#to stick in the intro so it looks cool

[s-4pphics]

click!: in frame. 2 (e.w.)

SYNOPSIS: you crave redemption more than love. [idk au]

WORD COUNT: 11.5k

WARNINGS: professionalphotographer!ellie, strugglingartist!oc who’s black, ANGST!!, daddy issues, SA/victim blaming :(, homophobia LOL, anger issues\violence, bad parenting, anxiety, joel standing on bidness, FLUFF!! :3, SMUT… MDNI, ellie bottoms YAAAS, virginity mentions, jealousy😂, dubcon (they’re high), more fingering, brief mentions of cunning lunning, squirting, mult. big Os, err dassit

A/N: YYYYAASSSSSSSS hi… bye 

APRIL, 2014

Happy birthday, babe, you whisper in your girlfriend’s ear, arms wrapped around her neck from behind. Ceniyah’s giggly thank yous fill your ears and heart as you press smacking kisses on her cheek. 

I made you something… You reach behind and grab the rolled-up poster paper sticking out of your backpack, making sure Ceniyah doesn’t turn around. She seems giddy and your heart soars. You hope that all-nighter was worth it. Please, you pray to yourself, please love it. 

Close your eyes and gimme your hand, you say and she listens, palm open in front of your face. You place the scroll in her hand and she gasps. She whips around to face you, shock written all over her, and you giggle. She unrolls the painting and her head instantly falls back, tears jerking behind her glasses. 

Are you seriously crying right now! You pull her tight to your chest and she sobs into your neck, C’mon, baby, stop cryin’! S’okay. You coo and her arms tighten around your waist. 

D-D’you like it? Your face burns when you whisper. 

Are you fucking serious! She squeaks into your neck, It’s beautiful, baby, I love it. T-Thank you—

I love you so much, you mumble, and she says it back. 

You haven’t slept at all. Your body’s going to collapse soon. You hope it’s not during this phone call. 

You ogle at the small card in your hand, pressing the digits into your device before hitting the call button. It rings twice before a bright voice answers. 

“Hello, this is Lisa Meyers speaking. How can I be of service?”

… Interesting intro. “Good morning, um, Professor Meyers?” 

“Yes, how can I help you?” 

“I… we spoke at the coffee shop yesterday. About the… assisting art professors alumni thing.” 

“Oh, of course! How are you, dear?”

“I’m good. Um… I was wondering if you’d have some time to speak with me about it... If that’s cool.”

You can hear her wide smile through the line, “More than cool! Would you be able to come into the office tomorrow?” 

An extra day in the city wouldn’t hurt (it would), “No problem. What time were you thinkin’?” 

“My mornings are always open! How does ten sound?” 

“Sounds like a plan. Uh, thank you,” you say with twitchy fingers. 

“Course, hun! I’ll put you in and I’ll see you tomorrow!” 

You never expected to end up back here. 

The campus art studio looks exactly the same, only now the old portraits, sculptures, ceramics that were lined up on shelves of the display case are all replaced with new, nameless ones. You’re not used to seeing projects that you couldn’t attach a name to in the classroom. Your university years never feel that long ago, but the randomly placed structures are proof of your long-term absence. 

Time is an illusion… Or you’re getting old as fuck and about to be lowered into the ground. Freshmen make you sick(affectionately). 

Professor Meyers explained the position well enough for you to manage on your own. The work you’re doing isn’t difficult: oversee, assist in grading, oversee some more, oversee, and guide. You’re practically getting a check for being the already observant individual that you are. It’s a steal! 

The position only lasts around a month, but Professor Meyers was convinced that it would only take someone as talented as you (her words… although you agree) a week to get on her toes. You vowed to bring your sketchbook every day from here on out, both to yourself and to her, in case you get the inkling of inspiration that you desperately need. 

The job’s a small win. That’s all you could ask for right now. 

Fuck all that shit you said at the start of the week. TAing fucking sucks. And you still haven’t had any inspiration despite all the efforts from the students! Whenever you pick up a utensil, you stab through your paper. You’ve officially lost your touch. You’re a regular bitch with no talent! What the fuck is going on! 

You’ve had numerous breakdowns in bathroom stalls since Monday, and you’re bound to have another one in the next fifteen seconds. Why the fuck did so many students leave their filled water cups on the fucking tables. Guess who has to clean all that shit up! You! Fuck freshman(unaffectionately). 

You’re so happy the halls are empty in between rotations. No one needs to watch you sobbingly wipe down tables splattered with paint. 

After Professor Ronson’s room is tidy, you start prepping the board for the next rotation of students. They’re learning about anatomy today; There’s bound to be at least three students that scribble tiny dicks in the corner of their starter pages. You hate it here. 

You open the drawer to retrieve all the sharpeners, only to find the container completely empty. You’re sick of the animators not putting shit back. You begrudgingly make your way back down the hall and into Professor Lacey’s room… You should’ve never left.

Your lungs constrict with your gasp and you almost drop your keys. 

A just as shocked Ellie gawks back at you, laminated name tag with YEARBOOK dangling from the camera strap around her neck. 

What the fuck.

Ellie’s either hallucinating or dead. Yeah… She has to be dead. The haunting of your email was too much and she died and now she’s seeing shit—

An angel disguised as you is staring back at her, fist clenched under the sleeves of your sweater, brown eyes just as stunned as hers. Ellie barely has time to gather words before the chains hooked onto the pockets of your jeans jingle as you step out of the room and scurry down the hallway. Ellie’s feet are flying before she can even register their movements, hot on your trail as her camera bounces on her chest. 

She manages to get close enough to grab your bicep, ignoring the stuttering in her heart when she sees the former light in your eyes replaced with something darker. The flourishing storm in your pupils is uncontrollable. 

Ellie drops your arm when she realizes you won’t run, “W-What are you doing here?” 

Your gaze is locked onto the tile squares on the ground. “I-I’m, uh… just enjoyin’ the weather— “

Ellie’s brows pull downward, eyes flicking towards the badge wrapped around your neck. Do you work here? “We’re indoors.” She mumbles dryly. 

“Nothin’ like… the spring rain hittin’ the windows, am I right?“ You huff with a nervous smile, eyes flitting around the hallway as you search for an escape. Ellie’s not having that. 

“We needa talk.” 

You sigh, “I can’t. I’m working.” 

“So am I. Take your break,” Ellie grabs your wrist and drags you back down the hallway, leading you to the bathroom and pushing you into a stall, locking the door behind her. 

Her voice is quiet when she presses, “The fuck are you doing here?” 

Ellie expects you to snap, to push the same questioning back onto her, but you don’t. Your mouth gapes like a fish as you stumble over words. Ellie’s eyes soften when she sees a shaky hand come up to pin a loc behind your ear. You’re shaken up and she instantly notices something off. Your demeanor has shifted immensely since she last seen you and it’s making Ellie’s stomach twist with discomfort. She's never seen you this stunted. 

“What.” Ellie asks when you mumble to the floor. 

“I’m sorry about the email,” You sound winded, “I thought… I dunno. I’m sorry about everythin’.” Your lip starts to quiver as you ramble, “I would’ve never come if I knew, I’m sorry— “ 

… What the hell are you talking about? And why are you crying? 

You sniffle and wipe your tears with your sleeves and Ellie’s fingers itch to comfort, to dry your face herself, but she doesn’t. She watches you weep into your palms for what feels like hours, the air of the restroom suffocatingly tight. 

“I didn’t mean to ruin anything you h — had going on, okay? I’m sorry… I’ll leave right now! You’ll never have to see me again— “

Your sobs are stressing her, “G-Gimme your phone.” Ellie blurts. 

You're already digging in your pocket for your device to unlock it, “W-Why— “

Ellie snatched it from your hand, heart pulling when she sees a photo of younger you being carried by a woman shoved in your case. The same face that was littered all over your apartment, “You wanted to talk so bad, right?” Ellie presses her new number into the pad and calls herself, “You have my number. My…” 

When she looks up, her words get swallowed up; Your eyes still manage to glow under the… horrific bathroom lighting, glittering like stars in the late night. She clears her throat to catch herself, “My shift ends at four. Call me any time after that.” 

Ellie hurries to unlock the stall before leaving you in the bathroom, heart in her throat as she heaves all the way down the hallway to the lounge, shaking her hands to get the jitters out. 

She knew she should’ve never accepted a call from the alumnus association. Fuck the yearbook. 

You clock out with a heavy, anxious heart. 

Three students came up to you and asked for advice on their starter shapes. They were a bit upset when their circles didn’t come out perfect, and you almost cried. It was too sweet. Your bag bounces off your back as you descend the staircase to exit the building. The droplets hit your hood with fever as you skip to your car. You jump into the driver’s seat to turn the heat on, teeth chattering from the evening breeze. 

You check the time on your dash and… it’s way past four. You hope Ellie’s willing to meet. You dial the most recent number and tremble as the phone rings. She answers after the second tone. 

“Hello?” 

She sounds so relaxed, and your shoulders unlock, “… Hi. It’s… me?” 

A lengthy pause, “… Me who?” 

You hide a snort, “Um… ex-roomie?” She chuckles lightly. “Hi.”

“… Hi.” You whisper, “Did you, um… still wanna talk to me?” You think you hear the click of a lighter. 

“Mhm. I’ll send you where I stay at.” 

“Okay… I’ll see you soon?” 

“Yup.” And with that, the line goes dead. Ellie’s location delivers not even a minute later. Her hotel isn’t far from here. . . and fuck, it looks like wealth. Your nerves are nowhere near settled after your last attempt at reconciliation, and paranoia is itching beneath your skin. 

You open your GPS and blast your screamo playlist, hollering your way down the street with your windows down, rain be damned. 

You’re burning holes through Ellie’s hotel room door. 

You haven’t knocked, you haven’t rang. . . you're not even sure if your text of arrival went through. You just stare at the peephole with a clenched jaw. This big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos is doing an excellent job as a stress ball. It’s bound to pop from your grip soon.

Your bladder almost lets loose when the door gets pulled open, nostrils instantly hit with wafts of that forbidden flower. You’re pulled through the small crack by a strong grip before the door is shut and locked behind you. 

Ellie faces you, bare arms on display, and leans back against the door… in those fucking grey sweats. After all this time, they still cause damage to your soul, “Sorry. I don’t wanna get kicked out.” 

“It’s… you’re good.” You point behind her, trying not to gawk at her tattoo, “How’d you know— “

“You breathe loud.” She says simply, tone hushed and raspy. She nods behind you, “Sit down.” 

She follows you to the lounge chairs that face each other. You sit, still tense, suddenly back in therapy, “I-I brought you somethin’.” You push the crumpled bag of chips towards her as she relights her joint. 

Her pink, doe-eyes flit between yours and the bag before she mumbles, “Thank you.” 

“No problem…” You awkwardly set them on the windowsill, swallowing your guilt and deciding to take initiative, “I… I know you have a lot of things going on and I don’t wanna take up too much of your time… I’m just…” 

The loud splattering of raindrops is nerve-wracking, “I wasn’t… I didn’t treat you well. College was a very hard time for me and I didn’t really know how to deal with it without being a bitch—” 

Carbon leaves her nose, “Is that your excuse?”

“N-No, no! I’m not… I’m not tryna avoid blame. I was terrible and you — no one deserved what I put them through… I-I’m really sorry, Ellie… From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry.”

Ellie’s silent. You have no idea what she’s thinking; She could be plotting to get you kicked out of her room right now and you wouldn’t know. Her stare isn’t angry, it isn’t anything… she just watches you. Every squeeze of your hands, bounce of your knee, every tic photographed in her memory. Just like before. 

“Why're you back on campus?” 

You exhale the breath you’d been holding, “Um… I gotta, like, TA job, I guess. With the art profs.”  

“Still doing art, then, I guess.”

You stare down at your lap, “Yeah. Trying to.” You croak. 

“Trying?” She asks, brows furrowed. Your shoulders bounce in a shrug. “I, err, hadn’t made anything in a while so… yeah. I thought it’d get me back into it.” 

“Are you?” 

“Hm?”

“Are you back into it?” 

“I don’t know yet.” 

“Why were you so upset when I moved out?” Ellie’s tone shifts into something much more delicate, ready to crack and bleed open at any given moment. You can’t tell her, your brain bellows over the pleads from your heart. You can’t tell her how much you missed her!

Your jaw slacks dumbly as you search for a believable explanation, mind blanking under her scrutinizing stare. 

“I was drunk. I-I don’t remember…” 

“You were drunk and don’t remember.” You cringe at her tone. 

“Ellie… I don’t wanna— “

“Don’t wanna what? Actually be fucking honest?” Your babbles are silenced as she rants. “You reached out to me and you can’t even answer one question honestly. Why’d you even come?” She seems so disappointed in your response, but what can you do? Tell her how every part of your body yearns to be next to her? How you almost collapse when you saw her for the first time in what felt like an eternity? How manipulative would that be after everything you’ve done?

Ellie’s index finger jumps on the armrest as silence takes over once more. She’s deep in thought, it seems, teeth nipping at the skin of her lip. 

“Ellie— “

“When I moved out…” She repeats sternly, “you told me you didn’t want me to go. Why did you say that?” 

It’s on the tip of your tongue: because I’m weak and I like you! I’m sorry I didn’t fight! I’m sorry, I'm sorry, I’m sorry! 

“B-Because I didn’t want you to go…” You whisper between sniffles, wiping your nose with your sleeve. 

“Why's that?” 

“I… really liked having you around…” You chose your words very carefully, but they’re not a lie. “You’re… you’re really nice.” 

That seems to satisfy her a little, “I’m really nice?” Ellie’s brow quirks, a tiny smile blossoming on her face. 

“And funny.” You sob, “Like, I laughed a lot.” 

“You’re funny, too,” Ellie says awkwardly while scratching her ear. Your heart pulses. 

Her eyes search yours, “I didn’t know how I would react when you got here. The thought of seeing you really… fucking freaked me out.” She scoffs to herself, and your shoulders begin to droop. “But… um...” She pauses and your pulse pounds in your neck. Tears brim in your ducts. This is when she tells you to leave. To fuck off. To drop dead, for fucks sake—

“I’m glad you reached out.” 

You gawk in disbelief before your bottom lip trembles, “Really?” You ask meekly. She simply nods. 

“Me, too.” You’re really trying not to cry right now, but the softness in her gaze isn’t helping. She’s too sweet. You change the topic before you say something you’ll regret. You point to the bag of chips, “I really hope you like that flavor. I just grabbed it because I was overthinking.” 

“I don’t know why you bought those. I still owe you a bag from what I remember,” She grabs them, squeezing the end until the other side pops open. She grabs four ships and crunches them all at once before extending the bag to you. You follow her lead and munch to your heart's content. 

“I was never mad at you, y’know.” Ellie sets the bag down and reignites her roach. “I wasn’t, uh, innocent, either. We both fucked up,” She puffs and hands it to you. You've never smoked bud before, only stole a couple of Abby’s edibles a while back. She vowed never to smoke with you since you’re a tweaker. 

You accept the charred-to-hell baby jay and stare at it. You shrug, “Wasn’t worse than me. How do I do this without burning my finger off?” 

“Err… just breathe in and hold it.” She instructs. “Have you never gotten high?” 

“I have. I don't— “

“Oh, yeaaah. Non-smoker. Sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” you mumble before bringing the remnants up to your lips and sucking in. Nothing happens. Ellie snickers, “Not like that. It’s not a fucking lollipop. Just, like, fill your cheeks up and hold it.” 

… Are you an idiot? “I don’t know what that means.” Ellie cackles like a witch at your lost expression, nearly falling over in her chair. Your cheeks burn and you try again, cheeks expanding to fill in the smoke. The second you inhale, you start choking, eyes bulging out of your skull from the burn in your chest. 

Ellie finds your near-death experience fucking hysterical as she hollers from her seat. Tears stream down your face and the veins in your neck are bulging as you gasp for air. You’re never doing this shit again. Your lungs finally decide to spare you when Ellie passes you water from her dresser. You gulp that shit down like no tomorrow as Ellie’s giggles dwindle. 

“What the,” cough, “fuck— “

“Fucking baby lungs,” Ellie mumbles with a grin. “You’ll be fine after a couple tries.” 

You chug more water, “Girl… fuck you.” You gasp. Ellie’s grin turns cocky when her head tilts. 

“Fuck me?” Her voice lowers and goosebumps rise on your skin. Your heart stops in your chest and your gaze falls to the floor as your tummy swirls in delight, cheeks fiery. You stand and Ellie sits up at your sudden alertness. 

“Um… Like I said, thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.” Ellie stands to grab your arm when your feet slowly start backing towards the door. 

Her smile drops, “I-I’m sorry. I was just kidding—” 

“No, it’s fine! It’s not you! I just, uh… y’know what I mean?” 

“… No.” She mumbles, “You don’t… have to go yet. You just got here.” She chuckles weakly. 

“I just… don’t wanna… pry.” You whisper like it’s shameful. Ellie’s head shakes in denial, “You’re not! I’m… inviting you.” 

Your eyes beg her to understand where you’re coming from. It’s not like you don’t want to, but the two of you just got back cool three seconds ago. The last thing you want to do is force yourself back into her life. Your relationship needs time to marinate and heal before anything else happens… if she allows it. 

“I… I still miss Pickle?” You suggest with bright eyes, and Ellie’s soften despite her confusion. “Would it be okay if I see her?” You ask quietly. 

Her mouth turns upwards, “How long are you in town?” 

“I don’t know… These hotel bills are runnin’ my credit in the fucking mud.” You sigh. 

“She’s with my dad right now. Come this weekend. I’m outta here on Friday, anyways.” She suggests, cheeks glowing in the dimming room. You hope Ellie doesn’t notice your dejection at the mention of her father… It still stings. Her eyes are so hopeful, meadows flurrying with excitement… and you can’t say no. 

“…Okay.” 

“Yeah?” She confirms, smile widening. You nod. “She misses you like crazy.” Ellie notes and tears get to cooking. You think about Pickle every day. Little munchkin. 

“I miss her, too.” You sniffle. The hand that rests on your bicep slowly slides down your sleeve, closing around your wrist. Not strong, but her hold is steady. Ellie whispers your name. 

“Hm?” 

“I’m glad we’re… okay.” Your heart soars with adoration. Her eyes explore your face in admiration, and your body glows. 

“Me, too. Thank you.” Ellie’s gentle gaze drops to your lips and you stiffen. Your hands clench when she moves an inch closer. It kills you to move away, and an inkling of hurt overcasts in her forest. She lets you go and backs away, “Sorry— “

Your head shakes desperately, “S’okay, I just think we should… move… slower?” You never fail to sound like an alien who just arrived on Earth, but Ellie seems to get it. 

“Yeah, I… yeah.” Ellie stares at her sock-covered feet, red dusting her cheeks. You try to hide a smile while she walks you towards her door. She opens it for you, propping up against it. 

“See you Friday?” You throw over your shoulder and Ellie grins. “See you Friday.” She parrots. You can’t stop cheesing even after she closes the door. You make your way back into your driver’s seat, heart bleeding with relief. 

MAY, 2014

Her record is clean! I would’ve never expected this from such a great kid, your professor says to your father, But violence, especially to this extreme, is completely unacceptable—

What about what he did to me! You shout, and your father glares at your tone, He put his hands on me first! H-He—

Your body shudders in disgust at the recall of your classmate touching you the way he did. You were on your way to class when hands enclosed around your chest in a tight squeeze, all oxygen leaving your body. It was abrasive and made your skin crawl, and you swung. Your arms moved on their own until you were on top of him, his nose gushing blood while his friends attempted to pry you off. 

There was laughter when he groped you. So many people — students that you see every day — all watched it, and no one came to your defense. 

Your principal sighs with his palms up, I’m just trying to get to the bottom of what happened—

No, you’re not! I already told you what happened and you’re tryna make it seem like I’m lying! You stand and grab your bag off the floor, stomping towards the door to the office, Y’all can choke—

Your dad calls out for you, and your fingers twitch at his tone, but you keep walking, pushing past the double-doors of the school and towards the bike rack. Tears flood your eyes when the double doors slam shut, your father berating you about making a scene in public. You unlock your ride, blocking out his rampage that draws the security guard’s attention. 

He put his hands on me, dad! You shriek as loud as you can between your cries, He put his hands on me! Why’re you yellin’ at me?

I’m not yelling at you! I’m yelling in general! You scoff and swing your leg over your bike, strapping your helmet on, I’m tryna understand what happened! You broke his goddamn nose! They’re boutta suspend you! 

Imma be at Maya’s, you say, monotone. I’ll see you later. 

Amaya isn’t even home. Your dad’s hollering his lungs out as you ride down the sidewalk, but you block it all out until the wind fills your ears like a monsoon. You’re not sure where you’re going, but it’s somewhere. 

Hopefully somewhere you can cry to yourself without disturbance. 

-

-

-

It’s your first day back at school since being suspended. Fuck everybody… except Amaya and Ceniyah. You probably would’ve switched schools if it wasn’t for them. You can’t wait to see them during lunch and tell them how fucked up it’s been staying at home. 

Today has been weird as fuck, to say the least. Friends that you’ve grown used to talking to in the hallways have either disappeared or ignored you. It’s quiet around you, now, and you’re on edge. What the fuck is going on?

Walking into the cafeteria is frightening. It’s always loud, rowdy, hectic, but the minute you step foot inside, everything seems to stop. You grip your tray so tight; you think it’s about to snap, frantically searching for your girlfriend. 

But your two favorite people are nowhere to be seen. You wander and come up empty-handed. Where the fuck are they—

Your thoughts are cut when a shoulder shoves right into yours. You throw your tray onto the nearest table. Laughter surrounds you before a snarky voice shriek in your ears.

Watch where the fuck you’re going, 

No, you watch where the fuck you’re going. Dumb ass bitch, You spit. You're about to get suspended for knocking this broad out. Who even is this? 

Coming from the slut who cheated on her girlfriend! Are you sure you’re a lesbian? Or are you going back to dick? 

The entire room seems to collapse from top to bottom, crushing you beneath clutter in attempts to suffocate. You freeze when everyone turns to stare at the scene, some standing to surround you, hoping to see a fight. You release a shuddering breath as your fist clench. 

… Cheated on your girlfriend? You love your girlfriend. You’re in love with your girlfriend, and she’s in love with you! What the fuck is this bitch talking about. 

I think she’s going back to dick! One of them laughs, and the rest follow, and the entire room glows red. 

Your knuckles are drenched in the color when your dad comes to pick you up. 

PRESENT

Maybe being a TA is helping. You’ve finally pulled your sketchbook out of your work bag. 

The point of your fine liner hovers over a blank page of your sketchbook. You can’t stop thinking about Ellie, and you don’t have many distractions. 

It’s been so long since you’ve created anything, and frankly, your ass is clenched with anxiety. Never in your life would you think that creating art would wrack your nerves in such a way, but your insecurities are working hard. Probably the hardest they ever have. Once upon a time, your sketchbook was your safe haven, and now the feeling of blank pages feels like needles. 

What if you’ve… lost your talent? You can see everything you want to make clearly in your head but your pen isn’t moving. The attempts at reigniting your passion would be pointless if you can no longer fucking draw. Your fingers are itching. 

Maybe you should try that corny shit from the movies where they close their eyes and move their utensils on pure muscle memory… Maybe you should do fucking shrooms! Visuals always peak on psyches, according to the experts. At this point, why the fuck not— 

“Son of a fucking — this is fucking stupid, bitch, jus’ fuckin’ draw,” you mutter to yourself in agitation. Just fucking draw! You do this! You do this, you do this!

Minutes pass and your paper is mussed with smudged, small ink marks from constantly moving your pen around, trying to find the right angle. Another piece of paper gone to waste. You fucking suck. You slam your pen down on the table. 

You stand and start to pace, “Positive affirmations only,” You remind yourself aloud, “You got this shit, like, what the fuck. Everything’s gonna come back to you. You’re in a funk and tha’sit. It’ll pass, it’ll pass— “

Whoever your hotel neighbor is… Praying for their sleep schedule. 

It’s going to be a long night. 

“Hello?”

“Hi, kiddo. Sorry I missed your call. Your pet knocked out on my hand.” 

Ellie giggles, “It’s cool. How ya been?”

“Fine… She’s a rascal, ain’t she? I found her head first in one of my flower pots. Her tiny legs were wiggling tryna get herself out,” His chuckles are like warm hugs, “How’s work?”

Ellie’s cackles calm, “Also fine… Err…Um… speaking of Pickle…” 

Her dad hums, and Ellie sighs, “Remember when I told you about how I found her?” 

“Yeah… You and that girl found the poor thing freezing to death outside… Why?”

“… Would you believe me if I said we somehow reunited by the grace of God and she’s coming back with me tomorrow?” Ellie squeaks, and her confidence drops when he exhales. It sounds heavy. 

“Um… for what?” 

“To see Pickle…”

“…Alright.”

“What’re you thinkin’,” She nips at her nails. 

“Nothin’…” 

“Dad…” 

“I dunno what you want me to say, darlin’… Everything you’ve told me about her so far wasn’t… great to hear.” 

Ellie rolls onto her back, “Yeah… I dunno. Something’s different about her now.” 

“How so?” 

She can’t tell him how badly your shielded eyes have taken a toll on her. How desperately she wants them to revert to the shining rivers they used to be. How badly her chest ached when you left her room last night, “I dunno. It just is…” She mutters weakly. Another heavy sigh. 

“I mean… You’re an adult. I can’t tell you what to do anymore.” 

“Don’t be like that, please.” 

“Not being like anything. I can only accept.” 

Ellie’s hand drags down her face in exasperation. The rants she relinquished onto her dad about you are making her nauseas. 

“Just… be nice to her, please.” He hums begrudgingly. 

“Dad, I’m serious. I feel like we… could be friends.” 

“Friends… Alright.” He sounds skeptical, but he isn’t combative. She hopes he’ll keep it together when he sees you, “How should I plan for this friend when she gets here?”

Ellie smiles sadly, “Make eggplant parmesan…”

Her dad snorts, “… Since when do you like eggplant?” 

Ellie grins, “I don’t.” 

Why can’t black roses be real? 

Ellie doesn’t seem like a flower girl, but she has a gigantic leaf imprinted on her arm for the rest of her life; She must appreciate the autotroph kingdom. Your mother always told you how fucked it is to enter people’s homes empty handed. Walmart usually pulls through with the awkward housewarming gifts, but they’re slacking in their garden selection today. Fuck your life. 

You’re forced to settle on peonies… They’re pretty and all, but you’d prefer alliums for her. Maybe even a carnation. Plus, Amaya always told you to never buy flowers that sound like penis. 

Amaya… Are you really about to break down in the frozen food section? Maybe. It’s time to go. You're shocked to find out you have more than ten dollars on your card. Fuck hotels, from the depths of your soul. 

You set your purchase in the passenger’s side and pull up Ellie’s pinged location. She left way earlier than you. You would’ve carpooled, but you couldn’t miss these hours for this paycheck. How are you a struggling student and not even in school? 

The drive is going to be long. 

At least you have time to scream out your frustrations. 

“Hey, Siri.” 

… UH HUH?

“Play This Cold Black by Slipknot.” 

PLAYING THIS COLD BLACK BY SLIPKNOT. 

Your head thrashes as you back out of your parking spot. 

“WELCOME HOOO— “

The ride wasn’t long enough, actually. Ellie’s dad’s house is right there. Like… right fucking there, and your voice is almost gone. Clouds are beginning to roll in over the neighborhood. The universe is fucking with you. Great. 

You dump the last bits of water into the thirty-dollar, peony-stuffed vase before exiting your car, backpack strapped over your shoulder. You climb the brick staircase with a pounding heart. 

“Okay,” You croak, “Hi. Nice to meet you, Mr. Miller. I heard my — our cat was with you—“ You rehearse and cringe. Why are you pressing him about a cat in his domain? 

“Fuck, okay, wait,” You try again, “Hi, Mr. Miller, I’m Ellie’s, uh, friend. We were roommates some time ago— “ 

Some time ago? Who the fuck are you? Shakespeare? Emily fucking Brontë? Get a fucking grip. 

You almost drop the fucking vase when the door opens. Your coughs are uncontrollable when you see Ellie, eyes flicking between you and the ring light camera. Why the fuck does she look so good? Cartier watch, black button up and slacks, hair… neat. She’s about to trigger your asthma! 

“Uh… you okay?” She questions flatly. You’re still choking on your own esophagus, but you send her two thumbs up anyway. You’re great! Terrific! Immediately scared shitless when a… big ass man holding a black furball creeps up behind her. He’s not as dolled-up as Ellie and it makes you less insecure. Why the fuck do you have this hoodie on? You should’ve at least worn some trousers! 

“Nice to meet you.” His voice sounds like grovel. Gravel? You can’t fucking think right now! He adjusts Pickle in his grasp so he can extend a polite hand out to you, “I’m Joel. I’m Ellie’s father,” He sounds courteous, but there’s something simmering beneath his pupils as he stares at you. 

His grip is strong when you accept it. You’re going to vomit, “I-I’m — I mean, hi, I’m, uh… Me’n Ellie used to live together—“ You sound like a frog who just learned how to speak. 

“I’ve been told.” He hums.

Meow!

You almost start bawling at your baby’s cry. She's so big now and her coat is so shiny! She’s eating well. Ellie accepts the flowers with dusted cheeks before stepping aside and allowing you entry. You’re instantly hit with the smell of garlic… Can the whole bloodline throw down in the kitchen? 

“Nice home!” You crack and cringe. You cringe so fucking hard. They both say thanks in unison, but her father’s is gruff while Ellie’s is delicate like petals. She can’t stop staring down at the flowers. Joel finally sets Pickle down so he can head back into the kitchen, and she follows him without hesitation. 

She doesn’t remember you. Your heart shatters. 

“Thank you for the flowers,” You hear Ellie say from beside you. You swallow the lump forming in your throat with a smile. “No problem… You look, um, great.” And you smell like heaven. Like clouds before the rain. 

Her face gets redder and she grins behind petals, “Thank you. I got called in today. For… editing and whatnot.”  

You snicker, “Whatnot?” 

“Shut up. C’mon.” You follow her into the kitchen where she sets the vase in the middle of the dining table before waddling towards her dad, who stands over the stove. You stand back and watch as she playfully punches his upper arm while he stirs the simmering pot, cracking jokes amongst themselves while Pickle paws at Ellie’s calf. Your doting smile vanishes at their laughter; What a little happy family. Are you breathing? 

You turn to face the living room and breathe in as deep as you can, eyes glued to their maroon couch. You crack your knuckles and release the wind in your lungs before repeating. 

“You’re okay, it’s okay. You knew what it was before you came,” you whisper to yourself. Ellie mentioned how close her and her dad were way before you got here, so why is the pain in your chest so sharp? 

A hand comes down on your shoulder and you jump, “Sor — fuck, sorry — “

“Are you okay?” Ellie asks, concerned. 

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m fine! Jus’ looking around,” You laugh shakily and note the large paper crane on the TV stand. You point at it, “That’s so cool! Did you make that? I love origami.” 

“No, my dad did— “

Fuck, “Oh— “

“Yeah, um— “

“D-Do you have a restroom?” 

She observes with worry, “… Yeah, right down that hall, to the left— “

“Thank you, BRB,” You’re practically running to the fucking bathroom. The door closes and locks and you pace. They have a nice shower curtain: black and white stripes. You count them all from top to bottom. 

“Your dad’s dead, fucking relax, it’s been like that, it’s been like that,” You exhale shakily, tremors building in your hands, “You’re fine, you’re fine, calm the fuck down.” You unzip your hoodie and ball it up before shoving your face in it. Your screams into it are muffled. 

You come up for air and stare into the mirror, “You’re fucking fine. The food smells good as fuck and you’re gonna eat and you’re fine.” You open the door and… kitty’s staring at you. She’s sitting pretty and inspecting your disheveled appearance. 

“Hi, baby. Remember me?” You squat and stick your hand out to her. She sniffs curiously before nipping at your pinky. “Ow,” you coo with a smile. 

“She remembers you.” 

Ellie’s leaning against the wall with her arms folded over her chest. You need her to stomp the fuck out of you with affection; She looks so fucking good, fuck—

“I hope,” you squeak and cough. It scares the shit out of Pickle and she runs. 

Ellie’s gaze lingers on your bare arms. “Can we talk for a sec?”

“Yup.” Sound casual, you think. You sprinkle a shrug in there. She nods before heading down the hall and entering the last door. You can’t hide your shocked expression at the scenery. 

Every inch of the room is covered in posters, most of them about galaxies and all their intricacies. There’s a red racecar bed covered in Regular Show sheets and pillowcases and a bunch of stuffed animals, dresser covered with discarded sticker papers and seemingly empty polaroid cameras. There are fairy lights dangling from the ceiling before coming down and around the bed frame, across the closet, and finally slung over her dresser. There’s little action figures and trinkets everywhere. 

The door closes behind you, “… Is this your room?” 

Ellie snorts, “It was. Not anymore.” 

You laugh, “I’m fuckin’ with it. That bed is crazy, though.” Ellie joins in, scratching at her ear. She takes a few steps until she’s in front of you, still at a distance. Thank God; Any closer and your celibacy goes down the drain. 

“Sorry I only brought flowers. I would’ve brought fucking… cake or something if I knew y’all were gonna cook.” Ellie waves you off. 

“The flowers were pretty. Thank you.” 

Your entire face is on fire, “Y’know what I mean…” You cough. 

“Um… I just wanted to talk to you about something. About my dad.” 

There’s a hole in your chest that’s expanding. She takes your silence as attentive, “He can be really overprotective… like, he’s kinda stubborn.”

“Oh… I see where you get it from,” You laugh weakly, clearing your throat when Ellie doesn’t. “Sorry.” You mumble. Ellie looks down at her feet, “Does he not… like me?” You ask quietly, embarrassed out of your fucking mind. 

“It’s not that, he’s just… I told him a little of what happened between us. Not everything, just some of it!” 

“The… bad part, I’m assuming?” Her silence is enough confirmation. 

Ellie looks like Pickle when she’s guilty. You remember when she hopped onto the counter and knocked over your water cup, eyes large and pleading for forgiveness over the mess she caused. 

“M’not mad,” You mumble, “I probably would’ve done the same thing.” Probably is used very strongly. 

“I’m sorr— “

“It’s okay— “

A knock comes from the other side of the door. 

“Come eat, you two!” 

“Coming!” Ellie yells back before rubbing her hands together. “I’m really— “ 

“Ellie, it’s fine,” You reassure her with a light slap on her bicep… It’s quite hard. “C’mon, uh… I’m hungry?” You brush past her and head towards the door, holding it open for her. “After you?”

Ellie reminds you of a strawberry milk squishmallow when she eases past you, trying to hide her smile and pink cheeks. Your cheeks puff as you release the air in your lungs, shutting her door behind you. 

This is the best eggplant parmesan you’ve ever tasted in your goddamn life. Too bad you can’t enjoy it due to Ellie’s hardcore mobster dad sending you deadly glares from across the table. He hasn’t said a word this entire meal, and you’re not anticipating the minute he does. He’s going to blow a gasket. 

“D’you like it?” Ellie says lowly from beside you. You nod your head with two thumbs up. You can’t hide your smile when you notice all the gooey cheese and noodles eaten off the pieces of eggplant. 

“It’s delicious. Thanks Mr. Miller.” 

“Don’t mention it.” He sounds like he means it. Your heart drops and Ellie scowls at him. Your fingers clench around your fork and you scarf down what you can. It’s so good and you’re so scared and you want this meal to be over. 

You're the last to clean your plate so you stand in a rush, gathering all of the plates and spoons off the table before scurrying to the sink. 

Ellie pads close behind you, “Oh, you don’t have to— “

You cut Ellie off with a nervous laugh, “The least I could do.” The dishes clatter and you grab a sudsy sponge. You waste no time, scrubbing the living hell out of these dishes. 

“Go sit down, Ellie.” 

The hairs on the back of your neck stand at his stern tone, “Wha— “

He slices through her refute, and still manages to sound calm, “Go.” 

You continue to scrub, sighing at Ellie's descending stomps. Joel creeps into the open space in front of the sink, grabbing a dish and another sponge. 

“Ellie told me you’re an artist.” He mutters over the running water.

“Yeah. Sorta.” You reply as calmly as you can. 

“What are your intentions with my daughter?” He gets right to it, it seems. You scrub harder. 

“Just… tryna make things right between us.” 

“Why's that?” 

Word vomit. You can’t help yourself. You’re so fucking nervous. “I-I fuc — sorry — I screwed over someone that was… really great. Your daughter’s a sweetheart and I feel awful with how things left off.” You stumble with a heated face. You catch the arch in his eyebrow and back pedal, “Not like we were — we weren’t dating or anything! Like, not like that! We just — “

“I was a student once upon a time. I know how these things go.” He snickers humorlessly. Your shoulders relax a smidge before he asks, “Why now?” 

“Hm?” 

“Why’d you wait so long to talk to her? The two of you graduated forever ago.” His tone is much calmer than it was seconds ago, but anxiety surges in your gut at his questioning. 

“I didn’t wanna reach out without being in the right headspace. I had… a lot going on and I had to handle it. Therapy’s hard as fu — heck,” You sigh, “I still don’t think I’m doin’ a good job, but… I dunno, it earned me a Michelin star eggplant parm. Must be doing something right.” 

You don’t expect Joel to laugh, but he does. It’s hearty and deep. Very dad-esque. Your heart crushes to dust all over again. 

“Look, kid,” Joel sets the clean plate in the rack before grabbing another, “I wasn’t gonna say much, but Ellie seems to like you… a lot. More than most people.” Your heart flurries back into shape at his observation. You want to ask what a lot means exactly, but he continues. 

“She’s… she gets very attached to people. I know it’s hard to believe but she’s very… sensitive,” His voice is low, but he’s not bullshitting in the slightest. The protective aura has returned and it’s radiating back onto you, pushing you back. Keeping you at a distance from him. From Ellie, “I’m never gonna shit on anyone’s journey, but frankly… if you’re not here to stay, I’d suggest leaving her alone now.”

This is definitely a threat. But you don’t feel threatened. You feel… sad. Joel is doing what any great dad would when faced with an outsider: armoring his cubs by any means. Something you’ve never experienced. If meeting Joel has shown you anything, it’s been what you’ve missed out on your entire life. Little does he know the last thing you want to do is separate from Ellie a second time. Another breakdown is bound to crash into you very soon. You forgot where the bathroom was. 

You’re not going anywhere. Your heart won’t allow it. “I’m— “

You’re interrupted by a loud rumble, instantly followed by the heavy droplets of pouring rain. It sounds like pebbles are being thrown at all windows of their home; Is it hailing? 

“Holy shit,” Ellie calls from the living room window, “Was it supposed to storm tonight?” 

“Yeah, it was on the news,” Joel confirms. Ellie rushes over and points her eyes to you. 

“You’re not driving in that.” She breathes out. Your heart fist pumps, but you maintain nonchalance. 

You shrug awkwardly, “I don’t wanna pry— “ 

“Nah, she’s right. We have a guest room.” Joel sighs, “Ellie, show her where it is. I’ll finish up in here.” 

Ellie’s hand closes around your wrist before guiding you down the hall. The bathroom’s right across from the guest room. On the left side, you note. 

“Fuck a guest room. You’re staying with me.” She mumbles and opens the cupboard. She grabs you some sleep shorts and presumably her father’s sweatshirts. You try to convince yourself that the strong pounds in your chest are from fear of the storm, and not at all from a lesbian slumber party. 

… Fuck. 

The storm is roaring outside. And Ellie’s chiefing in neon astronaut jammies. This feels like a fever dream. 

“They glow in the dark.” Ellie hums around a cloud of smoke from where she sits across from you on the bed. You pause your gawking, “Huh?”

“My pjs glow in the dark. Wanna see?” Her eyes sparkle and your heart sprouts legs and sprints around in your ribcage. 

“Fuck yeah.” You gasp. Ellie’s teeth shine before she puts her joint between her lips and leans across her bed to shut her lamp off. Every fiber of your being tries to not lock onto the smidge of skin that appears from under her sweatshirt when she stretches. The room goes dark around the neon pink and green outlines of the design. You choke out a laugh at the pigmentation; How the fuck are they so bright!

“Sorry if this is boring. I’ve never had a sleepover before.” 

“Shut up, that’s cool as fuck! You gotta battery pack in there or somethin’?” Ellie giggles out a no. A smile stretches wide across your face when you look up at her, hers just as bright. “Are you sleepy?” You ask. 

“Not at all,” she hums as she switches the lamp back on. 

“We could play a gaaame,” You suggest sing-songy. 

“Oh, fuck. Like what.” Ellie huffs a laugh. 

“Truth or dare is a sleepover classic— “

“I’m not licking a toilet seat.” Ellie states flatly. Laughter explodes from you at her face. “I’m not a crazy dare-er like that. The most you’ll have to do is prank call an ex or some shit.” 

“I don’t have an ex.” 

“Oh… Well, a family member.” Ellie nods in acceptance. “Can I ask first?” She asks. 

“Mhm. Lay it on me.” 

“Truth or dare?” 

“Dare.” 

“Show me what’s in your backpack.” 

“…Fuck.” You sigh, and Ellie cackles. “Were you planning this shit?” You ask and stand, walking over to the dresser where your bag sits. You grab it and hand it to her. She wastes no time, stubbing her joint out before rummaging through your shit, sifting through loose-leaf paper and markers used for coloring. You plop down onto her bed and she pulls out your sketchbook. 

“Is it okay if I look?” 

“I dunno,” You smirk, “Can I finally see your fucking portfolio?” 

“Come home with me tomorrow,” she says instantaneously, “It’s there. You can see it.” 

“… Then yes.” 

She flips through pages and pages of visuals you’ve created before your father’s passing. They range from sloppily scribbled orchids, to immaculately shaded depictions of eggplant farms. Ellie giggles when she finds a small comic of Pickle playing with her favorite mouse toy. 

“She still has it.”

“Good,” you whisper. You watch as she studies each page to her heart’s content, fingers dragging across lines that catch her attention. “You’re so good,” she says softly, awestruck and eyes sincere. Your gaze drops to your lap. 

“Thanks,” you match her volume. She hums and flips to the next page. You eye the ashtray on her bed before snagging it, snatching her lighter and igniting the joint. Ellie eyes you like a hawk. 

“I watched a tutorial on how to become a professional pothead… I think I got it down.” 

“Show me.” She whispers and your stomach jolts.

Smoke leaves the lit end of the J and you flick the lighter off. You bring it to your lips and puff your cheeks full of smoke, inhaling as deep as you can before your lungs squeeze. You cough and heave tearfully and Ellie leans in to rub your back. 

“That was better.” She says softly. “I was gonna dare you to hit it anyway.” Your coughing fits calm and you swallow. 

“Shit,” You say. Ellie takes the joint from you and hits it like a fucking pro. She's much closer than she was seconds ago. You examine how her lips curl around the roach, cheeks expanding around carbon before inhaling, allowing the remainder to leave in a bunch of circles. 

“You really blowing O’s right now?” You think you hit it right this time. The jitters you’ve had all day are beginning to dwindle. 

She smiles mischievously, “Mhm.” 

“Truth or dare?” You mumble.

“… Truth.” 

“Did you think about me… after you left?” If you were to lean forward an inch, Ellie’s nose would touch yours. Nose hug. Her face spots are so adorable. 

“Yeah. A lot.” She passes the J back to you and you accept it boldly. You’re releasing your stress with every exhale. Ellie was right; Smoking does feel good. 

“What’d you think about?” 

“Isn’t it my turn?” 

“No.” You smile. 

She shrugs, “I dunno. Just…” Her gaze falls onto her stuffed tabby cat. 

“I feel like you’re boutta say something nasty.” You snicker. 

“Wha — no! The fuck— “

You mock her, rubbing all over yourself, “I thought about your hands, ooo, aaa— “

Ellie smacks your arm a bunch of times before pushing you back onto the bed. You’re howling laughter over her whining, “Bitch, that’s you! Don’t think I forgot about that shit you pulled in the car!”

“You have nice hands! What can I say,” You slur with a dumb grin, “You have, like… classic lesbian hands. All you need is some Hot Topic rings and all the hoes gon’ flock to you.” You take one last toke before the lit end can reach your fingers, stubbing it on the ashtray. 

Ellie seemingly ponders with the theory, “… Is that why a milf ate me out at the club?” 

Your neck almost snaps when it cranes to look at her, “What the fuc— “

“Yeah. Craziest experience I ever had. Like, in my life.” 

“Fuck, Ellie…” Your head flops back onto her Lightning McQueen blankets. “Was it good?” 

“I… I guess. I came.” 

You stare at the star stickers on her ceiling. “You guess?” She only hums. 

“But…”

“Hm?” You urge her to continue. 

“She didn’t… kiss me.” She whispers like it’s dirty to say out loud. You slowly blink at the opaque walls. “I mean, she did, but it wasn’t a real one.” 

“Shame on her.” 

Ellie maneuvers so she’s lying on her back beside you. “Yeah…” 

“Ellie?” 

“Hm?”

“Were you a virgin before I touched you?” 

You expect her to slap the shit out of you again, but she doesn’t. She takes one deep breath before muttering, “Yes.” 

You stop yourself from melting into her bed, turning on your side and propping yourself up on an elbow, gazing down at her. Her eyes are wide as saucers as she looks up at you. You can see her fingers twitching around her pillow, squeezing the fabric of the case. Right on Rigby’s nose. 

“A-Are we still playing truth or dare?” She whispers, her breath hitting your face. She smells like oranges. You shake your head, tongue rolling over your lips. “No.” Your free hand lands on her hip and squeezes. Her jaw slacks around a gasp.

“… Oh.”

“Oh?” You want — need to kiss her so badly. Steal all the oxygen from her lungs so that she has no other choice but to breathe from you. Only you. Your vision is hazy with each travel over her face. She looks so soft, so pliant, so ready and prepared for you to take from her. Just like you hoped. 

Your hand travels, pushing her sweatshirt up just above the waistline of her pants, fiddling with the knot right under her bellybutton. 

You pull at the string until it loosens, “She gave you head?” 

“T-The milf?” 

“Yeah. The milf.” Aggravation seeps through your tone. Ellie’s hips twitch. 

“… Yeah?” She coughs. You hum and hook your thumb under the band and inch them down. They aren’t even off all the way and you can tell she’s naked underneath. 

“How good was it?” 

“I don’t… know?” 

“Yeah you do. How good was it?” You snip, and Ellie winces. “I-I squirted.” She trips over her words and your clit jumps. You don’t say anything, and she seems sad. 

“… Are you mad at me?” 

“No.” Your tone says otherwise. You’re not mad. You don’t know what you are. You don’t like what she’s telling you, though. Fuck milfs… You love them with your entire heart, but fuck them. 

… Yeah. You’re high as shit. 

You sit up and she moves to follow you, but you push her down and she goes limp under your touch. 

“Don’t move. Just lay there.” 

She pouts and you almost kiss it, “Don’t be mad.” 

“I told you I’m not.” You swing a leg over her waist and she sighs dreamily. “How many times did you come.” You’re not asking; She’s going to tell you. You raise her sweatshirt up over her breasts. 

“T-Two — Two.” She moves to throw her sweatshirt over her head but you snatch her wrists, pinning them right on the cushiony mattress. She doesn’t fight you. 

“I want you quiet. Your dad’ll kill me if he hears you.”

Her eyes go glossy and twinkle, “Okay— “ 

“I mean it. Don’t say shit.” 

“M’not gonna,” She whines before her mouth clamps shut. You give her overlapped wrists one last threatening squeeze, watching her fingers go lax before releasing her. You cup her tits and her eyes flutter shut, teeth sinking into her lower lip. You mouth at the valley between her tits and her back arches to follow each swipe of your tongue. 

You kiss all over her ribcage, almost feeling each erratic thump of her heart under your tongue. She keens when your tongue flicks over the rising bud of her nipple, thighs squeezing around your hips. Your mouth latches onto the skin right above her areola, teeth sinking into it before sucking. Her hips raise and she’s breathing like she’s about to faint, and you grin like a fox. 

You don’t let up until a wet maroon mark is left on her tit before swiftly switching to the next one, leaving a much harsher spot on the raised skin. An eager hand scratches down her torso until it brushes the patch of hair that peeks out from under her pants. 

You shove your hand beneath the light cloth and your fingers are drenched in seconds. Your walls squeeze around nothing when you feel her clit jump in excitement. Her squishy lips spread around your middle and index fingers, her throbbing bundle of nerves cinched between them. She keeps making fucking noise and the walls seem to shake. 

“What’d I say.”

“I — m’sorry, can’t h-help i— “

“Be quiet, Ellie.” Your fingers slip over her messy clit in slow, teasing circles. You release her skin until it’s blistering and bruised, quickening the pace of your fingers and she pulses in your hand. Your tongue swirls around her nipple once more, cheeks hollowing when you suckle. 

Your eyes search for hers but her head is thrown back, neck strained and veins popping from beneath her skin. Your lips release the skin and your drippy hand leaves her pants. Your nipples harden under your tee when she reaches for your retreating form, fingers digging into your sweats. 

Her pants are yanked down and tossed across the room, her toes curling in her rainbow-striped socks when your hands hook under her knees to push them up to her chest. Her arms entangle under her bent legs to hold them out of your way. 

“I could fuck you right now with no problems.” You exhale in a daze, “S’fucking drippin’.” You envision how good her pussy will swallow whatever pops in, how easy it’ll stretch around something thick—

Ellie’s eyes shine like you offered her candy and her hole clamps down hard. You chuckle. “You want that?” 

Her head bounces off the pillow in rushed nods. If your mouth wasn’t so fucking dry, you’d be slobbering all over her pussy. “Remember what I said?” You remind her, and she plants a heavy hand over her mouth. You kiss her ankle in appreciation. 

Your fingers move on autopilot, massaging her clit a few more times before inching down, your index pushing past the tight, gripping muscles. Your finger’s swallowed whole in an instant and Ellie’s trying her hardest to mask her squeaks. “Fuck me,” you sigh when she takes another finger with no hassle, walls engulfing your digits in wetness. Her scent is surrounding you and it’s intoxicating. 

“Missed you s’bad— “

“Missed you more, baby. Missed this pussy,” You’re pussydrunk and you’re slipping. That spot in her cunt becomes plumper with each press of your fingertips, “She fucked you better than me?” 

Ellie’s denial is convincing, but that sick part of your brain doesn’t believe her. She loved being touched by someone, wanted by someone. Someone who wasn’t you, and you’re livid, “Nooo— “

You slice through her whine, “No?” Your smile is sadistic and your fingers are relentless, “You said her name like you said mine?” You grit and her eyes cycle into her skull, her hair sticking to her forehead. She’s trying to keep her voice down when she whispers how she only thought about you when she made a mess. She wanted you there, she says, she needed you there to take care of her. 

“Y’fuck me s’good, fuck— “

Your eyes are dead, “I’ll hurt you. Be quiet.” 

Fear flashes beneath her desire and she listens, keeping her sobs to a minimum. The sloppy, wet sounds of her pussy overtake the entire room the harder you fuck in, her nails tearing into her Pikachu stuffie on the corner of her bed. A string of drool dribbles from her bottom lip to her sweatshirt, her eyes glowing under the dimly lit lamp. 

Her walls shake and throb on you, “Gonna cum, baby?” You grin manically at her dumbed-out expression, cheeks wet and eyes droopy. You coo at her and force in as deep as you can, curling your fingers up, fighting against the tight contractions of her walls. 

“Make a mess on me, baby, I gotchu, c’mon— “

A long, drawn-out moan escapes Ellie’s lips, and you’re so hypnotized by the heavy spray of juices that lands on your thigh that you don’t even bother to shut her up. She’s drenching her sheets and blankets and you and it’s the hottest thing you’ve ever seen. You’re fucking wave after wave out of her and she’s practically riding your hand, groaned curses and dazed squeaks of your name bouncing off the walls. 

It feels like minutes pass when her orgasm slows, inner thighs drenched and dripping with slickness. Ellie’s entire body shakes and her thighs squeeze around your hand as she attempts to catch her breath, but you’re not done. You’re not satisfied. She didn’t give you enough. 

You climb onto her and your lips connect in a simmering kiss, her wet mouth smacking against yours. Her cold hands land on either of your cheeks and your hips roll downward on hers. She whines into your mouth and tries to meet your hips but you force them back onto the mattress. She yanks at your shirt in attempts to rip it off but you don’t let up, lips slipping down to connect with her neck. 

Your wrist twists downward until you're met with her sticky bush once more, spreading her lips apart and shoving your fingers back inside her. She chokes a wet gasp when they hit right where she needs, her arms wrapping around the back of your neck to hold you close. You’re babbling nonsense in her ear as you work her, telling her how she’s stuck with you, how you’re never leaving her side again, demanding that she says you're the best she’s ever had. And she does, and either you’re fucked out of your mind, or she means it. 

You barely catch how your hips move like you're fucking her, driving into her as hard as you can and she takes it, stretches her legs wider so you can reach the spots she’s never been able to on her own. She’s saying your name like a prayer, like it’s all she’s ever known, and it’s breaking you down, only to build you back up so you can crash back into her. You missed her so fucking bad and you’re unleashing all of your feelings on her body and she eats all of it. How could you leave her when she fucking needs you this badly? You’ll never forgive yourself. 

She’s warning you, crying about how you’re going to make her squirt again, begging you to slow down because she can’t take what you’re giving her, but you feel so good and you know she does, too. You can’t stop even if you want to. You want to drain her, live inside her for the rest of your days on Earth. You’re forcing space for you inside her.

Her nails dig into your shoulders as she cums. She’s unapologetically loud and it flows directly in your ear, and your own noises leave your mouth and land onto the clammy skin of her throat. The jets of fluid that leave her are stronger than the last, and you laugh. Laugh in ecstasy and joy and pleasure that you can’t even feel, but it’s there. Right in your chest. 

You’re not done. You’ll never be done with her. 

The night evaporates with you in between her legs, slurping every bit of cum and stress that you may have caused since knowing her from the source until the sun shines through her blinds, drinking from her like you’ll die without her taste on your tongue. She lets you do whatever you need to feel satiated, but it’ll never be enough now. 

You’ll never be done with her. 

Ellie’s naked form jolts awake when ticklish breaths hit her shoulder. 

You’re beneath her, slumped, pantsless legs entangling hers and arms twisted every which way as you slobber and snore. A smile grows on Ellie’s face at your peaceful expression; She’s never slept that good in her own bed. She doesn’t want to wake you, but she has to pee so fucking badly. 

She shifts in her position and instantly cringes at the soreness in her legs. Warmth coats the crests of her cheeks when she sees the discarded sheets and pillowcases that were changed only hours ago on the floor, head plopping onto your shoulder to hide in your neck. Your snoring gets cut by a guttural cough and Ellie laughs to herself when your snores pick up again. 

She’s not a morning person in the slightest, so why the fuck is she so happy? Is this the post-sex glow that her friends always tell her about? Is she still considered a virgin if you only used your fingers and tongue? She doesn't feel like one… Sex rules are fucking dumb. She stops stressing before she ruins her morning. 

The pangs in her bladder are getting on her nerves; She wants to cuddle. She sighs and shifts on top of you, trying her hardest not to disrupt your deep slumber. She manages to separate and clothe herself before waddling down the hall and into the bathroom, trying to ignore the aches in her thighs. You wrecked her shit… What the hell. 

The second she leaves the bathroom, she smells coffee. Her dad’s up. She might vomit. 

The two of you weren’t that loud. Definitely not. He couldn’t have heard. He didn’t hear! Ellie’s stealthy as she tiptoes through the hall… until the fucking floorboards croak from beneath her and she nearly faints. 

“Come out, dipshit. I know it’s you.” 

Her eyes squeeze shut and she curses to herself. She reluctantly appears from behind the wall, her dad sitting comfortably on the couch with a filled mug and newspaper, Pickle napping on his lap. He peeks from above his reading glasses. 

“Think we needa talk.” 

“… Fuck me.” She whispers before shamefully limping into the living room. She flops onto the couch and glues her eyes onto the decorative rugs under the coffee table. 

“She seems nice.” Her dad sips his mug. Ellie’s face burns. 

“She is.” She mumbles. You took such good care of her after last night. You got her in the shower, brushed her teeth for her when she was damn near sleepwalking, watched her down two bottles of water. Her heart flutters at how soft your eyes turned when you kissed her to sleep. 

“Is she your girlfriend?” 

“… I dunno.” He hums and sips. 

She doesn’t know. You’re not dating, but Ellie thinks you like her… She thinks. She likes you… a lot. She bites at her nails. 

“You like her?” He asks lowly; She knows he knows. 

“Yeah…” Ellie whispers, cheeks rising on their own. She covers her face when he smiles. 

“Just… take your time.” Joel advises gently, “Did she tell you she’s in therapy?” 

Ellie’s ears perk and her brows furrow, “No.” She sits up. Her dad’s gaze softens, “Wait til she brings it up, then. Y’all should talk before things get serious. It’s only been a couple days.” 

Ellie knows her dad is right, but it’s hard to control herself when she’s around you. She naturally gravitates towards your aura; It’s comforting and she doesn’t want to lose it again. 

A gentle clatter comes from her bedroom and she stands. You’re awake. 

“I love you, kiddo,” Joel says, and she smiles softly. “Love you, too.” 

She scurries down the hallway and enters her bedroom, seeing you sprawled out on the floor, all wrapped in sheets. 

Your eyes are droopy when you croak, “Hello.” Ellie snickers. 

“Hi. What happened.” 

“I was reaching for, like… an orb in my dream and I guess I did it in real life,” Your voice gets so raspy in the morning, and it tickles her ears. Ellie can’t stop laughing. She helps you stand before kissing your cheek. 

“Good morning,” she wraps her arms around your neck. 

“M-Mornin’,” You squeak, eyes flitting around, “Uh… How'd you sleep?” 

“Good.” She’s lost in your brown eyes. They’re warm like the sun. Why won’t you look at her? 

She follows your line of vision down to your fiddling hands before whispering, “You okay?” You simply nod. Ellie’s heart stutters nervously. 

“Do you still wanna come over later?” 

“… Yeah.” Your attempts to disguise your stiffness fail. Ellie feels a lump forming in her throat when she detaches from you, and you search for the new pair of pants she gave you before you went to bed. Ellie watches silently, crestfallen. Something she did triggered your aloofness, so she turns to leave the room.

Her voice cracks, “I’m gonna… shower again— “

“Ellie.” 

She turns, “Yes?” 

Her fists clench when you walk until you’re standing in front of her, warm hand coming up to hold her cheek before kissing her. It’s soft and makes Ellie’s fingers thrum with excitement. It only lasts seconds before you pull away, and Ellie chases your mouth.  

“I’d love to come over. I think we… should talk about some things.” You say quietly, and Ellie silently agrees. You let her go and she wants nothing but for you to pull her in once more, shrouded in your warmth. 

You’re making her bed when Ellie leaves for the bathroom, body falling against the door to calm herself down. You’re not upset with her, and you want to come over… to talk, whatever that means.

The hot water burns her skin; She spends her entire shower thinking about how she can make you as happy as she feels. 

taggiessssss :3 @dyk3ang3l @ellieloml @inf3ct3dd @fromminaa @womenofarcane @sawaagyapong @mina-281 @aouiaa @bbglmfao @i00rii @sakiigami @starologist @southelroys @diddiqueen @trackinglessons @ellieswhorcrux @villainousbear @p4ison1vy @tohoko @yuckyfucky @dollyfleurs @elsbunny222 @sevsbimbo @amiorca @alittlextrahoney @gato-chino @topiatwin @r3wbeef @elliesatchel @muthafuckingstargirl @callmewhenyoukan @macaroni676 @draculurasblog @ellieaesp @@gravygranules @elsblunt

#in frame ✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ #ellie williams smut #ellie williams au #ellie williams angst #ellie williams #ellie williams x reader #the last of us 2 #black!oc #black!reader #lesbian #works 𖧧࣪

[doobea]

BLLK - RELATIONSHIP HEADCANONS CONT.

contents: some suggestive in oliver's, overall super fluffy, like domestic fluff its insane but i love it, gn!reader characters: sae, oliver, isagi, rin a/n: hehe im throwing this out just to have something but also i love coming up w hcs and its been a WHILE since my last one

SAE

Because of his constant travels, it was his idea one night that there needed to be something physical to keep himself reminded of you at night. Which led to him bringing you to a build-a-bear store the very next day. You took your time deciding which animal to choose from, scents, cute outfits (obviously you had to pick the soccer jersey), and recording your voice memo. He keeps the plushie by his bedside, sending you pictures of it every night, and even buys a small bed for it. You can't help but feel slightly jealous that he's treating a toy better than you.

The sounds of him brushing his teeth and gurgling mouthwash wakes you up every time. He doesn't mean to be so loud about it, Sae can't exactly control the volume of his electric toothbrush and he has to make sure that his breath smells nice before he goes in for a morning kiss.

"My hands are cold." and proceeds to touch your face. Will chase you around the house to make sure you warm him up. Don't even bother running away because he's a literal athlete. Probably refuses to wear gloves when it's cold outside just so he can stick his hands in your pockets too.

OLIVER

Karaoke nights with Oliver are like no other. He has a nice voice, but will purposefully sing terribly just to hear you laugh. With the combination of alcohol and old-school tunes, the two of you will test the limits of the so-called 'soundproof' rooms.

He's the type of boyfriend who loves to test physical boundaries in more ways than one. Walking in public, he'll 'accidentally' brush his hands against your bottoms or your chest. If you're taking a shower, he'll try and poke you from behind the shower curtains. Leaves his mouth a mess when he's eating food and specifically asks you to lick the sauce away.

Sadly, he eats your leftovers when you haven't touched them after a day. He tries to be super sneaky and tries to help you look for it after finishing the whole thing. And yes, he gaslights you just a tiny bit - "baby, are you sure you didn't eat it yourself?"

ISAGI

Under the condition that you have a lot of plushies, Isagi will either neatly place them around your shared apartment or send you videos of him punching them across the room - there's no middle ground.

Mentioned this before briefly but he'll show you all the highlights of his games. But not the professional videos - he'll go out of his way to find videos that are edited poorly (he thinks they're cool tho) and will force you to watch them with him. The videos with dubstep outros and intros, like and subscribe for more, and Roblox figures flying across the screen.

If you're not paying attention to him, Isagi will literally pull out his phone, take a picture of you with 'HEEEYYY' as the caption, and send it to you despite being within arm's reach. What's gotten your attention that's more important than him?

RIN

He definitely sleeps with a blanket that he's had since he was like five. The type of blanket that has holes in it, design and color faded by how much he's used it, and he was super embarrassed when you found it stuffed underneath his bed when he first invited you over. After suffering an endless amount of teasing, he brings out the blanket when he wants cuddles.

Facetiming with Rin is always so endearing yet so awkward at the same time. His face is never fully shown, only the corner of his head, and there are long periods of silence just because Rin hates having conversations on the phone. Expect a lot of "oh so what are you doing right now" every ten minutes - he's trying his best!

His favorite pastime is laying in bed with you in his arms and scrolling aimlessly on the phone. Whether it be reading a funny thread together, scrolling through TikTok, or watching a movie on Netflix - he finds it easy to relax with you and easily falls asleep within an hour.

#blue lock #bllk #blue lock imagines #bllk x reader #blue lock x reader #doobea writing #blue lock headcanons #isagi yoichi #rin itoshi #itoshi rin #sae itoshi #itoshi sae #oliver aiku #oliver aiku x reader #rin itoshi x reader #itoshi rin x reader #sae itoshi x reader #itoshi sae x reader #isagi yoichi x reader #blue lock scenarios #blue lock x you #blue lock fluff

[yenqa]

ADVANTAGES

in which…

on jay’s live, fans point out a stuffed animal on his bed, one that seems to be the other piece to your notorious missing pair. as imaginary pieces start to connect for fans, the viewers beg for some kind of interaction. and though you and jay have never met before, why not use this situation to your advantage?

warnings : haters ❌, y/n is a roblox player

wc : 1028

green hair

“Hi, chat!” You wave to the camera, watching as viewers flow in. You prop your legs up, hugging your knees as you try to read the overflowing chat.

strawberrylimesoda : HII Y/NNN

popcornpops : WE MISSED YOUU

Laughing at the sweet comment, answering “Chat, I streamed two days ago, remember?”

Messages flow in as you try to keep up with the fast paced comments. Though you can barely comprehend them quick enough to answer one, your eye catches on one.

Bluebirdfly : IS JAY WITH YOU?

Your smile falters slightly, ignoring the comment with an awkward chuckle, “Anyways, how are you guys?”

stellaverse : IM GOODD HOW ARE YOU??? I LOVE YOUR HAIRR

“Thank you, Stella! I styled it better today for some reason.” Brushing your hands between your front strands, you fix the hairs that are sticking out. Your eyes catch on the viewer count deciding to actually start the stream. Clapping, you welcome everybody in.

“Welcome to my stream everyone!” A smile grows on your face, ready for the reaction of your chat.

You pause to build suspense, then soon continuing “Today we have a special guest joining us!” Using your desk as a drum, you point to the camera, letting your guest know to say something. Jay’s low tone fill your headphones. “Hi, chat.”

The comments spiral, reading some, “Guys stop—Hyeju’s not my only friend, everyone please welcome Jay!”

You could hear the grin Jay has on his face, saying “Don’t get too excited Y/n.”

Rolling your eyes, you snap back “Wasn’t planning on it.”

Folding in your lips you can hear Jay barely holding his laugh in, letting out a snicker. You both burst into laughter, you hit the chair slightly, laughing at your antics.

Letting your giggles die down, you open the game you’re going to play, reading the recognizable “ROBLOX” loading screen. Spotting a green dot next to Jay’s username you click on his profile automatically joining him.

Switching tabs so the stream can see your joining screen, you watch as the chat laughs at the game choice.

Jay’s voice fills your ears again, a slight rasp to it, “She chose the game, guys. Not me.”

Your jaw drops, retorting, “Nothing wrong with Royale high, it’s the best dress up game on the planet.” Your eyes meet the familiar castle, walking up to the fountain you’re met with Jay’s avatar. Though clearly not decorated at all since he made the account, you can’t help but laugh at his skin.

“Hey wait—you have to go through the intro to get here, have you played this game before, Jay?” You accuse.

His avatar turns away from you, “No comment.” He replies.

ilovegreenbeans : JAY PLAYS ROYALE HIGH ON THE DAILY I BET

Giggling, you read the comment so Jay can respond, “Someone said that you play Royale high on the daily, is that true?” You tilt your head slightly, awaiting his remark back.

“Hey! I do not play Royale High a lot. I joined yesterday so I could get through the intro—It was for the good of the stream!”

You skeptically nod, letting out an “Uh-huh” before showing Jay how to decorate his avatar and how to get special hair colors. It’s much harder to help him when you’re not next to him, but this would work for now.

“Jay if you want the cool hair colors you have to buy the gamepass!” You nag him.

He sighs, “Y/n I am not spending money on this game, no matter how little.”

“I know you want that bright green hair, it would look so awesome on your avatar! Jay please—for the stream. Chat, help me convince him! Spam “Jay buy the gamepass!”

Comments flood in, all chanting the same four words over and over again. Pointing to the chat right next to your webcam you exclaim, “See the chat agrees too!”

lilaclavender : JAY FOR THE STREAM BUY THE GAMEPASS

Bluebirdfly : JAY BUY THE GAMEPASS 🙏

strawberrylimesoda : WE NEED GREEN HAIR JAY

“That’s because you told them to—whatever I give up, give me a second to buy it.” His audibly exhale is covered by your cheers, clapping your hands together as you excitedly tell chat that it worked.

user18127983 : AWW HES SO WHIPPED FOR HER

popcornpops : need a man who cant say no to me like jay cant say no to y/n

You want to smile at the comments, but you’re unsure whether or not to prove those to be false. Instead you let it go, deciding that it wasn’t worth replying. A minute or two passes by, you’re entertaining your viewers when you spot Jay’s bright green hair from the corner of your eye. You squeal, commenting, “Jay it looks so good! Aren’t you glad you decided to buy the gamepass?”

He lets out his nth sigh of the stream, and you take that answer as a “yes”.

☆

Two hours later you say goodbye to your viewers, ending a stream with a relieved sigh, finally leaning back into your chair.

“Tired?” He asks, before you can answer, you let a yawn out, eyes watery.

He laughs, urging you to go get ready for bed. You drowsily get up, basically stomping to the bathroom with your heaved footsteps. You brush your teeth and do your skincare before walking back to your desk, you see Jay’s webcam, waiting for you on his phone.

“Did you get ready for bed before the stream?” You ask, positioning your headphones to a comfortable position. His head shoots up, a soft smile grows when he sees your bare face.

“If I start the stream after like 9:00 I always do, so after I could crash. But today I’m not that tired for some reason.”

You hum, nodding as best as you can. He spots how your head falls every few seconds, and how your eyes drop “Hey—Y/n you can go to sleep, it’s okay.”

He doesn’t get a response from you, but he doesn’t mind. In fact he finds it kind of cute how you are when you’re sleepy. He lets out a soft “Sweet dreams” before finding a comfortable spot on his chair and drifting off to sleep.

☆

back masterlist next

yenqa > if you dont know what royale high is, its just a fairy dress up game thats based off winx

taglist : @yeokii @hanniluvi @euncsace @taejaysmain @mrchweeee @fakeuwus @ashy1um @rikisly @filmofhybe @nwjws @yizhoutv @soov @tocupid @tzke1ta @yannew @manooffline @mars101 @haechansbbg @enhaz1 @teddywonss @en-happiness @kim2005bomi @sunooscheek @luvswonyoung @flwoie @lilriswife4life @nicholasluvbot @ikeusol @lylovw @alwayswook @astrae4 @choi-beomgyulvr @aishigrey @infpistj @jiawji @planethyuka @mari-oclock @222brainrot @jakevascaino @rory-cant-sleep @hyehae @vixensss @hearts4hanni @kgneptun @tongtongie @www-jungwon @lovejunz @fluerz @jiyeons-closet

yenqa © please do not copy, steal or translate.

#advantages — yenqa 🎀 #jay smau #enhypen jay x reader #jay x you #jongseong x y/n #jongseong smau #jay angst #jay fic #jay scenarios #jay fluff #jay fics #jay au #jay drabble #jay fanfiction #jay fanfic #enhypen jay fanfic #jay drabbles #jay fake texts #enhypen x yn #enhypen smau #enhypen drabbles #enhypen reactions #enhypen x reader #enhypen x engene #enhypen imagines #enhypen au #enhypen scenarios #enhypen angst #enhypen fake texts #enhypen fanfic

[theoraclej]

THAT SEASON FINALE!

light, where to begin, a disjointed ramble of things I observed:

Dovie’andi se tovya sagain! - Mat said the words, he said the words!

And he made his own ashandarei! I hope he gets the raven-inlaid one though because I’m sure no one wants him running around with that dagger

And I know he’s going to get a massive S3 glow-up because he sees himself as MORE, now. Yay Mat!

RAND exploding the shit out of the Seanchan including Turak; nice way around his general lack of swordtraining which I’m sure will be remedied

Once the Heron, to set his path!

The interplay between Rand (and Lews Therin before him), Lanfear, Ishamael - they were besties in the Age of Legends, lmao!

I had expected the intro to be a high society polyam party they were attending, not the Sealing of Ishamael, 🤭

The Warder bond was beautiful, flowing, intimate, just what I imagined when reading these books some 25 years ago

I knew Moiraine was gonna say Lan was her better!

I’m so glad they’re back together though, legendary qpp

Nice to see the S1 intro sequence with the gorgeously woven Aes Sedai tapestry

I was a bit sad Nynaeve didn’t heal Elayne OR Rand but she DID swear to make Seta’s mother curse the first kiss her father ever gave her and THAT was cool

Hopper, my beloved! 😩 I would be chopping Whitecloaks too!

It was so satisfying to see Perrin obey his wolfly instincts already!

Elayne being the one to heal Rand’s wound was an interesting choice, and you can tell he was dazzled by her!

Book lines, book lines, book lines making me have conniptions every time one was uttered

“From birth to death I serve the Blood.”

UNO I KNEW YOU WERE COMING YA SHEEP-GUTTED MILK DRINKER

“For the Light, and Shinowa!” still gave me chills even without an expanded story behind it for Ingtar

Egwene al’Vere. I hope she earns a title of “the Unbroken” someday. Remember, Nynaeve even said that about her when Egwene was captured by Whitecloaks in S1!

Egwene, spitting out the damane gag and refusing to rain down fire on innocents, ah my girl, that’s that Two Rivers steel

Egwene, collaring Renna and choking her to death, being stronger than Renna, being able to withstand the pain of that because that’s exactly what Renna taught her

Egwene later, with that amazing shield against Ishamael to protect her friends!

Lanfear pushing Lan and Moiraine out of the ocean Waygate was very unexpected but totally within Lanfear’s lane, just to keep Moiraine away from Rand

Lanfear working to sell the Seals to Bayle Domon, which was so lmao also, and it really enhanced her utter shock when she entered the room later with the Seals all broken.

M O G H E D I E N 🕷️

She is perfectly creepy, perfect in every way. I can’t wait to see her tear shit up, or to see how she will be used in S3 and beyond

Never expected her to cage Lanfear in her webs, either, dang. Lillen Moiral wasn’t near so strong as Mierin. But we know some things are just Talents, and Moghedien is better in Tel’aran’rhiod than Lanfear

Did you notice Rand’s wound swirling with evil bits throughout the healed part? Really cool effect if you catch it

Aviendha, Bain, and Chiad showing they can fight just as well in close quarters in a city as in the Three-Fold Land; and then later acknowledging Rand as Car’a’carn

Though I’d hoped we’d get some good old He Who Comes With The Dawn in here too

Moiraine’s outstanding torpedo weaves that fucked up the Seanchan boats! And she understands the stakes - if the Dragon is gentled, or harmed, or captured, everyone’s life is in danger and that includes her and Lan

Anyhow fuck the Seanchan

Did it look like Suroth got blown up too? Does that mean she’s dead? I guess we’ll see who gathers in the scattered remnants of the Hailene!

The first “I’m not Lews Therin” from Rand

Mat taking a moment to mention Rand’s “shit hair” to Perrin while they were in the mix, lmao

That shadow ashandarei is really scary, it is a laser knife (lightsaber?) on a stick

I can’t wait for Perrin and Hopper to meet again in the Wolfdream

Speaking of which, I think Perrin’s eyes are permanently golden now

I cried at the coming of the Heroes of the Horn, I’m sure many of you did too 😭

Cool Hero fighting effects, I liked those

BIRGITTE SILVERBOW MY LOVELY

I figured Min’s vision of Mat “killing” Rand would be something like this, an accident, not an intentional thing

His blood on the rocks of Shayol Ghul…

AL’LAN MANDRAGORAN, the Uncrowned King, Sworn to the Flame, bonded again, fighting as he was meant to, just slicing through armies, snatching arrows out of the air and stabbing people with them, chef’s kiss

I wonder if Nynaeve’s “failures” and inability to channel at these vital moments will give her the drive to break her block

Ishamael’s channeling at the end was really impressive, a testament to how much more he knows than Rand

I hope that’s not the last we see of Fares Fares, he was remarkable as Ishamael and a truly enjoyable villain

And since they didn’t have the Dragon banner of Lews Therin Telamon found with the Horn like in the books, Moiraine saw to it that he was heralded with literal fire

This I can imagine many people seeing from far away, and of course rumor travels further

The Falmen sure seem to appreciate it and of course the Seanchan are gone for now

Lanfear asking the LIGHT to protect Rand at the end is something interesting and NOT LOST ON ME

I REALLY ENJOYED IT and am looking forward to a full rewatch of S1 and S2!

Proclaimed across the sky in fire 🔥🐲

#wheel of time #wot on prime spoilers #wot on prime #wheel of time show spoilers #wheel of time show #wheel of time s2 spoilers #wheel of time spoilers #wheel of time on prime #mat cauthon #rand al’thor #lanfear #ishamael #al’lan mandragoran #lan mandragoran #moiraine #moiraine damodred #aes sedai #perrin aybara #hopper #nynaeve al’meara #elayne trakand #ingtar #uno nomesta #egwene al'vere #moghedien #wot book spoilers #birgitte silverbow #min farshaw

[thegurlwhoisntthere]

Changes to BBC Merlin that I think would make it better:

note: these aren’t necessarily all in the same au timeline but even one of them could’ve made it better

When Merlin asks Gwen for a sword she gives him the best one she ever made, not her father, so she and Merlin together forged Excalibur

Gwen is knighted alongside the others in the Round table

Merlin is officially recognized as the Court physician’s Apprentice rather than becoming Arthur’s servant (Why do you call him an idiot? By Yvion on Ao3 proves this)

In the scenario that Merthur happens, and Merlin’s the ‘queen’ and/or court Sorcerer, Gwen should be the next Court Physician

Or she’s with Lancelot and she becomes the next court physician, I just think she’d be good at it and it would give her a reason to have a seat of the council in the case that she’s not queen

Lancelot doesn’t fucking die

Arthur learns of Merlin’s magic during the Sigan fight and comes to terms with it on his own

Merlin doesn’t know his destiny (y’know… like the intro of the show literally says over and over again…) so he’s actually just listening to his own heart when he makes decisions and doesn’t have crippling anxiety from holding the weight of the world on his shoulders alone the entire show

More Gwen and Merlin bestie shenanigans before and after either one of them becomes queen

Gwen finds out about Merlin’s magic sometime in season 1

Merlin ignores Gaius and Kilgarrah and tells Morgana about his magic and they’re cool magic besties

Arthur doesn’t fucking die 3 seconds after finding out

Any of Arthur’s character development sticks for more than an episode

Arthur actually catches on to the fact that Merlin is usually right when it comes to danger or judging people by Lancelot’s episode

Gaius actually listens to Merlin instead of immediately shutting down his ideas even tho they usually turn out to be right later on

More Round Table

Morgana’s turn to being evil doesn’t happen completely off screen and she shows some kind of hesitation in harming Gwen, Arthur, and the townspeople even after she’s evil because seriously what the fuck was that

We get several episodes completely from Arthur’s point of view that show Merlin looking absolutely unhinged with absolutely no context followed by the episode from Merlin’s point of view where everything he does looks completely reasonable

I can and will elaborate on any of these if you ask

#I will also probably add more #writing prompt #merlin prompt #these are also writing prompts/plot points that anyone can and should use in fic #bbc Merlin #feel free to add your own #bbc’s merlin #Merlin #merlin emrys #bbc arthur #bbc arthur pendragon #arthur pendragon #guinevere #bbc guinevere #bbc morgana #merthur #the round table #the knights of the round table #headcannons #au #merlin au #bbc Merlin au

[the-possum-writes]

Hi! I was meaning to request if you could write how would finn and princess bubblegum react if they found out there was a human princess around. Maybe she was adopted by the Queen and King from a small kingdom and kept her hidden for safety. I hope it's okay, and thank you for everything <3

Discovering a human Princess

❥Characters: Finn Mertens, Princess Bubblegum

❥Tags: SFW, Fem!reader, princess!reader, drabble, hcs

❥Synopsis: Bubblegum and Finn attempt to help a princess who they believe is inflicted with a curse but turns out she's actually a human being.

❥A/n: No prob! This is in the early seasons when humans are almost non existent and are considered extinct. Gonna take the same approach and write a small intro before seperating it into hcs for each character.

❥Taglist: @foxpearlwilder @watchingfromthefloorboards

Finn isn't one to dwell too long about being part of an extinct species or he'll get soul searchy, but one day the topic came to mind when he was rummaging through a barrel filled with old toys, some were old and moldy while others were mostly intended for babies. "Did you use to have toys like these growing up?" Bubblegum asks him, rummaging through her own pile of things. Her investigations leaded them to the remains of a shopping mall, mainly in effort to find more information about old times.

"Not really? I always had Jake to play with, well, that and any cool stick that looked like a sword." Finn responds, with his fingertips touching an unfamiliar rubber plate which turned out to be a Frisbee, he didn't get the chance to check it out because  Bubblegum cries out when her pile starts jiggling and something starts crawling out of it, Bubblegum takes a step back while Finn jumps into action with his gold sword ready, but instead  of confronting monster he was met with a harpy pigeon. "Oh I must've fallen asleep again..." he rubs his round eyes with the tip of his gray wings. "You! You're struck with the land walker curse as well?" the pigeon directs his attention at Finn.

Finn took it like some sort of insult. "Curses shmurses!" he responds almost immediately.

"Yeah, Finn has been curse free ever since that one witch gave him a booty rash." Jake exclaims in his failed attempt to defend Finn.

The human boy lowers himself to Jake's height. "Duuude, you weren't supposed to tell anyone." he mumbles with pinkish face cheeks.

"What's the land walker curse?" Bubblegum focuses on the topic at hand, to which the pigeon harpy dwells further.

"Back at the harpy kingdom our rulers were blessed with two royal heirs many seasons ago, one prince with wings and talons and a princess who remains wingless. The king said his beloved daughter was cursed by a shaman to walk on land forever, never to soar the skies with her family nor her people. It's so tragic don't you think?" he pulls out a handkerchief to dramatically wipe his non existent tears.

Bubblegum remained skeptical with her arms crossed together as she mutters to herself. "There's gotta be a scientific reason for this, maybe a genetic mutation? Or someone cheated." her thinking gears started running inside her head, meanwhile Finn and Jake were, in their own words, sweating from their eyes.

"That's so sad! We have to help her somehow." Jake expresses sincerely, being someone that wears his emotions on his sleeve.

____

Bubblegum called her giant bird marrow so they could fly their way to the harpy kingdom with the pigeon harpy as a guide, the flight lasted a few minutes with their surroundings turning into cloudy skies and rocky mountainsides. Bubblegum hopped off Marrow without any issues but it's Finn and Jake who were feeling nauseas due to the kingdom’s necessary altitude.

"They royal family live thus way, follow me!" the pigeon says joyfully.

It took a while for the guards to allow these foreigners entry but with a bit of Jake's charismatic persuasion and Bubblegum's own royal status, they were able to get a council with the Harpy King and Queen, such royals would despise an abrupt meeting but once they saw Finn they immediately became started at the human boy, especially the king who became agitated in his mighty throne.

"Honey look, that one over there is just like our daughter!" the harpy queen tugs on her husband's sleeve.

"I can see it clear as day my dear, no need to shout." the king sighs as he calms down his wife, "How dare you remind me of my daughter's misfortune, I order the three of you to leave this instance." his booming voice echoes through the room with Finn being the first to speak up.

"What? But we came all this way to help your cursed princess."

The king ruffles up his feathers like a bird of prey attempting to scare off another predator, but it was nothing more than an act because he lowers himself to Finn's height and mutters. "No, you don't understand if my daughter see you she'll know we've been..."

"Dad? I heard a loud noise coming from outside, is everything alright?" a new voice let's itself known, the cursed princess herself. But rather than being some sort of flightless bird or lack any feathers, she's actually an ordinary human being, or at least as ordinary as one can be when you're part of a rare species. Her bare footsteps echo through the room between small gasps and low  murmurs as she makes eye contact with Finn, calmly walking past her father as she extends a hand to the young man, both intrigued but uncertain about talking to him.

"Are you're cursed as well?" she asks him to which Finn replies. "Not exactly." he looks at Jake and to the shocked King and queen, feeling like he's accidentally got himself wrapped in family drama.

❥Finn

❥It's amazing he was allowed to stay in the kingdom even after revealing the King's biggest secret. That he found and adopted a human child from the wilderness and raised her alongside his harpy son.

❥"I just wanted my citizens to accept you without judgment"

"It's okay dad, I know you meant well."

Finn is just standing there while you console your father who is crying more about the whole situation more than you are, turns out the guilt was eating him inside.

❥"How's your dad?" he asks while you walk alongside him, stepping over branches and loose feathers.

"He's kinda sensitive right now but I know he'll get through." your tone is calm and mellow. Which makes it hard for Finn to get a good read on you, even the most steady rivers have heavy currents underneath.

"And what about you? How are you taking this?" Finn asks carefully.

You exhale loudly through your nostrils, failing to hold back a laugh. "Suprisingly well? I mean, I always knew I was different to everyone in this kingdom." you stretched your arms out. "I just wished I would've meet you earlier, hang out and do... Whatever humans do." you wave a hand in the air.

❥Finn thought about it for a moment before remembering the item he found at the mall ruins, shrugging off his backpack to open it up and pull out a rubber disc. "What's that?" you raise your guard up at the unfamiliar item, but still eyeing it in curiosity.

"It's a frisbee! Just stay there and catch it when it comes to you." At the mention of this, Finn runs up a few feet away from you and throws the disc at you. Still being cautious of the item you stood rigid until it was right above your head, prompting you to jump an grab it, filling you with excitement like when you caught your first fish.

"I did it? I did it!"

"Good job!" Finn gives you the thumbs up.

"Now what do I do??"

"You throw it back!" Finn explains, doing a circular motion with his hand.

Of course you threw it with too much strength and it landed on a tree, you spew a few curses but Finn still gives you the thumbs up.

❥After an afternoon of playing with Finn, the two of you settle on a small water stream, looking at your reflection in the water as dubious thoughts invade you. "It had me thinking... If the Harpy family isn't my real family, then what happened to my human family?"

"They're still your family. Sure they might not physically be like you but they still raised you like their kid." Finn explained.

You press your lips together, still unsure how to feel about that.

"What about you Finn? Did you ever meet your human parents."

Finn looks down at the frisbee in his hands. "Nope,"

"And weren't you ever curious to find out who they are?"

"... Sometimes, but Joshua and Margaret were always there for me and never really drove me to find out."

❥You look back at the giant castle made of twigs and leafs, knowing full well your dad is probably still sniffling like he just watched a soap opera. The thought brought a smile to your face.

"I'm just happy to know I have you."

❥Bubblegum

❥It was kinda awkward for her to stand there while this family drama came undone in front of her, but Bubblegum remained still and didn't disturb while the Harpy King cried his eyes out.

❥"I just wanted my citizens to accept you without judgment"

"It's okay dad, I know you meant well."

Bubblegum heard from across the hall, it isn't until you notice her did you approach her with an apologetic sigh.

❥"My apologies Princess Bubblegum you're still our guest, please, join me for a cup of tea." you bow slightly, keeping the manners you've been taught since forever.

❥"I hope the king is alright?" Bonnibel starts making small talk while you wait for the staff to bring your teapot.

"He's always been very sensitive, but I know he'll be alright." you shrug off with an uneasy smile.

Bubblegum takes note of this and holds the top of your hand in comfort.

"But will you be alright?"

You take a moment to cherish the hold and give her a comforting squeeze. "It won't be easy, but i'll be fine." you reassure her.

❥"It takes alot of strength to deal with newfound emotions, just by looking at you I know you'll make a great ruler someday." is the most she can muster up at the moment, since she can't fully relate to the situation you're going through. But still tries to get in your shoes.

❥Bubblegum removes her hands from you when the castle staff brings in your favorite tea set, relishing in the smell of fine herbs as you serve PB her cup.

"I don't think I'm eligible to rule, even before the reveal happened I am pretty sure my brother is the next heir to the throne." you confess.

"You can never know, I have an older brother too but he's okay doing his own thing."

"Oh really?" you reconsider, looking back at your sibling and his array of trophies on the high shelf, he always had the weird dream of becoming a professional baseball player so it's a possibility. "Then maybe it's not too bad of an idea. Though I would need to learn alot of new things about kingdom management." you chuckle, shaking your head at the thought.

❥"Hey, no need to get nervous I could help you...! If you like." Bubblegum offers.

You hum contently at the suggestion, raising your teacup to clink it with hers. "I would love that."

#adventure time x reader #finn mertens x reader #princess bubblegum x reader #bonnibel bubblegum #finn mertens

[babyrunsforfanfic]

The Mixtape Detectives

summary: in which eddie tries to be nancy drew

or; in which eddie finds mixtapes in your car and steve’s and decides that the two of you both have to be seeing someone! so he has nancy and robin help him try and figure out who… while they’re all completely missing the signs around them.

steve harrington x fem!reader

warnings/tags: “secret-relationship” trope, but they aren’t doing much to hide it everyone else is just oblivious, the reader and steve have opposite music tastes (steve listens to top 40’s and the reader listens to hard rock / metal), fruity four appearances, background robin x nancy, upside down never happened everyone lives ok, minor talk about steve having absent parents, minor drug use

wc: 3900ish

eddie munson grinned to himself as he drilled his fingers against his knee, his eyes hazy as he leaned his forehead against steve’s passenger side’s window. the glass was cool against his skin, and eddie snickered when steve leaned back in the driver’s seat.

“still alive over there?” steve teased, and eddie snickered again as he glanced toward steve. “i haven’t seen you this high in fucking ages, dude.”

“pretty sure ‘m jus-” eddie huffed as he bent down, fingers yanking open the glovebox right at his knees. “need music.”

“carefully just, fuck-” steve swerved as eddie harshly leaned back, tugging out two handfuls of loose tapes that steve had a bad habit of just.. throwing back into the glovebox. “stay steady dude i don’t want to have to get vomit out of my fucking car.”

“shut up!” eddie groaned as his fingers and rings clacked against the different plastic casings of the cassettes now in his lap. “stevie your music taste sucks.”

“hey!” steve hissed, and eddie couldn’t help but laugh as steve swatted his right hand toward him, left still firmly on the wheel. “bruce springsteen and elton john do not suck!”

“oh steve…” eddie trailed off, abandoning several cassette tapes that fall to the floor, even if steve did suck a sharp breath through his teeth. eddie’s brow pinched, fingers tapping against a cassette that didn’t have a title printed on it. “what’s this one?”

“oh uh-” steve tried to make a grab for it, but a car cutting in front of him forced him to slam his right hand onto the steering wheel. “is private.”

“oooh, pri-vate.” eddie stresses both syllables of the word, before he popped it into the radio and pressed play.

static happened for a second, before the intro of fucking ‘necropobic’ by slayer starts. eddie can’t help but immediately balk, especially since steve… steve doesn’t even seem like the music is bothering him. no, instead steve taps his fingers against the steering wheel, and he looks like he is at-fucking-ease.

steve and eddie don’t say anything for the entire two minutes the song plays, and eddie isn’t surprised when the next song that plays is ‘stranger in a strange land’ by iron maiden. eddie just watched, wide-eyed and mouth slightly agape, as steve harrington sings under his breath to fucking iron maiden. the same steve harrington who would jokingly complain about his ears bleeding whenever eddie had control of the radio.

when steve and eddie pull into his driveway, carefully parking behind nancy wheeler’s car- eddie is stunned when steve turns and grins at him after he’s turned the car off. his dark-tinted sunglasses are hanging near the tip of his nose, and steve harrington fucking winks.

“told you my music doesn’t suck, munson.”

•••

a week later, while steve is stuck waiting for his car in the only mechanic shop in hawkins— eddie is sitting in the basement of the harrington house, with nancy and robin sitting in front of him.

steve’s parents had long since moved away to who knows where, and apparently they were ok and trusted steve enough to make sure the house didn’t collapse on itself.

“can you repeat that?” nancy’s brown is furrowed, and robin is chomping on a popsicle stick as she eyed eddie intently. “you think what?”

“i think that our stevie boy is hooking up with someone!” eddie is adamant, and he points at the piece of paper he’d brought with him. he’d managed to sneak the mixtape out of steve’s car long enough to catalogue what songs it had on it. what eddie hadn’t expected was for steve to bang on his door, not even five minutes later, with his hands on his hips, looking for it. “stevie doesn’t listen to slayer, buckley!”

“it’s just music, eds-” nancy started, though the girl smiled as eddie huffed out a noise of disagreement.

“no! top 40’s is just music.” eddie jabbed his finger toward the paper, which nancy turned so she could look at the entire list. “steve ‘the king’ harrington does not listen to alice cooper!”

“i mean he could just be trying to branch out y’know? we all like different music and stuff, maybe dingus is just trying to expand his horizons and shit.” robin pulled the wooden stick out from between her teeth so she could speak, tongue tinged blue as she wet the corners of her mouth. “maybe that’s all it is, eddie! maybe you’re reading too much into it.”

“no, i’m gonna find out who it is.” eddie is grinning, a slow ear to ear thing that has both nancy and robin let out sighs. “now, are you two with me?”

“ugh, fine.” nancy agreed after eddie sent her a puppy dog look. nancy cast a look to robin, eyes softening slightly, as the trio heard the front door above them unlock. “you in?”

“i’m in.” robin quickly agreed, especially as steve began his quick descent down the basement stairs. eddie quickly snatched up the paper, folding it along the creases before he jammed it deep into his jacket pocket, just as steve entered.

“hey jerks!” steve had an ear to ear grin, a couple boxes of pizza propped against his hip. “look who i find wandering the neighborhood.”

you stepped out from behind steve, a twelve pack of beer in your own hands, and you scoffed playfully as you flipped steve off.

“fuck off, stevie.” you rolled your eyes as you moved toward the trio, smiling widely as you grinned at robin and nancy. “girls i have so much work drama to fill you in on.”

nancy squealed, instantly helping you set the beers down, as robin grabbed you into a tight hug- before the three of you wormed around steve. you all moved as a unit, bounding up the stairs, as steve chuckled.

“glad they get along, aren’t you?” steve smiled to himself, setting the pizza boxes open. eddie watched steve curiously, before he nodded with a grin.

“of course, they all seem to get along great.” eddie shuffled, helping steve break apart the twelve pack, while steve set out a couple of coasters. “car okay?”

“yeah, brakes were just a little fucked.” steve shrugged, before the sound of footsteps down the stairs happened. steve smiled as you bounded down the stairs, trailed after by both robin and nancy. “aw, just talking about you three.”

“oh really?” you grinned wide, dropping a stack of napkins and paper plates on the table. “anything exciting?”

“reminiscing how you joined our little group, actually.” steve grinned and you laughed shyly, rolling your eyes as you dropped onto the loveseat.

“i was high out of my mind, alright?” you scoffed, before smiling as steve dropped down so he could sit next to you. about six months prior to now, while almost greened out, you’d marched up to the four at a party and declared you were all best friends. you’d all been inseparable pretty much since. “can we dig in, i’m starving.”

everyone moved after that, dropping to sit and flip open the pizza boxes. while you slid a couple pieces of supreme onto your plate, steve slyly tapped his knee against yours while everyone else was distracted, especially when eddie jumped up to turn the television on.

“you look real pretty today.” steve whispered, and you smiled towards your plate, accepting a beer when steve offered one out to you.

“thanks, stevie.” you murmured, shy as steve threw his arm behind you to rest along the back of the sofa.

no one noticed, just as no one noticed your shirt.

iron maiden clearly displayed across your chest.

•••

eddie rifled through the box you usually kept in the passenger seat floorboard of your car, an extra pair of your sunglasses drooping down his nose. his van had absolutely refused to start that morning, and since you’d been the only one that was awake when eddie called… you’d offered to drive the brunette to work.

“god at least you have a good music taste.” eddie chuckled, pinching a metallica cassette between his middle and pointer finger.

“yeah?” you giggled, flipping your blinker on as you came to a stop at a red light. “whose music taste are you bashing?”

“stevie’s,” eddie chuckled, dropping the bin of tapes back at his feet.

“aw, it can’t be that bad.” you teased, though you felt your cheeks warm as you took the left turn once the light had turned green. you honestly had no problem with steve’s music taste, truly you didn’t. “some of the stuff he listens to is cute, y’know?”

“cute?!” eddie guffawed and you nodded as you tucked your bottom lip in between your teeth.

“yeah!” you defended, shrugging as you came to a stop at another traffic light. you tapped your fingers against the steering wheel, offering eddie a slow shrug of your shoulders. “some of it is cool, y’know. good make-out music and shit.”

“make-out music?” eddie was grinning now, a wide ear-to-ear thing as he cackled out a laugh. “you’re making out with people to music now?”

you shrugged, especially as eddie continued to grin at you from your peripheral.

“i’m human, eds?” you couldn’t help but giggle, especially as eddie jammed his finger to turn your radio on. “i don’t think that tape is rewound-”

eddie listened, repeatedly pressing the rewind button, before he stilled as you started to drive again. the tape was quiet, barely any static coming through, before it started.

the intro of bon jovi’s, ‘you give love a bad name’ crooned from your car’s speakers- and eddie felt his jaw open as he turned to openly stare at you. you had taken to singing along to the words, tapping your fingers perfectly to the beat- and eddie realized you must’ve listened to this song countless of times to know every fucking lyric.

when you pulled up front of the music store, you flashed eddie a smile, as you pushed your sunglasses down so you could look at eddie with a small smirk quirked on your mouth.

“like i said,” you grinned even wider then, shoulders shrugging as you gestured toward the radio. “some of the shit he listens to is good make-out music.”

“tell me you’re joking.” eddie’s jaw is still hanging open, and you shrug as you instead shift your car into park. “no no, tell me the tape playing isn’t your fucking make-out tape.”

“what? do you think i make-out with people to metallica or some shit?” you’re grinning instead of smirking, and eddie bobs his head into a quick nod. “i don’t listen to this shit all the time, eds, but master of puppets doesn’t exactly give ‘let’s kiss’ vibes.”

eddie is still looking at you, mouth slightly agape, especially as the next song plays. ‘take me home tonight’ by eddie money starts to play, and you’re openly giggling now- as eddie’s cheeks flush.

“do you wanna borrow it?” you question, and you don’t wait for an answer as you click the rewind button twice, and then eject the tape. you hold it out while it’s between your pointer and middle finger, and eddie takes it from you as he slowly blinks. “there you go.”

eddie climbs out of your car slowly, and you grin as you blow him a kiss.

“nance is gonna pick you up once your shift is over, she’s the only one off today, just letting you know.” you’re smiling softer now, before your eyes flash mischievously, and nod your head toward the tape. “take notes munson, i want that back.”

as you pull away, eddie is still standing shocked in the parking lot.

•••

a day later when eddie is sitting in steve’s basement again, he can’t help but feel deja vu trickle up his spine. nancy and robin are sitting across from him, the three glancing at the pieces of paper that eddie had been looking over pretty much his entire shift at the music store. steve was upstairs showering, while you were currently on your way over, having gotten held up at your job instead of being able to get off at your usual time.

“so you think that steve’s best match…” nancy trails off, brow furrowed as she leans forward to look at the paper closer. “beth wildfire? why does that name sound familiar?”

“she’s the girl i told you about, nance.” robin reminded her girlfriend, speaking around a mouthful of doritos. eddie’s brow is furrowed, so robin quickly continues to ramble on. “she was the goalie on my soccer team, this other girl like slid into her right? and ended up breaking one of beth’s legs, and like the whole bone came out of her knee.” robin stuffed another chip into her mouth, missing the small smile that nancy had on her mouth at the rant robin had unintentionally started to go on. “it was insane! i think she ended up having to get screws put in her knee or something. but also, i’ve heard her music and i don’t think she’d listen to any of those songs that were on that mixtape.”

“you don’t think so?” eddie raised his eyebrows, and when robin shook her head immediately, he groaned and crossed her name out.

“also jason carver, really? that’s the best you have for her?” nancy jabbed her finger toward the list of guys eddie had made for you, which prompted eddie to shrug.

“look, she didn’t say she was dating anyone, just making out! isn’t her type like pretty guys or something?” eddie explained, hair moving wildly around his shoulders as he began to talk with his upper body.

“is whose type pretty guys?” steve’s voice rang out, and eddie quickly grabbed the list, crumpling it up as he shoved it into his pocket before he turned around.

steve stood at the bottom of the stairs, hair wet with his hands on his hips as he eyed the group- the trio sheepishly smiling toward steve. steve quirked an eyebrow, as his eyes flitted between everyone’s faces, before he looked back to eddie. a beat or two passed, before you bounded down the stairs, your own hair wet and in pajamas.

“you stop at home and shower?” nancy changed the subject, glancing at you, and you paused a second before you nodded.

“yeah, felt grimy after work.” you shrugged, slyly ghosting the fingers of one hand against steve’s hip as you moved by him. “excuse me stevie.”

you plopped down in the empty chair, before you tucked your knees to your chest and smiled widely at the group. “what are we watching? pick something good up after work, rob?”

robin and nancy were both up then, quickly discussing several movies they’d both apparently rented from family video. eddie excused himself almost as quickly, bounding up the stairs to go smoke before the movie started. while nancy and robin were preoccupied with each other, steve made his way to the side of your chair, and perched himself on the arm before he bent down so he could whisper in your ear.

“thanks for taking a shower with me.” steve’s words were quiet as you let out a soft hum of acknowledgment, and steve tucked a few wet strands of your hair behind your ear. “feel okay?”

“little tired,” you shrugged, blinking sleepily towards steve and he smiled fondly at you as he smoothed his hand over the back of your head. steve hummed softly, and after a quick glance to make sure nancy and robin were occupied (they were), he pressed his lips to your forehead in a soft kiss. “we cooking tonight or ordering in?”

“figured we’d cook, maybe.” steve shrugs, before he ends up sliding so both of you are sitting in the chair together. you uncurl your knees from your chest, letting steve prop your legs over the chair arm, as you end up half balanced on one of his thighs. “i have stuff upstairs to make spaghetti, or i could make burgers instead?”

“hm, spaghetti.” you tuck your head into steve’s neck, and he freezes slightly- before he smooths his hand over your back carefully.

“they’re gonna think somethings up, baby.” steve murmured and you whined softly, shrugging your shoulders. “they are.” you let out an indignant huff, pressing yourself tighter against steve, who made no actual move to peel you off of him. “do you not care anymore?”

“you’re the one who cared if they knew.” you mumbled your words against steve’s chest, and steve stifled a laugh as you snuggled closer and shut your eyes. “if i want to snuggle my man, ‘m gonna snuggle him. don’t care what they think.”

steve said nothing further, instead cradling you to him, with one arm as he used the other one to snag a throw blanket. he covered both him and you, letting you snuggle as close as you wanted. interestingly, robin and nancy didn’t spare either of you more than a glance, and that was just to see if either of you had any input on the movie they watched (you didn’t). even eddie didn’t comment when he made his way back down the stairs, flicking off the overhead lights before he launched himself onto the couch.

while the movie played, the shining, specifically, steve kept his arms wrapped tight around you. none of your friends said a word, even as the group (minus you, seeing as you’d drifted off before the movie had even been chosen), talked through the film.

when you finally woke up as the end credits started, you yawned, and uncurled yourself from steve. steve watched appraisingly as you stretched, tank top riding up on your hips as you stretched your arms high above your head. you let out another yawn, before you turned and smiled at steve.

“i’m gonna go start food, wanna help me, baby?” your voice was soft and it was clear you were still half-asleep, and steve nodded following after you slowly.

interestingly he noted, no one batted an eye at your use of the pet name. when steve was at the top of the stairs, he heard the crinkle and low voice of eddie, rattling off a couple names to robin and nancy. the two girls seemed to put their input in, and steve was still chuckling when he joined you in the kitchen.

“what’s funny?” you murmured, soft spoken as steve wrapped his arms around you from behind, pinning you to his chest as he ducked his head down. steve pressed a soft kiss to the top of your head, watching as you turned a burner on. “hm?”

“pretty sure eds and the girls are trying to figure out if we’re dating someone.” steve chuckled, nosing at your hair as he watched you dump a thing of hamburger meat into the pan.

you giggled at that, since the two of you had already filled each other in on the weird moments about music with eddie when you’d been driving with him. neither of you were worried about him though, not really anyway.

“funny.” you murmured, and you didn’t protest as steve plucked the spatula out of your hand, though he still kept your back pressed to his own chest. “think they’ll end up confronting us?”

steve chuckled, shaking his head as he thought about the trio downstairs in the basement, before he spoke.

“oh without a doubt, baby.”

•••

a week later, eddie sat in the back of his van with both nancy and robin, the van facing toward the drive-in’s screen. some double horror feature was playing, and while both you and steve had bailed, the trio had still wanted to attend. steve apparently had a migraine and you the stomach flu, so the trio had just sent you well wishes and still went.

eddie took a slow drag of his cigarette, glancing around as he eyed the cars that surrounded him. everyone was waiting on the second movie to start, the first having been over for a couple of minutes already. nancy whined when robin smacked her arm, and eddie jumped as robin smacked his too. when eddie turned, robin was grinning- gesturing a hand out into the crowd.

“isn’t that steve’s car?” robin was grinning even wider now, and eddie cackled as he stubbed out his cigarette. “oh my god it so is isn’t it?”

“and the windows are fogged up.” nancy giggled, and eddie grinned at his two friends, before he gestured toward the car with his chin.

“what do you say about going and saying hi?” eddie was grinning even wider when the two girls jumped up, and eddie followed suit after closing the back of the van.

steve’s noticeable car was several rows ahead of them, the last in the row. the windows were fogged, and eddie couldn’t help but stifle a laugh as he neared the driver’s side window. eddie could hear music playing from inside, madonna’s ‘crazy for you’ crooning from the car’s speakers. eddie grinned wide at nancy and robin, before he rapped his knuckles against the window.

a beat passed, then two, and eddie knocked again. he could hear mumbling inside the car, clearly steve’s voice, though he couldn’t make out the second. when another beat passed and the music was turned off, eddie knocked for the third time. eddie smiled again at robin and nancy who crowded closer as the driver’s window started to roll down before…

holy fucking shit.

you were perched in steve’s lap, lips red, smiling shyly up at the trio. steve was under you, hair mused as he grinned cheekily at eddie, before his eyes flickered to robin, and then to nancy’s. you were in a tiny sundress, something drastically different than what you usually wore, and eddie swallowed harshly when steve slid the strap of it back up your shoulder fondly.

“hey guys.” you were grinning, all teeth and crinkled eyes, before you extended your hand with a small giggle. “nice to meet you, ‘m stevie’s girl.”

no one made a move to shake your hand, and when you brought it back in, steve extended his own. he was flushed pink, lips puffy from being kissed, and he licked at the corners before his grin widened.

“nice to meet you all, i’m hers.”

•••

eddie had decided on that night that he was a terrible fucking detective, and had somehow missed what’d been clear as day right in front of everyone’s eyes. you and steve later explained you hadn’t hidden your guys’ relationship for any malicious reason, it was just new and you both weren’t exactly sure where it would actually lead.

years later, at your wedding with steve, neither of you could explain to anyone other than your three closest friends why your favorite present was what it was. it wasn’t large or expensive by any means, but the second both you and steve had seen it, you both had erupted into a fit of giggles.

inside of a shadow box were the following items;

one the right, the list from the tape in steve’s car.

on the left, the list from the tape in yours.

at the bottom, in between those, two unlabeled cassette tapes side by side.

just above the two tapes was what had really sent you and steve into a fit of hysterics.

it was two separate lists of names of students that had gone to or once attended hawkin’s high.

some x’d-out, some circled, some underlined.

the most interesting thing, however?

neither your name or steve’s were anywhere on it.

#babyrunsforfanfic #steve harrington one shot #steve harrington #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington fic #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington blurb #fruity four #stranger things #stranger things x reader #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction

[ros3ybabe]

Daily Check-in: April 20, 2024 🎀

No update for Friday as all I did was go to class then go to work, come home, and sleep. But Saturday was a very good day and I feel as tho I did a good amount of things! And I feel good about the thing I did! <3

🩷 What I Accomplished:

woke up early before work (didn't hit my alarm three times and wake up tired, like I've been doing)

worked a ~7hour shift

agreed to cover a coworkers morning shift on Sunday 4/21

created a budget/ work plan for next semester to see how much I can make vs what most of my spending will look like

made an appointment to get a tattoo at the beginning of May (it's a tattoo to honor my dad and my late mother, who will have been gone 10 years this year. I wanted to honor my dad with the tattoo as well because he has been an amazing parent for the last 10 years, and I love and appreciate him so much)

booked an intro class at club pilates for mid-may (finally going to see if I enjoy it, and if so, will continue taking classes next semester!)

did a morning yoga workout

reflected on why I've been having a hard time sticking to my goals/daily tasks lately

washed my laundry (didn't put away tho)

💞 Good Things That Happened:

my friend gave me a ride to work

my favorite supervisor gave me a ride home from work

ate some spicy cheesey ramen

had a really good day at work

was able to request a day off work for beginning of May

got told my tattoo won't cost as much as I had thought

talked more with my roommates

💔 What Could've Gone Better:

drank too much coffee, and too late at night

had a near panic attack because of the coffee and cried myself to sleep

didn't zoom with my boyfriend because of how bad the coffee made me feel

lost trust with a different supervisor that I had thought was cool with me ( made me realize you can't trust most men to keep their word nowadays. not all men. just the men where I live at least.)

didn't study anything or do anything I felt was productive

💗 Stuff For Sunday:

work a shift

clean bathroom

wash pillowcases and towels

dust bedroom

practice some past chemistry homework problems

pick up medication from pharmacy after work

draw up rough sketch of tattoo idea

morning yoga?? we shall see

DONT drink too much caffiene

til next time lovelies 🩷

p.s Check Out My Depop shop!

💕 Song of The Day: Pied Piper - BTS

this song has been making me feel the same way that House of Cards has, which is saying a lot. I love this song so much right now.

#pink pilates girl #pink pilates princess #self development #wonyoungism #it girl #mental health #self care #physical health #that girl #self love #pink academia #pink aesthetic #pink blog #pilates aesthetic #college student #student life #student #spanish studyblr #college studyblr #studyblr community #studyblr #language studyblr #uniblr #university student #uni student #study aesthetic #studyspo #college studyspo #that girl energy #it girl energy

[themultifandomgal]

From 2010- Start Of The Take Me Home Tour

2013

Part 29

23rd February- London O2

“I got this, everything will be fine” I say to myself in the mirror while my hairstylist/makeup artist Erin is putting my hair half up after spending the last few hours doing my hair and makeup

“Of course you’ve got this. Your going to be fine”

“It’s just the last time I was on tour Alex…”

“I know, but he would want you to carry on doing what you love. He’s here with you, I can feel it” Erin says finishing up “and we are done” just in time as well as there’s a knock on my dressing room door. Charlotte walks in with my clothes rack

“Time to get dressed, 5SOS have just gotten off stage”

“Ok thanks” I give myself one more look in the mirror, take a deep breath and let it out “everything’s going to be fine” I say one more time to myself before taking my pill and washing it down with some water. I take my first outfit from Charlotte and get dressed, meeting up with the boys back stage

“5 minutes” I hear a stage manager yell

“Alright?” Harry asks

“Hmhm” I nod smiling, but I’m honestly so nervous, more than I was during our first tour.

Soon enough I hear the intro to the tour and hundreds of screams. The start of Up All Night begins and we walk on stage. Annoyingly my inears aren’t working so I have to take on out so I can actually hear Harry before the chorus. I notice Louis also doesn’t have his in so while Zayn is singing both Louis and I quickly run off stage to see if the techs can fix the issue.

“Hello!” Harry shouts into his Microphone “we are One Direction and it’s and absolute pleasure to play for you today” as Harry talks Zayn hands me a water bottle “thank you so much f’being here”

“Thanks” I say to Zayn opening up the bottle and taking a sip of water

“We can see everyone!” I hear Harry shout

“Want to say that any louder?” I say to Harry

“Oh shush” Harry sticks his tongue out at me so I stick mine out back

“So mature” Zayn says shaking his head “so the next song we’re going to do, I’m not sure if any of you know it, it’s called One Thing”

“Come on O2. I tried playing cool….” Liam starts while Harry and I are dancing stupidly making Zayn laugh

“Shot me out of the sky. You’re my kryptonie. You keep making me weak, yeah frozen and can’t breathe” 

“Somethings gotta give now, cause I’m dying just make you see that need you here now cause” I point to the audience who shout ‘you’ve got that one thing’

“Let’s here you O2!” Liam shouts.

“Everyone having a good time?” Niall asks “good stuff. Right the next part of the show is the most important part of a One Direction show. Let’s look at Twitter. Ok so we’ve taken in some of your questions and we’re gonna answer them here and now in the O2 Arena”

“Where’s cookie? YN I think this one’s for you” Zayn says. The boys all look at me waiting for an answer

“She’s with my friend Emma while where on tour. When we’re in Birmingham I’ll get to see her” I reply to the question

“Ok this one’s for me. What’s your favourite song to play on the guitar?” Niall reads “I think it’s a remix of what makes you beautiful and I’m sexy and I know it”

“Which Disney movie do you prefer?” Liam reads of

“YN will watch any” Harry laughs

“Hey I have a favourite”

“Don’t we know it Nants ingonyama bagithi baba” Niall sings

“And is Cookie is in the building you know she’s getting lifted up”

“Ok well what about you boys?” I ask

“There’s a few classics aren’t there, but I think I’ll have to go with the Lion King as well” Louis says

“Yes!” I run over to him and give him a high five

“Zayn I know your a man who likes cartoons. Talk to me” Liam says

“Tarzan”

“Good choice. Harry?”

“Is Dumbo Disney?”

“Is dumbo Disney?” I scoff “yes of course it’s Disney”

“You do fancy the little Mermaid though don’t you?” Liam teases

“I think it’s your turn” Harry dodged the question

“Mines more of a Pixar movie. It’s toy story” we finish up the Twitter section and continue on with the concert.

By the end of the night we are all exhausted. I get dressed in a pare of sweats and a jumper. I take out my contacts and place my glasses on. I grab my stuff and head out of my dressing room and knock on the boys’ door which opens in no time

“So that’s where my hoodie went” Harry says letting me in

“Oops” I shrug

“Are they my sweats?” Louis asks

“Maybe” I shrug again. Louis raises his eyebrows at me “ok fine but they’re more comfortable”

“Well now we know what to buy you for your birthday” Niall jokes.

#6th one direction member #one direction x reader #sixth one direction member #one direction #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x you #harry styles x oc #harry styles fanfic rec #harry styles imagine #harry styles x reader #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction

[mercymermaid]

so

next stop theatre rtc production rant

@ihavenoideamanokay you're being sacrificed

- jane didn't actually sing during her first verse of karnak's dream of life, she just flung her doll around which was iconic

- karnak unfortunately spoke very quickly and didn't have the comedic timing of 2016 :(

- virgil was this tiny little rat who moved up and down it was so silly

- karnak had little blinds in his booth and the front one got stuck and at first we thought it was a bit until he opened the side one and said "oh that one works-" (and then during the entirety of uranium suite he was trying to fix it 😭)

- ocean and constance both had the same outfit, jane had the same outfit as them but with white socks (instead of black), noel had a whole ass blazer over his dress shirt, mischa was. mischa. and ricky had a normal sweater vest over his dress shirt and a beanie

- during uranium suite constance kept managing to channel Main Character Energy (/pos) and then ocean just went. nope <3 and constance actively looked hurt

- once karnak started speaking and they were all standing there ricky was rubbing his throat like "oh my god-"

- noel was a lot less vocally expressive but damn his facial expressions were on POINT

- constance was just having this huge ass panic attack throughout the entirety of everyone's catchphrases and it's hilarious

- speaking of, during everyone's introductions, they hovered by karnak's booth just in like a video game idle animation

- noel, instead of being disgusted, just kinda shrugged like "okay, me, pop off"

- ricky did a handstand and slayed

- jane sounds a lot more like an actual teenager, which was great

- she also had a ragdoll which slayed and it's head was constantly falling off

- noel looked like he was struggling very VERY greatly to keep it together while ocean talked

- mischa and noel were so nice to jane 😭 - noel was talking to her about nails during ocean's intro and waving ajd shir, and they both like ushered her around and shit oh my godddd 😭 they'd make hand gestures and jane would imitate and they looked so proud oml 😭 

- mischa sounds german 😭 

- ocean started her songs by aggressively blowing a whistle which spurred everyone into choreography

- jane was really out of it and didn't actually know what she was doing until towards the end of what the world needs 

- ocean somehow managed to hurt everyone at the end - noel was hit in the nose, constance was knocked down, ricky was as well, mischa got kicked away, and ocean used jane as a little stepping thing at the end

- they all very much enjoyed that, and as karnak announced the 'unanimous vote' thing, ricky and noel both were trying not to laugh

- noel started dramatically clapping and it was great

- "not all gay people are fun to be around" he stared ocean right down, stuck his middle finger in his mouth and then cornered her into the middle while aggressively flipping her off (as he should)

- noel yelled a LOT more than "sweet jesus christ on a stick" when he was fed up "I LOVE YOU GUUUUUUYS-"

- his idle animation was some really weird sexually invigorating writhing (funnily enough mischa was sitting behind him 😭)

- instead of the gay pose for the "his mother found out two things", this mf all but twerked and showed off his ass to the audience 

- this man. /pos

- during the "i hear it gives you an erection" ocean looked on the verge of tears and smiled and nodded aggressively when constance suggested just moving on

- noel was fruiTEA he was not holding back at ALL 

- the taco bell pic was on thr back of a karnak poster and noel all but sprinted and screamed to stand in front of it and trying to play it cool (he failed miserably)

- oh the flirting with mischa was WILD

- at one point he made some innuendo ("never wrote a novel.. or had sex.." points at mischa with a wink) and mischa immediately started texting talia

- instead of a full-blown kiss scene it was a bit more of a little peck and then mischa going "😍"

- and then right after that he got his wig lmao

- he was laughing like a MANIAC he was FERAL

- he was about to do a split and then after constance refused to pay he gave up

- his "tell the lord im dying like him" moment was less dramatic and more peppy

- he just say up and excitedly started rattling off what he would say

- he walked down a pathway of chairs and boxes to The Box and then did his lovely singing while everyone else was also on chairs and shit lmao 

- ricky's accordion was rapidly falling apart 💀

- karnak danced to every song except wtwn and ballad

- again. more fucking flirting with mischa. this man was WILD-

- everyone was sitting on the sidelines during ocean's lesson rant

- jane was sitting with constance, trying to show her her doll, which constance accidentally threw onto the stage

- jane went to get it and mischa went "no-"

- also when karnak said "not every story has a lesson" constance was motioning for him to stop like "please do not-"

- tsia was dope. he had a fur coat and EVERYTHING. he was slaying hard

- everyone was being extremely sexual which was fuckinf hilarious to watch 💀 

- noel was getting INTO IT

- ricky had a silly little robot head thing

- "i lay my masculinity at the altar of your maidenhood" he offered his rapper dollar sign necklace 😭 ily sm my guy

- someone said "aw" and he focused on them for the rest of the song lmao

- talia was beautiful. the big projection fabric was brought in as a veil by jane, and then they used it to shadow project jane and (i think) noel dancing behind it it was so cooollllll 

- instead of the dance circle they all just started dancing crazily it was great lmao

- mischa fucking THREW himself at ricky and noel that mf was sobbing

- no sped up speech from ocean (thankfully /j)

- however at the virginity bit noel immediately walked over like "fucking SPILL"

- they all collectively nudged ricky forward it was so sweet like "you should go"

- it was. wild.

- as he was explaining his religion, noel was nodding along like "yeah this seems sick dude"

- instead of having ocean, jane, and constance at the beginning, he had jane, constance, and noel (bisexual king) 

- he had a cape for a bit but took it off before the "it gets weird now"

- speaking of there was no backstage or costume change he just played guitar aggressively smh

- everyone had a cat helmet and fluffy cat tail and they all has different color and they all had visors and mischa's was constantly falling off 💀 

- mischa: "dude you are so cool now" ricky: "nobody-" *gives the biggest fattest nastiest side eye to ocean* "-ever listened to me"

- BALLAD WAS SO AMAZING HOLY DHRIROFJDUSSHITITISHUDIEKDSB AJRUSJSJFJFJRAUGHFHDUSUFJEIIRH can you tell it's my favorite song

- jane gave her doll to karnak 😭 dadnakdadnakdadnakdadnak-

- her voice was so powerful holy SHIT

- the choreography was everyone moving around with masks on their hands like heads before the first chorus, and then after that it was just hands constantly grabbing at her

- she was terrified kf the hands and heads

- oh and there was uv lihting which made everything very very ckntrasty holy shiat

- her voice was torn between fear pain and anger and it was so fucking gorgeous DUDEEEE

- THOSE HIGH NOTES 🤩 best jane ive seen since emily rohm (i say, this being the only other version i've seen-)

- at the end she just kinda stood there, nobody else was on stage, she kicked the floor like a lil pouty child (my sweetheart) but then when the others started singing happy birthday her eyes widened like "what the fuckkkk"

- mischa beat boxed the first half of the og birthday song

- the new birthday song was super awkward but then ocean figured out the beat and it got really fast really randomly for some reason- felt a bit rushed

- they all blew it out together so once she reached for the cupcake it was already put out

- she didn't wander off to eat the cupcake shr went straight to Ricky

- at first he kinda dismissed her but... oh my goD

- her voice was so confident "savannah, with the greenest eyes..!"

- once the focus shifted off of them ricky unwrapped the cupcake and then he took a bite to show her how to eat it then they took turns until she just shoved the entire thing in her mouth-

- mischa was all alone and then he pointed the bottle at noel who came over

- he offered a sip and noel was such a lightweight hetook one gulp and his knees buckles 😭 

- they had their deep convo and then just took turns drinking until they ended up finishing the entire bottle

- the constance ocean situation. goddamn. it escalated to yelling and then constance punched he really hard and ocean sat down and sulked for the entirety of jawbreaker

- mischa was the guy and he had the tattoo and once he was Free the look of disgust on his face as he tried to dust himself off

- everyone was kinda smiling somberly as constance talked

- DADNAK GAVE HER A SPARKLY JACKET EAFHFHGJGJG

- they all kinda did their own jigs yk

- dadnak had them walk past his booth and grab various sparkly accessories from a bucket for them to dance with it was so cute

- no recorder solo sadly but she did do some wicked scatting

- it was utterly amAZING

- AFTER SUGAR CLOUD. OCEAN HUGS CONSTANCE AND OUT LOUD FULL ON TELLS HER "I'M SORRY" LIKE FUCK YEAHHHHHH

- as ocean being the final vote is announced, the choir turns to look at her rhythmically, and then just look at that exact spot for the rest of her monologue

- it is. long. obviously

- as she's turning around to pick the final vote, everyone makes varying faces of some sort of hope, and as she chooses jane, they relax

- jane's life is revealed by a waterfall of photographs coming from the ceiling and everyone crowds around her to point out all the stuff in them as ocean starts its not a game

- eventually she has all the photos and she's shuffling through them quickly on the verge of tears

- she leaves without much fanfare, constance WAVES and jane runs off behind the wings

- karnak gets his ass killed and just leans out the window, very dead (his death scene was.. interesting)

- as they start it's just a ride oh my god 😭 it's so happy because they're just kinda running around and dancing together and everything AUGH MY HEART

- NOEL HUGS OCEAN. 

- THEY DO THE SPIN ON THE "TURNING ROOOOOUND" BUT NO BIG JAM OUT HOW DARE THEYYY

- JANE COMES BACK OUT AS PENNY WITH A DARKER WIG AND GREEN EYES AND SHE GUIDES THEM ALL TO THE AFTERLIFE BC THEY ALL END UP SETTLING INTO THE ROLLERCOASYER POSITION

- AND THEN PENNY SINGS THE “I KNOW THIS DREAM OF LIFE IS NEVERENDING” WHICH MEANS HER NOT SINGING IT EARLIER WAS FORESHADOWING LOOK AT ME I’M A GENIUS

OTHER STUFF

- this one chair to the side was used as the breakdown chair because constance had like thirty anxiety attacks on it and noel was barely keeping himself together from tearing ocean to shreds 

- can't remember in which interaction specifically but ocean pisses mischa off and he stomps off to sulk backwards on a chair by ricky

- either at the beginning of lament or tsia jane fucking. chucks. her doll somewhere behind karnak's booth

- at one point jane and ocean are sitting next to each other and jane keeps trying to initiate contact and ocean is leaning away like 'fuck no babes'

- mischa beat boxing was a good bit and he did it twice-

anyway that's all-

#ride the cyclone #mercy rambles #rtc #uranium teen scream #uts #next stop theatre company #next stop theater #idfk #virgil #the amazing karnak #jane doe #penny lamb #ocean o'connell rosenberg #constance blackwood #noel gruber #ricky potts #mischa bachinski

[39oa]

f1 rpf graphing & archive insights

intro & prior work

hello! if you're reading this, you may already be familiar with my previous post about graphing hockey rpf ships and visualizing some overarching archive insights (feel free to check it out if you aren't, or alternatively just stick around for this intro). i've been meaning to make an f1 version of that post for a while, especially since i've already done a decent amount of f1 rpf analysis in the past (i have a very rough post i wrote a year ago that can be read here, though fair warning that it really does not make any sense; while i've redone a few viz from it for this post i just figured i'd link it solely because there are other things i didn't bother to recalculate!)

f1 is quite different from many team sports because a large part of my process for hockey was discovering which ships exist in the first place—when there are thousands and thousands of players who have encountered one another at different phases of their careers, it's interesting to see how people are connected and it's what was personally interesting to me about making my hockey graphs. however, with f1's relative pursuit of "exclusivity," barriers to feeder success and a slower-to-change, restrictive grid of 20 drivers, it becomes generally expected that everyone has already interacted with one another in some fashion, or at least exists at most 2 degrees of separation from another driver. because of this, i was less interested in "what relationships between a large set of characters exist?" (as per my hockey post) and more so in "what do the relationships between a small set of characters look like?"

process

my methodology for collecting "ship fic" tries to answer the question: what does shippability really look like on ao3? (the following explanation is adapted from my hockey post:) a perceived limitation i have with character tagging numbers on ao3 is that they don’t exactly reflect holistic ship fic; that is, if lando is tagged as a character in a max/daniel fic, it gets attributed to his character tag but doesn’t actually say anything about how many Relationship Fics exist for him on a whole. my best solution for this was essentially uncovering most of a driver's relationships and summing their individual fic counts to create an approximate # of “relationship fics” for each player. so any kind of shippability graph going forward will use that metric.

i used ao3’s relationship tag search and filtered by canonical in the formula 1 rpf fandom and only pulled relationship* fics (“/” instead of “&”) with a min. of 5 works. ao3’s counts are… Not the most accurate, so my filtering may have fudged some things around or missed a few pairings on the cusp, which again is why all the visuals here are not meant to show everything in the most exact manner but function more so as a “general overview” of ficdom. although i did doublecheck the ship counts so the numbers themselves are accurate as of time of collection.

(*i excluded wag ships, reader ships, threesomes to make my life easier—although i know this affects numbers for certain drivers, team principal/trainer/engineer ships, and any otherwise non-driver ship. i left in a few ships with f2, fe, etc. drivers given that that one character was/is an f1 driver, but non-f1 drivers were obviously excluded from any viz about f1 driver details specifically. this filtering affected some big ships like felipe massa/rob smedley, ot3 combinations of twitch quartet and so on, which i recognize may lower the… accuracy? reliability??? of certain graphs, but i guess the real way to think of the "shippability metric" is as pertaining solely to ship fic with other drivers. although doing more analysis with engineers and principals later down the line could be cool)

also note that since i grouped and summed all fics for every single ship a driver has, and since one fic can be tagged as multiple ships, there will be inevitable overlap/inflation that also lessens the accuracy of the overall number. however, because there's no easy way to discern the presence and overlap of multiship fic for every single driver and every single ship they have, and attempting to do so for a stupid tumblr post would make this an even larger waste of time… just take everything here with a grain of salt!

data for archive overview viz was collected haphazardly over the past few days because i may have procrastinated finishing this post haha. but all ship data for section 2 was specifically collected april 22, 2023.

PART I. f1 rpf archive overview

before i get to ship graphing, here are a few overviews of f1 ficdom growth and where it measures relative to other sports fandoms, since i find the recent american marketability of f1 and its online fandom quite interesting.

first off, here's a graph that shows the cumulative growth of the top 8 sports rpf fandoms from 2011 until now (2023 is obviously incomplete since we're only in may). i've annotated it with some other details, but we can see that f1 experienced major growth after 2019, which is when the first episode of dts was released.

something that fascinated me when making this graph was the recent resurgence of men's football rpf in 2023; while the fandom has remained fairly consistent over the years, i had noticed that its yearly output was on the decline in my old post, and i was especially surprised to see it eclipse even f1 for 2023. turns out that a large driver behind these numbers is its c-fandom, and it reminded me that out of all the sports rpf fandoms, hockey rpf is fairly unpopular amongst chinese sports fans! i wanted to delve into this a little more and look at yearly output trends for the top sports fandoms since 2018, only this time filtered to exclusively english works (a poor approximation for "western" fandom, i know, but a majority of sports fandom on tumblr does create content in english).

another thing i've long been curious about with f1 specifically is—because of how accessible dts and f1 driver marketing are to fans online, does f1 rpf and shipping culture skew a bit more "public" than other fandoms? i'd initially graphed the ratio of public fic on ao3 for hockey because i also wanted to see whether it was on the rise (again, apologies for how many callbacks and references there are in this post to hockey rpf... it's just easy for me to contextualize two familiar sports ficdoms together *__*), but i was surprised to see that it's actually been steadily trending downward for many years now. f1 fic, on the other hand, has steadily been becoming more public since 2016.

another note is that c-ficdom follows different fic-posting etiquette on ao3, and thus chinese-heavy sports rpf fandoms (think table tennis and speed skating) will feature a majority public fic—here's another old graph. since f1 fandom has a relatively larger representation of chinese writers than hockey does, its public ratio falls a little bit if you filter to english-only works, but as of 2023 it remains significantly higher than hockey's!

anyway, onto the actual ship graphing.

my ship collection process yielded 164 ships with 57 drivers, 46 of which have been in f1. all 20 current active f1 drivers have at least one ship with min. 5 fics, though not all of them had a ship that connected them to the 2023 grid. specifically, nyck de vries' only ship at time of collection was with stoffel vandoorne at 56 works.

once again because f1 is so strongly connected, i initially struggled a lot with how i wanted to graph all the ships i'd aggregated—visualizing all of them was just a mess of a million different overlapping edges, not the sprawling tree that branched out more smoothly from players like in hockey. this made me wonder whether it even made sense to graph anything at all... and tbh the jury is still out on whether these are interesting, but regardless here's a visualization of how the current grid is connected (color-coded by team)! i graphed a circular layout and then a "grid-like" layout just for variety lol.

of course, i still wanted to explore how ships with ex-f1 drivers have branched out and show where they connect to drivers on the current grid, especially because not too long ago seb was very much the center of the ficdom ecosystem, and the (based purely on the numbers) segue to today's max/charles split didn't really come to fruition until the dts days. so here's a network of f1 ships with a minimum of 75 works on ao3:

before i go into ship breakdowns, i also have a quick overview of the most "shippable" drivers, aka the drivers with the highest sum of fic from all their respective ships. the second bar chart is color-coded by the count of their unique ships to encapsulate who is more prone to being multi-shipped.

PART II. ship insights

first let's take a look at the most popular f1 ships on ao3, again filtered to driver-only ships.

here's another graph filtered to the current grid only, and then one that shows the 15 ships where one driver isn't and has never been an f1 driver:

for this section, i ended up combining my ship data with a big f1 driver dataset that gave me information on each driver's birth year, points, wins, seasons in f1, nationality... etc., so that's what i'll be using in the rest of the post. disclaimer that i did have to tweak a few things and the data doesn't reflect the most recent races, so please note there might be some slight discrepancies in my visualizations.

anyway—in my hockey post i did a lot of set analysis because i was interested in figuring out what made the players who were part of the ship network different from the general population. with f1, since almost Every Driver has at least one ship and it's a much more representative group, doing a lot of set distributions wasn't that interesting and so i stuck more to pure ship analysis. still, the set isn't completely representative, which i noted by checking the ratios of driver nationalities in my dataset and then in the large database of f1 drivers i merged with (though filtered to debut year >= 2000 to maintain i guess the same "dimensions").

while british and german drivers have been the most common nationalities in f1 since 2000, both in general and in my ship data, it seems that ficdom slightly overrepresents/overships them and then underrepresents brazilian drivers. i was also curious to see the distribution of ships by nationality combination (which is actually quite diverse), and though it once again wasn't surprising that uk/germany was the most common combination given that we've just established the commonality of their driver groups, i found it somewhat interesting to realize just how many ships fall under this umbrella.

i then once again wanted to see what the distribution of age differences looked across ships. the ships i graphed yielded a range of 25 years, with the oldest age difference being 25 years between piastri and webber. tbh, something that's interesting to me about f1 ships is not just how connected current drivers are but also how there is a very strong aspect of cyclicality, wherein long careers in combination with well-established celebrity culture and post-retirement pivots to punditry & mentorship position drivers perfectly to still be easily shipped with any variety of upcoming drivers, hence why we encounter a relatively significant variety of age differences.

of the ships with two f1 drivers, 38% were within 2 years of each other, while 44% had an age difference of 5 years or more.

more experimentally (basically i wanted to use these performance metrics for something!), i tried graphing driver metrics against "shippability" to see whether i could uncover any trends, normalizing to percentile to make it more visually comprehensible.

one thing that was interesting to me is that there is a strong correlation between a driver's points per entry and their number of ship fic; really, this isn't surprising at all because it's basically a reflection of whether they've driven for a big 3 team, and we know that the most popular drivers are from big 3 teams, but then i guess it does become a bit of a chicken and egg question... which is something i'm continuously fascinated by when discussing success and talent in sports fandom, especially in a sport like f1 where there is so little parity and thus "points" do not always quantifiably translate to "talent," making it difficult to gauge why and when a driver's skill becomes consciously appealing to an audience. i don't know but here's that scatterplot.

similarly, i also wanted to look at years active vs. fic to gauge which drivers have a High Number Of Ship Fic relative to how long they've actually been in f1, basically a rough rework of the "shippability above expected" metric i'd tried exploring in my old f1 post haha. because the set i merged with attributed 1 "year active" to a driver just like, filling in as reserve for a single race, and it also included drivers who maybe raced one season and then never raced again, but then i still wanted to include current rookies in their first season to show where their Potential lies... i settled on filtering to drivers who were or have been active for at least 5 seasons OR who debuted recently and thus have a bit of rookie leeway. there's a decent amount of correlation here, which is again... in f1, the underlying argument for remaining active for many years is that you have to be good enough to keep your seat, so it's expected that if drivers stay on the grid for a long time they will eventually accrue more fandom interest and thus ship fic. still, we can see some drivers who underperform a little relative to their establishedness—bot and per, interestingly also below the trend line in the points/entry graph–and then those who overperform a decent amount, like nor and lec.

this is somewhat interesting to me because i'd tried to make a similar scatterplot with my hockey set and found that there was... basically nooo correlation at all, but i also had to make do with draft year and not gp which i think might move the needle a little bit. regardless, it's just interesting to think about these things in the context of league/grid exclusivity and then other further nuances like the possibilities of making your niche in, for example, the nhl as a 4th line grinder or f1 as a de facto but reliable #2 driver for years down the stretch, and then how all of that impacts or shapes your fandom stock and shippability.

moving on, here's a look at the current top 20 f1 ships and how much of their fic is tagged as fluff or angst! out of all their fic, kimi/seb have the highest fluff ratio at 38.44%, while lewis/nico hold the throne for angst at 34.74%.

lewis/nico are also the most "holistically" tragic ship when you subtract their fluff and angst percentages (by a large margin as well), while jenson/seb are the fluffiest with a difference of 17.38%. really makes you think.

and finally this is a dumb iteration from my old f1 post but i thought this was kind of funny haha so: basically what if teammate point share h2h but the points are their shippability on ao3.

closing thoughts

that's really all i have! again, i don't know whether any of these graphs make sense or are interesting to anyone, but i had fun trying to adapt some of my hockey methodology to f1 and also revisiting the old f1 graphs i'd made last year and getting to recalculate/design them. i know there's a lot more i could have done in examining drivers' old teams since many ships are based on drivers being ex-teammates and not the current grid matchups, but it would have been too much of a headache to figure out so... this is the best i've got. thanks for reading :)

#*m #stats #f1 #kept forgetting i wanted to finish this but i was clearing out my windows going why on earth do i still have tableau open... #i know this is not even remotely interesting but i did my best!

[cutepastelstarsalior]

Decided to watch Hazbin Hotel…..(only because I hard that Jeremy Jordan is Lucifer va…..and also because i am a hater™️)

Watching this on Watch Anime dub, it has the pilot…so

Pilot

Pilot Charlie voice is so pretty. God the angels designs remind me of those weird The Purge neon mask…forget how red this pilot is..there is a lot of random sounds effects, it feels a tinnnyyyyyy bit to much. Pilot angels voice <3 snake guy voice so SO familiar????? I feel like he was in a video game or something. Hmm I forgot how much cursing there is…minor pet peeve, sometimes the lineart is hot pink and it’s kind of annoying since it sticks out against black lineart, also there SO many eyes, everywhere? Idk if that a fun little quirk or lore™️ that one news reporter being on fire made me laugh.. I like the mixed art style when Vaggie talks about Alastor, it’s charming. Hmmm, radio sound effects, love them <3

I think it’s cool that Charlie is a very sweet, kind of “childish” Nieves princess in a world full of murder and hate and violence. It makes me wonder how she got that way? Also hell is overpopulated so the angels kill them. Interesting!! Especially since lot of demons also fight over territory. This Katie killjoy does have a point, why would sinners want to change? Beside the killing, it seems like hell is basically Earth 2.0.. It is cool how Alastor the radio demon, decided to help out because he’s bored.

GOOSEWORX THE CEATOR OF THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS :0 👀 yooooooo. Jesus there so many people working on this pilot…

Scale of 1-5 I give this a 3.5.

Episode 1

Ok, so the intro says that the angels have an extermination because they don’t want Hell to rise up. But in the pilot it was because of overpopulation…Also Lucifer not liking hell and can no longer dream, while Lilith thrives…hmmm if this story has Lilith be evil while Lucifer is good idk how to feel about that. The voices are different, while I don’t like Charlie’s new voice (sounds to idk deep?) I definitely like Vaggies, it’s deep and a bit monotone. Also new outfits!!! Charlie’s is fine, but I don’t like how sharp her face is? So look more older and mature compared to her pilot self, which add the whole naive princess feel. It’s canonically 5days to a week between the events of the pilot and the first episode…oh ew I hate Angels voice. It’s too high, and he has an accent now??? Oh Husk voice!! While is deep, it’s also high? No longer gruff.. hmm character wise, angels seem more bitchy?? Then the pilot?

Ok…random song???? Just…no build up music or anything.. Charlie curses more too. In the pilot she curse like, 3 times. Here she does it more.

There is a giant clock tower thing that went you go in, leases to a lobby then leads to the angels???? Wouldn’t that make it like, easier to attack heaven or something? Why is an Angel, like the heaven angel, cursing?? I feel like that would be against the rules?? WAIT THATS ADAM LIKE FIRST HUMAN ADAM???? Oh no that worse… like like nifty she’s a cutiepie :)

Ok Hell is still overpopulated, and heaven keeps killing then because they think he’ll will overpower them, but Adam does it for entertainment? Hmmm they also going to kill again in 6 months. :/ Katie killjoy voice is also bad.. oh!!! Wait Adam lied, the real reason heaven is killing again because an Angel was killed? But an angel was never killed before??? I thought hell was very powerful?

Episode rating 1-5. I give it a 3. I like the singing, love Vaggies and Alastor’s dynamic. But the plot is a bit confusing? Is hell being kill because of overpowered or because of overpopulated? The hotel design is pretty. Though he’ll is still red :/

Episode 2

Why is hell citizen freaking out? In the pilot it seems like they like it, because people can fight over territory. And an angel was murder, so ??? Don’t see why they would panic.

The Vees. Vox, a tv head demon who is like a weird Amazon business guy. His design is…clutter. Dude, striped jacket with vertical stripes shirt? Tho thank god he’s blue, he sticks out nicely in hell. I like his blue neon eyeliner, that cool. Velvet is a British fashion designer….shes fine. I don’t really care for her. And Valentino, who’s is Angel’s boss/pimp. And oh my gosh whose voice, his accent keeps coming and going??? It’s bad I hate it, because it’s so noticeable. Interesting that he’s Spainish(?)

Vox can hypnotize people and he did a cool tv voice effect!! Oh god I think I have a favorite character??? Vox and nifty…

Ok ok ok, so there a radio demon, a tv demon, is there a computer/internet demon??? God I hope so. Imagine if there an internet demon and vox and alastor has to like put aside there differences and work together.

Why is there Egyptian demons???? Ancient Egyptian believed in an underworld called Duat, but it’s not a place of external punishment. The ancient Egyptian thought the worst punishment a soul could have would be denial to the afterlife, and being ceased to exist. The souls did have to make a dangerous journey to be judged by Horus and Osiris. (Wiki)

Vox asked Alastor to join his team?? Maybe Vox doesn’t like Velvet and Valitini that much? He seems more like a boss to them than a friend.

“And that’s the tea” :/ Why is Alastair using slang from after the 20’s? I mean sure he probably learn it in hell. But Alastor is like from 1920. That’s the tea/spilling tea is original from drag culture in 1994.

What IS Charlie’s plan to redeems sinners? Charlie was born in hell, and the sinner were from earth, surely the sinner like, know how to apologize and basic human decency? Maybe they just forgot? Maybe they need to like, clean themselves of their sin??? Idk.

Oh my god Charlie is having them do a say no to drugs roleplay!!!! ……that. Akers me wonder, how does Charlie’s know this stuff if she’s from hell? Does she learn this by watching the sinners? Did her mom or dad teach her this??? Ok, so I have seen the pilot and that seen post about that one comic about angel day to day life, and seen the addic music video. So it’s a surprise that Fat Nuggets, Angle’s pet pig is here. And that weird red smoke.

I don’t care for snake guy. He’s…neutral. Kind of suck that who snake guy being a spy was like, immediately uncovered. Kind of wished that angle was get like bummed out about the attention snake guy is getting, then later he would like, try to find out what is going on. Or something!!! But I guess having snake guy be an actual member of the team is fine. Tho, I do like his design. It’s nice to see characters that aren’t so red. Angel’s and Vaggie’s singing voice harmonies really well. Ok, this is like the first sign I actually enjoy.

Scale 1-5. I give it a 4. Only because of Vox, and that ending song.

Episode 3

Snake guy wanting to shoot the other residents because he thinks everyone is to nice and it’s a lie. That…that surprisingly a deep thought? Like I didn’t expect the show to have the residents not trust one another because they are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Also it seems like Vaggie and Alastair run the hotel, like doing up with the ad, making rules. Seems like Charlie is just the face/money aspect of the hotel. My guess is that in the future Charlie wants to quit, or is forced to to quit, and Vaggie take over, or gives like, an emotional speech about how the hotel and running it charge her for the better.

I remover in the pilot, or around that time, Alastor is aroace (nice) but I don’t remember what Vaggie is. But I can see people shipping them. For me, I could see then being close friends or maybe a weird ambiguous relationship.

Charlie you kind of a shitty boss. Like, I know I just said that vaggie does all the work, but girl, you have to do some work to?

Oh my god there do a Mean Girls trust fall bit.

Weird green spider guy….i love him. Wish this show has subtitles, would love to understand what this guy is saying..

There sub overloads? Neat. God that weird neon wolf??? Dinosaur??? Is SO distracting, like they really stick out against the reds and washout colors..

Once again, a another song without any music buildup or warning. “I’m the backbone of the Vees” hmmmmm are you tho? Like, Vox is doing a lot, and Val is….there. WAIT IS SHE the internet overboard??? She’s call “social media overlord” in one of the screen backgrounds.. god if she if, that lame. She not like, scary or imitating?? She’s just annoying. Man that sucksss. We could have like a cool internet overlord that was young and careless, but that a persona, and on the inside they are rude and vile. Because the internet has everything and anything, so they could instantly control people lives or spread rumors or doxxs people????

Idk why, but velvet sing reminds me of SIX the musical. But I know that her VA is Lily Cooper who did the SpongeBob musical and wicked , and not SIX.

Why is this lady’s earring hanging off her hair??? Do sinner/demons/whatever not have ears or noses?? Eghh I don’t like her singing?? It feel like she’s straining herself.

WAIT THE SNAKE EGG HAS EGGS BECAUSE SNAKE LAY EGGS BUT THEY ALSO EAT THEM. OHHHHH. why did that take me so long to figure that out??

Scale 1-4. I give this a 2. Idk man, this episode is kind of boring.

Episode 4

Oh dear, I hard LOT of bad things with this episode…let’s see how bad it is.

Charlie get gross out by the sex tape….asexual Charlie real. To me!!!! Also same, Charlie, same.

“Dollface” aw, cute.

Angel panicking about Charlie trying to talk to his boss. I’m guessing he’s afraid that if Charlie accidentally angers Val, Val will take his anger out on Angel. :(

Oh cool. Val hit angel. Wow!! (Sarcasm) Totally wish there was like, a warning or something for that!!!!

Hmm ok. So that song was…bad. Like lyrically bad. As for the scenes, I literally don’t know how to feel about them? Like knowing the backstories of this episode, it grosses me out. But the song and scenes, just didn’t feel anything? Idk.

I don’t think husk should get angel back?? Angel was sexually harassed him, and husk has repeatedly said no. Like yeah, angel did that has a bad coping mechanisms or like, persona, but hmmm. I feel like if they two need to talk to each other, it could be in a different way? Also I noticed this episode is SUPER short compared to the other ones. The other once’s are like 22 minutes, this one is 12.

Oh cool, husk stoped angel from getting roofied. I guess with him being a bartender, he’s train to watch out of these things.

Husk singing voice is so so nice <3 but WOW is this message a bad one. Angel sold his soul to Val, and Val abuses him. Angel then self destruct because he thinks if he (angel) is broken enough then Val will let him go. Meanwhile…..Husk was an overlord who gamble and lost his soul to Alastor…..these 2 problems don’t equal each other. One is horrible, and one is a bummer situation. Also the message for being at rock bottom, together, maybe he helped to some people, but I think in Angel’s case he needs different help. Like sometimes when people act worse with each other, it can make people not want to get better or encourage someone to get worse. I feel like that what husk and angel dynamic is?

For some reason I feel like Charlie was written really out of character here??? She crying and had to be carried away. It feels very weird.

Scale 1-4. I give this a 1. Would have have this a 0 but husk singing voice save it.

I heard that episode 5 and 6 are coming soon. Will I seen them, probably. Do I enjoy this show? Not really. The concept is cool! And like, only 3 characters I enjoy. But I feel like the way this is handled is bad. On Prime Video this show is 18+. Honestly, this show feels more like TV-14 - TV-MA. TV 14 is decried as intended for children ages 14 and up in company of an adult. It possibly contains suggesting dialogue, strong language, intense sexual situations, or intense violence.

TV MA is for adults. It possibly contains crude indecent language, explicit sexual activity, or graphic violence. On IMDb Hazbin Hotel has 19 sex and nudity, 14 gore and violence, 9 profanity, 10 alcohol, drugs and smoking, 9 fighting and intense scenes. On HBO MAX it’s 18+, TVMA, when video version, and 16+ on YouTube. So like, who is this show for???

#my thoughts #long post #hazbin hotel #hazbin criticism #hazbin critical #vivziepop

[foundfamilynonsense]

I’ve been seeing some posts saying that Hobie was not an instant fav but won them over quickly and I realized I had a similar experience. So I started thinking about why.

And a few people brought up that his comic book intro used very dry sarcasm that might have come off badly to some but I don’t think that’s it (at least it wasn’t for me)

And then I realized: I didn’t like Hobie at first bc he was being set up as the third in a love triangle between Miles and Gwen.

I don’t care if Miles and Gwen get together (in fact I would prefer they don’t) but there are few things I think ruin a story more than a love triangle (no matter how small a part it takes in the plot). Especially in this movie bc all it would have done is make Miles feel intimidated and whiny.

So Miles is already jealous bc hey Gwen stays over some guy’s dimension :(

and then! Pavitr picks up on something between Gwen and Miles and says “does he know about Hobie”

Which to me said that Gwen and Hobie were actually in a relationship. Or starting one.

Then we meet Hobie. And there’s a whole montage where he’s basically like “yea this is the coolest character ever” and you think oh fantastic. This character exists only so Miles will be annoying and jealous for the rest of the movie.

But then that DOESNT HAPPEN. And of course it doesn’t. Because you actually meet Hobie and if one thing is certain about this character it’s that he could never be in a love triangle bc he is acutely aware that he has two hands.

And then he turns out to be the mentor archetype of the movie. He is out there not only teaching but giving gifts. (The new bracelets). Which is one of the main things with mentor archetypes.

He is not a new barrier between Gwen and Miles. He has replaced Peter B’s role as the mentor of the group. Because this is a harder challenge and calls for a mentor with a sharper edge.

And part of me is going “why would the writers underplay him up front like this?” But the rest of me is going “of course the writers misdirected the audience at the beginning”.

Bc Hobie’s whole thing is misdirection. He doesn’t look or feel like they typical mentor we see in movies. He seems like an interesting character, maybe a little comic relief. But being underrated is how he managed to save the day at the end. And while I think Pavitr’s line might have been taking the misdirection a step too far (we already had it, now I’m wondering why Pavitr thinks Hobie and Gwen are together), it was a great way to handle the character.

I just… wanna stick him under a microscope. I wanna write a thesis on him. What a cool way to shake up some well known archetypes.

#across the spider verse spoilers #across the spiderverse #spider man: across the spider verse #across the spiderverse spoilers #hobie brown #spiderverse

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

Find the Word

Thanks @sleepywriter00 for the tag!

Rules: find the given words in your WIP(s), then tag others with new words

My words: psycho, pranked, soil, grave

Your words: new, clean, decide, system

Tagging with zero pressure @theeccentricraven @mysticstarlightduck @little-peril-stories @blind-the-winds @buffythevampirelover @mk-writes-stuff @eccaiia @cowboybrunch @addicted2coke-theothercoke @gottestod-writes @chauceryfairytales @frostedlemonwriter @talesofsorrowandofruin @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @theprissythumbelina or anyone else who wants to hop on

TSP intro

TSP tag list (ask to be +/-): @thepeculiarbird @illarian-rambling @televisionjester @fairy-tales-of-yesterday per usual you can hop on

Keep reading for:

Liam and Maddie discuss the science of shapeshifting

George X Liam is a thing now

Beau creates a beanstalk

Noelle's research finds an article

Psycho Insane (closest synonym) - from The Secret Portal Part Two (Maddie POV)

“Thanks for researching all of this,” I said. “I mean, not being an animal morphian, you didn’t have to.” Liam leaned against the wall. “I always wanted to be an animal morphian. When I realized I got to train one, I just did a bunch of research. To both benefit your learning and just to learn a few things myself. Shapeshifting is just fascinating in general. Like, you can change your mass, like, that shouldn’t be a thing! But it is, and that’s, like, insane.” “Wow,” I breathed. “So what happens to the mass that you lose?” “No idea,” said Liam, smiling. “What if we took the mass from something?” I asked. “Great, but where would that something come from?” “I dunno,” I said. “Matter can’t be created or destroyed. We’ve learned that in science class.” “You’d be right,” said Liam. “But we’re in another dimension.” “So you’re saying matter can be created or destroyed in this dimension?” “Perhaps,” said Liam, pressing his hands together in deep thought. “But what if instead we’re borrowing mass from another pocket dimension? Like, there’s a pocket universe of just mass, and we put our mass there if we’re lessening our mass, or borrowing mass from there if we increase our mass?” “Hm,” I said. “That could work, but isn’t it complicated?” “Who knows?” said Liam. “We’re in another dimension. Anything is possible. The rules of this universe are different than the rules of Ceteri.” “That’s cool.” “Glad you agree, kiddo.”

Actually, matter can be created or destroyed but only with an anti-matter particle :)

Pranked Trick (closest synonym...) - from The Secret Portal Part One

Maddie gave Kelsey a small punch in the arm. She looked past Kelsey’s shoulder. “Hey, Liam, what are you dressed as?” Liam, who was talking with George, wore a black full-piece covering his whole body with glow sticks along his arms, legs, and torso. Upon Maddie’s query, he put a hood over his head, then zipped it shut over his face, glow sticks forming a circle. “A stick figure.” Maddie burst out laughing. Kelsey smirked, clapping slowly. “You win. You win.” Unzipping the hood, Liam smiled at George. “See? This is hilarious. It’s simple, but it’s super clever. I barely put any more effort than Gabe, yet everyone I’ve encountered says this is the best costume here. That’s the trick of Halloween. You either need to go all out or you need to be very, very clever about what you decide to be and what materials you use.” George, now eating what Ceters called a “cupcake,” nodded, very entertained by his new friend. While George loved sharing all of his speedster-induced hours research, Liam always managed to make a good argument out of seemingly everything. It was one of the fascinating things about him. He was glad Liam approached him working on one of the computers about a month ago, otherwise George wasn't sure he would’ve been able to work up to potential rejection from the only boy his age he’d interacted with in a decade.

Soil - from School of the Legends Year One

Beau widened his stance, holding his arm out, palm aimed at where he’d planted the beans. Jack glanced at Jill, both sharing a confused expression. Jack looked at his cousin. “Beau, what are we supposed to see?” “Just watch the soil,” Beau said, his brow clenching together. Jack obeyed, looking at where the beans were. A sprout suddenly poked its head above the ground. Jack’s eyebrows rose, and a glance at his sister told him she had the same reaction. The sprout began growing, now at Jack’s knee. “Beau, you’re...you’re gifted.” Beau’s smile stretched across his face. “Yeah, isn’t it amazing?” He glanced at Jack, his eyes shining. The sprout now shot up faster, and Beau flicked his eyes back to the stalk. “Merde,” he muttered as he tried to regain his concentration. He, Jack, and Jill grunted as the stalk broke the ground at such a force they were knocked to their feet. Beau scrambled up as fast as he could, holding his palms out toward the beanstalk. It slowed first, then stopped. Jack tilted his head back, squinting to see the top of the beanstalk--which didn’t help. “O...kay…,” Jill soon said, breaking the silence. “That just happened.” “What are we going to do with this?” Jack asked, now standing. “There’s now a giant beanstalk in the middle of the yard! How are we going to explain to Da?” “You won’t need to.” Jack whirled around to see his dad leaning against a post on the porch. “I saw the whole thing.” “I’m sorry, Oncle Erskine.” “Don’t be,” he said. “D’ya know how much that would sell for?” He laughed.

Grave - from The Secret Portal Part Two (article Noelle is reading)

One thing I must make clear is that I AM Inutilia. I did not quit because I no longer believe in equality for my people. Quite the opposite. I still am a firm believer that we should get as much equal rights as those with powers. However, Raissa Kamanzi is NOT the way to do it. Ms. Kamanzi is obsessed with power. She does not truly believe in the equal rights of Inutilia, rather the dominance. She wants to oppress the system just as much as the old one oppressed us. A taste of their own medicine, she would say. This is not the answer. All Raissa has given us is a harder time to be accepted by society around us. It gave an excuse for bigots to become even louder, people who considered themselves neutral to become bigoted. It gave those in power a reason to persecute us from a genetic standpoint. We lost access to the portal last year because of her. We can no longer be with Ceters, in a world where WE are the norm. One thing I will say about Raissa is that she is a complicated woman with many heavy burdens and regrets. She holds tight to her morals, and will never cross a line that others would. However, that does not make her morals right. That does not make her policies right. I did not join the Refugae initially because I wanted control of the world. I did not join so others would suffer just so I would not. I joined because I was sick of the lynching, the riots, the massacres, the genetic engineering to attempt to erase the gene. I was sick of the suffering. But I see Raissa’s tactics are only going to deflect the suffering from herself to others. That it is causing people to flee to Ceteri, and those who cannot cross the portal to stay, suffering. Raissa is digging the grave of her own people. The arrival of the Aequales was the first sign. I do not believe the Aequales is the savior we need, for many other reasons, but its preaching of equality and peace is dragging more and more people away from equality. They can still hate us, but if they support Atsila McLain, suddenly, they can wipe their hands clean of their bigotry. Inutilia are still suffering under Raissa, and we have no escape. I ask you to support social reforms and to engage in political action. We must stop this violence. We must in order to survive. For all Inutilia. For all Alii.

I wrote two articles in this chapter - one of someone who worked with Atsila but left, the other who worked with Raissa but left. I really ended up being proud of the articles themselves even though I'm revising Noelle's research purposes later.

It is funny. She's like "hm maybe other perspectives would be nice to read about to form an opinion that seems logical" but then she does that and is like "nevermind these are both biased what a waste of time"

#the secret portal #tsp #teaspoon #tsp excerpt #school of the legends #sotl #sotl excerpt #my writing #maddie morgan #liam beaumont #george baxter #kelsey newman #jack mcdonald #jill mcdonald #beau bellerose #erskine mcdonald #noelle bishop #raissa kamanzi #atsila mclain #find the word #writing tag game #writing blog #writers on tumblr #writing community #writers of tumblr #writing on tumblr #writeblr #writeblr community

[little-peril-stories]

Blood Garnet - WIP Intro

it's a working title leave me alone

Aka: WIP Wednesday / Vaguely Summarized WIP / I'm Desperately Trying to Get This Dumb Story Out of My System

DISCLAIMER: this stupid story is a silly, self-indulgent mess that would require a lot of hard work to make it, um, fit for human consumption. It was my little brain break between finishing The Queen of Lies and restarting The Court of Rogues. It may not ever get finished. 🤷‍♀️ So, uh, you're forewarned. 😇

OPEN TAG for WIP Wednesday, Vaguely Summarized Plot, or both 😊- there's a lot of nonsense in here so I feel bad subjecting even more people to it 😂

Let's use this cheeky lil post for some recent WIP Wednesday tags: Thank you @kaylinalexanderbooks and @sleepywriter00 for the tags! Posts here and here (same post chain).

Rules: Pick a WIP. Post something about it. On a Wednesday. Or whenever! It can be literally anything! 😊 (It does NOT need to be extra as this😅.)

Mood Board

don't anyone say anything about how there isn't a single gemstone on this mood board

What's It About?

Take a drink every time you see an element Kate's used before in other stories. 😅

Evyn, a schoolteacher, impulsively embarks on a journey in an effort to escape the chokehold of her small village, overbearing uncle, and inevitable (and unwanted) fate as someone’s happy little wife. It’s risky, of course: wild animals roam the woods, and she still doesn’t know the source of the mysterious lights that gleam through the darkness at night. However, she gets more than she bargained for—the forest is not what it seems, nor are those mystical yellow lights.

The Fae, creatures of legend, are real.

And they’re coming for her.

Vaguely Summarized Plot

Also using up another tag here! Thank you @mysticstarlightduck for this one! Posts here and here. The tag is kind of perfect for this seeing as I don't know much of the plot myself, so I have no choice but to be vague. :)

Rules: Summarize your WIP in 15 2-5 word bullet points (as if you were trying to summarize it in 15 seconds). (I didn't stick to the limit at all.)

✨ “So the forest's been kind of glowing lately? And no one but me seems to have noticed? Ok. Coolcoolcool.”

✨ “Get married? Me? Never!” Evyn Edition: Simply Not Interested But I Must Be Lying Because All Women Want to Get Married, Amirite?

✨ “Get married? Me? Never!” Jonathan Edition: Very Not Straight But Try Telling That To My Religious Zealot of a Father

✨ Jealous twin will NOT let his sister win control of their clan like she wins everything else, damn it (footnote 1)

✨ Emo loner who can’t go home (on pain of death) just wants these weird dreams about some random-ass human to please STOP (footnote 2)

✨ “I’m going to pursue independence! In another town! On a time crunch! By walking through the woods! At night! I’m a schoolteacher with no survival experience! This Is A Good Idea!”

✨ Grumpy grandma re: pesky human: What is her deal?

✨ “Hello yes hi I’m the emo loner. I’m unrealistically attractive. I saved you for reasons I won’t explain. But also I don’t talk to humans. Or Fae, really. Or. Like. Anyone. Not often anyway. What’s talking again?”

✨ “So, like, you're kind of hot … but you’re, uh, my enemy?? But I haven't figured that out yet?? And also, do we, like, have weird sexual tension, haha, or is it just me? Hahahaha! … But seriously, do we?”

✨ "Hey I know you have breathing issues or whatever, so you don’t like dusty or dirty or humid places, but … wanna take a shortcut through this super duper cool underground cave system?”

✨ “Haha, what? No?! There’s no reason I’m avoiding this area of the forest! Nope! No reason at all!”

✨ YOU get a betrayal! And YOU get a betrayal! And YOU get a—

✨ “Who is the monster and who is the man?” (footnote 3)

✨ This asylum makes the one in TQOL look like a vacation! (footnote 4)

✨ Sexy villainess gets to emotionally torture one MC and then physically torture another. AND psychologically torture them both! Hell, maybe she’ll even kill one of ’em too! Fun for the whole family!

Footnotes

(1) IT’S NOTHING LIKE ZUKO AND AZULA SHUT UP

(2) IT’S NOTHING LIKE RHYSAND AND FEYRE SHUT UP

(3) IT’S NOTHING LIKE QUASIMODO AND FROLLO SHUT—oh who am I kidding 🎶

(4) Technically the whole asylum thing happened in this story first, like, 2 or 3 years ago. That version just lives in a purple notebook that will never be seen by any eyes but mine. So, really, TQOL stole the asylum setting from BG, not the other way around.

Character Vibes

Evyn, human, orphaned as a child and raised by her aunt and uncle. Now a schoolteacher who sees yellow lights no one else can see.

“My heart cannot be captured. I intend to die an old maid, surrounded by papers and books. Good afternoon!”

Jonathan, human. Evyn's cousin, a clerk. Just truckin' on through a life he finds endlessly tedious and unsatisfying.

“Cecil’s a soggy piece of tree bark in a hat,” he said before he could stop himself.

Ah, Jonathan Garnet. A man who gained a single speck of favour with his impossible-to-please father…and promptly hurled it into the wind.

Dharan, Fae. Exiled from his clan years ago for murdering another Fae.

The Fae leapt up, standing straight and bending his knees as if to run—or perhaps pounce. One hand hovered over the stolen knife on his belt; the other, he extended to her.

He looked away from his foe to meet her gaze, uttering a single word:

“Run.”

Rennith, Fae. Heir to his clan but competing for the title against his twin sister.

He was a man, it seemed, but those eyes bespoke something much more ancient—of man, but not man himself. Silver hair, an impossible shade, framed a face sculpted into sharp angles, as cold and pale as if it were made of ice.

A Fae creature forged in primordial fire, carved from gold, silver, and mother-of-pearl.

For the Whump People Here:

Whumpy Things I've Managed to Squeeze into the First 13,000 words

Humiliation/embarrassment (minor)

Hyperventilation, dyspnea

Angst (minor)

Grabbed in the dark

Abducted

Restrained (but make it magic)

Magically forced to obey commands

Chin grab

Whumpy Things I've Got Planned But Haven't Written

Angst (major)

Stabbed

Various fight-related injuries I won't know till I write them

Betrayed by someone you trust

Drugged/knocked out

Humiliation/embarrassment (major)

Imprisoned

Taunted by the antagonist

More magic restraints (but turn it up to eleven)

Tortured (but make it magic)

Desperation, hitting rock bottom

A death fakeout or two or three

If you made it this far, you deserve a medal. 🥇

#lps blood garnet #pls excuse the constant self-deprecation #i love me - i do - but this story is pretty silly 😂 #and i'm ok with that #writeblr #fantasy #mood board #lps mood board #tag game #wip wednesday #wip wednesday tag #vaguely summarized wip #vaguely summarized wip tag #open tag #writeblr open tag #writing #creative writing #wip intro #writeblr community

[lysenfeu]

Pair of Aces - Chapter 1. Day One

Pair of Aces

Chapter: 1. Day One

Rating: M

Word Count: 2.6k~

Summary: After Peacemaker nearly blows the mission at the Goff mansion, Waller sends in a new team member to pick up the slack and assist Task Force X with Project Butterfly.

Content Warning: Mentions of Violence, Gratuitous Swearing, Verbal Insults

A/N: This is the intro chapter to a fairly long series I have planned, set directly after the Goff mansion mission but before Peacemaker finds out his dad's in jail. Intended as a reader-insert in 3rd POV, afab!she/her main character but nameless/description neutral, no Y/N. Vigilante x reader pairing.

[Read on AO3]

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If there was one thing Amanda Waller hated above all else, it was failure. While the Task Force X mission to the Goff mansion wasn't a complete and utter failure, it was still too close for Waller's comfort. Project Butterfly needed to proceed according to plan and if Peacemaker couldn't be relied on to do the job, then someone else would have to pick up the slack.

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Sensible heels clicked against the worn-down Evergreen sidewalk as a woman walked along the deserted street. She finally arrived at the correct address, double-checking her notes to be sure, before she pushed open the door to the deserted storefront. The inside of the building was a mess, with random shelves and boxes scattered everywhere. A few desks and chairs sat near the back, piled with equipment and files. Five heads turned towards her at once, following the sound of the door closing. Three men and two women were staring back at her. As she looked around, she only recognized one particular face. Her gaze settled on the stern-looking blonde woman at the front of the room and a small smile crept onto her face.

Now there's a sight for sore eyes. God, this shithole better be worth it.

She stood in silence patiently and the unfamiliar woman addressed her first.

"Hi! You must be the new girl!" A warm smile accompanied the greeting. "It's so nice to meet you. I thought I was going to be the only new girl but now you're here so that makes you the new new girl! I'm Leota Adebayo, welcome to the team."

The woman smiled back and shook the hand Adebayo extended. "Nice to meet you, hopefully, us new girls can stick together." She glanced around the room at the others. John stood up and also introduced himself quickly, shaking her hand and saying welcome.

Peacemaker remained sitting, unimpressed by the new addition. "As if this team needs more girls. What is she here for anyways? We don't need any extra help."

"Is he always this rude?" She looked around and questioned the others.

"As far as we can tell, yeah." Adebayo sighed, offering her a sympathetic look.

She rolled her eyes in response. "Delightful. Clearly Big Red has some major anger issues."

"His name isn't Big Red." A male voice replied from behind her. "It's Peacemaker."

She turned around and took a closer look at the last person in the room. She didn't recognize him at all.

Lean build, black armour, are those ... teal accent stripes? That's ... a choice. Plenty of weapons and a pretty cool sword. The full on ski mask is bold. I guess the whole outfit together is kind of intimidating in a certain way, but why teal? Man, capes are always so fucking weird.

She shook her head and finally responded to his correction. "I know but I'm definitely not

calling him that."

"Why not?" The man cocked his head to the side in confusion.

Can he even see out of that visor? That can't be comfortable.

She pulled a face. "Because it's a dumb fucking name."

"Hey! You take that back!" He jumped up suddenly and shouted at her.

She startled but held her ground, squaring up. "No way man, it's a terrible name. It doesn't even make sense."

"Are you the name police? Do you get to just randomly decide what names are cool or not?" He was becoming overly animated and louder at her antagonization.

"Yes. I've been authorized by the National Committee Of Name Judgment and they've deemed Peacemaker to be such a stupid fucking name, it's been made illegal." She deadpanned, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

"Wait, seriously? That's really fucked up." The man in teal seemed to genuinely believe her.

"I'm just fucking with you, dude." She shook her head in disbelief at his gullibility. "Though if N.C.O.N.J was real, they'd definitely make that name a crime."

"Well I bet your name is also so terrible and that's why you're being so mean!"

The woman chuckled. "You don't need to worry about my name, buddy."

"What is it? What should we call you?" Adebayo asked politely.

She shrugged. "Whatever you want."

"Your name should be Dumb Bitch then." Peacemaker laughed at his own terrible joke.

Adebayo quickly turned on him. "What the fuck Chris!"

"She said it could be whatever I wanted!" He shot back, trying to defend himself.

Harcourt glared daggers at him from across the room. "Are you fucking five?"

"She started it! My name makes perfect sense and is fucking awesome. It's kinda my whole thing!" Chris yelled out. "I cherish peace with all my heart, I don't care how many men, women, and children I need to kill to get it. I make peace, ergo Peacemaker! Come on!"

"Ergo?" Harcourt looked at Peacemaker with a strange expression on her face.

"Yeah, it means the same as 'thus' or whatever." Chris crossed his arms defensively.

"I know that, I just didn't know you knew that." Emilia paused. "Honestly I didn't think you knew 'thus' either."

"For the record," The new arrival cut in, "That motto is the stupidest thing I have ever heard and I once interrogated the Riddler."

"Wait, really?" Economos seemed genuinely interested in that tidbit.

"Well, I say interrogated but it was more like he wouldn't shut up and I kicked him a couple times before the GCPD banned me from the room."

Gordon was pissed off, but Nygma was so annoying he deserved it. 'Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep?' What a dumbass.

It was Adebayo's turn to join in the conversation. "You've been to Gotham?"

"Yeah, sure." The woman shrugged. "Metropolis too. I go wherever there's weird shit happening and things to shoot."

"Which is exactly why you're here." Harcourt interjected, trying to get back on track. "Welcome to Waller's worst assignment. You're lucky I saw your name on the transfer list, your only other option was the Arctic." She levelled a serious look at the woman. "No idea what you did to get on her shit list but Waller must hate you even more than us right now."

Subtle as always, glad to see not much has changed.

"Nice to see you too, Blondie." She grinned at the stern blonde, easily ignoring the pointed comments about Amanda Waller.

Harcourt scowled in return. "No one has called me that in years, quit it."

"Do you two know each other?" Economos was even more interested in what was happening now.

"Oh, we go way back. Has Blondie ever told you guys about the old CIA days?" She deliberately ignored the death glare being shot at her from across the room and continued. "We were in the same rookie class at the Farm and worked together until she ran off to the DEO."

"Woah! Did you know younger Harcourt? Tell us everything!" Adebayo is thrilled at the chance to find out more about her new coworker.

Harcourt flinched and hissed at her old friend. "Don't you fucking dare."

She once again ignored the other woman's serious tone. "You should have seen her in first year! A dead ringer for Debbie Harry, feathered hair and all."

"That is the hottest thing I've ever heard." Peacemaker mumbled, way too loudly.

"Tell me, Emmy, can you still do an absolutely killer 'Call Me' at karaoke nights?" She grinned mischievously.

Emilia turned bright red while Economos burst out laughing. "Please tell me you have footage of this somewhere!"

Harcourt tensed and shot John the same patented death glare. "Under no circumstances will you ever see any evidence of these outrageous lies."

Well, that was a yes to karaoke. Same old Blondie.

"Come on Harcourt, lighten up! You're no fun" John whined back.

"Shut up Dye-beard! Leave her alone." Peacemaker jumped to Harcourt's defence.

Dye-beard?

The new girl looked closer at John and noticed his mismatched beard.

Oh, wow. He really does dye his beard.

"The half and half isn't a great look, man. Just strip the colour or put the time in to do your roots, it'll look a lot better." She offered up in an attempt to help the poor guy.

Peacemaker snorted, "Doesn't matter what he does, his beard will still look dumb."

"Well, I doubt he wants fashion advice from a guy wearing rubber dish gloves." She smirked at him.

Chris started yelling again until Harcourt whistled loudly and interrupted the commotion. "Quit it! Both of you."

"Oh come on." The woman groaned in frustration. "How can I not make fun of him? He dresses like a first-grade colour wheel and is built like a knock-off Ratchet from Transformers."

The flippant remark earned a loud laugh from Economos and a confused look from Adebayo.

"It doesn't matter, you're part of the team now. I expect everyone to keep it professional. Shut the fuck up and play nice!" Harcourt snapped at her.

Peacemaker snickered a bit at the admonishment and Harcourt turned on him, an accusatory finger outstretched. "When I said everyone, I meant it!"

Peacemaker stopped laughing and instead glared unhappily at the rest of the room.

"You know, you really should be nicer to him." The costumed man at the back interjected.

She snorted dismissively. "I'm not taking any feedback from a grown man in a costume with teal accents."

"Hey! Teal is an awesome colour!"

"For a kitchen backsplash maybe." She taunted.

"Wow, okay. It's good this kind of thing doesn't really hurt my feelings or I'd be very upset right now. You're very mean." He shook his head at her in disappointment.

She stared at him, visibly confused. "What the fuck does that even mean?"

Emilia clapped her hands loudly to interrupt them. "Seriously guys! I just told you to play nice!"

She spun around to face Harcourt. "You throw me in with a bunch of goddamn capes and just expect me to be cool with it? What the hell Em!"

"Hey I did you a favour! Would you rather be fucking around with polar bears right now? No? Then deal with it." The blonde snapped back.

Maybe the Arctic would have been a better choice than Buttfuck Nowhere, Washington. Polar bears might be easier to deal with than these costumed idiots.

She cursed under her breath in frustration and looked back at Harcourt.

Oh well. Too late for that.

She sighed in resignation. "Fine. Just tell me I'm not working directly with chrome dome over there. According to the latest report, he nearly blew the entire mission at Goff's mansion last week."

This giant oaf's incompetence is the only reason I'm stuck in this hellhole to begin with. A

killer who can't kill, fucking pathetic.

Peacemaker leapt out of his chair. "Fuck you! Nobody was prepared for that little freak Judomaster, come on! He came out of nowhere!"

"Okay, fair. The footage of that guy was insane. No one could have predicted that 'kiai' shit." She then fixed Peacemaker with a smug look. "But I was actually talking about when you bitched out behind the rifle and couldn't fire a single shot."

Chris clenched his jaw before he sat back down and muttered angrily about doves of peace under his breath.

She smirked again and continued on. "The mission report was a super fun read by the way. If that second gunman hadn't come in and cleaned up after you, the whole operation would've been a bust. That was some ace shooting too, I'd love to work with that guy instead."

Harcourt cleared her throat, redirecting the attention to her. "That's good to hear actually because you will be. Vigilante, meet your new field partner."

Vigilante? Christ, that name is almost as bad as Peacemaker.

"Who the fuck is Vigilante?"

"That's me!" The same annoying voice from behind her answered.

She froze at the sound and turned around towards him slowly.

"Oh hell no. Not you."

"What? Why not! You're the one who just said you wanted to work with me!" Vigilante was confused again.

"...what?" She was also confused by this exchange.

"You said, and I quote, 'That was some ace shooting. I'd love to work with that guy instead." He repeated back to her.

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. "...you're the second shooter from the Goff mission?"

"Yes."

She studied him further, looking him up and down. "You're the guy who hit three clean headshots at over 900m in under 2 minutes with a partially obscured view?"

"Yeah!"

"...No way." She shook her head in disbelief.

"Uh, yes way! That was totally me!" He started to get openly frustrated with her dismissal.

"Absolutely not."

"Oh it absolutely was him." Harcourt confirmed with a nod. "We didn't even ask, he just kind of showed up. But now he's officially on the team, same as you. You two are going to need to get along, you'll be spending a lot of time together in the field. I need to send you both out asap."

"Already? I just got here!" She whined at the news. "I haven't even unpacked yet."

"Is it just me and her? Why can't Peacemaker come?" Vigilante seemed upset at the new directive.

"Waller's orders, for the time being, Peacemaker needs eyes on him at all times." Harcourt looked a little antsy, anticipating that info might not land well.

As if on cue, Peacemaker jumped up and started yelling again. "What the fuck! I don't need a goddamn babysitter!"

"Well, it could be good for you to stay." Adebayo offered. "You can take the time to ... put those dove thingys on ... all the weapons?" It's an obvious attempt to gently redirect Peacemaker's attention.

Chris smacked his hands down on the table in front of him. "Yes! Good. That's a good idea. That was the problem, none of you assholes put the dove on the gun. It's always gotta have a dove! That's what fucked me up. I gotta get like, a stencil or something. I'm gonna make so many goddamn doves."

Harcourt shot Adebayo a grateful smile as Chris settled back down before turning back to Vigilante and the newcomer.

"Here's the deal. I need you two out for recon on a suspected butterfly cluster. It's just outside of town, you'll be out for about a week. In case shit goes south, you may need to clean up so bring enough gear with you."

"Seriously, a week? I just got into town and now I need to run off for a week with this guy?"

"You're the one who said you'd like to work with him." Harcourt replied with a smirk.

Vigilante shifted nervously. "A whole week out of town? I'm getting paid for this right?"

Harcourt rolled her eyes. "Yes Vigilante, you're officially on the payroll. Field pay and mileage reimbursement."

He nodded. "Okay cool. I'll have to rearrange some stuff but as long as I'm getting comped it'll be fine."

"Can you at least tell me what we're going after here? What the fuck is a butterfly?" She had read every report and file she could find associated with this project and virtually nothing in the documents explained anything.

Harcourt sighed and avoided the questioning look. "Murn will fully debrief everyone later on. For now, all I can say is they're dangerous. Monitor them, take them out if you can, and don't underestimate them."

"...Clemson Murn?"

"Yes, he's the team lead. I'm just handling things today while he's meeting with a contact."

Huh. Interesting.

"Alright. Let's just get this over with." She sighed in acceptance.

Harcourt was visibly relieved. "Great. Vig is driving, you leave at 8 pm tomorrow and check-in at the Sunset Motel."

She nodded and grabbed the file Emilia was waving at her. She said some quick goodbyes to Leota and John, pointedly ignoring Peacemaker and Vigilante on the way out. As she made her way through the streets of Evergreen on the way back to the bare-bones rental apartment that had been arranged for her, she deeply regretted her choice in employment.

Fantastic. I uproot everything, move to a new town, and immediately get stuck for a week with a cape who likes teal. I really should have picked the polar bears.

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A/N: This is the first thing I've written that isn't a script, essay, or professional document in over a decade. Comments, kudos/likes, and shares feed my soul. More chapters to come with some action, slow burn/eventual smut, and more banter.

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#peacemaker #peacemaker fanfiction #adrian chase x reader #vigilante x reader #lysenfeu fics #pair of aces fic #adrian chase #vigilante #adrian chase fanfiction #vigilante fanfiction #freddie stroma #peacemaker dcu #fanfiction