later.  Now he had to worry about how he was going to tell you what had happened to him and how it was still not over.

He hadn’t really told anyone what had happened.  Not all of it anyway.  Some people knew parts.  Everyone knew he had been in the cave and about inventing the arc.  No one knew about the waterboarding or how from months after he got home when he got in the shower and the water hit his face - he would flinch.  Pepper, Rhodey, and some of SHIELD knew about Obidiah - but no one else.  No one knew about the dance with Pepper or how he’d realized he was falling in love with her and he was fairly certain she felt the same way.

He wanted to tell you.  You of all people wouldn’t hold any of it against him or pressure him to do something he wasn’t comfortable with.  It wasn’t going to be easy though.

“Tony?”

You spoke at barely above a whisper and yet the sound startled him in the quiet room.  He jumped a little and spun around in his chair.  Kurt still slept soundly, but you were sitting up, looking at him.  You’d pulled the sheet up to cover yourself but your breast was exposed.  He could see the look of worry on your face and a wave of guilt hit him.  He hated how upset you’d been last night.  He’d wished he could have protected you from that fear, and he had been grateful that he’d never actually started dating you in the first place.  He could only imagine how panicked you’d be if it had just been the two of you.

Tony’s automatic reaction was to smile.  It wasn’t real and he knew you’d see through it.  He hated using that smile on you, but it had become so natural to wear it.  When he realized what he was doing he let the facade fall again.  “Hey,” he whispered.  “Go back to sleep.  It’s early.”

You climbed out of bed and moved to him.  When you reached him, he wrapped his arm around your waist and pulled you close, resting his forehead on your bare chest.  “Why are you up?” You whispered.

“Guess I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted.  “Needed to get my thoughts in order.”

“Yeah?” You asked.  “Like what?”

He pulled back and looked up at you.  “Maybe we should go downstairs so we don’t wake, Kurt.”

You nodded and pulled away, going to your bag and pulling out a sleep shirt and a robe.  The two of you headed downstairs together.  The house was a hive of activity.  In the kitchen, the cooks were preparing breakfast-to-go for the party guests that were sleeping off the events of last night.  Tony paused just long enough to ask them to bring you something out to the patio before moving on.  There were maids and cleaners and Happy’s security team waking up people and moving them on as they cleaned up.  All over the living room and out on the deck people were blearily getting dressed and making their way to the buffet table that had been set up with tea, coffee, and juice and was being laden down with toast and breakfast sandwiches.

People called out happy birthday to him, but no one tried very hard to engage.  He was glad of that at least.  You followed him to the hammock and when he was comfortably lying in it, he pulled you down on top of him.

The sun was now a semi-circle on the horizon making the sky a mix of orange, pink, and purple.  You settled against him, resting your head on his shoulder, and staring out over the ocean with hooded eyes.  There was a pain in his chest where you were leaning against him.  He hurt most of the time since Afghanistan.  Having a hole carved out of your ribs and a battery shoved in where they used to be was bound to be painful.  Still, he took it.  Pain meant he was alive, and right now, that meant he was here with you.

“You gonna tell me everything?”  You asked quietly.

He rubbed your back and gave a small nod.  “Yeah,” he said.  “But I need you to promise me something, you can’t tell anyone.  Not Kurt.  Not some random friend you know who doesn’t know me.  Not Rhodey.  Especially not Rhodey.  He’ll just worry and get in my way and … I can’t do that to him.”

“You’re scaring me, Tony,” you said.

“Promise me, Cookie.  Promise me or I won’t tell you anything,” he said.

You took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  You looked up into his eyes and gave a small nod.  “I promise.  It stays between you and me.”

Tony kissed you softly and ran his palm up and down your back.  This was it.  He was going to unburden himself of everything and he hoped that you were the person he could do that with without regrets.

“I was making a sale in Afghanistan.  Obidiah had convinced me it was better if we did the demonstration on site.  I ate it up…”

Tony told you everything.  About how he’d been arguing with Rhodey before it happened.  How he’d been joking with the soldiers just before the explosion.  How he’d watched those soldiers die right in front of his eyes just before a bomb landed beside him with the Stark Industries’ logo on it and everything had gone black.

He told you about waking up with them making a recording for Obidiah (though he hadn’t known it at the time).  He told you about waking up again and how Yinsen had saved his life by putting a battery in his chest.  How he’d been asked to make more weapons and that when he refused they’d tortured him.  The fact that Yinsen kept trying to befriend him, and by the time Tony did trust the man, he’d already built the miniature arc reactor and had started making the metal suit.

He told you about fighting his way out.  Watching Yinsen die.  Blowing up as many of his own weapons as he could.  Rhodey finding him in the desert.  Deciding he was changing the direction of the company.  Of building a new arc reactor.  A new suit.  How Obidiah had been the one that ordered the hit.  How the man who had acted like his stand-in-father had stolen his heart right out of his chest and left him to die.  How Tony had ended up killing him with Pepper’s help and some secret government organization had covered it up.

He didn’t just tell you about the events that led him to become Iron Man though.  He’d also told you about the dance with Pepper and how he was definitely in love with her and that he was pretty sure she felt the same way but neither of them seemed to be willing to do anything about it.  He told you part of the reason why he wasn’t willing to move it forward was that the very device keeping him alive was also killing him and he didn’t have it in him to put her through losing him if they moved from being boss and employee to lovers.

He didn’t leave out one single thing.  The staff brought you both breakfast and left it on a table beside the hammock.  You both left it practically untouched as he spoke, just pausing to sip his chlorophyll smoothie or coffee briefly from time to time.  When he was done the house had cleared out and was almost completely clean, and the sun was up.  You were crying silently, tear tracks staining your cheeks.

“Oh, Tony,” you whispered.

“Please,” he said.  “I don’t want pity, okay?  I’m working on it.  You’re the only one I trust to tell all this to.”

“It’s so much, Tony,” you said.  “You need help.”

He sighed and pressed his lips to the top of your head.  “I promise, I can handle it.  And if it gets to the point that it’s too much, I’ll tell Rhodey.  But I invented this thing -” he tapped the casing on the arc, “- in a cave, under pressure, by myself.  I’m the best one to fix it.  If Rhodey and Pepper are worrying too much, it’ll just distract me.”

You frowned and nodded.  He tilted your chin up to face him.  “Now, you know,” he said.  “But the world out there isn’t part of what we have here.  Right?”

You nodded.  “Right.”

“So, we’re just going to do what we always do,” he said.  “Hang by the pool.  Relax.  Fuck.  Enjoy ourselves.  Right?”

“Right,” you agreed.  He smiled and leaned in and kissed you.  You hummed, wrapping your arms around his neck.

The sliding door opened and closed and he pulled back, looking over to see Kurt watching you both.

“Where’d you guys go?”  He asked.

Tony smirked and held out his hand.  “Why don’t you get over here and find out?”

// NEXT

#tony stark #tony stark x reader #iron man #iron man fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #reader insert #the hamptons' house #2009

[regrettablewritings]

Preferences: Guilty Pleasures

Characters: Okoye, Lucifer Morningstar, Dewey Finn, Peter B. Parker, Ahkmenrah

Okoye

Okoye is straightforward and stony upon first impressions. And, admittedly, even afterward. The only real difference is that, if one gets to know her better, they might find shock in the fact that in spite of her appearance, she Dora leader actually likes sweets. However, it’s not sweet things in general that Okoye feels guilty for enjoying: It’s Starbucks.

Starbucks is the antithesis of everything Okoye is associated with: Supremely un-Wakandan, a chain establishment, and overall just not worth the absurd cost. Not to mention superbly unhealthy when compared to the rest of a fighter’s typical diet. But yet you can bet that every time she needs to go out of the country or off-continent, there’s an invasive shout for joy at the possibility that she might be able to get her hands on a Frappucino (followed by an internal scolding).

She can’t even explain exactly why she likes it; there are plenty of good, even healthier sweet things back in Wakanda -- heck, back anywhere else!

But it’s a bit like when someone craves the cheap taste of school pizza over a legit pie cooked in a stone hearth: She just loves the sugary sweetness, the application of whipped cream to an already tooth-rottingly saccharine icy drink, the addition of chocolate. But Bast, she also hates it. But ever since T’Challa practically shoved a grande cup of caramel frappucino into her hands, she hasn’t felt entirely the same.

Against her better judgement, she’s more or less unintentionally tried 45% of the menu drink-wise. She doesn’t particularly care much for the food part of the establishment, though if she should ever find herself in one during the fall, she might indulge in a chunky slice of pumpkin bread under the conviction that it’s healthy enough for being gourd-related. Never mind that it’s just a cinnamon mixture with more sugar than actual pumpkin-derived anything.

Really, of all those mentioned on this list, Okoye is the one who probably feels the most disappointed in herself whenever she indulges in her guilty pleasure: It’s a betrayal to her patriotism, to her dignity, and to her attempts to eat healthy. But damn, if this type of betrayal doesn’t taste so addicting . . .

Lucifer Morningstar

The thing about Lucifer is that it’s actually a bit hard for him to feel any regrets over liking anything; he’s the Devil, after all, so his whole thing is about embracing the things that make you feel good. And even besides that, he’s mostly managed to skate by in his time on Earth by categorizing things as Stuff He Likes, Stuff He Tolerates, Stuff He Doesn’t Bother With, and Stuff Humans Seem to Enjoy But He Doesn’t Quite Get. It’s a tad restricted of a system but you can’t argue with results.

However, just because something is difficult doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. The Devil can, in fact, recognize absurdity in liking certain things. Hence why, to a point, he’s fallen prey to his own bizarre pleasures: The Devil has guilty pleasures, and it’s in stupid YouTube videos, Vine, and TikTok.

After he finally drank the Kool-Aid and got himself a smart phone, it was only a matter of time before Lucifer fell down the rabbit hole that is YouTube prank videos and strange uploads about nonsense and animal humor. It was also only a matter of time before he found himself stumbling into Vine compilations. The Celestial is terrifically mystified by the creative power of humans, managing to tell entire stories and peak comedy in only a span of seven seconds. But he’s also quite loathe to have realized it’s been long defunct by the time he’s discovered it.

He’s even more loathe to find himself making references in his daily life: He has actually quietly blurted out, “I sure hope it does” in response to seeing a Road Work Ahead sign, causing Chloe some confusion (and Lucifer lots of embarrassment). He has referred to a culprit as “Jared, Age 19″. Since discovering Vine, there has been at least one night wherein he and a bed mate were sitting there with barbecue sauce on his tiddies, but that was by sheer coincidence.

But eventually the Vine compilation well dried up, and the inevitable transfer over to TikTok happened. And Luci honestly doesn’t know what to make of TikTok. He would describe it as Vine’s Molly-addicted cousin based on its obsession with dancing, but the dances are so stationary that even that doesn’t seem quite right. The videos on the platform are also much more . . . bizarre. And some of them admittedly trigger a fight-or-flight response in him, to which he always chooses the third option of freezing if only so he can keep watching the train wreck unfold before his eyes.

The trouble with TikTok, he’ll admit to himself, is that it’s not as easy to find iconic content the same way he could with Vine. However, this isn’t to say that he hasn’t found anything worth watching over and over and over again . . .

(Let’s just say the “Wolf Pack Compilation” lives in his head rent-free, and he’s both too amused by it and too overwhelmed by its vibe to try and evict it.)

Dewey Finn

Dewey is . . . a special case. Given that he associates messy living and indulging in one’s pleasure a part of the rocker lifestyle, he’s generally quick to embrace whatever makes him happy. He’s very upfront about his interests and is arguably almost incapable of feeling shame. But it’s in there: Deep down. No, not in himself -- in his Spotify. Specifically, a Spotify account made on an email he never uses because it was made specifically to create this separate, uber secret playlist.

One marked “Actual Musical Bops.”

Dewey hates musicals: They’re cheesy, uninspired, gaudy, ridiculous, totally aimed at chicks with weird fantasies that he could never aspire to, and the music is just overall unimpressive. And yet, somehow, against his music elitist nature, a handful have managed to slip through the cracks. At the very least, a handful of numbers have clawed their way past his defenses and into his ear, where they now live rent-free.

In spite of his best efforts, the problems are that he’s a New Yorker, so it’s inevitable that he hears a song or two; and also that, as an instructor (to wealthy New York tweens whose families can afford frequent tripes to the Great White Way, no less), he’s definitely going to wind up hearing about some shows and their stand-out numbers: Against his will, he knows the lyrics to “My Shot”; he has cried in the secrecy of his apartment to “When I Grow Up”; in the never-necessary reason he needs to remember how many minutes there are in a year, he sings it inside his head; hell, he’s even found himself trying to figure out the electric guitar riff from “The Phantom of the Opera” during his down time.

What’s all the more embarrassing is that, given how he presents himself as a music elitist, there’s just no way he can come back from this if anyone were to know. He has to catch himself when he finds himself humming “Johanna” in the teacher’s lounge. He scowls at himself when he can’t sleep and gives in and starts playing “No One is Alone.” He wants to kick his thick ass every time he realizes he’s excited to have stumbled across a “slime tutorial” on YouTube, this one with better quality than the last. The reason he actually put a password on his phone wasn’t out of privacy like a sensible person would, but out of a need to make sure that no one ever found out that he had downloaded the entire Beetlejuice soundtrack, including jankily-recorded songs that never made it to the official cast recording for whatever reason!

And should anyone ever find out about any of this, Dewey has a plan: “Oh, I’m doing research. I’m studying these songs so I can give the kids a lesson on what not to do as actually competent musicians.”

But the lesson would never actually come. Mainly because he keeps prolonging his “research” . . .

He’s also developed a bit of a soft spot for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic due to some students gushing about it, but he would rather sooner die than ever be associated with the term “brony.”

Peter B. Parker

Peter is at a point where he’s too tired to really care about the idea of guilty pleasures. The way he sees it, there are bigger priorities at stake than worrying about someone finding out about your love of some hokey activity or food or form of entertainment.

Besides, he’s a New Yorker: There’s way weirder stuff for people to just not pay any real attention to. Hence why he thinks nothing of his bizarre eating habits. And no, this isn’t referring to his disastrous appetite: This is about his tendency to eat food with his hands. Foods that, well, he really should probably utilize eating utensils for.

To be fair, this habit has always existed in him in some form or another, especially since, as Spider-Man, he often needs to eat food on the go. But during the time he spent living the life of a depressed bachelor, it came out in full force. On the rare occasion he wasn’t eating a food that deserved to be eaten by hand, he often found himself loathing the idea of doing the dishes afterward. There would be days he’d feel only slightly less depressed; enough to make a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese in the pot, but not enough to avoid cutting out the middle man.

He’s thankful the craptastic apartment wasn’t also see-through because if it were, he’s positive his neighbors would’ve thought they were bearing witness to a man’s breakdown as he wept into a pot of macaroni and cheese, his hand full of the stuff, while wearing a Spider-Man costume. (And, to be fair, they actually would be.)

In addition to this, there were also those nights where he would be prepared to actually tuck in to a plate of spaghetti, only for some crime going on elsewhere in the city to drag him away. By the time he’d return, the plate would’ve been cold and his energy too depleted to want to even dream about cleaning more than he already had to.

The great news is that he’s thankfully done a 180, now able and willing (if begrudgingly) to clean up after himself. But bad news is that this feral man will still eat a fully-loaded baked potato like an apple. In a park. In front of women and children. He’s just too tired to care anymore. He’s aware of the guilt in this as a concept, but he’s also aware that he needs to take whatever happiness he can get out of whatever he does. And if that means eating everything by hand, then so be it!

Ahkmenrah

Funnily enough, Ahkmenrah doesn’t seem to experience much of any shame for enjoying the things most might feel the need to hide: He’s constantly curious and has missed out on a lot over the centuries, so why should he feel bad for wanting to indulge in them? Celebrity gossip is just a more fun version of the palace gossip he’d grown up hearing as a boy; reality TV is like watching a play, but with much more fights, less deaths, and more faulty romances; and sloppy meatball subs are like a feast for a man of his time!

Besides, he’s a king: Kings shouldn’t have to feel embarrassment over what the common folk might think.

And yet . . . It took some time, but eventually Ahkmenrah did experience it: Guilt in his pleasures.

He couldn’t even recall where it had all started. Maybe he was searching for more content to swallow after the most recent season of his new favorite show had ended? Whatever the case, he wound up biting off more than he could chew when he stumbled upon . . . fanfiction.

The adorable yet sad thing is that he didn’t even think anything of it at first. It wasn’t until he brought up a ship he’d invested his last few nights awake exploring on the computer: Nobody knew what the crap he was talking about, so of course he felt the need to explain it. But the more he talked, the more perplexed his friends looked. And the more he could feel his cheeks and ears burn.

Oh, he thought. Is this . . . embarrassment? Is that what this feels like? Oh, this is just foul.

Thankfully, nobody pressured him to keep talking about it, but the poor king sure as heck didn’t feel much of a desire to talk any further about it. But he needed to talk to somebody about his newly acquired “feels” as those online were calling them.

Joining fanfiction-oriented sites was the next obvious step, of course, but he’s experienced mixed feelings about it: On one hand, it’s nice to talk with people who share similar views and excitement about a fictional couple. But on the other, the digital wars that have broken out both disturb him and bring out the worst in him.

Like, of course there are bigger things to deal with than whether or not So-So is better off with Him-Ham, but if you truly think that Blah-Blah and Himhaw are a healthy relationship, then you can go do a service and bury yourself in the desert sands to provide substance to the hungry beetles with your flesh --

Suffice to say, a lot of the guilt in this pleasure seems to come from the fact that Ahk can get a little too emotionally invested if the work is really good. He tries to limit his interactions to commenting and praising certain works, and encouraging content creators. However, he’s also contemplated contributing his own pieces of fiction to the fandom . . .

#okoye #lucifer morningstar imagines #dewey finn #peter b parker imagines #ahkmenrah #okoye imagines #lucifer imagines #dewey finn imagines #ahkmenrah imagines #regrettablewritings #spiderman into the spiderverse imagines #spiderman itsv imagines #spiderman imagines #i tried posting this on my phone and it literally fucking deleted EVERYTHING #anyway @staff: the fuck is up? fix that shit because now i literally cannot post SHIT on my phone from my laptop #preference #preferences

[lyriquette]

RWBY farming au

Conceived in the Frosen Steel server, a RWBY farming / hydroponics AU. I’ll probably use some of the ideas in this for Rising Snow. Mostly background with scattered pieces of actual fic. - lilac 

If people don’t mind this format, I’ll probably post similar world-building AUs in the future.  

Featuring: Penny Polendina, Oscar Pine, Whitley Schnee.  

Because of the freezing cold and the years of industrialization in Mantle, Mantle/Atlas soil is incredibly poor for growing plants. Most food product is imported from Vale, and in turn Atlas supports Vale in terms of sharing their technology. It's why the two Kingdoms are more modern in appearance than the other two kingdoms, not to mention that they were originally good allies during the Great War.

In this AU, Watts develops his murder machines first and ends up winning whatever contract Atlas was offering. The Penny Project is later realized by Pietro, and Pietro later resigns as he picks up on the increasing militarization in Atlas as if General Ironwood was preparing something big - and he wanted his daughter not to be involved.

Pietro decides to move down to the Crater in Mantle to facilitate that. That way no one would know about Penny. He then creates a small shop to help repair electronics and create prosthetics for the unfortunate. It’s through this change in locale that Penny learns how bad things are down at Mantle. 

The main reason is food. Though Atlas and Mantle do have greenhouses, they're only able to supply food for a small amount of people - and it's usually just to the rich who want to eat fresh produce up in Atlas. The rest of the food is imported and thus expensive. In a way, food is a means to keep Mantle underneath Atlas's thumb because if its citizens don't work, they can't eat. If they quit, someone else would gladly take that job just to feed themselves and their family. Thus, a cycle of control is created where people simply can't break free of the poor conditions nor could they really complain, because to them it's happening everywhere. 

The SDC is the main actor in that, given their non-essential businesses are everywhere. If they decide to forcibly close down those businesses, many many people would be out of a job and likely die. Whether the government would act or not is a coin flip - the SDC needs Mantle for labor, but Atlas could run effectively without it - they have robots for labor, the rich for funding, and a military arm in the form of Atlas Academy. 

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

Most of the Faunus who lived in the Crater did not trust Penny and Pietro at first, but given Pietro's generosity and Penny's kind demeanor, they slowly warm up to them. The White Fang within Atlas is more of a community hub that supports each other because they can't afford to be militant; attacks of SDC buildings end up having extremely bad repercussions on Mantle Faunus which includes unofficial anti-Faunus hiring policies or firings - the whim of the SDC can easily kill a couple thousand of them from that alone. 

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

Penny initially started this project, not because she wanted to change the world, but because her father had been getting more sick lately, getting thinner, and starting to get sores in his gums and bleeding more easily. She later on would learn that these were signs of malnutrition - scurvy - things that those living more centrally in Mantle or up in Atlas didn't get but was a problem now because of where they lived. Though buying vitamin supplements did help, it didn't quite replace actual food - and nutrients were often better absorbed and palated in the form of food, especially when it came to the nonessential but still important minerals. 

However, she knew that things simply did not grow in Mantle. And the things that did grow were usually hardy weeds turned poisonous due to absorbing heavy metals from the ground. It was all too common to see a desperate man or woman just collapse shaking from eating too many wild weeds because they couldn't eat anything else. Maybe one day, they could plant enough weeds to help improve Mantle's soil quality, but it didn't help her dad now. 

She's heard of hydroponics before. It wasn't exactly a secret; however, the science was in its infancy stages. Part of it was because people in the food importing business did not want others to grow cheap, domestic food - greenhouses were already bad enough for them. However, the main reason was that people didn't quite know what made plants succeed in growing and creating produce (farmers were the least likely people to work in permanently cold Solitas) - usually the plants failed to germinate, died drooping (overwatering), or end up growing but don't create produce (never bore fruit). Even though there was limited success, the yield would be extremely poor, and the amount of time and energy could've just be used to create another greenhouse instead.

But this was okay for Penny cause all she really had was time and energy. And it wasn't like she was selling food. She just wanted to grow produce, so her dad could eat healthier. 

Her dad supported her efforts by getting the short experiment logs of the initial hydroponics projects at Atlas. And it became clear to Penny that there were many holes in that research with the main factor being that there was not an actual farmer to help with the research. And with the arrogance of Atlasian scientists (Watts being the archetypical example), who would bring a down-to-earth farmer who knew nothing of science and the like? Lacking expertise and knowing that the entirety of Atlas would be of no help, Penny sought the CCT for assistance. 

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

Oscar didn't particularly like farming. He wanted to become a Hunter, but his aunt wouldn't let him. Too dangerous, she said. He might end up mixing with the darker elements of Mistral because of it, not to mention the fact he’d be fighting the Grimm on a regular basis. Better to be a farmer in central Mistral with a nice stable income like how his parents and their parents and their parents' parents lived. 

Still, he never complained out loud. After going to school in the morning, he helped worked the fields in the afternoon, the same as the other farmhands like his uncle and his cousins.  He was living under their roof, and he knew it was hard to provide for a thirteen-year old who was just starting his growth spurt. He probably ate more than his aunt and his baby cousins combined now. And their family generously paid for his living conditions without forcing him into anything he didn't want to do. 

As of late, he's been a bit happier with his lot in life. Using the CCT, someone from Solitas had contacted him in regard to farming - about how they wanted to grow things in Mantle and potentially revolutionize the lives of people there. But they couldn't due to the soil being bad. In what way, he didn't particularly know. They discussed the issue with each other through voice-chat, talking about their very different lives and even the possibility of something called hydroponics - honestly, it felt like finding a kindred spirit. And he looked forward to the days he could talk things out with his new friend. 

"Hey, wait. Check this out," Oscar said as he checked the CCT forums, "Your thread got replied too." 

"Really?" said a bewildered voice on the other line. 

"Yeah, a Penny123 is asking about farming in Mantle too. Even mentioned hydroponics." 

"...Let's try bringing this Penny in." 

"You sure, Whitley?" 

"Yeah. As much as I want us to keep the credit, it's not like we're going anywhere right now. Maybe this person will have new ideas." 

==========

So a duo became a trio. And Whitley was right. What Penny brought to the table was the scientific expertise. She might not know how hydroponics actually worked, but she did have the means to analyze the soil content (retrofitting some of her sensors for more specialized purposes) and simply put - she was a scientist. On the other hand, Oscar had the farming expertise - he knew what soils worked well with which crop, the habits of each plant he grew, he knew what plants liked more water and which ones preferred less, and what a plant should like when it was growing well.

Whitley was the odd duck in the group. First of all, he wasn't quite doing it for altruism's sake. He was doing it because he disliked his family - and really hated the Schnee Dust Company, seeing that it's responsible for his mother's drinking, his parents' loveless marriage, Winter abandoning the rest of the family for Ironwood and the Hunters/Huntresses, and Weiss's likely plans to abandon ship on him too (he's angry at her for that, but after having Oscar to confide in, it wasn't as bad as being left alone and isolated completely.) 

He's also responsible for making sure that his two partners weren't murdered in their sleep. Going this route infringes upon the interests of several major corporations including the SDC and the food import companies. Seeds and food products coming from and going to Solitas were tracked very closely. Penny is also given some chilling news from Whitley: people have tried building greenhouses at the Crater before, and all of them were destroyed without a perpetrator to be found.

The danger was serious enough that Oscar was also planning to move to Solitas to not implicate his aunt and uncle when he and Whitley finally started the project in earnest. With Penny around, Oscar potentially had a place to stay (Oscar also was like "i can do heavy lifting, the dishes, cooking, farming, etc" as part of his self-advertisement). 

Even Whitley acknowledges that he himself might not be safe. One wrong move on his part - and well, if his father was able to endure nearly a decade of loveless marriage just to take over the SDC, there's no telling what he'll do when he realizes he's working against his interests. 

Penny needs some time to think. She now knows that her tiny project of letting her father eat better is connected to the livelihoods of so many and also brings a lot of danger along with it. Not just to herself but to her father - her dad would also be a target if things go south. With her partners’ agreement (since it's inevitable Pietro would get wind of things since the project will be occurring in his house), Penny talks to her dad about the hydroponics / farming project. He's worried for her but understands what she wants to do - she's filled with purpose now and wants to help the people out. As much as he's scared for her and doesn't want her to do this, he can't help but feel a bit of pride about his daughter growing up. Still, he makes her promise that as soon as things start looking bad, they'll stop. They'll quit and not look back. He asks to speak to the other two, not quite realizing they're a pair of thirteen-year olds, and extracts the same promise for their sake. 

------

As plans for moving and gathering soil samples are being made, Pietro starts building Floating Array. 

Penny begins dragging several abandoned shipping containers to the "backyard" of their store, saying her dad needed some raw material for experimentation when in reality it's gonna be where the heart of their project is. 

Weiss starts getting worried about her younger, now constantly sneaking around and speaking to the scroll in hushed tones. She overhears part of his conversation - about how he'd get in a lot of trouble for a certain course of action (directly smuggling goods in using his authority) - and worries that he's getting bullied. 

Oscar tells his family that his friend found him a job working as an engineer's assistance in Solitas, and he'd like to stay there for a year. His place of employment has already paid for the transcontinental ticket.

#rwby #rwby fic #rwby au #penny polendina #whitley schnee #oscar pine #farming au #lilac writes #throws my au at the universe

[much-obliged-timothy]

Dad Tim & Uncle Rhys Part 8

Back at it again with Tim trying his hardest and Rhys somehow getting sucked into their problems! I’ll probably do a follow-up to this part, so more soon! You can read part one here

“It’s not going to work, Rhys,” Tim said, throwing a contract down on Rhys’ desk. “They’ve been fighting me for you to take that wording out.”

“I will not,” Rhys said indignantly. “Atlas prides itself on being state of the art. If we take that wording out, they can use cheaper materials, and it’ll lower the quality of that line of weapons.”

“I hear you, I hear you,” Tim said, thumbing through the pages of the contract. “Alright, buy me a little time on it. Push the meeting back a day or two. I’ll see if I can’t hide it somewhere else with more clever wording.”

It was a little scary how good Tim was at things like that. Then again, he’d been trained to negotiate and write up contracts by Handsome Jack, so Rhys supposed it was scary but not surprising. 

“I can buy you at least a day, but I’ll push for two or three,” Rhys said, writing a note to get right on that after Tim left his office. “Now, onto the next thing. Which is...uh…”

“Analysis of those trials,” Tim said, digging through a folder to pull out reports. “I had them send the reports to me and glanced them over earlier. Haven’t had a chance to look in-depth yet, but it seems like everything is going well.”

Tim passed some papers to Rhys. As Rhys organized them, Tim helped himself to some of his coffee, courtesy of Lorelei. 

Lorelei had taken a liking to Phoenix, so in an attempt to win him over, she often brought coffee for Tim and juice or soda for Phoenix. Right now, he sat reading in the corner, nibbling at a cookie she’d gotten him from a local bakery. 

He looked up, opened his mouth, then shut it and put his head back down. Rhys kicked Tim under the desk and nodded to Phoenix.

“Need something, pal?” Tim said.

Phoenix turned his book around. “Dunno this word, dad. Can’t sound it out.”

“Bring it closer. Dad’s only got one working eye,” Tim said, gesturing him over. 

Phoenix got up, frowning at his hands because one had the book and one had the cookie, leaving no room to grab his bear.

“Cookie in your mouth,” Tim offered.

Phoenix brightened, sticking part of the cookie in his mouth so he could grab his bear. He went over to Tim, who took the book to free up one of his hands.

Tim lifted Phoenix into his lap. “Which word? This one?”

“Uh-huh,” Phoenix said. “Dunno that word. I tried to sound it out but I still can’t get it.”

“Well, at least you tried. The word is ‘weather’,” Tim said. 

“Oh!” Phoenix said, pushing his cookie into Tim’s hand so he could take the book back. “Don’t eat that. Weather. Weather.” He spoke it slowly, tracing it with his finger.

He’d really dedicated himself to learning how to read. Rhys had bought him several books to practice with when Tim left him in the office. He was getting noticeably better, but he still struggled with longer words.

There was a knock on the door. Phoenix tensed up, but Tim just gave him an easy smile and ruffled his hair, passing his cookie back to him.

“Come in,” Rhys called.

The door opened and in came a woman Rhys knew, but not well. Tim’s easy smile turned to surprise, and he looked flustered as he tried to straighten his shirt a little.

“M-Moxxi,” he said. “What, um, what are you doing here?”

“Checking on you, sugar,” Moxxi said, winking at him. Tim’s face heated up. “I had some business with a supplier in Promethea so I’ll be here for about two days. I wanted to see how you were doing. Plus, Ember asked me to check on the two of you.”

“We’re good,” Tim said, pointing lamely at Phoenix’s book. “He’s working on his reading skills. And I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t had time to, uh, you know, drown in trauma or anything. Mostly.”

“Rhys, how’s he doing?” Moxxi said.

“Fine,” Rhys said honestly. “He’s been a huge asset to Atlas. He’s a hard worker and he’s good at his job. Kind of a pain in the ass and socially stunted, but we’re working on it.”

“I was in a casino for seven years!” Tim said, glaring at him.

“How’s the hand?” Moxxi asked, sauntering over and taking Tim’s cybernetic hand, running light fingers over it.

Tim’s face grew even redder. “O-Oh, it’s, um, it’s good. Works fine.” 

“Maybe you can show me sometime,” she said, smirking at the dumbstruck look on his face. “I could use help moving some crates into transport.”

“Right! Right, moving crates. I can move crates,” Tim said weakly. 

“And how are you doing, Phoenix? Your mom misses you,” Moxxi said, giving him a surprisingly kind smile. “She always gets excited for your daily calls.”

Phoenix looked at her with such distrust that it bordered on hostility. Rhys was surprised to see the expression on his face, especially considering that as far as Rhys had gathered, Moxxi was the whole reason Tim and Phoenix survived and escaped the casino.

“Hey, she asked how you’re doing,” Tim said, nudging him.

Phoenix didn’t respond. He just tensed up, gripping his bear tighter, never taking his eyes off Moxxi.

If it bothered Moxxi, she didn’t let it show, the smile staying on her face. “Well, Ember said you two are still working on socializing him. I won’t press him. It is good to see you though, Phoenix. You look much healthier.”

“I’m teaching myself how to cook so I can feed him better meals. He’s gained some weight and gotten a little bit taller,” Tim said. “It’s good. He was always worryingly small. Hey, uh, maybe I could...cook you dinner while you’re here? Catch up.” His face heated up again. “You can tell me about the casino.”

“Sure, sugar,” she said, back to the seductive smile. “I’d love to hear about your life here, too. Mind coming to talk with me for a moment? In private.”

Tim immediately stood up, setting Phoenix down in his chair. Phoenix tried to cling stubbornly to him, but Tim pried his hands off.

“I’ll be right back, pal,” he promised. “Stay with Rhys. I’ll just be in my office with Moxxi for a few minutes.”

“Dad!” Phoenix said, grabbing his arm again. “Don’t. Don’t go.”

“Phoenix,” Tim said, slight exasperation in his voice. “Rhys is here with you. I’ll be in my office. You know where I am if you need me. We just need to talk for a minute, okay? I’ll be back before you know it.”

Moxxi put a hand on Tim’s arm to guide him out of the room. When the door shut, Phoenix glared at it.

“She doesn’t work here,” he said, that surprising hostility back. “Can’t you make her leave?”

“She had a visitor pass,” Rhys said in confusion. “She’s authorized to be here. Phoenix, what’s wrong? Didn’t she help save you and your dad?”

He glared at Rhys now, hugging his bear to his chest. “It’s her fault dad lost his hand. He hid until she showed up. Then he got caught and he almost died.”

“But from what I understand, Moxxi was trying to help him escape,” Rhys said. “And he only had to cut his hand off because of Jack’s protocols.”

“I don’t like her!” Phoenix said stubbornly. “Make her leave, boss guy. She doesn’t work here. She’s not Atlas.”

“But why don’t you like her?” Rhys pressed, sensing there was more to this. 

For as distrustful as Phoenix was, he wasn’t usually hateful like this. And he’d been getting better with everyone trying to help socialize him. So this whole thing was baffling Rhys.

“She’s gonna take my dad!” Phoenix said.

“What? No she’s not. She’s the reason you and your dad left the casino,” Rhys said. “Why would she take him back?”

“Nu-uh!” he said, shaking his head. “Dad likes her.” Frustrated tears rose in his eyes, but he choked them back. “Dad’s s’posed to like mom. Not some clown lady.” He hugged his bear even tighter. “He’s s’posed to like my mom!”

Oh. Rhys wished he hadn’t pried for an answer.

He leaned back in his chair. Tim didn’t speak about it much, but from what Rhys had gathered, Phoenix was the result of Tim and Ember having a few near-death experiences that all ended in frantic adrenaline fueled, unprotected sex. Tim had specified that they’d always been good friends, but never a couple. 

As far as Rhys knew, the two were perfectly happy remaining friends instead of being a couple. Ember planned to stay working in the casino, and they’d agreed to have Tim raise Phoenix for now so the boy could finally grow up outside of the casino.

“Phoenix, your mom and dad were never a, um, a couple. I know Timothy likes your mom. Just not...not as anything more than a friend,” Rhys said awkwardly, unsure if Tim and Ember had ever had this talk with Phoenix.

“He can’t like the clown lady! She’s not my mom!” Phoenix argued.

Rhys supposed it was best to wait this out and let Tim talk to Phoenix about it. But Phoenix was growing anxious like he did when he feared Tim was in danger, so he tried a different approach.

“Doesn’t your mom work with Moxxi? So I’m sure she likes Moxxi,” Rhys attempted. “That must mean your mom would trust her with you and your dad.”

“Dad can’t like her,” Phoenix repeated stubbornly. 

Well, this was getting nowhere. Rhys sighed.

“We can talk about it when Tim comes back. Finish your cookie,” Rhys said, picking up his paperwork. At Phoenix’s look, Rhys gave a reluctant nod. “Yes, I promise we’ll talk about it when he comes back. Or you two will talk about it. I still don’t know how I keep getting sucked into all this.”

Phoenix glared at the door as he finished up his cookie. He tugged at the ear of his bear instead of pacing.

It was a bit before Tim returned. “Moxxi had to get to a meeting. Sorry about that. Just haven’t seen her in a while, you know?”

“Boss guy,” Phoenix pressed.

“Yea, I know!” Rhys said. “Timothy, Phoenix...doesn’t like you talking to Moxxi.”

“What?” Tim said in confusion. “Why not?”

“‘Cause she’s not my mom!” Phoenix said.

Tim looked pained for a moment before going over to his chair. He lifted Phoenix up so he could sit, settling Phoenix into his lap.

“Phoenix, I love your mom. She’s one of my best friends,” Tim said. “But we’ve talked about this. Your mom and I love each other, but we aren’t in love. We’re always going to raise you together, but we’re not going to be a couple.” 

Phoenix’s eyes watered again and he looked away from Tim. “But I miss mom.”

Tim hugged him tightly. “I know, Phoenix. I’m sorry.”

Phoenix began to cry harder. “I want you and mom. It’s not fair. It’s not fair!”

“Shhh, I know, pal. I really do,” Tim soothed. “I was raised by a single parent. I know it hurts sometimes. I’m sorry you haven’t seen her in so long.”

“If you marry the clown lady then what if I never see my mom again?” Phoenix whimpered. 

“Hey, no, no way. We’d never do that to you. And your mom loves you too much to let anyone keep her away from you,” Tim said, kissing Phoenix. “C’mon, pal, why don’t we go for a walk and visit Lorelei? And when you’ve calmed down a little, we can call mom so you can talk to her.”

“I miss her!” Phoenix said, burying his face against Tim’s shoulder and clutching at his shirt. “I miss my mom! I want my mom and dad! It’s not fair!” 

Tim looked heartbroken at his son’s distress. He rubbed Phoenix’s back, kissing his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Phoenix.” He stood up with Phoenix in his arms and glanced at Rhys. “Do you mind if I take him outside for some air? I’ll be back in a few minutes. It’ll give you time to read those reports.”

“Go,” Rhys said. “Take your time. Go home early if you need to. I can manage, Timothy.”

“I’ll be back,” Tim promised, carrying his son out.

Rhys felt awful seeing the kid cry like that. Phoenix was so attached to Tim that he’d never really considered whether or not the boy missed his mom. 

Rhys sighed and grabbed his ECHO, connecting a feed. He was probably going to regret this, but he’d grown too attached to Timothy Lawrence and his son.

“Something I can do for you, Rhys?” Moxxi answered.

“I know Timothy said you had a meeting, so I’ll make this quick,” Rhys said. “Any way you can help me plan a surprise to cheer Phoenix up?”

He and Moxxi spoke for a bit before hanging up. Rhys picked the reports back up, hoping like hell he was helping and not about to make things even harder for the family.

#borderlands #timothy lawrence #borderlands rhys #dad tim & uncle rhys #borderlands au #My writing