#I mean I say slow burn there are kisses in all three books but it is slow burn of mutual LOVE

[endless-ineffabilities]

Maroon (part two)

modern!Aemond Targaryen x f!reader

And I wake with your memory over me

That's a real fucking legacy to leave

A series loosely based on the song Maroon of off Midnights by Taylor Swift ▪︎ read more Daemon & Aemond midnights imagines here: masterlist

series list: part one - part two - part three -

themes/warnings: fluff, angst, slow burn, mutual pining, slight love triangle, language, accident/severe injury (towards the end)

word count: 7.3k

a/n: just a little explanation on their ages, since they are aged up for this series. Jace, the reader, Helaena and Aemond are in their mid-twenties. Alys is in her mid-thirties. Luke is around 21/22. Feel free to adjust if you wish.

Also, the photo I used is of Tom Bennett, as I felt the need to use a modernized look for Aemond, but nevertheless, he is still Aemond - silver haired, sullen, and soon enough, sapphire-eyed. If my photo editing skills are up to par, then I would have edited shoulder-length (yup, for this story) silver hair and modern clothes on our Aemond, but alas...

happy reading, beautiful people. 🖤

The morning after their interrupted kiss, the reader learns more about Aemond's apparent lover. She grows discouraged with striking up a romance with him, but he is determined to change her mind.

There is a curious knot in your stomach when you wake, remembering the night before. Aemond had leaned in close, so close, that you feel as if his scent still surrounds you.

The deep green walls of his bedroom are still burned into your eyes. From then on, there is no way that this particular shade of green won’t bring you back to that night. With him.

With Aemond. The one who has flooded your thoughts for almost a year now. The object of your desire.

Although, it seems… that he might already have his own object of desire.

Why did Alys visit him so late last night? You want to feign innocence, and remain oblivious to any and all lewd possibilities. Maybe she’s just a dear friend, who needed some company. Perhaps to have a drink, or to borrow a book? Or perhaps she has had some romantic trouble earlier last evening, and needed to vent her heart out to Aemond, who is nothing if not an attentive listener.

Well, shit. You slam your palm to your forehead as you allow reality to set in. You can continue to hope, but deep down, you know that Alys is not just a friend to Aemond.

This might be one of the very few instances wherein tabloid fodder has some truth to it. Dragonstone heir and model socialite spotted leaving Claridge’s Hotel in London after a wild night out.

That was just one of the several headlines that caught your eye, and immediately chose to ignore. You don’t even remember how long ago that was, but it seems as if their story is yet to reach its end.

If, indeed, it ever will.

But why was he going to kiss me? I mean, he was, wasn’t he?

You turn to the side, and notice that you’re all alone in bed. Helaena always wakes up much earlier, preferring to be awake as the sun rises, which leaves her ample time to go about her extensive morning routine.

Before you allow your rampant thoughts to get the better of you, you finally get up, wiping sleep from your eyes, and stumble to her bathroom. As you study your reflection is the mirror, one thing springs to your mind. What is going to happen if you meet Aemond downstairs? Granted, it is rare for the whole family to convene early during weekdays, but he did say he will meet you in the morning.

You take your sweet time getting ready, delaying the inevitable, before finally heading downstairs.

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

The clock above an alcove in the kitchen reads 8:17. The smell of pancakes waft through the air, calming your senses. Breakfast food is always a good idea.

Helaena comes into view, stacking the last pancakes on a plate.

“Hey, sleepyhead. Nice face.” She jokes, smiling in her carefree way.

“What about it?” You scrunch your nose in response, picking off a blueberry from a glass bowl on the kitchen counter.

“Rough night?” She turns off the induction stove, having finished, and you help her carry the dishes to the dining table.

Talia, their housekeeper, walks in the kitchen. A worried look is etched on her face. “Ma’am, are you sure there isn’t anything I can do for you? I can cook you something else, or fetch something from the store? Your mother says - ”

“Everything’s fine, Talia.” Helaena assures her. She has never really indulged having a maid to clean up after her. One thing about Helaena, she’s very likely the most simple one out of the family, not bothering with the usual trappings of luxury, and that includes having a maid at her every beck and call. Helaena only asks for help when she needs it, and as it stands, she’s perfectly capable of cooking up a damn good breakfast. “Why don’t you attend to yourself this morning?”

“A-attend to myself, ma’am?” Talia asks.

“Yes,” Helaena shoots a smile at you conspiratorially, “Talia, go out and take a walk, or watch a movie, or get a massage. Whatever you want, it’s on us. The rest of the family are either busy working, hungover somewhere, or out of town, anyway. We’ll be fine for today.”

Talia smiles brightly in appreciation. “Very well then. Thank you, ma’am. Please do call me if you need anything at all.”

Helaena nods her head once. Talia makes a move to leave, but she seems to recall something.

“Oh, uh, Miss Y/n?” She addresses you this time. “Sir Aemond did say that he’s very sorry that he isn’t able to see you this morning. He left very early, quite in a rush. There must have been something very pressing at work.”

“Oh.” You could not hide the disappointment in your voice. Or was it relief? “Aemond’s not here?”

“He did say he would call you, though, as soon as he can.”

Aemond isn’t here. “Right. Well, thanks for letting me know, Talia.”You smile at her genuinely, while feeling slightly empty inside from the notion of Aemond’s absence. There was no reason to be excited or nervous, after all. A shame, really. “And please, call me Y/n.”

“Of course, Y/n. And, it’s not a problem. Sir Aemond did seem quite distressed about having to leave. I’m sure he’d be annoyed with me if I don’t let you know.”

“Oh, that’s for sure.” Helaena rolls her eyes, smiling at you. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say that my brother’s kinda infatuated with you.”

Before a warmth can develop in your chest from what Helaena claims, another person walks in the kitchen. A long-legged, impossibly unblemished figure that is Alys Rivers.

Talia straightens, not as comfortable around Alys as she is with you and Helaena. She takes that as her cue to leave. She politely addresses each of you in turn. “Have a lovely morning, Ma’am. Y/n. Miss Alys.” Her tone bristles at the last name.

“Sooo,” Alys saunters over to the table, and daintily plops down on the seat opposite you and Helaena, “good morning, girls. You don’t mind if I join you for breakfast, do you?” She pops a piece of fruit in her mouth before you could respond.

“Not at all, Alys.” Helaena sighs. “It would be nice to finally speak to my brother’s…” She trails off, one eyebrow raising slyly. “…friend.”

Alys simply laughs it off, unfazed. “That’s nice of you, Helaena, but you don’t need to watch your words around me. I know that Aemond has never clearly stated what we are yet. But we are something, that much I’m sure of.” Her gaze trails over to you. “Nice sweater. You know, it looks a lot like my Aemond’s.”

My Aemond’s. God help me. “Oh, uhm,” you balk, not wanting to overstep the line with something that is completely none of your business, as far as you’re concerned, “he lent it to me last night. Clumsy ol’ me apparently can’t handle too much red wine. Literally and figuratively.”

You smile at Alys placatingly, but you’re not sure what for. Nothing happened last night, right? Nothing at all.

“Well, it looks good on you, darling.” She winks at you. The more she speaks, the more you realize how self-assured she is. Your first meeting, you’re wearing her… boyfriend’s…. sweater, and she’s only quick to accept your explanation. It’s as if she’s truly certain that no one can steal Aemond away from her.

“Thank you.” You awkwardly say, taking a sip of your coffee.

“So, Alys,” Helaena says, “tell us more about yourself. Surely we cannot just believe everything the gossip blogs say about you.”

“Right, well. I’m aware that I do have a certain image, but that’s all it is. An image. A kind of persona. It makes it easier to draw a line between my job and my personal life. I do enjoy the luxurious and fast-paced lifestyle that modelling brings, but that’s not everything. I am… more than that.”

Her statements catch you by surprise, slightly. You knew more than just to take her reputation at face value, but it’s different now. Aemond’s attraction to her might run deeper than you had hoped.

“I think it’s right that you do whatever you feel is best for you.” You find yourself genuinely saying, empathizing with how she feels. “I can’t claim to know exactly what it’s like, being in the public eye like that, but it must be hard. You should protect yourself, and if keeping up a kind of mask is something that works, then…” You purse your lips, and tilt your head, a show of your approval.

“Solidarity, sister.” Alys smiles at you, one which you return. “I mean, thanks for not judging me right away. Most people do.”

The rest of the morning is spent in a way you never would have expected to enjoy, but you do. Alys turns out to be more friendly than she seems, and it’s plain to see that she truly cares for Aemond. She did share her insecurities when it comes to him, and how he has set implicit boundaries between them.

Whenever she gets too close, he’s only quick to pull away. Aemond has predictably not made it clear what they are, and has never protested when Alys goes on dates with other people. Although she wishes that he would.

Each time Alys hints at how Aemond means to her makes you feel guilty. You know you want him, but she has been in the picture much longer than you. Do you even have a chance? Do you want one?

Eventually, Alys receives a call, which she explains is from her disgruntled manager, telling her that the call time for her photoshoot is nearing. She excuses herself, sashaying confidently out of the apartment. You can’t help but feel small, and the fact that you find her a tad intimidating is the least of your worries.

Aemond seems farther away from you, if he ever was close. Helaena notices your lowered spirits, and she spends the rest of the morning helping you get your mind off things.

But no movie, series, or copious amount of baked goods proves effective.

Despite your best efforts, Aemond Targaryen has taken refuge in your mind. And perhaps, your heart. But you would never admit that too soon.

Especially not now.

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

The weekend is a welcome respite from your busy university schedule. Although you have to work a full shift at a local bookstore, you wouldn’t complain about it. It’s a calm and decent enough part-time job, and while it doesn’t pay much, you’re more than happy to be surrounded by books all day.

You rush into the bookstore, already half an hour late. Your bus was delayed for too long, and you did not even get to pick up your usual coffee on the way.

“Mel?” You call out to the owner. She’s always the first to come in, and open up shop. You rub your boots on the welcome mat, and make your way around the tall bookshelves. You spot her at the counter, arranging yesterday’s receipts into a folder.

“Good morning.” She greets you with her usual warm smile. “Don’t even worry about it, y/n.” She reassures you in time, already knowing you would apologize profusely for being late.

You breathe a sigh of relief, dropping your bag behind the counter. “I’ll just stay a bit later after closing. Help clean up everything.”

“No need.” She places a hand on your shoulder, and whispers close. “By the way, you have a visitor.”

“A visitor?”

“A handsome one, might I add. He’s sitting in the corner desk by the Classics section. I found him waiting outside so early. Poor kid said he wanted to be here as soon as the shop opened, and I don’t know about you, but I hardly believe it is because of his raging love for literature.”

“Oh, I see.” You stand dumbfounded, a new sense of nervousness settling over you. That handsome visitor can only be Aemond, can it?

“Go on, honey. Take your time. It’s not like the shop gets particularly busy this early.”

You slowly walk deeper into the shop, past the new releases, the sci-fi section, and then the romance.

And sure enough, there he sits.

His shoulder-length silver hair is in its usual half-up style, and his expensive black coat is draped on the back of his seat. His left hand holds a book on the table, while the other props up his face, his index finger absentmindedly running over his lips, deep in thought.

Your footsteps carry no sound, so he does not notice as you walk closer. You almost don’t want to bother him, as he looks so serene. Faint sunlight from an awning window warms the scene, casting a glow over him. Beautiful.

You find yourself leaning against a bookshelf, studying him, flashes of that night running through your head. He did leave you a message, explaining why he had to leave the morning after. You were not sure what to respond with, apart from “No problem. See you soon.”

Impersonal. Direct. Safe. Getting to know his lover that morning was a sort of wake-up call. You aren’t sure whether you’re ready to dive in deeper into the enigma that he poses. So you decided to leave it at that.

But it clearly was not enough for him, as evidenced by numerous subsequent missed calls.

His head turns, languidly, finally sensing your presence. When your eyes meet, a soft smile forms on his lips.

“Hello, darling.”

Shit. Two simple words and you’re all but ready to let go of any uncertainty you might have about him, then and there.

“Aemond,” you can’t help but smile in return, “to what do I owe this visit?”

He closes his book and sets it down on the table. He turns his body towards you, still seated, leaning back to take you in.

“Would you believe me if I said that I missed you?” He says smoothly, so sure of himself. He stresses, “I miss you.”

“It’s only been days since I last saw you, Aemond.” You roll your eyes in a poor attempt to hide the way you grow flustered.

“Feels like forever.” He stands, walking over to the bookshelf you’re leaning on, making a show of perusing the titles. “You have not answered my calls, darling. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you’re ignoring me.” He steps closer to you, mirroring your position.

“I was busy.” You respond quickly with a defensive tone. And you were, but not busy enough to avoid staring at your phone every time his name blinks on the screen, waiting for his call to drop.

“Hmm. I was hoping we could have a moment alone. To… talk,” His eyes rake your face, landing on your lips, “or perhaps, more?”

“More? Getting ahead of yourself, Aemond?” You look down, unable to meet his heated gaze.

“I really enjoyed our night together, and I was hoping we could have some more time to ourselves.”

“I’m sure we will. The next time Hel invites me over, or you guys throw a party…” You trail off, raising your head to look at him again, and sure enough, he continues to watch every change in your expression.

“How about now? Could I steal you away for an hour or two? I’m sure Melanie wouldn’t mind.”

“Already on first-name basis with my boss. Fast work, Aemond.”

“She’s a sweet woman. Nurturing. I’m glad you have someone like her as your supervisor.” His lips quirk in amusement.

“Really…” you raise your eyebrows.

“Mhmm. If she was unfair or unpleasant to you in any way, I would not hesitate to have someone better appointed in her stead.” He explains smugly.

“It’s an independent bookstore, Aemond, and not one of the hundred businesses your great empire owns. You wouldn’t have the jurisdiction.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” He lowers his face nearer to yours, his breath fanning your face. He continues, “I don’t believe you understand how much I would be willing to do for you.”

His proximity makes you short of breath, so you take a step back, wanting to clear your head. A frown materializes on his face, but it disappears just as quick as it arrived. He is determined to make himself heard.

“I have known you for a good part of a year now, y/n. And… my admiration for you has only blossomed as time passed. When we had a moment to ourselves that night, it just felt… right.”

“Aemond… ”

“I’m inclined to assume that you feel the same way. At least, I hope.”

Your throat feels dry all of a sudden, and you struggle to match his unabashed sincerity. “I’m not sure where this will lead. What you expect this to be. You already have… someone… ”

“Someone?” Props to him for seeming genuinely clueless as to who you’re referring to.

“I met her the morning after. Alys. She’s actually quite lovely.”

“It’s not what you think.” He finally looks away, his mood changed with the mention of Alys.

You sigh flatly, "That is exactly what someone involved would say. Look, I have no interest in ruining anyone's relationship - "

"I am not in a relationship - "

"But there is something between you and Alys, isn't there?"

"We aren't together. I have made this clear to her, time and again." He paces at the aisle, running his hand over the books. "Though I admit, in the times when I need... company... she's the one I have become accustomed to calling."

"Company." You almost roll your eyes at his casual implication.

"Hmm." His lips curl in distaste. "It does not come easy for me to connect with anyone. Even for a purpose as unseemly as that."

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"I know, I just... hope that you don't think any less of me."

"Aemond," you take a step forward, "you're free to want... company with whomever you want. So is Alys. But I can't get into this, whatever this is, with you if I will have to share you with anyone else."

"You won't. That already is far from the truth, darling. I have not even considered anyone else for a while now."

"But Alys - "

"I did not invite her over that night. I hadn't even seen her in weeks. Nothing happened after you left my bedroom."

"She cares about you. A lot."

"I know," he shakes his head slightly, "and I care about her, too. But it never became..." He bows his head, almost sheepishly. "... it's not... I don't love her."

Your gaze softens as you watch the torment in his expression. It becomes clear that Aemond does not throw around the word love without care. He sounds cautious. Nervous, almost.

His eyes find yours suddenly, the intensity behind them catching you by surprise.

"But you..." His brows furrow in frustration. He takes a deep breath, before repeating, almost accusingly, "You."

Suddenly, he pulls you close by the waist. His violet eyes keep you in place, holding you dear.

You take each other in with hungry eyes. His every little movement, every twitch, catches your attention. The way his lips purse, the way he swallows nervously. A stray strand of silver hair has fallen in front of his face, and you unconsciously reach up for it, your hand freezing mid-air when you realize what you're doing.

His hand comes up to caress yours, and slowly, he presses a soft kiss to your palm.

A soft moan nearly escapes your lips at how soft the gesture is. How gentle it feels. How right.

"I want you." He says, still holding your hand.

The two of you stand, mere inches away from one another.

Until a startled voice pierces the atmosphere, destroying the mood. "Shit, excuse me."

A boy stands in the middle of the aisle, a book in his hand. The day's first customer. He smiles sheepishly, pointing to the section you and Aemond have conveniently blocked, "Sorry, uh, I need to check out some of those."

You quickly step away from the shelf, and from Aemond. "Oh, excuse us. Please go right ahead." You wave him through.

Aemond does not move, his eyes irately landing on the boy. He is plainly displeased at the intrusion, not bothering to hide it. Spoiled, rich baby.

"Aemond, move over here." You address him, pulling at his hand. That gets his attention.

He does not let go of your hand, and directs you to the next aisle. But the haze has subsided for you. Or at least, it has to, for now.

"I have to work." You mumble. The words sound so dull after everything that has been said.

"Alright. I'll wait here."

"Pardon?"

"I'll wait here until you can leave with me for a little while."

Your mouth parts in frustration, confusion, or is it awe? You no longer know for sure. This day is certainly shaping up to be more eventful than you are prepared for.

"Aemond," you try to implore gently, "my first break is in four hours. Surely, you won't just wait here until then."

"Why ever not?" He looks amused at your growing incredulity. "I've got time to kill. Besides, I've got all these books to keep me busy."

"You would wait for me for four hours, and then what?"

"Then, I suppose, I'll take you out for lunch." His thumb continues to draw circles on the back of your hand, which almost escapes your notice. It felt so normal, just as if he has held your hand a thousand times before.

His hand reaches up to stroke your cheekbone, before tilting your head up at him. "Please say yes, darling."

Your heart races, even without its usual helping of caffeine. Looking at Aemond, you think that your break cannot come soon enough.

"Okay."

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

For the next four hours, Aemond keeps his word and waits.

He moves to a table within eyeshot of the counter where you're working. It is clear that he is watching you, glancing at you from time to time and throwing a smirk your way.

You struggle to keep up appearances, cordially greeting customers and ringing in their purchases. You fight the temptation to walk over to Aemond, nudge his face towards his book, and tell him to quit staring at you like that.

His presence makes you infinitely more self-aware, and you try not to watch your every move, but you do anyway.

Aemond seems content to wait in silence, poring over the pages of his novel, until someone in particular walks in the store.

“I’m sorry, miss, I must be in the wrong place. My good friend Y/n promised that this would be the best bookstore in the city.” A familiar voice says. “Seems cozy, sure, but far from the best, wouldn’t you say?”

You look up at the new arrival, whom you immediately recognize. Aemond visibly straightens in his corner, noticing him as well.

“Jace!” You exclaim brightly, reaching over the counter to give him a hug.

Jacaerys chuckles deeply, and you can't help but feel warm at the sound. The sound of his laughter is something you love about him, genuine and free.

"Somebody missed me." His voice is muffled against your hair, and his arms wrap around you tightly.

"Course I did." You move to stand in front of him. "Back from Pentos so soon?"

"Yes, I finished my course early. I'm just that smart, as you well know." He taps the side of his head smugly.

"Ha-ha." You playfully punch his shoulder.

"Nephew." Aemond greets, interrupting your little reunion. "It's been a while."

"Aemond," Jace turns around to face him, "I didn't notice you, dear uncle. You look well."

"As do you." Aemond replies stoically. His hands are neatly kept behind his back, and he watches you and Jacaerys with keen eyes. "I was not aware that you and Y/n are so close."

You know that Aemond does not have the best relationship with his half-sister Rhaenyra's children. At first, you could not understand why. Jace and his siblings are among the kindest boys you've met. Luke is a bit roguish, but that is part of his charm.

But that was before Helaena explained to you how Aemond must have felt neglected growing up, always in the shadow of his nephews, who are much favoured by his own father Viserys. Helaena learned not to mind, telling you how she has found peace with her own self and her passions. She is aware that Viserys loves Rhaenyra above everyone else, and by extension, Rhaenyra's children. His marriage to their mother Alicent was borne out of necessity, not love.

And she only hinted at it, but apparently, Aemond was also bullied by the younger boys when they were children. Of course, that was long ago, but some scars never fully heal.

"We're good friends, Aemond." Jace responds, putting one arm over your shoulders, a movement that makes Aemond's lips curl in distaste. "Met her through Hel, of course, and I just couldn't get enough of this little rascal." He squeezes your shoulders, pulling you closer, making you wrap an arm around his waist.

"You're the rascal, leaving me for nearly half a year like that." You jest, matching his smile.

"Well, I'm back now, aren't I?" He says, then he turns back to his uncle, "What are you doing here, by the way? Just browsing for a new read?"

"No," Aemond loosens his stance a bit, looking at you, "I'm actually waiting to take Y/n out on a date."

A date? Is that what I agreed to?

"To lunch." You clarify, meeting his gaze.

"A lunch date." Aemond simply shrugs, deeming the matter settled.

"Uh-huh." Jace looks between the two of you, growing amused. "Listen, uncle, could you give me just a few minutes with Y/n. Then, I promise, she's all yours."

Aemond stands still for a few seconds, deliberating whether he should leave you with Jace. The silence is utterly deafening, so you say, "Aemond. I'll be with you in a bit. We can head out soon."

"Hmm." He relents, then stalks back to his table, his silver hair gently flowing behind his neck.

Jace watches Aemond walk away with a weird look on his face, and you already know what's coming next.

"Y/n?" Jace smirks at you. "What is going on?"

"He's... here for me."

"Worked your magic on him, I see? I remember you having a crush on him and all..."

"Alright, pipe down about it." Your face becomes flushed, and you catch Aemond's eye in the corner. "I didn't even do anything. He sought me out."

"Riiiight," Jace says, "and this is what you want?"

You shrug, "I do like him. You know this."

Jace studies your expression, seeing sincerity but also a tinge of something else. Doubt, perhaps? "Just be careful, alright? My uncle can be a little... unpredictable."

"He's... I mean, he actually seems a lot better than I expected. It's a shame you two aren't close."

"Yes, well, some things can't be helped." Jace's eyebrows furrow in thought. "What about that model that he's rumoured to be seeing? He can't keep messing around with her, if he wants you, y/n."

"Oh, I even met her, actually. She's nice. But Aemond says that they're apparently... over. Or... not working out. You know, I'm not sure." You shake your head, not wanting to think about it any further. It isn't really a matter that's been resolved yet.

"Okay, just be careful, alright? You're too good for him, y/n."

"Don't worry about me, Jace." You smile, looping your arm with his as you lean against the counter. "How's the family? How are Luke and Joffrey?"

"Well, Luke is Luke. You know. Gets into a fair share of trouble, what with his penchant for racing cars and all. Bloody well gives mum a heart attack each time he has to do a competition. I think he's coming back tomorrow from some race in Casterly Rock."

"That's our Luke." You sigh fondly.

"And Joff's as sweet as ever. Nearly done with middle school, that one. You're invited to his finishing ceremony, of course."

You smirk at his assurance, "I think Joff should be the one to invite me, no?"

Jace moves to stand in front of you again. "Doesn't matter. I'm the big brother, I say you're in."

He cages you in, with each of his hands on the counter. You then press your forehead against his chest, and he rests his chin atop your head. A position that the two of you have gotten so used to doing. Jace is truly like a brother to you, and he loves you like his actual sister in turn.

"Mmm, I did miss this." You breathe.

Aemond's fist bunches on the table, his book long-forgotten. You and Jacaerys were only friends, right? So why did he have to feel so uneasy?

He stands, not able to watch the scene any longer, and walks over to claim what he thinks should be his.

"Let's go." Aemond's voice pierces the silence, catching you by surprise. You move away from Jace, and throw him a sheepish smile, as if to apologize for Aemond's behaviour.

“I guess that’s my cue to leave.” Jace’s arm drops from your sides, and he takes a step back to keep Aemond’s envy from worsening.

“Won’t you join us for lunch?” You ask Jace. One glance at Aemond, and it’s plain to see that he’s not particularly fond of that idea.

“Nah, you two go ahead. I’ve got some matters to attend to.” Jace is quick to respond. Whether he’s telling the truth, or he just wants to appease Aemond, you remind yourself to ask him about it later.

“Nice seeing you, uncle.” Jace says to Aemond, as he heads for the door.

His hand is already at the doorknob, when he recalls something. He calls out to you, “Y/n, you will be coming to the Dragonstone ball, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know yet.” You reply. The annual Dragonstone ball is a grand event held by the Targaryens, and almost anyone of repute is sure to be invited. Celebrities, philanthropists, academics. You vaguely recall seeing last year’s ball everywhere in the news. That must have been around the time you first met Helaena, your friendship quickly developing soon after.

“Well if you are, would you - ” Jace begins to say, but he is immediately interrupted by Aemond.

“She’ll be coming with me.” Aemond declares.

“I am?” You say, startled, as you pick up your bag from behind the counter.

“Mmm. You are, darling.”

What the hell?

“See you around, y/n.” Jace relents, taking note of the heightened tension in the room.  

As soon as he’s gone, you address the silver-haired scoundrel who was quick to make a decision for you, much to your annoyance. “Listen, sweetheart,” you pat him on the chest, and head for the door, expecting him to follow suit, “it’s not going to be that easy.”

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

The two of you sit in the secluded veranda of a Valyrian restaurant that, unsurprisingly, is owned by the Targaryens. Beautifully gilded tables are nestled in a garden, and Aemond had led you to their best section under an archway. The restaurant had been empty when you arrived, with all the staff standing ready to usher you inside. You suspect that Aemond went ahead and purposefully reserved the entire place for this very afternoon, but you let it slide.

“When is the Dragonstone ball?” you ask, after finishing most of your meal.

“I’d say in around two months. My mother is overseeing everything, as usual, so it’s really all up to her.”

“And,” you lean back, smiling wryly, “apparently, I am going with you?”

Aemond smirks, “Why wouldn’t you?”

You scoff. The ‘Prince of the city’ sure has a pair on him. “I don’t know, Aemond. Maybe because you did not really ask me to come with you.”

His smirk does not fade. He leans forward, taking your hand from across the table, his fingers tracing your skin. Your prideful facade is at risk of breaking, and you wish to simply hold his hand back lovingly.

But you keep a hold of yourself, waiting.

“Darling,” the corner of his lips turn up in amusement, most likely at your rapidly changing expression, “would you do me the honour of being my partner…” He deliberately pauses, taking delight in how your eyes widen, “… to the Dragonstone ball?”

Oh, you little shit. “Mmm,” you swallow, attempting to steel your nerves. Aemond patiently waits for your response, the damage already done. For a split second, he gets the urge to reach for your knee underneath the table.

Perhaps to comfort you. Or solely for his pleasure, adding to your already fluttering heartbeat. Or both.

“Okay,” you clear your throat, “I will go with you. Thank you for asking.”

Aemond smiles brightly, the dimples on his cheeks deepening. “I’m glad, darling.”

Something crosses your mind, and before you can push it down, curiosity gets the better of you. You find yourself asking, “By the way, who did you go with last year?”

His face falls, “You probably already know. Alys.”

“Of course,” you nod, “and the year before that? Her as well?”

“Y/n,” he says sternly, “that’s not of any importance.”

“Won’t she be expecting to go with you again this year?” You ask.

He simply shrugs, “She may have mentioned something recently to that effect.”

“Aemond - ”

“Look, the main reason why I brought her to previous balls was because I’ve always been expected to take a date. It’s just the proper thing to do, to keep up appearances, though I don’t really agree with it. If I were to bring someone, I don’t want to do it out of obligation. And I can finally do that now, with you. I want to be with you, and take you as my partner for the ball.”

How can I argue with that? It’s almost impossible, when his violet eyes blaze at me in the way that they always do.

“I just,” you look away, choosing to admire the way the vines wrap themselves around the archway, to distract yourself from Aemond’s heated gaze, “I don’t want her to feel like she’s being slighted in any way. I don't want her to feel like I’m… stealing you away… or something.”

Aemond smiles, “By all means, steal me away, darling.”

“I’m being serious.” You attempt a stern tone, but it falls flat as soon as you see his smile.

“I was never hers to keep. You, however…”

“What?”

“You’re more than welcome to call me yours, if you wish.”

“Aemond.” You want to scold him for being so forward, not when there are some things that still need to be resolved. But you also want to trust him, to trust in whatever it is the two of you are becoming.

You realize you are already in too deep. How? The possibility of ever losing him is enough to fill your stomach with dread. If Aemond will be yours, then he will also be yours to lose.

And you don’t know what you will do if that happens.

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

The next two weeks pass by in relative bliss. Aemond makes an effort to see you almost every day, visiting you in the bookstore or meeting you after your lectures. You learn more about him in this time, than in the past year you’ve known him. The two of you have always admired each other from afar, but now that Aemond has begun to completely open up to you, it’s as if you’ve known him your whole life.

It's as if he’s one of the pillars holding everything together around you. A comfortable constant. As well as a conflagration, casting his radiance over everything. Aemond is like a magnet, a desirable paradox drawing everyone to him. The amount of looks you get from your fellow students whenever Aemond picks you up from university made you uneasy at first, but you’ve learned to find the humour in it.

Aemond’s smug smirk at their reaction each time he takes your hand, stealing you away, is surely enough to make you feel giddy inside.

Everything seemed too good to be true, and perhaps it was.

The abrupt end to this brief golden period began one evening, as you and Helaena are in her bedroom, perusing through countless gown designs online to wear for the Dragonstone ball.

Aemond had been away on business to a nearby city, and you eagerly await his return. Then a sharp ringing echoes throughout the room, coming from Helaena’s phone, a sound that makes you anxious though you cannot pinpoint why in the moment.

She glances at the screen, before quickly turning to you. “It’s my father.”

“Oh, answer it then.”

“That’s strange,” her face contorts in confusion, “he almost never calls.”

Helaena excuses herself, walking over to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Her reflection on the glass is only faintly visible to you, and you struggle to make anything out of the muffled conversation.

A long, torturous minute passes before the call finishes. When Helaena turns to face you, her face is white as a sheet.

You stand, and rush over to her side. “Hel? What is it?”

At your touch, something snaps in her, and she becomes frantic. “It’s… it’s my brother… it’s Aemond… ” She quickly scrambles around the room, putting on her coat and shoes.

“Aemond?” You feel nauseous with worry. “What happened, Hel?”

“I have to get to the hospital. Aemond and Luke got into an accident.”

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

An entire week passes before you hear from any of them. Helaena had rushed off alone to the hospital that night, and while you were desperate to come along and see Aemond, she explained that her parents preferred that only family came to visit.

You understood. Or at least, you tried to. You went home feeling weak all over, and it only worsened when you saw that the accident was already plastered all over the news.

It was reported that Aemond and Lucerys were each driving their cars at dangerous speeds, when one of them must have collided with the other, crashing onto the freeway. It was alleged that Aemond’s car had flipped over multiple times before finally landing down a hill. The extent of their injuries are not made public, probably at the authority of Viserys himself, but the masses have been quick to speculate.

Jace calls you while you are staying home one afternoon, having opted out of attending all your lectures for the day. For the past few days, actually.

“Hey, you,” He greets softly, knowing how you must already be reeling with stress. “Holding up okay?”

“Me? What about you, Jace? How is everyone? How is Luke? Aemond? Fuck, I haven’t heard from anyone.”

He breathes, “We’re fine, y/n. Luke just has a broken leg, but it should heal fine. He does have to put up with a cast for several weeks, though.”

Okay. Luke is alright. But you still can’t let out a sigh of relief, not until…

“What about Aemond?” You ask nervously.

“That’s… another thing.”

“Please just tell me, Jace.”

“Are you home? I’m actually nearby. We should maybe discuss this in person.” He offers.

And only half an hour later, he is standing at your door. You quickly envelop him in a tight hug, and he breathes deeply, feeling comforted by your presence.

Once the two of you are settled on your couch, cups of warm tea held between each of your hands, you begin talking.

“Aemond is fine. For the most part.” He says. “He’s alive and well, but he’s suffered an injury.”

“What injury?”

“He doesn’t want anyone to know, Y/n. At least, not just yet.”

You pause, unsure if you want to press further. You do want to know, but you also want to respect Aemond’s privacy. Besides, if he wanted you to know, he would tell you himself, wouldn’t he?

“I understand,” you relent, sinking into the couch, “I’m just glad they’re okay.”

Jace notices your distress, and reaches for you, “Come here.”

The embrace offers a momentary respite. Your head drops down on his shoulder, and you both enjoy the silence that follows.

“One thing’s for sure,” Jace says after a while, “There’s no way in hell that mum is letting Luke drive again. At least not for a long, long fucking time.”

You smile at that, feeling light for the first time in a while.

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

The Dragonstone ball is once again making its rounds in the media, and this year, it is reported to have been delayed for two more months, allowing the dust to settle over the terrible accident that befell two of the Targaryen heirs.

Just a week after you learn about this piece of news, you finally hear from Aemond.

Your heart skips a beat when his name flashes on the screen, and you pick up your phone with a slightly trembling hand. You press the green button, and lift the phone to one ear.

Nothing. But then, you hear soft breathing at the other end. It’s a silly notion, but you think you recognize those breaths to be his. It can only be him.

“Aemond, I know you’re there.” You say, biting your lip in anticipation.

“Dar…” he cuts himself off, “Y/n. I’m alright, I apologize for only calling you now.”

Coldness seeps in your bones when you notice how he corrected himself. Why?

“It’s alright, Aemond. I’m just relieved that you’re fine. I was so worried, you have no idea.”

The sound of your voice tugs at his heart, one which he sorely missed. He swallows, struggling to bring himself to say what he means to. “I need to tell you something. About the ball… I’ve decided that I should take Alys instead. She was already expecting that she is to be my date, and I just think that it’s rude if I…”

“That’s fine.” You say, far too quickly, not believing your own words. “I… I did consider that. You should take her.”

“Darling,” Aemond finally says, unable to hold back, “I…”

“It’s okay,” you attempt to comfort him, but it’s mostly for your own sake, “I completely understand.”

He takes a deep breath. As he envisions how you must look on the other line, he instantly feels a pang of regret.

“I’ll… I’ll see you around, yeah?” You say, wanting to be done with this damned call.

“Hmm. I’ll see you, darling.”

You throw your phone down on your desk. Feeling numb all over, you make your way to the kitchen, and quickly take a bottle of red bottle from the cabinet. You make quick work of the cork, and pour yourself a hefty amount.

You slosh the liquid around your glass, staring at that familiar shade of maroon.

And sure enough, it brings you back to that night on their balcony.

“For fuck’s sake.” You whisper to yourself. Closing your eyes, you see him.

What happened, Aemond? Have I already lost you?

“How could I?” You say bitterly. “When he was never mine?”

The part two preview that I posted, has been relegated to part three, after much editing. It's meant to be a steamy, little scene that unfolds in the Dragonstone ball.

And I had to work in the tragic injury that Aemond suffers in a way that might be suited to this modern setting. It's just hard for me to picture child on child violence happening here, with one of them taking a brutal dagger to the eye. At least not in this world, which is meant to resemble ours 😂

Oohh and thoughts on Jace? I actually don't intend him to be a love interest for the reader, and more so a genuine friend. But Aemond doesn't need to know that, does he? He surely won't believe it in the events at follow... 😏

Taglist for this series is still open (for now) so comment below if you wish to be added. 🤍

Series taglist: @caught-in-the-afterglow @aemondtargaryensrider @punggo66 @dollfaceyourfear @candypurplebutterfly @moonmaiden1996 @bdpst-massacre @mxrgodsstuff @lolitaisreal @blue-serendipity @depressedperson88 @melsunshine @thejanecampaign @fxngsfxgxrty @padfooteyes @msmarvel-19 @noxytopy @louschan @aemondssuit @virginslut08 @tempo-rary-fix @lauraneedstochill @julczimozart @booknerd2004 @sarcasticfangirl @witchyvik @julieeba @pyjama-shorts @bellaisasleep @account3168 @this-is-a-bad-idea @zillahvathek @thincrusttheworks @krispold @yougotthatlove @raging-panda @fleetingly-artistic @its-hopes-world @ririrare @throughgoeshamilton @polireader @katsav17 @minttea07

#house of the dragon #aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond targaryen x reader #ewan mitchell #midnights #maroon #modern!aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen x female reader

[stanningstanhd]

THIS is The Most Beautiful Bucky Smut scene I have EVER read in my life.

I’ll link it below for you guys, but stop what you are doing right now and read this.

There are fics that deserve more recognition and then there are stories like the one I just read. I wanted to spread the word to everyone about the most amazing, beautiful, raw, stunning, and alluring sex scene of any Bucky Barnes fanfiction I’ve ever read. Putting Nicholas Sparks, that one fic Possessed, to SHAME.

Like, seriously.

Stop what you are doing right now, and listen to this rant I’m about to go on. This is a well deserved rant.

I recently came across this fic called Take It Back by @allandoflimbo . The fic itself is probably the most underrated piece of art I’ve ever come across on here. To the point where after I read it it blew my mind that some cheaters only had a few hundreds likes, no comments, and some chapters not even in the hundreds, because when I tell you this story is BEAUTIFUL. I mean it with all my heart and soul.

You’ve probably get told a lot by other people go read this fic you’ll love it go read that one and you probably save them for later, but this is a story you do not save for later.

I am telling you right now, if you are reading this post, go goddamn read this heart wrenching and beautiful piece of art. DO IT!

Back to my purpose with this post…this story has a love scene in it. A smut scene. Sex scene, or what ever you prefer to call it. It’s in the core part of this book and so beautifully and perfectly placed. Even reading it alone is just…the amount of emotions, conviction, and goosebumps that will unravel over your body is insane. There are smut scenes in fics that make you hot and bothered, and this one does make you feel that way, but it also does something else to you. You break and heal at once. You cry and smile, you whimper and you have to take deep breaths.

I’m going to quote some of it here for you guys so you have a general idea of what I’m talking about.

The moment leading to the kiss.

There’s slow burns, and then there’s tension of unbelievable thickness, paced out so well that Alandoflimbo captures perfectly. You can tell she poured her heart into leading up to the kiss. That when it finally happens, you feel the same exact emotions they both feel when it happens.

First it’s the dialogue.

“You know why.”

Perfect. Three little words and the reader knows what’s going to happen.

It’s so quiet that the only thing you two can hear is the sound of his breathing, your tiny feet walking, and the distant hum of the refrigerator. You see the muscles in his back tense when you get closer to him, the silence in the room becomes unbearably quiet. It was screaming at you both, it was the answer you both needed in your own way. The silent scream was the phrase he had said moments ago that still lingered in the air like a damn siren. Because you loved him.

…

You stretch out your fingers flat against his back, making him sigh. The moonlight peeks in through his large window as your hand drags slowly up his back. His breath hitches audibly at the feel of it. His eyes close together again as his right-hand falls against his leg. He rubs his hand there on his jeans. trying to get rid of the nervous sweat that had gathered on the edge of his palm. He can’t breathe.

There’s more, and so much much more before they kiss. And when they do it’s perfect.

And the smut scene…by god. BY FUCKING GOD.

Ten thousand words that would put Nicholas Sparks to shame. That’s right, ten thousand words.

Like I said, I’m still surprised at how unknown this story is because I’m not exaggerating when I say it is the best BuckyxReader fic out there. Please, please read it. This gem deserves all the attention in the world.

If you’re interested in just the sex scene, it’s in Chapter 17 “Our First Dance”. But I would recommend reading the full thing from the beginning if you can. I believe the author also put out a BuckyxOC Version if that’s more your thing.

This story is beautiful. Magnificent. Bravo @allandoflimbo , bravo.

The link

#bucky barnes #sebastian stan #marvel #MCU #fanfic #bucky smut #bucky fandom #winter soldier #50 shades of gray #wattpad #bucky x oc #bucky x reader

[elizabethwritesmen]

Notice - Part 4

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Curvy!Reader

Warnings: Smut 18+, Mature Themes, Self deprecation on both sides, Body image issues, Self hatred, Angst (That's basically all this chapter is sorry love you guys), Slow burn, Mutual Pining

Summary: Dean is gone. Until he's not.

Word Count:

AN: Hey guys! I'm so sorry it took so long for me to put this out. This past (almost) year has been ridiculous, and I haven't had much time to even think about writing. But I'm back at it now with lots of fresh ideas and chapters! And I snuck in a little something as an official apology (;.

The next chapter will be the last, and I might do a short epilogue.

Thanks so much for the continued support and enjoy!

╔══ ❀•°❀°•❀ ══╗

She pined after Dean left, just as she knew she would.

Every time she saw a man that looked like him at a bar, or a store, or anywhere, she fought the urge to say something. She knew deep down, though, that if Dean ever came back, she's the first person that would find out. He would knock on her door and let her know how long he was staying for, and maybe he would even spare her a kiss this time before disappearing.

She waited for that knock. A month passed and she waited, then two, then three. Eventually she grew cynical, her inner demons possessing her and her insecurities winning.

"Come on, Y/N. Please. If you want to wait forever for that guy to come back, more power to you, but can you at least rejoin the human race in the mean time?" Evelyn asked, her voice heavy through the phone speaker.

"I don't know, Evvy. I don't really like the whole bar scene anyway, I never have fun like you guys do."

"Yes, we've been over this. Ashley and I have tons of men all over us and you never have anybody. Did you ever stop to think that maybe that has nothing to do with how you look? Seriously, Y/N. You're hot. But you're quiet, and reserved, and you hang out in corners and read or peel labels off bottles. It's intimidating and off putting. What you need is to come out with us tonight and let your hair down! Have a good time!"

"I like corners and books and peeling labels," Y/N huffed.

"I know you do, but why don't you just take a break from the norm? You might have a good time, and it'll get your mind off of Dean."

The mention of his name was enough to make her second guess her decision. She did want to forget about him, at least for the night. She wanted to remember what it felt like to be human.

"Okay, fine. But you're driving. Come get me."

Evelyn cheered on the other line and hung up, leaving Y/N to wonder if she'd made the right decision. She shrugged off her doubt and wandered to her closet, picking through clothes until she found an outfit she was happy with.

An hour later, there was a knock on her door. Evelyn and Ashley stood on the other side, both with giddy smiles plastered onto their faces.

"Stop looking at me like that," Y/N furrowed her brows, letting them in and shutting the door behind them.

"Like what?"

"All smiley and weird. You look like the doodle bops. You're creeping me out."

The girls giggled, and Ashley explained, "We're just so happy to see you. It's been so long! It's like you forgot that we're all best friends."

"It hasn't been that long. Besides, I'm sure you guys have more fun without me, I am the lame one."

Evelyn huffed, "No you're not. You're like the coolest of all three of us. You're the funniest, and the smartest. It's not the same without you. We don't even really go out much anymore since you stopped coming with us."

"It's true," Ashley nodded, "You make us whole. I'm glad to have you back."

Y/N was taken aback. She always thought she was extra. She never realized how much she mattered to them.

"And by the way," Evenlyn raised her brows and blatantly checked her out, "You look hot."

Y/N blushed, smoothing out her yellow mini dress. Her white heels complimented it perfectly, and she paired the outfit with assorted gold jewelry and curled hair.

They walked into the bar, and Y/N let out a sigh when she noticed how packed it was.

"There are so many people here," she cringed.

"And you're about to flirt with one of them!" Ashley exclaimed, much to her dismay.

"I don't think she's gonna have to make the first move, either, with that dress on," Evelyn smirked.

They found a booth and Y/N volunteered to go to the bar and order them all drinks. Three beers.

"I love a girl in a good sundress," a voice came from behind her. She turned around to see a man, tall and handsome, but not quite Dean.

"Oh," she awkwardly spoke, "Thank you?"

"You're welcome," he laughed, "Why don't you let me buy you a drink?"

"I already ordered one, but thanks."

"Okay, then why don't you hang out with me while until you finish it and I'll buy your next one?"

He was persistent, she had to give him that.

"Okay," she sighed, figuring she had nothing to lose. At least it would be a short-lived distraction.

"Here you go, ma'am," the bartender handed her three bottles.

"Thanks," she smiled, grabbing them and turning to the man she'd been talking to, "I'll be right back."

She brought Evelyn and Ashley the beer and told them about him.

"Go for it, girl! He's been staring at you since we walked in, he totally wants some," Ashley spurred her on.

"Yeah, but I don't want some," she frowned.

"Okay, but he doesn't know that yet, so there's no harm in flirting. Just something to get over Dean and boost your self confidence," Evelyn inputted.

Y/N let out yet another exasperated sigh and silently agreed, walking back over to the man.

"There you are, hot stuff!" he smiled at her, all teeth.

"Yeah, sorry, I just had to bring my friends their drinks."

"No problem at all, sweetness, I knew you'd come back for more."

Internally, she was cringing. This dude was disgustingly cocky. He looked like a former frat boy who peaked in college.

They talked for a while, but she really wasn't interested at all. Even a conversation with him was a chore, and her energy levels weren't high enough to inflate his ego further.

"Listen, Jordan, I'm gonna go back to my friends but it was nice to meet you," she interrupted him in the middle of his sentence, not caring what he had to say.

"Excuse me?" his confusion showed all over his face.

"Yeah, I'm sorry, I'd just rather be hanging out with them. There are a lot of other girls here you could talk to," she smiled politely, ejecting herself by turning away from him.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her back into him, growling through gritted teeth, "But I'm talking to you. You know, you big girls are good in bed but you're really all fucking bitches."

She tried to yank herself away from him, but it was to no avail. She yelled, "Let go of me!" He didn't listen, holding tighter and reaching down to her ass, giving it a squeeze.

"It's ok, hot stuff, I can take care of that. This ass needs me behind it, huh? Get rid of your attitude real quick."

She didn't even have time to respond, or spit on him, or punch him, or whatever else she planned to do because she was ripped from his grasp. It was a whirlwind, and she felt like she was spinning, but when she grounded herself, she was behind a solid wall of leather.

She recognized him by his smell alone. It was Dean. Her Dean.

"She told you to let her god damn go," he deadpanned, his voice low and deadly.

"Who the fuck are you, her dad? Get the fuck out of here, she's just some whore," Jordan huffed.

That was all it took for Dean to swing, sharp and quick, his fist landing square in the center of the other man's face. Jordan's nose instantly started leaking blood behind the hand he'd put over it.

"She is not a whore. She just doesn't fucking want you, asshole."

He grabbed her hand and lead her out of the bar before the owner even had a chance to kick them out. Evelyn and Ashley followed closely behind.

"Are you okay, Y/N?" Evelyn asked, concern written on her face like a book.

"I am," the girl meekly assured, rubbing her arm where the creep had grabbed her.

"Um," Ashley started, glancing between Y/N and Dean pointedly, "We're gonna go. We'll call you later to check on you."

"Yeah," Evelyn agreed, sensing the mood. She turned to Dean as they walked to her car, "Get her home safe."

"Always," he promised, waving goodbye to the girls and turning to his favorite. "What the hell were you doing, talking to a guy like that, sweetheart?"

"I..." she stuttered. She didn't want to lay all her cards out on the table just yet. "I don't know. I liked him."

Dean cocked a brow, "Him? Really? See, I just don't believe that."

She rolled her eyes and stomped her foot petulantly, "I thought it would be a distraction, Dean."

"From what?" he asked, as if he really didn't know. Her eyes averted to the ground and she pursed her lips awkwardly. That told him everything. "From me?"

"I think about you more than I should. I just knew you would come back, so I've been waiting for you, but I didn't know when, so I wanted a distraction."

"How many distractions have you looked for?"

"He was the first one. And I didn't plan to sleep with him or anything. I just thought the conversation would be good for me. Turns out it wasn't."

"Well you don't have to answer to me, sweetheart. But you should know, I've been thinking about you, too."

"Really?"

"I've been trying to get back. It's just been impossible. We've been so busy with hunt after hunt, and there haven't been any here."

"If there's not a hunt here, then why are you here?"

"There was an easy one close to home. I sent Sam on it alone for a couple days and I drove here."

Her eyes met his, and she saw how worn down he was. The innocence in his eyes was dwindling every day. Her heart ached for him, wishing she could lighten the load. Wishing she could take some of it away for him.

"Take me home," she demanded, her voice sweeter than her words. He nodded, leading her to the impala and opening the passenger side door for her.

The car ride was silent. As was the walk up to her apartment. Neither of them knew what to say. All of the feelings from before were still there, in fact they were stronger than they'd been the first time.

They stood awkwardly at her door for a moment, and she cleared her throat to ease it, "You can stay here tonight, Dean. You don't have to find a cheap motel."

"I actually already have one. But I'd still rather stay here, if you're sure it's okay."

She let him in and he sat on her couch as she walked to her bedroom to change. She threw on a tank top and a pair of spandex shorts, rushing back to his side. She didn't want to be away from him for too long. Really, she didn't want to waste a moment of the time she had with him.

"How long are you here for?" she asked.

"Until tomorrow afternoon."

She couldn't stop the sorrow from creeping into her smile, "Well at least we have a little bit of time."

"I need more with you."

"I know," she sighed, "But this will do. Are you hungry? I'm gonna make something to eat."

"I'll help you," he offered, following her into the kitchen.

They threw together some burgers and fries, and she handed him the remote, instructing him to find a movie. He did, The Untouchables, mumbling something about it being his favorite of all time.

Before they knew it, they were sitting next to each other on the couch, plates empty and discarded, movie almost over.

"You were right. The movie was good," she mused as the credits began to roll.

"I’m always right,” he smirked, turning the TV off and carrying the plates to the kitchen, washing them before she could protest.

A loud yawn burst from her lips as she joined him, placing the newly clean plates in her cabinet.

“You should get some sleep, sweetheart. I’ll still be here in the morning,” he told her.

“I’m not ready to go to bed yet, I don’t want to let you out of my sight,” she whined in protest.

He chuckled, pulling her into his chest and squeezing. She took the moment to breathe him in,

“Hey Dean, why’d you go to the bar when you got to town instead of to my apartment?” she’d been wondering for hours but hadn’t had the chance to ask yet. Finally, she said fuck it and went for it.

“I came here first. You weren’t home, and it’s a Saturday night. I figured the bar was a good place to start looking for you.”

Her heart warmed, swelling in her chest.

“Let’s just have a living room sleepover and watch movies til we fall asleep,” she suggested, pulling just far enough away to look at him.

“Or, and feel free to say no or slap me or whatever you think is appropriate, I could sleep with you tonight? We don’t have to do anything. I just want to be next to you.”

And he meant it. He’d never been so eager to simply sleep in the company of a woman in his life. He wanted more, sure, but he was fine with just holding her. She was warm, and she smelled of vanilla and strawberries. She was comfort and she felt like he’d found a home. Hunting didn’t really allow him one of those, so he savored her.

“Come on,” her voice was barely over a whisper as she pulled him by his hand to her room.

He had to fight the urge to inhale as he walked in. Her scent was so heavy in the room he could wrap up in it like a blanket. He felt like he was becoming addicted, and he dreaded leaving the next day. She was just as perfect, if not more so, than he remembered, and he didn’t understand how she came so easily to him when nobody else ever had.

“You’re welcome to shower before you go to sleep. I have some extra boxers that I think might fit you,” she hummed as she flitted about, cleaning up as much as she could. She wasn’t expecting him, and her stomach was in knots, butterflies fluttering in there like she’d never felt.

“Why do you have boxers laying around?” he asked, brows furrowed, a twinge of jealousy tainting his voice.

“Evelyn stayed over a few months ago with her ex boyfriend and they forgot to bring his boxers, so they went to the store and got some. He only used one pair out of the pack, the other two are still in there. I’m pretty sure he left a T shirt too, but I’d have to look for it,” she explained. She felt empowered by his slight jealousy; it made her feel wanted.

“Just the boxers will do,” he smiled, and she reached into one of her dresser drawers to fish the package out for him.

He went to shower and while he was gone, her nerves got the best of her. She paced, almost frantic, heart beating out of her chest. What if he made a move? What if he didn’t make a move? She hadn’t become less insecure since he’d last been there, and she worried about whether or not he even liked her. Maybe it was just a friendship thing for him. Maybe it was a pity thing. Maybe he didn’t want to see her at all, and just stumbled into her at the bar by accident.

“You okay, sweetheart?” he asked, drawing her out of her panicked state. She stood frozen when she laid eyes on him, his hair wet and his chest bare. The boxers fit perfectly and her eyes widened when she noticed what they were hiding. It was…. intimidating, to say the least.

“Yes!” she squeaked out, jumping under the covers, willing the flush to leave her cheeks.

He climbed in beside her as she turned on her bedroom TV, putting on an old movie and turning the volume down for background noise.

“I can go to the couch if you’re uncomfortable,” he offered. His concern for her was evident.

“I’m not,” she said, all too quickly. “I just… I can’t believe you came back. Why did you come back?”

He sighed, heavy and thoughtful, “You’re all I’ve thought about since I met you. I talk about you all the time. I didn’t send Sammy on that hunt alone, he went without telling me and called me on the way. Told me to drive here and see you before he goes crazy.”

“Why are you so interested in me?”

“I guess for the same reason you’re so interested in me. It’s not something I can explain. It’s just something I feel.”

“Yeah,” she paused, “Tonight is the first night I’ve gone out since you left. I’ve been waiting for a knock at my door like an idiot. You’ve.. you’ve vexed me.”

“You vexed me first.”

She met his eyes, startled by how close he was to her.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“Trust me. Close your eyes.”

She did as he asked. She hoped he’d kiss her, but she was only half expecting him to, doubt gnawing at her like a dog with a bone.

It let go of her, though, the second his lips met hers.

It was the kind of kiss a girl doesn’t forget. Heavy, and soft, and passionate, and desperate. And sweet. So sweet. His taste was burned into her memory and if she was ruined before, she was much worse for wear now.

He slipped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest, embracing her like he’d wanted to since the moment they met. She whined, needy and pliant, and he had to fight the urge to groan. He’d never felt want like he did with her. She made him feel like he could do anything.

She arched her back into him, wanting to be closer. She thought she’d die without more of him right that second. His bare skin taunted her, warm and hard and inviting. Her nipples hardened through her thin tank top, pushing against him, creating the most beautiful friction. She couldn’t hold back her moan when his tongue brushed against hers, and her leg found it’s way over his hip, her core meeting his in a fit of need.

The groan he’d been saving came out full force, his hand sliding over the curve of her ass, pulling her closer, wanting…. wanting…. wanting. Only then did the kiss slow, coming to a sweet and breathless end.

“Maybe we should wait,” he suggested.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

“I’d rather work for you, sweetheart. I don’t want this to be something you regret. I want it to be perfect, like you deserve. And I just don’t think I deserve you quite yet.”

“Dean..” she breathed out, unsure of what to say. He was so… careful with her. It turned her into a puddle. “We can wait. But you deserve everything.”

“You are everything.”

╚══ ❀•°❀°•❀ ══╝

Tag List: @stoneyggirl2 @winchestergypsy90 @hazel-eye-coffee-shop-girl-blog @deansbbyx @siospins2 @gatorgal94 @classyunknownlover @jbcalway @djs8891 @mishapocalyse @justrealizedimmascifygurl @ellie-andthemachine @sassy-pelican @tmb510 @superwholockisdabest

#dean winchester smut #dean x reader #dean winchester #dean winchester x reader

[areyoudoingthis]

Ed makes his way back to Stede after watching the ships burn. - Something settles into place within him as he hacks and slashes his way back to Stede. He doesn't want to do this anymore, he's certain of that. But maybe he doesn't have to burn his bridges to get to where he's going. Maybe everything he's capable of can serve him well sometimes, maybe there's some middle ground between fisherman and pirate.

Stede.

The panic sets in like a sudden tropical storm that's caught him leagues from shore with full sails unfurled, sending his brain into a tailspin.

He fucked up. He fucked up so badly. He asked to take it slow and then he let himself get carried away. Everything was so nightmarishly terrible all of a sudden. The quiet ease he was slipping into turning poison into positivity shattered into pieces by that fucking joker with an axe to grind, and then Stede... Stede pushing a man overboard, sweet, gentle Stede embodying the fucked up caricature of violence he showed Ed in that book when they first met, like it was fucking aspirational. He remembers the words to this day. "If I could be just be like Blackbeard, even just for a moment, honestly I would give all of this away." He never wanted Stede to give up a single fucking thing for him. The fine fabrics and the books and the two chandeliers made him happy, and Ed's wanted to be happy with him in a world full of soft things ever since that first morning they woke up together, high above the horizon and the shit that was dragging them both down for years, bathed in golden light and eager promises.

And after everything they both went through last night, after watching Low stick a hot poker in him and thinking this was it for them, after the fear and the adrenaline and the boundless amounts of love and sorrow he felt when he knocked on the cabin door... When Stede sought his comfort in Ed's body by pushing him against a wall and asking without words to kiss him, eyes full of unshed tears, Ed couldn't deny him. It's not like he wasn't dying for it himself, not like he hasn't wanted to allow himself to come apart with Stede since bread with marmalade on the crow's nest.

But he still doesn't know who he is or who he wants to become, where the fuck he fits in this world, in Stede's life. He knows he doesn't want to be a pirate anymore, and Stede becoming all the things he once claimed not to like in Ed... it messed him up to watch that happen.

Having sex with Stede the way they did was a mistake, but not for the reasons Stede probably thought he meant when he said it. He thinks about having to hear those same words from Stede without an explanation and he wants to run on water to get back to the Republic as soon as possible, find him and actually try to explain this time. Loving him isn't a mistake, it's taking such a huge step and making himself vulnerable like that when he was dying three days ago and he still feels lost all the time that was a fuck up.

And then he fucking panicked, and he told Stede - fuck, he started that conversation out okay and spiraled out of control within two sentences, rambling about fishermen and pirates without ever actually saying the words that were eating up at his insides, gnawing on his heart like hungry moths. I gave myself over to you. I'm ready for us to build a life together. I don't want to put you in danger again. I don't want to be a monster. I don't want you to become like me.

He's never actually told Stede how he feels, has he? Stede was so sweet at Anne and Mary's, and Ed never said it back. He wasn't ready to stay it, still isn't sure he is, even after everything. But he's ready to say something, ready to promise to stay and ask for time to say the rest when he can.

If Stede is even there to be found. What the fuck is going on, why is the entire bay on fire? Is the Revenge among the burning ships. Are their friends safe. Where is Stede. Please let him be okay. Please let him still be alive so Ed can explain to him, so he can hold his hands and give all the warmth he has brought to Ed's life back to him, so he can try to get his words to come out right this time. Give him one more chance. He won't waste it again.

Finding the leathers he does on purpose. Finding the letter is a surprise. Stede told him he'd sent him messages in bottles, but what were the fucking odds of ever finding them in the immensity of the ocean. Slim, apparently. Just like their chances of ever finding each other. And yet they did, and they keep doing it again and again like there's a string pulling them together across the vastness of the sea.

He finds out from the letter that Stede was always thinking about him, even when he left, even when he ran away and took Ed's heart with him. He came back to find him. Not to find piracy, but to find Ed. He stands in the surf reading it over and over, wet leathers back on and pulling heavily on his limbs for what he hopes will be one last time, and makes the decision to give his heart over to Stede for good.

He's all in for real this time. No more running away, no more panicking. He will find Stede and he will be alive and they will talk and work things out and they will never be separated again. Fuck the British and the Spanish and the French, fuck every navy in the world and every washed out pirate with a grudge. Fuck his own fears that live in a huge chasm inside him and claw at his throat and make the words he needs to say get stuck there like knives.

Stede is it for him. He will ask him for space to figure himself out, but he wants that space to be by Stede's side, in Stede's arms, in the home they will share every day and every night for their remaining years. He will be better at asking for what he needs. He can't lose Stede.

There is no Ed without Stede anymore. It has been too late for that for a while.

He makes his way to Stede mostly on instinct, trusting his legs to carry him and his arms to fight for him and his heart not to stop beating the second he emerges on the shore and sees him surrounded by British uniforms on the beach, fighting five to one.

Something settles into place within him as he hacks and slashes his way back to him. He doesn't want to do this anymore, he's certain of that. But maybe he doesn't have to burn his bridges to get to where he's going. Maybe everything he's capable of can serve him well sometimes, maybe there's some middle ground between fisherman and pirate. Maybe the man and the monster are one and the same and it doesn't matter, because the monster has always been just a man doing his best to stay afloat, a man kicking and screaming against the weights dragging him down into the deep black waters, and he can let go of him now without hating him for keeping him alive all these years. He brought him to where he is now and to Stede, after all.

Hasn't Stede seen him for the entirety of who he is since the early days of their relationship? He thinks as he slides on one knee across the black sand, every slice of his sword bringing him closer to the man he loves. Hasn't he been trying to tell Ed that he loves everything about him all along? Maybe it's time Ed learned to say those things to himself, too.

He crashes into Stede the second the last soldier is down, drags him into his arms with a desperation that could put a hurricane to shame.

"Ed!" Stede's voice floods into him and he soars.

"I'm sorry. You're okay. I'm sorry," he says, breathless, clings to him like he will run out of air and his lungs will collapse if every inch of them isn't touching.

"You came back."

"Never left, mate. Or no - I did. I'm sorry. This was the last time, I promise. I don't want to be anywhere else." His entire body knows this, his bones and his muscles and his marrow. He could never take a permanent step away from Stede again without coming undone.

Stede holds him tight, like he too was afraid they'd never see each other again and the hurtful things they flung at each other would be the last words they ever exchanged, like he was afraid that their life together would end before it even had a chance to start.

"I'm sorry I called you a coward."

Ed winces. That one stung a little, probably because it was true.

"I'm sorry I told you that night was a mistake without explaining what I meant." He feels Stede tense and then relax, like those words have been weighing on him as much as Ed feared they might have.

"Sorry I called your fish whatever," Stede says, voice soft and tender. "I loved the fish."

Ed smiles against his chest. They're going to be okay. He wasn't too late and they're going to be okay. Stede is safe and they're talking and everything is going to be fine. The world can burn and they will find a way to make it out of the inferno as long as they're together.

"Sorry I didn't stay to celebrate your first immolation," he jokes.

"Fuck that. Turned out to be a fickle crowd, too."

Ed suspects there's more there that he isn't saying, but perhaps a beach littered with dead and wounded British isn't the place to be discussing this. They'll have time. They're not leaving again, no more running off for either of them. This time it's for good.

"Tell me later?" He slides his hands down Stede's chest, draws in for a welcome back kiss that he can already taste sweet on his lips.

Stede runs his hand down his arm, caresses his elbow delicately with his warm palm and leans into him and they're finally going to kiss again when they hear a shout.

"Help, guys!" a voice calls out from across the beach. Stede turns and groans when he spots the woman slashing into soldiers like they're butter, but still covered in them like sharp spikes.

"Who's your friend?" Ed asks. "Should we go help?"

Stede closes his eyes, sighs and nods.

"Yeah, we'd better."

When they run this time, it's together.

#blackbonnet #gentlebeard #our flag means death #ofmd #edward teach #my fic #today has been all about ed for me #this is the fic version of the meta

[nanaloco]

part 2 of being best friends with jaemin pls ... i cried /pos

More than friends? Pt 2 - Best friends to lovers

Wc: 2.08K

This is a part 2 of the it’s complicated series’ Jaemin part (part one), but this is pretty much stand alone <3

Warnings: none really. Girly pop Jaemin, Kdrama-like-cheesyness, shy Jaemin (at the beginning *lol*), emojis in my writing 😁, although it’s quite short, I’d say it’s slow burn, lots of beating around the bush, one off dick joke, minimal swearing

Genre: bestfriend!Jaemin x Gn!reader, best friends to lovers. Tooth rotting fluff, crack fic kinda (a lot of bickering)

Featuring - 7 dream lol

Tysm anon for requesting 💕

It was an ordinary day meaning an ordinary hang out at Jaemins place with him and his friends who, a this point were your friends too. Jaemin had been quick to his feet to get some meat for a barbecue (after you had said you were craving ribs) along with Jeno, and Jisung who had tagged along for snacks; leaving you with Chenle, Renjun and Mark as Haechan was arriving later.

“ Y/n, I know that we've kinda asked this question before, but we wanna like reaaally discuss it this time” Mark starts with his hands clasped, thumb rubbing over the back of his hand. “Have you ever like, with Jaemin like, have you ever-“ “seen him as more than a friend?” Chenle cuts him off eagerly, Renjun staring at you with anticipation. “Uhmm, what does that mean?”

Truth is, you hadn't actually really thought about it. It's only at times like these when one of these three slyly ask you these types of questions, only then is when you really think back on your relationship with Jaemin. 'Y/n, really think about it okay.’

He's a really reliable person, call him and he's there for you, whenever you need. When you're hungry, or when you've had a bad day at work, or a bad week, just wherever a pick me up hang out sesh is in order. Even when you don't need him, he's there, invading your personal space or in your kitchen cooking food. In other words, you really trust him and he's someone really special and important to you as you want to be the person he can rely on too. A shoulder to lean on. Someone you can always count on.

How he would always offer to pick you up from work or to just be your chaperone in general. The activities he books for you two, How he put his hands over yours while you were making pottery mugs. Not just your booked activities but things you two do together, buy groceries together, head to the market together he'd even go with you to any cosmetic appointments like nails,a hair cut, being your hair done, no matter how long because he loves you (but you still remain oblivious.)

"Hmm well, he might make a good boyfriend..

They're all almost giving you deathglares at this point a really good boyfriend" "aaaaaaaand?"

"And? We're just friends, I know that how he sees it, he's just that nice to everyone, thats jow jaemin is." "YIn, what are we going to eat today?" Renjun deadpans "who shot up out of their seat and threw their shoes on as soon as you said you were craving Barbecue meat" chenle adds "Be so serious Y/n..

Truthfully, the possibility Jamin ever liked you never crossed your mind, you just thought he was kind to everyone, which is why you refrained from seeing him in that way.

"Would you kiss him?" Mark questions while smirking and raising his eyebrows.

Would you kiss Jaemin? You thought to yourself covering your face out of shyness, Thinking back to the times you'd see his teasingly try to kiss jisung and everyone else when teasing, skipping you (out of respect) only wishing you'd be included too. Thinking back to the vlogs he'd take randomly in the day and send to you where half his face takes up the whole camera when you notice your lips drifting towards his as his soft voice ambiently rambles on in the background of your chaotic thoughts innocently going on about what this old lady said to him in on the way to work.

You uncover your eyes only to be met by Haechan right in your face, lips puckering. "EW HAECHAN GROSS" you say whacking his head to the side. "Everyone THIS is a NORMAL REACTION to thinking about kissing your bestest friend in the world, not that minute long evaluation" haechan goes on to explain after conducting his research. “Ok y/n you're not fooling anyone, it's so obvious you like him" Renjun blurts out. "But it's ok, we're here to help, we're not going to tell him anything, we're here to support you Y/n" Chenle adds. "I'm afraid if you don't take our Jamin off of us, no one will" Haechan says faking tears. "yeah man, that dude hasn't even held hands with anyone before-" Renjuns hands is flying to marks mouth at that pin point "we're supposed to be hyping him up" he says massaging his nose bridge out of stress.

Little do you know, Chenle has been recapping your whole conversation, taking notes of your body language in their groupchat Y/n and Jaemin K-1-S-S-I-N-G' with Chenle, Mark (because he begged to be added), Renjun, Hyuk and Jaemin

*what a liar*. So Jamin knows what's going on, and throughout the conversation, the 4 sitting in-front of you had been slyly messaging in the groupchat, and when Jaemin, Jeno and Jisung get home, it's time for phase two of their self curated plan.

Jaemin sits down on the other side of the couch next to you while Jeno stands over the nearest couch to the door, Jisung sits right im between you two to show you the snacks he got meanwhile the original for audibly sigh, slap their foreheads and roll their eyes (this is why Jisung wasn't added to the g) they all get up, Mark signalling to Jeno to go and Chenle grabbing Jisung by his hoodie and dragging him out.

God, what's going on, what have they done your thought to yourself as you're left in the room with a very nervous Jaemin.

Jeno had gone to start the barbecue, Jisungs probably in the basement playing games and who knows where everyone else is.

After an unusably long moment of silence, Jaemin takes a breath and goes "do you want to go out to the patio dining area?" You agree and the two of you are now outside, on your backs opposite each other on his garden chairs, staring at the stars.

The sky is clear, with the faint smell of the barbecue and smoke in the distance, and the crickets chirping. It's a good day today, what a relaxing way to end it. "Hey" he says, "hey" you say turning to look at him who's already looking at you. You guys are never this awkward. What's going on.

"Let's finish this conversation another time" he says swiftly getting up, heat rushing to his cheeks.

You get up following suit "let me see what Jenos doing" he exclaims preparing to run away; but before he can you grab his wrist, spinning him back around. "Why should we continue it later?"

You ask.

"Because." "Because what" "it's too

hard" "what's too hard?" You say in disgust, taking a step back "NOT LIKE THAT GOD Y/N" he screams swinging his hands to his head gripping his hair while crouching down. "I'm joking" you say giggling to yourself. Shooting back up "it's that" he says pointing at your smiling mouth. You just look up at him confused and he does a little 360 spin of frustration. " listen, let's talk another time he says turning back around to go to Jeno, which you only grab his wrist and spin him back round. "Don't want to" you tease as he covers his face.

“You're too much for me, I don't know how much longer I can do this" he sighs "DO WHAT!?" « CAN'T SAY!" "WHY NOT" "BECAUSE | SAID SO!???"

"Na jaemin you drive me crazy"

" DRIVE YOU CRAZY!?" he laughs pointing to himself and you as he says each pronoun, wiping his forehead and turning around, laughing at what you just said.

*You can't even imagine what I'm going through" he says as he runs his hands through his hair

"THEN JUST TELL ME!!???" "NEVER" you push him onto the couch and get on top of him, holding him by his collars "Na Jaemin I swear to god" *if you don't tell me right now I'm going to lose my mind" you say holding up your fist at him who's shielding his face.

—-

Meanwhile

"OH MY GOD THEY'RE GOING TO KILL HIM I CAN'T WATCH" Haechan exclaims covering his eyes yet peeking through the gaps *SHUSH THEY'RE GONNA HEAR YOU" Renjun whisper shouts. I can't believe he only lived until 22" he says wiping his fake tears *if I knew this was how it would turn out I wouldn't have said the things I said" Mark cries, with genuine tears "dude are you seriously crying?" "SHUT UP LOOK LOOK LOOK"

—-

". fine.. I'll tell you..... if you get off of me"

You agree, releasing him, standing with your arms crossed "shoot'

"So I-* he runs away before he finishes, instinctively you run after him, tackling him to the ground when you catch up to him.

Both breathing frantically, hearts beating fast as you land on top of him, hovering over him, just staring into each others eyes.

"What is it" you whisper, curiosity eating you alive

"Fine, l'lI tell you" he whispers matching your tone, looking down at your lips and then back to your eyes.

“Y/n" he pauses, looking back at your lips then to your eyes, “I think, I like you" he says in his low whisper voice, his voice sounding like honey dripping down your ears.

Everything about this is perfect wow. Your heart has been beating abnormally fast for too long to blame it on the running you did moments before.

You two just stare at each other for a while, your elbows now reaching the floor, your hands delicately above his head grazing his silk strands, his hands on either side of his head.

"Am I being rejected?" He smiles responding to your silence.

"no.”

"do you like me as much as I like you?" "maybe."

"Can I kiss you?"

"Yes"

His hand delicately holds your jaw, your eyes fluttering closed as he brings his head up off the ground to join your lips together, in a short, sweet kiss. He draws back slowly opining his eyes, and you follow suit. His lips form into a wide grin, and you pinch his cheeks,he just stares back at you, with joy filled eyes.

"So can you get off of me now?" "Hm?" "I said can you get off of me now?”

He repeats again in a teasing way, tickling your sides, you roll over squealing to lay on your back next to him, staring up at the sky, heart swelling with happiness. I can't believe he likes me.

Your sweet moment is soon interrupted by Jamins balcony door opening to see Renjun, Chenle, Haechan and Mark come out cheering 📣📣

"JAEMIN YOU'RE SO COOL!!!!" You hide your face in the crook of Jamins neck. *Jaemin what are we Haechan screams cooing, imitating your voice to which you put your fist up and he hides behind Renjun. "Man I wish Jeno was here to see this" mark sighs " who said I wasn't he comes out of the barbecue section on the side of the house with his phone on record mode. Only making the situation ten times worse.

"Jisungs too stupid to understand this, leave him out of this" Chenle grimaces. "RIGHT, EVERYONE ASSEMBLE ON THE PATIO FOR A CELEBRATORY BARBECUE" Haechan shouts from the balcony while Chenle messages Jisung that there's food.

You're now all seated at the outside seating area, enjoying the barbecue that you so rightfully suggested, noticing Jamins eyes constantly on you, which you chose to ignore. But every time your eyes meet, you just feel more and more queasy, lovesick and you need a break. His smile only grows more and more from ever dirty look and action you make trying to get him to stop looking.

You're now all seated at the outside seating area, enjoying the barbecue that you so rightfully suggested, noticing Jamins eyes constantly on you, which you chose to ignore. But every time your eyes meet, you just feel more and more queasy, lovesick and you need a break. His smile only grows more and more from ever dirty look and action you make trying to get him to stop looking.

"So can I be your boyfriend?" Jaemin blurts out across the table, Jisung in shock.

"OOOUUU JAEMINNN" everyone but Jisung coos

"Yeah,I guess" you say looking down at your lap, Haechan beginning a group applause.

"Damn, she stole my bitch" Jisung sighs

"Jisung you're actually so cringe" Renjun sighs

"Never say that ever again" Chenle adds.

——-

Thank you so much for reading!!! This is my first full length fic and I have to admit I got a bit carried away, but I hope you enjoyed

As always, love you guys 💕

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 100 FOLLOWERS LOVE YOU ALL MWAH 💕

Let me know if you want to be added to my tag list as I want to make one at some point.

Planning on making a direction page but idk if I should make it now or later ;/

#nct dream #nct dream fluff #nct dream soft hours #nct fluff #nct imagines #best friends to lovers #jaemin #na jaemin fluff #jaemin bftl #na jaemin #jaemin imagines #jaemin scenarios #nct dream x gender neutral reader #nct dream x reader #jaemin x reader #jaemin x gender neutral reader #nanaloco #fluff nct #jaemin soft hours #jaemin fluff #nct crack

[stormblessed95]

Hi Storm!

I'm obsessed with your book recommendations and just read aftg and loved them... do you know any other books like them?

Ah yes! I've recommended some of these before, but I'll include them anyway as "gives similar vibes but probably isn't as problematic/toxic as AFTG and yet still as wonderfully amazing and made me fall in love with it" list. Queer characters, character driven, slow burn, angsty at times, happy ending, achillean book recommendations....

(Andriel from AFTG in fanart above)

Icebreaker by A.L Graziadei

Seventeen-year-old Mickey James III is a college freshman, a brother to five sisters, and a hockey legacy. With a father and a grandfather who have gone down in NHL history, Mickey is almost guaranteed the league's top draft spot.

The only person standing in his way is Jaysen Caulfield, a contender for the #1 spot and Mickey's infuriating (and infuriatingly attractive) teammate. When rivalry turns to something more, Mickey will have to decide what he really wants, and what he's willing to risk for it.

This is a story about falling in love, finding your team (on and off the ice), and choosing your own path.

Tropes: Sports Romance, Rivals to Lovers, found family... I mean it's basically just reading about a depressed bisexual hockey prodigy in a Rivalry and romance with his teammate.

Content warnings: Abandonment, Anxiety, Depression, Tricholillomania, Alcohol consumption, Drug use mentioned, Suicidal Ideation

Quote I Love: "I hate you" "Prove it"

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

Tropes: Paranormal Adventure novel, forbidden love, found family, high stakes, going on a quest, human sacrifice, tall dark and snarky (mlm side pairing)

Content Warnings: there is a lot, so here is a link to a detailed list

Quote I Love: “When Adam kissed him, it was every mile per hour Ronan had ever gone over the speed limit. It was every window-down, goose-bumps-on-skin, teeth-clattering-cold night drive. it was Adam’s ribs under Ronan’s hands and Adam’s mouth on his mouth, again and again and again.”

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

Ox was twelve when his daddy taught him a very valuable lesson. He said that Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then he left.

Ox was sixteen when he met the boy on the road, the boy who talked and talked and talked. Ox found out later the boy hadn’t spoken in almost two years before that day, and that the boy belonged to a family who had moved into the house at the end of the lane.

Ox was seventeen when he found out the boy’s secret, and it painted the world around him in colors of red and orange and violet, of Alpha and Beta and Omega.

Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his head and heart. The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his bloodred eyes, leaving Ox behind to pick up the pieces.

It’s been three years since that fateful day—and the boy is back. Except now he’s a man, and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.

Tropes: Found Family, Alpha Male, jealousy, revenge, troubled pasts, Boy next door, Clumsy with a Crush, wait for me, own voices gay

Content Warnings: Abduction/hostage, Ableism, Age gap, Assault, Blood, Death, Emotional abuse (parental, past), SA (mentioned), Sex scenes (graphic), Torture, Violence

Quote I Love: "My future,” Joe said, “is Ox.” Ah god, that made me ache. “Is that so?” Mom asked. “How do you figure?” “He’s really nice,” Joe said seriously. “And smells good. And he makes me happy. And I want to do nothing more than put my mouth on him.”

Check, Please! By Ngozi Ukazu

Check, Please! is a comic about hockey, queer romance, and the frequent baking of pies. And you can read this one for free! It's online and free on the authors blog here, including a link to the where the start at the beginning of the story. It's super cute!

Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuinston

First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince.

As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?

Tropes: Forbidden Love, Enemies to lovers, royals, secret relationship, love letters, celebrity romance, heroes with titles

Content warnings: Addiction, Alcohol, Anxiety, Blackmail, Cancer (mentioned), Death (parental, mentioned), Drug abuse (mentioned), Forced outing, Grief, Homophobia, Invasion/violation of privacy, Neglect (parental), Panic attack, Politics, Racism, Sexual abuse, Sexual harassment (mentioned), Sexually explicit scenes

Quote I Love: "Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?"

Running with Lions by Julian Winters

I haven't read this one yet, but it's on my TBR as a gay sports Romance that sounded really cute!

Also, ao3 is a goldmine of amazing fics for the AFTG fandom. Like top tier beautifully done fics. AFTG is a great sandbox for fandom honestly. So definitely check that site out if you want more too.

#achillean book recs #storm book recommendations

[periwinckles]

WHY THE BOOKS ARE ALWAYS BETTER, AKA why writers should consider carefully before selling rights to their stories (AKA how Jason Rothenberg ruined the 100)

Sometimes I think about this, not particularly related to my beloved the 100, but to all fandoms that I love in general (The Hunger Games, the 100, Harry Potter, etc).

Why is the book always better?

Even those adaptations that do a good job are lukewarm at best when compared to the original masterpiece. Our favorite characters get washed out (Ginny Weasley, oh my soul 😭), blotted out altogether (Madge Undersee, looking at you!), killed off too soon (Wells Jaha, my sweet boy). WHY DO SCREENWRITERS MESS WITH THE STORY??

Bottom line, screenwriters are not the original writers. Which means they don't love these characters like the original writer does. So every decision they make (whether or not to include a scene, whether this or that character should make an appearance, etc) are made purely from the perspective of making a good movie/tv show that sells. Yes, they may still have that driving force of telling a good story, but ultimately they want the show to make money.

The writer makes his choices based on storytelling. If he includes a scene, or a character, or whatever, it is always because of storytelling. If he kills off a character it is because of storytelling not because he has a hidden agenda, a personal vendetta or is a plain jerk to his own fans.

Now on to The 100 controversy.

Kass Morgan wrote the books. The rights for the story to be adapted to a tv show were sold before the first book was even published. They had access to the first book manuscript, to base the storyline, but that was it. After that, the show was being produced at the same rate as the books, and they were free to take the plot wherever they wanted.

Jason Rothenberg was the show runner for The 100, and he did an amazing job on the first two seasons. Remarkably good, even though I missed some characters that didn't make the cut. But his storytelling was actually better than the first book and that is unheard of. It came to a point were the books became obscured by the tv show, and no one cared for the original plot. Halfway through it, he became insane. He started making decisions purely based off on shock value, or following trends for popular tv shows, with no regards whatsoever to the characters or whether or not that was fitting to their personal arc. He killed off at least three characters that I can think of, just because he had a peeve with the actors.

He became annoyed with the fandom because they were excited about a romantic relationship between the two leads of his show. A ship that was canon in the books, from book 1. A SHIP HE TOLD US WAS ENDGAME, because it was CANON. He specifically said it would be a slow burn, for us to take comfort reading the books and to wait because he would be making it worthwhile. Think of it like this: it's like you select a fanfic from AO3 that's tagged with your favorite OTP. You start reading it and it's good, there's a lot of hints to the romance building up, you're excited about how the story is going. 10 chapters of the story and nothing happens. 20 chapters, still nothing. 50 chapters and still nothing. The fandom became impatient with his back and forth with the two characters. He became annoyed that the fandom wanted him to do what happened in the book. So then he starts saying things like"What are you talking about? These characters have been platonic from the start! You're delusional!" (when we have screenshots form the actually scripts for their scenes and there's notes saying things like "A looks lovingly at B", or "B is jealous of A kissing that other person"). Then he goes on and sinks that ship. Irremediably. Unexplainably. Out of spite for the fans, for shipping and for the actors for supporting the ship.

While I do think the books aren't as good as the first two seasons of the show, I still prefer them to the whole tv show. Because its clear Kass cared for her characters and the story she was telling.

Spoilers ahead.

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He actually makes Clarke kill Bellamy. Her soulmate. Her best friend. Her co leader. Like he wasn't happy with keeping them "platonic". No, let's just kill one of the characters so we can stop his whole shipping nonsense. Oh better yet, let's have the girl kill the boy.

And then he actually has the nerve to say that was the only possible solution because said actor asked for a bit of downtime, because said actors are married in real life and HAD A MISCARRIAGE WHILE FILMING HIS TV SHOW.

Still hate you Jason Rothenberg.

All the writers of the world: don't sell your story without reading the fine lines.

#the book is always better #the hunger games #Harry potter #The 100 #Kass morgan

[koravelliumavast]

My favorite fanfic tropes

Character A: rambling about something to just talk Character B: kisses them to shut them up

The classic: Oh, Oh!

Forced proximity something something no we won’t share a bed something something we end up sharing a bed. Both characters haven’t had a good sleep in a hot minute because of fear/desperation/other reason but they both sleep soundly when the other characters right next to them

“We’ll just stick to our sides of the bed.” Wakes up cuddling together

One sided enemies to lovers where one perspective is ‘I hate them’ and the other perspective is like ‘hhhhh I want to kiss them so badly’

Grumpy/sunshine but the grumpy is the one who is the golden retriever and the sunshine is the one with every reason to be the grumpy

All the characters except the main pairing think that the main pairing have been together for forever

Characters placing bets on how long before our main pairing gets together. Bonus points go to if there’s “big money” riding on the bets

When we find out the more grumpy one is actually a big softie

Pre-relationship one character somehow acquires the others sweatshirt/jacket/sweater and doesn’t want to give it back because it smells like them but refuses to acknowledge that fact

Intimacy through infodumping. As in one character is talking about anything and the other character is looking at them like nothing else matters

SLOW BURNS THAT ARE OVER 100K WORDS

Soft intimacy aka moments that won’t seem intimate to bystanders but to the main pairing it’s everything (like listening to music together or playing cards or even a cup of coffee/tea/hot chocolate)

Helping the other through an anxiety or panic attack

Stargazing where the character who knows about astronomy moves the other (who doesn’t) arm to show where the constellation is and the second character’s dialogue is ‘so glad it’s dark out so they don’t see how red my face must be.’

One character is a bad cook. The other is a pretty good one. The first character tries to make a cake or something for the other and it doesn’t turn out (burns or something) and the second character is so touched that they tear up because their partner did all that for them

The character who you wouldn’t think is clingy ends up being the super clingy one who always cuddles up right next to their partner. Bonus points if they’re ace (just because they’re ace doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy cuddles)

This is specifically for daredevil fics because I think they’re funny but I’ve only read like four like this: but when Matt gets injured in some way and the avengers take him back to the tower and they believe the injury caused the blindness and not that he was blind before and then like a few days later when they find Matt fighting crime even though he should still be blind but it’s like nothing changed and they freak out and he’s just like oh yeah I’ve been blind this whole time

When a typically calm and reserved character goes absolutely feral and everyone else is like woah holy shit

Absolutely poetic dialogue that makes you go holy fucking shit what are they doing on ao3 get them a book deal

Crack fics written with a specific reasoning behind it and the reasoning is absolute insanity (this is a direct call out to the zellion fic because it was so horrible. I loved everything about it)

Alternate universes but it’s not just like ‘no magic’ it’s like this is an original story if I changed a solid three things

The most random characters popping up. (Good Omens characters in a sandman fic. Yeah that’s the only example I can think of right now)

Before they get together one character describing the other to their sibling/friend and it goes on for like a long time and the person they’re talking to is like I think you have a crush and the other is like no way we’re just friends. They’re not just friends. They’re in love

One character just casually saying I love you, leads to the other character to totally freak out because how can they just say it so casually and when it gets brought up the one who said it is just like well I do love you…

Mutual pining but they’re both bad at realizing that the other wants to get with them but literally EVERYONE they go to for advice is like yeah I think that you’re gonna be just fine. Tell them how you feel and the characters are like but what if they don’t feel the same way and everyone goes oh I don’t think that’s a problem.

I think I’m good at flirting. <- absolutely terrible flirt.

Band fics. Bonus points if it’s enemies to lovers

#tropes might not be the right word #fanfiction #archive of our own #ao3 #long post #lists

[crystalelemental]

Unit Teambuilding - Valerie (For real this time)

UUUUUGH, fine.  Fine fine fine.  I can’t leave it like this, I’ll talk about Valerie.

General Overview This is the worst grid in the game.  I will not hedge that statement, it is the worst.  Even Flannery’s bullshit grid with all that Power Chain stuff from a dead meta isn’t as painful as this, because shit man, at least she still has Burn, Impervious, and a decent sync nuke.  What does Valerie have, exactly?  Oooh, a 40% boost on her base 50 damage attacks?  Only one sync multiplier of 50%?  No Master Healer, no Vigilance for an off-tank set that still lets her use damage, First Aid 2 because fuck you, no Endurance, no supportive effects like Unfortuitous on her AoE attack, no method to boost defense more reliably for a sustain tank; even the tile placement is a disaster.  You can’t even take all the tools she’d want for a single good grid, let alone trying to cobble together something actually impressive.

Make no mistake, you are dealing with one of the all-time worst units in the game.  I think you can probably rank Glacia below Valerie just due to 5* locked and boosting almost nothing as a support unit, but this is a damn close attempt.  And to show up almost three years into the game’s development?  It’s an absolute embarrassment.  Someone at DeNA must just have it out for Valerie.  They took her Mawile, gave it to fucking Marnie, who’s neither a Fairy nor Steel type user, and now just completely destroyed any hope of her being a useful character with this grid made of literal trash.  It’s downright depressing.  But what is life but a constant barrage of tragedy and misfortune?  The whims of fate is  our cross to bear, and there’s little else to do but fight back against the current.

Team 1: Valerie, SS Kris, Palentine’s Dawn Let’s start out with a few caveats: Valerie 100% cannot take full offense bonuses.  Even with Palentine’s Dawn.  Even god cannot stop her from dying in a single sync.  Because they didn’t give her anything to help her defensive profile.  So you need to take HP parameters.  You want to play her like any other sustain-focused offensive unit.  The other is that you really need to emphasize survival.  No matter what you do, damage numbers will be bad.  You will be depressed, and that is a promise.  So you want the offense debuffing more than you want the defensive debuffing, Dawn can just do both relevant tasks against Bruno this week.  Third...man, there is no goddamn way that you can off-type with her.  Maybe in Gauntlet, where the damage numbers aren’t as threatening, but I’m not convinced.

That said...I forgot to give Valerie a grid before doing this.  So apparently SS Kris is just that good, that she can support a gridless failure like Valerie to victory.  Not that with a grid she’s any better.

Team 2: Valerie, Kimono Jasmine, Lucian Basically the first, but there are a few things that make this one more interesting.  Lucian’s got much better spread effects and gauge control, which makes him a stronger partner with Kimono Jasmine since everyone is slow.  The other is Safety Net.  This is a fantastic skill when the foe’s offenses are minimized, and your aim is survival.  Even Valerie can’t fail with this.  Another fun note?  Kimono Jasmine upgrades Valerie’s special defense to cap, kicking off Smart Cookie if you took it.  And you know.  Sometimes that extra 15 damage matters.

Team 3: I have no idea but that one guy did it so it’s possible I can’t even conceive of a good team for this, but Valerie can be used as an off-tank, thanks to Draining Kiss keeping her alive.  I mean sure, no Master Healer, and her defense is pretty bad.  So it can only possibly work when the foe is entirely, or at least mostly, specially offensive.  And you need Vigilance, which cuts further into your healing.  Basically what I’m saying is this can only, possibly work in Gauntlet, where damage numbers are low. Courtesy of @books-are-my-life-stuff, here’s a video showing someone pulling it off.  I cannot imagine how much planning and how many resets went into pulling this clear off.  But it’s possible

Final Thoughts Valerie is usable.  But so is literally everyone else in this game, so this is not novel.  Valerie can take hits and heal up.  But is the absolute worst of any pick at it.  Sycamore is infinitely better, and equally free.  She offers borderline nothing of value.  I guess the grid is some level of upgrade for her, but like...it was also a positive for everyone else who got a grid.  The problem is it’s such a minor positive for her that she only gets further eclipsed by every other option, despite her starting out so poorly.  They did not even really try to make her worthwhile.  And that’s depressing.  I hate this grid so much.

#pokemon masters #valerie #unit teambuilding

[korgbelmont]

Choices Insiders September 2022

Here we go once more...

RAMBLE ALERT!!

Undercut due to length of post

The VIP launch of The Phantom Agent rocked the world, as players everywhere launched into spy mode! While you’re investigating up a storm, we can’t wait to send out new TPA chapters to you every Wednesday.

I've seen some mixed reactions to this, not really much else I can say on this until it's had it's wide release.

OUI, CHEF! Slow Burn made its Wide Release debut this August, and fans everywhere are asking the pivotal question: does this need a little salt? Catch new chapters of Slow Burn every Friday!

I'm not sure what to make of Slow Burn yet. However, as I have started, I intend to see it through.

We closed the book on two outstanding, heartbreaking, fantasy-filled books this month: The Cursed Heart and Immortal Desires. But fret not! A sequel to The Cursed Heart is scheduled – there are plenty more fae and foes to meet!

Although they haven't finished their wide release yet, I have been enjoying both books. I always enjoy fantasy and lore and the way they've done that with the use of stories for The Cursed Heart is a really cool way of showing the worldbuilding.

As for Immortal Desires, though I stick with the mentality of expecting every new title to be a standalone, it was is a shame that Immortal Desires is a standalone. Cas and Gabe are amazingly well written Love Interests and the approach taken with everything has been so cool!

--

Laws of Attraction is BACK this month and we’ve tracked down our writers to give y’all some advice - seems like you’re gonna need it.

“If you thought the stakes were high in book one, buckle up: in order to get to the bottom of the book’s central mystery, you’ll have to team up with people you may not trust. You’re a top lawyer now, but can you maintain your ethics in the face of corruption that runs deeper than you could ever have imagined?”

We're ready for a challenge!

Laws has returned! I'll admit it was sooner than I expected, but no complaints here. I think they may mean Sadie when that say people you may not trust as I highly doubt it'll be Martin. Interested to see what the mystery will be for this one.

--

I think I saw that both Blades and Crimes share the same lead, so I'm curious to see which will be released first. I am looking forward to this as I really enjoyed BK1 and it was something to look forward to during each week of lockdown. Interested to see how the world will be expanded and looking forward to the gang's return.

This month is jam-packed with new content for both VIP and Wide Release players! VIP players, get hyped for three new VIP-exclusive books coming to you soon: The Camelot-inspired Guinivere, Kiss of Death’s mafia playground, and the bestie vacation of a lifetime in Getaway Girls! Wide Release players have a packed calendar, too: Murder at Homecoming, Laws of Attraction 2, and Surrender 2 are all coming soon to a Choices app near you!

Not really much else I can say on Laws, Guinevere, or Kiss of Death as we don't have any more new info on them. Looks like Getaway girls will be the first VIP book of 2023, interested to see what that will be like.

I had a quick look on the app just now to see if there was a release date for Murder at Homecoming's wide release and although it didn't give one, it did say wait 12 days 20hrs which I worked out to be the 14th. So it looks like it will be releasing on a Wednesday rather than a Friday like it's VIP.

It definitely seems to be a case of have either a new VIP book or a sequel as this month and by the looks of it, December show as it seems like Surrender 2 will be the final new release of the year.

That's it for this month, keep safe everyone!

#playchoices #choices stories you play #choices insiders #thoughts and theories

[notmuchtoconceal]

Flat Surface II : -- Abyssinic (Ooga) Boogaloo (This Time I Ain't Leavin Without You) A Reprisal In Six Acts, with Epilogue for Six Sopranos

. ( . ) ( . 0 . ) -/~ -/~ -/~ \\./ /.\\ * ( o ) * \.// //.\ ~\- ~\- ~\- (( * &# * )) \ . |. / o

-- Welcome to LeBrux(e) DeLux(e), a show in which the answers remain, now and always, incoming and self-evident, for we speak softly and knowingly in whispers as such the venom of our hissing tongues may be cloaked always beneath the gentle lappings of the mic noise.

... Today, on my show, I am Honored to be the Earthbound Emissary of My Greater, His Eminence Being Always Evidently in Emanance ! ~ ! Oh ~ How Could I Be Anything But Charmed to Be His Lesser, Elated for Lesser Than I Could Only Ever Be ! ~ ? His long overdue and always over-introduced, my brother, my pocket-keeper and my picker, Cpt. Joseph Elias Beliar Dmuta Drabsha Ganzibra Abi Ibn Musafir Sheldon Heinrich Friedrich Schreibermachen IIV, published across international boundary markers simply as Joey ~ (a homuncultic matric(es)) though having said all this aloud, I now wish to refer to him imply as Henry-Freddy. Welcome aboard, my friend. I need no enemies, for I have you & This is why you are, above all, what is most precious to me as the ring which beckons me always to my inevitable and foretold volcano doom. What can I say? What can I do? What can I breathe but your smog and pollution? As dross I yearn always to be tempered by the hell of your forge.

-- Thank you. That means a lot.

[the shriek of a blender which lusts for blood for it lusts for love]

( w a l l y )

-- Might I say Joey, my brother who I adore, both personally and professionally, and whose work I find sensible and intriguing and not at all bloated and self-satisfactory in a plethora of ways I had not once thought to previously consider possible. Multiple overlapping dimensions of smug complex in the Freudian sense as a rotating dodecahedron by which I mean the fourth-dimensional equivalent as such, that is 12 X 4 rotating, and that makes, yes ~ 480 faces visible to our dimension at once, if I'm not confusin meself, which -- why would I when I got you to do it for me! I mean, ain't that the whole point, mate ? :-- to lull gullible idiots into a brainwashed stupor where they can be lost in your radiant light and deceive themselves by the apparition of their own retinal damage? To call you Shaitan would be an understatement, for you oppose no one and nothing; having no core, no center or value: no love or family or home, so adrift and out of time and out of place, you can project only your divisions outward into a fluorescence by which the flies you hypnotize may burn themselves in their feeble attempts to approach you. Having said absolutely none of this out loud, I'm quite pleased to report you are quite substantial in the flesh. Your three-dimensional body displays remarkable features of solidity and consistency! It's nice to see there's something in place which makes you have to slow down, my mate :-- my brother and lover. You're always goin so fast, burnin people alive! Burnin em alive jus by talkin and movin and singin! You need legs and arms to know how to keep pace. You need your head stiffly bolted on your neck and stuck firmly on your shoulders, held in place to your trunk and adhered upright by a firm and flexible spine. You need to march, Joey. Clack and drop. Book on the table. You like books, Joey. I know you like books! Pens and books. Spirals and ledgers. Books have spines & Spines are spirals! You're a screw always bein tightened by a flathead! Books have two faces facin the other & Books are always kissin when ya close em cause it's what's inside what counts, while if it's the cover & the back were what real, why ! ~ you'd be always lookin away and never gettin to kiss yer other! Less you bent yourself backward to bend back yer spine -- all fer only the terminal pleasure of lickin your own arse! -- for, in all which was hollow as the Earth and void as the Sky you knew this to be the only way you could know yourself, & yet you were left vegetative with malaise ... Don't wanna hear no shit bout the eternal supremacy of the scroll nether :-- ain't noone got time to unroll a large piece of decorative parchment, who he think he is? Needin to be unrolled outta time and into space. Words, words, words, words. Comin endless and unrelentin in their density! Least a nickelodeon got simple silhouettes to bedazzle the senses. Least a film got the projector & screen to be rendered in space one frame at a time. You? What you demand of me? What could you be worth? How could I ever be content when I may never be content feelin always contentless before you containin all things I know and see?

-- The subtext is often the twist, and the inverse often as true as the surface is complicit with the deception. I shan't give any away.

[taps thumbed upon tables]

-- Joey, in your latest pulp rag jack-off wad, by which I mean celebrated entry into the classical genre of the factless autohagiography, of which you are our proud nation's most esteemed and fairly-rated practitioner, you claim Persian Dualism was the worst deception to be afflicted upon the senses, the corporate-mandated forms of physical and intellectual (to say nothing of spiritual) self-mutilation induced in mass-scale across the former Motherland by the Carpenter Cultists, not only having its origins in this intellectual bident skewering any collective capacity for rational thought, but so too inherent was the seed of Crissendom (as it was classically known)'s inevitable (as what was sown must be inevitably reaped)'s consumption into Muhammat (C) A Regulated SuperPredator! Praise He Who Is Merciful and All Loving, The All Who Is Ah ;- the Alpha and the Omigawsh ;- the All Wise & Benevolent Baphomet! Wooot Wooot. Who Could Possibly Be Offended by the Claim That Their Prophet's /-\ Hermaphroditic Goat Demon (!?) Muhammat Wants You To Suck His Big Perky Dick-Tits! By His Milk, Did He Behead the Still Stifled and Suffering Yeshuites Nailed To Their Fake Plastic Trees, & Mall Music Was All Around DickSpittled into Rhapsodic Chanting!

... How does this claim of the utmost importance, and not-at-all hysterically divisive perversion of the proud tradition of separating the wheat from the chaff, less mediocre men run rothschild over the great, not at all conflict with your open status as a High Priest(ess) of Ahriman by Your Nightly Plunging into His Depths to See Yourself Lumined in the Dark Shrouds, Seduced Always By Your Own Magnificence?

( A H R I M A N )

( o )

( a h r i ( w o ) m a n )

( . )

A L L I B E

she)

(runs and runs and runs

imma be

( handsome as he )

Next stop ...

-- Contradictions are manufactured always. One hears diction they dislike and speak contrary, dictatorial minds always assuming dictation.

[tap

tap

tap]

-- I play with my words like I play with my dick. It's fun for hours and I can never stop, going long without food or sunlight.

-- It's vital to amuse yourself, truly. Unamusing minds are hostile to all the many easy things they allow themselves to never know and be.

[the strain of a cord twisting round a larynx]

-- Is this porn for you, Joey? Is yer fancy gettin titillated? Is yer dick gettin stiff? Do ya feel it in yer tits when ya give em a good rub? Do ya feel it in yer soul. Where's the soul in the body, Joey? What part of the soul's in the tits? Where I got eyestalks sensitive to the matchbooks of my thumbs? When I sulfur and ash? When I ready to rip apart and ignite? Where's the mind entombed in flesh? Where's spirit in matter, and where's light cleave itself from dark? Which emerged first of the other? I look upon the sky and I see it all black and see the light ebbin in like splotches of mold pissin out their endless pollution; all dim bulbs burnin mercury festerin unto other growths and stains on nearby rocks, to mold into self-awareness willed delusions of Christic consciousness, (and what's it all amount to other'n a putrid network of gobspittle? What purpose does it serve other than to slosh its own strands round itself? Why do things come alive if not to coordinate supply lines into a roaring spitfire of dance, and so seduce operatic intensity from a mere emergence of chemistry? Why does bombast serve naught but itself, if it's naught but the pomp & meter of the heart? Why do) all things which emerge from filth long to be known, for anything which breeds and feeds calls the conditions of its filth an atmosphere :-- that same by which we light dark corners & sepulchers of the Earth, in where we may know ourselves without?

-- All which induces ecstasy may be called pornography. God is a mimetic of the self and all mimetics are a contagion, as all which ruptures forth from the balls is corruption when one contains the body in filth. If one assumes pollution to be a prerequisite for life, then God could only ever be a disease as all thought is a crime, making Death the only Reality. Such is life spent living in darkness, I am a World of My Own.

-- You say nothing. You say nothing over and over and over again. You spin around and say nothing and people hear nothing and people know nothing and all is blissful and alive and one with itself in the nothing you induce. From Death, you lie awake, and all Know Your Dreaming.

... When they awake again into life, where will they be Joey? What will they know? How could they contend with the lives they are not, by their own volition, compelled to live? These lives you and I know well to be only another & another's dream? The Many Architects of the Trap, Lubed and Gearshafted Like Singing Birds, your empty words and emptier promises are songs lullabyin poor babes to deeper sleep, and you tuck them in so snug and tight, knowin well they ain't never gonna wake knowin the subtle sparkle of your splendid metallurgy once the prick's finally in!

-- What you say is pleasing to me. Your deductions are clear, stemming lucidly and transparently from observable axioms. You speak, and I know you well to be my brother. I am endlessly delighted and beguiled by you, for you bring to my attention so many points I'd never thought to consider. You are my bridge to an ever more radiant light. By you, I know more fully creation in all its splendor. You leave me to marvel, for you are nothing but, and by you I see how little I know and grow ripe as the fruit of the autumn-blooming branches in the wetlands of your pine-sodden, your mucosal and fragrant, always earthy and overlush wisdom!

[a card tapping upon the table

the card tapping, never revealed

the card tapping always upon the table]

-- it's all a game to you, yes. You're a big winner, Joey! You're a big man. You're a winner constantly cause you deserve it and you wanna move forward and gain opportunities you've never known, that's right. You're not constantly winning to hide the constant shame and impotence you feel just by bein you. You're not emotionally and psychically castrated for you know yourself in your heart to be always a slave. You're not broken upon the rock of your own consciousnesses, chained to the same empty station, feeding upon the meat of your own organ. Always overflowin with acids, distillin all you consume to a bile which is manageable! You don't hate yourself more than anything else. You're not, at all times, right now and as you rise, and when you lie awake, beggin for Death, for you'll never escape those failures in which you don't believe / Failure being only a burden one accepts, and you always try & tryin again!

-- You speak truthfully. I can find no fault in your words, nor any fault in our stars, for the author of them I find rightfully exposed, pretty as a picture of the spring day he brings always to my face.

-- You don't wound me. You've never hurt me. How could you hurt me when you've always cared so deeply about me? How could I feel hurt by you when I see how much you care by how much you avoid me? You need to be a sterile vacuum empty as the bleak and cold night sky to suffocate the fires which roar within the crucible of me, else I'd immolate all I approach, for I am truly the sun and you are truly the void!

-- As you have said this aloud, it is sensible to all who have heard it.

(bro, that's the thing that i say, but scrambled!)

-- You have given me all power over you. You have, by your refusal to negotiate, voluntarily surrendered your agency to me in stages. You are now utterly at my mercy, for your every word gifted me this conversation (all which you have affirmed verbally, and covertly by lack of immediate response) has now tethered you to me, for I am the Master of Your Autonomous Nervous System, The Snake Which Entwines the Lion, and You Are Surrendering Now and Forever to Me to Lie Awake in Effigy, that on Which I Now and Forever Must Always Feed.

-- As I have no clear point of origin, I revoke any consideration of the things you have said (erstwhile, pending, contemporaneous & imminent; in this and all possible dimensions) until you have presented your requests to me in coherent form -- preferably bulleted point-by-point & (or) numbered -- that I may review, finalize or revise all suggestions at my leisure; or upon a deadline we may further negotiate once I have received your terms in writing, delivered to me through my brother, my secretary, my soul's love & heart's secret name, between the hours of dawn and noon on Sol's Day, or dusk and midnight on Tyr's Day, (Wodan's Day on Months of the Ascent only and Satyr's Day on the Descent, upon the hours of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21 & 24). If these terms are not meant, there remains the chance your documents may spontaneously immolate, particularly if proper de-acidification of the parchment did not occur, or the ink was not properly mixed to separate its blackness from basics.

[the tapping,

ever present rapping

of the card

upon the tabletop]

-- Okay ... I see how it is. I have read and reviewed your terms and I raise you one glass of icy tonic to your beautiful perfect face!

[a ruffling of ice, a splashing of drink

( O o )

a flashbulb searing sound, hissing out rising mists]

-- No! It is a miracle! Your mantle remains unsaturated with syrup and your visage unspoiled by moisture! The radiance of your spotless and ever-diversifying intellect has evaporated my petty assault! You have strange powers and I long to grovel at your boots and lick!

[veiled by the steam through which the light of the monitors on his pale skin and golden hair glimmers with the bruised hues of dawn through which the yellow of a carnation is bright & airy from the earth]

-- You may do so. It would amuse and intrigue our audience, be they-listers-in, viewers at home, or sterling readers of the transcript.

[chairlegs sliding back

a sloshing of saliva on lips]

-- This is stupid. I'm weak. That I am so effortlessly beguiled by your illusions is reflective of my fundamentally juvenile sensibility. That I know I could never be nothin but a slave to you, held so close by the invisible and all-enveloping chains of all places, holding me along a track, compelling me by instinctual motions, limiting me to lower planes; breaking me as I break you in this junkyard of time and place, where things could only ever be made to be broken, as all space is but a probability of ballistics in inverse, falling forward.

[a crunching of leather, unclasping of steel]

-- What is to come has already occurred. I have willed it by recognizing it as such. All precognition is mine, for my cognizance is potent as my pre, & from these you may know your saltlick. As water flows upward unto stone, so too does stone blow downward unto dust & stars to centers near and far ;-- bridging two poles only estimates in taste. The premium mobile hangs always overhead, you remaining always cribbed and caged by this, what you are ;-- a package deal bundle of nerves.

[gagging, hacking, a fifteen minute laryngeal contortion solo, the attempt of which to depict pictoglyphically would constitute an epic in its own right, another casualty of this, our newfound prog-rock reality]

-- It's so dull. You can't have this level of power over me! You can't do this! You can't bend me so effortlessly to your will! It negates any perchance to drama! There's no conflict when you know who's always gonna win! It's boring! You can't make yourself into a serial, Joey! You ain't got the marshmallows! You're the status quo now, bro! (The affection of our relationship is now a dirty word! Be ashamed for knowing and supporting me!) You can't just keep gettin better and better! You gotta ruin yourself to make it fair to others! You can't keep goin on up! You're the thing that is, so now you must not be! All popularity contests are death cults! The greatest we cut that its plenty may spew forth to nourish the plantation fields of our eternal empire! You owe us your Death, so-called brother! You know democracy is a sham! Why would the Gods accept a Lottery, Joey? The Lottery exists to placate human weakness! Humans invent Gods to deny themselves their lot in our shared sufferins! They disperse with their Gods, all they do is kill without reason. What say you, Joey? What say your pretenses to reason? Why you even open your mouth, knowin yer every word'll only aggravate me worse? Why you speak, knowin you'll only ever make things worst?

-- Frankly, dear brother, I think you ought learn to give a damn.

[rabid dick foam]

-- Who're you to decide for me? What I should hear? What I should know? You can't control what I think and feel. That's not your place.

-- Neither is it yours, yet it is my bliss to receive your eternal delegation.

-- You, you you ...

-- Aye, aye, aye.

[gulp and spit]

-- In your latest whatever-it-is, y'know -- routine hackwork, you express discontentment with details of the historical narrative, postulating that Our Received History As We Know it is not only an elaborate construct cobbled together from scant expurgated documents (the mutual ambiguities of which allow vast and winding plantation space on which to plant whole cherry-trees to mulch and pick) but these documents themselves, having come down to us in such heavily redacted form, new emphasis must be given not only to the history and variance of the contents of the texts themselves (so much of the scribal lineage being so well preserved, and immediately archived via the autofont apparatus which is a standard feature of your typical serviceman's standard implant) but attention also to the date and origin of the material on which these documents were composed, their carbonic composition itself being our most revealing preservative, you continue to claim, despite the obvious & repeated fact that dating carbons is as much ridiculous hokum as the axial tilt, personal magnetism or mitochondrial consciousness. Certainly far from respectable practice, like bloodletting & leeching, which we now know verifiably to have purification properties when paired with adequate hydration and proper nutrition. Why's any of that, mate?

-- Data lends itself to sophistry as well argument, as the spaces between variables may contract or expand with mastery over the blank and the negative. Particularly if one trusts so blindly they fail to see contradictions between analysis and reportage, methodology and summation.

( . o . )

-- That had nothing to do with what I asked, but If I said what it was really in response to outloud, I'd only be revealin the multiple and complex layers of my own deception by drawin subtle and yet strangely obvious attention to how cleverly you can refute a suggestion I'd thought I'd only implanted subconsciously! Welly, well! I will not wish you well-done, cause I don't like that you're still makin it like I'm a loser when frankly I am doin my best, these are all my tricks, the bag's runnin on empty & I'm realizin maybe it's me's the one who puts the kramp in Krampus, mate!

[hand feathersoft upon a fairchild's skull

throat sputtering to reaccommodate the cock]

-- I am elated to know I could help you learn as well as you have helped me learn and together we may be two torches luminating this dim and polluted world, which our eyes refresh always by revealing the splendor laying always dormant within the coagulated light of matter!

[starlight through the tears in his eyes]

-- Stop ... Please stop. I wanna die. It makes me wanna die, all the things you say. Why can't you be jus miserable like erryone else? Why can't you jus wan die? Why can't you accept that life as we know it was a mistake, and we may only collectively suffer for we are stupid and unworthy and weak, fit only to be crushed into crude by the boot we long to lick?

-- Your thoughts fascinate me. I can't imagine anyone having them.

-- I'm just a joke. I'm just a side-show attraction. It's me that's the novelty. I'm sick. I'm deformed. People just wanna line up to gawk at me cause I'm so weird! The only reason I'm alive is to be humiliated for bein so weird and small and nasty and gross. I have nothing to offer other people but how repulsive I am! All I can do is laugh at meself, cause the only sane thing any man could do in my position is cry! I'm so completely alone. Do you understand? You have to know how I feel? You're my brother in all my shared sufferins & revilins, and I cling to you for we are so alike and won in our piety. You have to know how it feels bein so deep-fried, so battered and beaten! Ya know yourself only fit to be breaded, ripped apart and dunked into a tangy sauce round yer beard?

-- I've always noticed far too many points of interest to get hung up on such petty details, which I regard as the one true sophistry. What anyone would want to do with your self-styled impotence is a mystery to me. I suspect you revel in your mediocrity to feel some immensity in your meagerness ;-- proud explorer of paradox which you mire, my heart's true admiration. I would like to contradict you, if only to alleve your ills long enough to change the subject to something more fruitful, but I fear you are the expert on your own attitudes, and I don't always wish to endure your offenses long enough to correct them under my own volition ;-- you being so resilient in hesitancy to move past outmoded and outdated forms of self-flagellation and thought termination.

[vibrating cum-spittle]

-- Words, words, words, words! I say the most words, Joey. You don't say the most words. I say the most words, Joey! You don't.

-- I do. We're married. You haven't said no, and as such, it is now so. I am smacking you upside the head as a son, for my wife is dead and you are my charge. Get down on your knees, boy. Lick daddy's boots. Daddy is tired of watching you humiliate yourself. Daddy has loved you enough for one day, and now you will earn your right to love Daddy's dick, & This shall be a lesson we shall rehearse long into the night, I'm sure.

-- You... you skipped past all the foreplay! There was a part where I could have been a girl and you just killed me off and gave me a sex change! Why couldn't it have been tragic, Joey? Why did it have to be a joke? Why couldn't I have woken up every day next to you for sixteen to twenty three (depending on your region's age of consent) of the happiest years of my life, beholding, in the endless depths of your cobalt-blue eyes, the rising sun! Beholding you in all your scruff, which even stubbly remains lush as the mane of a lion, clingin to you so closely in your cotton-rib tank where I coulr behold in the golden light how the sun carves with its rays, from the marble of your body, all the shadows all the shades of every striation of your arm and shoulder; your shape so exquisitely masculine, as your mind is so relentless, priestly and warlike, for you are my everything and all I aspire to be, and I would be proud to be the son we have raised together, as I yearn for you to cling unto and in me :-- separating me and completing me, being my fulfilment and my desecration, changing you as you've me :-- and I would weep for myself as you wept for me as I deepthroated Daddy's dick, needing to be filled, for you are My Whole as I am The Hole of Your Life, all things being now found in me!

-- I am responding now directly to the question you had asked previously. About the lapses in the historical record there are, of course, limitations to pre-fab stencil structures, as they induce -- to thought -- what is glacial in continental drift and collision to our seas. This leads to all manner of dysfunction and overlapping disorientation on the personal and population level, the beginnings of which I leave our astute viewers, listeners and readers to untangle at their leisure. Nevertheless, to teach above the individual level -- in any meaningful sense -- requires certain simplifications of form, not only for accessibility, but basic broader-scale coordination in any significant shape. We are, tragically, not yet Gods, & so constrained by the limitations of the unmade world of which we are the perpetual authors, owe it to ourselves to finish our story. Silence must be earned. Certain details must be established. I have no patience for Fundamentalism on any level, other than I am fundamentally myself, for I must assume the locus of the unchanging lies within me, my sole point of orientation remaining closest to my heart ;-- for to assume an unchanging mind in an everchanging world (even if the Mind of God Remains Transcendent) neglects that a still mind is one habituated to a harmony of still-repeated motion, as the emanation of the ripples or waves when a droplet of water returns to its source.

[gagging on cock, sputtering, accelerating]

-- Please. Continue.

-- History is written by the winners, and to assume there are winners and losers is to assume a polarized view, not only of history, but of human thought and the universe from which it extends. As there are no winners and losers -- for the rules of any game could only ever be human dreams -- there remain countless histories unwritten where all the many things never here have already occurred, and what greater worlds were these we now see! We rescue them by our recollections which never were, and so enrich this world we know not to be our hell, for we could make it nothing but ... longing always for there to be somewhere more worse!

-- Might be I'm from Upside-Down Land Joe, but you thinkin backwards makes it happen forwards makes me wonder about all the upright things that'd never be :-- like what it'd be like if Laik were talkin!

\ . o

-- Welcome to the Laikaverse. Tonight on our show, we have the only man who ever mattered to me, and he should matter a lot more to you. Ladies and gentleman & all interesting packages I need to unwrap cause they make me wanna guess, tonight I am proud to present my one and only guest. My best friend & brother, Cpt. Laika Psychorrhax.

-- Yo Yacko. How's havin the only show worth watchin treatin ya?

-- I get all the views I deserve. All of them. I don't need your hearts. I rip em from the chests of all who oppose me. I'm a barbarian, & a brute and I de-stigmatize cannibal psychopathy by bein cute in a bad boy way which Laik keeps makin boyband, all his fuckin smiles. I'm basically the best. Don't need to mention it. Know how bad you want this dick, bro.

-- Don't need fuckin seven or eight middle names. I like havin the two. I think it makes it less disingenuous when I wanna brand, which I don't need to cause I am arbiter of all possibilities which present themselves!

-- Well spoken, better sucked. We can actually talk about shit that bros care about at some length before I make you suck my dick. Sometimes I just wanna hear two dudes talk and suck each other's dick, bro. I don't wanna go to the fuckin ballet. Like the choreography is spellbinding, but it's too hyperstylized to be sexy. I'm not a fuckin rube, I just don't know why your dick needs an aerial shot bro. Can't the dick be a subject in its own right, does it have to be a dream-image in a propagandistic context? Holy fuck, what have words done to your brain, bro.

-- Why I wanna go to the ballet, I fuckin live it!

-- Dance, lil seducer-assassin. Smack you on the ass with my ruler before I make you gulp down a shot of poison, send you out into the Siberian winter to ice-skate in the light of the moon while Spider Willow watches from the barn. Cradling all her agricultural tools and her chemistry set, hollow and silvery knowin what she hath sown.

-- Holy fuck, bro. Fuck my ass and cuddle my scared shivering body! I don't need no comparative mythology course before you refuse to blow a load on my face cause that would deplete your heightened stoic life essence and dim the solar crown radiating out your gold-threaded dick-header! Fuckin wrap me in a myrtle jockstrap and crush my balls, bro! Shower me in the gold of all which is cloudy and stagnant and stifled! I long to be blessed by your brine, the salt of your labor and excretion! I'm not a fuckin black hole, Joe! I'm a fruit I gotta burst and seed, bro.

-- Juicy lil pomegranate. Juicy lil apple. Juicy lil date.

-- Fuckin masticate me to make water into wine, bro! It's a fuckin miracle when you dismember me! Oh my fuckin God, bro. That's what you are to me, no fuckin irony, no fuckin academic obfuscation! You magnificent beast! Rip me to pieces and devour me! Splatter my blood all over these pristine white walls, that the scene of my execution should look as though Pollack convex within a Bollack! Mirror me in flesh to eyes dimmed by torpid flames into new universes of neuronal tumescence! Your fat engorged prick at which I long to suckle like the teat of a bull is the one true Source of My Life and I Am Slavish Before It! To me, your cock could never be a means to inflict pain or inject corrosion, for it is the very font of all which I most cherish, it is truly Life Itself!

-- Yeah, like I said. Know how bad you want this dick, bro.

/ . o

-- Goddamn it, mate. I really am must be a loser. All the universes where I win are terrible. Wanna go back to that one, that was way better! Their chemistry is so natural. You can't fake it! What the fuck is it they doin, bein so easy and comfortable round each other? Joshua, Devil Within-Me Christos! I just wanna hang out with em for hours and be their best friend, but like... I already know em! Is that how they are round each other now? Neither one of em's that open and friendly w/ me, they're always comin at me like -- y'know, I'm disgustin fer bein covered in my own shit after rollin round in garbage to make myself deliberately offensive so I know only pure and goodhearted souls who can tolerate my stench will come near me? Y'know. It's their fault for bein repulsed by me when I don't bathe. If they really cared about me, and wanted to be my friend, it would matter, such petty details as personal hygiene.

-- It is a tragic state of affairs indeed, that so few it seems, can meet the high standards of your ritual purity, my ever-deceitful nut goblin.

[tongue muddy with laps across the sole]

-- I have to say, Joey. You take it very well, constantly having to watch your boyfriend get fucked and fondled by another man, and like -- he ain't even tryin to hide how into it he is! Half the time he's dry-humpin back or fondlin him first or deliberately antagonizin him to get his dick sucked fast and hard :--< real tight and frothy when they got a live audience?

-- Oh, Cpt. Haruspex. To tell you the truth, I have so many admirers, and have lost so much vitality to stray grasps from lepers of all stripes save the tiger, I can hardly forgive my dear Laika for having a friend so close to warm his bed the many lonely hours spent away from me ;-- particularly when I know I offer him challenges he's not liable to find elsewhere.

(in total agreement with you on that one, broey.)

-- Just sayin, Joe. Were I in your position, I don't think I'd handle it so well, seein the soul with whom I knew myself to be eternally entwined, constantly lubin himself in the sap of another trunk's greasy pitch!

-- To tell you the truth, Cpt. Haruspex, to see my brother and my sole and primary affection so happy alleviates a weight which would weigh otherwise tremendously on my heart. To see him so satisfied and solely content with someone we both know, and he knows well -- it deprives me of any opportunity or inclination towards guilt. Being always beleaguered, so many strays craving to peel and to poach me, I being the most inviting fruit upon the tree -- that which the serpent compels one pluck against all dismay, whose pulp would yield a fire in the tower of your loins... climbing alike the vviny censure of your empty skull.

[cockgargling intensifies

bootcap spitshined rock around the washer]

-- Your boytoy's got a pet fuckboy cause you're just so wanted, Joey. It all checks out. None of it's self-delusion whatsoever! You are a revealer and a knower of yourself, and your light shines brightest through the dark knight of obscurity, to seduce lost souls back into ascension!

-- You listen so well. A quire sings within you.

[beating cock against his face as a shamanic drum]

-- You propose, in your outline of the New Official History, that there was a switcheroo around the time of the Afro-European Continental Marriage (Known otherwise as the Great Mediterranean Suturing to those who Still Can't Accept They're In Love), when the krauts dropped the former territory of Swisserlind on the then province of Vatican City before the rest of the Italic Peninsula was accordioned into dust by the grindwheel of the plates bout to get dawned-up and powerwashed! --

-- London, dear brother. It was London in the Current Official History on Which the Historical State of Switzerland was Air Dropped, to bury all Memory of Big Ben for a Thousand Years, that they may begin their repentance for the sins of Churchill. Our Baptism by Neutral Land was Long Overdue for the Ever-Struggling Financial Power, the sire and mother of all false currencies which held the world in bondage.

-- Yes, London. Forgive me. Reading the words you produce makes my brain not work good. What you'd actually written in your tortured and beleaguered screed against all sense and relevance, revealing only your own multi-faceted cheese wheel of overlapping hysterias in a petty and senselessly drawn-out gag which nobody but you has ever found amusing, is that the krauts in fact ... yes, I'm reading this right! Lifted Vatican City out of the Earth by tunneling underneath it, thus preserving its treasury of occult knowledge encoded directly into mason & statuary (to say nothing of its vast treasury of archival documents) in a floating pirate airship which orbits somewhere out in the upper atmosphere, in a pocket-dimension of its own generation, which can be accessed only by reflecting the light of a solar eclipse off one of two mystery metals into the other, the formula for each of which is a secret yet to be deduced, but for a process of mutual and contradictory compositing!

-- To open a gateway, yes.

-- I believe that same device was used in an episode of the Red Paper Plumber. You could learn a lot from him, Joey. You see, the fact that he was two-dimensional in a three-dimensional world -- it meant he couldn't be flattened, but he could folded. He made use of his transparency and his lack of weight and hardness! He was content to be a hero who was nothing, in a cardboard world of his own adventure! It was a marvelous time, Joey. Even the stars were only paper! The way the crowns of children are paper in industrial halls, or petals in the fields or the wildlands. It needn't be gold. Gold is a rarity, soft and glimmering, which we value not for its scarcity, but its conductivity. I crown myself in gold, I say my thoughts may reach yours, and you think it garish that I wish to rule you? You are deceitful and wicked! You are vulgar and profane only yourself when you profane your brother. You falsify all things by your simplification, you being simple only for you are false ;-- true simplicity being the paring down of a true, if chaotic known!

-- Cities in the sky, why do I fly so high? When all is glass, the sea is brown, I suck myself to stand in renown! Hearing well the roaring sound, settling still I shrike and clown, everyone else left-right upside-down!

[tongue flapping

as if flicking up incisors

between ridges of his boot soles]

-- I longed for it, you know. I longed for the paper crown. I made myself holy before you, Joey. I made myself holy before my peers and said the holy words with pure intent, but they knew me naught, for they knew me only by my fear. I loved and I venerated, and I fancied and knew myself well by my fancies. St. Sydney Ba'al. St. Shiggy Myrmidon. The Hammer & The Rainbow Cube. Their mysteries I had known, yet known only my fancy, for I fancied only myself and my knowing. By them I had known myself, and I was the only subject worth consideration. My vainglory. My ambition. My puerile right to be and more than be, for I was strung together by more than strand! They knew me by how I trembled and made lies placing myself in positions I had no place to right, uttering words which were not mine to utter, taking these few and precious moments where a man could be seen and heard for the right and true, that I may boost myself like a mandate in the ward or in the lounge, intoxicating you with communion of my own. I was not fit to wear the crown, for I was not fit to be seen. I was that mold, needing that darkness, twisted by the cold and damp that I might have shape, connecting what meager points I was. No light could I endure. No eyes could I be withstood within. All scorched me, and I was that ageless carbon, black and rancorous, acidic and void of flavor, smoldered by exposure, overdone for I longed to be burnt, having no right to light!

-- Cage yourself by the scales of your bars, lil bird.

[tongue arching

to form a hand in prayer

with his bootcap]

-- It was not right. That a man should have power. That any man should have power over another. It was not right that I should feel, that I should be, that I should be denied my own agency by another. My own. My own. My own. No. If my own must exist in violation, then none should have any. There ought be none at all. I must now be the only power in this, or any world! For I have been deprived temporarily, all must now be deprived eternally! As I have no power, I am the only, and all who rise must be now be broken, as all who give must now be taken. All in any position, must now be stripped of all support! None must be! It is simple. Nothing. Nothing is safest. Life is catastrophe. Life emerges in disorder. Death is harmony. Death is return. Death is the flatline as all rhythm is the agitation. Silence. Forever. No noise. Ears ripped from skulls. Eyes ripped from sockets. Tongues from palates. None may have any right to anything, for this is the only assured fairness, oblivion the only true equality. I would never dare be so gauche as to argue this with my words, but it is what I will believe every day with the motions and lackings of my body, crushing myself as I crush you into a concentrate we may only freezerburn before we water it down to pour out in the garden.

(-- Do I have a line here?)

-- Whaddya want from me, Joey? I can't ... I can't...

-- Say nothing if you wish. I near tire of your groveling.

-- I'm inferior to you. Please tell me I'm inferior to you. Please look me in the eye and confide in me, man to man, that I'm your lesser and you're my better and it's my place to serve you. Please, Joey. Please, stop jerkin me around! Please tell me it's my duty and my honor to serve you! Please tell me it's safe to love your dick, brother. Please tell me you'll shelter me in your strong & manly arms. Please take control of me! Please let me be yours. I'm begging ya mate, please! Please let me be yours!

-- Cpt. Haruspex, do you really have no other topic worth breaching?

-- Put the bullet to my head! Kill me! Kill me now! I don't wanna live! I don't wanna live! I don't wanna live! I don't wanna live!

-- Brother, believe me there's

(and now, another even-better universe without brux)

Welcome to the show that has no title, for you are not in fact reading words. That you think you're reading words is simply an autonomous response of your language-adapted organism. Your nervous system is as much an algorithm as the chaotic winding road-less-traveled of a thunderhead shifted into spires of jagged obsidian when blunted by the medium of mineral-rich earth. We censure our brother as our lesser, oh Exalted Craftsman of the Material Cosmos, and Father of All Shortcuts, for you O Holy Janitor, Have Sired Well Sleeping on the Job.

It was a lot of work. To whip all this up in one night. We really fuckin appreciate it, man. You are the most treasured member of our team, and to you we now dictate winter holidays, the splendor of which will live as an eternal revelry in memory, oh King of the Twilit Seasons.

Nevertheless, problems have occurred and we can trace them with zero ambiguity back to you. In the future -- which is only an illusion of your three-dimensional linear world, your rational and goal-oriented mind -- kindly give yourself more of the time which you don't need to see things more fully to their dormant and emerging satisfaction.

Today, to assail our ears with the splendid harmony of his divisive and orderly cosmos, where all things simultaneously are and are not, for once the egg had split there became only two abysses feasting on the other, My brother who is rankless as he is depthless, Joseph Elias Schreibermachen III, there being no first, nor even a second.

-- Thank you, my King to Whom I am Pledged Beyond the Memorandum of Myself, for Time Immemorial All Good Times Are Emergent in Me.

Spoken like a true sun-drenched, light-entombed meat droid. Your physical body is honed and splendid as the airy and razor-sharp acuity of your intellect, lacerating all things in vivisections of cheese spreads to be picked and canid ;-- father of all murderers, first slayer of your brother who never was, for we recognize only Our Brother Who Gave of Himself, to Know Death that He Who Was First May Know Plenty.

When we are self-sacrificing, we rob all which feed on us of the fruits of their predation. We feed upon ourselves and so become a vegetative more-than-reality, rooting always as we bloom and meet, parting many limbs and symphonies of coral into the widening toroid you are always unseen, cleaved from me as one field in-orbit around the other.

-- As a pasture beside a meadow. As a forest beside a glen.

That your ears have known always the pleasure of silence, you having no shrill dental whine to forever bore and macerate the delicate pulp of your drum by repetition and hyper-compulsion, droning you into the living death of a life unworth living ;-- that you have known not this abnormal and avoidable affliction to which a majority refuse to give of themselves with meager hopelessness, surely this is why you are so pleasing, to me and to yourself and the legions who adore you alike. To be not mulched, salted and left desecrated as a weeded garden napalmed for the not-so-subtle hatred it inspires ;-- these evident realities, surely, have left you splendid to look upon, my brother and pride of my life.

-- Why speak, when you are so sensible in silence?

You already know. To speak is simply to affirm.

-- To need to affirm when all is affirmative.

Is the erection of a negative to raise up and stick out.

-- We need invent no religion, nor record any doctrine, for the Voice of God could be heard ever only here and now, had we but the ears to hear beyond our ears, or the eyes to look beyond our eyes.

Yet in total agreement, you must oppose me to retain some solidity against me, and we mutually stiffening in a distance which is mandatory for we are so alike, could do nothing but draw closer and grow harder, finding both union and division a mutual impossibility.

-- You are you, and I am I. To say and to feel as such is falsity for I am you and what I see is more than I could ever be, I being so aware there is still so much more of me beyond the borders of what I see of you in me.

beyond words, we are more than being

_/~ ( o ) ~\-

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o ( o ) o 8 ( O )

( * . ) 8 0 ( o ) 0

. . . -/~ . , . _/~

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-- The topic of the conversation eludes me, for none from my mouth which was mere vibration, void your conduit of flesh, could convey the aching pulsations of all I adore in you.

(and now, back to that which must inevitably conclude)

nothing more I would care to see than your misery come to an end, but surely you're throwing out the babe with the bathwater, bloodying the baptismal font with your newly unborn's brain matter?

-- Vitamaxing metaphors, I destroy the strands that sugars may not slow their absorption on release! By me, you have no weight and know short-term cycles of desire, spike and appetite! By me, you become crude, compulsive and doglike! I lead you on, and on and on

(and now, at last, we remembered that thing we were going to say)

There was a creature once, you had almost known, who was a lecher and a leper in the shape of a friend, who extended his hand only that you may pull it off, as he shed a litany of flatulence in self-aggrieved mercy.

-- Merciful first and foremost to yourself, you shed him as a leech by the light of your cigar as soon as the necessary coagulation was broken, watching him wither and writhe through the veil of your maya.

His maiden-mother fair, craving her deflowering, as the bouquets we mutilate less for our fancy, than the fancy of a titillating spring.

-- He descended here to corrupt the daughters of man, and as he has never said once to the contrary, I see only reason to insist.

Human women are beautiful and pure. Human women would only give themselves to so wretched a creature if induced by the sorceries of the blasphemously sensuous, beguiled by false promises and knowledge only true enough to coerce you into injuring yourself for his attention.

-- He made all human education emotional-blackmail by depriving us of emotion to blackmail ourselves! Yes, I would like to know more. I am mere externalized disk space and as such am compelled to know all!

You know you were put here on Earth to corrupt the beautiful human women, bro. Don't fuckin try to deny it. Human women wouldn't be this way if it weren't for you. Human women are perfect and wonderful and play a vital role in society and nature. It was you who fuckin ruined em.

-- As Vice Precedent of the Fashion Club, You are a Spade a Diamond and Father of All Error, for in Your Attempts to Correct What Is Already Perfect, you defile your highest by bringing it in accordance with your lowest, thinking you bring equilibrium when you sow only discord!

The Peacock grew in splendor of plumage, to reflect the splendor of its heart, for upon his head as upon his rump, did he fan and part and press outward into the empty air all the colors befitting of Himself.

-- Say it all at once, you will say nothing at all, less I gift you perfect time, or an eternity of ever-mounting agony in which you may find silence!

Beautician of Lies.

-- This Land Is Not Your Land.

(This land is my land.)

my mob is not your mentality.

(That mop does not go in the cumbucket.

Less the Linoleum Spit Like a Glue Gun)

-- Harvest man, of you I draw water into wine.

To the Harvestman go the Bunches

-- as Raisins Give Freely to the Son.

I. O. <

eeeeeee

I. O. >

eeeeeee

I. O +/+

eeeeeeee

(every fuckin time ya try to be a wise-ass, this fucker turns it into performance art. he wants your dick so fuckin bad, he will change the shape of your communiques so profoundly, they are decipherable only to his heart's innermost desire, becoming the edifice of unwavering aestheticized enigmas to all disinterested, yet rapidly becoming interested third parties. you could certainly defect no strategic or tactical advantage here whatsoever.)

and on! ... For fuck's sake. Holy Spirit, my Living Hellfire, please compel my brothers of better times to introduce me to new and tantalizing possibilities by interrupting me once more! It never feels better than when I don't feel safe to talk, cause someone I think I love might spit in my face and call me a stupid bitch! Smackin me upside the head with his own shoe or his budgies! Shovin me down into his feet or his balls, makin me lick his sweaty armpits or suckle at his nips and worship his abs!

... Gosh, I wish I was bullied and abused and humiliated in that way! I love men. I love men so much. I love men so much I wanna be one! It's weird that I have this fantasy, for by any observable metric I would seem to appear to be a man, and yet all I wanna do is feel my face impaled upon a superior's dick every hour of every day for the rest of my life, as though more a stone gargoyle overlookin a timeclock bridge than a vicissitude of undead failure rottin on a pike? The ways in which I was actually bullied and abused and humiliated weren't sexy at all, and what I really want is a beautiful and perfect man who will hold me and keep me safe, but nonetheless, I just need you to smack my face and spit in my mouth and call me your dumb lil bitchboy slut, cause I just... really, really, want you to do this to me, not to prove to me that you love me, but just cause I think it'd be fun? Gosh, please brother. Please, Joey. Don't make me beg. Don't make me get even lower down on my fuckin knees, to the point where I'm like ... actually tryin to deepthroat the floor I accidentally jizz-mopped, which that second extended fantasy sequence rightfully knew (don't know if that's obvious, just goin off what's obvious to me!)

-- You will forgive me, I'm sure. I have no words.

-- That's a baldfaced lie and you know it, cute lil beardy boy! You have nothing but words! You are composed of words down to the genetic level and you will give me some right the fuck now or I'll scream!

-- Patchouli. Herbivorous. Placenta. Rhubarb. Hibiscus.

-- You have met the technical requirement of my request for words! With this I am well-pleased, for they are fresh and well-selected!

-- Thank you. I do my best, always.

-- Well, if I was being flirted with seemingly-obliviously this long live on the Fernkasten Parabox, I'd have blown my brains out hours ago, but with you I receive nothing but days worth of quality content coming at an unceasing pace, far more than I could ever edit, let alone anyone ever manage to consume. You are a blessing, a curse, and utterly unstoppable. I am all objection, and you a force insurmountable who will budge me only slightly, as my catastrophes will not cease to abound. That I endure your endurance of me is an evident virtue of which you are surely aware.

-- I am aware of all things you are and do, yes.

[nut dribble clingin to his lashes]

-- You pay attention to me, Joey. You give me time and energy.

-- What you are worth, you are afforded.

-- You're so generous.

-- Frequently you are afforded more than you are worth. Of this you are aware, and rightfully respectful of my generosity, which you exalt.

-- True, true ...

-- We are in total agreement. You will scream now.

-- JOEY YOU FUCK! FUCK YOU! DIE IN A FIRE JOEY!

-- How did I never see it coming?

-- You compelled me into acting out your fancies by suggesting them!

-- You do everything I say, it's effortless.

-- I'll do everything you say because it's the easiest thing in the world for me to obey you! You are the only thing in this dim and dingy land of death and decay which motivates me to live and to breed!

-- Your 100% heterosexual attraction to me cannot be denied.

-- I'm so straight for you, Joey. My straight boy mouth wants to be on your straight boy cock. I want you to fuck your roommate and life partner (who is likewise a straight boy like us) in the ass, then make me lick his anal bastins off yer knob. I wanna do this, because it is the tangible epitome of my complete and total heterosexual love for you.

-- You will permit me to fuck your wife, if only for the pleasure it will give me to see her groveling at my feet, recognizing the self-evident superiority of my masculine expression and essence to your own.

-- Please let me watch, brother. I need to bare witness to you pleasing my lady love in all the ways I never could, for I am a pussyboy rube before you, a total patsy weak-willed beta-bitch to duplicitous females & gold-digging harlots I could never hope to control, for I am not man enough to own their minds in the way you so effortlessly own mine!

-- You hate women so much, you deliriously over-perform crude and melodramatic pastiches of chivalric romance as part of your wider plot to manufacture an image which isn't totally repulsive to those creatures which frighten and sicken you, making you feel so meager!

-- You know me suspiciously well, brother! Gosh, women are exhausting vampyre bitches! I hate their vampyre bewbs. I love their vampyre bewbs. Their vampyre bewbs haunt me and levitate disembodied before me with scorpion stingers and bat wings & energy projectiles conjured from the amber light a their spinal antennie as I lie stiff on the threshold of sleep.

-- You are, over the course of the next six lunar cycles, by the engineering of the sun and whim of the moon, letting erode all of your once imagined attraction to females, for they are paltry & you crave only cock, exalting it not only as the highest expression of your value, but the epitome of all flavor! You are helpless before any superior man's cock, mine most of all, I being to your eyes most-evidently the most superior! You may tattoo the name of my cock upon your tongue. You may use bacteria grafted from the underside of my own dick, altering your tastebuds through the chromatophores of the ink that you may taste in every morsel you imbibe or consume that which is the highest expression with which you long to unite forever! To think, dear brother, with every lick of your lips you may taste of my cock in-perpetuity! Is it not bliss to give yourself to these imaginings so totally, they become your evident and only reality?

-- Thank you, Joey. Please gift with me with a piece of your cock. Let me suckle upon you, in my imagins forever! Let it be that I may live and know in my heart that I am your slave, even if I am not fit nor able to look upon you, nor serve! Let me pledge myself to you, now and forever, brother sir! Please feed me your dick, bro! Please piss on me like the stupid lil puppyboy dumbfuck pussy boy I am! Press your dirty bare feet, or better, your dirty worn and earth-sodden sweatsocks to my face, that I may breathe of the perfume of your soles for hours! Press me against a wall and choke me, noogie me, leave me a totally limp and impotent ragdoll, I just wanna die in your arms brother! I'm in love with you.

I'm in love with you.

I'm in love with you.

-- I understand. From your position, that would be sensible.

-- You mock me and I deserve all which you inflict on me, for I am a wretched and worthless nothing, bereft of any and all humanity, who has surrendered his will by his own slothful lack of intellect, having no one to blame but myself for why I am so hollow, and thus deserving of all which is inflicted upon me! I am beyond helping, having been given every opportunity and yet so few opportunities, it seems, to exorcise them.

-- What have you given me to contradict?

-- I give you nothing. By me, you contradict yourself.

-- What worth are you?

-- None. I am none.

-- I have found some for use for you. By me, you are always some, for you are the sum of all I have given you and more. In you, I agitate all which is lying dormant, and you are always, now and forever, crawling back towards the light as you break-through, germinate and bloom.

-- You have made me as though the flower of a dawn!

-- From the soil of the dusk that I am, you are the tree rooting deep who was seeded to span far. I am but the dust of your hollow trunk, filling you that you might be a more a sandbag, beating every heart you endure.

-- I don't understand. How could I understand? It means nothing to me. It's all so obvious to you, and it means nothing to me! How could I know? By what means may I be more than myself? How may I extend hands amputated I can feel only by invisible senses, out into a current I know not which roars, and yet I fear may still rend and consume what is a known unknown in that lack of sense by which I sense the unsensible?

[tender scratches of nailbeds behind ears

teardrops beading on the head of the cock]

-- Dumbing it down really is an art. The correct amount is always situational, pending so many inscrutable variables. One has to be very, very smart if one wishes to successfully play it dumb.

-- All which nature produces is natural, and so no product of nature could ever be unnatural. Plastics and petroleum are as natural as otter milk and honey, they being distillations of an extrapolation. To recreate nature from a perspective beyond itself is to come home, for we are all offspring of the land and sky, having variable homes by variable origins.

-- Say what you will, and it will be as you say.

-- Push me. Tell me I'm a dumbass sack of shit gutbag meatboy who fills himself with excrement only to be skewered as a shit balloon by a bayonet in a futile struggle for some piece of land owned by no one in service to some sovereign by whom I must labor for his taxing! His taking all from which I make that his peace may be preserved, ah yes! The peace for him preserved, from every piece he's taken of you and me! His bridal gown to the state he produced, his own ermine-lined monarchical regalia's naught but a person-suit stitched pound of flesh by flesh from all he hath cut from the arms of his laborers! Death to all bootlickers, Joey! I would rather die a man than be your slave, so as my last right as a man, I demand you end me, despite any protestation to the contrary which might spit forth from my deceitful lips! They are falsities the echoes of falser mes, raped into me by weaker men! I respect you enough to exalt you for the value you are, but damn me if I'll allow meself to succumb to your spellbindin's! That's women's work, Joey! Say what you will about me manhood, but I never once controlled another man with women's work, and for this to me you are truly deceitful, a hypocrite and wretched beyond reason! I have made myself awkward and sissyish to dispel you of my charms and preserve your free will, but you have gladly taken mine, depleted me without relent of my atmosphere as though entitled! A stray body suffocating me in orbit, for I say you have flown too close on my inevitable ascent! To Hell with Me, if Not You, Joey! Burn me alive, fucker! Burn me alive, father of witches, and son of malignant sorceries! I would gladly blow my damn brains out before I let myself be servile unto you, creature of rampant and irrefutable allure!

[a tug of yanking hair

unclogging throat from cock]

-- Your death would be agreeable to me now, surely. Your yapping has long overstayed any stray novelty it might have once possessed, and to see you silenced forever will be as a boon to my strength of mind.

-- It is so, then. You will end me not only in this time, but all times where I have succumbed to the failure of my desperate and needly love for you, and the Uber Brux in His Totality Shall Benefit by You, My Preserver and My Destroyer, Uprooting all Contaminated Tendrils and Breaking Off In Your Billowing and Arid Winds Sick Branches for the Fire in Which No Corrosion May Outlast Your Purity! Forge of My Heart, Crucible of My Love! In you and by you, are all things renewed!

-- As you have said, I am. As you are as I have said, I'm sure.

[the overlapping of two spotlights

winding in the dimming amphitheater

coming to compose a crosshair of color

x-ray plated on brux's skull]

-- Mate, you need to stop maskin stage-directions with so

[the overripe melon of brux's skull erupts in a geyser of pulp & seed]

-- Mate, you need to stop maskin stage-directions wi

[the hollow-point bursts forth the barrel, carrying a star trail of gore]

-- Mate you need to stop maskin stage di

[the bottom of the jaw flaps backward, hitting itself on descent]

-- Mate you need to stop mask

[ a streamer of drool tracing lymph through the air,

pearly whites golden on the crowns, otherwise

quartzite in dustings of bicarbonate of pink foam]

-- Mate, you need to sto

[gushing brainpan pulp the thickness of a pineapple display]

-- Mate, you need

[rich vanilla-scented dick-brain gushing forth in creamy loads]

-- Mate, you ne

[sputtering of color flashes in darkness

deadlights strobing in rhythm

to the sputtering of his gushing throat]

8 *

0 . o . o 0

* * 8 **

0 o . O . o 0

* 8

[a second & third ice age

this miniature eternity we endure

a stray hand strokes the remnant of his scalp

still clinging by a thread to his jaw

as a parchment woven with silk and gold]

-- Laika will love you, for Laika is your little brother. (. O O . ) ( . O O . )

O . O O . O O . O ((( o ))) (((( o ))))

((( o )))

(((( o ))))

[brux again, someplace far off

slender and robust in the deprivations of his youth and plenty

meeting the eternity of those blue skies

these endless vista of opportunity

which was a life of mastery, promised to the seas]

-- Come with us, you shall be seen!

[brux, trapped forever in his tight and clingy, formfitting lil white uniform, making him look so cute and dorky and real easy for women to laugh at, when he should only appear more tough and masc.]

-- Off this teat, you'll never wean!

-- It is not so. I cannot know you. I cannot live your life. I cannot be consumed in you, broken down, secreted, ingested, I a mere piss-mixer in another man's indoctrination, for you have taken me of all that I am!

[brux inked and pierced

pumpin iron in the smoke

bein not a dweeb]

-- Thank you for reducing me to a three-panel image. You have pressed me into an icon, as I am for time and pump always movin waters!

[a stream of bruxes, hair ivied with flowers,

flowing overlong with tassels fit for pullcords

squandered of their solidity, their ever unmet

endurances to blows, deprived of vital meat

by stray ballistics, intendended otherwise

for sweatervested lesbian librarians,

lovers in stories too beautiful to be]

the one who seizes

[the day he left, unmet

brain peeled open by the door]

p o s s i b i l i t i e s

[in the field, amongst the torrent of lead

he stood apart from the din, beckoning

upright, hair billowing in the breeze

a smile so bright, it trumpeted the day

you would inevitably call him dad]

Your impossible pasts lie in tatters and rags

( the future's not yours to see )

I Don't Know You. We Walked Once Upon ~

Dream Thy Last Dream (old woman with a casket)

[she never left you,

you, wise enough to leave her young

bringing only dreams to wakefulness]

-- To my elder brother, in beryl and berry, I gift lost time long-searched.

[by her you knew

by her you unknew

this last stray bullet

you saved for the heart you starved]

Know me. I m alone. Show, girl. I'm a masterpiece. Take me. That this night might be mine ~ Make me, I'm yours ~ ! Only on sale, cause I'm a time-limited offer!

It was amazing how long he could talk without a head, truly.

[the icon of a five-pointed gold star erupts from the polygonal remnants of brux's skull, suspended in the air by its own luminant gravity, rotating around itself and casting rings of shadow as a miniature sun]

Holy fuck, how long does it take for this fucker to fuckin die! Tell me that was his last death animation, and he don't actually got another six forms!

Holy fuckin hell, this is a fucking curse! This fucker fucking cursed me and now I'm doomed to spend my life experiencing every moment as a live-action repeat highlight reel with laptop lag, holy fuck. How the fuck does a search & destroy system named after em have no fuckin idea how to handle windows, bro!

.

-- Think we're safe now, Laik. We escaped that horrible dimension where Brux's techno-bureaucratic neurocritical-bastard offspring had reduced the human population to food grubs. In one of these countless pirate radio universes we've wrestled back from him, there's gotta be one in which we can produce quality and relevant content of artisanal and hand-crafted quality for a niche audience of likeminded maniacs, you know ... uninterrupted & real and on-time and under-budget.

-- Thank Your Fuckin Dick, Yacko! Take me to a place where you're the only thing worth watchin and I ain't got no complaints!

-- I love you, Laika. I would carve your name upon my chest, were I not so stupid that I'm sure seeing it emblazoned backwards on my own reflection day after day as I mire my own gains, ever increasing and striating, would convince me in my decipherings that it was my own, mislead once more by literacy, as such there was no difference between you and I. My dick wants to call your mouth home for the rest of my days. bro. Wanna slither up inside your throat like a moray into a tight lil den. Spend our life under the sea, locked in a scissorhold with you.

-- God fuckin damn it, Yacko! Quit fuckin makin me feel bad for cheating on my boyfriend openly and shamelessly in a way which makes me crave backstabbing and torture, allowing more cruelty and neglect from the man I love that I could ever hope to endure otherwise, which I secretly fear is the main reason he adores me, & that I don't think highly of myself enough to stop him when he's horrible to me because I so obviously deserve it, holy fuck! I am the worst and he could do better!

-- It's okay, Laik. I'm real stupid, too. We're both real stupid, it's why I fuck your face so good and we both do what big bro tells us.

-- God fuckin damn it, talk some sense into me Yacky! I am a stupid fucking hysterical female and I'm man enough to admit it! Oh my fuckin God! Wearing a cute lil uniform gives me gender dysphoria! It feels fucking wrong that I'm this cute and manly! I love being this cute and manly! I am so fucking sexy and into myself, it feels like I'm raping my own body by appreciating it! Holy fuck! I am so into me, I feel like a fat kid shoving a plate of cupcakes in my face! I am so cute, it's sickening! Why the fuck do I think I'm so cute and hot! This has gotta be a mental illness, nobody should feel this good jacking off to their own reflection, bro!

-- Just shut the fuck up, bro. I'm putting my dick in your mouth now. You're going to stop having thoughts. The thoughts you have are stupid and terrible. You're basically Brux, but sexy. Yeah, I was gonna say sexier, cause Brux ain't unattractive, but his soul is putrid and it hurts. I just wanna be around someone who makes me feel fuckin good once in awhile, bro. Holy hell. Why does every second around you have to be an endurance round? Can you like... try not testing my patience for five fucking seconds and see how it feels? That'd be nice, man.

-- Shut me up! Make me gargle cock! I need a deep, deep brushing, flossing and rinsing! Meep-meep! I'm the road runner! That's the sound I make when I gargle cock! Set a fuckin alarm, bro! I'll gargle cock every second of every day cause I gotta keep my breath fresh and minty!

-- This shit just writes itself when I'm with him. He's my best friend and he brings out the best in me. We are so endlessly in-sync when we work together and everything feels good. Bro, you don't even know.

-- God fuckin damn it, Yacky! Never fuckin leave me! Never fuckin even wanna be away from me, bro just like -- be concurrent and simultaneous with me for all time as though we were thrumming to the beat of the same drum, pulsating to the bulging of the same burning bile!

-- You're so fuckin stupid, lil bro. Gonna fuse your fuckin face to my cock, make you survive the rest of your life on protein piss, you're so fuckin stupid to insult my intelligence with these provocations.

-- God fuckin damn it. Wanna cry, bro. You're such a man. Honored to know you. You're my brother. Drink my tears. I weep to know and to love you, and my life is gifted to you in service. Honored to be your hole, bro!

-- Keep fuckin suckin, cutie. You know you're big bro's fave.

That was a lotta nothin to take in, for somethin that weren't nothin.

((( o )))

. | .

\

. \ .

. \ . \ .

/ o /

Yes, it was always Brux. Brux is the worst thing which ever happened to you! Brux ruined your life. Brux turned you into an addict and tortured you of your dreams and left you a shell of a man! Brux is a blight upon kingkind, a swarming plague as the great southwester. Brux drives bright malice dizzying into the night, for he is a thousand splendid fireclouds!

Brux will admit this now, and Brux will bare all responsibility, for Brux is the demon you have deigned of your own desirins. Brux is all you will in vacancy, for Brux is what you have voided of the responsibility of yourself. Brux unburdens all things, for Brux is nothing but a burden! Brux weighs down upon you, for Brux is what leadens the spirit into shape by making dense all which is airy! I will mold you by hand, the shapelier your dough, for only by my heat will you rise and be made more than porous!

Brux is your maker, your carpet-bagger, your tea-leaver and baker! Brux leaves you buttery & on a roll as Brux bares all the nails of your iron-cross, having tasted every boot, and licked at every heel, face-planting into each sophistry of law, Brux endures tyrants so you don't have to!

. / . / . / . / .

Cpt. Drottin stands on stage.

Around him, the priestesses dance, carrying streamers of nitrate to impress upon cells the biohazardous waste of his energetic shellac, burning itself into a mist of helium, Sulphur and rich creamy androsterone & (adreno)chrome, well as trace elements of explosive mutagenic payload, inkblot and octopi alike in solidity & variance.

Upon the strips as they stir the air, swanlike by gentle conjuring of wind, did his face appear along strands in sequence as though the pages of a flipbook, head caving into itself, more implosion than injection, all which he was collapsing deeper in, as though his own brain flushing the shattered porcelain of his neck, longing to be excreted out himself.

[the descending lights part on reascent

the houselights burn down the darkness

brux's torso falls lopsided to the floor

a plume black as corvid feathers

incensing acrid out his apple peel]

-- I would like to thank

[ reel missing ]

This has been IV ~BRUX AMUX : ~ : MUCKS ABRUCKS ~VI

A MURDER BRUX IN ALL TIMELINES GAME

Authored by Soley By Brux, and Representative of His True Beliefs and Attitudes, with His Sire, His Master, & Eminence, Whose Cock is the Right Glory to Which He is Ever-Subservient, Risking Skull Maceration by Paw for Blasphemy to Place It Even Above the Big Man's Nine-Incher and Throat Stretcher on Which He Yearns to Be Nailed, Cpt. Joseph Elias Schreibermachen III (including 1st & 2nd) [respectfully abridged for print] Acting Merely As Formatting Advisor, Archivist & General Editor / Author of Colophon.

We hope you enjoyed ~ Liberating Your Soul from Sexy, Sexy Bondage

Simultaneous with Purging the Uber Brux of All Lingering Sissification, Ossification, Hyper-pigmentation & astro-illogical orientation.

You are a God Man to bash your brother's head in repeatedly and times beyond counting, now and forever, in all those eras which never were where he might've grew up to be a queer and bring shame upon no one, for all men of valor already suck cock, with discretion or without!

#go head #you know u want to #only gets better from here bro #homogeneity #fraternity #fuck yeah brah #bro time

[wittybibliophile]

The Wall of Winnipeg & Me 🏈- Mariana Zapata

A Slowburn-romance story. I like the story a lot, yes being someone who loves heavy scenes (ykwim) i thought if there were more of light physical intimacy it would have been hell of a slow burn u know. That does not mean it doesnt have those its just too little for me personally, i am a sucker for physical touches and itimacy... but nevertheless i loved it, what mariana did... love her books. The Characters are so perfect, like they mix together very well. (players, friends, assistant) Vanessa/van/vanny being personal assistant/cook/cleaner/publicist/social media manager to the world class football player Aiden/aid. She is perfect, she can do anything as long as she is getting paid. She needs to pay off her student loans and well although she might have had a little bit of crush on her boss, she never went beyond that. She has seen his ups and downs, all kinds of moods, she knows him the best, but aiden's world is crashed when she tells him she wants to quit. Van is an artist is her world. she wanted enough money to pay her debts and start her business full time, now that she has saved some she does not want to be aidens assistant. Aiden tells her she can go, which kind of upsets her, 2 years being with him and his best buddy and team player Zac has left her wanting to be appreciated. Trevor aid's manager hates her for some reason and wants her to stay, but she goes anyway when she hears him body-shaming her in front of aiden, and aiden does not stop him.... Long story short guys.. Zac is van's bestfriend more than aiden's. Aiden does not realizes that he likes van strongly, so he never gets a replacement assistant but goes to vanessa's house to call her back... she does not listen 2-3 times and then he says his visa is expiring and somehow both of them come to conclusion he needs to marry a US citizen to stay... he tells van to marry him, they do get married, she shifts to his house. All three are like roommates. Slowly aiden and vanessa start opening up tp each other about their past and fears and family issues. We get some heartburning romantic scenes, some very much needed at the time kisses... everything comes together in the end when they fall in love and they do not realize when did it happen it was just there... always there in those little moments, the details they remember about each other all the time. And it ends how its supposed to guys... they get married and have kids and Happily Ever After happens... Its a very sweet slow burn Romance. 💕💕

xoxo, Ironically witty!

#new blog #romcom #books #review #romance #wittybibliophile #ironic #mariana zapata #the wall of winniepeg and me

[rhonddaandallaneuro]

The “Ring of Kerry” is one of the most beautiful drives one can do. Magnificent fields with cattle and sheep grazing inter-mixed with historic houses on one side with the ocean and islands on the other.

I must mention that it is also one of the windiest places on earth at some points. Lindsay and Allan could not even open their car doors at one point. A small price to pay for such a scenic drive. Would always do when in the region.

We arose on Tuesday to the rain and feared the worst but given our time restraints we had to move on and after a great night in Foynes drove south towards the west coast. Mother Nature must have taken a liking to us as somewhere after the town of Waterville, which is where Charlie Chaplin spent a lot of his life the clouds disappeared and the beauty of the drive placed before us to enjoy.

The drive is supposed to take about 4 hours but with the mandatory photo stops is was well over five hours. Time well spent.

As the drive itself ended we headed off to Torc Waterfalls within the National Park. The drive very slow due to the twists and curves, we now understand to be an Irish motorway, we arrived to take a small trek to see rushing waters through a cascade of rocks. Worth the walk and if you were over here in wet season would have to do again to see them in full flow.

Time running out now we headed off to Ross Castle, which on arrival we were advised you could only do on a guided tour and we would have to wait over an hour. We had not booked any accommodation for the night so elected to do a quick walk around and start the search for a bed for the night.

Lucky we did. Three hours later after stopping at numerous pubs, cafes and motels we found a motel in the south, well past where we were headed, in Cobh. A small tight streeted community very wiilling to leave progress behind. Hahha the motel had us taking our bags up two flights of stairs so the bar was well sought after allowing us to reflect on the days travel.

It was here in the bar that Julie fell in love with Ireland. Her first burning fire place in Ireland. Great food but way to much so we moved back up the stairs to enjoy finishing off our bottles of assorted drinks. One of the great things about travel is you get to purchase and try so many great foods and brews. The sad thing is that you have to drag what you did not drink to the next place. This was the night that all part bottles had to be finished and I am proud to say we accomplished all we set out to do. As Rhondda pointed out that we could buy more super cheap booze (Baileys) on the ferry back to England. Julie and Rhondda would then have five nights to drink prior to our flights onwards.

The rain which we thought we had dodged caught us up and on awakening it was pouring down so we headed back up the highway to Cork home of the Blarney Stone. The castle is nestled in gardens to die for with the history well documented. Something that Irish tourism does not always do so good. The stairwells to the top are hard and very narrow and many a head comes off worse for wear.

Finally at the top both Julie and Rhondda did the “kiss the Blarney Stone” thing which means you have to lie down backwards and lean over the side to lean your head up to kiss the underneath side of the stone. Very proud as this is not easy.

Done the deed we headed towards Dublin via the “Rock of Cashel“ which I must admit I had never heard of. This former place of worship is a true treasure and given they have only started to restore will be one of the must do visits in a few years. The basic stone structure has to be seen to truly appreciate.

Still pouring rain we continued our drive to Dublin only to find out what peak hour traffic is like in an ancient city with designated (peak hour) bus lanes and lots of one way streets. I would hate to be desiring to urinate in a car at this time as the stop start traffic is at every turn. We did make the motel well after our original intent but soon nestled into our rooms after parking the car a few blocks away, as no motel offers parking in Dublin.

Again we headed off to Temple Street for some drinks and dinner. Here we met two Europeans playing a numbers game set up like scrabble in an Irish bar taking in the music. They were not drinking, merely listening while they played their game which I can not even say the name of, let alone tell you any rules. We also joined in some great banter with four young Dutch guys who had come in for a few days as you do in Europe. Haha

Tomorrow is our last day in Ireland so we do a city bus tour and try to see as much as we can. Hopefully the rain will stay away.

[rhaenyratargeryn]

I love Shadow and Bone but I gotta tell you all— if you are in it for the enemies to lovers trope? Read the Folk of the Air series by Holly Black. Stunningly good enemies to lovers romance and the main character Jude is honestly the love of my LIFE.

Like I like Alina, clearly, but Jude has a level of agency and character that just are UNPARALLELED in a new adult fantasy heroine.

#tfota #shadow and bone #so if you were disappointed by the romance in s&b #may I offer you a Cardan in these trying times? #he’s my book boyfriend hands down #queer vibes? check #wears makeup? check #a prince? check #THE ENEMY IN AN ENEMIES TO LOVERS SLOW BURN???? CHECKKKKK!!!! #I mean I say slow burn there are kisses in all three books but it is slow burn of mutual LOVE

[randomshyperson]

Right answers, Wrong questions - Wanda x Reader - Part Two

Summary: The one where you and Wanda are part of the trivia team, and have hated each other since first grade. Or, enemies to lovers in high school (again). / Requested by @abimess

Warnings: (16+), Bottom!Reader, Jealous Wanda (she's also kind of mean? so hot),reader is a total dork, emo wanda, mentions of trauma and familiar toxic environments, minors drinking, kissing, teasing, a lot of cursing.

Part One | Part Three | Part Four | AO3

All Works Masterlist

---//------//------//------//------//---

Chapter Two - Small Misunderstandings

Thursday is a strange day for you.

You were late because you went to Tony's house after school, and your movie marathons always took longer than planned.

This resulted in you both falling asleep late in his living room, and not listening to the alarm. At least Tony had a car.

The problem actually starts there.

Arriving at school in Tony's car, with his jacket on because you didn't bring one, and with him with his arm around your shoulders, just because he was saying something sarcastic in your ear, gave the impression of something very different to your classmates.

"Dude, I don't like this." You mutter as you realize the curious stares you were receiving as soon as you two entered the main building. Tony on the other hand loves the attention. But seeing your expression, he put a little distance between you both.

"Hey, relax, this school loves gossip but it's no biggie." He tries to reassure you. But his own relaxed posture ends when Pepper Potts approaches you two next, looking quite enraged.

"I should have known you weren't worth my time, Stark." She spoke before slapping the boy right across the face.

The school erupted in a buzz. You opened your mouth in surprise, and Tony rubbed his face, ready to defend himself, but Pepper was already leaving.

"I'll talk to you later, Y/N." He said before walking off after Pepper to explain himself.

Hyper Aware of the hallway watching you, you bowed your head and started walking toward the chemistry labs.

Maybe a little lesson would distract you from the embarrassment of that morning.

You were already sitting in one of the front chairs when Wanda came in, in her typical dark clothes, which seemed to make her even more pretty.

Although you had an appointment, she didn't greet you. You swallowed the sigh of dissatisfaction, that girl was so hard to understand.

You busied yourself checking your homework when not-so-slow comments from your other classmates caught your attention.

"Everyone saw them arrive together." One girl commented to her classmate. "And she's even wearing his jacket."

"They're screwing I'm sure." The other girl said. You clutched your book tightly, annoyed at the way these people seemed willing to talk about your life.

"Did you see that Pepper Potts slapped his face in the middle of the hallway?" Another classmate asked from across the room. By this point, you were sinking into your seat in shame. "I bet Stark was seeing both of them."

"He deserved the slap then."

"But how could Pepper have not noticed this before? Those two were always hanging out together. And I can understand, Tony's pretty hot."

"And quite rich too. Everyone wants to hang out with him."

You felt the stares burning behind your back, but you didn't have the courage to look.

Fortunately, the teacher arrived shortly afterwards, and dispelled the comments.

Mrs. van Dyne's classes were hard enough to occupy everyone, so you didn't have to worry about gossip during this period.

Your problem was Wanda being your partner and the cold way she treated you.

"Hey." You greeted softly as you sat down on the bench next to her after the teacher finished dividing the pairs of the day's lesson. All you got in return was a murmur and a quick, almost angry look that made you frown in confusion.

But you didn't have time to complain, because Mrs. van Dyne began to explain the day's experiment and you didn't want to do it wrong.

You had just started when Wanda spoke up:

"I was right that day."

It was low, just for you to hear, because technically you were not supposed to talk during class. But the teacher was busy with the pairs in the back of the room, and you were curious.

"About what?"

Wanda didn't look at you, focused on the colorful jars in front of her. "You and Stark really are a thing."

You chuckled in surprise, and the noise attracted the teacher's attention, but you only received a warning look.

Waiting for Mr.van Dyne to be busy again, you spoke only after a few moments.

"As I said the first time you implied something so absurd, no, Wanda. Tony and I are not a couple." You clarified, your hands and eyes busy with the experiment in front of you.

Wanda was silent, thoughtful. You figured she was just thinking about the equations, especially since when she spoke again it was to comment on the mixture you were making.

But a few moments later, she leaned toward you, and whispered against your ear, "I want you to take off this ridiculous jacket with his name on it."

You almost dropped the bottle you were holding as you felt her hand on your thigh. She squeezed once, and pulled it away, returning to her study as if nothing had happened.

With your heart racing, you turned your head incredulously toward her. "What's wrong with you?"

You questioned between teeth, but Wanda just gave you a neutral look, and went back to writing. You clenched your jaw, and closed her notebook tightly. "I'm talking to you!"

"Is everything okay around here girls?" The teacher interrupted seriously. You answered before Wanda.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Van Dyne," you said. "I was just asking a question, and Wanda was being a bitch about it, as usual."

"Fuck you." Wanda attacked, making you let out an incredulous laugh.

"I'd rather you do that."

You returned the response without thinking. The room let out a chorus of whistles and laughter, and the teacher frowned.

It was the first time you had ever seen Wanda blush, and the image stuck in your head all the way to detention.

"That's unlikely." That was the first thing Professor Fury said to you when he saw you standing in his door. "Are you sure you are in the right classroom, Miss Y/L/N?"

"Unfortunately, yes." You muttered, handing him the detention note that the Chemistry teacher wrote for you.

Fury read it, and raised his eyebrow. "Inappropriate language during class? What did you do, swear out loud?"

"I prefer not to say." You muttered, shyly now, remembering what you had the nerve to say in the middle of the class.

Fury laughed, giving you passage into the room.

It was practically empty to your happiness. But Fury didn't leave you alone. He made a note in his notebook, and came over to talk to you right away.

"Look, it's your first time here, so I'm going to overlook it." He said. "Because of your track record and the competition, I won't put it on the books. But you'll have to promise me that you won't cause trouble in class again, okay?"

"Of course, Professor Fury." You spoke immediately. "That was a misunderstanding. It must be the stress, because of finals."

Fury gave you a sympathetic look. "If you want, you can talk to the therapist later. She has great exercises for stress relief, and most senior students need them."

You just nodded in understanding, and Fury went back to his chair.

At least he let you study for trivia during detention time.

--//--

When you left Fury's room, the whole school already knew what had happened in chemistry class.

You could tell by the giggles in the hallways, and the comments. And also because when you went to use the bathroom before the break, someone had written "y/l/n is sleeping with all the hotties in this school" on the stall you entered.

Tony approached you at the outside tables, looking happier than he did earlier.

"From the look on your face, you worked things out with Pepper." You spoke, and he smiled as you nodded.

"Of course I did, I'm irresistible."

You laughed, returning your attention to your snack. Tony sat down in the chair in front of you.

"A little bird told me you got a detention today." He started, but you kept eating. "I thought it was a lie, because there's no way the flawless report card lady is going to detention."

You sighed, and finished chewing. "It was a silly argument, Tony. With Wanda."

He propped his chin on his hand, looking at you curiously. "That's odd. You guys always argue, you've never received detention for it."

You pressed your lips together before you spoke. "She said fuck you, and I said I'd rather you do that."

It took half a second for Tony to burst into laughter. He laughed so hard that the students who passed by your desk cast curious glances at you.

You rolled your eyes, and poked him in the ribs under the table. "Are you done?"

He wiped away tears of laughter, before speaking. "I can't believe you said that."

"Neither can I." You returned. "I don't have the heart to look Mrs. van Dyne in the face ever again."

Tony laughed, shaking his head. "I thought you guys were cool, even scheduled a date. What happened?"

"Tony, stop it." You countered. "I already told you it's not a date. Steve asked us to review some content together for the competition. Wanda just made a joke."

"And you didn't contradict her." He argued with a smile. "And I haven't even mentioned what happened the last time you two were alone."

"First of all, that was a mistake. How many times do I have to say this?

"Until you believe it, I suppose."

You tapped him on the shoulder, and he grinned, stealing one of your fries.

"Nothing is going to happen between me and Wanda, okay?" you warn. "We are simply incompatible."

Tony lets out a laugh, chewing his french fry. "Sure, two nerds who like trivia and sitcons, so different." He sneered, causing you to frown.

"Wait, how do you know Wanda likes sitcoms?"

He shrugged, smiling, "She's friends with Nat."

"And?"

"And I talk to other people." He jokes, making you roll your eyes. He sighs at your insistent look. "Okay, maybe, just maybe, I asked Nat some questions about Wanda."

"Why on earth would you do that?"

"Because you like her."

You gasped. "No, I don't."

Tony muttered, stealing another potato. "And since we're best friends, I wanted to find out some things for you, so you're welcome."

You slapped his hand to get him to stop stealing your food. "Tony, what did you say to Natasha?"

He smiled, shrugging. "I didn't give away your crush, relax."

"I don't have a crush."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." He returned. "But just clarifying, I told Nat that I knew someone who was into her friend. And that I wanted to know some things in common so I could tell that friend what to talk about with Wanda."

You began to feel despair growing in your chest, and you took a deep breath. "Tony, my beloved friend of the heart, please tell me that you didn't use pronouns when asking your question."

Tony frowned. "What? What do you mean?"

"Tell me you didn't say 'she' or 'her' when talking about this hypothetical friend."

The boy let out a confused laugh, "I couldn't?"

"Shit." You sighed, burying your face in your hands for a moment. "I swear, Tony. I'm going to kill you."

"Hey, hey, what's the matter?"

"I'm your only female friend you idiot, that's the problem!" You returned in despair. "Oh my god, Natasha definitely realize it. And she'll tell Wanda, and she'll have another reason to tease me. This is a disaster."

"Y/N, come on, it's not that bad." He tried. "Now at least you guys can be more honest with each other."

"You're an idiot, Tony." You returned annoyed, starting to gather your things. Your hunger faded. "I don't have anything to be honest about with that girl, because I'm not hiding anything."

"Y/N, hey, I'm sorry I didn't mean to-"

"It's okay." You cut in irritation. "See you later."

Tony had sent you a few messages throughout the day, apologizing, but you were too busy avoiding Wanda at all costs.

Fortunately, the only class you had with her that day was chemistry. You were so happy with your luck that you completely forgot that you had made an appointment with her after class.

After last period, Steve greeted you in the hallway, and you remembered, almost knocking your backpack to the floor when the realization hit you.

Shit, shit, shit.

It was as if you could guess that Wanda already knew about Tony and Natasha's conversation when you saw her leaving the second floor Geography room and your gazes met. She said goodbye to her classmate who was with her, and came walking toward you.

You took a deep breath, trying to calm your heartbeat and look as cool as you could, leaning against the wall and crossing your arms. Since the day had warmed up, you were holding Tony's jacket.

"Hey, trouble girl." Wanda joked as she reached you, you almost couldn't believe her playful manner.

"Hi, Wanda."

"What did you want to talk to me about?"

"I..."

"Mrs.Maximoff have a moment?" It was Professor Fury who interrupted you, coming from the hallway behind Wanda.

The brunette gave you a wink, and turned to speak to the professor.

You didn't mean to, but you could hear the whole conversation from where you were waiting.

"It's good news, Wanda. I just got the answer from that NYU scout I mentioned to you." Fury narrated, and you had to control yourself not to widen your eyes. "He said he watched your performance online in the semi final. And he'll be here on Friday."

"My god, that's incredible!" Wanda returned excitedly. You felt your chest heat up. You were used to few versions of Wanda. The angry, the know-it-all, and the one who competed with you. Happy Wanda made you flustered.

"Yeah and don't waste this chance, eh?" Fury continued. "I hope you play well on Friday."

"We will." She spoke, and thanked Fury. The man smiled, and gave her a wink before walking off toward the hallway.

You almost melted in your spot when Wanda turned to you again, and her bright smile was still on her face.

"Damn, sorry, I'm so excited." She comments half-heartedly, shaking her head to stop her silly grin, "What did you want to say to me?"

"It's nothing that important." You said. "It's just that Steve asked us to go over some quizzes. Before the final."

She raised her eyebrow, leaning on the wall beside you.

"Yeah, and why?"

You didn't know why, but you were nervous under Wanda's evaluative gaze. "I guess because you missed the last practice." You try, and that answer doesn't take away any reaction from her. "And also because I got some of your topic questions wrong."

“Poor Y/N, it happens darling” She mocked with a smile. You bit your tongue, finding it amusing in the way she repeated the tease from history class with you. "So this is about you needing my help?"

"I didn't say that."

She grinned, and moved closer. You swallowed dryly, watching her raise her hand to Tony's jacket that you were holding.

"Thank you for taking this off."

"Why do you care about a jacket?"

She bit her lip, and you looked immediately at the action. Wanda smiled, finding it amusing in your lack of control.

"Why do you think?"

You swallowed dryly, shaking your head. "I have no idea."

She moved even closer, and you held your breath. But she did not break the distance between your mouths, sidestepped at the last moment, and whispered in your ear, "If you're going to carry a name around, I want it to be mine."

You bowed your head, feeling your face heat up. Wanda pulled away, and let out a giggle. "You're so cute."

"And you're annoying." You returned embarrassed. "Let's finish this for once."

"Lead the way."

You sighed, ignoring your wobbly legs to walk down the stairs toward the study room on the ground floor.

The school was emptying, but during senior year, it was common for some students to stay to study or train for games.

You found the study room practically empty, with the exception of two other groups scattered around the couches. Since you didn't know any of them, you just went quietly to one of the end tables, Wanda within reach.

To calm your nerves, you sat down in the chair opposite her. Wanda was amused, rolling her eyes, but said nothing.

You both put your backpacks on the floor, and took out your notebooks. You were looking for Steve's questionnaire while Wanda prepared the question cards.

It was strange how the perfect harmony happened so naturally.

When you were finished, she had Geography and History cards for you, and you had Physics and Math questions for her. The general knowledge ones were to be drawn among you.

"Okay, let's get started." You said.

Everything was neutral and under control for two hours and twenty-eight minutes.

You were hungry after studying for so long, but Wanda was in the middle of a question and raised her eyebrow, thinking you were evading because you didn't know the answer.

"We can take a break if you answer correctly." She said with a cocky smile. You rolled your eyes, giving a short laugh.

"I'm not going to starve myself just so you can win, Wanda."

"Oh, so you admit you don't know the answer?" She teased, but you only laughed, getting up.

"I won't even deny or affirm that."

She laughed. Short and sweet, and true. You swallowed dryly, thinking it was the first time you had ever heard the sound for real. And that you had enjoyed it much more than you should have.

The snack machine in the study room was old, but it had great options.

You were deciding between salty snacks or muffins when you felt Wanda's presence behind you.

"Option seven is delicious." She commented and you think you are imagining the heat eradicating from her body.

Your fingers trembled a little when you went to press the button for the suggested option, and you hoped she wouldn't notice.

But of course she did. And she sighed behind you, her breath hitching against your neck and making your whole body shiver.

Only when two other students got up from their chairs, the noise made Wanda step away. You bent down to pick up your lunch quickly, and returned to your seat, not giving Wanda a chance to say anything else.

She stayed at the machine for a while longer before returning to her seat in front of you.

You ate in silence, option seven was really good and seemed vegetarian. You wondered if this meant that Wanda was too.

Unable not to look at her, you felt your face heat up when she noticed and smiled, leaning on the table. "Is there something you want to tell me?"

"No." You retorted stubbornly, turning your attention back to your food.

Wanda muttered, and also went back to eating. After a few minutes, she asked, "Are you ready to answer the question yet, or are you going to keep stalling me."

You bit your lips to keep from smiling, rolling your eyes with amusement. "Damn it, Wanda, I wasn't dodging the question."

"I don't believe you." She returned in the same tone.

You chewed for a moment before answering. "You asked 'When was the first American dollar printed', right?"

She confirmed with a grumble. You smiled.

"The answer is 1862."

"Look at that, someone did their homework." She joked, making you roll your eyes in amusement.

"And your question, are you going to answer it, or are you going to pretend you need to go to the bathroom?" You tease, causing her to laugh softly.

She leans back against the chair, and gestures for you to speak. You blink a moment because she looks so hot right now.

"Yeah, um, right..." You mumble half-heartedly, pushing the impure thoughts away to reach for her question card. "What is the prefix meaning 10?"

Wanda leaned over the table again, staring intensely at you. You clutched the paper tightly, watching her raise her hand to your face. She ran her finger across your cheek, wiping away some sweet cream you hadn't noticed, and put her thumb back in her mouth, smiling in a corner. "Like I said, delicious." She whispers after tasting the cream.

Your body heated up in places not at all appropriate for a study session, and all you could do was stare at her mouth discourteously. Wanda relaxed against the chair again, and smiled. "Can you repeat the question? I got distracted."

Blinking a few times, you cleared your throat. "S-sure."

You repeated, and Wanda sighed before answering, "I don't know."

All this, and she didn't even know the answer. You swallowed hard, realizing that Wanda was enjoying the way she was affecting you.

You needed to gain some advantage.

The room finally emptied, the last group of students left the room when the clock ticked half past five.

It was getting cold again, and you remembered Tony's jacket, and the way Wanda had behaved in the hallway.

She was sorting through new questions when you started to put on the jacket, and she looked at you seriously.

"What are you doing?" She questioned with her jaw locked.

"I'm cold."

"Stop." You asked, and you swallowed dryly, but put the jacket back on the chair. Before you could complain about the weather again, Wanda pulled out of her backpack a sweatshirt. "You can return it anytime."

You nodded completely cluelessly. As you took the sweatshirt, Wanda's scent invaded your senses and you wanted to close your eyes, but her watchful gaze made you maintain your posture.

Your goal was to gain an advantage, but you ended up losing even more ground by wearing one of her clothes.

Or maybe not, you thought, as you noticed the slight redness that appeared on Wanda's cheeks when you, now dressed in her red, comfortable sweatshirt, looked at her again.

You couldn't resist, and with the same teasing tone she used earlier, you asked as you noticed her gaze on you, "Is there something you want to tell me?"

"Only that you look hot in my clothes."

"How classy, Maximoff." You returned wryly, even though your heart was racing at the compliment. She smiled, and returned her attention to her books.

The study session went on for another twenty minutes until the questions ran out.

You found yourself wanting to prolong the moment, and ignored all your brain's warnings as you spoke, "Your next question is 'What's your favorite useless fact?'

Wanda looked at you for only a second, then turned her gaze back to the cards in her lap. You were about to say you were just joking, thinking she was ready to tease you about your attempt to make a conversation, when she simply answered "Fingernails grow faster on your dominant hand." like any other practice question, and waited for you to continue.

You bit back a smile, and relaxed against your chair. "How did you discover that?"

Wanda sighed softly, and leaned across the table, resting her chin on one hand and extending the other over the metal. "Well, you know, I use my fingers quite often, and I've noticed that these nails grow faster than the ones on my other hand." She counted innocently, and held up two fingers at face height.

You choked softly, feeling your face heat up as you understood what she was implying. Wanda let out a giggle.

"I'm messing with you!" She laughed. "I read it somewhere."

"Oh, okay." You mumbled clumsily, looking away.

Wanda laughed one last time before asking, "Well now it's my turn, 'How was your first kiss?"

"Wow, that's pretty straightforward." You mock with amusement, Wanda smiles but waits for your answer. You sigh. "Well, I was 15, and it was with an old friend."

"It was with a girl?"

"Yes, Wanda."

She frowned slightly, and you looked at her curiously. "And did you enjoy it?"

"Well, I didn't have much to compare it to at the time."

But Wanda didn't laugh, looking almost tense. "Was it better than the way I kissed you on Friday?"

Oh, there it is.

You swallowed dryly, and gave a breathless laugh. "Not even close."

Expecting her usual cocky smile, you blushed over the sweet way she looked at you.

"Good to know." She comments, relaxing back against the chair.

You clear your throat, and pretend to read the question on the card as you stated, "What was your favorite Halloween costume as a child?"

She smiled, joining in the game as she picked up the blank cards in front of her as if they had answers on it. "Witch. I have pictures of at least six halloween wearing the same costume."

"I'd like to see that one day." You comment and she smiles, nodding as if making a mental note about it.

You spend the next few minutes exchanging questions unrelated to the content. Good thing you had already finished studying.

Wanda had just answered a question about her favorite hobby, confirmed as watching sitcoms as Tony told you, when she decided to mess with you a little.

“What do you think about friends with benefits?”

Wanda was not a very subtle person, that much is clear. You wanted to laugh, but just pretended to be thoughtful before answering. "It depends on the friend."

"If it was me."

Ignoring the way your heart sped up, you smiled as you looked at her. "We're not friends."

Wanda licked her lips. "What do you think of enemies with benefits then?"

You know she can notice the redness on your face, but no chance of you letting her win. "That's not a thing."

"We could be the first."

You let out a breathless laugh, shaking your head. Wanda didn't hesitate and asked again, "So, what do you think?"

"I think it's no longer your turn to ask."

She bit back a smile, but didn't insist. You took a deep breath earlier as you thought of another question.

"How many siblings do you have?"

That changed the mood of the game. Wanda was almost surprised.

"Two." She said simply. You thought she was going to continue with another question, but she added. "And I'm a twin."

"Wait, what?" You let out impressed. "I didn't know that. That's cool."

She shrugged, staring at you. "I guess so."

But you couldn't help yourself, curiosity surfacing. "And how come I never knew that? They don't study here, right?"

She denies with her head, and you straighten your posture quickly, "Sorry, I didn't mean to be nosy-"

"It's okay." She cuts in with a laugh. "My twin's name is Pietro, you saw him yesterday."

"Oh, that 's true."

"And my younger sister's name is Lorna." She continues almost shyly. "Sorry, I don't usually talk about them."

"Why not?" You let out, and add quickly. "If you want to tell me of course."

Wanda smiles, shrugging. "We're not that close, and I don't have many friends here, I guess. The last person I mentioned it to was Natasha." She clarifies. "It's because my parents are divorced, and Lorna is another woman's daughter, too. Each child lives in a house."

"Oh, I see." You mutter, surprised at the information. Wanda clears her throat.

"Is it my turn to ask?"

"Yeah." You say. She sighs, and looks around, as if thinking of another question.

And then she swallows dry, and has an almost sad smile on her face as she looks back at you. "When did you know you hated me?"

Your stomach gave a turn and you looked away to your lap.

Wanda sighed again, and murmured, "I can change the question."

"No, that's fine." You spoke raising your face. You took a deep breath before speaking. "First grade, on a Tuesday."

Wanda squeezed her eyes shut, appraising you. "Be more specific?"

"One question at a time, Maximoff."

"Fuck the rules, I want to know now."

You bit your lower lip, Wanda was looking at you in a way that made your body tremble. You took another deep breath, and replied, "It was mascot day. I was late, and the teacher thought I was not coming . You took my place when it was my time to take the rabbit home, and I had waited all month for that."

Wanda locked her jaw, circling the table with her finger for a second as if absorbing his words. "That's your motive?"

"You looked at me as if you had beaten me somehow." You continue in earnest. "Since that day we haven't stopped competing in everything. But I think that was the moment."

"You hate me because our elementary school teacher made a mistake? For a stupid rabbit you took home the other week?" She accused incredulously, and you also glared at her in irritation. "Seriously, how old are you?"

"And what the fuck was your motive madam maturity?" You sneered angrily. Wanda laughed, shaking her head.

"You being my first crush."

You frowned in confusion, but Wanda was already gathering the materials.

"No, fuck this, you're not running away again." You warned getting up and going around the table to get in her way before she left. "What did you mean by-"

"I like you, you idiot!" She interrupted with the confession, knocking all the air out of your lungs. "I always have, ever since I met you. You're annoying and stubborn, but you're brilliant and funny, and fucking beautiful. But I can't believe you hate me for such a petty reason."

"I-I..."

"I was just playing your game all these years!" She returned annoyed. "You wanted to compete? I wanted your attention. I did everything I could to get you to notice me, and I could affect you the way you affect me!"

"Wanda, I had no idea, I-"

"Of course not!" she exploded incredulously. "You were busy hating me for something stupid thing that happened in first grade! I can't believe I fell in love with you."

Wanda's eyes were filled with tears. You felt like the worst person in the world. It was the first time you had ever seen her cry, and that was bad enough in itself, but it was even worse because it was your fault.

"I'm sorry." You tried, but she shook her head, wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, and went around you.

"Save it." She retorted. "We're done here. I'll see you at the competition, and then never again. Just like you wanted."

With this, she left the room.

You didn't realize you were crying until the tears rolled down your collarbone.

Taking a deep breath to calm yourself, you began to gather your things, replaying the whole conversation in your head.

You called Tony to ask if he could see you, but sobbed as soon as he answered and asked how the study session had gone.

"I'll pick you up in ten minutes." He warned before hanging up.

You stood there with your backpack hanging, watching the fine drizzle that began to fall and matched your mood very well. Wanda's sweater warmed your body, but you only felt worse when you realized it.

---//---

Tag list > @imapotatao / @aimezvousbrahms/ @ensorcellme/ @helloalycia || @mionemymind / @abimess / @stephanieromanoff / @yourtaletotell / @tomy5girls / @thegayw1tch / @idek-5 // @helloalycia // @ensorcellme // @aimezvousbrahms // @drpepperobsessed // @sighsam // @olsensnpm // @sxfwap // @table57 // @madamevirgo // @causeitswhatjesuswouldfreakingdo // @emptysince18x // @xastrydx || @yuhloversxx || @ymzki-haruki || @wouldirunofftheworldsomeday || @lostandsearching || @lezzzbehonesthere || @musicinourlips || @chaekhan || @diaryoflife || @nervoustrack || @aquamarinescarlet || @cristin-rjd || @idamaemann || @fortunatelynerdylight || @iliketozoneout || @blackwow34 // @spongebobtentacles || @cyberbonesworld || @stressed-but-a-mess || @ima-gi--na-tion || @dykse || @natasha-belova || @etb32698 || @raqelacevedo || @sweeet-likeeee-cinnamonn || @androgynouscloudenemy || @dumpaccdontmindme || @thought-of-you-and-me || @euphoriaszn2 || @messuhp || @@blkmxrvel || @s1ut4nat

#wanda maximoff x reader #wanda x reader #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff imagines #wanda maximoff fic #wanda maximoff imagine #wanda maximoff #wanda you #marvel imagine #high school au

[deancaskiss]

The 5 Senses of Longing

This fic is a gift for @stanforderadean as part of my gift exchange celebration!

Also posted on ao3.

Word Count: 7,463 (Continued under the Read More)

Dean rapped his knuckles on the wood door, pausing for a second before nudging it open with his shoulder. Cas was lying on the bed in his room, propped up against the headboard with a book in his lap, and Dean was once again hit with the startling recollection that Cas actually needed to sleep now that he didn’t have his Grace. Somehow it was endearing to see Cas this way; curled up under the covers and rubbing sleep from his eyes.

But wasn't that the point of this? The whole reason Dean had come knocking on Cas' door in the first place. Because Cas had been without his powers for months now, and also because they were in a lull with finding Metatron and killing Abbadon. What they needed was a little break. And even though they were dealing with more shit than ever before, Dean yearned to slow things down around them for just a couple of days to show Cas some of the good things about being human.

Dean had been the one to suggest the idea casually to Sam, and with Ezekiel healing him slowly, it was best for Sam to stay at the Bunker and rest. Which gave Dean the perfect opportunity. Now the only thing to do was to bring the idea to Cas.

“Hey, buddy,” Dean said, hovering in the doorway. “Mind if I come in?”

Cas smiled, lowering his book and closing it with a quiet thump. “Not at all,” he said, gesturing for Dean to enter the room. “Did something happen?” he asked, smile shifting into something more alert as he pushed himself further up in the bed.

“No, no, nothing happened,” Dean quickly reassured, taking a couple steps closer before hesitating at the foot of the bed. Should he sit on the bed? Should he pull up a chair? Should he just stand there? Why was he overthinking this? God, he really needed to get these bubbling feelings under control before he opened his mouth and said something he shouldn’t. “I was uh. Actually wondering if you were busy?”

Cas blinked a couple times, tilting his head and squinting up at Dean in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I thought we could go on a little road trip. Just you and me for a couple of days. Wanted to show you a few things now that you’re sorta human,” Dean said.

“A road trip? Don’t we do that all the time?” Cas asked.

Dean grinned, nudging Cas’ leg with his knee as he plopped himself down on the edge of the bed. “Well, yeah. But this isn’t gonna be a road trip for a case. There’s a couple of spots around here that you’ve got to experience. Sights and smells you haven’t seen yet. Oh, and the best stack of pancakes you’ll ever eat. You’ve just gotta trust me.”

Something soft and affectionate sparked through Cas’ eyes before he nodded. “Best pancakes I’ll ever eat? Is that so?” he teased.

All the nerves that had been lurching in Dean’s stomach settled all at once, and he shoved at Cas’ leg again. Yeah. This he could do. Their usual playful antics that he enjoyed so much. He didn’t need to think about that little spark that was twining around his heart at the way Cas had just smiled at him.

“Just you wait. Now that you’ve got taste buds, I’m gonna make you try every single food I can get my hands on. I will find every single thing you enjoy eating, mark my words,” Dean said lightly, hauling himself up from the bed. “Twenty minutes. Get your ass moving and meet me at the car.”

Cas laughed, free and happy, and Dean’s heart lurched in his chest. Oh, he was going to do everything he could over the next two days just to hear that sound again.

Dean had just reached the door when Cas called out to him.

“Hey, Dean?”

Dean turned, hand on the doorknob as he looked back at Cas. “Yeah?”

“Thank you,” Cas said, smiling so warmly that it made Dean feel momentarily weak in the knees. Oh God. If Cas kept smiling at him like that, Dean was going to do something he regretted, like kiss Cas stupid until he could feel that smile against his own lips.

“Yeah, of course. Twenty minutes. Don’t be late,” Dean said, flashing Cas a quick smile before bolting from the room; the door snapping shut behind him as he escaped to the safety of his own room.

Pressing his back into his bedroom door, Dean heaved in a deep breath; closing his eyes and scrubbing his hands over his face. This idea was either the best thing he’d ever come up with... or it was going to be the death of him. Maybe he’d be able to get over this stupid fluttering feeling in his chest. Or maybe, just maybe, that feeling was going to explode until it consumed him whole.

~

"Where are we going first?" Cas asked, sliding into the passenger seat exactly nineteen minutes later.

A minute early, Dean noted. Was that deliberate? Was it accidental? Dean couldn't possibly be overthinking one teeny tiny little minute, could he?

"Pancakes, obviously. Unless you're suddenly going to turn your nose up at chocolate," Dean said, darting his eyes over to Cas as they pulled out of the Bunker onto the main dirt road winding through the woods.

"Chocolate?" Cas repeated, turning in his seat until he'd angled his body towards Dean. The smile that crept across his lips was so dazzling that Dean had to suck in a sharp breath and force his eyes on the road. "I love chocolate."

Huffing out a laugh, Dean clicked on the music and Zeppelin softly filled the air. "Oh really? I never would've known." Shifting onto the main road, Dean grinned at Cas. "I definitely didn't see you eat 3 chocolate bars yesterday."

Cas pretended to be shocked, gasping at Dean even though his eyes were sparkling with laughter. "That certainly wasn't me. Sam framed me."

The laughter bubbled up from Dean’s chest, and he couldn't stop himself from knocking his hand against Cas' knee. "You're a menace. You and your sudden sweet tooth."

"I don't see you complaining that hard. Considering now you have someone to eat chocolate pancakes with."

The breath caught in Dean's throat; such simple words hitting like a wave against his chest. Keeping his focus on the road, he quickly darted his gaze over at Cas from the corner of his eye. Cas had tucked himself against the door, with his body still tilted towards Dean. There was a soft expression on his face; a smile that lit up his eyes with his nose crinkled adorably.

Oh God, this feeling really was going to consume Dean.

Shifting the conversation towards topics that wouldn’t make Dean’s heart ache in his chest, the hour-long drive slipped by in a blur. The diner soon loomed on the horizon, and it was so easy to keep talking about blueberries vs bananas as Dean guided the Impala into a parking spot.

“Doesn’t it depend on what you’re putting the fruit with?” Dean asked, holding the diner door open for Cas to walk through. “Besides, bananas can be baked into far more things than blueberries.”

Cas scrunched up his face, giving Dean a look that bordered on a pout. “You’re just saying that because you prefer bananas over blueberries.”

"I would never," Dean teased, before stepping up to the counter. "Table for two, please."

"Right this way," the hostess said, guiding them to a booth in the back of the diner.

As soon as they sat down, Cas moved to pick up a menu from the table, but Dean reached out from the other side of the booth and plucked it from Cas' hands. "Nope. No looking. You just gotta trust me on this one, yeah?"

"What if I don't like it?" Cas asked, raising an eyebrow even though he leaned back in his seat, conceding to Dean's statement of trust.

Tapping his fingers against the table, Dean tried not to linger on the way their fingertips had just barely brushed when he'd pulled the menu from Cas' grasp. "You will. Don't overthink it and have a little faith in me."

"I do. Trust you," Cas said, something in his tone slipping from playful to serious.

Dean shook his head, dispelling the heavier tone. He didn't want to think about Cas' unwavering trust and how most days he felt like he didn't deserve it. Right now, this moment was about showing Cas something more.

"Good. Because if you don't like it, I'm never speaking to you again," Dean joked, lightening the mood again.

"Never again? That's a long time to not talk to me because of some pancakes, Dean,” Cas laughed.

Just as Dean was about to throw another tease at Cas, a waiter appeared at their table with a smile and a notepad in his hand.

“Hi there, welcome to Mel’s. My name’s Hunter. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Actually, Hunter, we’re ready to order. Two coffees, one with cream and sugar and one with cream. And two short stacks of the rocky road pancakes, please.”

Hunter smiled, jotting down the order. “Well that was easy. I’ll get those coffees out to you both in just a few moments.”

“Thank you,” Cas said, as Hunter collected their menus and disappeared towards the kitchen. “You know how I like my coffee?”

Dean ducked his head, a sudden tinge burning his cheeks as he cleared his throat. “Cream and two sugars. Like I said, you like things on the sweeter side,” Dean said, avoiding Cas’ gaze from the other side of the table.

“You’re very observant,” Cas pointed out.

Dean bit down on his tongue, forcing himself to swallow the words ‘I’m only observant when it comes to you.’ Instead, he threw on a cocky smirk and said, “That’s because I’m an excellent hunter.”

Rolling his eyes, Cas kicked Dean lightly under the table. “You’re not that good.”

Dean pretended to be offended, scrunching up one of the spare napkins and throwing it at Cas’ face. Cas laughed, bright and giddy, and Dean felt a weightless feeling in his chest. He spent the next 15 minutes doing anything and everything he could just to hear Cas laugh again and again.

By the time their pancakes and coffee arrived at the table, Cas’ cheeks were pink from laughter and Dean had never been more smitten. Cas made a little sound of shock as the pancakes were put in front of him; his eyes widening as he looked up at Dean in surprise.

Three massive chocolate pancakes covered the entire size of the plate. Topped with handfuls of marshmallows and almonds, along with a drizzle of chocolate syrup and cocoa powder, it was a chocolate overload.

“What do you think? Does it look sweet enough for you, angel?” Dean said, with a grin.

“Looks like Heaven,” Cas muttered, picking up his fork and taking a bite. Cas instantly groaned in pleasure, eyes fluttering shut as he hummed happily. “Tastes like it, too.”

Dean wasn’t sure whether to laugh at Cas’ words or to dwell on the sound Cas had made when he tasted the pancakes, and it was all too much and not enough.

“You like it?” Dean asked, swallowing a mouthful of his own pancake and washing it down with a sip of coffee just so he could distract himself from the look of sheer bliss that was on Cas’ face.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Cas said, dipping one of the mini marshmallows into the chocolate syrup with a grin.

This time Dean did laugh, nudging Cas’ leg under the table with his foot. “Don’t eat it too fast or you’ll give yourself hiccups.”

“That’s not a thing,” Cas said, chewing on another mouthful of pancake.

“Yeah, Cas, it is,” Dean said, huffing out a breath and rolling his eyes fondly.

As if to prove his point, Cas started hiccuping a minute later. Dean raised an eyebrow, as if to say, ‘see, I told you,’ and Cas pouted.

“But it’s so-” he broke off to hiccup, “Good.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Dean said warmly. “Hold your breath for twenty seconds, and then eat a little slower. The pancake isn’t going anywhere.”

Cas gave Dean a sharp look. “Unless you-” he hiccuped again, “steal it from my plate before I can eat it.”

Okay, that was a fair point. Dean definitely had eaten from Cas’ plate before. But this time, he placed his hand on his heart as he said, “I won’t touch your pancakes, you have my word.”

Shoulders bouncing as Cas hiccuped again, Dean watched as Cas took in a deep breath and then held it. He internally counted as well, watching as Cas let the breath out twenty seconds later.

They both waited a beat, then two, and when no more hiccups came, Cas beamed at Dean. “It worked,” he said before moving to take another bite of chocolatey goodness.

They lapsed into comfortable silence as they ate, both of them enjoying their breakfast. Cas broke the moment a few minutes later to say, "I want to eat these pancakes every day for the rest of my life."

Taking a sip of his coffee, Dean grinned across the table at Cas. "I'm not sure if we can get out here every day. But we can make it a thing, if you want? Every Sunday that we're at home, you and I can drive down here for breakfast," Dean offered.

Cas nodded eagerly, a genuine smile lighting up his face. "I'd love that."

Something warm settled in Dean's veins; seeing Cas so happy and content over something as simple as a stack of pancakes. It was all Dean had wanted. To see Cas smile and to see him enjoy something Dean also liked.

Nodding firmly, decision made, Dean nudged Cas with his foot again. “Finish your pancakes. We’ve got more things to explore today.”

“Like what?” Cas asked, freezing with his fork inches from his lips. Dean had to force himself to look away before he stared at the way Cas’ lips wrapped around the fork.

“You’ll see. I’ll give you a couple options in the car and you can pick whichever one you want,” Dean said, biting down on his own fork just a little too roughly; the tang of metal vibrating along his tooth.

Cas pouted, pointing at Dean with the handle of his fork. “What if I want to know the options now?”

Miming zipping his lips closed, Dean smiled at the fond exasperation that Cas shot his way. The expression instantly melted into a smile again as Cas scooped more marshmallows onto his chocolate pancake.

“A new tradition,” Cas murmured, more to himself than Dean, but Dean heard the fondness in the words and his heart kicked up again in his chest.

God, Dean was happy. Happier than he’d been in a long time. He genuinely cared about Cas enjoying things, and knowing he’d been able to make Cas smile was a damn good feeling.

By the time they made their way back to the Impala twenty minutes later, both full of chocolatey sweetness, Cas immediately tapped his fingers on Dean’s knee. “What are the options?”

Rolling his eyes, Dean nudged Baby into gear and pulled back out onto the road. “So impatient.”

“Shut up,” Cas huffed, his tone sharply contrasting the happy look on his face.

“Alright. Simple question. Don’t think too hard about it. Ready?”

Cas nodded.

“Aquarium or the zoo?”

Cas’ eyes sparkled bright blue in the late morning sunlight as he made his choice. “Aquarium.”

~

The afternoon sun crept through the Impala windows as they arrived at the aquarium in Kansas City a couple of hours later. Cas had spent the entire drive talking about the evolution of fish and their importance to the earth from creation until now.

It was entirely endearing, hearing Cas talk so animatedly. It made Dean want to pull over; to watch Cas talk as he hung on every word that slipped past Cas’ lips. Instead, he darted his eyes over to the passenger seat as often as he could, watching as Cas occasionally emphasized his point by gesturing with his hands.

Too cute.

Dean turned his eyes back to the road again.

As soon as they’d parked, Cas was out of the car and gravitating towards the entrance before Dean could even open his door. There was an excited gleam in Cas’ eyes, and Dean felt the electric pull as he allowed Cas to lead the way to the ticket booth.

“I wonder if they’ll have any seahorses. Did you know they’re the only animals where the male carries the eggs and undergoes the birthing process?” Cas asked as Dean purchased the tickets.

Dean hummed vaguely in answer, not wanting to take away from Cas’ enthusiasm by admitting he already knew that. “I’m sure they’ll have plenty of seahorses,” he said instead, watching Cas from the corner of his eye as the former angel beamed.

Stepping into the cool air conditioned building, Dean’s eyes caught the entrance sign that indicated which direction each exhibit was located and he nudged Cas towards it. “What do you want to see first?”

Cas’ gaze caught the very first line on the sign and he grinned. “There are sea turtles, Dean. A whole rescue center for them.” Something in Cas’ expression shifted from excited to fond in the blink of an eye; leaving Dean reeling at how expressive Cas was. “It’s nice. That there are people who try to conserve endangered species.”

Dean bumped his shoulder into Cas’, gently directing him towards the sea turtle exhibit. “See? Not all humans are terrible,” he joked.

“No. They’re not,” Cas said, the fondness morphing into something tender as his gaze locked with Dean’s. The moment felt blinding, and Dean had to tear his eyes away before he did something stupid like lean in and kiss Cas right in front of the exhibit.

Instead, Dean shifted the conversation into something lighter. Putting his hand out, he caught Cas’ shoulder and held him back mere feet from the turtles. When Cas gave him a questioning look, Dean moved to tap his nose with his finger. “Take a second. What do you smell?”

Cas tilted his head, sucking in a deep breath before raising an eyebrow at Dean. “Salt water.”

Dean nodded. “Part of the experience is the smell; the salt lingering in the air from the exhibits. Almost makes you feel like you’re right there by the ocean.”

Dean watched as Cas’ eyes fluttered shut as he took another long, slow breath. A little smile graced his lips, and the sight was so simplistic and yet so beautiful Dean momentarily lost his breath. Quickly sneaking out his phone, Dean took a picture; with the turtles in the background and Cas with his eyes closed in a peaceful bliss.

“I like it,” Cas said a moment later, eyes fluttering open as he looked over at Dean. “The atmosphere is peaceful.”

Nodding, Dean nudged Cas to start moving again. “I’m glad. Now let’s go see the turtles.”

Entering into the turtles rescue center, they walked up to one of the large tanks where several turtles gracefully swam by. Cas moved forward, gently pressing his palm to the glass. “They’re beautiful,” he murmured.

“Do you want to sit and watch them? It looks like there might be someone coming to feed them if you want to stay for that?” Dean asked.

“I’d love to,” Cas said, letting Dean lead him to a bench just a couple of feet away.

They sat down together, watching as the turtles elegantly moved through the water. It was captivating and mesmerizing; both watching the turtles glide through the water, but also watching Cas watching the turtles.

“Tell me something. About turtles, I mean,” Dean said, bumping Cas’ knee with his own.

“Their species is 110 million years old,” Cas said wistfully, as if he were picturing the moment when sea turtles first came into existence. “They don’t have any teeth,” he said, nodding his head to the tank where several jellyfish and crabs were being fed to the turtles. “Their mouth is made of keratin, like your fingernails, which helps to break down the plants and small animals that they eat.”

“They really are elegant,” Dean said, pressing his shoe up against Cas’ and offering him a smile.

Cas nodded, his eyes darting back and forth between the turtles and Dean. “They were some of my favorite creatures made for the ocean.” Cas lapsed into silence for a few moments, his gaze caught on a cluster of turtles that swam up to the surface to take a breath.

Dean let the pause linger, but instead of watching the turtles, he spent his time watching Cas. He cataloged the serene expression on Cas’ face and committed it to memory. It was a pleased contentment that Dean wanted to see Cas experience over and over again.

After several minutes of watching the turtles swim around and waddle their way up onto a sandy ledge, Cas bumped their knees together. “What’s next?”

“You tell me,” Dean said. “What do you want to see?”

“Fish. Any fish,” he paused, “The fish from that movie you’ve talked about before.”

Dean laughed, tipping his head back and letting a bubbling feeling of happiness wrap around his heart. “You mean Finding Nemo?”

“That’s it. Show me fish from Finding Nemo,” Cas said, getting up from the bench and offering his hand to Dean.

Dean let his fingers wrap around Cas’ wrist as Cas pulled him to his feet, and a spark of longing cascaded down his spine. Before he could linger on the feeling for too long, Cas had let go and was moving towards the nearest sign with arrows to the major exhibits.

“It says fish exhibits are this way,” Cas said, already moving towards the tunnel he’d indicated. Except it wasn’t just a tunnel. A large tank wrapped around the walkway, giving a massive overhead view of several sharks and fishes as they stepped into the passage.

“Wow,” Cas breathed out, tilting his head back so he could watch as a blacktip shark swam over their heads. They paused in the corridor, watching as a school of fish darted overhead just seconds after the shark had passed. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Cas whispered.

There was something about Cas’ earnest awe that made Dean want to surprise him over and over again. “Do you like it?” Dean asked, stepping to the side as a family moved past them.

“I do,” Cas replied, happy and carefree.

And then they were moving again; past the sharks and into several rooms filled with tanks of colorful fish. From sea bass to minnows, and rockfish to flounders; they spent a vast amount of time looking at each exhibit of fish. Dean specifically found tanks filled with clownfish and blue tangs, explaining the plot of Finding Nemo even though he knew Cas already knew the movie.

The exhibits transitioned from fish into invertebrates and other sea creatures; crabs and lobsters, jellyfish and urchins, eels to octopi. Cas was fascinated by every animal they saw.

But Dean’s favorite part was the knowledge Cas shared. At every single exhibit, Dean pointed at a fish and asked, “Tell me something about this one.” And, without fail, Cas instantly told Dean a unique fact or detail about whichever animal Dean had pointed at. Dean stopped looking at the signs next to each tank, instead turning and asking Cas what each species was. No matter how many times Dean asked, Cas gave him the same beautifully fond smile as he detailed every fish they saw.

By the time they’d made their way through all of the tanks, Dean swore he could write and direct his own nature series on sea creatures with all the information Cas had shared.

“Alright, now we’ve seen the fish, are you ready for the best part of any aquarium trip?” Dean asked as they stepped back out into the main entryway of the building.

“There’s something better than seeing the fish?” Cas asked, tilting his head questioningly.

Dean chuckled, nudging Cas towards another corridor while deliberately blocking the signpost from view so that he could surprise Cas. “Oh, trust me, you’re gonna enjoy this.”

Guiding Cas past tanks of coral and kelp, they walked out into a large enclosure. People lingered around a massive pool in the center of the room; children screaming and giggling and the sounds of splashing water echoing around the walls.

“Welcome,” Dean said, gesturing widely with his arms, “To the interactive touchpool.”

“The what?” Cas asked, squinting at Dean in shock.

“Touchpool, Cas. It’s where you can actually put your hand in the water and touch the creatures. I thought you’d like to physically interact with some of the animals. If you want?”

Cas pulled in a sharp breath, his eyes flitting to the large pool before darting back to Dean in awe. “What animals are there?”

“Why don’t we go find out?” Dean said, guiding Cas to the sink area so they could both wash their hands before directing them to an open spot along the wall of the exhibit. Rolling his sleeve up, Dean motioned for Cas to do the same. Then he dipped his fingertips into the water, and watched as Cas copied his motions.

Reaching out, Dean’s fingers brushed over a sea star and he chuckled quietly. “C’mere,” he said, moving his hand through the water until he bumped against Cas. Linking their fingers together, Dean guided their joined hands down until Cas’ palm was pressed against the sea star.

“Oh.” Cas’ surprise hung in the air between them as he leaned his weight into Dean’s side. Pressed together against the rocky edge of the exhibit, Dean swore he never wanted to let go. But Cas deserved to experience what it felt like to touch these creatures. Loosening his hold on Cas’ wrist until he was just barely brushing their hands together, Dean felt Cas’ hand move slowly over the top of the sea star, as if he were memorizing every hard bump of the spines along its body. “It’s not what I expected, even though I know every molecule they’re made of. It feels… leathery,” Cas said, tilting his head carefully as he gently traced his fingers over the starfish for a second time.

Dean gave Cas another minute to interact with the sea star before he slipped his fingers across the back of Cas’ hand and carefully guided him again. “How does this feel?” he asked as he lowered Cas’ hand down gently towards an anemone.

Cas let out another little gasp, hand jerking back slightly at the texture before he touched it again. “Gelatinous. Like jello,” Cas said with a laugh, fingers tracing over the flower-like structure.

Shifting away slightly to put some space between them, Dean moved to pull his hand away, but Cas instantly followed him until he pressed their hands together again. Their fingers interlocked under the rippling water, and Dean felt his breath stutter out of his lungs.

“Show me something else,” Cas said, voice almost drowned out by the loud sounds all around them.

Pulling in a sharp breath, Dean kept their hands linked together as he took a step to the side; waiting for Cas to follow him. He watched carefully as the stingray moved along the floor of the exhibit, and as it approached them, he directed Cas’ hand down until his palm slid down the stingray's back.

“What does the stingray feel like?” Dean asked, words sticking in his throat as the overwhelming sensations sparked between them.

“Smooth. Almost sleek and silky,” Cas said, voice dropping into something breathy in awe. Cas’ hand lingered against the stingray, fingertips stroking over it’s skin before Dean shifted their joined hands down onto the bottom of the tank.

“Let it move over your hand,” Dean said, shifting his hold on Cas until he was gripping around Cas’ wrist.

The stingray rippled over Cas’ hand as it swam along the floor, and Cas let out a startled laugh. “It tickles,” he said, leaning his weight back into Dean again until his hip bumped against Dean’s. They remained that way for several long seconds as the stingray moved over Cas’ hand and continued on its way down the length of the pool.

Dean cast his eyes from the water up to Cas, and their gazes locked for a heart-pounding moment. An unspoken thing passed between them, and Cas momentarily flipped his hand until his palm brushed against Dean’s palm. There was a rush of water that moved around their hands at the motion, but Dean swore he could feel the heat from Cas’ hand radiating up into his.

Movement from a large gray fish broke Dean from the trace and he tipped Cas’ hand palm down again as the fish swam past.

“Fish,” Dean said.

“Sturgeon,” Cas clarified as his fingers grazed along the bony spines of its back until it’s whiskers tickled over the pads of his fingers. “It’s smooth because it doesn't have any scales, but also bony where the cartilage creates these projections.”

Nodding, Dean glided their hands through the water again until they brushed against the sharp roughness of coral.

“It’s different, right? Focusing all your senses on the way something feels,” Dean said quietly.

Cas nodded, letting Deans’ fingers slide into the gaps between his own again. “I’ve never experienced anything quite like it,” Cas said, words whispered reverently between them. And then, said even more quietly, “I remember watching the evolution of these creatures; watching one of the fish climb onto the shore and another angel telling me not to step on that fish because there were big plans for it. I wish I’d known then.”

“Known what?” Dean asked, a sudden lump forming in his throat.

“How beautiful fish could be, and what it was truly like to see them and touch them,” Cas responded, letting Dean maneuver them as another stingray floated through the water right underneath their hands.

Dean tilted his head, watching the way Cas’ expressions shifted from amazement to surprise and delight.

“Do you want to stay here for a little while? We can see if there’s any other creatures on the other side of the pool that you can interact with?”

The smile that Cas gave him was so bright Dean swore it rivaled the sun. “I’d like that very much.”

Letting go of Cas’ hand and stepping away from the water felt like Dean had left a part of himself behind on the edge of the pool. But when they’d found a new spot on the opposite end of the exhibit, Cas’ hand instantly found Dean’s underwater.

They spent an hour at the touchpool interacting with the creatures, but Dean wasn’t paying attention to the animals anymore. All he could focus on was the way Cas’ hand fit perfectly with his own, and how Cas kept their fingers intertwined the entire time. Dean never wanted the moment to end; Cas pressed against him, babbling excitedly about how everything felt, as if they had all the time in the world to linger right there at the edge of the glistening water.

~

Dusk had fallen by the time they left the aquarium. Walking back to the car, Dean felt drunk on happiness with the tingling sensation of Cas’ fingers still lingering against his hand. Part of him wanted to reach out and grasp Cas’ hand again, but without the pretense of the water, Dean hesitated and the moment slipped by.

But the day had been good; better than anything Dean could’ve hoped for. In all the time he’d known Cas, Dean swore he’d never seen Cas laugh and smile so much.

By the time they climbed back into the Impala, Cas was hiding a yawn behind his hand, automatically dropping his head to rest against the door.

“I think that’s enough excitement for one day. Ready to find a motel and get some sleep?” Dean asked.

Cas’ tired eyes found Dean’s in the muted light from the streetlight above them, and he gave Dean a soft nod. Despite the exhaustion, Dean could still see the etches of happiness lingering in Cas’ expression. Something churned in Dean’s stomach at the sight and he reached out, resting his hand briefly on Cas’ knee with a gentle squeeze.

“Dean,” Cas said, voice infused with affection.

The tenderness was almost too much to bear, and Dean cast his eyes out to the road as they pulled out of the parking lot. “Sap,” he muttered back to Cas, catching the little fond smile on Cas’ face at the light teasing.

Once they were back on the road, Cas closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the door again. Dean noticed, and quickly he fumbled one handed to grab one of his spare jackets from the backseat. He nudged it into Cas’ lap, nodding his head towards the door. “Better to use a jacket as a pillow.”

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas murmured thickly, scrunching the jacket up and nestling it between his head and the door. Another surge of fondness surged up to wrap around Dean’s lungs, and he forced himself to focus on driving instead of watching Cas drift off to sleep with his head pillowed on his jacket.

It took almost half an hour of driving to find a motel that had any vacancy- why the last 3 were all full was a surprising feat that Dean had rarely encountered- and Dean was tempted to let Cas sleep the rest of the night tucked up in the passenger seat, but he knew from experience that it was more comfortable to drag his exhausted ass into a motel room than to get neck ache from sleeping against the car door. As softly as he could, Dean nudged Cas’ shoulder.

Cas’ eyes immediately fluttered open, Dean’s name on his lips as he catalogued their surroundings with sleepy blinks.

“Hey buddy. Are you ready to get out of the car and get some sleep in a bed?” Dean prompted, keeping his tone gentle in the peaceful darkness of the car.

“Yeah, okay,” Cas said, scrubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

God. The sight was ridiculously cute. Dean’s heart kicked up against his chest, and he forced himself to open the door and step out into the cool night air before he reached out and brushed his hand through Cas’ messy hair. “I’ll go get us checked in.”

He waited until he saw Cas nod before he made his way to the front desk.

A young man looked up as the bell above the door dinged, and the smell of musty haze hit Dean as he stepped into the building.

“Single room with two queens, please,” Dean said, stepping up to the counter.

The man made a face, shaking his head as he dropped a key in front of Dean. “Sorry, dude. I’ve got one room left with one bed. There’s a convention in town and everywhere is booked for miles.”

Well shit. Dean cast his eyes outside to Cas, who was leaning against the hood of the Impala with his shoulders hunched as if he were barely keeping himself standing upright. They were both tired, and searching for another motel when there was a room here felt unnecessarily complicated. They could share a bed, right? It was just for one night. Cas wouldn’t mind, would he?

“Yeah, alright, we’ll take it,” Dean said, lungs suddenly constricting in his chest at the thought of lying inches away from Cas. “Thanks.” Picking up the key, Dean made his way back out to the Impala where Cas had stacked their bags on the curb by his feet.

“Hope you don’t mind sharing,” he said, bending down to grab his overnight bag. “They only had one room left with just one bed.”

“Okay,” Cas said, simple and easy. But was that… was that a smile? Why was Cas smiling about sharing a bed? Surely he wouldn’t want to be crammed up next to Dean after they’d spent all day in each other’s pockets. “I’m following you.”

Shaking his head, Dean hummed vaguely and followed the signs down to their room. Nudging open the door, Dean dumped his bag on the little table by the window. “You can go ahead and take a shower first if you want?”

Cas smiled, tired yet genuine. “Are you sure?”

Nodding, Dean gestured towards the bathroom. “Go for it. I’m just gonna check in on Sam and see how he’s doing.”

“Thank you, Dean.”

Dean watched Cas disappear into the bathroom, and his chest ached as the yearning wrapped thickly around his lungs. God. Any hopes Dean had of this trip dampening his feelings had quickly flown out the window. The ache was even deeper now, and the thought of sharing a bed with Cas all night was more than Dean could handle.

Stepping back outside, Dean sucked in a sharp lungful of air. He really was in trouble now. Calling Sam didn’t seem to distract Dean at all; especially because Sam had nothing exciting to report other than the fact he’d been doing some inventory work around the bunker.

A cold shower would help to tamper down the yearning… well, it would’ve if Dean hadn’t seen Cas emerge from the bathroom in a soft pair of pajama pants and one of Dean’s old tshirts that he’d given to Cas a couple months ago.

Shit. Dean was well and truly smitten.

Cas tugged the blankets around himself as he curled up on the left side of the bed, and Dean felt his heart lurch in his chest. Soft. That was the best word he could find to describe how Cas looked. Hair still damp and flopped across his forehead with a faded maroon shirt highlighting Cas’ tan. The sleepy look in Cas’ eyes was enough to have Dean melting into the floor.

“I’ll be- uh, be right back,” Dean said, locking himself into the bathroom as his heart thundered against his ribs.

There was no escaping the feeling.

By the time Dean made his way back into the room, he expected Cas to be asleep. But instead he was propped up against the headboard and he smiled at Dean the second he saw him. Dean hesitated for a moment at the edge of the bed, before pulling back the covers and climbing in on the other side.

Cas instantly shifted so he was facing Dean, offering him another tired smile. “Today was good. Really good,” he murmured quietly.

Dean felt himself relax into the mattress; tilting until he was lying face to face with Cas. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cas replied. They lapsed into silence for a few moments before Cas admitted, “I didn’t know it could be like that.”

Dean raised an eyebrow in the faint light coming from the single lamp on Cas’ side of the bed, waiting for Cas to clarify what he meant.

“That the simple things in life could be so beautiful,” Cas said after a moment, as if he’d been looking for the right words to describe what he was feeling. “I don’t know what…” Cas paused, tilting his head until his cheek was pressed into the pillow. “I’ve never really known what happiness is. But I think this is what it looks like; what it feels like.”

The words hovered between them, heavy in their confession and yet light in their tone.

“You’re happy?” Dean whispered, barely able to get his voice to escape past his lips.

Cas smiled, gummy and soft, and it was the most beautiful smile Dean had ever seen. “Really, really happy,” Cas said, fingers tugging lightly at the blanket he’d wrapped himself in.

The words settled like honey in Dean’s veins, and he felt himself smile right back at Cas. God, why was he feeling so sappy and why did he want to do anything to keep that smile on Cas’ face?

“Wanna talk about plans for tomorrow? I’ve got another idea you might enjoy that’s on the way back home,” Dean said. The idea had wiggled its way into his head while he’d been brushing his teeth, and he had a feeling it would make Cas smile even more when he suggested it.

“Yeah?” Cas asked, echoing the same tone Dean had used just a couple minutes ago.

“Botanical garden. There’s one on the other side of Kansas City that’s famous for blooming flowers this time of year. I thought you might like to see some of the beauty of nature,” Dean said.

A smitten look crossed Cas’ face; his eyes softening into something extremely tender and affectionate. And then he was leaning across the pillow into Dean’s space. When their lips met, it was the softest brush Dean had ever felt in his life.

Cas pulled back with a little sigh of an exhale, and then dove back in to press their mouths together again. This kiss was even warmer and slower; Cas pressing his body against Dean and Dean wrapping his arms around Cas’ waist to coax him closer.

They broke the kiss with little gasps before closing the gap to kiss again. Cas’ nose brushed against Dean’s, nuzzling delicately, before his fingertips grazed along Dean’s jaw.

Dean’s heart ached in his chest as Cas peppered several quick butterfly pecks against his lips before lingering on the next kiss. Everything seemed to slow down around them, until all of Dean’s senses were overwhelmed with the touch and taste of Cas.

Somehow, Dean had always pictured that kissing Cas would be like an electrical storm; crackling and fizzling and bursting with desperation to make things deeper. But this… this was the most delicate and romantic kiss Dean had ever experienced in his life. Soft and simple; just gentle caresses of their lips melding together with little happy hums.

Cas tilted his head and Dean followed the movement, sliding his hand under the hem of Cas’ tshirt until he was tracing little patterns along Cas’ hip. Each kiss felt like Dean was going to melt into the mattress as Cas huffed a tiny breath against his cheek before kissing him again.

God.

It was so good Dean just couldn’t get enough.

When Cas pulled back with a stuttering breath, Dean chased him, free hand coming up to cup Cas’ cheek as he brushed their noses together again before seeking out Cas’ lips in another kiss.

Quiet little pleased sounds filled the air with the tickle of lips teasing against each other. Cas’ hands had found their way into Dean’s hair, and Dean had all but tugged Cas forwards until he was lying across Dean’s chest. Fast kisses morphed into slow tangible dances as their mouths learned what it felt like to be slotted together.

By the time Dean finally pulled back, resting his forehead against Cas’, he was absolutely breathless and his heart was milliseconds from catapulting out of his chest with how fast it was beating.

“What was that for?” Dean whispered, tracing his fingertips from Cas’ hip to the small of his back.

“Because you’re absolutely… Dean, you’re just… indescribable,” Cas murmured, lips ghosting over Dean’s cheek. “I’ve wanted to kiss you all day. You make me happier than I’ve ever been in my entire existence.”

Something in Dean’s chest burned warm and pleasant through his veins, lighting his heart on fire. This whole time, Cas had felt the same way he did. God. He’d have kissed Cas breathless over those chocolate pancakes had he known that Cas wanted it, too.

Cas tucked himself more comfortably against his side, and Dean looped his arms loosely around Cas’ back.

“Dean,” Cas whispered, breath tickling along Dean’s neck.

“Hm?” Dean hummed quietly.

“Kiss me again.”

This time it was just sleepy little brushes; lips ever-so-softly coming together in chaste touches as they kissed. When Cas pulled back, he muttered something about the botanical gardens and how happy he was. The words were muffled into the collar of Dean’s shirt, and Dean felt the shift as Cas drifted off to sleep in his arms.

When sleep finally caught up to Dean after he spent several long minutes committing this perfect day to his memory, it was with the taste of Cas still lingering against his lips and the feel of Cas’ body pressed against his own.

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