#but no i can't have tomatoes half the time anyways since they are so high in histamines

[justthatwwegirl]

(Idk, I'm always making imagines inspired by Laufey songs)

From The Start

(Grayson Waller x Female Reader)

Summary: Y/N finally tells Grayson about her feelings for him and it goes in a way she didn't expect.

(Warnings: Shitty summary and kinda rushed ending, two idiots in love, some cursing, Liv and Austin being icons.)

Y/N sat on one of the crates, opening her water bottle as she had just finished her match.

Her and Dakota faced against eachother, Y/N coming out on top.

Just right as she was still drinking her water, there came the face she had wanted to see, the person who made her smile and blush till she felt like a high school girl with a crush.

"Y/N/N! Congrats on your match." Grayson had said, walking up to her with some food from catering and a vending machine before giving her a hug that she returned back.

"Thank you." Y/N said quietly. She ate the food very eagerly due to her hunger. Not eating before the show or during.

Her and Grayson had been good friends since their NXT days, Y/N falling for the Australian ever since they met and falling even more in love every day after.

The two had grown very close and cared for each other dearly.

Grayson was more outgoing and very much an extrovert. Y/N liked to keep to herself, didn't like going out and was more of an introvert.

"Hey, do you wanna order takeout when we get back to the hotel?" Grayson asked in his Australian accent, making Y/N go weak.

"Um, sure why not." Y/N said, keeping a cool composure.

Grayson smiled at her, making Y/N smiled back automatically, blushing just a little (or a lot).

Grayson had sat next to her, leaning to rest his head on her shoulder.

Y/N smiled and then leaned her head on his.

Just very friendly things...

"I like your gear." Y/N said making Grayson look down at his gear with a smile.

"T-thank you!" Grayson said in a stuttering mess, making Y/N concerned.

"You okay, Gray?" Y/N asked, using his nickname.

Before Grayson could answer, a familiar voice interrupted.

"Y/N!" Liv had said giving Y/N a big hug that Y/N returned.

"I saw your match and you did absolutely amazing!" Liv said making Y/N jump off the crate and slightly nod.

Liv looked at Grayson and at Y/N before holding her hands up. "Looks like I interrupted some time between you and your boyfriend, sorry!" Liv apologized making Y/N rub her face and making Grayson start smiling.

"I'll see you later, Grayson." Y/N said, looking like a red tomato and waved bye.

Grayson frowned a little but ultimately said bye as well.

"Okay, I didn't even do anything wrong, I said the truth." Liv said and Y/N crossed her arms.

"We're not dating! And as much as I would like that, you know he doesn't feel the same way." Y/N said and Liv looked at her confused.

"Y/N, you can't be serious right now." Liv said and Y/N shrugged her shoulders.

"I am. He doesn't like me back and that's fine. I don't wanna ruin years worth of friendship just because I have a crush on him." Y/N said with a frown.

"Girl. You do realize he feels the same right?" Liv asked, making Y/N shake her head.

"I can give you multiple reasons on why I think so!" Liv said before going on a rant making Y/N listen.

Even though Y/N acted like she wasn't interested. Deep deep down, she hoped Liv's reason were true.

"I hope you know that you talk about this man NONSTOP. Pretty much half of our messages is you talking about how much you love him and want him. Well, I'm here to tell you why you should shoot your shot BECAUSE HE LIKES YOU BACK!" Liv said in a frustrated tone making Y/N jump just a little.

"1, when me and Naomi are on the topic of you guys," "Wait you guys talk about us?" "Not important, anyways." Liv continues. "We both notice how much he listens to you when you talk. Not like how a normal guy listens like this man is INVESTED and he always looks at you with those fucking heart eyes." Liv says making Y/N confused.

"Number 2, who got you matching bracelets for your birthday, AND took you to the mall to go on a shopping spree, not minding how much money you spent?" Liv asked making Y/N look down.

"Gray." Y/N whispered. Liv smiled a she proved even more of her point.

"And who gave you matching bracelets in NXT which you are still wearing today?" Liv asked another question making Y/N scoff.

"Gray." Y/N answered once again, showing her wrist that showed the bracelet.

"You can stop this rant-" "I am not done until you say you will tell him." Liv stated making Y/N groan.

"He gets you food almost every day, he literally carried you everywhere when you injured your leg even though you had crunches, even Triple H thought you guys were dating, and then, this man lets you hold his man just because you're nervous-" "Fine, fine! I'll tell him." Y/N said in defeat making Liv jump and down in excitement.

"Yes! Oh my gosh, FINALLY!" Liv says jumping and down, clapping her hands.

"Alright, Liv, chill." Y/N says while Liv takes some breathes before finally calming down.

"It's that obvious?" Y/N asks, looking at Liv.

"Yes. It is that obvious. He even talks to Austin so much about you to the point where Austin calls you Grayson's girlfriend." Liv says making Y/N blush a little and smile.

"And according to Austin, Grayson doesn't correct him." Y/N looks up at Liv.

"Gosh, if you keep telling me this, I'll die of being too flustered." Y/N said before covering her face as she was blushing and smiling too hard.

"When you're not around, the man complains to Austin 24/7 about how much he missed you."

"STOP-"

-

"You still have that?" Y/N pointed to the little wristband that she made for Grayson years ago.

"Yeah, I wear it everyday and pretty much everywhere." Grayson said, holding the door open for Y/N as they walked into the hotel.

"You didn't notice?" Grayson asked making Y/N shake her head.

"No, I thought you had lost it." Y/N said as they got to the counter, booking their room.

"Imagine if they give us the honeymoon room again." Grayson says, making Y/N let out a laugh.

"That was something." Y/N said, shaking her head in a smile as they went toward the elevator.

They entered the elevator, continuing their conversation.

She always made eye contact with him during conversations even though it made her super nervous. But she loved the way they looked and always smiled at least once during every conversation they had.

She always took his features into deep thought.

Just as they were talking, Y/N had remembered what she promised Liv and immediately groaned, rubbing her face.

"Y/N/N, you okay?" Grayson asked, putting his hand on her shoulder make her relax.

"Um yeah, but I kind of wanted to talk to you about something." Y/N said, facing her fears.

"What is it-" A loud sound had interrupted him, making Y/N and Grayson.

"What just happened?!" Y/N asked in a loud tone, looking around.

"Did the elevator get stuck?!" Grayson asked, also looking around.

"Are you fucking kidding me right now." Y/N said stressed, making her grab Grayson's hand.

Grayson held her hand, squeezing it and making them look at each other.

"It's going to be okay, they'll fix it." Grayson said, trying to calm her down even though he was terrible at it.

"You're right." Y/N said before taking some deep breathes but never letting go of his hand.

The two stood in silence. Still holding one another's hand.

Until Grayson broke the silence.

"What were you going to tell me?" He asked, squeezing her hand again as she looked at him.

"I'm going to try and tell you in the best way I can but you make me super nervous and I just-" Y/N paused.

"I just what?" Grayson asked quietly.

"I like you, more than a friend should." Y/N quickly blurted out.

"I've liked you from the start and the feeling has gotten stronger ever since and I understand if you don't feel the same or if you just wanna be friends I'm really sorry-" While Y/N rushed, before she could finish, she felt those soft lips she had always wanted to kiss against hers.

Y/N kissed him back immediately. Not wanting the moment to end ever.

Until Grayson had to pull away.

"Well, if that doesn't tell you that I feel the same way, I don't know what will." Grayson said in his accent that kept making her go weak.

"I'm still a little... shocked that you feel the same, didn't even realize." Y/N said.

"I thought I was being obvious, I kept dropping hints!" Grayson said making Y/N scrunch her eyebrows in confusion.

"I talk about you so much where Austin has to deal with it everyday. He calls you my girlfriend cause I always talk about you!" Grayson said.

'Well, Liv did tell me that.' Y/N thought.

"Everytime we were away, I always fell asleep on the phone with you and every time I see you, I feel like eyes turn into hearts." Grayson continues making Y/N blush.

"I tried giving you hints but I was too damn awkward." Y/N defended herself.

"You know how shy I am, Gray" Y/N says making Grayson smile and nod.

"I do, and every single time you opened up to me or revealed something about yourself, it gave me more reasons on why I love you." Y/N blushed even more at his statement before giving him a look.

"How long have you felt this way?" Y/N asked him.

"Since we met-" "I could have told you this whole time?!" Y/N shouted.

Grayson laughed and nodded before hugging Y/N.

She hugged back and looked up at him. He looked down at her with their eyes locking and leaned in.

He kissed her with such passion that it made her melt as she kissed him back.

She held onto him as the two continued to kiss but both of them didn't hear anything as they felt like they were in a different world when with one another.

And especially didn't hear the elevator door opening.

"OH MY GOSH!" Liv shouted, making Grayson and Y/N pull away, looking to see Liv and Austin standing next to each other.

"YOU OWE ME 50 BUCKS THEORY!" Liv shouted once again and Austin groaned.

"You guys couldn't have waited one more week?" Austin asked as he pulled a 50 dollar bill from his wallet, giving it to Liv as she danced in a celebration.

"I mean if it wasn't for Liv, I still would be dreaming my fantasies with him away." Y/N said making Grayson start blushing.

Grayson and Y/N stepped out of the elevator while Liv and Austin got in. Everyone said goodbye to eachother while the elevator closed and once again, Y/N and Grayson were alone again.

"Does this make us a couple?" Grayson asked and Y/N nodded her head.

"I hope so. I want to be your girlfriend." Y/N said with another smile as she kissed Grayson again.

"And I want to be your boyfriend." Grayson said, kissing her back while she wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Then, we're together, Gray." She whispered and leaned in for another kiss which Grayson immediately obliged too.

The End ♡

#wwe #grayson waller imagine #grayson waller #grayson waller x reader #grayson waller oneshot #wwe fanfiction #wwe imagine #wwe oneshot #wwe x reader #wwe fluff #fluff #thismanhasbeenstuckinmyhead #Spotify

[wannaeatramyeon]

Meeting Jake Kim for first time

You start working on Big Deal street

You're a fashion student at Jaewon High, and unlike most of your classmates, you have a genuine interest in fashion.

However, you're not learning much these days and all you seem to have are self study sessions. The teachers never turn up half the time.

Trying to gain some actual work experience, you've applied to some of the bigger fashion houses all the way to dinky back street stores but you never get very far.

Luckily, there's a friend of a friend of the family that said they know somewhere that could help you. There won't be any pay but you'll pick up some skills in no time.

.

.

You come out of the tailors with a spring in your step. The interview went well and they said you can start next week! You happily make your way back to the bus stop.

The commute is a pain and Gangseo is a bit far from your house, but you need the experience.

"... Erm, I think I have nice eyes..."

"Yeah Jerry!! You do!"

"Girls love nice eyes!"

"You know what they say, they're windows to the soul."

You overhear the 4 guys talking in front of you.

"Well I don't think I have a best feature," A pause. "I'm perfect everywhere."

You hear that and scoff immediately. This person has no shame.

He notices your reaction and turns to look at you.

"What, you don't agree?" He flashes you a smarmy smile and you notice the scar over his mouth. "Well what do you think it is?"

"Your shamelessness!" you blurt out.

That's one way to get them to notice you. All 4 thugs now turn their attention on you and you realise that your big mouth has gotten you into trouble again.

They look intimidating and strong as shit. Fuck, there's no way you can fight them off and if you run they would definitely catch you.

The street looks empty.

There's no one around to help you.

"Well sometimes it's good to be shameless," The 'perfect' guy gives you a wink right before noticing your nervousness and fearful expression.

"Sorry miss, just making conversation... Come on guys let's go," he signals at them. "Let's go get some noodles."

"Again, Jake?! I'm so sick of noodles!" one of them moan as they walk off.

.

.

You're working another shift in the shop today. It's been a month since you've been employed at the tailors and you've picked up some basic dressmaking skills.

A nice patient old lady owns the shop and she likes filling the silence with stories about the history of the street and Big Deal.

You have since learned who Jake is and cringe every time you think about how you 2 first met.

The door bell jingles, signalling a customer.

"Oh hey, it's you!" Speak of the devil. In walks the leader of Big Deal.

It's the first time you've seen him since then, and you're surprised he still remembers you. You were hoping he had forgotten your face and how rude you were.

"H-hello! How can I help?"

"Oh I was just wondering if there was anyway to loosen this area here?" Jake turns around, "I think my butt has gotten bigger and it's a bit uncomfortable."

It's a bizarre request but you don't have the luxury of being able to turn away business.

"Erm, that is a difficult area but I can have a look..."

You check out his behind, purely for professional purposes of course.

"Huh, it is pretty perky... " you mutter to yourself, "...maybe this is your best feature-"

SHIT. Blood rushes to your face. You can't believe you actually said that outloud. You quickly look at him, hoping that he didn't hear you... and find him staring back.

You seem to have caught him offguard, his eyes widen as your words sink in.

You're on the receiving end of another wink, "If you think so, then it must be true!"

Dear god, just let me die.

"...So I'm Jake. What's your name?"

"Y/N..." You were pretty sure you are as red as a tomato. "Erm, I know who you are..."

"Don't believe everything you hear, Y/N." Jake gives you a soft smile. "I'm looking forward to seeing you around."

#sitting in my drafts for a while #cheesy but jake makes me cheesy #lookism #lookism headcanons #lookism hc #lookism x reader #jake kim #kim gimyeong #kim gimyung #jake kim x reader #lookism fanfic #lookism fic #lookism manhwa #lookism webtoon #wannaeatramyeon

[diary-of-a-ghoul]

What I ate [ Jan 6-7, 2023 ]

I sleep and wake up at really weird times often, so it's hard to do these by date if I'm currently in a weird sleep schedule phase. Also I'm currently staying at my mother's until the Jan 9, so I eat a bit worse than I normally would (like at my own place I don't drink whole milk, don't buy salami usually, I only buy plain rolled oats and not sweetened müsli mixes, I rly only put no fat cream cheese or yogurt on my bread, etc etc etc. I don't cut at many corners at my mother's because I find it wasteful to purchase my own separate food on top of what's here).

I don't weigh my food or count calories. I only drink water, unless listed.

Anyway.

Woke up at around 4pm from a 4-5 hour nap. Had bad dreams so high anxiety; didn't eat until 7pm. Meal 1:

Last two slices of home-made pizza -Dough: Flour, curry spice, salt, a splash of olive oil, water, baking powder. -Base: Ketchup -Toppings: Red onion, two types of cut up salami, cut up chilli peppers, cherry tomatoes, a bit of grated emmentaler cheese. Dried basil, grill spice mix

Cucumber salad -Sliced cukes, sliced onion, vinegar, olive oil, salt

Yogurt bowl -No fat greek yogurt: mixed half of strawberry flavor & half of bluebery flavor, they come in 140g cups. Emco baked müsli with dried strawberries; frozen berry mix on top.

Not pictured: A large mug of coffee with a bit of whole milk. No sugar.

Only ate half of the yogurt bowl, if that.

Napped again. Woke up at around 1:30am.

Meal 2 (snack):

Ate at around 2:00-2:30am. Didn't take pic. Finished the rest of the yogurt bowl. Continuously sipping on a new large mug of coffee with a bit of whole milk.

Meal 3 (snack):

Ate at around 4:20am.

The rest of the strawberry no-fat greek yogurt

125g vat of blueberries - less than that, bcs I ended up throwing like 10 blueberries out bcs they were moldy

4 chocolate banana bites -They're essentially slices of banana in between these two circular biscuit thingies (kinda like ladyfingers but harder/drier and round). Dipped in cooking chocolate melted with milk & a bit of butter and then fridged until the biscuits go soft.

More coffee with a bit of whole milk. Can't wait to have my 2% back T-T

Meal 4:

Homemade: Red lentils w chicken (and some chopped up bacon) with a ton of spices, canned tomatoes & peppers. -On top: Sauerkraut & chopped green olives

Two slices of toasted white bread

Three chocolate banana bites (The last ones, rip)

Three waffle crackers (salty)

Two tangerines

Now this is where I fucked up. Didn't eat this until past 9am, and by that time I was already kinda fainty. The tangerines were a mistake and I should have saved them for later, but since I was so hungry I inhaled all of this in 20 minutes and ended up overeating. I'm way too full and feel like shit :/// Last meal for the day, methinks.

Also yeah. More coffee.

Ghoul out 🤟

#what i ate in a day #wieiad #food diary #no calorie counting

[foofygoldfish]

apparently i'm at the "eats a pack of gushers and is surprised by the juice being in the middle" point of being tired

#mariahs rambles #it's been a d a y #first i had emma's problem #and then i rushed straight from the vet to my neighbor's birthday party at the shop #which *was* a masked affair which was nice - and apparently most of them have had at least one dose of the vaccine #but i then got to watch everyone eat food i'm allergic to while i nibbled on breadsticks (((: #my mom saw that the menu was pasta and that's not dairy or eggs so that's fine obviously! #but no i can't have tomatoes half the time anyways since they are so high in histamines #i'm home now but i almost ran to meijer (which i've been avoiding for a solid six??? eight???? months) to get some chocolate cheesecake #because the cake they were cutting infront of me and gushing about how good it was was a lemon cake and i adore lemon flavored stuff #blech

[dulcetxminfy]

Lotto | A | Chapter One

MafiaBoss! UndergroundCriminal! Yoongi x Strugglingwaitress! Y/N

Word Count - 3,210

Yoongles has his silver hair in this one 👌🏼. Smut will be in future chapters. Enjoy !

The smell of grease and bacon has your brain pounding in your skull. A normally pleasant smell can get old after an 8-hour work shift, 5 days a week. Dave rings the bell once again and you zig-zag between the tables trying to get there, refilling empty coffee mugs and fetching missing condiments on the way. Another day, another measly dollar.

By noon, your feet need a rest and you need a break. The sneakers squeeze your feet so much it feels like they might bring you down a size permanently. Marla comes from the back, chewing that cheap gum that’s bought wholesale. You hand over the paper tab and fill her in before heading into the back room. Lunch is spent eating a stale sandwich with stale lettuce and softening tomatoes that can leave an unpleasant aftertaste. Mentally, there’s a reminder set to see what they have at the food pantry this week.

Hopefully, your brother ate his lunch. It’s not like he likes it anyways and you can't blame him for it. Anxious thoughts are interrupted when Mina opens the door in all of her cheerfulness.

“Y/N, someone is asking for you.” She must see your furrow brows cause she continues.

“Says he needs to see you, it’s been a while. Is he a bad ex? Should I get rid of him?” Her worry makes you inwardly smile and you head to the sink. “No, it’s ok. I’ll be right there.” She leaves with a nod. The smile drops the minute she does. What could he possibly want now? Something uneasy stirs in your stomach. It could be the food just devoured, but there is something more pressing at the moment. The dim hallway is empty and you carefully walk out, counting the black and white tiles. With your head held high, you walk towards the booths.

The blue hair peeks out from the top of the divider. He always sits in the left corner of the room, drinking a lemonade. Always at the same time. Always on time. You walk towards the table and sit down. Taehyung offers a small nod of his head in acknowledgment. Or at least that’s what he says his name is. The first time he had waltzed in, he turned heads. A beautiful man in a crisp Armani suit isn’t exactly discreet. You came out to greet him and asked if you knew each other when he uttered one word. Your father's name. From then on you knew whatever came of this interaction, it wasn’t going to be pleasant. That bastard had ruined your family and still, it's not enough. He continues to cause destruction, long after he’s been gone.

Taehyung's tan skin and blue hair are a striking match. Chocolate eyes study the way you clench your hands together on the table, steadying shaky fingers. Pretending to hold it all together.

“Hello, Y/N.” He asked for your name the first time and you refused to give it. Years of watching sketchy people walk in and out of your apartment teach you to be wary. By the next meeting, he had it on his tongue in greeting. Perhaps a show of how much they really knew and were able to find out what they wanted.

“I have a note for you from Mr. Min. It’s appropriate to now set up a formal meeting. Tonight.” The previous suspicion is proved correct. This elusive Min wants to meet and it has your heart sinking.

“I have my brother to pick up from school.” Demons may thrive and bath in the night, but the rest of us don’t have that luxury to choose.

“Sorry, but you’ll have to make arrangements. We could send one of our men to do it... if you want.” Absolutely fucking not. You may be bad at surviving, but stupid is not in your nature.

“I’ll work it out.” It's the first time you keep eye contact with him since he arrived. While he notices the sudden determination, you notice the prominent mole on his nose. He’s handsome in a catalog type of way. they must have to be, to make the jobs easier. His tan skin glows, even in the gloomy shadow that the grey skies cast into the room.

“There will be a car parked outside your residence to pick you up.” Being in a car with these people doesn’t seem like such a good idea, either. The next words are painful to say.

“It’s ok, I’ll walk.” He quirks a brow and looks sideways at the droplets sliding down the window.

“It’s going to be raining heavy tonight, though.” His deep voice fills you with dread. Especially because there is an underlying tone of sympathy in it. On cue, lightning roars from somewhere above the popcorn ceiling. Hopefully, it’s enough to distract him from the fidgeting.

He gets up to leave but not before looking down at your slumped form, trying to ignore how tired and pitiful you look. Deliver and leave. That’s the job as a messenger. All of the five times he has come here have made him wonder who you are. What put you in the sights of a man like his employer. You are young, but there is so much sadness already. Ironically, he knows how you must feel. Against his better judgment, he fixes his collar and is gone as quickly as he came. Don’t ask, don’t get involved with the debtors. It’s easier that way. All you can do is place your head on the table and zone out for a little. It’s the go-to self-care these days. Just to pretend that you don’t exist in this form in time, that you can blend in with the background and disappear. Not for the first time, you curse your luck, family ties. What have I been roped into?

When the sun sets, your legs are already carrying you down the street before Lina can change her mind. Thankfully, it isn’t pouring down yet. Closing the diner is normally your job and it is a dreaded task. Anything can happen in that timespan and it keeps the adrenaline constantly flowing. A girl alone in a diner with a cash register is a golden opportunity. It’s hard to feel like beyond the windows there aren’t eyes, waiting in dark street corners. After a couple of blocks, the old orange apartment building comes into view. At one time it must have been nicer and that's hard to picture. Mr. Shihan is playing cards with another older man on the sidewalk when you come up to the gate. Their concentration is fully on the game and he doesn’t give his normal greeting. He’s a sweet man with a terrible habit. The courtyard is empty. There are barks and kitchen sinks running, loud televisions that have no consideration. Unfortunately, there are no stairs and after long days, it’s hard not to just want to sit down on the dirty, concrete floor and fall asleep. Before you reach the 5th floor, you wait at the entrance to the hall on the 4th. It’s taken time for you to stop caring what others think of your situation, the disapproving comments, and glances from the teachers at your brother's school and almost anywhere you go. Too young, give him up to the state. Can’t take care of him, look how skinny he is, look how tired. People who look from the outside and have the luxury to judge. You are old enough to take care of him and he belongs with you. You’re the only family you two have left.

It’s only when you need help that it kills you to see Mrs. Litska. She’s an old woman who was able to babysit your brother while you are at work. With one knock, the door opens and you are met with a frown on her crinkled face. You don’t have time to say much, you just give her the envelope of this month’s pay and step inside. Your brother is asleep on the brightly foiled couch in the dim living room that smells of baked bread. The sound of Vivaldi comes through the ancient radio on the side table. His little fingers hold tightly onto the Spider-Man plushie picked out at the thrift store a while ago. It’s seen better days, but they are insuperable. Placing the stuffed item to the side, one arm loops around his shoulders to him up to place his head on your shoulder. The kid could sleep through anything.

The both of you head upstairs into your own living quarters. The lights don’t turn on when the flip is switched and you sigh as you try your best to remain close to the wall.it proves to be hard with your body ready to give out, but you ultimately make it to the room and place your brother into the squeaky bed. The candles are pulled from the drawer and each one settles into every corner of the space nicely.

Finally, you take off your partially wet clothes and put them into a pile by the tub. At least the water is warm as your body slowly leans down into it. Suddenly, the room is quiet and it’s hard to let yourself float away. It’s eerie and not comforting at all. It never is. There is no next destination besides a dreaded one, no way to work yourself towards, hanging on through the blissfully hard distractions that take up your life. They allow you to not stop, to not think about where you could be. Staying busy saves you from reaching into yourself too much.

Minutes tick by, a full half-hour before your skin is soggy and the water is cold. Still, it's better to be here than think that in another hour you could be trafficked and the little boy in the other room sleeping peacefully would have no one left. Mother dead, father gone, sister missing. It brings a chill to the room and it’s suffocating. Once you’re dressed casually, you check in on your brother who is still tucked in, his breathing mellowed out. Here’s to hoping he stays asleep and doesn’t wander through the place at three in the morning to an empty apartment. You kiss his forehead and bring his plushies within reach. They crowd the space around him, cocooning him in.

With one last safety check and blowing out the candles, you lock the door from the outside and move along the hallway down to the stairs.

Your neighborhood is wet and dark at this hour. Thankfully, you are prepared with a switchblade and pepper spray bought last week. It’s three blocks to the main streets where more people walk with umbrellas. Men in suits getting home and families hurrying to their cars. The shop lights flash, shop windows showcasing fried chicken and ice cream. Your stomach automatically grumbles.

Your umbrella holds up for the most part until the lights start to separate and the streets once again turn dim and dirty. The sudden gusts of wind fold it in and it snaps. Soda cans and bags of junk food litter the edges of cement. Shops on this side are all closed, bars and steel curtains drawn. Every little sound has the back of your neck standing up. A tabby cat pops up from under a beat-up truck and it has your heart momentarily stop. Hopefully, it’s around the corner. Your hands shakily open the worn piece of paper to try and locate the street. Luckily, it’s one street down. Once you turn the corner, you head right into a narrow alley. The pepper spray is held onto tightly with clammy hands.

The situation is starting to look sketchier as you go on. Once you reach the dead end, something to the left catches your peripheral vision. Off to the side is another narrow path, much shorter than the one you just went through. It leads directly to a steel door with a neon sign right above. The letters that read Welcome bathe the entrance in blue and red. When you come closer, you notice a little plant to the side. As if it can hide the strangeness of it all when all it does is highlight. Still, the harshness of the surroundings doesn't reach this corner. For a while, you stand there as the rain continues to patter. The sign buzzes and flickers. Your clothes get more soaked but you refuse to move forward. I’m a bad bitch, I’m a bad bitch. I got this. There is vibration coming from the floor beneath your feet. The door opens and a big muscular man gestures for you to come in. This is how it starts. A cliche buff bouncer opening the rope to the gates of hell. He stares and steps aside, gesturing again. Maybe you could have made a run for it before he appeared. Not now. It would be useless. They will come looking. These people always collect. You’ve seen it before. Ultimately, the decision has been made by someone else. There's more to lose if you don't and with a tug of your bag, you trudge forward.

What you had been imagining this past week was apparently absurd compared to the vision that lay in front of you now. There was no blood, no people begging for you to help them escape. No blindfold, just plenty of men and women holding down handles at the slot machines that showed them all the wrong symbols. You walked through the desperation into another area of green felt tables and cards being dealt. The air is stuffy and it smells of smoke and alcohol. Apparently, no one else is bothered. Ahead of you, a tall man is pressing on something in his ear with a meaty hand. Darting your eyes around, you take in more. Before confusion settles in on where to go you find the answer. From the second floor, Taehyung holds onto the railing, looking around. Your eyes meet and it’s strangely intimate. Too intimate. It must not be hard to be found when your clothes are wetting the floor beneath you.

He walks towards you with a small smile. His cobalt blue suit stands out and there’s a dangly earring hanging from one ear. His appearance is much flashier than it was the last time you saw him. With one look behind you, he leads you both up the stairs. On the way, you internally chide yourself for wearing what you are now. The wet clothes make you feel like a little sewer rat. You feel like ratatouille and the confidence that brought you here is dwindling. Instead of a shoddy warehouse that was expected, you are venturing deeper into a maze of halls with red carpeting and gold-rimmed mirrors. Eyes remain forward, but your mind tries to remember every sharp turn, every step that takes you further away from an exit. It is not hard to conjure up terrible, gruesome images and they flash a mile a second. There is only silence and you do not expect anything else. Finally, Taehyung comes to a halt and you almost bump into his back. The door is red and for some reason, it hits you know what big of a mistake you have made. You feel like you’ve been personally delivered to hell’s gates. No one knows where you went tonight. They could get rid of your body and no one would look. It would be easy. Just a poor, young person who could have been tossed or thrown into the river. Another cold case, another victim. He knocks on the door in a pattern of sound and pauses. Must be a code of some sort. Loud noises and laughter get closer until the door opens abruptly and an older gentleman with peppered gray hair greets the man next to you.

“Tae, my boy. Yoongi was about to cheat again.” Tae? Yoongi? This stranger’s excitement has you even more on edge. Your palms are now sore from clenching and cutting at them with overgrown nails. Taehyung moves forward and he smiles as an arm is put around his shoulder. There’s conversation but you don’t hear any of it. Somehow you get yourself inside the room and the door shuts right after. There’s even more smoke and laughter and a champagne bottle being popped somewhere. It all whizzes by. On the outside, your face must seem neutral but the inside is ringing with alarms and warnings. It feels like there’s a hole in the pit of your stomach. Somewhere along the way, the older gentleman named Lee went off to talk to some people on a chase couch against the wall.

There is a long gambling table at the end of this well-sized room and it seems to be the destination. When you get closer, there are about eight people around it. Mostly men with frowns. It must be the small number of chips in front of them. That doesn’t matter a second later though. Not when you catch the sight of the man sitting at the head of it. There’s a force that seems to be pulling everything in space to him, everybody. Bluish Silver hair catches the lighting of the small chandelier above as he gets up with a flute in between pale hands. His fingers grab a couple of chips from his pile which is no doubt the biggest of them all. They twirl in his ring-clad fingers. The veins line them and it’s hard to not stare. The robe that hangs off his lean figure looks decadent and expensive, so much so that it would stop the question of why he is wearing it entirely. There’s so much to take in. His face is gorgeous. His gummy smile numbs the feeling of panic that set in before. He gets closer, or perhaps you do. The two of you walk up to him. Realization dawns in then. Fuck My life.

“Mr.Min, this is miss Y/N.”

#bts angst #bts scenarios #bts smut #bts fake texts #namjoon #Jungkook #jin #suga #jhope #jimin #taehyung #bantansonyeondan

[athys-obelia]

summary: no one's evil au lmfaooo but make it pt. 2

character/s: anastacius de alger obelia, claude de alger obelia, athanasia de alger obelia, jennette de alger obelia

and here's part 1 <3

oh my god okay. okay. so.

ana, claude, athy and jennette - they go on a LOT of vacations

claude complains every single time but anastacius pulls his trump card and sends athy and jettie BOTH after him

u think he's strong enough to say no after that? lmao jokes

and their vacations always go this way:

jennette: isn't this scenery just gorgeous, uncle

claude: indeed it is. and...quiet

jennette: ...too quiet

[cut to anastacius in the distance, fighting a bear as athy cheers him on]

athy + anastacius, hands down the most chaotic pairing yes i will not be taking criticism

they have tea in ana's palace everyday, just the two of them, they're so poised and picture perfect through the entire thing everyone thinks it's just the emperor giving profound advice to his heir

it's actually them deadass scheming,,, ana has no qualms discussing everything from court gossip to military tactics, both of which she's so on top of all the time

if anyone shit talks jennette or claude, this tea party is where their slow and agonizing demise is planned out to the dot

[true story - count sivan once made the fatal mistake of expressing his favour for athy as the next empress, dissing jennette by comparing her to athy sm which inevitably sparked a debate that ranked the princesses. a week after athy's sources informed her of the kindling behind this new debate, the count's sudden divorce became the talk of the town, and the man's business faced bankruptcy all of a sudden. the sivans still haven't recovered.)

athy n jennette were actually allowed to visit kiel in arlanta a few times, except it was too dark at their first arrival, postponing the meeting to the next morning

buttt then jettie can't sleep and she decides on a midnight snack run (their hotel doesn't really have the maids the palace does, but oh well. she's left the palace w lucas n athy plenty of times)

felix tags along btw, he knows this trip is important to the girls since they're leaving the palace without their Overprotective Papas™ for the first time and want some sense of independence, but... she's just so smol n he couldn't bear it if anything happens so he just shadows her

she totally knows he's there

n e ways so there's a juice place right beside their hotel which she aims for, but when jennette reaches it, it's closed

and out of nowhere, a voice addresses her - "hey you, do you come here a lot?" she nearly jumps out of her skin at the brunette, relaxing when she sees he's literally a kid around her age and not a murderer lmfaoo "me neither," he continues without waiting for her, pouting at the closed sign, before he asks for her name and whether she's new in arlanta

she confirms that yes, she's only visiting, and refuses to tell the stranger her name, still feeling strange at being addressed as 'you' for the first time (well, minus lucas, but he was like her brother and had the emotional capacity of a teaspoon, so)

he eyes her. "you're so weird. i've never seen a girl out so late before, and alone too. are you stupid?"

(felix has his sword out at this point)

she's flushing now and has no idea why she's still out here, but then this stranger kid apparently senses her mood and tells her the best ice cream store in arlanta is not too far away

(he also explains he knows someone who's starts doing weird things when she's hungry as well, and tries to defend that ice cream is actually a healthy midnight snack, "you can just take a healthy flavour like strawberry or mango, mangos are healthy,,right"💀️💀)

so jettie has travelled all the way from obelia, she loves her papa but he would have a heart attack if he found out she was ever awake this late?? yeah bc she's never getting this chance again, jennette accepts the offer

the stranger boy seems to be taking the whole "i'm not telling you my name," thing like a joke, and asks what he should call her since 'you' was getting boring

she goes with "lady j" and like a knight, the boy becomes "sir c"

(felix is on the verge of committing a crime - the princesses can only have one knight, after all)

they walk as the the boy navigates the streets in the dark, and she asks whether he's from the academy, seeing his uniform

"of course i am! you could probably tell bc i look so smart, right?"

she snorts. "yeah, that."

she also comes to know that this guy,,,well he might as well be a tourist? she's out here asking stuff like "oh where's the statue of lady alphia?" or "aren't we really close to the museum where they keep the first emperor's sword?" and he goes "lady do i look like your brochure?? but if you turn right from here there's a cool arcade and across the street from there is the best street food vendor you'll ever eat from."

well at least mans had his priorities straight 😌

"so can you take this off?" he asks, pointing towards her dress once they've neared the store

um???????? sir tf????????????

anyways jettie has been living with lucas n her dad farr too long to not take this the wrong way?? "...no?"

the boy raises an eyebrow "look, it looks like an expensive cloak but i promise i'll return it, alright? i gotta hide my uniform."

ohhhhhhh. 😳.

so she unfastens the cloak and because he's kinda just staring at it cluelessly (he can't even tie his shoelaces fight me), jennette sighs and moves the clothing over his shoulder, fastening it in place at his neck

he's literally a tomato when she looks back up and realises that yes, we are way too close rn

bc she's ana's daughter, jennette by default cannot function when she's flustered. so she kinda stumbles backwards like a fish out of water (years of princess training n etiquette? where art thou??) and 'sir c' has to grab her forearm so she doesn't bump into the pillar behind her smfh

the shopkeep is definitely suspicious of this pair that's definitely too young to be out so late, but chalks it down to his sleeplessness

they escape the store with the ice cream before the shopkeep can ask any questions, and 'sir c' escorts jennette back to her hotel. he climbs onto the roof of the building, helping her up as well

(felix wishes he had a magic stone to capture this moment, this is the first time he's seen jennette become such fast friends with someone)

she stands on the roof (it hurts her butt so she doesn't wanna sit)

"my sister would be so jealous right now," jennette murmurs, "she told me her ideal first date would be either a picnic or something like a moonlit walk. we're having like a moonlit picnic."

it's silent for a few seconds the boy speaks up, "is this a date?"

oh-

oh.

"i mean- i didn't- i don't- uh."

give her some time lmfao she's loading

"i don't really mind that," he tells her, and she thinks she might just walk off the roof in her embarrassment - who just says something like that?? "you're probably feeling really lucky right now, right?"

jennette: ✊😔

he does look pretty in the moonlight, she admits to herself, listening as he excitedly tells her about his siblings at home and how she should send an offering to the gods since they gave her the good fortune to be on a date with the most good looking one of all four of them

in turn, she tells him about how she spent her childhood away from her amazing dad and had gotten closer to him recently, about her sharp-witted uncle, her sister and friends

(the 'friends' section includes felix and he's melting)

she smiles - it's almost as if, at finding out he treasures his family just as much as she does, they've gotten a bit closer

and he tries to listen. jennette had guessed that his temperament was somewhat like her dad's - her dad didn't know how to listen, always making his opinion known before anything else, though she supposes as emperor he could do that

'sir c', on the other hand, tried his best, his blue eyes focused on her as he almost burst from the unsaid words he was holding back, trying to let her finish. the sight was an odd mix of sad and insanely adorable that she couldn't help but let him tell her about everything he couldn't hold in

sensing she could pass out from her exhaustion nearly half an hour later, and 'sir c' escorts her to her window and helps her sneak in bc "what sort of knight would i be otherwise?!"

(felix can't stop shaking the entire night)

the next morning, jennette's heart is pounding as kiel shows her, athy and felix across campus - the chance is low, but still...

"ezekiel!" comes a voice, and the four watch as a turquoise haired boy waves down the alpheus heir "are these the guests you mentioned?"

kiel introduces the trio to johannes vastia before asking, "where's cabel?"

"at the training grounds, he asked if you could bring everyone there so he could show them around there."

"... they're my guests though?"

athy is quick to befriend johannes (i mean she and his sister are practically the same person, so) and at the grounds, jennette's blood runs cold

(so does felix's)

the brunette doesn't notice her at first, arguing with johannes about something as kiel introduces him as cabel ernst

jennette is hyperventilating?? actually back up is this girl even breathing??

cabel ernst from kiel's letters? the 'loud and obnoxious cabel ernst', who gradually turned into 'my acquaintance cabel ernst', then 'hardworking, passionate cabel ernst', and finally 'my friend cabel'?

she'd actually rather admired this slow build of respect between her friend and the ernst boy, and had even expressed her interest to meet him

"this is the first daughter of his highness prince claude de alger obelia, princess athanasia-" cabel mock salutes the princess before his mouth forms an 'o' and he remembers to bow, "-and here's the emperor's only daughter, her highness princess je-"

andddd his eyes widen comically "-hey, lady, it's you?"

yeah jettie is on the brink of literal death - her entire face reddens as this...cabel, grins at her

she watches as he glances behind her, "and you're the guy who was following us - sup?"

felix flinches "...you knew...?"

cabel shrugs. "i mean you do kinda suck ass at the whole subtle thing."

"don't say it like that," jennette retorts, "felix was trying his best."

"princess 😭😭 you knew as well?"

"uhhhh no?"

athy + kiel in a corner: 👁️👄👁️

they watch as cabel's eyes widen all of a sudden and he just,,,runs away

...🐦...🐦...🐦...

yeah well anyway he comes rushing back a few minutes later, a piece of cloth in his hand "...*huff* here *huff*...you go."

athy totally flips out "jennette is that your CLOAK???!??"

"uhhhhh no?"

"um do you realise uncle would literally wage war at this."

and as if it would make everything better,

"i washed it," cabel offers with a grin

"you didn't," the vastia heir deadpans

"i mean, johan helped a little bit."

kiel smiles murderously at the pair. "johan, did you know cabel took the princess out?"

"wait, you're a PRINCESS??"

your honour they aren't very smart

so the group orders some coffee (milk for cabel smfh) to find out what happened, cabel mentions "date" and everything goes to shit again lmfao

kiel and felix scheme against poor cabel while athy n johan get over that stage pretty quick ("listen. MY sister will be living with ME after the marriage and if your friend wants to be with her he'll have to come with us to obelia." and johan's just like "fine by me ✌️😊") and start planning the wedding

cabel + jennette dip n sneak out of the academy again to get the juice they couldn't the night before bc shit is getting awkward here

on another note, our uncle cius' musical intelligence is actually very high - he can probably play more instruments than i can name tbh, but he feels most comfortable singing and i shit you not, this man has straight up an angel's voice

(didn't like singing in front of others coz he was secretly a nerd and only knew old love songs with deep lyrics, athy found out and educated him)

jennette tends to have nightmares often, most often regarding their family - she's seen her father murder her uncle for the throne, and vice versa, athy admitting her affections towards jennette were a front to get the position of crown princess, her uncle killing her to solidify athy's claim, etc - her family is her everything, so despite however many times these horrible scenes play before her, she's left sobbing uncontrollably

and on these nights, she leaves for her father's room, who holds her close and sings her to sleep

also lucas n jennette are like sibling duo# 1,,, jettie is an active lucathy shipper even though he denies it sm - like their dynamic is just peaceful walks in the gardens as she watches the plants n lucas shi talks the nobility and kiel

claude and athy have a thing for each other's sleeping on each other? idk it's weird

athy once fell asleep on the couch while reading with him, and claude moved her head onto his lap so she wouldn't be uncomfy sitting - well, she woke up to his hand absentmindedly raking through her hair and it was just so soothing that whenever she's tired and he's working or reading, she just plops her head on his lap and zzzz

and claude wondered what was up with that, so she proposed they switch roles and he felt so awkward trying to lay down in front of her lmao

obviously athy noticed and she just started reading, thinking he might be more comfortable if her attention isn't on him completely - she ended up reading out loud while playing with his collar and he just,,,passed out

also anastacius has definitely pulled jennette aside regarding the issue of his heir at some point - she had been hesitant at first before admitting she wouldn't like to be the empress at all

i know we'd all love to see empress!jettie and her sister duchess!athy ruling the court, but i really really really can't see her wanting the title?

so thus start athy's empress lessons, but holy shit her teacher is mean

like this man makes me want to bash his face in?? so he doesn't like the idea of athy becoming empress over jennette at all, all bc of both hers and claude's mothers being commoners

he has one of those long ass sticks that you use in presentation to point at stuff?? idk but basically mans has athy name every region, its lords and their vassals during their first lesson

the first time she gets one wrong, she's too shocked as the stick meets the delicate skin of her forearm to react

now the thing is, wmmap!athy would probably stand up against this bc her dad is the emperor and she's his only heir, but i imagine with anastacius' social nature he holds many parties / balls where she's probably heard claude's mom + diana slander and it wouldn't be unreasonable for her to be self conscious abt it (now she's the emperor's heir while jennette, 100% royal + noble blood, is right there which probably makes her feel even less legitimate)

so she endures it, the light marks on her arms as well as the taunts of his she's too smart to not understand - perhaps this is the price to be accepted in jennette's place?

and honestly, no one really notices until at breakfast a few weeks in, where jennette mentions how her dresses are still so modest when sleeveless dresses were more in fashion - ana is suspicious because athy is always on top of these things, societal trends and such, and claude is sus from the way she hesitates slightly in her answer, "i haven't had the time lately, i suppose"

the lesson after focuses on ettiquete since everyone knows she's good at politics and such already, but now tears of frustration are pooling in her eyes because what the hell?? this guy had made an opinion of her long before he even met her, so anything she did would be wrong in his eyes

he gives her a sinister smile, "tired, princess?"

"no," she insists, keeping her voice level. he's about to spout some other nonsense, when anastacius enters the room, taking a seat across from her

anastacius watches quietly as athy answers the teacher's questions in her "public" voice. he watches as her usually cheery disposition is replaced by something far more...dead, despite the front she puts on for him. he's soundless as she hesitates in her answers where she normally would've been louder, more confident. he stops watching in silence when his niece flinches at the sight of the stick

oh.

he interrupts her lesson, not missing the way she winces almost imperceptibly when he grabs ahold of her arm, announcing, "we're going."

he just- it's just that that was the moment he knew for sure - the sight of his niece emotionally disheveled for the first time reminds him too much of how his own brother had once been, and he'd... he'd promised he wouldn't let anyone hurt his family anymore

he ends up taking her to the port with some of his advisors to welcome some royal guests, insisting that she would learn better from experience rather than books - but the guest delegation gets so boring that he sneaks her out of the meeting n they end up in the streets

now athy has no idea where they are, but apparently her uncle does?? ana has his hand on her head as he navigates the streets of the capitol as if he comes here everyday, using magic to casually disguise the two of them

in the meantime?

felix is at the port trying to cover for them smfh, he makes up this huge story about how the great wise emperor wanted to familiarize his heir with the locals, understand her subjects, yada yada

back at the palace prince claude is currently dragging a man by his collar and only upon jennette's insistence does he throw him in prison rather than literally kill him

(jettie visits him later in prison to give the guy a piece of her mind, after felix's visit he's sporting a few noticable bruises and the prisoner is practically unrecognizable once lucas visits)

back to athy + ana, they end up stuffing themselves with some super good street food as anastacius confesses that yes, he has definitely been sneaking out of the palace ever since he was a lil kid

athy almost mentions that she, lucas n jettie sneak out too but that might give him a heart attack, so

"it's so pretty, uncle cius," she says, gesturing towards the necklace he holds up. once he's paid for it, anastacius fists the necklace, opening it to reveal the jewel pendant - now imbued with his magic and replaced with gold lettering of the word athanasia

and she realises that yes, that's what both him and her dad have called her all her life, haven't they?

"you're my heir, athanasia," he uncle tells her with a small smile, "i am proud of that."

getting teary, she tells him, "i'm really proud of you too, uncle cius," triggering a very flustered + blushy anastacius

this mans craves validation - not from the sycophantic nobility, or the obsequious concubines he'd dismissed all those years ago, but from the family he thought he'd neither have nor deserve

and just the acknowledgement is so large for athy - he wants her as his heir, not because she's his niece, but bc he trusts her to look after his hard work after him??? - yeah she's totally bawling her eyes out

anastacius magics her a handkerchief but my mans magic isn't that strong?? lmao he's used up so much by now that the 'handkerchief' turns out to be some scratchy tissues

awkward amirite

nope! athy laughs at that, offering him a sip of her drink as she magics another straw and a proper handkerchief lmfaoo

n e ways so when they return, everyone's shocked to learn that the crown heir, princess athanasia will actually be joining the official circles as anastacius' temporary aid - he doesn't wanna entrust her to anyone but family, and decides that the best way to learn is by his side

(she's so confused bc lucas doesn't normally bat an eyelash when she wears the prettiest gowns, but he deadass can't look her in the eyes when she's in her aid uniform - it's more like a suit than it is a dress)

yes lucas women in suits >>>>>

everyone is STUNNED when at dinner, claude proposes they leave on vacation??

anastacius is just not having it?? like no, this is not my brother, and he throws a grape at claude to check if it's a clone or sum (¿¿how does that work??)

anyays so he ain't no felix, ana's aim is ass and it hits jettie instead

mans nearly gets on his knees to apologise

long story short everyone preps for vacation, but by some aCCiDeNt claude n athy end up at a different destination than jettie n ana, when she suggests returning to the palace to regroup, mans deadass sulks

"so you wouldn't like to spend this time with your father, despite barely visiting my office for weeks?"

o-oh

so at their return, the nobility starts pestering everyone that the princesses aren't independent enough, yada yada idc so to quell this annoyance, to the girls' joy, they get to move into emerald palace together, while claude and ana stay in the ruby and main palaces respectively

literally emerald palace becomes such a cool place to be in since it's the residence of the only decent people in this family, the brothers spend hours going through the requests of maids who want to be transferred

it's such a busy time because of athy joining the court and jettie starting her studies as well - naturally, since she isn't becoming empress, she'll be getting the duchy claude + athy were to be given in the beginning

speaking of futures, jettie's interest in plants and cooking has definitely branched out into herbs

claude notices her tending to a small garden during his visit to athy and even gives her a few tips (he had been studying medical since he was a kid, and picked it up again when athy was born and the empire stablised somewhat)

this soon becomes a routinely thing, and he actually starts reading up on some herbs and even orders a few for her prospering garden

after a month of her learning from books, claude proposes adding a medic as one of her teachers, and turns out his hunch was right?? she's excelling at medicine and they keep it between themselves for the time being

it doesn't last long though, bc they're on a hunting trip when ana injures his leg

and !! this girl istg, she gets to cleaning and wrapping the wound without blinking an eye, as if it's the most natural thing ever, and claude is just smirking while athy and anastacius and literally everyone else: 🌟💞✨jettie✨💞🌟

literal tears coming out of anastacius' eyes "how come my daughter is smarter than me😭💅"

claude: that's not a very high standard, brother

anastacius: ✨suddenly i'm an only child✨

behold, the people in charge of running an empire everyone 👏👏👏

even though jennette is claude's (unofficial) student and athy is her uncle's heir, they both ask their dads to the debutante

yes athy does dance with lucas, anastacius sent him an invitation even though he wasn't a noble (he's an active match maker 😌) and nobody dared question the emperor's special guest

at the end of the night, kiel gives jettie a letter from arlanta - it's an invitation to the academy during holidays, from a certain brunette

when she brings up the subject, felix lets out a squeak and literally everyone goes silent 😭😭

athy n kiel are just out here DARING him to spill them beans

but anastacius takes on look at his excited lil kid and decides that yups, she's going to get everything she wants

a/n: i literally don't know how many parts this should have lmaoo but y'all made it this far!! thanks for reading i hope you liked it<3

#non dysfunctional family!au #or ana decides to stop being a shithead!au #functional family!au ?? #wmmap #sbapod #who made me a princess #suddenly became a princess one day #anastacius de alger obelia #claude de alger obelia #athanasia de alger obelia #felix robane #lucas #jennette magrita #jeannette magrita #kiel alpheus #ezekiel alpheus #beware of the brothers #cabel ernst #johannes vastia

[avyssoseleison]

Funnily enough I was going through a lot of your old fics yesterday for nostalgia reasons and now can't stop thinking high school enemies to lovers deancas ideally with some punk!cas nerd!dean maybe? Fully understand if that prompt doesn't tickle your fancy though

Please enjoy these 3.2k of enemies to homework buddies!

“Winchester.”

Dean will ignore him.

“Hey, Winchester!”

Dean will most definitely ignore him. Just keep on walking. If Novak thinks he can’t hear him, surely he’ll leave him alone. He’ll go bother someone else, and Dean will finally be free of him.

“Winchester!”

Dean hears, but doesn’t listen. He starts humming to himself when there’s suddenly a hand on his shoulder, ripping him out of his thoughts.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, you assbutt!”

And there he is, of course: Castiel Novak. With his dumb boots and even dumber leather jacket, and, dumbest of all, that small little frown that slowly morphs into a way too pleased smile the longer Dean glares at him.

Christ.

By the time when Novak’s smile turns into a full-blown grin, Dean finally musters up the strength to look away. The soft rustle of tree crowns in the distance reminds him of what a great morning he has been having, and what a perfect day it could have been, had Novak decided to leave him alone. As it is, his day might turn out a bit marred, after all. A bit more normal, perhaps.

“‘Assbut’?” Dean quips, way too late. “What kinda insult is that?”

“What kind of delayed comeback is this?” Novak counters. 

“It’s not as delayed as your…” Dean doesn’t really know enough about Novak to be able to insult him in any meaningful way, and what he knows of him, he doesn’t want to use. So, instead, he finishes lamely with, “...development.”

Novak could not look any less impressed, especially because the raise of his eyebrow alone continues their little banter in a manner that clearly suggests that if anyone’s development is delayed, it has to be Dean’s. However, that level of insult is apparently not one Novak deigns to lower himself to, as he continues to look smug while busying himself with lighting a cigarette and blowing out a lungful of smoke with obvious relish.

Dean makes a face and pointedly waves his hand in front of his face. “Smoking’s bad for you,” he simply states, making Novak chuckle lightly.

“So’s a lot of things, if society is to be believed. I am not much of a believer, though, and I do enjoy the small pleasures in life.”

The small, self-satisfied smile Novak shoots him sends a strange feeling through Dean’s body, from his lips down to his very toes, and everything in-between.

Dean swallows. “What do you want, Novak?”

“Oh, nothing much.” Novak takes a drag while trotting along Dean who starts moving again, trying to put some distance between himself and the self-proclaimed anarchist. “I just have a small favor to ask you,” he says, sounding as though whatever he is asking for is actually not that small at all.

“Again?” Dean grumbles, thinking of Novak quickly copying his homework last week, secluded in that small parking lot that no one but Novak and some people in the know ever seem to use, and of what Novak did in return. “I’m not doing you any more favors, man,” Dean scoffs, and stomps on.

Nonetheless, Novak stays hot on his heels.

“Why not?” Novak presses, “I’m not asking for much -- I just need today’s Math homework. I didn’t hear Mr. Singer give us any, but Meg just told me he wanted us to solve like 15 fucking problems, and she didn’t do them either.“

“Of course not.“ Anything else would’ve been shocking enough — if Novak has a bad reputation, Meg Masters‘ is even worse. All kinds of rumors are going around about her, ranging from drug use to prostitution to downright witchcraft. Although Dean cannot confirm nor deny any of the rumors, he is inclined to believe most of them. And Meg Masters herself would probably laughingly accept any accusations -- she is that kind of person. And although Dean cannot help but grudgingly respect her for her attitude, he also resents her for it: and how could he not, when he works so hard to do what is asked of him, and stick to the rules? Yeah, the only way someone like Meg could shock Dean would be to actually do her homework for a change.

“Now, now,“ Novak chides playfully, even if it doesn’t seem like he cares all that much about it. “Meg does her best.“

“Just like you do, huh?“

At that, Novak‘s grin turns darker, a bit more dangerous. “So harsh, Winchester. I think you know better than most how sometimes, things are not as easy as they seem. That circumstances are different for everyone.“

“Yeah, yeah,“ Dean dismisses, with a pang in his chest, though he gets it. Unfortunately, he really does. “Anyway, I won’t give you the homework.“

“Why not?“

“Because why would I? I don’t like you and you only hit me up when you need stuff from me. Besides...“ he begins, then swallows back a proper explanation. “You know why.“

“Oh, I do?“

“You damn well know you do.“

“Hmm, alright.“ Novak takes another drag, unbothered. “Listen, if you give me today’s homework, I’ll make it worth your while.“

“Not interested,“ Dean says, already having a hunch of where this is going.

“No? Could be something similar to last time. You liked last time’s payment, didn’t you?” Novak asks, and it’s just like Dean expected.

Dean avidly fixes his gaze on the school building, still hidden behind some trees, but not too far off anymore. He will be safe there -- Novak would never dream of bothering him where anyone else could see. 

“I fucking did not,” he argues, already feeling heat creep into his cheeks.

“Really? I could’ve sworn you did, what with all the blushing and squirming and your pants going--”

“Novak!” Dean barks with a swelling sense of despair. His entire face feels hot by now, and is probably as red as a tomato, “I sure as hell did not enjoy whatever you call ‘payment’ for last week. Besides, I wouldn’t even call it ‘payment’ so much as fucking ‘harassment’.”

There is a beat of silence. Then, “Are you serious?” Novak asks, in an unidentifiable tone of voice.

“‘Harassment’, ‘molestation’, ‘taking advantage’,” Dean recites, enjoying this now that he is gaining momentum. “You call it payment, I call it an affront, and--”

“Is that really what you think, Winchester?” Novak cuts in at the same time he stands still, his eyebrows drawn together in an unfamiliarly serious way. “That I harassed you?”

Dean stops as well. He looks back at Novak, his straight back and straightforward face, the way that he seems not just annoyed by the accusation, as Dean would have expected, but unsettled. As if he were taking Dean’s half-joke seriously, and reconsidering his own course of action.

Guilt wells up in Dean, and he holds his hands up in reassurance. “I didn’t--” he doesn’t know how to actually finish that sentence, so he just leaves it hanging.

There is nothing to say there, not really. What Dean said was half in jest, and half in… half in what he knows anyone else would think of the situation, or should think. It’s what Dean himself should think: that it was unexpected, unwanted, unreciprocated. That his animosity towards Novak just grew over it, that he truly hates him now. That there was no part of Dean that enjoyed any of it, no part of him that longs to do it again.

Novak keeps staring at him, though, reassessing. His stillness is as unnerving as his little smiles and contemplative looks usually are, even if in different ways. Regardless, he seems to come to some sort of conclusion as he takes in Dean’s still figure, the flush in his cheeks and whatever else there is to see, since he suddenly steps forward, closer towards him again.

“Harassment, was it?” Novak says, now with cold fire burning in his eyes that takes away Dean’s breath for just a moment. “Because I do seem to remember that you were the one who not only told me it was okay if I gave you a kiss on the cheek, but turned it into something more. By turning your head, parting your lips, not letting me go. You were the one who slipped me the tongue and kept going and going. You were the one who begged me to do more, kiss you more, touch you more, fu--”

“No!” Dean interrupts him, with burning cheeks and a stomach that has already dropped all the way down. “S-Stop making shit up, Novak. You know I’m not like that -- I’m not like you --, so I’d really appreciate it if you could leave me out of your fantasies. You were the one who harassed me--”

“--I just said--”

“--who pushed me to give him my homework in the first place--”

“--I asked you if it was okay to--”

“--and who made me do something I sure as hell neither enjoyed nor wanna do again.”

“Oh, really?” Novak asked, raising an eyebrow, in what might constitute a challenge or a feeling of false imputation, or both. “So, if I told you I’d love to kiss you again if you let me copy your math homework, you’d tell me no? Would what, cry harassment again if I dared touch so much as your wrist or even came close to you again? Or,” he continues, voice dropping into a darker tone while he does indeed inch closer towards Dean, close enough to touch him, and who remains where he is, rooted to the spot, “would you tell someone about it? Mr. Singer, perhaps? Or the counselor? Hmm, one thing’s for sure, though.” He laughs, but there’s no humor behind it. It sounds pained, even to Dean’s ears, knowing. “You wouldn’t tell your dad, would you? That you made out with a guy, and liked it? That you wouldn’t mind doing it again, given the right circumstances, some good excuse? Such as taking the long way to where you’ve parked your car, past the small parking lot you know where mine is and where I usually hang out? So that, I don’t know, perhaps I might come over when I see you, and all you had to do was bat your long lashes at me, bite your pretty lips, and wait for me to make a move again?”

It feels as if all the air is sucked out of Dean’s lungs. Standing there in front of Novak, feeling the heat of both his words and his body, he feels seen-through, known; and as lacerated and repugnant as an open wound.

Dean  wants to draw back into himself, into his safe shell, but he can’t. “You’re ridiculous, man,” is all he can mumble out in return as he twists his gaze away from Novak.

They remain there like this for God knows how long. Dean, looking somewhere between their feet and Novak’s almost heaving chest, and Novak, with his face hidden from Dean’s view, but his hands clenched into fists.

By the time Novak’s hands open again, it feels as though an hour has passed, though it probably were mere minutes.

“Alright,” Novak blows out on a breath, “let me make you a deal. Just so we’re on the same page, and we’re both absolutely clear on what is okay and what might be harassment or anything of the sort.”

Hearing Novak say that word again revives the feelings of guilt in Dean, but he knows he’s made his bed, so now he has to lie in it. So, he swallows and nods, feeling all of his body tense. “What kinda deal?”

“It goes like this: you either refuse to let me copy your homework and I won’t ever touch, much less kiss, you ever again. I’ll leave you alone. Or, you allow me to copy today’s homework at the very least, so Mr. Singer won’t call my foster home again, and you can choose whatever payment you want, as long as it’s somewhat reasonable. Money, cigarettes, beer, anything you want me to do, you name it. As long as you name it. I won’t give you what you’re not explicitly asking for.”

Dean frowns. “What? How is that a deal? It’s either you win or I do, no in-between. I mean, fine by me, but you get nothing out of it, so what gives?”

“It’s not that bad of a deal,“ Novak says, finally flinging his cigarette to the ground and grinding it out. 

He gives no further explanation, though, which gets on Dean’s nerves even more. “You suck at coming up with deals, you know that?“

“Not really,“ Novak says, shrugging a little. “As I see it, it‘s win-win for you and win-lose for me. Which, for me, too: is fine. It all depends on what you want.” There’s something strangely soft in the way he is looking at Dean, something almost wistful. “And on whether you’ll actually express it.”

Put on the spot yet not, there isn’t much for Dean to do but nod in acquiescence. He’d like to pretend he still doesn’t get what Novak is going for, but he does, deep down. It’s both an in and an out -- what he was hoping for, but couldn't have asked for. Now he has to ask for what he wants, and if he doesn’t, he won’t get it. And he’s not sure he can. Not when there’s rules and expectations and the shadow of a man larger than Dean, larger than life itself, endlessly looming over him.

“Okay,” Dean says, pinching the bridge of his nose. Novak keeps staring at him in that stiffly intense way of his. “Alright. I mean, it probably would be pretty bad if you turned up without homework again, huh? Last I heard, you got into some pretty dire straits when Mr. Singer called your foster home, right?”

Novak huffs out a sound of amusement, his shoulders sinking in what looks like relief. “You’re well-informed.”

A furious blush threatens to stain Dean’s cheeks again. “It’s just what I heard. People talk. About you. And, uh, everyone else, I guess.”

There it is again, that soft expression. And Dean thinks he might recognize it now, impossible enough: Novak looks fond.

“They do,” Novak agrees, showing no offense at any possible implications of him being the talk of the school, which he most definitely is. “And yes, it was ‘pretty bad’, as you’ve said. I’d much rather not have a repeat performance.”

“Easy way to avoid it.”

“Yes, I’m working on it at the very moment.”

In spite of himself, Dean huffs out a laugh. “I meant doing your own damn homework. I know you’re smart enough to do it, even if you barely show up in class. You ace all the tests even when you weren’t there, so I don’t believe you couldn’t just as well hand in your homework if you fucking wanted to.”

Novak hums in open amusement. “Is that your own observation or people talking again?”

Feeling as though caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Dean just lamely stammers out a, “It’s-- it’s common knowledge, okay?” before setting into motion again.

Novak’s laughter follows him the first few steps, then he is beside him again.

“Who knows, maybe you’re right and I could take care of my own homework. But maybe I like not doing so, and asking certain other people for it instead.”

It’s obvious what -- or rather, who -- he means by that, that Dean is pretty sure his skin will never be anything but pink again. “Oh yeah?” he needles, “You got many people doing your homework? Giving them the same payment, too?”

“No,” Novak replies surprisingly quickly, “there’s only one person, and only one time I offered that type of payment.”

For a minute, they walk in silence as they almost reach the stairs of the school house. There’s few other people around, most of them just entering the building or looking at their phones, unheeding of the pair.

“So, we have a deal?” Novak eventually asks into their waiting silence.

“You can have today’s homework,” Dean relents, holding out on what he knows Novak is actually going for.

“Thank you, Dean,” Novak says with a gummy smile.

The sound of his name stirs Dean him up a bit more, reminding him of the only other time when Novak called him by his first name: when he was crowding Dean up against a wall, removing his glasses, and kissing his cheek so softly that Dean needed more, needed to be closer to this other guy, to this enigma of a person.

“Don’t mention it,” Dean mumbles.

“As for your payment…?” Novak probes, though with his voice in a whisper as they are close enough to other people now that they might otherwise be overheard.

“Don’t know yet,” Dean says, his voice clipped.

“I’m sure you already have something in mind.“ It’s completely uncalled for Novak to say this in such a low and heady way.

“Maybe you do, but I don’t.“ He doesn’t know, he thinks. He can’t, is why. He won’t, he tells himself.

“Dean,” Novak says, using his first name again, as if they were friends or something more, sounding intimate in the most casual way, and that does it.

“Damnit, Novak, I want—“ Dean bursts out.

Novak looks at him in expectation, all of him turned towards Dean, listening.

He won’t, he won’t, he can’t.

Can’t he?

“—time,“ Dean finishes lamely.

Novak pulls a face that clearly says, ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed.’

Which is all the worse.

“Listen, Novak, you… you might be right.“ Dean pulls a face. “I can’t believe I just said that. But yeah, I might have an idea of what I want, what I’d like to have,” he pointedly does not look at the other boy or anything else but straight towards the school. “But you’re also right in that my dad wouldn’t— I can’t--” He swallows, tries to shake the thought out of his head, but it unfortunately stays stuck. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll think about it, okay?”

“You will?” Novak asks, sounding hopeful.

“Yeah, sure. Maybe.“ He blows out his breath, scrubs a hand through his own hair, and continues, “Might take me some time, though. Maybe a long time. Maybe forever.“ He laughs mirthlessly. “So, today’s homework might actually turn out to be a freebie for you.”

The expression on Novak‘s face is hard to read, but undeniably one he usually does not show in public. For a second there, Dean thinks Novak wants to reach for him: his hand lifts and opens just so, swerving in his direction. Before anything comes off it, though, he drops his hand again, burrows it in his pocket and says, “Take all the time you need, Dean.“

He might have to, Dean thinks. Probably nothing will come of this, not right now, maybe not for as long as he is as young as he is, dependent on his father’s will, bound to him for freedom. Perhaps, though, some other time, in some distant future, or hidden behind some bleachers, he might find a taste of liberation, or the touch of Novak’s lips again.

Dean turns away from the other boy as the school bell rings, the call-back to the present not quite as oppressive with blue eyes and a soft smile still impressed on his mind.

#simpingfortimstoker #miriam writes #destiel #punk!cas #nerd!dean #spn #oooooooh boy this was a pain and a half to write #not because of the prompt itself but because i wrote the story in chunks over a couple of days #and about halfway through the tone suddenly changed so i had to readjust (rewrite) what i already had #and ive been struggling to make this into something that i like #but i actually like how this turned out (and am shocked by its length lmao) #and i hope you like it as well! #funnily enough i usually skip punk cas stuff but when i read your prompt an idea immediately came to mind #and i was like 'yeah lets give this a try!!' #fanfiction

[bloodyspade0000]

30-day knb challenge: Day 1- Favorite Male character

↳ Haizaki Shougo

I am not justifying Haizaki's behaviour. I think he needs a tall glass of respect woman juice and therapy. This is just meant to explain why he is my favourite character and help you better understand him as a character. Do not send hate or take my words out of context. You will be reported, deleted and cancelled. Thank you and enjoy. :)

My favourite character is Haizaki Shougo *dodges tomatoes* a lot of people in the fandom hate this guy for many reasons. It's kind of funny how many people hate him and the amount of hate he gets just for existing. Like bruh; he's sixteen, leave him alone. 😂

His whole existence is just sad. He was literally created to be hated.

Like straight up, Tadatoshi Fujimaki even admitted that he hated Haizaki. Haizaki's sole purpose of existing is to make the Generation of Miracles look better even though they’re just as problematic as he. No one is fucking perfect and is about time people woke the fuck up and realized it. Your faves are problematic move the fuck on.

Yes, the Miracles are redeemable but so is Haizaki. Yet, unlike the Miracles, he does not get redeemable. No, he disappears and is never seen again. Like bitch, what the fuck!? if you’re gonna introduce a character to only have them disappear for a long time and either have them show up again or just never mention them again. Wasting the potential they had to be a very good character or not having them redeem themselves while the other characters who were just as fucking problematic get a fucking redemption arc because they’re fucking main characters!? What’s the point of that character even existing in the first place? What kind of bullshit is that? Just to have them exist to make the main characters look good? How the fuck does that make sense? Like where is my Haizaki redemption arc? Do I have to write it on my own? I will write it. I am writing one.

Haizaki is the only character I could relate to. Being second best, struggling to find somewhere to fit in and overshadowed and replaced by someone everyone thinks is better than you. It's fucking depressing, okay? You spend your whole life thinking you’re not good enough, and it hurts. I don't feel like going too deep into it because I don't owe you a detailed explanation of my trauma, okay?. So I'll save that for my fics where I self-project half of it onto Haizaki. It’s a coping mechanism, okay? Therapy is fucking expensive.

The anime ruined his whole character, got rid of his whole arc and shorted it down, and made him worse than he really is.

A post explaining how the anime did him dirty and goes more in-depth about his character

I am not trying to justify his actions, i.e. him manhandling Alex and beating Himura up. He does terrible shit. We all do lousy shit sometimes, but that doesn't make us bad people. Making mistakes is a part of being human, and we're supposed to hold people accountable for their actions and help them realize what they’re doing is wrong, allowing them to grow and change. Not condemn them and ostracize them, which leads to isolation and a lot of psychological trauma and self-hatred, and as someone who has dealt with—is still dealing with all three. It is not fun. It makes living painful. Highly unrecommended.

Haizaki does not have a positive role model in his life nor anybody he can turn to, everyone has already given up on him. Even Nijimura and Kuroko didn’t even try to help him, being more focused on the Miracles. (Yes, I know kuroko tried to stop him from throwing his basketball shoes away, but that doesn’t fucking count because after that Kuroko just gave up on Haiazki too). Haizaki has probably grown grew up knowing only violence and not a single ounce of kindness, turning him into the bitter and angry little boy he is.

Haizaki had so much potential. But instead of making him a great villain that potential was WASTED on fucking Kise.

Also, the Kaijo vs Seirin match in the winter cup was completely useless because Kise already got redeemed and he literally got no character development from it.

And Seirin was gonna fucking win anyways because duh thier the main characters. 🙄

Now some headcanons I think about a lot:

1. He gets abused. Some psychological behavioural consequences of child abuse are unhealthy sexual practices and juvenile delinquency, and Haizaki exhibits all three which are some external behaviours of most (NOT ALL) male abuse victims. Haizaki's a womanizer, aggressive, hostile and violent. Yet, he backs down when someone stronger than him comes around and puts him in his place i.e. Aomine and Nijimura.

a factsheet explaining the long term consequences of child abuse and neglect

How to help a friend dealing with family abuse or neglect

How to Handle Abuse

2. He's a victim. And when you're a victim, you either become angry and cynical with everything and everyone around you, swearing never to be a victim again and struggle with gaining back control of your life. Not wanting anyone to see you being vulnerable because being vulnerable makes you weak. Being weak makes you shatter. You always shatter like glass, cutting yourself every time you pick up broken pieces, watching as blood trickles through your fingers.

Your body is constantly on high alert. The default is flight or fight—survival to the fittest.

Or you bite your lip and keep your head down, bottling everything inside and looking for escapes or seeking validation. You want to be wanted and loved because you struggle with loving and accepting yourself. There's always a voice in the back of your head telling you, you're not good enough or that it's your fault. That everything is your fault. Self-hatred and self-doubt are your tormentors.

Or it's a combination between both—a constant struggle.

And I believe Haizaki portrays both from the way he acts and presents himself. Especially since his motto is literally "Survival of the fittest,” and he had once told Kuroko, " there are bad guys and then the really scary people," or something along those lines, which I believe he is talking from experience. You learn from your experiences. They either make you or break you.

3. He's touch-starved.

What Does It Mean to Be Touch Starved?

4. He's bisexual and has a lot of internalized homophobia. I can just feel his internalized homophobia rolling off of him. Bruh, I just know cuz I am bisexual, and I have struggled with internalized homophobia and still sadly struggle with it cuz I grew up surrounded by homophobic people.

I still live with them. 😭

Also, we live in a society that thinks straight is the default.

What internalized homophobia is.

5. His sexual awakening was probably Aomine or Kise. Could be both 😂?

6. He cries himself to sleep every night.

7. He's observant and a great judge of character. It's a fact. This guy literally predicted the downfall of the Miracles. Straight up warned Kuroko too. Too bad Kuroko didn't listen to him.

8. He's hilarious. When he first appeared in the manga, he literally called Himura a loser, lol. XD

9. He's a closeted softie and a total tsundere.

10. doesn't know how to react to kindness and will think you're threatening him or will feel really awkward and uncomfortable but will cover it up with his scowl, or he'll have a breakdown.

11. needs a lot of reassurance and head pats

12. swears a lot. Has no filter.

13. His bother is in the yakuza or some high position of power, and he feels inferior to him. It also explains why Haizaki gets away with things because he would have been kicked out of school if his bother wasn't either-or. I'm talking about his bother being in the yakuza, lol. XD

14. He and Momoi dated for a while but broke up on a mutual understanding that thier relationship just didn't work out. They're best friends and hang out sometimes.

15. Haizaki's good with kids and just genuinely likes them. He would be a great father and try his best to raise his kids right.

16. He gets sick really easily

17. He's clingy

18. He has no friends, mainly because he doesn't want people to get close to him because he's afraid of getting hurt again. Also, everyone in knb hates him.

19. He watches cartoons cuz he was never allowed to watch them when he was a kid. His childhood is trash, okay?

20. He hides in the closet because that's where he feels safe the most—rhetorically and literally.

21. Sleep-deprived and only runs on caffeine and spite.

List of fics that portray Haizaki better than the anime:

Heavy is the head by extrastellar

Idle Hands by DarkWoods

Another Chance by regretting my username_ (777imou_offline367)

What Matters is that We're Together by StrawFairy

06:00:00 of Haizaki Shougo (4) by ReiClien

This Is Happening by SharkGirl

What is Love by voices_in_my_head

A completely uncalled catharsis by oddball

One-shots

intertwined, under a spell by kornevable

ԼƠƔƐ & ӇΛƬƐ by Arthuria_PenDragon

delirium by extrastellar

me with you by doublejoint

Turn My Camera On by wordsliketeeth

At Summer's End by doublejoint

Taste by Hibari1_san

I Can't Get Enough of You by HisDarkSecret

I don't care if it hurts by llowsywriter

Ashes by doublejoint

broken things by lowsywriter

Series:

Finally found each other by suzakukills

This Is Happening Universe by SharkGirl

DNA by flowerway

My WIPS:

Isn’t it lovely?

Broken Crown

Love me, Love me, Love me

Grey skies

Rabbit hole

A playlist of songs that I believe fit Haizaki

Kuroko’s basketball’s manga

In conclusion, You can hate Haizaki as much as you want. But just keep it to yourself. Haizaki is my baby and I will protect him with my life.

#kuroko no basket #knb #haizaki shougo #long post #rant #favorite character #knb 30 day challenge #favourite male character #headcanons #one shots #fanfiction #rec list #manga #tw swearing #tw mentions of abuse

[dvp95]

can't breathe when you touch my sleeve - chapter 1

pairing: dan howell/phil lester

rating: e (eventually)

warnings: none

tags: alternate universe, slow burn, fluff & humour, tiny bit of inner turmoil wrt sexuality but trust me it’s not that deep, eventual smut, idiots in love

word count: 5,384 (this chapter & total)

summary: Dan keeps making a fool of himself in interviews, to the point where it’s basically a meme. Now he’s got to sit down for the better part of an hour and sell his show to the YouTuber he’d had a massive crush on when he was a teenager.

read on ao3 or here!

“You’re gonna need to do this one alone, dude, our flight’s been delayed again.”

At least Dan’s costar seems somewhat put out. She looks all chagrined and her accent has slipped back into a drawl since they’d finished filming. The FaceTime call is grainy, but he can tell she’s tired from being in the airport all day.

“It’s fine, Jaime,” Dan lies through his teeth, because there’s nothing she can fucking do about it anyway. He sighs and looks at himself in the mirror, where he’d paused in fixing his eyebrows to take her call. “Does Patrick even care, or is he just sleeping on his luggage again?”

“The latter, of course,” Jaime laughs. She turns the camera briefly so Dan can see the star of their show lounging across his bags with a blanket over his face.

Dan laughs, too, but there’s panic in it. “So you guys are really, like. Stuck in Atlanta.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “But it’s just one interview.”

Just one interview. The amount of damage Dan knows he can do with just one interview makes him consider calling out sick.

“It’s an interview with BBC Radio One,” he reminds her. Jaime’s only reaction is to blink at him. This is why he regrets spending all of his time in America, with Americans. They’re fine and all, he loves his job, they just don’t understand the sort of ramifications that could come from Dan fucking up this interview. Ramifications like, his grandma might hear it.

“It’s fine, you’re talking to a YouTuber,” says Jaime. “You’re better with them.”

“That’s because they’re more like people.”

“Jimmy Kimmel is people, Daniel.”

“He’s not,” Dan says, adamant. “And Jimmy Kimmel saw me do a fucking nosedive on my way offstage, didn’t he.”

It’s their second year doing press tours, the first they’re doing any kind of international coverage, and it’s already become a widespread joke that Daniel Howell sucks in interviews.

Give him a script, he’s fine. Ask him questions he can riff off, he’s fine. But he’s easily distracted, gets starstruck in ways his coworkers have managed to suppress, and his limbs aren’t friends with his brain. He’s spilled iced coffee on many a PA, said BuzzFeed no less than five times during the Wired autocomplete interview, turned into an actual fucking tomato when Lilly Singh complimented him.

He always thought, hey, at least it’s mostly online coverage. Not the fucking BBC. He’s more comfortable in an online space. And he’s happy with it all, since being in a well-liked Netflix original means that he’s more or less living the dream.

If only he could stop making a fucking fool of himself in interviews. It’s basically a meme at this point.

“You’ll be fine,” Jaime says.

“I’m going to offend them and/or fall on my ass,” says Dan.

Jaime’s lips twitch, lagging a bit with the shitty airport wifi. “Yeah, maybe.”

–

It’s a very close call, but Dan doesn’t roll into the BBC late. His hair might be a fucking disaster and he might have almost left the house without his left shoe on, but he got here and that’s what counts.

“Hey,” he says at the desk, trying to act like he didn’t just run here after getting off on the wrong Tube stop. He’s never spent a lot of time in London, has barely been back from America in a few years, and he might have overestimated his navigation abilities. “Hi, um, I’m -”

“Daniel Howell,” the receptionist says, looking for all the world like he hasn’t done anything strange. “Sure, yeah, you’re just going to go down that hall there, it’s the third door. The toilets are on the way if you want to freshen up.”

Dan is fairly sure he looks like a mess, so he thanks the kind person profusely before running off to the bathroom to check.

Yeah, alright. He’s looked worse. He’s also looked a lot better, but he didn’t pack any straighteners or concealer in his jeans, so it’ll just have to fucking do. He fixes his hair as best as he can and dries the sweat off his face. After that, all he can really do is make sure his flies are zipped before he makes his way to the room he’d been pointed to.

It’s small and sparse, clearly not part of the radio behind-the-scenes. In front of a plain white backdrop, there’s just a couple dark loveseats and a coffee table with glasses of water that Dan is already having a premonition of knocking over.

A guy is setting up one of the two cameras, hasn’t heard Dan enter, and now Dan is wracked with the certainty that anything he says or does at this point will come out awkward.

“Uh,” is what he goes with, wincing when the guy almost knocks the camera off its axis as he jumps. “Sorry. For - that. And for almost being late.”

“You can’t be almost late, can you? You’re fine, sorry, just let me get this…”

“I thought this was a radio interview?”

“No, I mean, I do have a radio show, but I’m not hosting today. This is just for the website and YouTube.”

The voice sounds irritatingly familiar, like it’s on the tip of Dan’s tongue, but that doesn’t surprise him. He’s probably heard most of the people here on the radio at some point, even with how little he’s on this side of the pond.

He’s immeasurably relieved by this not being a live radio interview that his grandma might hear, but he’s still feeling weird without his costars.

“Sorry,” Dan says again, for lack of anything else to say.

“It’s seriously okay,” the guy laughs, finally securing the camera on its tripod properly and spinning to greet Dan. “Hi! You’re Daniel, right? I hear it’s just us today.”

Dan’s brain takes an entire second to place the eyes, the smile, when they aren’t half hidden by a long fringe and bad webcam quality; to place that voice when it isn’t accompanied by some kind of weird animal noise. He makes a weird noise of his own once the lightbulb clicks, and he finds himself blinking rather more than a regular human does.

“Holy shit,” says Dan. “You’re AmazingPhil.”

AmazingPhil smiles with his tongue between his teeth. “Last time I checked. You can just call me Phil, though.”

He’s got glasses on his nose, his hair pushed off his forehead, a corgi on his jumper, and Dan would be lying if he said he wasn’t considering just turning around and walking out.

AmazingPhil - Phil - looks good. The last time Dan had the time to sit down and watch one of his videos was back in uni, and he’d thought Phil looked good then, too. Really good. Like, put Phil’s videos on whenever he was sad and think about that stupid Britney lipsync whenever he was showering kind of good.

Now he’s got to sit down with him for the better part of an hour and sell his show to the guy he’d had a massive crush on when he was a teenager.

“Daniel,” Phil says when Dan doesn’t say anything, his smile softening. “You alright over there?”

“Yes,” says Dan, feeling his face heat up. “I - yes. Sorry. I just - I didn’t expect you.”

“I’m guessing you’ve seen one or two of my videos,” Phil jokes, gesturing for Dan to sit down. “Get comfortable, I’ll grab your mic.”

Get comfortable. Is Phil having a laugh? Dan doesn’t think he’s been this high strung in months, and he sits stiffly on the sofa with his hands clasped in his lap.

Fucking hell. Dan had embarrassed himself on nearly every stop on their press tour last summer, still new to the whole process, and the interviews in L.A. and New York earlier this year weren’t much better. He’s just a massively awkward person, not aware enough of his own body or of the things coming out of his mouth.

He can’t even imagine how he’s going to fuck this one up.

Phil laughs when he approaches Dan, fixing the mic to Dan’s shirt with long, fumbling fingers. Dan’s heart does something acrobatic. “I don’t bite. Y'know, more people have seen your face than they have mine.”

“Probably,” Dan concedes in a mumble, hyperaware of his gaze while Phil gets comfortable on the other sofa. He doesn’t know where to look. He wants to try and match this calm man to the guy in his memory who’d once put makeup on and meowed at a camera for twenty seconds. “It’s not the same, though.”

“Why not?” Phil asks, crossing one of his ankles over the other.

“Well, you’re, like,” says Dan. He gestures vaguely at Phil, and then again at himself. “And I’m, like.”

“Very informative,” says Phil.

“I’m better at talking about the show,” says Dan, feeling the very stupid need to try and prove himself to someone he’s only just met, really. Phil smirks at him a little.

“Well, you’d have to be.”

As much as it makes Dan flush red, he finds himself honking a laugh at the same time. Phil’s smirk widens into a grin.

“Don’t look so fucking pleased with yourself,” Dan says, trying to let the banter relax him a bit. He hasn’t fallen on his face or accidentally said something horrendous yet. He leans back into the sofa and smiles at Phil. “Okay, alright. Moment over. No longer starstruck.”

“Still seems silly to me, I’m really not that big.” Phil laughs. Dan has to bite back roughly a dozen inappropriate comments. “Not compared to some people on the platform, anyway, but that’s fine. I like where I’m at.”

“I understand that,” Dan says, surprised that he’s not lying to sound empathetic. “Like, I love making Heatwave, it’s fine that we aren’t going to be the next Stranger Things.”

“Do you mind if I turn on the camera?” Phil asks, those eyes focused on Dan in a way that makes him feel warm all over. “It’s just, you’re actually speaking. About relevant stuff. So I feel like I should be capturing this on film for some kind of posterity.”

“Fuck off,” Dan says, and then immediately freezes. Phil only laughs and gets up to switch on the cameras and lights.

Okay, good. Still hasn’t mortally offended his teen idol yet.

Phil sits back down and rambles an intro to the lens, looking somehow even more comfortable now that it’s on. Something about being filmed makes him sit up straighter and his eyes go a bit wider. He gestures at Dan with a smile, says, “As you can see, I’m here with Daniel Howell to talk about Netflix’s Heatwave! This is your first time doing an interview by yourself, isn’t it?”

Not a hundred percent sure how Phil knows that, but it’s probably obvious in everything Dan has said and done since getting here.

“Er, yeah,” says Dan eloquently. He scratches the back of his neck and gives his closeup camera a sheepish grin. “That obvious, huh? Jaime and Patrick hide a lot of my awkwardness, they’re good at this bit.”

“You’re doing just fine,” Phil says, encouraging and warm. He ruins it by adding, “At least you haven’t asked me when the baby is due or elbowed me in the face.”

“Oh my god,” Dan groans. He plays it up, throws his head back with it, but the blush is all real.

“I have to ask,” Phil says, and his voice changes slightly. It takes Dan a moment to figure it out, but then he realises that Phil is using his off-camera voice now. Deeper, less enthusiastic. “Is the whole awkward klutz thing a marketing ploy? Like, you’ve been at the center of so many memes.”

“I wish it were a marketing thing.” He blinks over at Phil and mournfully admits, “I got my head stuck in the doors of the Tube last time I came to London. Luckily nobody was filming.”

Phil laughs. It’s a really good sound. Dan wants to make it happen over and over, and he has to stamp down on the urge before it turns into a class clown act. “How did you even manage that? I thought I was clumsy.”

“I tripped,” Dan says, a little more whiny than he really meant to sound. Oh, well, seeming cool in front of Phil is a lost cause by now.

“I trip a lot, too,” says Phil. He’s back in his camera voice. Dan likes this voice, too, more familiar with it, but he already misses being spoken to in that deeper, calmer tone. “Probably a good thing we’re sat down for this, or we’d have to take a trip to A&E.”

“Touch wood, mate,” Dan says dryly.

He’s surprised and charmed when Phil actually does, reaches out and taps on the coffee table.

The conversation flows more easily, then, because Phil starts asking questions about the show and Dan is finally in his element. He knows the show back to front and he’s experienced in the art of holding back spoilers from two decades of finishing video games before his friends did. He tells the same story he’s told in three other interviews, about how he didn’t know he was supposed to do an American accent for the audition and the character got Britishized for him.

Phil laughs like it’s his first time hearing it, even though he’s clearly done his research.

“But you still do a slight accent,” Phil says.

“I do,” says Dan, mildly surprised. He shouldn’t be, but he’s so used to people not noticing or just not commenting on it that Phil bringing it up is strange. “I didn’t think it made sense for Warren to be, like, posh.”

“It doesn’t,” says Phil, “that was a good call.”

“Not that I’m posh,” Dan says, because it’s important to him that Phil know this.

“Really,” says Phil, dryly.

“Oh, fuck off,” says Dan. He regrets swearing on camera, but figures someone will edit it out. “It’s not my fault Winnie the Pooh raised me.”

The grin Phil turns on him makes Dan briefly forget where he is and what he’s talking about. Luckily, one of them is a professional, and Phil gets the interview back on track easily. Dan even manages to make him laugh a couple of times. When he dies, he wants someone to stand up at his funeral and tell everyone that he made AmazingPhil laugh.

Dan even manages not to embarrass himself on camera. He thinks he’s gotten off scot-free, actually, until they’re saying goodbye and Phil goes in for a hug at the same time Dan goes for a handshake.

“Oh,” Dan says eloquently, his knuckles just sort of pressed to Phil’s stomach.

“Sorry,” Phil laughs. He goes for it anyway, wrapping his arms around Dan’s shoulders and not letting go until Dan steps back, feeling so extremely awkward with his hand just kind of crushed between them. Phil doesn’t look awkward. Phil is smirking. “I always give my fans a hug.”

“Shut up,” says Dan. He’s aware of exactly how whiny he sounds, and he wishes he could suck the noise back in and sound cool, unruffled.

“What?” Phil grins. “I’m flattered.”

“I’ll have you know,” says Dan, “I haven’t even, like, watched you since 2011, so.”

Phil’s smile falters. Dan wants to punch himself in the face.

“Just because I got really busy,” Dan rushes to assure him, like Phil actually cares what one bloke thinks of him. “Like, I actually started working my ass off, and couldn’t keep spending fourteen hours a day on YouTube, and then it just stopped being a habit, and I got a new Twitter for professionalism so I fell out of the loop with a lot of people, and -”

“Dan, breathe,” Phil says, but he looks pleased.

Professional people don’t call him Dan very much anymore, not since some other idiot called Dan Howell joined the same union as him. Daniel was a better option than James, and Dan had been going through a pretentious phase that hasn’t quite ended yet, so.

He’s reminded people at work to call him Daniel before, when they try to get overly familiar with him, but. He doesn’t really mind when it’s Phil.

“Okay,” he says, a beat too late for it to sound natural. Well, self-deprecation hasn’t failed him yet. “I’m just walking a very fine line here between seeming cool and also telling you I used to reply to everything you ever tweeted.”

“Aw, Dan,” says Phil. He holds a hand up to his chest like he’s touched. “You couldn’t seem cool if you tried.”

“Shut up,” Dan huffs, shoving lightly at Phil’s shoulder.

Phil’s tongue pokes between his teeth again when he laughs. Dan wishes he could stop noticing that. “It’s nice. I like meeting someone just as weird and awkward as me.”

“I’m way more weird and awkward,” says Dan. “If I didn’t already know the shit you get up to in your bedroom, I’d think you were normal.”

Both of Phil’s eyebrows raise, and it takes Dan about half a second to realise what he’s said and promptly turn crimson.

“I’m alright at acting normal around celebrities,” Phil says, blessedly not drawing attention to Dan wanting something to strike him down where he stands.

“I’m not really a celebrity,” says Dan.

“Sure,” says Phil.

“So you don’t have to, like, act normal around me.”

“Alright.” Phil grins, shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, rocks back and forth on his feet in what Dan recognizes as a nervous tic. “Did you know that caterpillars don’t just grow wings in their cocoons? They turn into caterpillar soup and then reform.”

Dan blinks. “Why the fuck would I know that?” He blinks again. “Oh, god, why would you tell me that? You mean they just fucking dissolve into liquid before becoming an adult? How fucked up would that be?”

“I know,” Phil says, very earnestly. “It keeps me up at night, Dan.”

Not a fluke. ‘Dan’ still sounds good coming from Phil. Although, if Dan’s going to be perfectly honest with himself, he thinks Phil could call him anything and he’d like the sound of it. He likes Phil’s voice and he really, really likes Phil’s voice when it’s just for him to hear. There’s a part of Dan’s mind that exists purely to remind him he’s attracted to men, and it’s currently clanging pots and pans together as if he couldn’t figure it out on his own.

“Now it’s going to keep me up at night,” Dan groans.

“At least I’ll have company,” says Phil. His voice lilts a bit on the last word, like he wants to make it a question but changes his mind at the last second.

That part of Dan’s mind that he usually tries to forget about, that part he keeps locked up tight unless it’s relevant, is now adding operatic singing to the percussion. It yells, This is flirting! The hot guy is flirting with you!

But he can’t trust it, not when the stakes are as high as having another conversation with AmazingPhil, so he stamps that voice down.

“Yeah, you can DM me,” Dan offers, putting that ball firmly in Phil’s court. “Like. When you can’t sleep. Or whenever, really, I’m jetlagged as fuck right now.”

Phil smiles. “Okay. I will.”

–

Dan doesn’t actually believe him. When his phone dings with a Twitter notification at one in the morning, he gets a sharp neck pain doing a double take at his screen.

Okay, cool. Actual AmazingPhil has sent him a caterpillar emoji. It’s stupid how fast that makes his heart race.

He’d followed Phil’s Twitter while he waited at the Tube station and had been pleased to see that Phil already followed him, too. He hadn’t had time to snoop on his profile or anything before the train came and then he’d gotten distracted when he got back to the hotel, but he’s got nothing but time and insomnia right now.

Dan opens his laptop and clicks on Phil’s Twitter profile to get a good look. He opens the Instagram and YouTube links in new tabs, since it’s not like Phil will know Dan is stalking every page.

youre really still thinking about that, Dan sends from his phone before he settles in to scroll mindlessly.

Phil’s not very good at taking pictures of himself, is the first thing Dan notices. He checks Instagram quickly to confirm it, and, yeah, what the hell? Phil either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what his angles are, because he looks more or less average in every single photo he’s posted in the past few months. He’s not an average-looking guy.

Twitter is kinda boring; Phil doesn’t tweet a lot and when he does it’s either video promotion or an anecdote that doesn’t sound fully true. Dan closes the tab and focuses his stalking on Instagram for a bit.

It’s a good choice. Phil’s selfies are still mediocre, but he’s got good photos with his friends, other YouTubers, some musicians. There’s about a dozen with Nick Grimshaw in some capacity over the past year, but that makes sense to Dan - he’s pretty sure they work together.

Lots of food pictures, which Dan can appreciate. Scenic views of Los Angeles, Orlando, somewhere by the sea that looks like Scotland or the Isle of Man. It doesn’t seem like Phil travels to many places, but those three locations pop up over and over again. And, of course, London. Dan wonders how long Phil has lived here, if he knows the city like the back of his hand the way Dan used to wish he could be rich and famous enough to do.

London used to be The Dream. Still is, really.

His phone vibrates again. I wasn’t joking, it drives me mad. I’ll just be minding my own business and all of a sudden I remember caterpillar soup and I start to spiral. Did you know they retain memories from being a caterpillar? How????????????? They’re SOUP. Then, after a couple seconds, Sorry. Hi., with a string of emojis.

Dan laughs quietly to himself. He’s still a bit starstruck, but he’s also just… charmed. Phil is a charming person.

that’s fucked up and i will be thinking about it for the rest of my short and meaningless existence, Dan replies, because if Phil can’t handle his humour then what are they even doing here.

Remember me when you’re soup, is what Phil says.

Dan decides to save his YouTube stalking for tomorrow night, closing his laptop so he can focus completely on the fact that he’s DMing with AmazingPhil right now. He bites his lip and starts one sentence about four times before he goes with, will do. soup will be soon, im gonna die of embarrassment tomorrow for sure.

What’s tomorrow??

buzzfeed uk. i hate doing buzzfeed interviews bc its like theyre waiting for me to fuck up. theyve got whole listicles on my messy ass

BRB looking up any and all listicles about your ass.

Dan feels warmth curl in his gut. He still can’t be sure if Phil is flirting with him or if this is just what he’s like, and he’s also not really sure what he’d want to do about it if Phil is flirting.

It’s not that Dan doesn’t know he likes guys. He’s known that for a long time. But aside from a few fumbling encounters during secondary and uni - and more than a few during his gap year, when he truly felt like nothing mattered - he hasn’t let himself explore that. It’s fucking terrifying just to think about, and that was before he had millions of people looking at his every move.

He pushes all that back into the box to deal with later, because Phil is messaging him again.

You could invest in a belt.

they dont help!!!! flat ass problems amirite? Dan tries to change the topic immediately after sending that, because the last thing his overthinking needs is to talk about ass with Phil. im also mad at buzzfeed bc they never let me play w the puppies. patrick got to last month and i almost cried i was so jealous

That’s not even a joke. Dan and Jaime had been stuck taking Buzzfeed quizzes on camera while Patrick got to roll around on the floor and play with dogs. When Dan heard, he’d literally started tearing up.

Patrick hadn’t even appreciated it properly. Fucking cat people.

Well, Thor isn’t a puppy anymore, but you can play with him while you’re in town if you want to!

Then, Phil sends him a photo, and Dan makes an embarrassing squeal of a noise, because, what the fuck, why didn’t Phil have any fucking dog photos from the past three years on Instagram? The cutest Welsh Corgi Dan has ever seen is curled up on a familiar duvet cover with one of its eyes peeking open at the camera, curious.

HOLY SHIT

PHIL

HOW IS THIS THE FIRST IM SEEING OF THJS DOG IM GONNA CRY

Haha, you weren’t kidding that you haven’t kept up with me! Thor is the most popular guest star on my channel.

Well, now Dan regrets starting with Instagram, but he doesn’t want to stop talking to Phil long enough to watch a video. He’ll enjoy that personal hell when he can’t sleep tomorrow.

WHY ISNT HE ON YOUR INSTA

Cos he’s got his own! Go follow him @AmazingThorgi if you wanna see! Dan immediately exits the app to do that, swiping up at the notification when Phil double-messages. You’re Insta-stalking me? :)

AmazingThorgi is Dan’s new favourite Instagram account. Thor is ridiculously cute, and Phil seems to have a habit of dressing him up and making him sit in front of plants.

Somehow, Phil takes incredible photos of his dog. Dan would like to know where that composition and lighting knowledge is in his selfies. He doesn’t even know how he’d bring that up, because how do you tell someone they’re smoking hot but have some kind of block when it comes to using a front camera?

When he’s scrolled back to puppy pictures and his eyes are in legitimate danger of watering, Dan goes back to Twitter.

amazingphil who i only know thorgi

He’s the best!!!!!! I’m slightly allergic to him but that’s ok he’s worth all the benadryl in the world!!

Jesus. Dan isn’t sure his heart is physically capable of handling all this new information about a guy he used to know everything about. There’s something so endearing to Dan about that, about a man who loves dogs so much that he’ll take allergy medication every day instead of not owning one. That’s just. Something Dan thinks is very cute.

They tell you not to meet your heroes for a fucking reason, and that reason isn’t 'because they’re somehow even better in person.’ Dan has met a few people in the acting sphere that he was disappointed by, to be honest, but.

Every new message he gets from Phil just makes him sound more and more like someone Dan really wants to hang out with.

And Phil had, in a way, offered that. Dan isn’t sure if it was just a lead-in to showing off cute photos of Thor, but he’s just sleep-deprived enough to take it as an invitation.

im in town for 3 wks what is thors schedule like

Phil responds with a couple of barely comprehensible, excited emojis, and Dan has to bite his lip so he doesn’t smile at his phone like a goofball. Not that anyone is here to see him, but. It’s the principle of the thing. He’s helping me film sometime tomorrow but he’s free all week after that!!

Swallowing down the minor uncertainty of whether or not this is flirting, if this is a date they’re setting up, Dan figures out a time and place to hang out. He’s got a day off between interviews this week that he’d originally planned to spend in bed recharging from all the social interaction, but being given the opportunity to get coffee and go to a dog park with Actual AmazingPhil is a gift from a higher power that he won’t ignore.

Phil gets sleepy and Dan finds it sweet that he can tell by the way Phil types, his grammar slipping by the wayside and his emoji use becoming a hundred percent incoherent.

we should both sleep mate but send me pics of thor to get me through buzzfeed hell

One comes in immediately, a somewhat blurry shot of Thor’s nose buried into Phil’s thigh, and Dan curses under his breath. He puts his phone on the nightstand and struggles to fall asleep when all he can think about is how cozy that photo looked, how much he wants to crawl into it and live there forever.

Dan may or may not be fucked.

–

It’s a relief to have Patrick and Jaime with him again, all three of them subject to the repetitive questions and whatever weird, unique tasks are thrown their way by entertainment news sources, but Dan can’t wait to get away from them once they’re back at the hotel.

He gets himself set up with a beer and some Dominos in bed before he opens the AmazingPhil channel on his laptop. Hotel wifi isn’t the best, but it’ll have to do.

There’s a lot of content and links, and every title is as clickbait-y as the last. Dan could probably scroll down Phil’s page for eternity without making a decision, so he sorts the uploads by most popular.

A video of Thor as a puppy takes the number one spot, which Dan isn’t sure he’s emotionally prepared for, and not far behind it in views is just a video thumbnail of Phil looking bemused and titled 7 SECOND CHALLENGE! (BONUS). It really is only seven seconds long.

Dan can’t help but be curious about that one. He clicks it, makes it full screen even though it’s a short video.

The shot opens on a closet door and it folds open, revealing a grinning Phil. His fringe is soft over his forehead and he’s wearing a shirt with a roaring bear on it - this was a couple of years ago.

“Hi,” video Phil says, jolting Dan back to the present. Phil giggles. “I’m gay.”

It’s not all that much of a shock, really, but Dan’s heart still picks up speed as he watches Phil laugh again, close the door, yelp as he knocks into something.

Something else starts autoplaying, and Dan lets it. A younger Phil talks to the camera about a bad gym experience, and Dan finds himself zoning out for half of the video.

Phil’s been out as a gay man since… when was that video posted? 2014? 2015? Dan doesn’t have the wherewithal to check right this second. For a few years, in any case, and he’d said it so casually that he must have known for ages before that, and Dan.

Well. Dan can’t quite shake the feeling that, if he had kept up with Phil all these years, he might have had to examine that box in his mind a lot closer by now. The word gay rolls off Phil’s tongue like it belongs there, like it’s second nature, like it has never been a weapon. Dan wants to hear him say it over and over like a personal calming ritual.

A cursory Google tells Dan that Phil’s coming out video was posted in 2014 accompanying a collaboration with Phil’s friend PJ, and that he has never spoken about his romantic life since.

That’s a blessing and a curse.

Dan sighs heavily and thinks, not for the first time, that he should really invest in therapy. Then, he lets himself become untethered from reality as he watches Phil talk and joke about silly things in the autoplaying videos. The pizza tastes like cardboard.

As if he’s looking at his own body from the perspective of an outsider, Dan takes the figurative locked box in his figurative hands and lets it fall open to sort through some things. Just for a little bit.

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #dnp fic #words words words #can't breathe when you touch my sleeve

[elizabethrobertajones]

I'm not saying you agree with that TLJ article since you tagged it 'mh', but I'm very worried but this latest trend 'Your opinion is wrong because of internalized ___'. Some movies just suck? Like, I hated Ghostbusters 2 because it was bad. I was perfectly okay with having four women as main characters, but that can't be your whole idea for a movie.

I do think that article is interesting, and trying to describe what is basically a wider cultural phenomenon. I’m sure on case by case basis you could rarely boil it down to just a few specific factors and “diagnose” someone except for really obvious lifelong character types who would be in the most obvious demographic. 

Star Wars *already* got a bunch of sexist and racist backlash before TFA, so it’s already in the bracket of movies which got thrown together as the collection of SJWs are ruining our childhood movies like Mad Max, Ghostbusters, etc, so it’s also definitely not like this is a wild stab in the dark that it has pre-existing tension, although in this case the reaction is still really split. But I can see why it’s easy to examine it this way and analyse where it might make people uncomfortable, and wonder to what degree people are prepared to let go of Leading White Man formula for mega blockbusters. 

Something like Wonder Woman, people know what they’re getting into when they see it in the sense that the franchise is completely built around there being a female character in the lead role. So that stands quite alone. And it’s not like there haven’t been action movies with female leads in the past either, but the re-casting in the case of Ghostbusters, or just development of interesting female characters who aren’t beholden to a cookie cutter template/romance arc within a supposedly male-dominated franchise (Furiosa, especially) and changing up old franchises to have more diverse cast (Star Wars) or just completely flip the “male is the default” idea like Ghostbusters and Oceans 8, are deliberately challenging and in some cases - the last 2 especially - are pretty much thumbing the nose to the idea of all-male casts being unremarkable and default. Whether the movies are *good* or not (I thought Ghostbusters was about on the level of, say, a Ghostbusters movie for quality and humour, so okay basically :P) they’re culturally significant at a time when it seems both bizarre and horrifically slow and backwards that we *still* don’t have *even just getting male and female representation right, never mind race and sexuality and disability representation* (I mean for that last point - in some ways these films are already going to be regressive by the time other progressive steps are made, for example Charlize Theron wearing a green screen glove to delete her arm, instead of just hiring an actress with half an arm which is the immediately less-expensive and fiddly route to get the aesthetic…)

But idk, it’s not even like Star Wars was either perfect or extremely progressive, it just managed *not* to have 2-3 white male leads + some other people in the background, and to allow the non white male people to have such a stake in the story they could mess up and make decisions that affected the fate of the galaxy - often negatively, as this is the ESB slot of the trilogy aka where everything is supposed to go in the toilet. There was a lot they could have done better and I’m still annoyed that Maz and Phasma both got pitifully tiny roles but were basically included despite the set up of the movie being extremely restrictive to much exploration and with probably the longest time limit they thought they could allow themselves and still sound like there were any tension in the chase… 

I think it’s definitely always worth exploring whether social issues are having an impact on the reception of a film, though, because it’s a way of addressing the issues in our society, which we *know* exist, and when a film is openly critical of our society, and then people are critical back at it, guessing there may be a nervous backlash from people it made uncomfortable for too-close-to-home reasons makes sense. The critique offered by Kylo Ren to edgy white masculinity is really interesting, and I think it’s probably not hard to imagine SOME people especially who fit the profile are reacting against him, or glorifying him anyway unironically while disliking large amounts of the rest of the movie. 

One of the points that article made as well was that other generic or bad films do much better with audience reaction - in fact some truly terrible films do really well as they’re marketed to a niche audience, and that audience gobbles them up and we get the inverse, of critically panned but audience ratings pretty high.

I mean, I’m assuming if you follow me you’re a Supernatural fan and so we’re all here to gobble up the melodramatic pretty boys :P

So, idk, I think in some ways the picking apart of the film and emphasising its flaws is happening in a strange social climate, where in some ways the discomfort about the film not catering with the most “easy” empathy of a white male main character & with flawed but interesting characters in the other roles particularly prone to being criticised in society for existing anyway and that the SW revival has already had one film threatened boycott over because of Finn being a black stormtrooper on his reveal, and I doubt that feeling has just magically gone away… There comes a point where I wonder how much is basically film review concern trolling when it comes to criticising his and Rose’s arc, or the film in general. 

And how much of the film’s real flaws, plotholes etc if they existed in an easier version of the film with all 4 Chrises in the major roles would take months or years to get properly dissected by the internet while it’s basically as soon as you go back online after the movie someone’s complaining about why Canto Bight even existed.

I mean my “Hm” was “this is interesting and I think it definitely could apply to the wider cultural reaction to the movies” while obviously on a personal level if people have certain standards for films (my dad hates basically *everything* so I don’t think his reaction to TFA was categorically racist or sexist, just that he would be inclined to think pretty much anything JJ Abrams makes is garbage and whoops I never should have naively made him watch the first episode of Fringe with me :P) then if any of these movies are things you can tell would have rubbed you up the wrong way anyway, e.g. you didn’t like the original Ghostbusters that much/have found it far cringey-er on adult rewatches etc then you are absolutely allowed to have a reaction to it on a personal level which is not a sign of the sickness of our society :P 

But I think even if you don’t like the new SW film, it’s worth putting aside your critiques of it for a moment to think about this article and the wider reaction - not to make you guilted into enjoying the film, but because it’s worth at least pondering the wider social issues the film’s already definitely caught up in since like, before TFA came out, so we can’t deny that there’s at least some portion of the audience, whether the loud but small group of assholes who utterly invisibly boycotted TFA, or the wider percentage of the population who’ll be consciously or unconsciously turned off by the cast and the power given to their characters in the story, and the possibly even wider percentage who may still struggle to empathise with female characters because Hollywood has so systematically underrepresented like, what can alternately be the literal largest demographic on the planet, and presented just plain old cis women as characters whose inner lives are valuable and decisions should be respected. 

I mean since I came out the movie I’ve been swinging back and forth on “should Holdo have just told Poe her plan or was the point that this man of a much lower station is getting all up in her business demanding to know and questioning her, and I assume that was intentional so I should agree with Holdo but would this have looked just as bad if a male admiral showed up doing the same thing and they accidentally undermine her by it being a bad decision in general, or is the point that if it had been a male admiral Poe would have shut up and not let an insurrection, but I mean it’s *Poe* and I love him and I totally understand and he was made out to be more sympathetic until *after* the twist so did they WANT us to be critical of Holdo or am I just falling into a trap of not giving female characters the same room to fuck up as male characters -” and that’s BEFORE I get onto the internet and read this debate for weeks, just my confusion about this arc and what it was saying and if it was meant to say one thing or the other or if it’s a bit of bad writing (but not something so bad it would ruin the film to the point of only 50% enthusiasm like Rotten Tomatoes is giving it - like, 93% or something :P) or if it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to by making my brain cogs go and making me feel I need to write like, a dozen female admiralty into things to allow Holdo a cultural sisterhood of good bad and ugly admirals to be her own person in instead of the only female admiral to ever stick in my head like this :P So idk. 

Hm. Basically. 

#Asks #star wars #star wars spoilers

[wessybabe-blog]

Dear Oliver

By: Criselle Bolante & Wesley Paligar

HU12

It was indeed a chilly morning. As usual, I started preparing myself to school. It’s not just an ordinary day to me though; it’s my first day on my new school.

Yes I know, transferring from schools suck. Well maybe it's just me because I'm not that sociable at all. I have social problems, not that I'm ill or what but I've always been bullied.

Can you imagine having new set of bullies from every new school?

That actually happened to me before, but I hope this time it's different. I want to start something new. I want to stop getting hurt and getting beaten around like a fucking rag doll. I want people to stop hurting me and making me bleed like a pig.

Sometimes I question the world about what I've done to deserve all of this- on why people have to be so cruel ,unfair and insensitive. Despite all of this, there's always something inside me. A spark that calls for hope that keeps me on continuing my life and believing that not all people are bad, that some people really do care and that's also the thing that keeps me on moving from place to place in hopes of finding the place where I really belong, a place in which I can call home.

Home, this word brought a myriad of thoughts inside my head. I suddenly felt my chest tightening and there was a lump forming at the back of my throat. The bitter coldness of the weather isn't helping at all. One person came into my mind and it was my mother.

My mother was someone who doesn't deserve to be remembered at all. When I was just an infant, I was neglected by my mother who was pregnant during her teenage years. I was a mistake. She threw me at a dump. I was actually about to die but someone was able to find and rescue me. I was brought to a charity home that raises kids. It was a charity home run by religious nuns. They’ve raised and fed me well enough until such time when things changed.

During my teenage years, my behaviour was not similar to that of the ordinary boys. I was attracted to the same sex that I've had. I had minor crushes. I know that this is not natural at all and this doesn't have to reach the nuns. I was taught religiously that boys must be boys and girls must be girls. Not long after, the nuns figured it out. I remembered the horrified look on Sister Martina's face when she found out I was gay.

I think I've had enough. I don't despise God nor hate him but this is who I am and I believe that He made me like this and that he loves me for who I am and no one can change that. It's not that I'm an ungrateful child but I've decided to escape the charity and live my own life alone. I've roamed around the streets without anything in hand and was exposed to the cruelty of the world. I won't forget that time, that memory will haunt me forever.

*flashback*

I was on the streets. Half-passed out and dying of great hunger. I already accepted that I would die when a boy with brown hair and piercing blue eyes suddenly went to me and gave me a loaf of bread after seeing me in that state. He was an angel; the loaf of bread that he gave me was the only thing I have. I started eating the bread, tears streaming down my eyes and my heart thumping with gratitude. I wasn't able to speak. "Hey Caelan let's go!" said a woman who was with the boy. From that moment on, the name Caelan never left my mind.

*end of flashback*

I realized that it's already getting late and I would probably be late for school if I didn't hurry enough. Erie High School was a 15 minute walk away from the apartment I was dwelling in. I grabbed my old bike and started my way to school. The slippery road wasn't helping at all. Fortunately I've reached my destination on time. The school’s atmosphere seems to be really refreshing and unnerving at the same time. There was a change of view of course since this is a new school for me. But there was something that makes my stomach clench on its own.

“Nothing new” I thought to myself. There were students in groups; there were jocks, nerds and bitches. Of course there would be a social hierarchy…. What was I expecting? Pure bunch of nerds who doesn't give a fuck about something except for studying and getting straight A's?? I parked my ragged bike to the side of the building and started my way towards the school's hall.

It was the epitome of awkwardness. If looks could kill, I would unrecognizably dead by now perhaps?? The school's population is surprisingly small and I think seeing new faces are something that would eventually become apparent and obvious. Nevertheless, I got my schedule and started locating my first class. I was lost not long after. I don't want to ask help from somebody so I went on with my own. I have finally managed to find it but I was 10 minutes late though.

"Good morning ma’am" I said while heaving breathlessly. "Take your seat" she said without looking at me. "Oliver Scullion right?" she asked while looking straight at me, stopping me on my way. "Yes ma’am"

I replied. I made my way to the only vacant chair at the back when I felt a sudden sharp pain on my right ankle. Before I knew it, I was sprawled face flat on the floor.

Fuck it. This will leave a bruise for sure. I looked back to see who tripped me. It was a tall and thin boy with a smug look on his face. That annoying smirk of his would be something I would like to erase on the face.

"Jasper stop" said the professor. So that jerk's name is Jasper huh?? I helped myself recover and hurriedly went to my chair. My lips were so painful. It started bleeding and I tried licking it off. "Ugh" that familiar rusty taste engorged my taste buds. It kept on bleeding and it seems that it won't stop. I tried looking around to find something that would help a bit and saw the most beautiful eyes in the world. It was oddly familiar.

It belongs to the guy seated next to me whom I haven’t noticed since I entered the room. He has light brown hair and piercing blue eyes. He was kinda tall and was quite muscular, lean and beefy. "Here" he gave me a piece of band aid and a small handy pack of cotton balls. “Uuhm thanks!” I thanked him shyly. I felt myself face warm up and before I knew it I was blushing red as a tomato.

"Caelan at your service" he smiled. Why does his name sound familiar? It seems like I already know him. I nodded awkwardly. “Hey I'm Oliver and I-I'm new here" I stuttered. "I see, there aren't that many students in this school and you've been talked about before you even entered the gate" He wiggled his eyebrows and beamed at me. That smile, it warms the coldest of hearts.

The bell rung and it was time for the next class. I started fixing my stuff immediately. I started looking around but Caelan was nowhere to be found. I guess I shouldn't attach myself to people that much.

My day continued with the most boring classes ever. But I can't remove the smile of my face after realizing that Caelan was indeed that angelic boy who rescued me from starvation. I don't think he would remember me anyway. I wish he would. I rode my bike on my way home and started sleeping early. There was some sort of motivation inside me after knowing that I've seen Caelan once again. I couldn't sleep; I kept thingking all the things that happened to me today. “Maybe I could talk to him again tomorrow” I said to myself. Luckily I still drifted off to sleep despite my bothered mind. I woke up anxiously, getting myself ready and going off.

The random stares from the old students are still there though. I guess it's just normal since it's just my 2nd day as a transferee. I scanned the halls for any sign of Caelan since I really wanted to talk to him.

Searching desperately for Caelan I bumped into some bulky figure . " Watch out loser" a deep mocking voice called out. He grabbed me by my collar and I reflexively closed my eyes and braced myself for a possible punch.

Miraculously a narrow nasal voice called out "Will, we don't have time for that. Get your ass over here!”

"Fuck off Xavier, I wanna give this loser a piece of my mind" replied Will. " Will. Just stop it. We don't have time for that and we still have something TO DO.”

Not long after, they finally left me. I breathe a sigh.

My nightmare's happening again. I was expecting a new life away from all the pain the moment I transferred from this school.

But everything seems to be turning the opposite way.

Fortunately I found Caelan on his lockers. I don't think it's the right time to talk to him though. I just feel like I'm about to cry. I was planning on greeting him on the way then going off on my own when he stopped me on my tracks.

"Hey Oliver! Do you have plans later?" Caelan asked quite enthusiastically.

"I guess I don't have? Why'd you ask?" I responded curiously.

"U-uhm can you come with me later this afternoon? Perhaps you don't have something to do? Would you mind if I invite you?" He started scratching his head and he was actually blushing. He can't look at my eyes though.

I can't stop giggling inside. Caelan wanted to hang out with me?! Seriously?! " Yea sure, ye-yeah" I stammered. I was expecting Caelan to be happy since I've accepted his invitation but I've seen worry in his eyes instead. From that moment, I knew something was wrong. I asked him if everything was ok. He said he was fine. Then we parted ways.

I can't wait to go home and prepare myself.

I started wearing the most comfortable yet presentable clothes I have and in a flash I was in Borough bridge, the agreed meeting place with Caelan.

Caelan was wearing a black shirt which in my opinion was quite odd. I don't really think he's that type of person that likes to wear black

I was walking towards him with his back against me .When something covered my nose and mouth. The texture seems similar to that off a handkerchief but it's kinda wet and it has a sharp scent on it. I struggled and struggled knowing that they might kidnap me. But with no luck, my vision started blurring and and I felt really drowsy. Everything went blank.

"Ouch, where am I?" I moaned in pain. Every tissue in my body hurts like hell. Then I hear whispers, those voices. They're familiar and I'm certain that they're from my school. "HEEEEEELP" I screamed at the top of my lungs. If they are from my school then that means I might have a chance of surviving!

The air was dense and the place reeks of Earth. This looks like an abandoned basement. I was tied to a wooden chair with my hands in cuffs.

Four familiar figures emerged from the door and to my surprise it was Jasper, Will, Xavier and Ca-Caelan?

"Caelan what's happening? where am I?”

"Shut up faggot, you deserve some good ass whopping.”

"Knew you were a faggot who's in desperate need of date."

I can't believe what's happening right now. Those words were coming out from Caelan's mouth. This must be a dream! A nightmare! Impossible!

His once angelic eyes were replaced with menacing ones instead Glaring at me so intensely as if his ultimate goal was to kill me.

His rage tore my heart into pieces. As if it has not been torned many times before. It was crushed into fine pieces like that of the sand.

A strong punch landed on my stomach, then another one but this one was undeniably stronger. I was kicked by the side and the wooden chair I was sitting came tumbling with me.

Fits of mocking laughter could be heard from across the room. It was from the three guys. That stood behind Caelan.

Oh good Lord. Please don't tell me that Caelan was with these 3 jerks all this time!!!

"S-s-stop C-Caelan. Please .stop." I pleaded.

My mouth was filled with the taste of rust and I know I might die anytime soon. I'm fucking bleeding.

I was kicked, punched, slapped and spoken harsh verbal words. And every second was unbearable. Of all people, Caelan was the one who's doing everything. What did I do to deserve this kind of thing? Do I really deserve this? Maybe the world is pure evil after all, that good people do not exist.

After hours of beating they finally left me seeing my fully beaten body. But I think they might come back so I take that as my time to escape. Every subtle movement send penetrating pain throughout my body. I was wounded, both soul and body. I don't know what to do. Continuing was something that came first from my mind. I wasn't able to think clearly. I've limped all the way home crawling, limping, tumbling, and puking blood.

Caelan POV

What have I done?! My arms are shaking. I want Oliver to know that I didn't mean all of this to happen. It was Xavier's fault! the leader of the Snake Gang.

They blackmailed me into hurting him and bullying him or else they would kill him before I knew.

I don't want them to hurt him! I know what that Gang can do to my Oliver.

The moment Oliver walked into the class. There's just something about him that makes me want to protect him. I know people have been hurting him and I want to kill them for that!

I've seen the bruises all over his body and my heart ached so much seeing him in such situation.

I would never forget that time when he was sprawled across the streets. I wanted to take him home but Mom wouldn't accept him. That's why I brought him a loaf of bread from the basket mom had. I wanted to hug him but it was time to go said Mom.

Oh Oliver. I love you so much!

His bloodied form haunted me.

I can't sleep that night.

The next day I came to school early as possible in order to find oliver's whereabouts and perhaps talk to him all about this and that I didn't mean to.

But they said he-he's dead.

Oliver's dead. My Oliver

They told me that he committed suicide in his apartment. Cutting and making himself bleed and from that moment on. I knew I was dead. Tears started streaming down my face. My body's shaking in disbelief and I can't think properly. I wanted to kill myself.

He's dead. My Oliver is dead.