Tumgik
#Cat Spraying Everywhere
lesbiansanemi · 6 months
Text
I am so…. SO tired of my cat peeing everywhere
5 notes · View notes
theloveinc · 2 years
Text
I’m literally just so fucking sick of have a dirty room
3 notes · View notes
Text
Y'know the adult cat owner has their own version of the floor is lava in a way. They play the floor is brown and shiny and one of the seven cats seems to have been dripping shit for some fucking reason and at 2 30 in the morning you have to carefully avoid hard to spot drips :)))))))
In other news I have the bestest most sweet and kind partner who I am forever grateful for. If I am ever in a condition that allows me to bend over without horrible pain I will return the favor you did tonight a thousand fold <333
2 notes · View notes
celaenaeiln · 10 months
Text
JL: Nightwing! It’s a delight to see you! You should come by more often.
Nightwing: Thank you! I’m so sorry, work has been piling up on me but I’ll try to drop by the office party this Sunday.
JL: Ofcourse! Looking forward to seeing you there. By the way, is Batman coming late?
Nightwing: No, I’ll be filling in for him today.
JL: Did something happen?
Nightwing: Nothing much, he’s just grounded.
JL: ???
48 hours earlier
Dick: Bruce, I’m telling you now and we’ve had this conversation before but you need to build a better rapport with your children. They look up to you as a father figure and your actions influence their behavior.
Bruce: …hmrgh
Dick: And you might not be aware but you unconconscious behavior is damaging. Tim has picked up your terrible habit of constantly working in front of a screen-it’s going to strain his eyes. He’s always inside too, so you need to make him go outside more. I’m not always here, I have an entire city to run, the titans need me, I'm mentoring hundreds of heroes, the Justice League calls on me to help them, and I need to keep up with my social life. The people in Bludhaven where I teach and work also call me if I’m gone for a day-the point is-I can’t always be playing second parent here in Gotham.
Bruce: ……hmrgh
Dick: Damian always looks up to you
Bruce: *side eyes*
Dick: He does! See you don’t even realize it! He wants to make you proud and Jason gets mad when you don’t make time for him because he cares too. Stephanie doesn’t have a dad she can turn to and it would mean the world to her if you took her out to an amusement park or something. When was the last time you spent time with her.
Bruce: ….hmrgh
Dick: And-
1 hour later
Dick: -that’s why you need to stop working, go to them right now, and bond with them.
Bruce:
Dick:
Bruce: ……...hmrgh
Dick: I’m waiting.
Bruce: *dragging himself off the batcave chair and begrudgingly trudging upstairs under Dick’s watchful eye*
Bruce: *listening to the sounds of his kids in the living room and pumping himself up* Better relationships mean better teamwork. Better relationships mean better teamwork. Better relationships mean better teamwork. And Dick. Do it for him.
Bruce: *entering* *clearing his throat* Children. We will be going-
*The living room is in utter chaos. The cushions are strewn and ripped with stuffing coating the couches and floor which for some reason is stained yellow, the flower vase is shattered and so is the table it was sitting on, there’s string confetti on the chandelier, there’s spray paint and neon goo across the walls and in Tim’s hair, Jason has deep claw marks down his face as he wrestles with Damian who’s sporting massive bruise on his cheek and trying his hardest to bite him, Stephanie is dunking Tim’s face in a tub of soda which splashed everywhere while he’s ripping out Jason’s hair and also trying to kick Damian with his foot, the tv has massive spiderwebs and looping on tellatubies like a broken record machine, Titus is spitting out a feather while a random goose runs around honking while Alfred the cat chases after it at full speed, knocking down decades old paintings.*
Bruce:
Bruce:
Bruce:
Bruce: *rolling up his sleeves and stomping forward to join the fight* HMRGH.
5K notes · View notes
joonipertree · 7 months
Text
To show someone that you care, is a gift itself. | Sugar Daddy Bakugo Series
Where you show Katsuki what a gift can be.
Tags: Artist!reader, very self indulgent, like guys....please buy me watercolour paper instead of Versace. Watercolour paper is stupid expensive. Im also not skilled enough to actually make the gift so--
Pt 1 Pt 3
Tumblr media
Katsuki's birthday had been looming when the two of you started going out, like a weighted shadow. You had spent a very long stressing about what to get him with a budget that wasn't even worth a fraction of what he would buy you.
But, like gift giving was Katsuki's, it was your love language as well. And you'd gotten good at getting heart felt things for people. Admittedly, it took a lot of brainstorming and notes upon notes of what to get.
You'd always go overboard to please the people you cared about, afraid that they'll leave if you didn't cross the limits and bend over backwards for them.
Katsuki had always taken care of you, never asked for anything and your love was returned albeit in a quieter and tsundere manner. So the urge to go above and beyond didn't fester for long, knowing that your bare presence made him warmer.
Your gift idea came when he was on the ring, swift on his feet and solid in the rigidness of his body. You'd brought your sketchbook and while you wanted to keep your eyes on your boyfriend, your hands became busy with large curves and sharp flicks of your pencil that brought dark edges .
You'd made at least 20 quick gestures drawings that were more crude representations of movement for you. But with those and the feelings you trapped in your heart, you made thumbnails and chose one to draw large scale.
One where Katsuki's face was partially blocked by his arm and he gave a blow. His elbows were jagged, muscles taut and rippling. And his eyes sharp and cat like.
The charcoal pencils and sticks used to create tapered lines to create hard surfaces was 340 yen. The watercolour pallete used had messy paint splattered everywhere and its lid broken, having been with you for a good while. The coat over the charcoal was 50 yen hair spray that worked just as well as professional sprays.
It didn't cost a lot but your hands were full of care and by the end of it, you hoped that it'd be something Katsuki would at least like. The man could have the world but all you had was you.
You didn't realize that you were more than enough
Katsuki to lost his voice when you handed it to him at midnight, eyes wide as he stared at him but not him. The layers on layers of paint held emotions that he could only describe as love, meticulously hand picked and felt in strokes. He'd seen HD pictures of his fights, seen videos of them where his sweat and pores were as clear as day. The most he'd thought of them were how his form could improve or how cool he looked.
But what you made, it twisted something in his chest and stung his eyes and filled him to the brim with love so warm and overwhelming that his body wasn't big enough to hold it.
You two had been dating for 4 months, Katsuki had spent that time falling in love with you in ways he didn't think possible. He'd fall with every giggle and kiss and ramble and your face when you were concentrating. He'd never said 'I love you', hoping his actions showed it enough, still too scared to speak it in case it was met with hesitance or silence.
But Katsuki had gently put down the canvas, something you that you'd built, stretched and primed yourself. And while you made eye contact with the walls and ceiling, you explained how the only thing you could come up with was the painting, that you wanted to capture the emotions you felt when you saw him fight. That it wasn't much but---
Katsuki had engulfed you in a hug, hand on the back of your head to press it against him and an arm around your waist. He squeezed you, tried to express all that he was feeling with one hug alone. You felt it, held him tightly and carded your fingers through his hair. With his shoulders shaking, you had an inkling that he had been crying. When he spoke, with a wobbly voice, you were sure that he was.
"I love you." He'd muttered out for the first time.
"I love you more." You whispered back and Katsuki had firmly denied it, that no one could love a person as much as he loved you.
Getting a gift for you became hard after that, because Katsuki sucked at making shit.
1K notes · View notes
mykoreanlove · 5 months
Text
The cat's revenge
Tumblr media
Your eyes shot open. Finally. The last day of your self-imposed sex ban was finally over.
You turned around and faced your boyfriend who was still sound asleep. His behavior had surprised you – Minho had begged for the first couple of days but then he just gave up and accepted his fate, never mentioning it again. You wondered how it was so easy for him, giving up sex like that.
You masked your frustration as best as you could, it was your ban after all. His behavior needed to be punished but most of the times it felt like you were the one that was suffering the most.
Minho slowly opened his eyes and smiled softly. “Baby, are you up?” He put his arms around you and hugged you tightly. The last two weeks were not only depleted of sex but rather every kind of contact that went beyond a peck. Minho nuzzled into you and sighed happily. “I missed this. I missed you, y/n.”
The butterflies in your stomach awoke as well, turning you into a mess in seconds. He placed a kiss on the top of your head. “Let’s not fight like that ever again, please.”
“Agreed”, you mumbled as your hands touched his body. God, you missed feeling his chiseled abs. You missed your fingers trailing down his v-line. You let out a quiet gasp as your fingers traced over his bulge, already stone-hard.
Minho tilted your face up and looked into your eyes deeply. You could have sworn you saw them sparkle more than usual. “Let’s not rush it, baby. Why don’t I take you out for dinner tonight and after that, we uh, continue where we left of two weeks ago?”
He jumped out of the bed and went to shower while you lay in bed cheerily.
The ban worked perfectly, look how sorry he is. I think this was a great idea after all.
Empowering music was blasting through the stereo as you were getting ready for your date. You took a long bubble bath, shaved everywhere and applied scented lotion all over your body. You were so ready for tonight. Your body was covered in the dress he loved the most, your neck sprayed in the most seductive perfume while your face was slightly tinted in different colors. You felt like a goddess ready to be worshipped after so long. Minho knocked on the door and entered slowly.
“Baby, are you ready?”
He was holding a giant bouquet of flowers, red roses to be precise. “Are those for me?” It took him a minute to answer as he was eyeing you up and down, too flabbergasted to speak. Minho cleared his throat hastily. “Yeah, uh, they are. God, I don’t know why I feel so nervous. It’s like our first date all over again.” You chuckled, feeling the same way.
“Baby, you look mesmerizing. Absolutely mesmerizing.”
You took the flowers out of his hands and kissed his check. “So do you, Min.”
He had made a reservation in your favorite restaurant, spoiling you with steak and red wine. You didn’t even notice the stares of the other guests as you two were too engulfed with each other.
You had missed this so much. The sex ban was a risky idea, one that stirred up a lot of controversy among your peers. Your friends warned you about this – withholding sex as a form of punishment was just as shitty of you, but you were desperate for revenge. Minho needed to be put in his place and luckily it all worked itself out.
“Do you want dessert?”
You smirked and got up to leave. “Yeah. But not the kind they’re serving here.”
The desperation for each other was immense, you barely made it to your bedroom. “Min”, you mumbled in between passionate kisses. “Yeah, kitty?”
“I want you. Now. Fuck me now.”
He shook his head as he put you down on the kingsize bed. “Kitty, right now I wouldn’t survive two seconds in your exquisite pussy. I’d combust instantly after what you put me through. No, let me take care of you first.”
He had that devious look in his eyes - the one that made you afraid for your life but also as horny as ever. He stripped you naked and hovered over you, placing wet kisses all over your body.
“Spread your legs for me”, he instructed quietly. He let out a gasp as you did, admiring your pussy for minutes.
“Kitty, look how wet you are.”
He traced his fingers through your blinds, collecting your juices on his middle finger. “All for me, huh?” Minho put his finger in his mouth and sucked on it, his eyes rolling back from pleasure. Seeing him like that was such a turn on. “Min”, you whined desperately. “Take care of me, now.”
He snapped back to reality and pumped his fingers into you – starting with one and adding two more. He was slipping in and out in a steady motion, getting you ready in minutes. He hovered in between your legs and watched you breathe quicker, your breasts heaving up and down. Minho curved his fingers, hitting all the right spots as you moaned excessively.
He could read you like a book, knowing damn well that you were close to coming undone.
“Min”, your moans filled the bedroom, which filled him with joy. “Min”, you whimpered his name. “MIN-“
And just like that he took out his fingers, making you open your eyes in irritation.
“Why did you stop? I was about to cum”, you whined in annoyance.
Minho chuckled. “Sorry Kitty, not yet. I want to make you cum real hard after those two weeks. Will you let me?”
He didn’t even wait for your reply as his lips landed on your throbbing core, licking his way to your clit. Your hands grabbed his long hair instantly and pulled on it, you felt the vibration of his grunts in your pussy. His tongue was quickly switching places between your clit and entrance, making you squirm from overstimulation. Your thighs clasped around his head, which made him go faster, making you dizzy from all the sensations.
“Min”, you moaned again, “Min wait, this is too much. I-“
Quickly, he pulled down his pants and thrusted into you – hard and rapidly. Your breath got caught in between your moans, he was stretching you out as much as he could.
His lips were on your ear as he thrusted, his animalistic grunts were the only sounds you were able to hear. Your body was on fire, but you were too far gone to notice.
All you cared about was your release, all you cared about was Minho fucking you into oblivion. But this time something was off.
Minho knew exactly what he had to do to make you cum in seconds, he knew your body better than you did yourself. Yet, this time he was working around it, eliciting all the spots that made you weak but never truly igniting them. Instead, he was irritating them.
Minho pulled out and slapped your clit with the tip of his cock, turning you into an even bigger mess. Tears started to roll down your cheeks as pleasure mixed with pain. Minho grabbed the vibrator he had gifted you last Christmas and turned it on to the highest level, holding it to your swollen clit. Your felt your body shaking, you lost all control over its movements.
“Min”, you cried. “Min, it’s too much. Please, I can’t take it anymore.”
“Kitty, kitty, kitty”, he whispered into your ear condescendingly. “What do you want?”
“Cum”, was the only word you were able to mutter in that state.
“Oh, is that so?”
You nodded.
“I’ll give you what you want kitty. Under one circumstance though.”
You would have agreed to anything right now. Your body felt like it was electrocuted – with vibrations, sensations and oxytocin. You nodded forcefully, not even questioning what he wanted of you.
Minho traced the vibrator along your folds and pushed it inside you, making you arch your back from pleasure. “I’ll make you cum kitty but only if you promise me to never use sex against me ever again.”
All you heard was cum and promise, ignoring the rest blindly. “Yes”, you huffed out. “Yes.”
Your boyfriend pulled the vibrator out of you and pushed himself into your heated core, thrusting into you as hard as he could. You felt the heat waves crush over you, stars blinding your vision. Minho’s voice in your ear: “Promise me, baby.”
You gathered your remaining strength and kissed him forcefully, promising him to never do such a thing ever again.
Content with himself, he gave you what you craved. You came multiple times, this had to be the most intensive orgasm you had ever felt with him. It felt like you were high for hours, jerking and shaking, too invested in the blankness of your mind.
Minho held you in his arms tenderly and waited for you to come down before he cleaned you up and pulled the blankets over you. You fell asleep instantly, this sexual encounter was too much for you to bear.
Minho however was beyond pleased. He whispered declarations of love into your ear while placing sweet kisses on your forehead. “You did so well for me, kitty. I am so proud of you.” He pushed strands of hair behind your ears and watched you sleep peacefully.
“You have no idea how much I love you. Only you, my adorable baby. Only you.” Your boyfriend’s swollen lips landed on the tip of your nose, smooching you once more in the most adorable way. Everybody knew how much he cared for you, how much he loved you – even if his ways of portraying that were very bizarre at times.
“Let’s not ever fight like this again, okay?” He nuzzled into you and closed his eyes, joining you in some restful sleep. “You learned your lesson, didn’t you?”
______________________________________________________
@maximumkillshot @weareapackofstrays @lieslovefantasy @thatonenoona @felixs-voice-makes-me-wanna @livzsposts @i2nsstuff @n3tunobellah @redstayrosie @straykidsholicleigh @notastraykid @astayinwonderland @hanjisung-enjoyer @nicolechingish @sassyhumancoppainter @got-me-seein-stars @kairinne @the-weird-mold-in-the-sink @kkamismom12 @xoxominghxe @f3rr0-fluid @straykidsholicleigh @xoxominghxe
i hope i got u all if not please share <3
971 notes · View notes
pinknatural · 4 months
Text
After googling “what to take to a stranger’s birthday party” and reading the top five articles thoroughly, the first two more than once, Castiel has determined that he should either bring candles, wine, or baked goods. 
A candle seems like a good, safe option, but the Walmart candle aisle is overwhelming. How is he supposed to know if Anna’s-friend-Dean likes oaky, woodsy smells versus lavender-linen smells? Castiel likes the one that smells like a waxy apple pie, but who’s to say that opinion is shared? What if he prefers pine, or something called Deep Twilight Mist? Castiel removes the lid for Deep Twilight Mist and smells the cream-colored wax curiously. It smells like the perfume Hael used to spray everywhere when she was eleven. He puts it back on the shelf. 
There’s a candle that smells like cupcakes. It is a birthday party, so perhaps he would like that. Castiel puts it in the blue plastic basket dangling from his arm, then puts it back on the shelf, tilting it so the label is facing perfectly outward. Maybe Anna’s-friend-Dean doesn’t like candles at all. 
Wine. Everyone likes wine. Well, unless Anna’s-friend-Dean is one of those guys who thinks wine is too feminine. Or if he doesn’t drink at all. Or if he drinks too much. Or, perhaps even worse, if he’s some kind of wine connoisseur and will mock Castiel for buying reasonably-priced wine from Walmart and then blacklist Castiel so thoroughly that he will never find a friend in this town. 
Wine and candles are too complex. But everyone likes baked goods. 
Castiel is stopped in the middle of the road, turn signal blinking to indicate that he would like to turn left into his apartment complex, when he realizes that Anna’s-friend-Dean could be diabetic. But the party is at a restaurant that specializes in hamburgers, so probably not. Hopefully not. All Castiel has to do is successfully implement chocolate chip cookies and then melt into the walls at the party. Be pleasant enough company that next time someone has a large event they allow Anna to invite him again. Go to enough social functions that he can claim to have friends and get Anna off his back. Live quietly, working at the Gas-N-Sip and writing papers about the science of Theology and perhaps even going to the library and reading secular fiction.
Castiel has no expectations of finding actual friendship at Anna’s-friend-Dean’s birthday party. Or ever, really. If he ever gets lonely, he can get a cat.
Anna thinks that Castiel and Dean will get along very well. Castiel thinks that living outside of their mother’s influence has made Anna believe in fairytales. Anna has known Castiel his entire life. She knows full well that he has never gotten along very well with anyone. 
Castiel cracks an egg over the batter. Maybe this whole baking thing will impress Anna so much that she’ll stop bothering him about making friends. 
Who knows, maybe these cookies will unlock something else to add to Castiel’s quiet life. He quite likes the idea of baking.
--
The firefighter is very beautiful. Maybe even the most beautiful person Castiel has ever seen, besides models on the sides of buildings who look so perfect they’re fake.
“You the guy who started the fire?” the beautiful firefighter asks. He puts his hands in his pockets. Castiel’s cheeks burn. Not from any fire. 
“They were just burnt cookies,” he says. “I didn’t know they would set off the smoke alarm.” In the entire building. The other firefighters are by the doors, writing things down, talking to other residents of Castiel’s building. How come the beautiful firefighter was the one who had to talk to Castiel? He sneaks a peek at the man’s arms, but they’re sadly covered by his coat. 
“You burned the cookies on purpose, then?” the firefighter raises an eyebrow. 
“Of course I didn’t,” Castiel says. The firefighter has green eyes and freckles splashed across his nose. Castiel wants him to take off his helmet so he can see what his hair looks like. 
“Right,” the firefighter says. 
“Am I in trouble?” Castiel asks. 
“No,” the firefighter says. He winks. Castiel feels his heart literally skip a beat. “Not a crime to burn cookies. Losing out on the cookies is punishment enough.”
“They weren’t for me,” Castiel says. “They were for a birthday party. Tonight.” For some reason, he wants the firefighter to know that he has a social life. Never mind if the social life was enforced upon him by his older sister.
“A birthday party? Today? Who’s hosting? I gotta fight for my honor.”
Castiel is baffled. What honor? What fight?
“What?”
“Everyone will come,” the firefighter says. He makes a pose, as if he’s flexing. “To see me and this other guy fight to see who’s the Supreme Birthday Boy.” He stretches one arm out, pointing it to the sky, then he opens his fist. “Pow! It’ll be me, of course.” He turns to look back at Castiel. His mouth is very pink. Castiel wishes he understood what words were coming out of it. 
“It’s my birthday, too,” the firefighter says after a moment, when Castiel doesn’t react.
“Oh,” Castiel says. “Why didn’t you just say that?”
“I dunno. Trying to be funny, I guess.”
“Oh,” Castiel says again. Behind the firefighter, he sees that the other residents of his apartment building are filing back inside. For some reason, despite the January chill, Castiel doesn’t want to go back in. Not yet. 
“You know, usually this is the part where people say happy birthday,” the firefighter says. 
“Happy birthday,” Castiel repeats. 
“Thanks!” the firefighter beams. “So do you think I should crash your friend’s party tonight?”
“No,” Castiel says, alarmed at the thought. A firefighter, and probably a bunch of other firefighters, crashing Castiel’s opportunity to stand beside the wall, holding a cup of sprite? When Castiel shows up with store-bought baked goods? And this beautiful firefighter will point right at him and say that Castiel invited them and then Anna’s-friend-Dean will hate him forever, and probably Anna will too? “Also, he’s not my friend.”
“He’s not? Then why are you going to his party?”
“He’s my sister’s friend,” Castiel explains. “I’ve never met him. She thinks I need to leave the house more.” Too late, Castiel remembers that he was supposed to pretend he had a flourishing social life. Oops. 
“Wait,” the firefighter says. His eyes sparkle. “Are you Anna’s brother? Cas-something?”
“Castiel,” he says, with the patience of someone who has had to explain his name a million times. He narrows his eyes. “How did you know that?”
“Dude,” the firefighter says, laughing. “I’m Dean.”
Anna’s-friend-Dean is a beautiful firefighter, with green eyes and freckles? Anna’s-friend-Dean is the Supreme Birthday Boy? Anna’s-friend-Dean probably has very muscular arms, under his uniform?
“Oh,” Castiel says. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” the firefighter says. 
“Winchester! Wrap it up!” one of the firemen calls from the truck. Castiel realizes that all the firefighters are about to leave, and everyone from his building is already back inside. When did that happen?
“Be there in a minute!” Dean hollers over his shoulder. When he looks back at Castiel, he grins almost shyly. “You were gonna make me cookies?”
“Yes, I--I thought it would be an appropriate thing to bring.” Castiel wonders again if Dean could be diabetic. Or perhaps allergic to something in chocolate chip cookies. Are chocolate chips made in a peanut-free facility? Maybe Castiel should’ve bought wine, after all.
“Hell yeah,” Dean says. “Whoever said that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach was dead-fuckin’-on. But, uh.”
“But?” Castiel is sure, suddenly, that Dean is about to reject him and tell him not to come to his birthday party after all. Which would be a shame, because all of a sudden Castiel wanted to go.
“My favorite dessert is pie,” Dean says like a confession. 
“Oh,” Castiel says, eyes widening. Maybe he can swing by the bakery--maybe he can look up a bakery, and then swing by it--on the way to the party. Assuming he’s still going. 
“And, uh, not to toot my own horn, but I make a pretty mean one. I actually made myself a birthday pie, and I was gonna eat it alone, but maybe…I mean…”
“Yes?” Castiel asks. Dean is slightly taller than him, so he tilts his head back to meet his eyes. Dean swallows. Castiel watches his adam’s apple bob.
“Well, I could swing by after my shift is done,” Dean says. “Bring it with me. We could share. Before we go to the Roadhouse, I mean. If you want.”
“I want,” Castiel says before he can think about it. He snaps his mouth shut. Dean brightens. 
“Great,” he says. “I’ll be back. After my shift.”
“When does it end?” Castiel asks. Dean looks at his watch. He grins at Castiel, tongue poking between his teeth.
“Twenty minutes,” he says. 
“Okay,” Castiel says. “I will you soon, then.”
“Yep,” Dean says. “Gimme about an hour, okay? And then we’ll have pie.” 
“Okay,” Castiel says. Dean turns to head back to the firetruck. “What kind of pie?” Cas calls after him. Dean turns. 
“Apple!” he calls. Castiel stands outside, in the January chill without his coat, for a long while after the truck leaves. What a strange man, making his own birthday pie. What a lovely man, sharing it with a stranger. Supreme Birthday Boy, indeed.
--
When Dean returns, in a soft flannel shirt with sleeves rolled up, revealing his magnificent forearms, his hair a spiky mess that Castiel wants to run his fingers through, he has, as promised, an apple pie. And Castiel has a present for him. 
When Dean opens it, he laughs until he almost cries. He lights it right away, and the lingering aroma of burnt chocolate chip cookies is chased away by the apple pie candle from Walmart, a bright, steady little flame flickering between them.
(ao3)
768 notes · View notes
Text
A flock of elephants
Written for the November warm-up round of the @steddieholidaydrabbles
Prompt: Bakery AU
Rated: T
CW: some sexual tension and innuendo
Tags: Baker Steve, Rockstar Eddie
Notes: Can be read as a continuation of this microfic
Tumblr media
“You don't understand how huge a deal this is, Steve,” Dustin says. He’s wiggling in the passenger seat, trying to take in every bit of their surroundings as they pull up to the concert hall. 
Steve huffs and squints at the signs. There's security and fans and staff everywhere and he can feel a headache coming up. 
"A guy asked me to bake a cake, so what? It's literally what I do for a living, nothing-" 
"A guy asked you to-" Dustin sputters. "Excuse me, what did you say? Eddie Munson commissioned you to bake a replica of his world famous Warlock, do you have any- Do you even know who Eddie Munson is?" 
"Of course I know," Steve grouses. "I don't live under a rock." 
"Oh yeah?" Dustin levels him with an unimpressed look. "Name one of his songs." 
"Please," Steve rolls his eyes. "You're blasting that shit on repeat, it's practically seared into my brain. Especially the one about the elephants." 
Dustin stares at him. Steve resists the urge to pinch his nose.
"You know the one! What was it? Flock of Elephants?" 
Dustin crumples into the car seat and slaps both palms to his forehead. "It's A Court of Sycophants, Steve! Oh my God!"
"Synchro-what?" Steve ignores the way his neck prickles and takes a sharp right. "You just made that up. Now help me look for the delivery entrance or we won't have ourselves a deal at all." 
*
Once they find the entrance, it turns out he forgot the ID badge that the label sent, because of fucking course he did. He spends about half an hour trying to convince the grumpy security guard to let them in while Dustin has a complete meltdown. Just as he's ready to give up, they're rescued by the appearance of a tiny blonde in a pink cardigan who cheerfully introduces herself as Eddie’s manager. 
"Sorry about Hop," she says for what must be the fourth time, while Steve sets up the guitar-shaped cake at the center of the buffet and Dustin inspects the backstage lounge with awestruck eyes. "He takes his job very seriously." 
"Yeah, I noticed," Steve mutters. She seems nice enough, but he really doesn’t wanna engage in smalltalk right now. The bustle of the stage hands and the hot air of the venue are making him squeamish. All he wants to do is get this over with and go home.
Unfortunately fate must hate him, because that is the exact moment that a familiar voice says, "Hey, Chris. No matter what Hop tells you, I didn't order hookers to the venue. I dunno where he got the-" 
Dustin starts squealing. 
"Oh my God, you're Eddie Munson!"
Eddie squints at him like a confused cat. 
"Last time I checked, yeah. And you are?" 
"Dustin," says Dustin, like that explains everything. "I'm with Steve." 
Eddie’s eyes flit over and his face breaks into a delighted, dimpled smile. 
"Baker boy, hi!" 
Steve's mouth goes dry. 
He doesn’t know why, but all of the easy confidence of their last meeting is suddenly gone. 
Maybe it's because they were in the bakery, on his own turf, and now they're on Eddie’s, where the lights and the noise and the hum of the crowd in the auditorium are grating on his nerves. 
Maybe it's because last time, Eddie looked like just some guy in his ripped jeans and ratty hoody, unwashed hair piled in a chaotic bun, and now …
… now he's in a pair of leather pants that are so tight they may as well be spray-painted on and what looks like a fucking harness, hair cascading around his face and shoulders in a halo of messy curls and is that eyeliner? 
"Woah," Eddie breathes, eyes growing large, and yup, eyeliner. Definitely eyeliner, Jesus fucking Christ. With two long strides of those impossibly long legs, he's beside Steve and ogling the cake with an awestruck face. "This is fucking incredible, dude, it looks just like the real thing. You did all that from the photos?" 
By some miracle, Steve manages to channel the incoming blush into a sly pop of his hips and a smug eyebrow quirk. 
"Told you I was the best." 
Eddie is looking at him like he didn't bake a cake but hung the moon, which … in combination with the eyeliner and the leather and the harness of it all? Steve squirms in his jeans.
"Okay, erm … if that's all, I'll send over the bill by-" 
"Wait, what? You're not staying for the show?" Eddie swivels to Chrissy, all righteous indignation. "Why are they not staying for the show?" 
Chrissy shrugs, at the same time that Steve says, "That's really not necessa-" 
"We'd love to stay!" 
Dustin shoves himself between them, elbowing him in the kidneys. While Steve is still coughing, Eddie turns to Chrissy. 
"Show the young man to the backstage area, Chris?" 
Dustin looks like he's about to die of happiness, so Steve resigns himself to his fate. 
"Will you play the one about the psychopaths?" he asks as they trail after him. "It's his favorite." 
"Psycho-" Eddie’s brow wrinkles.
"Sycophants, Steve!" Dustin hollers from ahead. "Jesus!" 
"Anyways," Steve says over Eddie’s rumbling laughter. "You really didn't have to-" 
"I know I didn't." Eddie accepts his guitar - the real one - from a stage hand and slings it over his shoulder. "But I saw what you're best at, so I figured I'd return the favor." 
"Careful there," Steve huffs. "All you've done is ogle my cake. You may wanna try it first." 
"Oh, I'm planning to …" Eddie's smile is sharp as he leans in, close to his ear. "Preferably with less people around, though." 
And then he's gone, stepping out on the stage, making his guitar wail. 
Steve can't quite tell if the roar in his ears is the crowd or the sound of his own blood.
681 notes · View notes
totaly-obsessed · 7 months
Text
Mess of a Mind
Tumblr media
Alexia Putellas x reader
-> Alexia's life is much more chaotic with you and your ADHD - but she wouldn't change it for a thing
-> Based on my daily struggles in life
-> reader has ADHD
➳ Masterlist
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
The moment Alexia received a text from you that read ‘I’m gonna clean’ – she already knew that she was coming home to a bigger mess than before.
Your ADHD makes cleaning things much more complicated than they need to be. But you were sick of being useless in the house. Because with Ale being at training most days and you still in university you were definitely the one in the relationship with more time on their hands. And while your girlfriend definitely didn’t expect you to do everything in the house, helping out with some chores would be nice.
But there it is.
The dreaded word ‘chores’. As soon as something fell under the category, you were all of a sudden unable to do that.
Alexia had asked you to put the trash outside one morning before leaving for training – which you were going to do anyway. But now, that it was your chore? No chance. The blonde came home to no trash outside, but a mess on the inside.
But you didn’t do nothing. In fact – you were quite productive. All of the possible trashcans that were placed around your house were now labeled their respective contents in hand-placed crafting diamonds. Nala lying by your side, nose stuck into the front pocket of your (Alexia’s) Hoodie.
The moment you saw fuzzy socks standing in front of you, was when you realized that you were supposed to take the trash outside. You hadn’t even heard her come in. Ale however wasn’t mad at you, she could see that you had vacuumed the entire house, as well as unloaded the dishwasher. As always you had left the last item on top of the kitchen aisle when your brain was already finished with the task, when in actuality there was still something left.
“Hola bebe. What are you doing?”
It was moments like these that you realized how much of a saint your girlfriend really was. Mapi, like the curious cat she was, peeked at her friend’s phone – wondering what she had seen that had her face all scrunched up. “What did your Roomba text you now – huh?”
Yeah. Roomba.
That’s what your girlfriend’s teammates called you after Lucy had compared you to one. Not because you were Ale’s live-in maid, but because her captain had once come home after a meeting, to a mess of a living room. Loads of different craft projects everywhere. And after following the trail of abandoned projects and broken dreams, she saw you. Stuck in the corner – panicking like a Roomba who can’t get back to its loading station. Lucy and Keira had both been there when Ale found you. That is how your nickname was born.
“She said that she was going to clean up.” Alexia tried to ignore her best friend laughing at your plans – knowing what happened the last time. But upon arriving at your shared house – you were nowhere to be found.
As expected there was chaos everywhere.
The vacuum was lying on the ground, directly next to the coffee table – at least it wasn’t running. Or rather what was left of the said table – two legs were missing, both on the same side, so now it was lopsided, and a once-filled coffee cup was lying on the rug, its filling now spilled on the carpet. The mug must have slid down the table, once it missed its legs.
Approximately every bowl that your kitchen holds placed on the counters, is filled with various things. The footballer recognized the ingredients to your favorite cake. The bathroom mirror was still covered in cleaning spray – apparently, you forgot to wipe it off.
She had already changed at taken a seat on the couch when she heard the front door open and your muttering once you entered. “Hola Ale!”
“Hola mi amor.”
“Oh god! What happened here?” The blonde throned on her usual corner of the couch in the midst of the chaos, Nala in her lap – both of them looking at you with curious eyes, wondering what you would do. “I don’t know what happened – it looked like this when I came home.”
Both of you knew that it could not have been Nala, the tiny dog did not have thumbs to turn on the vacuum.
Once the stain caught your eye – you remembered everything. “Oh right! I was vacuuming and then I hit the coffee table, but it wobbled so it was broken, so I had to fix it! Then the mug slid down the table, it spilled all over the carpet! So I went to the kitchen to grab paper Towles!”
This was better than any TV show Alexia could have watched – she was not mad. “And the cake in the kitchen?”
“Oh! You are right!” You were now following your own mess as if you were a detective discovering a crime scene. “I went to grab the paper towels to blot the stain – then I remembered that I wanted to make a cake – but I spilled milk. So, I went to grab toilet paper to clean up.”
Alexia, Nala and you were now standing in the bathroom, a foamy mirror laughing at you. “Right, and then I sprayed the mirrors, but I had no towels to wipe it off, so I went to the store!”
Now you had solved the crime – your main suspect? Yourself.
Alexia could not help but laugh at your satisfied facial expression once you came to your conclusion. After packing away your shopping you realize that you had gotten everything aside from why you had gone in the first place. “Why did I want paper towels again?”
Your girlfriend did not answer you. She was leaning against the fridge, muscular arms crossed in front of her and she just stared at you. A soft smile on her lips. “Ale?”
After planting a soft kiss on your forehead, she led you to the living room. “The stain, bebita.”
“Oh! You are right!” Without hesitating you dropped to your knees in front of the still-wet stain. No wonder there, but before Alexia could react, you had pulled your shirt off and thrown it on the coffee – blotting the stain.
The blonde pulled you up by your elbows “Oh baby. Could’ve used a towel.” You looked like a bratty kid, being held up by your girlfriend while you tried to get the stain away. “Oh right! We do not have paper towels; I will go and get some!”
The Barcelona player set you down on the couch as gently as she could “No mi Corazón. You already went out.” She was gentle and sweet and ever so patient as she helped you tidy your mess.
It was late when you finished, your brain now tired from running at 180km/h the entire day – so Alexia decided to order takeout. It took her twenty minutes to figure out what you wanted to choose from her suggestions because your very low attention span sprang from the TV to Nala, to your book, and then to the still very-much-there stain.
Ale had to take you to your shared bedroom, sit you on the bed, and kneel in front of you – one hand holding both of yours in front of your chest, the other holding your face so that you could not avoid her eyes.
But finally, you had settled on Pasta. She even figured out which one you wanted.
Once it arrived both of you carried the things you needed from the now clean kitchen to the couch, sitting down ready to eat.
Or at least that was the plan.
While Ale already started eating, you realized, that you missed something. “Oh, I need a freakin’ fork.” And with that you had stood up again, wandering to the kitchen and while you came back with a fork, you just stood in front of the couch.
Ale watched closely as your eyes drifted off. “I need to get my sauce.” And *poof* you were gone again.
You returned with said sauce and sat down again. Ale already saw what was coming, holding onto your plate that wobbled when you stood up with force, throwing your hands up in the sky. “Freaking fork!”
Fork in one hand, water in the other, you came back. Before setting both items down on the table, you looked at your girlfriend – “Would you like some water as well baby?” The older woman nodded, she appreciated that you thought of her while your brain was driving you insane. “That would be nice, thank you corazón.” 
She felt bad seeing you walk away with both water and your fork in hand, but she didn’t want to stop you, in fear that you would think that you were stupid, not being able to get everything you needed. So, she let you be.
Alexia even waited patiently as you sang in the kitchen for five minutes, before coming back with two water glasses, handing her the one you had already taken a sip out of. “Did you take my fork?”
“No baby. I think you left it in the kitchen.”
“No, I didn’t, I put my fork here.” Instead of showing her a specific place, you just plainly pointed to the entire table. But there was no second fork – so you went back again returning victoriously with a fork.
A deep sigh left your body after finally sitting down next to your girlfriend again. “What happened to your water?”
After bringing it up, Alexia felt bad. Your eyes squeezed shut, your fingers massaging your temple where an annoying headache would surely be forming.
“I left it.”
Now you had everything. Food, fork, water, your girlfriend, Nala, and your favorite TV show.
You were incredibly hungry by now but after taking a bite, you let your fork fall into your pasta. “My food is cold now.” Without saying anything, Ale stood up and heated it back up for you.
Later that night you were finally lying in bed, Alexia’s hand rubbing your back, cooing in your ear. “Today was hard for you huh, bebita?” Soft kisses were littered all over your face and neck, the blonde smiling after being able to get a smile out of you.
“Tomorrow will be better.” While your ADHD could be frustrating, Alexia would never be angry at you for doing certain things or not doing them – she was just so happy to have you.
905 notes · View notes
obey-me-disaster · 1 year
Note
Hello! I have an obey me request for the brothers if you don’t mind. I was wondering if you could write some head cannons for the brothers with an Mc who loves collecting plushies and has a bed full of them. Thank you, and I love your work!
I literally sleep with plushies every night, so I can relate to this request a lot 😭
Demon brothers x gn!MC
MC who collects plushies
Lucifer
Does he think it's childish? A bit. But some of his brothers have them so he doesn't judge. He will just look at you and think 'oh great, another one'. As he gets close to you he does think it makes you cuter.
As along as you keep your room tidy and not leave them everywhere he won't say shit, no matter how many of them you're getting. Chances are he bought some for you since you like them so much.
You aren't allowed to bring them into his room tho <\3. Or at least that's what he says, there is one hidden stuffed toy hidden in his room by you for when you come over.
Seems like the type to tuck them in your blanket with you if he walks in on you sleeping. Giving them a little pat while kissing you on your forehead.
Mammon
A good part of your plushies are won or bought by him. It begun when he won a plushie for you at a claw machine in order to show off and saw how happy you were.
Would rather die than admit it but he gets jealous if you cuddle with the plushies instead of him when he stays over in your room. Good thing he doesn't have to admit cause it's obvious by the way he acts.
Bought matching plushies for the two of you. He cuddles with his whenever you are in the human world.
Leviathan
Any and all anime inspired plushies are from him. He has quite a few plushies in his anime and video game and shared some of them with you.
He even made some plushies for you since he is good at sewing. Have a favourite character? New plushie. You like some cute creature from a video game/anime? A plushie that looks identical to it, is waiting in your room.
This is actually canon but it fits too well with the ask not to say it. He made plushies of everyone and out them in a claw machine. And when MC got the plushie of him they got a special prize too.
Back to headcanons, he 100% made plushies of the two of you but was too embarrassed to give them to you. You found them by accident during a gaming night.
Satan
He usually uses pillows to make himself comfortable when reading, but if MC were to give him any plushie he would 100% use them. Especially those soft squishmallows, he considers them both cute and useful.
No plushies allowed in his room for the most part. He doesn't have anything against them...he just sneaks in cats(and other animals sometimes) in his room so he doesn't want to risk then destroying anything of yours. But when he brings in a cat that he knows won't tear any stuffed toy apart? He is encouraging you to bring your collection. Cute animals cuddling with your plushies is win-win for both of you. He will clean any hairs left on them
He is also quite fond of the moments you two are reading something, snuggled up in your bed full of plushies, especially if you fall asleep. Tho are some of the moments he can feel how the wrath melts away.
Asmodeus
Finds them so cute and insists of taking photos with all of them. If you're up to it, he totally drags into your pile of plushies to take photos and cuddle.
He probably has a ton of photos of you cuddling a plushie. Both in your room and in his.
Speaking of his room, he has his own collection of plushies from his fans. You are free to take whatever plushie you desire the most. He will also give you any plushies that resemble him for 'when you miss him'.
One of the demons to go to when you need a plushie to be fixed. Or if you want a new outfit for one of them. He would be more than happy to do it for you. He also sprays them with one of his perfumes as a final touch.
Beelzebub
He is used to it from Belphegor. He treats all of your plushies respectfully and handles them with care. Tho make sure the ones that look like food aren't up at the front.
If he has to carry you into your room when you fall asleep in other parts of the house he makes sure to put a few of them in your arms to cuddle with.
He took a few of them into his room so when you spent the night you would have them close by. After the brothers found that out they started doing the same.
Also, if you were to gift him a plushie he would carry it around everywhere(he actually did that in canon with a doll made for him by Belphie)
Belphegor
So does he. He has a bunch of pillows and plushies to cuddle with whenever you or Beel aren't available. His collection is bigger than yours, but that is to be expected since he has been collecting them for hundreds of years.
Often steals plushies from you cause they have your scent. On the same note, he sometimes leaves some of his in your room so they can get your scent.
One of the people in HOL who can fix plushies for you in case they get a tear. He also made a plushie or two for you, that includes plushies that look like him and his brothers.
1K notes · View notes
transmascaraa · 4 months
Text
!lyney and lynette bday special!
since it was your bf's and his sister's bday, you decided to surprise them with something...
bf!lyney x gn!reader (ft. lynette and freminet)
author's note: HAVE YOU SEEN HIS BDAY ARTTT?? BABYGIRL IS ADORABLEEEEE😭💗 anyways i hope you guys like this cuz i tried my best to do something special for his(and lynette's) bday and yeah👍
"happy birthday, magic man!"
Tumblr media
-it was finally that day.
-the 2nd of february.
-your boyfriend's birthday, lyney, and his twin sister's, lynette.
-you and freminet, their younger brother, had been planning this surprise for weeks now, you needed it to be perfect
-they really deserve it, even more than that
-so, as for what you and freminet got lynette...
-you got her a fancy dress, some cute hair clips, and a cat plushie, that looked like her!
-you were confident that she'd like it.
-and as for lyney...
-a bouquet of flowers. roses. all kinds, all types, roses.
-lynette and freminet told you that his favorite flowers are roses but told you to blame it on the little birdie.
-you, separately, also bought him a fuzzy warm red blanket, but sprayed your perfume/cologne on it, so it reminded him of you.
-while the both of you bought him his favorite candy, to which you were sure he would love!
-and finally, you and lynette planned out a perfect date for you and him.
-this is how it went...
-"hey, lynette, so i thought about bringing him to an expensive date with me, what do you say?" you asked her while sipping your tea.
-"how expensive are we talking? $100-$200 or like you eat money for lunch?" she asked, glancing at you from behind the teacup.
-"hmm... like... we eat money for lunch." you replied, smiling innocently.
-"alright... i recommend "gâteaux de coeur". it's very expensive, and that's why there's not much people there. it'll be worth it, i think." she suggested. (help i used google translate for "heart cakes" is it correct???)
-"i'm on it!" so you were already reserving the seats...
-a bit later, you decirated your whole entire house.
-gifts everywhere.
-with the help of freminet, of course.
-the two of you set up everything, and then freminet called them to come tomorrow.
-anytime.
-and so, tomorrow came soon.
-lyney and lynette rang the doorbell, but nobody opened it.
-you and freminet hid behind the couch, with confetti ready in your hands.
-"hellooo?" lyney said as he opened the door. it was unlocked.
-"happy birthday!" you and freminet jumped out when they came in, blasting the confetti everywhere.
-"o-oh... wow... thank you..." lyney could barely speak, he was left flabbergasted by this.
-he was so caught off guard that he had no mask on anymore. pure shock.
-"woah... thank you, you two." lynette added. she's usually there with a neutral expression on her face, but she was surely surprised this time.
-so, after talking a bit and eating some cake...
-freminet and you gave them the gifts. they opened them, all 4 of you sitting on the floor in a circle.
-first, lynette opened her presents.
-"i love these... the plushie... it's cute. and the dress is nice too. and these hair clips will come in handy." she said, thanking you both.
-and then, lyney opened his.
-he saw the gifts, and just buried his head in your thighs. he was blushing hard.(most normal lyney behavior)
-"thank you..." was all he muttered, inhaling your scent from the blanket that he put close to his chest, and your scent itself...
-it was the best birthday he could ever ask for...
~~~~~
I LOVE THIS I LOVE THIS
IT'S SO CUTE
HELP I LOVE LYNEY
140 notes · View notes
icarus-star · 5 months
Text
thinking about chris rn.. (sfw & nsfw)
Tumblr media
he LOVES having his hair played with. feeling your fingers against his scalp, scratching a little bit. he's almost like a kitten. because he'll curl up next to you and get all comfortable, maybe with a blanket. but if you EVER compare him to a cat, he will absolutely deny whatever you said.
flavored condoms. he loves when you suck his dick, and he wants you to enjoy it. so he thought that it would be a nice idea! (even if a majority of the flavors aren't the greatest, he'll find one that you like!)
seriously though, he loves when you slobber all over his cock. when you drool and spit everywhere, he loses his mind. he loves it messy.
he loves kissing you. just kissing you. sitting there together, mouths together, hand's so gently caressing each other. he could sit there for hours and just kiss you. (bonus, whenever you two kiss he make's that little "mmh" sound. it's so cute.)
sorry, but he smells entirely of expensive cologne. he sprays SO MUCH because after a little while he can't smell it on himself, but everyone around him still can. after a little while of being with him the smell might be comforting, but before? yikes!
he really likes cafe's, believe it or not. he would absolutely love to bring you on a little cafe date and just talk. (he just really like coffee.)
naked cuddling. he adores being all comfortable under the blankets with you, feeling your skin against his and such. obviously it's gonna turn into way more, he's a little handsy. rolling your nipples under his thumb, maybe kissing your shoulder.
he has very warm hand's. and if you're often cold, he'll put them all over you. ;3
160 notes · View notes
lvrcpid · 1 year
Text
avatar with cats !!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
a.n // my favorite blue cats + my love for cats = masterpiece
Tumblr media
neteyam
he probably just stares at the cat. “what does it do?” he says, staring at the small fur ball toying with the stuffed mouse. “it’s a cat neteyam” “a what??” he is so confused because why is it so small. he’s probably reluctant to even be around it. of course he thinks it’s adorable but he also thinks it’s just so small. “if it didn’t have that ringing thingy on it, i probably would’ve stepped on it! it’s not safe for it to be here!!”. you looked at neteyam then back to the cat. “YOU MEAN A BELL?! we need to get you out- touch some grass. and stop being like that to her, y’all are literally the same species”
you definitely caught neteyam feeding and playing with your cat a few times
lo’ak
he’s actively poking the poor feline with a stick. “KICK IT-“ “NO DONT KICK IT-“ lo’ak is sweating bullets. he’s literally 8 foot and scared of a 10 lb kitten. he’s probably clinging to some table, praying for his mother. “(y/n)..it’s making a noise..” “it’s meowing lo’ak-“ “IS IT CALLING MORE OF ITS FRIENDS OH GOD” he probably fainted after a while. he’s screaming like a little girl begging for you to lock your cat away.
it took a while for him to warm up to it but he loves your kitten and loves the fact she fits in the palm of his hand. “SHH SHES SLEEPING!”
ao’nung
“it’s so ugly-“ “ao’nung you aren’t too good looking yourself” he cried himself to sleep that night. he hates hates HATES the fact your cat sheds. “why is there hair in my mouth??? wash that thing!” he probably has some grey hairs from that cat. one time your cat got out and he chased it down, busting his ass in the process. he came back with a few bruises and a meowing cat in his hands.
ao’nung hates your cat but sometimes finds himself smiling at her when you ask him to feed her
rotxo
he’s in love. “it’s so tiny and cute- and it makes noise!” he probably treats your cat like a toy. he definitely has his grandma make some (attempted) very small clothes so she doesn’t get cold. your cat ends up wrapped up like a burrito with rotxo going. “she looked cold! it’s cold in this lab! do better! shame on you!”
he isn’t the stepfather, he’s the father that stepped UP!
tsireya
she also thinks the kitten is adorable but she’s kind of afraid of it. she came on too strong with the cat and it hissed at her. after reassuring her that the cat does NOT hate her, she’s everywhere with the cat. bringing it to the ocean and taking her on walks. tsireya is so jealous cats don’t exist on pandora. and i’m mad because i see tsireya as the best cat mom on this planet.
she definitely plays kitty dress up and has tea parties with your cat.
kiri
she steals your cat. kiri just stared at your cat before grabbing it and walking away. you genuinely thought she killed your cat until you saw the two of them playing in the field. when you asked for your cat back she gave a quick “hell no” and continued to play with your cat. your car definitely likes kiri more now.
you and kiri have shared custody of the cat after a long court case (argument in front of jake and norm)
tuk
she’s so amazed with your cat. “why is it fat?” *proceeds to feed it all the snacks you have for it* tuk is so cautious over the sweet kitty though. she always holds your cat so awkwardly like no support with the legs or anythingggg. she’s definitely the type to spray a cat with a spray bottle and go “bad kitty! bad!! bad kitty!!”
tuk is so funny i love her stan tuk for clear skin
Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
eggyrocks · 25 days
Text
rot: h. iwaizumi
Tumblr media
chapter one -> a favor
word count: 6.1k
(masterlist ; written content ; taglist)
Tumblr media
Her apartment is a piece of shit.
Rot has set in its bones, a permanent stench of must and mold seeped into its walls. The bathroom is perpetually wet, and pieces of the ceiling frequently chip off and fall into her coffee. And it doesn’t help that there’s half smoked cigarette buds littered everywhere or greased soaked take out containers spilling out of the trash she’s too lazy to take out. But she doesn’t have it in her to blame herself. It was shit when she got here-there was hardly any motivation for her to take care of it.
Paint chips from the window as she struggles to jerk it open, muttering curses with a lit cigarette between her lips. The landlady has given her shit before about the smell of smoke that drifts out into the halls, and now she has to muscle open the painted-shut window in order to avoid her ire. She figures the old hag just wants something to complain about. There’s years of ash yellowing the walls; if she went at it long enough with some disinfectant spray and a roll of paper towels, she’d eventually reach the original, creamy white color of the walls.
She’s not the first smoker to rent the one-bedroom. She certainly won’t be the last.
Her teeth grind together, and her hands are starting to cramp, struggling against the wood. The apartment might be a piece of shit, but it’s the only piece of shit she’s got, and she’s not about to ruin it by pissing off some temperamental old lady. If she wants the smell of smoke gone, the smell of smoke is going to be gone (and what, is she supposed to climb down three flights of stairs to smoke on the steps outside every time she wants to light up? Please).
With one final grunt, she’s able to fling the window open, nearly losing a finger as she does so. There’s no screen, and the windowsill is decorated with years’ worth of grime, dust, and bug corpses. Distaste furls on her lip, and she holds the cigarette out the window, arm suspended in the air.
The night is cool and refreshing as it floats into her humid room. It’s always nicer outside than it is in her piece of shit apartment, and if she weren’t so convinced someone in this neighborhood wouldn’t hesitate to climb through any open window they could find (third floor or not), she’d leave it open all the time.
She flicks the end of her cigarette, and ash floats from the tip down to the sidewalk below. This isn’t really what she imagined when she imagined leaving. Her nose twitches, and she brings the cigarette to her lips. Chain-smoking and picking mold off bread and trying to lure in street cats to kill off rats that make their way up from the basement.
Leaving should look different. It shouldn’t have a sickly green tint to it. It shouldn’t be this distorted.
Her liberated life had played out so nicely in her head. Leaving would be the last hard part. She had figured, naively, that once the rot was cut from her, it would be the end to it. There’d be no more problems. It would be easy to be on her own. It would be easy to take care of herself. It would be easy to live in a shit apartment and work a shit job and make shit money and live off shit food and shit coffee and shit cigarettes. It was alone on the train platform, everything she owned stuffed into a single suitcase, that she realized she was dead fucking wrong.
She’s taken to keeping track of her problems with a numbered list.
If it weren’t for the dead bugs, she’d lean out the window, try to get the window to catch her hair. She’d get a good look at the street and the people who stumble through it. But instead, her arm goes sore, and she stares at the yellow wall in front of her.
Every day since she’s been here has been the same. An embarrassingly monotonous groundhog’s day.
In the morning, she wakes up to the sound of songbirds and the dogs in the apartment below her that continuously bark at them. At night, she falls asleep to the sound of whatever is going on in the apartment is going on above her: harsh footsteps, crashes, the occasional breaking of glass. In between, her mind numbs, and she mindlessly works the shift of whatever job she’s managed to get for the week.
She’s run through more jobs than she can count (she gets fired by anyone who makes the mistake of hiring her, problem #2). The grocery store fired her after she called a customer an ugly bitch at the end of a dispute over the price of plums (rage issues, problem #6). The restaurant she served tables at stopped putting her on the schedule after she called in sick one too many Fridays in a row (habitual liar, problem #11; chronic laziness, problem #5). The babysitting gigs she just stopped showing up to (she can’t stand to be around kids, and they can’t stand to be around her, at least she doesn’t have a problem with that).  
Her current employment is at a video store. That she seems to be able to manage. At least better than all the other ones she’s had. And it’s easy enough. Rent out DVDs. Collect late fees. Let your eyes gloss over whenever someone starts to run their mouth at you. Beg your managers for extra hours so you can pay all of your bills this month (problem #1, tied in pretty directly to problem #2).
A sigh escapes her. The cigarettes burns down closer to her fingers. A piece of shit apartment, and she can hardly afford it.
Her head turns, and she eyes the living room behind her, surveying the cramped kitchen and the rotting front door just beyond it. Her eyes are lingering on the dull, brass locks that keep her door in place. She thinks that she should install new ones, invest in something more secure. And it’s because she’s fixated on those locks that she sees the door rattle as someone slams their fist against it.
The noise makes her jump, and she hastily puts her cigarette out on the window, leaving it to blow away in the wind. She just a few long strides, her hand is around her doorknob, and she’s cursing the lack of a peephole and figures that’ll give her something to complain about with her landlady. She unlocks the deadbolt but lets the chain lock stay where it is. She opens the door just enough to get a look at whoever’s on the other side.
It's her neighbor. Upstairs. She blinks.
There are three things she knows about her neighbor:
His name. Iwaizumi Hajime. She’s heard his perpetual guests call it out enough to have it committed to memory, as well as the names: Mattsun, Makki, and Oikawa (see also: Shittykawa, Crappykawa, various-one-worded-insults-Kawa). But Iwaizumi is for certain the one she’s heard most, both though bouts of laughter and panic yelling.
He has a very careful routine. He’s religious about it. She can hear his footsteps as he follows the same 24-hours daily. In the morning he’s always gone by the time she wakes up. At night, he’s out smoking on the front step when she comes home. And in between-
Whatever it is that he’s doing in that upstairs apartment, it’s none of her business. She has her ideas. She has her clues that she chooses not to see.  But she won’t even let herself think about it, nevermind say it out loud. Whatever it is, she doesn’t need to know. It is not her business.
The first time she saw him, he was smoking a pack of blues on the front steps that led into their apartment building. His black jeans were worn in, and his sweatshirt had tears in the sleeves. A dark purple bruised blossomed along his jawline, fading into a lighter blue as it crept up his skin, and into a sickly yellow when it stopped under his cheekbone. The shape of it distorted when he dropped his jaw to let out smoke. She slowed in her approach at the sight of him and averted her gaze. It wasn’t any of her business.
The first time she saw him, he didn’t say anything. He just watched as she rummaged through her bag in search of her keys, careful not to brush against him as she passed him on the steps. She pretended she couldn’t feel him staring.
Her interactions with Iwaizumi Hajime, neighbor, have always been uneventful. At most, he will give her a slight nod of his chin in greeting as she approaches, but usually he just watches as she fiddles with her keys or pretends to be furiously texting, thumbs aggressively slamming against the keys (the text with no set recipient usually reading: aaaajjdewppgaa).
But even with their nothing interactions, she still would find herself thinking of him. As she popped another plastic meal into her microwave, she would think of his hands: long and veiny and cut up fingers holding up a cigarette, knuckles red and raw and forever scabbed over. When she deleted voicemails, she thought of his eyes, sharp and observant and a shade of green she finds perplexing. She thought of where he might be as she took out the trash. She started to look for the outline of him as she got closer to home.
She chalked it up to the loneliness.
The more she thought of him, the more she noticed him. His new bruises. The way his footsteps sounded late at night. How his voice rose in agitation when he spoke into the receiver of his phone, words muffled by the thin floorboards and drywall between her apartment and his. She noticed the unusual hours he kept and the way his most frequent guests always looked over their shoulders on their way out. She noticed heavy looking boxes covered in thick blankets going in and out of his place.
And she’s not stupid. It didn’t take very long for her to piece it together and resolve to stop noticing him (she can’t, as hard as she tries, and feels she knows entirely too much about him, problem #4).
She notices, now, the way his mouth is pressed into a fine line, a fresh laceration that spreads across the bridge of his nose. His expression is composed but there’s a panicked movement in his eyes, flashing over the details of her face that he can see through the crack of the door. She raises an eyebrow at him. “I need a favor,” he says, speaking directly to her for the first time, slightly out of breath and words strung together in a rush.
She blinks again.
★⋆. ࿐࿔
Her thought process is convoluted. She’s still working on justifying it to herself as she stands on the tips of her toes, trying not to shrink under his stare as her fingers clean his open wounds, the tips of them now stained with his blood.
It’s the path of least resistance, she tells herself. Really, there was no good reason or excuse to deny him, and she couldn’t exactly give him the bare faced truth of, “no, I think you’re a gunrunner and I don’t want to be involved in that shit, thanks.” And even if she did, or could come up with any other excuse to slam her door in her neighbor’s face, she figured it would be better to be on the good side of Iwaizumi Hajime, neighbor and potential arm’s dealer.
So she opened her door for him, and told herself that it’s better to be owed a favor than it is to owe one.
Hands steady, she applies a skin-toned bandage to the deep cut over his nose, an extra pad of cotton underneath it. She thinks it might need stiches, but that’s not an opinion she’s about to voice out loud to him.
She steps back and moves to wash the blood off of her hands in her kitchen sink, lathering her hands up with extra soap and running them under water so hot it turns her skin red. The water hits the sink a rusty color. Iwaizumi lingers, standing in the same spot, watching attentively as she does so. “Want a tea?” she asks as she turns off the faucet, wiping her wet hands off on the front of her jeans.
Without looking back at him, she moves about her cabinets, opening one to find her (frankly, pathetic) collection of mugs. She pulls out one with a chipped-up, knock-off version of Pikachu (a yellow rat-looking thing called “Ponkadu” with the iconic catchphrase, “ponka, ponka,”) and another with unsettling, discolored cats, knocking around a ball of orange yarn that she's fairly certain used to be red. “Ginger, if you have it,” he responds, still standing unsurely in the middle of her kitchen.
She glances at him over her shoulder. “You can sit down, if you want.”
Mechanically and awkwardly, he does so. The floorboards complain under his shifting weight and the chair squeaks as he pulls it out from under her table. It’s only quiet again when he settles back against the chair, going still. “You’re not gonna ask me what happened?” he asks.
It takes a few twists of the knob for her to finally get the flame on her stove going. She places her kettle on top of it, and rips into her tea bags. “Nope,” she answers. He gets ginger. She gets green. He gets the cats. She gets Ponkadu.
She can feel the way he watches her as she moves about the kitchen, putting a dot of honey in the bottom of her mug. He hasn’t asked her name, yet, which she figures is fair. She hasn’t asked his. And he’s probably seen it on the envelopes that get haphazardly tossed on their front steps or slipped under their front door (and he probably knows just as much about her as she does him, considering that more than half of the envelopes with her name on them have a big red stamp of “payment overdue,” or “bill enclosed”).
The kettle on the stove hisses, and she’s quick to snatch it up and pour the boiling water into each of their respective mugs. “How long do you need to stay?” she asks, not meaning to be rude, but she’s pretty sure it comes across that way anyways. She sets a timer on the oven for four minutes and turns to face him.
Iwaizumi shrugs. “Just for a bit, while things cool down,” is his uncomplicated answer.
She nods, arms wrapping around her middle as she leans against the counter, waiting for the teas to brew. There are questions she could ask that she’s sure he’s anticipating, but she doesn’t bother, she knows the answer. (Q: Why can’t you just hide out in your own apartment? A: I need the alibi. Q: Why’d you come to my apartment? A: Location convenience and believability. Q: Could I get in trouble for being involved with this? A: Probably).
Her fingers tap against her side, and her eyes are anywhere but on him. And despite reaching into the deepest, dustiest parts of her brain, she cannot think of one thing to say to him. There aren’t really any standard conversational topics to whip out when your neighbor/local arms trafficker (alleged) knocks on your door and asks if he can stay there for just a few hours, he promises, and also maybe a Band-Aid, if you have one.
It doesn’t help that she feels unbearably vulnerable with him, sitting at her dining room table (okay, it’s a kitchen table; a wobbly little thing pushed off to the side of her kitchen, but calling it a dining room table makes her feel better), looking at her, looking at her living space. She wasn’t anticipating guests, not that she ever gets any.
Everything she owns is splayed out on display for him to see. Dirty socks on the couch that she kicked off while watching late-night reruns. A stack of CD’s piling up on the ground, unopened because she doesn’t actually own a CD player. Dishes with remnants of ketchup and soy sauce and chocolate ice cream on the bottom of her sink. Loose cigarettes. Dozens of dead lighters. Mismatched furniture, curtsey of sidewalk disposals and secondhand stores. It’s a flagrant display of poverty and laziness.
Iwaizumi nods his chin towards the least offense thing he can find: the pile of CDs. “Those all yours?”
She thinks it’s a stupid question. Of course they’re hers. This is her apartment. Everything is hers. But the most complex form of conversation she could come up with to break the silence was, ‘tea?’ so she can’t really hold it against him. “Yeah,” she answers, and then adds without thinking, “got most of them from my brother,” (problem #9, she just says anything without ever thinking about it).
He stands from his creaky chair and creeps closer to the display. She holds her breath as he approaches. One wrong exhale and the entire pile will go toppling. Iwaizumi kneels down next to the pile, and his looking at the spine of them. His brow his furrowed as his eyes skim over the album names, and she’s anticipating some sort of string of critiques about her collection, or lack of. “Anything you like there?” she asks.
Iwaizumi straightens up and looks back over at her. “Gotta be honest, I don’t know any of these,” he admits, moving to sit back at his designated spot.
This makes her scoff. Her brother had started a worldwide sort of collection. Japanese synth-pop. Ethiopian jazz. Russian new wave. British post-punk. American folk. The rarer and more obscure, the better. If he could hear now that her neighbor and possible weapons dealer was stumped by his collection, he’d be overjoyed. Even if she has added a fair few of Hikaru Utada albums since she’s taken it over.
“What do you listen to then?” she asks, arms still crossed around her center, as if she’s shielding herself from him.
“Just whatever’s on the radio when I drive, I guess,” Iwaizumi answers with a shrug. “Not really a big music person, typically.”
For a moment, she tries to imagine whatever could be happening outside her door while he sits at her kitchen table, nursing a potentially broken nose and casually discussing music preferences. She gives him a nod. “That’s fair.”
Iwaizumi taps his thumb against the top of her table. She can’t read his expression. Every time she’s seen him it’s always been the same, like he’s permanently plagued by some minor annoyance that downturns his brow and pulls his lips into a slight frown. It’d be intimidating if she wasn’t so used to that kind of thing. “Wanna play something?” he asks.
Involuntarily, she scoffs. “Get me something to play ‘em with and I’ll play you whatever you want,” she snarks, and then stops. The smart smirk she had on her lips falls, and she shakes her head. “Sorry, that was rude. I don’t,” she starts, and then stops, “nothing to play ‘em on.”
The oven clock, gracious with its timing, beeps three times. She spins around on her heel, turning it off and using a spoon to fish out the tea bags. Her cheeks are red as she grabs his cat mug by the handle and walks it over to him. “Ginger,” she says, placing it down on the table in front of him. “”S hot,” she says, and then thinks, obviously.
She returns to the safe space of her kitchen counter, and grips her own hot mug around the middle, leaning against the counter and holding it up to her lips. She’s blowing away the steam that rises from it. Iwaizumi has a hand around the handle of the mug, and he’s staring down harshly at it. “So, listen, if someone asks you-“
“You were here with me all night,” she replies, and Iwaizumi looks up at her with a raised eyebrow. “You met up with me after my shift ended at around nine, and then you crashed on my couch by midnight, if I remember right. You were still sleeping in that same spot when I woke up.”
Iwaizumi’s quiet for a while. His thumbs are fiddling against the mug. She slowly sips at her tea, and when it’s too hot still, she blows at the top of it. There’s a rhythm to the way he taps his foot against her floor, deep in thought, probably trying to decide whether or not he could trust her.
He can trust her. Even if he doesn’t know it. He looks over at her with a slight scowl. “And you’ll tell that to anyone who asks?”
She can read between the lines. The anyone he’s so worried about is, undoubtedly, the cops that might come to her to verify whatever version of events he presents to them. “Yeah,” she confirms, “anyone.”
★⋆. ࿐࿔
In the following weeks, she gets three visits. Which is three more visits than she got in her first six months of living here.
When she was a kid, her dad bought her a knife, and stuffed it in the bottom of her schoolbag. “You don’t ever leave the house without a way to defend yourself, bug,” he had told her, and made sure it was properly hidden by books and crumbled homework assignments. And it’s the only thing her father has ever taught her that has the slightest bit of validity to it. She’s rummaging through her purse on her way out, double checking for her pink cannister of pepper-spray and that same little knife, when there’s another knock on the door.
Her head snaps up, and she sighs. At this rate, she’s already gonna be late for work and her sixteen-year-old manager is going to write her up if she’s more than twenty minutes late one more time and she cannot think of a single more embarrassing scenario. One hand grips onto her pepper spray, the other undoes the deadbolt. She barely opens the door, and on the other side is a grinning man.
This one she recognizes. It’s one of the men who’s always in and out of Iwaizumi’s place. Sometimes occupying the front step with him and sometimes laughing so loudly she can hear it clearly from her living room. She closes the door, undoes the chain lock, and then opens it once more. Her fingers are still tight around the pepper spray, which she thinks is fair, considering he’s got both hands behind his back. “Can I help you?” she asks, trying not to sound agitated.
He grins down at her, brightly. He’s the pretty one. “Hey, I’m Oikawa Tooru,” he greets, a natural sort of flirtation in the tone of his voice. She can’t tell if he does it on purpose or not, but she can tell form the glint in his eye that, either way, he doesn’t mean it. “Iwa’s friend.”
She nods. “Yeah, I recognize you. Listen, I don’t wanna be rude or anything, but I’m late for work, so-“
“Don’t worry about it,” he dismisses. “Just wanted to give you this gift, from Iwa, since you helped him out the other night.”
He reveals his hands to show off a box, neat and fresh from the store. It’s unwrapped, so she can see right away that it’s a silver little CD player. Portable. Battery-powered. Batteries included. She blinks. “He’s real grateful,” he says, pushes the box into her arms and giving her a wink. And he doesn’t say anything else as he turns on his heel, headed straight for the staircase that leads up to Iwaizumi’s apartment.
She places the box on the kitchen table where Iwaizumi sat, and makes sure her door is locked three times before she finally leaves for work.
The entirety of her ten-hour shift is spent thinking about it. She processes returns, and she thinks about it. She stocks shelves, and she thinks about it. She gets yelled at, and she thinks about it. What she’s going to play first. Where she’s going to keep it. How she’s going to thank him.
It makes her nervous to think about, that he got it for her. That she sarcastically suggested it, and then he did it. It makes nervous to think that he was thinking of her after he left her apartment. It makes her nervous to think that he went out of his way to buy something for her. Even if he left it up to an errand boy.
And listen, it’s not like she’s never had the money to spare to buy one of her own. At least, she could’ve bought a really cheap one, if she wanted. But in her liberated life, she’s always found that there were more pressing, demanding things that needed to be bought. Food. Phone bills. Credits at the laundromat. Cleaning supplies. Train fare. Cigarettes. Every time she passed by an electronics store and considered it, guilt gnawed at her stomach. She never needed it as bad as she needed everything else.
She clocks out a few minutes later than she was supposed to. Maybe it’s a bit much for a thank you. All she really did, at this point, was let him sit in her piece of shit apartment for a few hours and make him a mediocre cup of tea. She thinks about giving it back. She’s not going to, but she thinks about it.
Iwaizumi is where he always is when she gets off of work, smoking the same cigarettes. And instead of ignoring him via fake text or difficult-to-find keys, she stops in front of him, painfully aware of the intensity of the stare. “Thank you,” she says, and it’s all she manages to say.
Iwaizumi brings the cigarette to his lips and inhales. There’s no bruises on him today. She looks at him and doesn’t feel the need to turn her gaze. “It was a gift to thank you with,” he says through clouds of smoke, “you don’t have to thank me.”
She shrugs. “I wanted to.”
He lets out a small chuckle. “Okay, well, you’re welcome then, I guess.”
She gives him a small nod, and then takes careful steps passed up the stairs and passed Iwaizumi. It’s only once she’s twisted her key and is pushing the door open with her shoulder that he says, “Remember though, this means you’ve gotta play me whatever I want, now.”
Inexplicably, her face gets hot.
The second one comes thirteen days after that.
She’s got a layer of sweat on the back of her neck and her hair’s pushed out of her face with a bandana. The CD player sits on top of her kitchen table, playing an old scratched up copy of London Calling: her brother’s favorite. The mess got to her. She had started in the kitchen, scrubbing the burnt food off of her oven and trashing her food-poisoning level of expired leftovers.
Somehow, in the thick of it, she’s made more of a mess than she started out with. Full trash bags falling over in her living room, useless knick-knacks she’s managed to collect that would be better off in the trash, piles of clothes she plans on getting rid of (divided into two groups: ‘maybe I can sell these,’ and ‘these would be best to donate,’).
Her hand is down the drain of her bathroom sink, cleaning out the gunk and collection of her own strands of hair, protected only by a thin, yellow, rubber glove, when the knock on her door echoes around her apartment. “Fucking hell,” she grumbles, yanking her arm out of the sink, along with a clump of her hair, and carefully slides off the glove. She leaves it on the surface of the sink to be a later problem.
When she opens the door, she’s tired and out of breath, her body sore and aching. The door cracks open, halted by the chain lock, and she goes cold and rigid at the sight a police officer, standing outside of her door. “Can I help you with something?” she asks, tone not necessarily impolite, but it’s hard not to hear just how much she does not want to help. The door can stay locked.
There’s a fair few things she’s learned about cops (and lying to them) in her twenty-something years of living. Keep your distance. Don’t give them more than they need. They’re not your friend. They don’t wanna be your friend. She’s careful to keep her expression level and unbothered.
The cop starts up with his spiel. He’s sorry to bother her, ma’am, but he just has a couple questions, if you don’t mind. It shouldn’t take up too much of your time. You don’t wanna open up the door, do you?
She opts to answer any questions he might have through the thin space allowed by her chain lock. And the cop asks the questions she would expect him to ask. Where was she fifteen nights ago? Was she alone? Who was she was? For how long? Does she remember what time, exactly? Was he here the whole time? Are you sure? Are you positive?
Answers flow out of her easily, naturally. Fifteen nights ago, she was here. Like most nights. No, she wasn’t alone. Her neighbor was here. Iwaizumi. He hangs out here with her, sometimes. For how long? All night, why are you asking? What time? Exactly, she doesn’t really remember. She got off work around nine, and he fell asleep on her couch, maybe a bit after midnight? If she had say. Yeah, he was here the whole time. Yeah, she’s sure. Yeah, she’s positive. Why are you asking?
The officer thanks her, disappointed, and leaves with his head hung, disappointed. And she figures that, whatever Iwaizumi did, they were sure that he did it. And the only thing that stands between them and him, is her. She closes the door behind her and makes sure that it’s locked.
That kind of thing, it doesn’t really bother her. Her sense of morality is not dictated by written law, and she’s not going to be the one getting in the way of another person’s living, whether it’s honest or not. There are hard lines she wouldn’t cross, or help others get over. Of course. There are for everyone. But those lines aren’t in sight, so she’ll keep her mouth shut.
A shudder goes down her spine, and once the door is closed, nerves prickle at her skin. She hates talking to cops. Every time’s worse than the last. She shakes her head, trying to shrug it off, and returns to her pile of hair in the sink.
Her third visit comes three nights later, when she’s fresh from the shower, water dripping from her hair down her neck. She’s got a pint of ice cream in her hand, legs crossed on her couch as she watches reruns of Inuyasha. She presses the spoon against her tongue. They’re airing season two, but she’s only caught up halfway through season one.
She got off work a few hours ago. She’ll sleep for a few hours. And then she’ll wake up and go back to work. Then it’ll happen again. Standing on her feet for hours. Getting talked to like she’s scum by people who take video rentals too seriously. Being belittled by her boss. Making barely enough money to pay rent for her shitty apartment. It’s depressing. It’s boring. She shoves another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth to try and distract herself from it.
“Whatever you think life’s gonna be like away from here, it’s gonna be worse than you think. And I bet, when you realize that, you’re really gonna start to miss me.”
On her television, human-faced fruit falls from a demon tree. She puts her ice cream down. At least she hasn’t got to that point yet.
From above, she can hear footsteps moving. She can hear his door open, and swing shut. She can hear him stomp down the stairs. Her head is already turned in his direction when his fist raises to knock on her door.
She shifts off the couch and steps towards her door. She undoes the deadbolt. She undoes the chain lock.
Iwaizumi greets her with a smile once she opens the door. He’s wearing a t-shirt that reveals the clear definition in his arms. Her eyes linger there for a second too long before they flick up to meet his. “I owe you a favor now.”
★⋆. ࿐࿔
Iwaizumi’s not stupid. He never has been. He’s careful and deliberate and sure, in everything he does. And that’s the reason his record’s clean. It’s the reason he’s never been caught and the reason he’s been able to keep this whole thing going. He doesn’t second guess himself. He doesn’t make mistakes. He doesn’t get desperate.
With one, recent exception.
His internal reasoning: his gut tells him she’s trustworthy. He just looks at her, and he knows it. She acts like a private person, keeping to herself and minding her own business. She never has guests. She’s never given him any trouble. Never looked at him like she was scared of him. And, no, it’s not just because she’s pretty. It’s not just because he likes the smell of her fresh lemon perfume blended with the smell of her menthol cigarettes. It’s not just he wants a reason to talk to her, to knock on her door.
Iwaizumi would never do something so stupid.
She sits across from him, cross-legged on the (recently mopped, from the looks of it) floor of her living room. She is carefully studying the layout of CDs in front of her, and he is carefully studying her. The sort of messy way she lets her hair fall. The boxers she wears as shorts and the way they hug the bottoms of her thighs. The boxy shirt that hangs off her shoulders, loose and wrinkled, sporting the name of some band or movie or whatever that he’s never heard of.
Iwaizumi likes looking at her. He doesn’t act caught when she lifts her gaze to see him staring. She doesn’t blush. He wants to see her blush.
She leans forward and picks a CD. Iwaizumi tilts his head to read it. New Order. “Can I ask you a question?” he says, because, at this point, he figures that she won’t.
“Go for it,” she answers with a shrug, extracting the CD from its case with care and precision, movements delicate.
“How’d you end up here?” he asks, watching her face as she bites down on her tongue, placing the CD face down into the gift he got her. “I mean, girl like you, figure you should be enrolled in university or something.”
Her finger is firm against the play button, and the CD whizzes to life. “Girl like me,” she repeats back, though it sounds like it’s mostly mumbled to herself, a touch of bitterness to her tone. She shakes her head and looks up at Iwaizumi. “Is that the kinda question you’d answer? Honestly.”
He smirks. “Nah, I guess not.”
Music is slow to start up. It skips a bit, at first, but then it smooths out as the song progresses, evening out. Iwaizumi doesn’t look away from her. “I didn’t like it at home, so I left. This is where I ended up.”
Iwaizumi shifts, his hand reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and he fishes out a pack of cigarettes. He’s already got one in his mouth when he asks, “Mind if I smoke?”
Her response is a shake of her head, and she pushes up to stand on her feet. Iwaizumi watches her legs as she walks towards the window and, with a bit of a struggle, jerks it open. The early spring air drifts into her living room and cools it considerably. Iwaizumi lights the end of his cigarette. She grabs her own pack and an old cap to a pint of ice cream she’s been using as an ash tray before she sits back down, across from him.
She puts the cigarette to her lips, and before she can reach for her own, Iwaizumi lifts his lighter up, and the flame catches on the end of hers. She inhales, and Iwaizumi watches as her pupils dilate. “Thanks,” she says when she turns her head to let out a cloud of smoke.
“No problem,” he says, and leans back, resting his weight on the hand he places behind him. Iwaizumi jerks his chin and asks, “You gonna cash in that favor any time soon?”
“Hmm,” she muses, flicking the tip of her cigarette against the already ashy cardboard. “Think I’ll save it, for now.”
Tumblr media
an: PHEW this was certianly a lot. flexing my writing muscles so this might not be great. right now im planning three total chapters but idk i might end up writing more and dividing the story up differently. if you've made it this far pls let me know what u think im so extremely nervous/anxious lmafo
if you enjoy please leave a like, rb, comment or ask <3
taglist: @wyrcan @thechaosoflonging @publicbathroompanic @bedeater @rottingt1tz @rintarawr @deluluforcarlos55 @ahseyy @localgaytrainwreck @cherrypieyourface @baskin-robinhoods @polish-cereal @iheartamora @ferntv @eclecticeggknightpsychic @httpakkeiji @does-directions @pinkiscool @michivrse @causenessus @cannibalsrider @cherrypieyourface @kmwife @k8nicole @oikasenpai (fill out form linked in masterlist to be added)
74 notes · View notes
Text
Sponsored listings are a ripoff…for sellers
Tumblr media
Tonight (November 29), I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."
Tumblr media
Not all ads are created equally sleazy. The privacy harms from surveillance ads, though real, are often hard to pin down. But there's another kind of ad - or "ad" that picks your pocket every time you use an ecommerce site.
This is the "sponsored listing" ad, which allows merchants to bid to be among the top-ranked items in response to your searches - whether or not their products are a good match for your query. These aren't "ads" in the way that, say, a Facebook ad is an ad. These are more #payola, a form of bribery that's actually a crime (but not when Amazon does it):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola#U.S._investigations_and_aftermath
Amazon is the global champion of payola. It boasts of $31 billion in annual "ad" revenue. That's $31 billion that Amazon sellers have to recoup from you. But Amazon's use of "most favored nation" deals (which requires sellers to offer their lowest prices on Amazon) mean that you don't see those price-hikes because sellers raise their prices everywhere:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos
Forget Twitter: Amazon search is the poster-child for enshittification, in which Amazon locks you in (for example, with a year's shipping prepaid through Prime) and then you get recommended worse products while sellers make less money and Amazon pockets the difference.
Sellers who don't sell on Amazon are dead in the water, because most US households have Amazon Prime and overwhelmingly, Prime users start their search on Amazon, and, if they find the goods they're seeking. After all, they've prepaid for shipping.
So sellers suck it up and pay a 45-51% Amazon tax and pass it on to us - no matter where we shop. A lot of the junk fees sellers pay are related to Prime and other fulfillment services, but an increasing share of the Amazon tax comes from the need to pay to "advertise," because if they don't buy the top result for searches for their own products, their competitors' ads will push them right off the first page (those competitors spend money on advertising, rather than manufacturing quality).
There's a lot of YOLO/ROFLMAO in those ads: search for "cat beds" and 50% of the first five screens are ads - including ads for dog products, apparently bought by companies adopting a spray-and-pray approach to advertising. Someone selling a quality product still has to outbid all of those garbage sellers:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
This is at the root of Amazon's Pricing Paradox: while Amazon can defend itself against regulators by citing sellers whose prices are lower and/or whose quality is higher, it's nearly impossible for shoppers to get those deals. If you click the top result for your search, you will, on average, pay 29% more than you would if you found the best bargain on the site:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens
What's more, you can't fix this by simply sorting by price, or by reviews, or some mix of the two. The sleaziest sellers have mastered tricks like changing the number of units they sell so the total price is lower. For example, if batteries are normally sold $10 for a four-pack, a sleazy seller can offer batteries at $9 for three units. A lowest-to-highest price-sort will put this item ahead of a cheaper rival.
Researchers found that getting a good deal at Amazon requires that you make a multifactorial spreadsheet by laboriously copy/pasting multiple details from individual listing pages and then doing sorts that Amazon itself doesn't permit:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3645/
There's an exception to this: Amazon and Apple have a cozy, secret arrangement to exclude these "ads" from searches for Apple products. But if you're shopping for anything else, you're SOL:
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11
These payola markets are bad for buyers, and they cost sellers a lot of money, but are they at least good for sellers? A new study from three business-school researchers - Vibhanshu Abhishek, Jiaqi Shi and Mingyu Joo - shows that payola is a very bad deal for good sellers, too:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3896716
After doing a lot of impressive quantitative work, the authors conclude that for good sellers, showing up as a sponsored listing makes buyers trust their products less than if they floated to the top of the results "organically." This means that buying an ad makes your product less attractive than not buying an ad.
The exception is sellers who have bad products - products that wouldn't rise to the top of the results on their own merits. The study finds that if you buy your mediocre product's way to the top of the results, buyers trust it more than they would if they found it buried deep on page eleventy-million, to which its poor reviews, quality or price would normally banish it.
But of course, if you're one of those good sellers, you can't simply opt not to buy an ad, even though seeing it with the little "AD" marker in the thumbnail makes your product less attractive to shoppers. If you don't pay the danegeld, your product will be pushed down by the inferior products whose sellers are only too happy to pay ransom.
Tumblr media
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute
200 notes · View notes
captainbluewhale · 8 months
Text
#9S1923T ❞ THE LAMP.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
── ౨ৎ ‧˚ ft. miguel o'hara/wife!reader
synopsis: you wake up next to your husband, like usual—or so you thought.
・⸝⸝ mini-series (1/4), fluff, angst, there's a reason why fluff is first and angst is last, implied child loss, delusional character, no use of y/n
spider-verse | next
Tumblr media
You love days like these.
Just laying in bed together with your husband sleeping soundly behind you, big strong arms refusing to let go of your waist. You giggle at the way he nuzzles his head deeper into your shoulder, hair tickling the side of your neck. 
Arms stretched up—similarly to a cat’s—you turn to face your husband. You watch, a grin stretches across your face when he stirs from the sudden movement, thick brows scrunched up—relaxing only when he brings you closer, rolling you on top of him.
Holding in a snort, you trace your fingers along his chiselled and very handsome face, smiling softly as they tap light feathery touches across his cupid’s bow.
Contented, you sigh—nestling into your husband's arms, admiring little details that made him, him. 
Wiggling upwards, you place your hands on either side of his head, hovering over the hulk of a man below you.
You take a moment to run your eyes over his features, then lean down to spray soft kisses everywhere you could reach. His eyes, nose, cheeks, and right below his lower lip. 
Satisfied with the affection displayed, you reposition your arms to rest on his shoulders, moving to lay your head on his chest. 
Before you could do so, you were pulled up suddenly, the familiar touch of lips crashing  onto yours. 
Not giving you a chance to react, his lips part from yours, offering you a cheeky grin. He loves how flustered he makes you feel. You were just too cute not to tease. 
Your life is perfect.
He'd whisper confessions of love into your ear, his breath blowing the sensitive part of it causing you to giggle as butterflies erupte in your chest and stomach. 
"I love you," he says, over and over, never letting you for a second doubt or forget it. 
Before you could say it back, say that you loved him as much as he did to you, he blinked. And you were gone. 
The skies darkened, dampening his mood, the cold air kissing his skin, wrapped loosely in the empty sheets around him—Miguel's heart clenching painfully. 
You weren't there. You were never there to begin with. 
There was no waking up to quiet giggling,  there was no Gabriella jumping on the bed early in the morning, there was no you. 
Just a figment of his imagination, something to cling onto as he further subjected himself to madness. 
Because you were nothing but a dream.
If he got to see you one more time; he'd drown again, and again, and again. Sanity be damned, you were all he needed. Everything he breathed.
His fever dream.
Tumblr media
next
Credits: [divider/s] @/benkeibear, [editor/beta reader] @/nastygyal, [co-writer] @/y.0.me
Notes: I wrote this when I was depressed one morning on Instagram because it smelt like rain
231 notes · View notes