#maybe i should pop by counseling

[amjustagirl]

title: to rebuild a home pairing: kuroo x f! reader genre: angst / fluff, post timeskip! wc: 6.8k m.list

a/n: companion piece to the original love knows not its depth, from kuroo's perspective.

Kuroo Tetsuro is doing alright. 

He’s deftly juggling the roles life has handed him. His tenth wedding anniversary is coming up. He’s gotten a nice pair of earrings and a reservation at Tokyo’s hottest omakase for you to celebrate. The girls are doing nicely at school - Aiko’s grades are excellent, and Fumiko’s not gotten into any schoolyard fights unlike Bokuto’s trio of sons. His bosses seem happy with him too, paving the way for him to climb the corporate ladder rung by rung. He’s earned each promotion by burning days in the office, nights in the izakayas schmoozing with his bosses, but it’s worth it, even if it admittedly comes at the expense of being with you and the girls. 

It’s a sacrifice he has to make so he can provide you with the fairytale life he’s always promised you. Not that you’ve ever complained about the trade-off.  

“She’s the best wife and mom I could’ve asked for”, he tells Kenma, when the former setter asks about you. “I don’t know how she does it.” 

Kenma frowns. “You make her sound like a video game character.” 

“That’s cos she’s amazing -”

“Kinda sucks that she pretty much has to juggle a full time job and the kids on her own most of the time.”

“She manages perfectly well”, Kuroo enthuses, oblivious to the barb in his friend’s words. “By the time I get home, the girls are in bed, the house is clean, and there’s even a lunch box packed for me each day. She’s a rockstar at work too - should be up for a promotion next financial year.” 

“Huh”, Kenma sniffs. “I wonder when she gets a break.” 

Kuroo’s too distracted by the round of beers that’s delivered to his table to think deeply about his best friend’s apprehension. When he stumbles through the front door that night, he finds you crouched over the coffee table, frantically typing at your laptop. As expected, the girls are in bed, there’s nothing out of place. 

“All good?” he asks you in passing, his mind already filing the tasks on his plate for tomorrow - organising a publicity event jointly held by the JVA and Bouncing Ball Corporation to introduce new national team members, reviewing the proposed budget for this year’s international competitions, popping by the under-19 team to see if there are indeed any promising candidates - he’s already one foot in the bedroom, ready to call it a night. 

He doesn’t notice the violets blooming under your eyes. 

“Mm.” You don’t look up. “Have a good night.”  

Kruoo Tetsuro thinks he’s doing alright. 

Bokuto Kotaro, for some reason, doesn’t think so. “Mitsuki said you’re lucky you’re not married to her cos she’ll skin you alive”, he informs him, as if Kuroo shares his love for women capable of chomping his head off in one bite.

Maybe the Bokutos operate on a different metric - because yes, they’re the model of egalitarianism with Mitsuki the high powered general counsel for Kenma’s Bouncing Ball Corporation (based on his referral, he likes to add, cos’ it’s funny to watch Mitsuki growl) and Kotaro the part time coach, full time stay at home dad to his wolfpack of sons, but that doesn’t mean his marriage is on the rocks. 

As a child, he was the unwitting witness to his parents’ fights, which culminated in his mother walking out of the door, his father crying over a thick stack of divorce papers. His grandparents took him in, gave him stability and love and comfort but he swore to himself he’s never going to put his daughters through that. 

Sure, it’s been a while since you’ve had a night to yourself. The last time he remembers you taking time away from the girls was to go out for dinner with him to celebrate his latest promotion - his conscience stings a little that he can’t remember the last time you’ve taken a break from everything you’ve been doing for him and the girls, but he’ll make it up to you once he has time. You always understand. 

Still, just to be sure, he checks in on you again. 

“You alright?”, he reaches for your hand, when he climbs into bed that night. 

You’re lying in bed. He should find it odd that you’re still awake at this time of the night, staring up at the ceiling as if there’s something to be found there, but he falls asleep in the slow seconds, doesn't hear your response. When he wakes, you’ve already taken the girls to school. He gets himself ready for work, loops his tie around his neck, grabs his briefcase and the bento you’ve so lovingly packed for him, and hops on the train. He runs through his routine like clockwork, but there’s a niggling feeling that he’s missed something important, possibly something to do with you. 

Did you say something to him last night? 

It doesn’t matter. He makes a mental note to purchase a spa day for you - but that’s promptly forgotten when he’s greeted by a flood of emails and an invitation from his boss to go out for drinks that night. 

Kuroo still thinks he’s doing alright. 

“You’re lucky”, his boss toasts him. “Your wife doesn’t complain like mine when I go out drinking, even though I tell her I need to do it for work.” 

“She’s an angel”, Kuroo replies, quietly bursting with pride. “Never complains.” 

“Lucky man”, his boss says. “My wife is such a nag.” 

He misses the last train home that night, drops you a text not to wait up and stumbles around Shibuya trying to find a cab. It must be a busy night because by the time he manages to flag down one, it’s three a.m. and his head is pounding from the excess of alcohol and lack of solid food and water. He fumbles with his keys, almost falls through his front door when the lock gives way. “Tadaima”, he says out of habit, too-loudly, before his stomach lurches and he has to make a mad dash for the kitchen sink. 

“Tetsuro?” 

He wants to respond, but he’s too busy emptying out the contents of his stomach. He shouldn’t have woken you up. He shouldn’t greet you with a mess for you to clean up. He shouldn’t lean so heavily on you that you stagger beneath his weight. 

He shouldn’t do all of that yet he does so anyway. You tuck him, a grown man, into bed.

Tomorrow, he’ll apologise. Tomorrow, he’ll make it up to you. 

Tomorrow comes. He wakes up. 

You’re gone. 

Kuroo Tetsuro is not alright.

He’s ashamed to admit that he doesn’t even notice you’ve taken off until it’s way past lunch when your mother drops him a text to ask if he’s picking up the girls or if he intends to leave them with her overnight. 

“What d’you mean?” he texts her, confused.  

His heart stops when your mother responds to say you dropped off the girls at her place without much of an explanation, an overnight bag slung over your shoulder. You don’t pick up your phones, his calls going straight to voicemail. For the first time in forever, he sheepishly asks his boss for urgent leave from work so he can rush home to figure out what’s going on. 

You always take your laptop with you, but it’s sitting at home. He knows it’s an invasion of privacy, but he types in your password (his birthday), and your web browser reveals a booking for a ryokan in Hakone, where the both of you honeymooned almost a decade ago. It’s an hour away by train, far too much time for him to sit and stew in his thoughts. He wonders if you’ve become sick of your life with him, whether you’ve found someone new, and by the time he’s reached the ryokan and charmed the receptionist to let him into your room, he’s teetering on the edge of giving into his frustration, entertaining thoughts about yelling at you for being so goddamned irresponsible, cos how could you just walk out on him and the girls -

Until you walk in, thankfully alone. 

It strikes him that it’s the most refreshed he’s seen you look in a very, very long time. Your cheeks are glowing, your eyes sparkle, and there’s a spring in your step that he hasn’t seen since you’ve had the girls. 

Still, he can’t help but remain a little peeved. “I’ve been calling you all afternoon”, he informs you. “I was worried.” 

He immediately regrets his words as he watches the light die in your eyes. 

“Were you?”, you ask, as if you were addressing a stranger. “Really?” 

“Of course”, he frowns, slowly getting up to approach you, concerned when you start to sway. “You’re my wife and the mother of our girls, of course I care.” 

Laughter spills from your lips, an undercurrent of bitterness and contempt that’s threatening to drag you under before his very eyes. “If you really cared, you’d have noticed that your wife is broken”, you tell him between gasps, your shoulders caving in. “I tried fixing myself with a break, but you can’t even give me that.”  

He’s starting to realise that things aren’t alright at all. You flinch when he takes a step towards you, an action which stabs him clean through his heart because he’s your husband, your Tetsuro, your person. Tea, then, a neutral offering that manages to calm you down enough to take a seat, even if you’re still shaking, falling to pieces while laughing, laughing -

“Tell me what’s wrong”, he begs. “Tell me what I can do to fix you.” 

You take a sip of tea. It’s hot enough to burn you, but you don’t seem to notice. 

“I can’t do this anymore, Tetsuro.” 

“Don’t say that”, he snaps, his inner child recoiling because he can’t bear to have his girls go through what he went through, wondering if it was his fault, his very existence that caused his parents to split up. “The girls and I need you -” 

You don’t seem to hear him. 

“Princess”, he falls back on his pet name for you, rusty from lack of use. “Come back to me.” 

You’re unmoved, your eyes unseeing, deaf to his pleas. Sip after sip, you gulp down scalding tea, each action jerky, mechanical. Frozen, in an impenetrable placidness that he can’t read. You’re sitting right in front of him but you’re not really there at all.    

“Let’s talk when you’re back home”, he finally says. “Have a good break.” 

The immature little boy that still lives in his psyche is still unconvinced that it’s a bad idea to drag you back home with him posthaste, but you asked for a break, and it’s the least he can give to you.

You allow him to roll out your futon for you, to swaddle you in layers of blankets as if that would keep you from falling apart any further. As he kisses your forehead to bid you goodnight and goodbye, he feels the brittleness of your bones, the thinness of your skin beneath his palms and he spends the hour-long train ride home wondering how he managed to look away long enough for you to turn into a shadow of your past self.   

He goes straight to your mother’s house to retrieve the girls. As penance, he stands at the front door, head bowed, letting your mother yell at him in front of the neighbours for being a useless husband and an irresponsible father. After all, he deserves every word she flings in his face. He’s just thankful that she doesn’t ream him out in front of the girls. 

“Where’s mama?” Fumiko mumbles half asleep into his neck. “Want mama.”

He cradles her closer. “She’ll be home tomorrow”, he tells her, hoping with every fibre of his being that that does not turn out to be a lie. Aiko, older and wiser, just stays quiet, so he forces a smile on his face for her sake.  

Kuroo Tetsuro is far from okay.

The strain of the day wears on him and he’s sure there are burning emails in his inbox for him to firefight, but there’s a long list of chores to be done in your absence. The girls’ school bags need to be packed (in the case of five year old Fumiko) or checked (for ten year old Aiko), their uniforms to be laid out, the laundry sorted and folded. He barely gets any sleep before he has to hop out of bed to throw together a cold breakfast of milk and cereal that makes Fumiko burst into tears and Aiko’s face droops. By the time he shuffles his two cranky children out of the house and into their respective schools, he’s late for work. 

He meets Bokuto and Kenma for lunch since there’s no lunch bento waiting for him in the fridge, though he regrets the decision to leave the refuge of his work desk for the boardroom of Bouncing Ball Corporation when Mitsuki joins them and, sharp-eyed as ever, sinks her talons into him. 

“You look like shit”, she says to him as a greeting. 

“Thanks”, he grounds out. The girls demanded he work their hair into the neat braids they insisted you always do, so bedhead would have to do for him today. 

“I’ve never seen you without hair gel before”, Bokuto marvels. “You look weird.” 

“I had a crap morning, okay”, he snaps, biting the head off the karaage fish in his store bought bento, which he resents for tasting worse than those you usually make for him. “So I’m sorry if I look slightly less than presentable -” 

“You look like a man whose wife just left him - “ 

Mitsuki’s just stepped right on the wound he’s tried to keep hidden, festering and bleeding beneath his skin, so like an animal lashing out when it’s hurt, Kuroo slaps the table with both palms and snarls. 

“Don’t - don’t fucking say that, okay? She’s just taking a break. She’ll come home.”

He can’t stand to see the shock and pity on his closest friends’ faces. “She’s coming home today”, he repeats softly, almost to himself, as if he’s little Fumiko in need of reassurance that the person she needs most in the world hasn’t just abandoned her. “It’s gonna be okay.” 

Perhaps it’s the maturity that comes with fatherhood, because Bokuto is the first to react. “That’s right, you’re gonna be okay”, he soothes, pulling Kuroo into his seat. “Kenma’s gonna call your boss and tell him that you’re gonna spend the rest of the afternoon here to plan some event - “

“Sponsorship for the Under-19 team, done”, Kenma snaps his phone shut.

“Guys, I’m fine - ” 

“Pretending everything’s okay isn’t going to help.” 

Kuroo deflates. “Thanks, Kenma.” 

Shelving his worthless pride to lay bare the situation he’s found himself in, that by neglecting his duties as a husband and father, he’s forced you to the brink of a mental breakdown, bad enough that you’ve left him - temporarily, he hopes. In the span of a few hours, he’s already found himself at his wit’s end, struggling to handle both the demands of the kids and his job, something that he realises he’s left you to bear, alone. 

“But I can’t figure out why she didn’t just tell me she was feeling overwhelmed”, he says, pulling at a fraying thread in his shirt. “I would’ve listened. I would’ve done better.” 

“She shouldn’t have to tell you to do your part”, Mitsuki waves away Bokuto’s desperate gesture for her not to kick a man when he’s already down. 

“But I didn’t know -” 

“Y’know, I really can’t stand men like you. You guys are amazing at work, able to anticipate your bosses’ and clients’ needs. At this point, you don’t even need to be told by your bosses  to jump, you don’t even ask your clients ‘how high’ - yet, for some reason, you manage to turn off your brain the minute you walk in through the front door at home.”

 “Maybe I should ask her for a list of things I can help her with -” 

Bokuto claps his hand over Mitsuki’s mouth. “Ehhh..you might not wanna finish your sentence or Mitsuki might really bite your head off.” 

Kuroo winces, snapping his mouth shut. 

“Maybe you can think of it in a different way”, Bokuto says. “Instead of ‘helping’ her - cos that’s just placing the mental burden on her - at least, I think that’s the term Mitsuki-chan used when she explained it to me -” the affronted lawyer nods begrudgingly, and beaming, he continues - “you gotta do your half of the work!”

“Level up”, Kenma provides, rather unhelpfully.

“Open your eyes and use your brain”, Mitsuki says bluntly, rolling her eyes, though her tone is less sharp.

“Where do I start?” Kuroo asks. 

Step one. 

He picks the girls up from his mother in law’s place, bears with the lecture that’s awaiting him, and sheepishly asks them what their mama usually feeds them for dinner and breakfast, making a mental note of it. Tonight, he’ll cheat by feeding them gyudon at Sukiya, but he drops by the supermarket to procure the ingredients he needs for tomorrow’s breakfast and a bouquet of pink roses, even though he knows it’s probably too little, too late. He counts himself lucky that Fumiko loves bathtime, only needing supervision to wash and dry her hair, and Aiko’s responsible enough to work through her homework without prompting, but he’s still exhausted by the time they both head to bed. 

His job doesn’t end there. Running through the checklist Mitsuki begrudgingly allowed Bokuto to give him, he surveys the apartment, comparing it against the mental image of how everything was before you left it. Toys scattered, to be put back in place. Dust on floor, to be vacuumed up. A heap of laundry in the basket, to be hung, dried, ironed. 

Just as he finishes all these tasks, the front door swing opens. 

“Tadaima”, you call out, voice hushed. 

He nearly trips over his feet in his haste to relieve you of your luggage, usher you into a seat by the kitchen counter. “Okaerie”, he breathes, 

“The girls?” you ask. 

He’ll buy Bokuto lunch next time. “I picked them up from your mom”, he responds. “Don’t wake them up, I just put them to bed.” 

You peek into their rooms nonetheless. “Thanks”, you say, heading next to the fridge. “By the way, I’ll pay you back for the hotel room from my own money, don’t worry.” 

That’s the last thing on his mind. Besides, his sin is being a neglectful husband, not a miser. “It’s fine, I’ll cover it”, he scratches his head, embarrassed that you’re even bringing it up. “I should’ve realised you needed a break.” 

That makes you frown, but you accept anyway. He watches you stack bread, eggs, ham, cheese, and it strikes him that you’re already worrying about the girls’ breakfast when you look as if you haven’t even had your own dinner. 

“You haven’t had dinner?” he asks. 

You reply carelessly that you’ve had a bento on the train back. You don’t even bother to look at him. 

“I’ll take the girls in the mornings from now”, he tells you. “Sleep in and take a break.” 

That gets your attention. 

“Really?”

He plasters a confident smirk on his face to reassure you that he’s got it all in hand. 

“Oh”, you’re adorable when you’re confused, but he hates that he’s given you reason to doubt him. “Wake me up if you need my help?” 

“I won’t”, he promises. 

It’s time for him to level up.  

Step two. 

He’s not going to lie to himself that he finds it difficult to do even half of what you used to do. Taking over the responsibility of wrangling the girls out of bed and into school, coming home early enough for dinner with you, that requires him to have hard conversations with his boss about not being able to go out for drinks or come in early anymore which probably hurts his chances for his next promotion, forces him to give up an hour or two of sleep, but it’s worth it if it allows you to heal. 

“Don’t expect a gold star for your efforts”, Mitsuki warned him. “It’s just what you should’ve been doing before, so it’s time for you to go above and beyond.” 

He takes her words to heart. You deserve to go to work well-rested, to wind down at night with a hot bath. He’ll buy a robot vacuum and pour over its manual that’s thicker than a textbook, do laundry loads while hopping on and off conference calls, wrestle the iron to press down his own shirts. 

You seem baffled by the sudden shift in the winds, but he just pretends everything is normal. Business as usual. Things are just as they should’ve been. 

In his next push to right his wrongs, he organises a Saturday dinner date with you. The girls are packed off with your mother, he makes the reservation, books the cab, compliments your dress. He asks you about your work (tiring), your boss (a micro-manager), the books you’ve read recently (nada, zilch). In the uphill battle to keep the conversation from being stilted, he makes a fatal mistake. 

“We can make it work if you want to quit your job and stay home full time with the children.” 

In his mind, that was a reasonable suggestion to make since you seem to hate your job and boss with a fiery passion. But you stare at him wide-eyed, your initial confusion hardening into anger. 

“Did the guys at work tell you it’s easier to have a housewife instead of a working wife? Are you saying this because you don’t think I’m a good enough mother to our girls?” 

You don’t give him a chance to backpedal, shooting a sarcastic apology for being selfish enough to refuse to be reliant on him, so he just slumps back in his chair in defeat. 

“I just want you to be happy”, he murmurs. “Forget I ever said that.” 

Step three. 

To figure out step three, he schedules an emergency lunch meeting on Monday. The troops convene in Kenma’s boardroom to listen to his sorry tale with Mitsuki in charge of the post–battle analysis. 

“And remind me again, where did you two meet?” 

His face lights up at the memory of his first meeting with you. “Finance 102”, he replies. “We used to be academic rivals turned teammates after I convinced her I was smart enough for her to work with on projects.”

“What made you fall in love with her?” 

“As much as I hate it, I have to admit she’s probably smarter than me”, he says, though the fond smile that creeps onto his face betrays the fact that he loves that about you. “She’s just - her, she’s headstrong and funny. Did I tell you how she tried to stab me with her fork when I stole food off her plate -” 

“Only a million times”, Kenma interjects. 

“She’s always been independent and ambitious, with big dreams and an even bigger heart.” 

“Well”, Mitsuki says, adopting the mildest tone she’s used on him this month. “Does that sound like a woman who’d choose to stay home and depend on her husband? Not that there’s anything wrong with being a stay-at-home parent - Koutaro makes my career possible, and I’m the luckiest woman in the world to have him as my husband.”

“Babyyyyy.” Bokuto bawls, looking at MItsuki as if she hangs the moon in the sky. 

Gross. Kenma seems to agree. “Let’s get back to Kuroo’s failing marriage”,

“So I shouldn’t bring up the suggestion that she quit her job again?” 

His three person council shake their heads in unison. “Just keep what you’re doing”, Bokuto pipes up. “Sounds like you’re already doing the right things! Just gotta keep making sure she’s not holding up the sky herself.” 

He can do that. 

“And maybe talk to her?”, Kenma offers.

That’s the suggestion that he wants to dismiss right off the bat because he’s too much of a coward to even face the possibility that you might leave him. He doesn’t want to become his dad so he resolves to keep his head down and continue pushing ahead with his efforts to prove to you that he can be the husband you deserve, so you won’t wake up one day and decide to walk out on him again. 

But his subconscious fears force his nightmares into overdrive. Dreams of packed bags and stacks of divorce papers makes him yelp loud enough for you to roll over and shake him awake. He’s a terrible husband for disturbing your sleep, but in his sleep-dazed state of confusion he just sinks back into the pillow, exhaling a sigh of relief. 

“Thank the gods you haven’t left.” 

“Why would I leave?”, you mumble, turning away again. “It’s my home, isn’t it.” 

He sits up, rubs the nightmares away from his eyes. “I was afraid you left me.” 

The silence nearly suffocates him. The sudden need to know exactly where you stand eats away at him and he crawls towards you. “Are you going to leave me”, he asks, praying to all the gods in the universe that you’ll reassure him otherwise. 

His heart breaks anew when he hears a small sob, buried in the bedclothes. “I don’t know, Tetsuro”, you finally say. “I’m tired of being alone in a marriage when it’s supposed to be us working together.” 

“I’m sorry.” There’s nothing much he can say. 

A broken whisper. “I’m tired”, you exhale. “I think I deserve better.”

“I’ll make it better”, he promises. 

He will. He will. 

Kuroo Tetsuro is trying his best. 

He takes a cooking class on the weekends to learn how to prepare bento boxes that are nutritious and easy on the wallet. He takes over the ferrying of Fumiko to her swimming lessons, work on Aiko’s art projects with her. He hires a part time cleaner to pick up the deep cleaning, so you and he have time to take the girls out on weekend outings instead of spending all day on a week’s worth of cumulated chores. A dishwasher appears in the house. He makes it a game for he and the girls to load and unload dishware each night. 

“There’s a networking wine night for finance next Wednesday”, he tells you casually. “I’ll make sure to be home so you can go, if you want.” 

You goggle at him. 

“Go schmooze so the world knows you’re as amazing as I know you are.” 

You trust him enough to leave the girls behind in his care and go. He counts that as a win. 

Some nights he still can’t get home in time for dinner, but he always makes sure he’s home in time for a bedtime story and a goodnight kiss. Aiko avers that at the grand old age of ten, she doesn’t need her papa to tuck her to bed anymore, but she sidles into Fumiko’s room everynight and sits in the corner of her little sister’s bed as the littler girl listens to his tall tales. 

“I met a princess when I was eighteen”, he says with a grin when he notices you listening in. “Instead of a crown, she armed herself with a fork, ready to cut down anyone who’d cross her.” 

His heart skips a beat when he hears your voice from the doorway. “Don’t be dramatic”, you interrupt, a small smile growing on your face. “You were trying to steal my food and didn’t stop ‘til I stabbed you.” 

Fumiko huffs, unhappy that her story’s being interrupted, but he can’t seem to tear his gaze away from you. “You left it on the table, princess. I consider that fair game.” 

“Let ‘to-san tell the story, ka’san.” Aiko grumbles. 

He savours your laughter. It tastes better than the finest wine. 

“I can’t believe I have to fly all the way to Italy just to meet Kageyama-kun”, he huffs. “At least Hinata is meeting us there, I’ll revolt if I had to go up to Brazil as well.” 

“You know it can’t be helped”, you reply. “The promotional activities planned need your presence, and it’s only for a week.” 

“Will you be okay when I’m gone?” 

His fears melt away when you hand him his suitcase, a flask of his favourite tea. “I’ve always managed fine. Nothing’s changed.” 

His little monsters, realising that he’s about to leave, decide to launch a synchronised attack on him. Aiko throws herself at him in a bear hug. Fumiko yanks at his sleeve demanding a thousand kisses. 

“Yes, well. I’ll be home soon. Please wait for me” he says to you when the girls finally release him. The expression on your face is unreadable, but you don’t pull away when he takes the liberty of taking your hand in his. 

He feels your heartbeat accelerates. You glance up at him, almost shy. “I’ll see you soon.” 

He’s so tempted to call his boss and pretend that he’s too ill to get on that damned flight, but he’s pretty sure that would get him fired. Instead, he calls you and the girls every day, and brings home a luggage full of presents for all of you. 

When he’s home, he celebrates by putting on the frilliest pink apron he’s ever seen (courtesy of Yaku, who sent it to him all the way from Moscow as a joke) and throwing an elaborate takoyaki party, replete with customised toppings - octopus, cheese and shrimp, which the girls enjoyed even if he burnt the first batch and had to call Fukunaga frantically for tips to rescue the rest. It turns out to be such a success that he makes it a weekly event. Okonomiyaki is next, which he flips with expert confidence on a hot plate to the applause of you and the girls. 

“Itadakimasu”, you clap your hands together. “It tastes good.” 

He nearly melts into his pan. “Thank you”, he replies. “It means a lot, coming from you.” 

His nights are still plagued by nightmares.

Things are better with you, he likes to think. The violets beneath your eyes are replaced by roses in your cheeks. He hears you humming about the house again. You pick up reading again,  the shelves in the house start to groan under the weight of books belonging to the girls and you. You’re as eager as the girls to go on the next adventure, whether it be a summer night out in the park with sparklers, or a nerf gun battle at home on rainy days. 

Still, he doesn’t know for sure what he’s doing is enough for you and he’s too much of a coward to check. So he’ll wake up almost every night, fumble in the dark just to make sure you’re there. 

You’re there, until you aren’t. 

It’s three in the morning. The space beside him is cold and empty. 

He throws off the blankets, trips on his bed slippers. He crashes through into the living room and oh, there you are - sitting at the dining table, typing furiously at your laptop while mouthing off to yourself about the ridiculous demands your client makes. 

“What’s wrong?” you frown. 

He walks towards you, trying to discern that you’re real, you’re there, not some trick of the light.. 

“You’re - you’re still here.” 

You nod slowly, eyeing him strangely. “My boss called and asked me to send out an urgent email. I was just about to go back to bed.” 

He exhales, tries to force his trembling heart back into his chest. He thinks he’s doing a good job trying to act nonchalant, smoothing back his frazzled mane of hair, but you see right through him as you always do. 

“Tetsuro”, you say slowly. “Is everything alright? 

The truth tumbles out of his mouth. “I thought you were gone.” 

Then he hangs his head, looks at his feet, afraid that he’ll only see rejection in your eyes. He’s a pathetic failure of a husband who has a decade’s worth of sins to make up for, and there’s no justification for him to selfishly to seek your absolution. 

It comes anyway, in the form of soft hands pulling him forward. 

“I’m here”, you say, pulling him into your embrace, letting him rest his heavy head in your lap.

He doesn’t allow himself to sink into your warmth. “Are you happier now? Are things better for you?” 

“Yes”, he hears you say. The tension he’s been carrying around these few months lifts. “Thank you, Tetsuro. I appreciate it. I really do. You don’t have to work yourself to death - that’s never what I was asking for. If you’re tired -”

He shakes his head at your suggestion. He’s got a long way yet before he earns any reprieve. 

“Tetsuro -” 

He sits up abruptly, takes your hands in his. 

“Promise you won’t leave me”, he pleads. “I know you’ve had to carry what must’ve felt like the weight of the entire world on your own, and I don’t have any excuse for that.”

“You don’t”, you agree. 

He accepts the blow but he takes comfort that you don’t pull away. “I know that now. I know now how fucking hard it was to do it all alone.”

“It was hard. It was so, so hard, Tetsuro. I became numb to the pain. I don’t think I was functioning, I haven’t been for a while. For a long, long while.” 

“I’m sorry”, his voice cracks. 

“I know.”  You cup his face in your hands, offers him comfort he doesn’t deserve. “That’s a chapter of our marriage that’s past, that can’t be unwritten. But the past few months have been different. You’ve shown me that you’ve changed.” 

The first glimmer of sunlight after a long, dark winter. Hope blooms with your smile. 

“I think”, you say. “I think we can make this work again.” 

He stares at you, dumbstruck. Then the fact that you’re giving him another chance dawns upon him, and he crashes forward to rest his head on your shoulder, unashamed to cry tears of relief. 

“Thank you”, he exhales brokenly. “I won’t fuck this up again, I promise.”

You press a kiss to his forehead, curl up trustingly in his arms. “Don’t thank me”, you laugh. “Thank yourself for making me believe in you.” 

 He drinks up each drop of your affection, falls asleep in the cradle of your arms. 

“Is this what flirting is like?” 

He wakes up to Aiko’s impertinent question, her hands on hips looking distinctly unimpressed at finding her parents asleep on the sofa, entwined together. 

“Who taught you that word?” Kuroo asks, aghast that his ten year old daughter even recognises the existence of the opposite gender. 

Aiko sticks her tongue at him, and he’s too distracted by Fumiko taking a flying leap onto the sofa with them, chattering a thousand miles an hour about what’s for breakfast and whether they can go to the zoo this afternoon - though he pins his suspicions on Bokuto’s trio of sons. 

“Monsters”, he says. “Can’t even give your to-san a break to snuggle up to your pretty ka’san.” 

The girls shriek in dismay - Aiko, at being a witness to further gross displays of affection between her parents, Fumiko, at being called a monster despite being a self-proclaimed princess. You prod at the soft flesh between his ribs. 

“Don’t be mean”, you admonish him. 

He sniffs, taking the chance to draw you closer. “I’m cranky in the mornings unless I get a morning kiss.” 

You snort, swatting at him. “You make it sound as if kisses contain caffeine.” 

The girls giggle, but he protests. 

“Full of nonsense”, you tease, but you kiss him, again and again and again. 

Things settle into a steady, sustainable pace. 

You refuse to allow him to bear the weight of the household on his back alone. There are frank conversations to be had about what each of you can realistically handle without burning out. He leads the charge in the mornings, whipping up breakfast with the aid of his two sous chefs, building an expertise in braiding and french twists that could possibly allow him to moonlight as a hairstylist. You, on the other hand, take charge of evening pick-ups, cooking dinners, supervising homework and art projects until he comes home and tags you out. 

Chores are evenly split. He doesn’t allow you to assume the mental load of organising the household by yourself. “We both have a degree in business management”, he likes to remind you, because he now knows that remembering to run errands, scheduling appointments - all of this is work too. 

You force him to take breaks. If you get to relax with your friends, so should he. “If you get too stressed, you’ll lose your hair and we can’t have that.” He yelps when he imagines himself bald and obediently complies when you call Kenma up, talk him into getting him and Bokuto and Akaashi (when he’s feeling less morose about his singlehood) to go for a round of pick up volleyball. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself”, you note wryly when he returns home crowing about how he stuffed an Olympic player with a kill block. 

“I did”, he replies, catching your hips to pull you in, cheekily ignoring your complaints that he’s sweaty. “But I enjoy coming home to you even more.”

“Gross”, you grumble, but you seem content to remain in his arms. 

It’s another small moment he treasures. Life, he learns, is made of moments, both big and small. He’d made the mistake of only focusing on the big ones - graduation, playing at nationals, the day he was lucky enough to marry you, each of his daughter’s birthdays. Now, though, he cherishes each moment, each second he has with you and the girls, no matter how little, no matter how small. 

He likes to come into the bathroom each night, leaning his elbow on the edge of the bathtub as you chat to him about your day, luxuriating in the bath he drew for you. You and he take turns to complain about life’s inconveniences as you clear emails once the girls have gone off to bed- colleagues who shirk their work, bosses who nitpick overmuch, washing everything down with steaming cups of herbal tea. 

“Are you happy?”, he asks you, night after night. 

“Mm”, you say with an impish grin. “I’d be happier if you let me put my toes on your calves.” 

“They’re freezing”, he groans but scoots over anyway. “Better?” 

“Much better”, you hum, content. “Life is good.”

He’s not remiss in planning the big moments too. 

A year passes quickly to your wedding anniversary. He packs your suitcase, books the train tickets and whisks you back to the ryokan in Hakone, though this time he upgrades you both to their largest suite. “I feel like a princess!” you exclaim, twirling about the room. 

Your happiness is worth every yen he spent. 

You spend the day strolling down avenues lined with cherry blossoms, Mount Fuji looming in the backdrop, the evening exchanging heated kisses in the private onsen he booked. You’re older now, with laughter lines creased into your forehead, grey streaks in your hair, but you’re still the same girl he fell in love with all those years ago. 

“And you couldn’t wait ‘til we got back to our room?” you smack him. 

He also loves how there’s fire burning bright in your eyes, the way it always used to. “You kissed me first!” 

“You kissed me second!” 

“I don’t hear you complaining”, he cackles. 

You try to shush him, to no avail, as he draws the attention of everyone around him.

“What a happy couple”, an obaa-san remarks out loud. “They must be newlyweds.”  

Well, she’s not wrong. You’re as radiant as you were fifteen years ago, his spring bride, but he’s an old man doddering on, hopefully with his edges sanded off with time. “Just your regular old, married couple”, he chortles when you’re safely back in the room. 

“A happily married couple”, you reply, serenely sipping your tea. “That obaa-san definitely got that part right.” 

There’s a lump in his throat that he can’t swallow. “Are you happy?” he manages to ask anyway. 

“With you?” Your smile is warm, bright. Always.”

Both of you are doing alright.

a/n: it's been a while, hasn't it. i've been alright - how are you guys doing?

#kuroo x you #kuroo x reader #kuroo testuro #haikyuu angst #haikyuu fluff

[hairstevington]

Stranger Therapy

Eddie Munson x Steve Harrington

Summary: Based on this text post, Steve and Eddie match on Tinder and decide to go to couple's counseling on a first date to see how long it takes the therapist (Murray) to figure them out. Link to Ao3

Word Count: 3K, check out part 2 part 3 part 4 and epilogue!

Warnings: Nothing too serious, Steve/Eddie went to high school together but don't know each other, modern day AU, aged up, brief Robin cameo, Matchmaker Murray, and my fav tag of all - gay scheming!

A/N: I'm a counselor in training currently but I don't specialize in couple's counseling so this may or may not be accurate? Idk man it's just fun and silly I love our stupid boys sm. Original post by @hxneyfarms

It’s a match!

“Robin, it worked!” Steve shouted from the couch. She ran from the kitchen and joined him, peering over to stare at his screen.

“I told you it would! It’s funny!” she insisted. Steve rolled his eyes and anxiously pulled up the profile of his new match. 

“Oh, shit,” Steve said. “I remember swiping right on this guy. Didn’t think I had a shot.” He looked through the pictures. They were all candids, slightly blurry, or shots of him with his friends, but due to his distinguished look it was easy to pick him out even in a crowd. 

“Show me his bio,” Robin ordered. Steve closed out the pictures and scrolled until the bio was in full view.

Eddie, 25. Shit at bios.

“Well that’s kind of boring,” Steve said. 

“Yeah. You think he’s a bot?” Robin asked.

 “Or a catfish, maybe,” Steve mused. “Either way, I still think I should take your joke down. I don’t talk like that in real life, and people might get confused.”

Robin had convinced him earlier to change his bio and replace it with - let’s go to couple’s counseling and see how long it takes the therapist to realize we don’t know each other. Steve had been a little tipsy when he agreed, and he assumed nothing would come of it. But then, Eddie matched with him. 

“You’re thinking way too hard about this, Dingus,” Robin replied. “People write weird shit in their Tinder bios all the time.” 

“Eddie didn’t,” Steve countered. 

“Yeah, but look at him,” Robin responded. “He’s distinctive. It’s attention-grabbing in itself.”

“And I’m not?” Steve asked. Robin chuckled.

“You’re the kind of pretty where if you don’t have something witty in the bio, people will think you’re just some ignorant surface-level airhead who’s never worked a day in his life, and that’s not cute.”

“Okay, ouch,” Steve said. 

“It’s a compliment!” she insisted. “Like, you need to show that you’re witty and funny and able to poke fun at yourself, otherwise you’re going to attract the wrong kind of people.”

“And this guy’s the right kind, huh?” Steve opened one of the pictures back up - one where Eddie was passed out on the couch with a beer still in his hand. As they looked at the screen, a notification popped up. Eddie sent you a message.

“Let’s find out,” Robin said. 

-

Eddie: If your bio is serious, I’m in

Steve: Wait, really?

Eddie: Yeah xD sounds fun

Eddie: You got a therapist in mind?

Steve: Honestly didn’t think I’d get this far

Eddie: Boo. 

Eddie: You’re lucky I know just the guy

Steve: Okay…

Steve: So how do we do this?

Eddie: Dude, it was YOUR idea

Steve: Ok but I’ve never done it before!

Eddie: Steve! I’m your first? <3

Steve: Yeah, yeah. I’ve never pranked a therapist before. 

Eddie: I hope you’re either rich or have really good insurance. Otherwise this is gonna be an expensive first date.

Steve: I got it covered. 

Eddie: I figured you did. I’ll call the guy in the morning and get back to you with the appointment time. 

Steve: Okay. How’s your night going by the way?

Eddie: Nope!

Eddie: That’s not part of the deal, Steve. We go into this blind or not at all.

Steve: This is insane.

Eddie: Once again, your idea. I’m excited. Are you excited?

Steve: Thrilled.

Steve: I’m still concerned about how you know the perfect guy for this.

Eddie: 😛

Eddie: Don’t worry about it.

-

“I don’t even think he’s serious,” Steve said after he recounted the entire interaction to Robin.

“I don’t know, Steve. Sounds serious to me.” 

“What if he’s like - not right in the head?” Steve wondered, reading the interaction over and over again. “Like, who is this therapist and why does he know him? Is he actually going to make an appointment? What if this whole thing crashes and burns?”

“I honestly think he plans on it crashing and burning,” Robin replied. “And then after, the both of you either hit it off and laugh about it forever, or you have an amazing failed date story to tell your friends until the end of time.”

“That’s…actually genius.” 

“I know.” 

Steve read the messages one last time, focusing on the bits where Eddie was mildly flirtatious. Steve! I’m your first? He could tell if Eddie was being condescending, or what vibe he was going to bring to this absolute insane first date. But, as Robin said, it would be a story no matter what. 

He tried to focus on that and not the anxiety that started brewing in his veins.

-

The appointment was set for two weeks later. Eddie still refused to talk to Steve other than for details on where to go and at what time, so for the whole fourteen days, Steve assumed he was being pranked right back. Eddie was messing with him, or he’d cancel, or Dr. Bauman didn’t actually exist, or he’d be murdered, or, or, or -

None of that happened. Instead, on a Tuesday afternoon, Steve pulled up to an office building about fifteen minutes from his apartment. He’d passed by it several times and never once wondered what went on inside. 

Apparently, really weird first dates.

They had decided to meet up in the parking lot and walk in together. The whole thing was crazy, but having one of them pick the other up so they could drive in together was way over what was needed to commit to the bit. 

Steve got there first. They needed to be fifteen minutes early to fill out paperwork. It was twenty minutes prior to their appointment time. 

This was weird. It felt a lot different than all the times he’d met someone for coffee. In another world, that’s how he and Eddie would have met. But no. He had to agree to this stupid thing, and now he was too far into it to back out. Jesus Christ. 

Eddie’s car pulled in a few spaces down. Steve knew it was him from the hair alone - unmistakable. He got out of his car and walked towards his date, his palms sweaty. Eddie got out of his car a moment later, eyeing Steve as he approached him and smirking. 

“What gave me away?” Eddie asked. 

“You think I wouldn’t recognize my boyfriend?” Steve snapped back, pleased at the way he was able to take Eddie off guard. 

“Touche. Well, come on, then. Let’s do this.” 

-

Before they knew it, they were sitting in a cramped waiting room, alone, filling out paperwork. It consisted of insurance information first, followed by names and some quick background questions about the “couple.” Steve began filling it out, thankful that he was still on his dad’s fancy rich-person insurance. It covered basically everything, even fucked-up couples fraud with Dr. Bauman.

“Are you not worried I’m gonna, like, steal your information or something?” Eddie asked as Steve wrote down his policy number.

“I mean…should I be?” Steve responded. 

“No,” Eddie answered with a shrug. “I gotta say, though, you’re way more trusting than I am. It’s ballsy. I like it.” 

“Uhh…” Steve was trying to concentrate on the paperwork, but the compliment was throwing him off. “Thank you, I think.” He continued filling out the paperwork.

“You’re from Hawkins?” he asked. Steve nodded, absentmindedly. “I’m from Hawkins.” This caught Steve’s attention. 

“No shit.” 

“Yeah, seriously.”

“Small world,” Steve replied before turning his attention back to the form.

“You have a cute middle name,” Eddie teased. 

“Shut up,” Steve responded. He wanted to find Eddie’s pestering annoying, but instead he found himself smirking, even giggling a little bit. This whole thing was so ridiculous. He shoved the clipboard onto Eddie’s lap. “Your turn, lover.”

“Euch,” Eddie groaned. “That is not one of our pet names, no way.” 

“Noted,” Steve chuckled. He was…kind of enjoying this way more than he expected, as weird as it was. He’d grown accustomed to a lot of even stranger things in his life, so this didn’t feel as shocking as he’d initially thought. 

“Don’t look,” Eddie said as he covered the paper.

“What? Why not?” Steve asked, confused. 

“Because not all of us are as blindly trusting, Steven,” Eddie responded. Steve shook his head and looked away. 

“Good thing we’re in therapy to work that shit out, Edward Munson.”

“You looked!” Eddie exclaimed. 

“It was right in front of me!” Steve pointed out. 

“Fair enough,” Eddie sighed. “Okay, now we gotta put down a reason for doing this.”

-

Fast forward ten minutes, Eddie and Steve were seated next to each other on a relatively small but cozy burnt orange couch. The color was ugly, but the seats were comfortable. Steve noticed the cushions had a natural dip that kept inching him closer to the person sitting on the opposite side. He figured this was certainly intentional. 

The doctor sat in front of them, reviewing the papers the pair had just filled out.

“Hello, my name is Dr. Bauman, and one day I may let you call me Murray,” he began, his eyes fixed on the papers in front of him. “I see here on your sheet that you’ve been feeling distant from each other, and that you’re looking to feel more connected, right? Can you tell me more about that?”

“We’re just launching right into it, huh?” Eddie asked. 

“Well, we are on a time crunch here. Your decision how you spend it,” Dr. Bauman answered. 

The man was immediately intimidating.

“Ooookay,” Steve said, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess it just feels like - like he and I don’t even know each other anymore.” Eddie stifled a laugh, covering his mouth with his hand to make it seem like he was maybe getting emotional or perhaps trying not to sneeze. 

“I see,” Dr. Bauman said, eyeing them both suspiciously. “Let’s begin with how you two met and we’ll go from there, okay?”

“We were high school sweethearts,” Eddie replied with a grin.

“Wow,” Dr. Bauman commented. “Well, it’s common for a lot of development to happen from then to now. How did you two get together?” Eddie looked to Steve, as if to say, you’re up.

“It just kinda…happened, I guess,” Steve began. “We were assigned as partners for a project and really clicked.”

“Yeah, and then we snuck around for a while. Sneaking kisses in janitor's closets and empty classrooms, you know the drill.” Steve tried not to blush at the thought of sneaking around with high school Eddie. If they were both from Hawkins, did they actually go to high school together?

“Snuck around for the thrill?” Dr. Bauman asked.

“No,” Steve responded. “I wasn’t out yet.” Eddie looked at him curiously, as if he wasn’t expecting Steve to say something so serious. He wondered if it was actually true. 

“Well, that and -” Eddie added. “- he was a popular jock and I was kind of a freak.” This time, Steve looked at Eddie curiously. Steve was a popular jock. Eddie could have assumed that, or made a lucky guess, but something told him that wasn’t the case. 

Eddie Munson. Munson. 

Oh.

Oh!

It took Steve a minute to recover from that information. They did in fact go to school together, they just had never interacted. Eddie obviously remembered, and he obviously knew that Steve didn’t. So what was the goal here? Was Steve being punked or something just so Eddie could get free therapy?

“Steve, you look a little pale there,” Dr. Bauman noticed. “Did that trigger something?”

“Yeah -” Steve croaked, now unable to look at Eddie. If he had, he would have noticed Eddie didn’t look as smug as Steve assumed he was. “Yeah, I just don’t think about high school that much anymore.”

“Why not?” the doctor asked. 

“Because, I - I’ve changed so much since then. I’m not that guy anymore, and I don’t want to be that guy.”

“Ah, I see,” he hummed. “So, Eddie fell for someone who no longer exists. I think I’m understanding the problem here. Eddie, do you feel that you’ve changed?”

Damn. This guy’s kinda good.

“Uhhh -” Eddie began. Neither of them expected this to get so serious so quickly. It didn’t even feel like it was about their imagined relationship anymore. “N-no, I don’t think I have.”

“And Steve, do you think Eddie has changed?”

Steve thought about the limited memories he had of Eddie in high school. Cocky, slightly unhinged, just as he was now. But there was something different, he just couldn’t really pinpoint what. Maybe if he’d talked to Eddie for longer than like ten minutes total in his life, he’d have a better idea. 

Then, he realized the point of this wasn’t to be serious. It was to make shit up. Steve pivoted back to the original plan. 

“Yeah, I mean -” He shifted in his seat, finding himself now thigh to thigh with Eddie, despite not meaning to be. “He’s, uh - it just feels like we don’t have anything in common anymore?” It was something he’d heard lots of couples say.

“Do you want to make this work?” Dr. Bauman asked. 

“Why else would we be here?” Eddie answered. Dr. Bauman narrowed his eyes. 

“You tell me.”

Eddie and Steve were kind of not good at this. Their story was based in truth and not very exciting. They both seemed to realize this at the same time.

“Steve slept with the dogwalker,” Eddie proclaimed. Steve scoffed, half-amused, half-offended. 

“Yeah, well you sold drugs to my mom!” he shot back. The two guys looked at each other, pretending to look angry while simultaneously wanting to laugh. 

“Woooah, there,” Dr. Bauman responded. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Do we want to begin with Steve’s infidelity or Eddie’s illegal activity?”

“That’s not gonna, like, go on record or anything, right?” Steve asked, suddenly anxious. “Like, the cops aren’t gonna show up at Eddie’s door?”

“Our door, babe,” Eddie clarified, not the least bit nervous. 

“Depends on how long ago this happened, I suppose,” Dr. Bauman answered.

“Long time ago,” Eddie said. 

“Are you still currently dealing?”

“No, I don’t even do drugs anymore. Well, like, except pot - but that’s legal now so it doesn’t really count, I think.”

“Dude,” Steve whispered. 

“You brought it up,” Eddie replied just as softly. 

“Right,” Dr. Bauman responded, taking it all in. “No report needed, then. Let’s move onto the dogwalker.” 

They continued to add to their lore as the appointment went on. At one point, Eddie even faked tears. His acting was…decent enough to avoid suspicion, thankfully. When the clock hit 1:45, their time was up, and they’d successfully managed to fool Dr. Bauman. Mission accomplished, date over. Right?

“Well, thank you so much, Dr. Bauman,” Eddie said. “I think you’ve really helped us out today.”

“Yeah, seriously,” Steve said, smiling. “We feel so much better.”

“Now hold on a minute,” Dr. Bauman said with his hands up. “There’s still a lot of work to be done, in my professional opinion.”

“There is?” Eddie asked, confused. 

“Oh, definitely. Most couples go to a minimum of four sessions, and that’s still a low average. Plus, this was only intake. I mean, unless you guys weren’t happy with the counseling I gave you today…”

It felt like a challenge, and Eddie loved challenges. Meanwhile, Steve was too awkward to come clean or tell the doctor they weren’t interested. 

They made another appointment.

-

“Well, that went pretty well, I think,” Eddie said as they left the building. 

“You knew me already?” Steve asked once they were a safe enough distance from the office and Dr. Bauman. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I just knew your name and face, man. And, like, your vibe,” Eddie answered. “Back in high school, anyway.” 

“You should have told me,” Steve said. 

“You should have remembered,” Eddie shot back. “Whatever, it was fun. Right?”

“Eddie, I have no idea what that was,” Steve replied. “We have to cancel that appointment.”

“Why? You don’t want to see me again?” Eddie grinned. Steve rolled his eyes.

“No, I - I mean, I don’t want to waste his time. That spot should go to other couples who need it. Meanwhile, we could go get coffee like normal adults.” 

“I dunno,” Eddie said, kicking a pebble in the road as they walked. “I kinda liked it. You can’t tell me you didn’t.”

It was true. Steve couldn’t say that he didn’t.

“Doesn’t matter.” Steve unlocked his car and made his way to the door. “We’re canceling.”

“He’s the one that wanted to see us again, Steve,” Eddie reminded him. 

“Yeah, because he thought we were an actual couple.” Steve was getting frustrated at Eddie’s antics, and the way he refused to back down. “I don’t know if this is gonna work, man. This has been, uh - well, it’s been weird, but I think -”

“We have to go, otherwise you’ll be charged a cancellation fee,” Eddie blurted out. It was a lie, a bold-faced lie, and yet -

“So, I’ll pay the fee. Can’t be more than the cost of a full session,” Steve figured. 

“Ugh!” Eddie groaned in frustration. “Okay, fine. Look - I’m annoying as hell, I’m a mess, I’m broke, and I could never afford someone like Dr. Bauman. I don’t know about you, but some of the things he said actually made me think and I kind of want to ask him about, like, real shit.” 

Steve stared at him blankly for a minute. 

“You - you want me to keep going to fake couple’s counseling with you so you can get actual therapy?” Steve asked, stunned. 

“I mean, you could work your shit out, too,” Eddie suggested.

“What shit? I don’t have shit,” Steve insisted. 

“Of course you do! Everyone does!” Eddie yelled. 

“You’re insane,” Steve muttered. The thing was, he wasn’t saying it out of anger. He was saying it in understanding. 

Because the thing was, Eddie had a point. Dr. Bauman was good at what he did, and Steve knew he’d never sign up for individual counseling. He already had the appointment. Eddie smirked. 

“You’re with me, aren’t you?”

Fuck.

“Fine,” Steve agreed. 

-

Notes from Dr. Bauman - 3/18

Eddie and Steve

Together since high school

Feelings of disconnect

Steve/dogwalker

Eddie/mom/drugs

Clearly lying

Clients are faking their relationship for me, for some reason. Will continue to work with them to figure out why. 

They aren’t dating…but they should be

(next chapter)

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

@ofherscarlettwitchways @livvyshmiv @paintballkid711 @abraca-fxckyou @allbimyself26 @jellybabiesforall @allbymyselfexceptformycactus @justaloadofgarbage-blog @alliemunsonsstuff @undreamingscatworld @thefruityfours @hobbitnarwhal @calivanus @wreckmyplans-thatsmyman @antheia @goodolefashionedloverboi @lillemilly @missmagillicuddy @steviesbicrisis @gamerdano @menamesniall @eyeslikewildflowers111 @callmesirkay @stringischeese @eds-trashmouth @mnl-enuh @redfreckledwolf @itsanarrum @soulsofstarsliveinyourveins @gregre369 @stevesbipanic @momotonescreaming @aryakanojiaa @wrenisflying @comicmadlover @lilacrobin @itch-my-b0nez @anonymousbandgirl @disastardly @Dang_Dirty_Demons @daisyellsong @val-from-lawrence @starryeyedpoet17 @taikawaiteatea @samthemissfit @chaoticvictorianspirit @elizbaehth @despoenaandpyromania @bagofgreentea

#steddie #this is honestly so wild haha #nobody do this irl #but it's fun to read and write about! #steve harrington x eddie munson #eddie munson x steve harrington #stranger things fanfiction #steddie fanfic #stranger things au #writing #st fanfic

[sevensoulmates]

”deeper depths of his queer love” the realization that’s he’s been in love with his best friend for YEARS is going to hit him so hard I can only imagine how buck would react. Is he gonna laugh is he gonna cry is he gonna be scared is he gonna be happy is it all of the above?

Yeah, Oliver sees the vision. He seems to realize that Buck's relationship with Tommy is leading to something bigger, that there's more under the surface that needs to be discovered than just what he's found in these last two episodes, and I'm so excited to see it all come to fruition.

I personally think when Buck does finally realize he's gonna shut that shit DOWN. I don't think he's going to say shit for fear of losing Eddie and Chris. What I think could happen is Buck realizes in the season finale, it shakes him to his core, he keeps it to himself, the hiatus happens, we come back in season 8 and find out that Buck still hasn't said a word to Eddie but now people are starting to notice that Buck's acting a bit different around Eddie. Not enough for Eddie to notice (man is nothing if not oblivious to men who are in love with him), but enough that it draws the attention of the rest of the firefam. But there are subtle signs, such as a lot of staring, both jumping to spend extra time with Eddie but also holding himself back for fear of being too obvious.

Meanwhile, Eddie may or may not still be with Marisol. If he's still with Marisol, I want to see this being the continuation of his queer realization. I'd be okay with more issues popping up with Marisol and this time Eddie's got no excuses. Or regardless of if she's there or not, Eddie's back in therapy and trying to work through things. OR it could be fun to have Eddie AND Marisol in couples counseling, having the two of them trying to work their shit out, and have the culmination of that be Eddie realizing he's queer.

I just think if they don't have Eddie's queer realization arc in season 7, then a significant portion of it should be dealt with in season 8a. My timeline that I would love would be a mutual bucktommy break up in 7x10 + agreement to remain friends. Buck is pining for Eddie the whole of 8a, and Eddie figures out he's queer by the mid-season finale. A marisol breakup could be on or off screen at that point. As long as he FIGURES. IT. OUT. Then 8b could focus on Eddie coming to terms with his own queerness, now with Buck's conflict being "do I tell Eddie or do I not tell him?" Maybe even have BUCK shifting into TOMMY'S position, of sort of being a "guide" for Eddie, but worrying that he could be taking advantage of him. Meanwhile, Eddie's learning the freedom that comes along with finally being true to himself in 8b, and maybe he's seeing that everything he's ever wanted aligns exactly with what Buck gives him and their family. We could maybe even have Eddie bringing Shannon back, and worrying that realizing he's queer won't change a thing and maybe the issue really is him. Being scared that if he accepts the love Buck clearly wants to give him that he might ruin the best love he's ever had.

NOW. Depending on if the show wants to extend buddie out or they want to get them together, I could see the season 8 ending episodes going one of two ways: 1.) Buck confesses, Eddie accepts, they start their relationship, including first kiss and first date in s8 ending episodes. S9 sees them in a relationship for real OR 2.) Buck confesses to Eddie, Eddie rejects him not because he doesn't reciprocate but because he's afraid of destroying their relationship like he destroyed all the rest of his other relationships. Season 9 then starts with angst where they BOTH want each other badly but they can't take that final step. Season 9a ends with Eddie realizing that he can't waste time anymore, and their relationship starts for real in s9b.

Anyway, this got away from me. I think both of them are going to be more scared of their feelings than accepting right away. BUT I do have faith they'll find their way to each other eventually.

#911 abc #speculation #buddie #this got away from me LOL I didn't mean to map them out all the way through s10 #this is the shit that runs through my mind #the craziest thing is that this shit isn't even delulu anymore

[secondtechnicianrimmer]

Space Corp. Directive #1215225

For some ungodly reason, you fancy the second technician, but you'd be damned if you ever admitted it.

Pairing: Arnold Rimmer x (F) Reader

Warnings: None! Apart from some flirting

Chapter Five: Last Day

//

“Well, it's all very sad, Lister, but what can we do?”

You looked up from the robotics manual Lister had pushed under your nose.

Rimmer was lying on his bunk, examining his fingernails despite the fact it was physically impossible for them to get dirty. He didn’t seem bothered by Kryten’s potential shut off, even though you and Lister had been feeling queasy all day at the thought.

“Sad? It's sick!”

Lister had been scouring some sort of manual for over an hour now, though you weren’t sure if it was because he truly cared about Kryten or if he was just having difficulty with the bigger words. You also weren’t sure how this was all actually supposed to help Kryten but once Lister set his mind to helping a friend, he could not be talked down.

“He’s been programmed to believe in an android heaven so that he doesn’t get stroppy when it comes to turn-off time. So he accepts a lifetime of getting the short end of the stick because he thinks there's going to be some big reward at the end.”

Rimmer scoffed.

“Well, at least he gets 24 hours notice. That's more than most of us get. All most of us get is, ‘Mind that bus!’ ‘What bus?’ Splat .”

You raised an eyebrow at him, unamused by his brevity. He could act as cool and callous as he liked, he wasn’t going to get out of helping and he certainly wasn’t going to convince you that he didn’t care about the mechanoid.

“Speaking from experience there, Rimmer?”

“I do have a particularly unique perspective on the matter, yes.”

“From what I hear, you were given quite a lot of loud, ship-wide notice that you were about to pop your army boots.”

“I’m just saying, we all have to die sometime. Androids too. And it’s nice that he can get his affairs in order first.”

“Does Kryten have any affairs?”

Rimmer shrugged and went back to his nails.

“I’m sure there’s a mop and bucket somewhere on B Deck that’ll have to wear black for a while.”

You looked back down at the manual. If it had been any other time and he wasn’t being such a twat, that probably would've made you smile.

“How's he taking it?” Rimmer asked.

Lister went back to moping.

“Just keeps on doing his stupid smeggin' duties.”

“Maybe I should talk to him.” With a grunt, Rimmer lifted his legs and rolled to his feet. “Maybe he needs a bit of counselling.”

“You?”

You watched him as he sat down across the table from you. Again, you thought that if the stakes were different, if Kryten wasn’t in danger and there wasn’t a ticking countdown in all your minds, you’d be really enjoying the sight of Rimmer in his green short-sleeved roll neck, and thinking about all the fun you could have with those bloody braces.

“I used to be in the Samaritans!”

“I know! For one morning!”

Rimmer pulled a face.

“Well, I couldn't take any more.”

“I don't blame you. You spoke to five people and they all committed suicide.”

“Oh, for Io’s sake, Rimmer,” you had to laugh. “What did you say to them?”

“Probably just told them his life story.” Lister shook his head. “I wouldn't mind, but one was a wrong number! He only phoned up for the cricket scores!”

“Well, it's hardly my fault that everyone chose that particular day to throw themselves off buildings! Made the papers, you know. ‘Lemming Sunday’ they called it.”

You nudged the leg of his chair, making him jolt and have to grab for the table, which of course his hand fell right through.

The physics of his body made no sense to you, how he was able to sit and lie down, but couldn’t actually touch anything. You knew the holographic technology onboard was sophisticated enough to detect the presence of an object’s surface. He wasn’t actually sitting, but hovering ever so slightly above the chair. It was all an illusion. Still, it made your heart jump to think that Rimmer’s body had been affected by your action. It was the closest you’d ever come to touching him.

“I need you to look a touch less proud about it, Arn.”

He sneered at you across the table but Rimmer didn’t actually seem to mind it when you teased him. Perhaps because he knew you never actually meant any harm.

Lister flipped through a few more pages of his instruction manual.

“Maybe we could find his shut-off disk and turn it off somehow.”

“He's not a kit droid, Lister. He's not like that stupid thing Peterson bought on Callisto.” Rimmer shook his head. “We wouldn't know where to begin!”

“Be funny if you accidentally killed him while you were trying to save him.” You looked up to find both men staring at you. “No, you’re right, that wouldn’t be funny at all.”

“What can we do?” Rimmer went on. “He's pre-programmed to self-destruct.”

“At least we can help! At least we can make sure he goes out with a bang, give him one last big smeggin' night to remember.”

“How do we do that? He doesn't like doing anything! His idea of a good time is for us all to go up to the laundry room and fold some sheets!”

Rimmer’s mouth tugged back at the corners, forming a very Krytenesque expression as he mimicked the mech.

“Fun? Ah yes, the employment of time in a profitless and non-practical way.”

“Hey, I don't know much,” Lister rose to his feet, an idea blazing behind his eyes. “But one thing I do know is how to throw a good time!”

He ran off gleefully, leaving you and Rimmer alone.

Nerves stirred in your chest but you did your best to ignore them.

He rolled his eyes so deeply you worried they might get stuck in the back of his head, then Rimmer sighed and raised his chin at you.

“I suppose you’ll be helping him carry out this pointless caper.”

You wrinkled your nose.

Rimmer’s reluctance to do anything nice for his friends irked you no end. Sometimes it really did bewilder you, as you were sure it did Lister and the others, why on earth you were so attracted to him. He could be such a git, he never had anything nice to say, and he was a true coward, through and through.

But if you were honest with yourself, you didn’t believe that. Not really. And the small moments where he allowed himself to relax and be sweet kept your heart coming back for more.

Though he couldn’t touch you, Rimmer was always near you, always interested in what you were doing and always pestering you to join him on walks or to watch one of his mind-numbing war documentaries. And his voice was different when it was just the two of you, softer, gentler, and although he never lost his snark, he didn’t have to be on the defensive with you.

Perhaps you could admit, if only to yourself, that the small crush you’d been concealing so poorly over the last few months, had grown into affection. You’d even come to accept that, maybe, possibly, you had feelings for the idiot.

“Kryten’s just as much my friend as you are,” you said, raising an eyebrow that warned him he was being an idiot.

Rimmed huffed and crossed his arms.

“Oh, thanks. You’re lumping me in with that glorified hoover?”

“He was your friend before he was mine, aren’t you worried about him?”

“He’s not my friend,” Rimmer stated firmly. “He hates me. You remember how we found him on that old derelict? And what he said about me even when I invited him to stay with us? To share our home?”

“That was a long time ago, Arn.”

You tried to sound placating but you found it hard to repress a smile as you pictured Kryten painting an embarrassing portrait of Rimmer, then told him where he could stick it. Lister was wiping tears from his eyes as he relayed the story, but Rimmer didn’t find it quite so hilarious.

“Still,” he said, his lip curled. “He’s a smarmy know-it-all who thinks scrubbing the bogs is a recreational activity. I’m sorry if I don’t feel sorry for him.”

You sighed and closed the manual. It had been about as useless as trying to convince Rimmer to be kind when he didn’t feel like it.

“Well, I’m going to help Dave. Better than sitting around doing nothing all day.”

As you stood to leave, you dropped the book with a little more strength than you meant to. It clattered across the table, sliding so far, it almost fell into Rimmer’s lap. He stared at it, then looked up at you.

Despite his obvious social weaknesses, Rimmer must have been able to tell that he’d disappointed you. He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth as he thought of what to say next, while you stared at the book and debated whether you should leave or let him try and make it better.

Finally, Rimmer’s eyes slowly dropped to the table.

“I’ll help,” he said. “You’re right. He’s my… Crewmate. I’ll help.”

You sighed, feeling your chest ease.

“Good,” you said. Then, “You know, you don’t have to go above and beyond. You just need to be nice.”

“Nice? Me?” Rimmer repeated incredulously, then he smiled to let you know he was attempting a joke.

It worked. You smiled too. How annoying.

“You can be lovely when you want to be,” you said, begrudgingly. “Just do this for me. Please, Arnie.”

He sighed, as if the effort was herculean, as if it would be painful to even try. But he nodded.

“Fine. For you.”

/

The party started at 8pm - that’s what the frantically organised invitation you received just an hour ago had told you - so you made sure to arrive at the officer’s club just before then.

The boys were already there. Lister jumped a foot in the air when he saw you come in, his eyes wide.

“Easy, man! I thought you were Kryten!”

“Oh, thanks,” You laughed. “You know, I wasn’t sure about this dress at first but that really helps, Dave.”

“Don’t be daft. You look great. Come in, come in, sit down, grab a party popper.”

You were ushered into the seat beside Rimmer. You didn’t have time to wonder if Lister had sat you there on purpose, you were immediately distracted by the man to your left.

“Oh, wow.”

You let your gaze wander up and down Rimmer’s body, drinking him in. The tux fit him perfectly, pulling in at the waist and emphasising his broad shoulders. There was a perfect red rose in the buttonhole, and his neat bow tie was just begging to be pulled.

“Where’d this little number come from?”

Rimmer seemed a little embarrassed by the attention.

“Programmed it in a few weeks back.” He shrugged. “You never know.”

“It’s very spiffy. I love the tie. Where’ve you been hiding all this style, Bond?”

“There hasn’t been an occasion for it. Ah! I almost forgot.”

Rimmer clicked his fingers, and thanks to Holly, a spangly, fur-trimmed tricorn hat appeared on top of his head.

You couldn’t stop smiling if your life depended on it.

“Sorry, is this Kryten’s surprise party or mine?”

Rimmer’s face fell.

With a lurch, you realised you’d pushed the teasing just that little bit too far. Rimmer often let you get away with things he wouldn’t usually take from the others but that didn’t mean his patience couldn’t be tested.

“Shut up, Lefty,” he muttered, twisting round in his seat so that he was facing away from you.

“No, no I mean it! I think you look great!”

“Arlight, I get it.”

You sighed.

“Arnold, you’re not listening to me.”

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

If you’d been able to, you would’ve slipped a hand around his arm and pulled him back to look at you. But you couldn’t. So you settled for leaning right over the table until you were in his eye-line again.

“I think you look really handsome,” you said, smiling.

Rimmer met your gaze. Something shifted behind his eyes, like a match had been struck. You thought perhaps it was the sign of something in him beginning to heal, or at least, of trust beginning to form.

“Oh,” he said.

His eyes moved across your face before meeting yours again. When he did, the corner of his mouth tugged back into the tiniest of smiles.

“Well… Thank you.” Rimmer’s gaze went wandering again for a moment, then he said, “You look amazing.”

“Yeah?”

You grinned so wide it made your cheeks ache. Later, you would have plenty time to berate yourself for not playing it cooler, for being so embarrassingly pleased by the compliment, but right now, you just wanted to enjoy the uncharacteristic warmth in Rimmer’s voice, and watch his gaze as it, once again, got lost somewhere around your mouth.

“Yes.” Rimmer’s smile grew just a little. “You always look…”

He stopped, his lips pressing together as if he’d said too much.

You honestly could have cried.

“Yeah?” you pressed, but then Lister reached around Rimmer and frantically slapped your arm.

“He’s coming!”

Someone, probably Holly, switched off the lights and you were plunged into darkness.

You didn’t have a chance to ask Rimmer anything else. Kryten wandered into the doorway, dressed in the tuxedo Lister had left out for him to wear.

“Hello?” he called. “Is there anybody here?”

Suddenly, the lights sprang back on.

“It’s party time!” Lister yelled, while the Cat threw streamers up in the air, his pointed teeth bared in a grin.

Rimmer clapped enthusiastically, and you followed suit, trying to hide how flustered your conversation had left you.

Kryten staggered into the room, his arms anxiously held aloft.

“But this is the officers’ club! Mechanoids aren't allowed in here!”

The Cat scoffed and ushered him into the only empty chair.

“C'mon, c'mon, sit down, sit down. Let me pour you a drink.”

You couldn’t believe the spread Lister had managed to pull together. Despite the limited resources, he’d managed to cover the table in streams and sequins, and there were plates and plates of food that could kill a human stone dead, made just for Kryten.

Every other inch of the table not taken up by dinner or decorations was filled by cans of nose-wrinkling beer, champagne, and a dangerous bottle of rum that, by the end of dinner, had left your head feeling nice and heavy.

“My goodness, I do believe I am drunk,” Kryten said, echoing precisely what you’d just been sluggishly thinking.

He shakily rose to his feet and started to flap his arms about.

“I suddenly feel the need to strut my funky stuff!”

Holly, with her sparkling tiara barely clinging to her pixelated head, slurred a warning,

“Sit down! It's the booze, you're not us-used to it.”

You frowned, feeling oddly indignant on Kryten’s behalf.

“Well, hey, if he wants to dance, let him dance!” You tried to get up but found it took several attempts to get your legs to comply. “I’ll dance with you Kryten, c’mon.”

With his grand hat now sat sideways, Rimmer was also completely out of his tree. He tried to wrap his hand around your wrist but it went straight through you.

“You dance like a drunken monkey,” he said, as you fell back into your seat.

You gasped, offended.

“I do not! I have flare, I have grace-”

“You have two left feet! That’s the real reason why we call you ‘Lefty’.”

Rimmer’s hand fell through one of your windmilling arms again, but he was so tipsy, he didn’t seem to notice. You saw it though. And you noticed something you never had before. When Rimmer’s hand passed through yours, you felt it, you felt something, you felt him. Even projected light gave off heat, and for a fraction of a second, Rimmer’s warm hand had felt oh so very real against your skin.

Feeling bold from the drink and embarrassingly needy after your time in Better Than Life, you leaned closer until your face was mere inches from Rimmer’s.

“Well, maybe,” you said, slow and certain despite the voice in the back of your head telling you to stop. “You should get up and teach me a few moves, second technician.”

Rimmer was smiling, really smiling. It pulled you in deeper; you were practically in his lap.

“Are you pulling rank, Lieutenant?”

“I absolutely am.”

There was no denying it this time. Rimmer’s heavy gaze fell to your mouth and stayed there for far too long to be accidental.

You watched, cheeks burning, as he slowly dragged his eyes back to yours. It seemed to take some effort, though whether that was because he didn’t want to or because the drink had made him sleepy, you couldn’t be sure. You had an idea, though.

“I remember the first time I got drunk,” Lister said suddenly. “School trip to Paris.”

His voice made you jump. You’d honestly forgotten the others were there. As Lister told his story, and as the night wore on, they kept looking at you and Rimmer, passing knowing looks and smiles between themselves.

You could feel Rimmer watching you too. Unashamed, you stared right back. Then you smiled, unable to help yourself.

It must’ve been a little lopsided and silly but he smiled back and appeared to move a little closer. You knew if he could, Rimmer might have slung an arm around your shoulders or your waist, maybe even rested his hand on your knee under the table.

/

Kryten stumbling and falling out of his chair was the signal to call it a night. You all swayed down the corridor, bumping into the walls like pinballs.

The boys headed for Lister’s quarters to keep the festivities going, but your interaction with Rimmer had left your head spinning, and that paired with the alcohol was making it hard to stand up straight. You decided to call it a night.

After kissing Kryten’s rubber cheek and telling him to have fun, you pressed your hand against the wall and carefully, slowly, staggered back to your own quarters.

“I’ve got you.”

You looked up.

Rimmer was watching you with a smile. He hadn’t gone with the others.

“I can’t help you or do anything if you do tumble, but I can run and get help if you fall into the rubbish chute.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

Rolling your eyes made you want to throw up so you settled for smiling at him.

Rimmer’s bow tie was unknotted now, and was hanging around his neck in such an enticing way, you honestly could have sobbed. You wanted to touch him so bad.

You couldn’t say any of this though. Even tipsy, the sensible part of your brain had some control. Instead, you said the first thing that popped into your head.

“I’m sorry about your uncle, Arn.” You leaned back against the wall, letting it take your weight for a minute. “That was awful.”

He looked surprised. To his credit, it had come out of nowhere, but the story he’d told the group had been rolling around in your head all night.

“It’s alright,” Rimmer said quietly.

“It’s not, Arnie.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“I didn’t laugh. I know they might think it’s- I didn’t laugh.”

“I know. I saw.”

He smiled again, small and oddly sweet. It made your chest heave. Suddenly, telling him you might be a little bit in love with him didn't feel like such a stupid idea. Then the world began to tilt.

“Woah, woah…”

Rimmer reached out for you but, of course, could do nothing to help you as you slipped down the wall. You managed to catch yourself just in time, the pair of you giggling as you clawed yourself upright again.

“Sorry, I can’t-” Rimmer laughed breathlessly. “I can’t catch you or carry you. You’re gonna have to sort yourself out, Lefty.”

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it. I appreciate the thought, though.”

Together, you carefully picked your way down the corridor until you managed, after some consternation, to find your door.

You slapped your hand against the keypad and looked over your shoulder to find Rimmer still watching you.

Was he worried about you getting home safe? That would be a turn up for the books. Rimmer didn’t care about anyone apart from himself, yet another argument for not telling him you spent most of the day daydreaming about riding him to within an inch of his not-life.

The door slid open.

“Are you coming in?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

Rimmer gaped at you.

“To..? To your quarters?”

“Yeah, if you like. Why not? There’s room. And I don’t wanna say goodnight to you yet.”

You went inside but Rimmer hesitated. He glanced down the hallway when a raucous cheer echoed down from his and Lister’s room. It would be okay if he wanted to go, but you didn’t think he did.

You heard the door swish shut. Simulated footsteps padded across the rug you’d stolen from the Captain’s office your first week onboard. You smiled to yourself.

“I don’t think I’ve been in here since you moved in,” Rimmer’s voice was faint as he looked around your quarters. “I had this room for a while.”

“Well, if you ever get bored of Lister’s snoring, you can move back in any time.”

You kicked off your shoes, getting yourself comfy. Rimmer, on the other hand, hadn’t moved further than the edge of the rug.

“Arnie?” You smiled. “I wasn’t kidding, I’d like you to stay. If you want to.”

“Why?”

“I…”

That was a good question. You knew the answer, of course. You enjoyed being with him. You liked talking to him. Inviting him to stay the night made you feel normal, like he was just a handsome man you’d gone on a couple of dates with back home, and not a hologram who’d helped rescue you from a burning starship. When he was close, you were happier, simple as.

But you knew Rimmer wouldn’t understand that, not after the way he’d been treated his whole life, and everything that had happened after that life.

“I just…” Coward. “I just like having you around, I s’pose.”

Everything went quiet then. You watched Rimmer’s face, watched as his eyebrows sank and the bridge of his nose wrinkled. The corners of his mouth turned down as his hands balled into fists at his sides, and all you could do was watch and drunkenly wonder why he found it all so difficult.

“Why are you so nice to me?” Rimmer said suddenly.

Taken-aback, you could only blink at him stupidly.

“What?”

“From the beginning, you’ve always been so nice to me. Why?”

“I…” You stammered for a second, unsure of how to answer. “I don’t know. I like you. Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Because no one likes me! No one ever likes me.”

Your heart stumbled.

“That’s not true,” you said quietly.

“And I was horrible to you when we met!” Rimmer shook his head like he was trying to read about thermodynamics in Italian. “I don’t understand you at all.”

It was getting harder and harder to stand, so you flopped down on the bed, hoping that would help keep your head from spinning.

He was right. Rimmer hardly spoke to you the first few days you were onboard. And you never had the courage to ask why. He just slowly warmed up to you, just as Lister assured you he would. Now, you couldn’t imagine letting a day go past without spending time with him, and you suspected the feeling was mutual.

“I was new,” you said, with perhaps more diplomacy than he deserved considering the way he’d treated you. “You didn’t know if you could trust me. I understood. Really, Arn, I did.”

“But I was awful to you. I didn’t want to be in the same room as you for weeks.”

“Why was that? You’ve never apologised. I didn’t expect you to but… I’d like to know why.”

“Because I…”

He stopped.

You watched him, waiting. He was swaying slightly. Or was that you? It was hard to tell. The room was still spinning.

“What Arn?”

“Because I- I was jealous!”

“Jealous?” You shook your head. “What- Why? Of what?”

“Of you!”

You hadn’t expected that. By the look on his face, Rimmer hadn’t expected to admit it either. His eyes darted around the room, looking everywhere apart from you, and finally settled down by his shoes.

“Me?” you repeated, stunned.

Rimmer sighed.

“You’re brave and you’re- You’re kind, and you’d only been here five minutes and the others already liked you more than me. And you’re smart, and you’re capable, and beautiful and you outrank me and-”

“You think I’m beautiful?”

Rimmer looked embarrassed.

“That’s not the point.”

It was a stupid thing to focus on. He’d said so many nice things about you in the space of a few seconds, picking out that one probably made you seem vacuous and superficial. But it was just so thrilling. It made your heart rise up in your chest, pushing against your ribs, like it was trying to reach him.

“Arnie…” You smiled. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”

Slowly, his face softened. Rimmer seemed to realise that you weren’t making fun of him, you really were just happily surprised. Still, the booze and the weird night had obviously left him a little disoriented, and you thought Rimmer must be having as much difficulty navigating whatever it was that fizzled between you as you were.

At last, he took a step forward.

“You’re tilted at about a 60° angle, you know,” Rimmer said quietly.

He came to a stop just in front of you, so the toes of his boots were almost touching your blue socks.

You looked up at him, just enjoying how tall and handsome he was for a moment.

“It’s been ages since I was this worse for wear. Sorry for…”

“It’s alright.”

Rimmer obviously didn’t want to talk about his feelings anymore. That was clearly enough emotion for one night. Your mind was still whirring though, and the confession you’d been rehearsing for weeks teetered dangerously on the tip of your tongue.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

He was starting to hover again. He kept glancing towards the door. If he wanted to go, why didn’t he just go? You weren’t stopping him.

“Can you get me anything?” you asked, feeling suddenly despondent.

“Fair point.”

Rimmer looked towards the door again.

You almost told him it was fine, you were fine, he didn’t need to stay if he didn’t want to. But before you could, he surprised you by sitting down next to you on the bed.

It was an odd sensation. You’d been close to him many times, squashed up together in Starbug when Lister’s driving got a little creative; walking side by side as you explored a floral asteroid or an empty moon; sitting next to each other in the cinema, your hands almost but never touching, the urge to rest your head on his shoulder omnipresent but impossible.

Still, it was strange. To be near a person and not be able to touch them. To be able to feel warmth coming off them, see their chest rise and fall, watch their eyelashes brush their cheeks and their hands slip self consciously up and down their thighs, and know they weren’t real. Well, Arnold was real to you. It was probably about time you told him.

“I’ve missed this. Parties. Having a laugh with your mates.”

You smiled, nodding your head towards the door just as an excited shriek that definitely came from Cat rolled down the corridor.

Rimmer merely nodded, his hands now cradled in his lap. He couldn’t seem to meet your gaze but you knew you had his attention.

“You know, usually, I’d, erm… Hah, I’d usually end the night curled up on someone’s sofa with no blanket, so I’m very grateful for you taking me to bed.”

Rimmer looked at you like he was dying to ask if that was on purpose. Instead, he shrugged.

“I’ve woken up in a few strange places in my time. Don’t worry.”

“And I would always end up doing something stupid, you know. Like kissing someone I shouldn’t.”

Rimmer actually blushed.

“Right,” he said, clearing his throat.

“It didn’t happen often.”

“Of course.”

“Exciting when it did though.”

“Yes, I- I suppose it would be.”

You waited. Either the penny hadn’t dropped, or it had and Rimmer just didn’t want to acknowledge it, because he was looking at you blankly.

With a sigh, you turned your body, hiking one leg up onto the bed and crossing it so that you could lean in closer. The man had spent his whole life belittled and bullied and humiliated. Sometimes, you just had to speak plainly.

“Arnold,” you said. “You should stay tonight.”

Rimmer didn’t react. You wondered if he’d somehow misheard you, or not heard you at all. You were still pretty tipsy, even if you could slowly feel your head beginning to clear. Rimmer was still drunk too by the looks of things. Maybe you were mumbling and he was too far gone to catch it anyway. Should you try again? God, no. This conversation was embarrassing enough as it was.

That train of thought was thankfully stopped in its tracks when Rimmer slowly shook his head.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said quietly.

Cheeks burning with embarrassment, you straightened up.

“Oh.”

“You’re drunk, Lefty. It wouldn’t be right to-”

“I really like you,” you blurted out.

Rimmer blinked.

“Thank you?”

“No, I mean-” You huffed and closed your eyes, trying to force your spinning head to focus. “I really like you, Arnie. I think about you all the time. I-”

“Darling, it’s fine. You don’t have t-”

Darling. You were right.

“I want to kiss you so bad, it’s killing me.”

It really did go quiet then. Even the boys a few doors down had fallen silent at last.

Rimmer stared at you. He just stared and stared. You didn’t blame him. You wouldn’t know what to do with that either. But then his gaze dropped to your lips again, and your chest lurched so violently, it almost tipped you forward into him.

“I’m sorry,” You raised your hand to your mouth and shook your head. “I��m sorry, Arn. I shouldn’t have said that.”

He closed his gaping mouth with a snap. When he spoke again, Rimmer’s voice was croaky and unsteady.

“It’s alright.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you like-”

Your stomach lurched again. This time, it was not good news. The hand covering your mouth clamped down.

“Oh, God,” you mumbled.

Rimmer’s expression brightened with understanding.

“Bathroom, now.”

You stumbled to the en suite, tripping over your stupid Captain’s rug on the way. Hands shaking, you gripped the cold cistern and wretched over the toilet.

As you brought up all you’d consumed over the course of the night, you were faintly aware of Rimmer standing over you, his voice soft and steady, reassuring you that everything was okay, that you were going to be alright, that you were doing brilliantly and you’d be in bed before you knew it.

Though you had no memory of it, you must have brushed your teeth after you finished. Mint stung your tongue as you fell onto your bed. Head swimming, you let out a long sigh and pawed at your duvet until it covered your body.

Rimmer was crouching by the head of your bed. You’d never seen him look concerned before. It looked so pretty on him.

“Hi,” you whispered.

Rimmer smiled faintly.

“Hi, Lefty.”

“Mm, I prefer ‘darling’.”

“Maybe on special occasions.”

He raised his hand as if to brush your hair back from your face, but ended up just ghosting it across your cheek instead.

It took some effort but you slipped your hand out from under the duvet and beckoned him closer with the last of your flagging energy.

“Please stay.”

This time, Rimmer didn’t glance towards the door. He didn’t look worried or cornered or confused. He didn’t even hesitate. He just smiled and did as you asked.

“Okay, darling. Budge up.”

//

Next Chapter

Master List

#arnold rimmer #red dwarf #chris barrie #arnold rimmer imagine #arnold rimmer reader #arnold rimmer smut #arnold rimmer x reader #arnold rimmer x you #arnold rimmer you #red dwarf fic

[apphiarothowrites]

I’m writing to cope ok! (Chap 2 hit a little too hard)

Ace is about 4 when he realizes something is wrong, the realization comes slowly then all at once. Dandan practically breaking down his bedroom door as he screams clawing at his chest for a wound that is not there.

Time travel is a bitch

It’s weird being in a 4 yr old body, even weirder that now what he can understand more of the subtleties around him. He realizes he was very much loved in his childhood. Dandan is still gruff but she reads to him every night. The other bandits slip him extras at dinner or play games with him.

One day and god were the days always so slow? He remembers that luffy should be here, well baby luffy.

But he wanders down to the port anyway.

He’s been meandering outside the party bar for about 10 minutes when there’s a loud shout.

His gaze whips around finding a teenage girl stalking up the path dripping wet and looking utterly furious.

“You.” She hisses

For a moment just a moment mind you, ace thinks that Akainu somehow transformed into a teenage girl and is now back to kill him again.

“Hi?” He asks? Because he is almost certain he has never seen this girl in his life, then again if he squints maybe…

“Commander, you wanna tell me why I’m here.”

Ace knows that voice, more specifically that tone of voice.

“Time travel is a bitch?” He offers weakly.

His former division captain looks less than amused.

Random

“Darla what are you doing?”

The teen doesn’t even look up, still furiously scribbling. “I’m trying to get my degrees for relationship counselling and reptile training.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she says still writing at the speed of sound “someone has to be the adult around here.”

Ace doesn’t have a good response to that, so he leaves her to the many many textbooks.

omfg darla is so done with this shit, I love her (reptile training???? I'm screaming, that's fucking hilarious)

now I gotta imagine Marco's reaction in the same situation: he's suddenly 27 again, in the prime of his life and Pops is in fantastic health for being in his mid 50s, and he's clueless. Marco has no idea what to do except-

fucking Teach. Right there, laughing with other guys from the second division. Pretending, this entire time, like they're brothers still. He can't attack him outright on the deck, can't do it privately without damaging the ship, and can't just accuse him behind closed doors without proof. But that's the thing-he's so good at hiding, how the hell is he supposed to prove that Teach is a threat?

Marco flounders, utterly lost for what to do other than keep a very close eye on him. At least until a letter comes in, in a familiar but shakier script, telling him "Time travel's a bitch, huh pretty bird?"

The return address is Dawn Island, East Blue. It comes with a P.S. "Darla made it too, she's decided she's going to be a relationship counselor this time around?"

#Ar answers #raccooon once again on that good shit

[strywoven]

y’all already know what time it is , popping in with my quarterly check-in.  just the general , thank you for remaining patient with me through the term and a reminder that the queue will assuredly run out soon but i won’t have the energy to do much for it until break starts a few weeks from now.  i’m always skulking about , however , willing to do things over discord or IMs.  anyways , the tea under the cut , for those interested !

well , as you might expect , we’re in rush-hour rn with the final few weeks slamming into everyone full-force.  not much is happening save for me continuing to excessively min-max my time to ensure i get the best grades possible ( please stop me , this is a problem ) . also two of my finals are a presentation and , as we all know , i might have done theatre but i cannot public speak ; pray for me.

i inevitably turned down the symposium despite the board members being like , “you should do it ! you have good research !” nah. you want my stupid ass to talk to the whole campus ? not gonna happen. sorry , maybe come talk to me when i’m , i dunno , another few years more self-assured.

the induction ceremony into the honor’s society is the 18th ! POG ! every time i talk about it , though , i inadvertently keep referring to it as an “inauguration” so now certain people i’ve mentioned it to refer to me as , “mr. president” as a running gag i shall never live down.  don’t you ever let my big-dick 4.0 and verbose mannerisms fool you , i can’t even speak my own language half the time LMAO.

it came to my attention recently that the remaining cornerstone classes for my degree are evening classes. and , just to save everyone a long and miserable story , the TLDR is i don’t drive for traumatic reasons ( and hailing an Uber several times a day back-and-forth is unsustainable when i pay part of my tuition already ) . so i had to sit down to counsel with my advisors and upcoming professors to sort out a game-plan. one of the professors , i shit you not , broke out the , “well , as a psychiatrist --” and she proceeded to grand-stand to me about her accolades , “-- have you considered therapy ?” like , no , what a novel idea-- obviously i have. i literally almost bailed right in that moment ; how fkn rude can you be ? what’s better is that i’ll be seeing her several times next term so … what a good introduction , huh ?

and just a remark about my moral theology course ( again ) . i do not see myself as a “know-it-all” … but i noticed over the term that i am one of the few who contributes consistently to the discussion at all. every time the professor asks a question , I MEAN OBVIOUSLY i have something to say ( like just recently he asked about dostoevsky , whom i was excited to discuss ) . and i swear to god , i cannot tell if this man is smiling when i talk because he’s amused or annoyed -- perhaps both. 

#❧ ⸺ update | ooc ❞ #❧ ⸺ you’ve gone maverick‚ maverick ! | ooc ❞ #sadge for the queue tbh #it was nice while it lasted #but still you're all more than welcome to chatter at me in DMs any time! #i promise i'll try to post a few lore things or inbox calls once it's run out tho

[ladyblueberrymuffin]

Okay, I think enough time has passed that I can share my opinions on these two.

It could've been great. As it is, not really into it. And not because "Catra is abusive" or "It's toxic", or any stupid stuff like that. It's enemies to lovers, she's bound to do shitty things until her redemption arc, that's perfectly fine, I love messy characters.

My problem is that the show seems only interested in showing Catra's side of the story. She gets flashbacks, she talks about Adora all the time, we get to see all the ways in which Adora makes her life better. Adora... is kinda ignored.

I think that's why people don't like it. There is an unfair meta power dynamic. Catra is the more important one to the writers.

So we don't really get to see what Adora gets out of this relationship. We get to see all the ways Adora is accommodating to Catra, helps her feel comfortable after they reunited, lets her be her gremlin self, but where are the scenes where Catra does the same for Adora?

And people will talk about Catradora like this wonderful "I let you be yourself" comfort goes both ways, but it doesn't. That's my problem, it feels like it's always up to Adora to accommodate Catra, not the other way around.

I needed to see Catra really go out of her way to be a good girlfriend after her redemption arc. Like disgustingly sweet and trying her best every episode.

The most nice thing Catra does for Adora is talk her out of bad ideas. It happens in episode one, where Shadow Weaver is trying to convince her to leave her friends behind, and in the finale, where Adora is willing to die to save Etheria.

And like, offering counsel is certainly important in a relationship, but it doesn't really show this relationship in a good light when Catra's ultimate act of love is telling Adora "You're wrong".

Doesn't this feel kinda counterintuitive to her redemption arc? All the bad things she's done is because she was stubborn and unwilling to listen to Adora's ideas, but then her redemption is shown through her disagreeing with Adora's ideas anyway.

If Catra is allowed to be firm with Adora when Adora is being stupid, then so should Adora be able to be firm with Catra when she's being stupid, or antagonizing her friends.

This is a fictional relationship, so you're allowed to make them tease each other, or being mean to each other, but it can't be one-sided, because then it stops being cute, and just becomes frustrating.

The reboot introduced me to the franchise, and I delved deep, and really fell in love with the original 80's Adora, like I adore her (haha), my favorite superhero. And you know what? Reboot Adora is neat as well. So it bothers me double the show kinda seems disinterested in her and doesn't give her more agency.

I like that the 80s show focused on Adora more. I get Catra is interesting, but so is Adora, and I don't think the reboot really capitalized on it. I hope next time she pops up, maybe in the CG He-man show, or maybe in Masters of The Universe: Revolution (I am convinced this whole new season will be about her, and Adam grappling with the fact he has a sister, they're just hiding her from all the trailers, like they did with season 1's twist), she really gets the focus she deserves. You have a chance to really sink your teeth into her being a redeemed villain herself. In the DC comics, Adora was evil before she started questioning her loyalties to the Horde. Like, she killed people and she enjoyed it, her redemption arc wasn't much different from reboot Catra, so you really have a chance to make your main character as interesting as the villain.

#she ra #she ra spop #catradora #masters of the universe #masters of the universe revolution #he man #adora

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Business can't stop its illegal, fantastically lucrative gossiping

Seven years ago, I called Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows “the perfect anthem for our times.”

Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That’s how it goes Everybody knows

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/11/11/leonard-cohen-wrote-the-perfect-anthem-for-our-times/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/16/compulsive-cheaters/#rigged

That was just after Cohen died, and while the world seems to want to settle on Hallelujah as his totemic song, Everybody Knows keeps inserting itself into the discourse, in the most toxic, hope-draining way possible. Whenever some awful scandal involving the great and the good breaches, we’re told that “everybody knew” already, so let’s move on.

This current has been running through our society for decades now. Remember when the Snowden leaks hit and a yawning chorus of nihilists told us that they knew already and so should anyone else with the smallest iota of sophistication? Back then Jay Rosen coined a rejoinder to this counsel of despair: “Don’t savvy me”:

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369

Everybody knows. It’s what we heard after the Panama Papers. Swissleaks. Luxleaks. The Paradise Papers. Everybody knows! It’s what the nothing-to-see-here crowd said about Propublica’s explosive IRSLeaks, back in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

The leaks revealed the tax-dodges of the richest and most powerful people in America, which were jaw-dropping in their audacity and shamelessness. Sure, maybe you suspected that the 400 richest people in America paid less tax than you — but did you really guess that the means by which they did this was through taking massive deductions on their elite hobbies?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

Maybe “everybody knows” that the game is rigged, but did you know how? Like, did you know that REITs — a tax shelter for mom-and-pop investors who buy an income property for their retirement — have become a primary vehicle for gutting unions at hotels, slashing wages and imposing brutal, dangerous working conditions?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#reit-makes-might

The leaks are cumulative. By combining data from one leak with another, we can build out a far more detailed picture of the conspiracy — and it is a conspiracy — among the utlrawealthy and their Renfields in the law, real-estate and accounting trades to duck their responsibilities and mound ever-more treasure on their hoards.

Take the Jersey Offshore leaks (2020), comprising the internal memos of La Hougue, a fantastically crooked firm of fixers on the Isle of Jersey, one of the lawless tax-crime jurisdictions that the UK pretends it has no control over. La Hougue has a playbook, 11 tactics for lying about your taxes. The remarkable thing about these 11 tactics is how flimsy they are, how easy it is to penetrate their lies. When Parliament says it can’t possibly do anything about the criminal havens in the Channel, remember the Jersey Offshore leaks and remind yourself that not even Parliament is that credulous. They know. Everybody knows:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/20/la-hougue/#complexity

Why do working people think the Democrats are just another party for the ultra-rich? Maybe it’s Pelosi’s relentless opposition to meaningful curbs on insider trading. Or maybe it’s the kinds of politicians that the Democratic Machine likes to rally behind — like Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who raised millions in 2021, in large-money donations from Democratic finance-sector donors in her bid to become the DA of Manhattan. Farhadian Weinstein and her husband have more than $100m in annual income, and yet, paid no federal tax in 2013, 2015 and 2017. In 2014, they paid $6,584:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/17/quis-custodiet-irs/#trumps-taxes

Propublica isn’t done with the IRS Files. Today, they published a long investigation into ultra-rich corporate executives who buy and sell their competitors’ stock for massive profits with suspiciously precise timing. The data comes from 1099-B filings, which brokerages file with the IRS with each trade, but which the IRS doesn’t share with the SEC:

https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-irs-files-trading-competitors-stock

Here are some examples:

Ohio billionaire August Troendle, CEO of Medpace, repeatedly bought and sold shares of $Syneos — his company’s archrival, timing the transactions with a management shakeup that dropped the stock by 16% in one day, and an SEC investigation that crushed Syneos’s stock by 25%. His precision timing made him at least $2.3m in profit.

Isaac Larian, CEO of Bratz-maker MGA, made $28m trading shares in Mattel, MGA’s nemesis and frequent litigant — during a period when Mattel stock crashed by 57% (!). Larian boasts that “I made a LOT more money shorting Mattel stock than they did running a $4.5 billion toy company.”

Larian’s trades also involved some very precise timing. Sometimes, he took positions just before his own company announced its upcoming products, and others positions immediately preceded major disclosures from Mattel. Larian’s subordinates told Propublica that he is “is a boss with an endless appetite for information about his company and its competitors, constantly grilling subordinates on minutiae about the industry.”

Larian couldn’t explain the timing of these trades. His lawyer told Propublica that it was “false and defamatory” to suggest that he “possessed material, nonpublic information that Larian knew was obtained in breach of a duty.”

Next up is Gerald Boelte, founder and chair of the massive oil company LLOG. LLOG partners with other companies for its oil drilling. Companies like Stone Energy. Boelte bought a huge position in Stone the day before the company’s 2015 earnings report, in which they revealed an increase their reserves’ value, pulling in a 65% one day profit. He’d never bought shares in Stone before.

Boetle told Propublica, “I do not and have never traded on any material, non-public information of competitors, business partners or others… Any implication that I was investing based upon advance knowledge is therefore clearly false.”

Jim Sankey is CEO of Invue. He bought $3.2m worth of shares in his rival Checkpoint, while checkpoint was in secret negotiations to be acquired by CCL Industries. Sankey was already thoroughly connected to Checkpoint, having sold a $150m product line to them in 2007. There’s no record that he’d ever traded Checkpoint before. He made $2.3m. Sankey says “he did not know Checkpoint was going to be acquired.” He says that his company was not approached by Checkpoint as a potential acquirer.

Barry Wish was a board member of Ocwen, a company he co-founded. After the Great Financial Crisis, Ocwen bid unsuccessfully to buy $215b worth of Bank of America mortgages. The winning bidder was Nationstar. Three weeks before Nationstar’s winning bid was announced, Wish bought $600k worth of Nationstar shares. After the bid was announced, he sold them for for a $157k profit.

Wish told Propublica that he never traded competitors’ stock: “No, not at all.” Propublica read him the details of the trade from his leaked 1099-B. He said “You might see it, but I don’t have any recollection” and hung up.

Steven Grossman is a cardboard heir — a nepobaby who inherited Southern Container Corp from his grandpa. After he sold the company to Rock-Tenn for $1b in 2013, he stayed on as a senior exec. Over the next 5 years, he traded large blocks of shares in Rock-Tenn’s competitors, companies like Temple-Inland, a company that he made a 37% profit on after its acquisition was announced in 2011, one week after Grossman started buying its shares.

Grossman falsely told Propublica, “I haven’t traded stock since then.” IRS records show that Grossman continued to trade. Grossman also told Propublica that he had no role with Rock-Tenn, despite being on their payroll for five years. When asked about his extremely lucky timing buying and selling Temple-Inland, he said “That was 10 years ago” and hung up.

As Propublica’s Robert Faturechi and Ellis Simani write, Securities regulations have their origins in the crash of 1929, and the subsequent collapse in confidence in markets and capitalism, the sense that the system was rigged for the wealthy and political insiders. That is a pretty good summation of sentiment today:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

It’s not just that corporate executives are corrupt, it’s that they’re lavishly, shamelessly, endlessly, incorrigibly corrupt. Take Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, the sixth- and seventh-largest Class I railroads in the USA, whose merger was just approved by the Surface Transportation Board.

There are plenty of good reasons for the STB to have blocked this merger. The rail industry is already excessively concentrated, and its top execs are so convinced that they’re both too big to fail and too big to jail that they’re rendering entire towns permanently uninhabitable in order to eke out a few more points in profit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

But there are specific reasons to have blocked this merger, starting with the whistleblower report about CP and KCS executives illegally coming together for a three-day “retreat” at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, a notorious site for Republican operatives to collude with the business lobby:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2023-03-16-canadian-pacific-kansas-city-southern-rail-merger/

As Luke Goldstein writes for The American Prospect, both companies spent millions in 2020 and 2022 on campaign contributions to “grease the skids” for the merger — in particular, ensuring that the combined company could transport Alberta tar sands oil (the filthiest, most energy intensive oil in the world) to US ports.

Though the STB was informed of the illegal meeting — in which the two companies behaved as though the merger had already been finalized — STB chair Martin Oberman told Goldstein that the Board did not write to the companies for an explanation before waving through their merger.

Instead, Oberman dismissed the complaint on the grounds that “Railroads have to be able to talk to one another to function.” Typically this takes place over a free phone call, though — not on a three-day executive junket at a hotel where the rooms run $1,500/night.

Oberman knows what happened at that meeting.

Everybody knows.

It comes as no surprise to learn that before FTX imploded and destroyed the savings of its depositors, it paid out $3b to its top executives, including the criminal Sam Bankman-Fried:

https://gizmodo.com/sbf-ftx-crypto-sam-bankman-fried-1850232043

It comes as no surprise that Silicon Valley Bank paid out bonuses to its execs and employees hours before it collapsed:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/11/silicon-valley-bank-employees-received-bonuses-hours-before-takeover.html

Everybody knows.

It’s comforting to think that the tax code loopholes that the ultrawealthy exploit are an epiphenomenon of complexity, an unavoidable consequence of the technical requirements of a big regulation that spans 300m+ people. But the truth is, the loopholes in the US tax code were inserted by politicians who got massive campaign contributions from donors who directly benefited from those loopholes. Senator Ron Johnson got $20m from the owners of Uline (Dick and Liz Uihlein) and roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, then he blocked the Trump tax bill until his fellow lawmakers inserted a loophole that produced $215m for the Uihleins and Hendricks, in just the first year:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory It’s not even surprising that a sitting US Senator amended a bill to give hundreds of millions of dollars to billionaires who gave him tens of millions of dollars.

Everybody knows. It’s weirdly comforting to think that everyday people vote for demagogue wreckers because Facebook hired a legion of evil sorcerers to fashion a mind-control ray out of Big Data and AI, but Facebook lies about everything, and everyone who ever claimed to have a mind-control ray was a liar.

Maybe people vote for demagogue wreckers because they believe the system is rotten, and maybe they believe the system is rotten because the system is rotten. Maybe the self-described evil sorcerers of Big Tech aren’t “hacking our dopamine loops” — maybe they’re just helping opportunists target people who are justifiably angry:

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

The problem with this explanation is that it requires “progressive” parties to actually do stuff to demonstrate that they are on the side of people, not the side of paperclip-maximizing immortal colony organisms and the corporate executives who pretend to run them:

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1184004730722217984

I try to have hope — that is, I try to believe that if we can only make changes to our material circumstances, however small they may seem, that we might attain a new vantagepoint that reveals more possible changes within our grasp:

https://gen.medium.com/hope-not-optimism-943e88291b

Some days, it’s hard to have hope. Some days, it’s so obvious that everybody knows, all that I can muster is fury. Fury is not a full substitute for hope, but it’ll do. It’s a far superior alternative to the fatalism that “everybody knows” and thus nothing can be done.

Some fights you win, and other fights, you just fight, because surrender isn’t an option. Everybody knows, right? If everybody knows, then everybody might just decide to do something about it.

Next Monday (Mar 20), I’m doing a remote talk for the Ostrom Workshop’s Beyond the Web Speaker Series.

[Image ID: A smoke-filled room lit by candles. Around a large formal table sit various 19th century gentlemen-type people. One of them stands and reads from a memo. The shadow he casts is in the shape of a dollar-sign.]

#pluralistic #railroads #conspiracies #insider trading #surface transportation board #kcs #kansas city southern #cpr #canadian pacific railway #irsfiles #propublica #August Troendle #Syneos #Medpace #sec #irs #MGA Entertainment #bratz #barbie #mattel #Isaac Larian #Gerald Boelte #LLOG Exploration #Stone Energy #checkpoint Systems #ccl industries #Nationstar #Ocwen #Barry Wish #Steven Grossman

[emiewritesthings]

happier ☆ jay halstead

Summary: in which jay and y/n's break up leaves one more broken than the other

Warnings: Language, angst, not the happiest of endings lmaoo

Requested: Yes!! Can I request a jay Halstead imagine where he and the reader broke up and they have a kid and  he gets married to hailey not long after the break up

“Okay, Ruby’s finally gone back down. Mr Ted fell out her bed again- Wait, w-what are you doing?” Y/n froze in the threshold of their room with wide watery eyes, watching as the man she’d sworn to herself and everyone around her was the one emptying his side of the closet into a large duffle. His face was scrunched up in frustration and pain, skin red with heat and tears of unknown emotions sailed down his smooth cheeks and into the depths of his stubble. “Jay? What are you doing? Jay!” She gasped louder, taking a step forward and felt the internal knife twist in her gut upon realising the scene that had once been an exploited fear in her nightmares become her reality. 

“What am I doing? What am I doing?” Jay looked up, his tongue snapping as the venom could no longer be contained from travelling through his words. “What are we doing? Why are we pretending we are okay?” Shaking his head, his fists balled up one of his ‘fancy’ shirts before angrily punching it into the bag again, again and again. With each motion, Y/n felt her body jump in fear, her stomach uneasy questioning whether she should be walking towards him or running in the opposite direction. 

“It’s okay, Jay-.” Y/n attempted to comfort, now an arm length away from him and where he was hunched over leaning against the mattress with his fists. In the six years they had been together, never had she felt like she ever had to fear Jay. To her friends and family she would describe him as a teddy bear in human clothing, a man that was professionally trained in staying calm and collected. But in that moment, she hesitated to reach out for him. Her eyes zooming in on his balled fists, the stress veins popping under his skin and the mood in the air that just didn’t feel right. 

“Nothing is okay. I am not okay, Y/n!” He yelled, throwing his hands up in the air and suddenly the woman in front of him was cowering away from him. The jump back caught both of them off guard. His hands fell back to his side, as they both stared in silence at one another. 

She thought I was going to hit her? 

I thought he was going to hit me?

Y/n’s head dropped as her hands ran through her long, dark, slightly greasy hair and tugged at it. Maybe if she pulled hard enough everything would dissolve and she’d jolt back into her bed, slightly sweaty from the nightmarish antics but in the safety of Jay’s arms. That’s where she wanted to be. That’s where she belonged, or at least she used to.

“You don’t trust me anymore, Y/n,” Jay’s voice was cold, resuming to gathering his belongings, and keeping a healthy distance between him and the mother of his child for whatever was happening he didn’t want her to feel like she was in danger. “We can’t keep pretending that this is going to get better, it’s not getting any better. I need to go before it breaks us both.” He assured as he appeared from the bathroom with his toiletries. Positioning them in his bag, he realised he had everything and began to tug at the zip.

“Maybe we can try counselling. I have the number of the guy that my sister and George went to, she said it was hard at first but now they’ve never been better!” She bargained hopefully, her hands slapping onto the top of the duffle pausing the man. She leaned over the bed from the opposite side, something stopping her from rounding the bed and standing closer to him. Their eyes met in that moment, and both could see and practically count the pieces of their soul floating around in them - broken and bruised. 

“It won’t work.” Jay insisted, his eyes not leaving her’s, for if he glanced down at her lips and the way they shivered he’d be crumbling down in an instance. “I know it won’t work, you know it won’t work.”

“I don’t want you to go.” She pleaded, her hands placed on top of his, her smaller ones squeezing them gently. She didn’t want to let go of him, not physically or emotionally. Jay was all she’d ever known. He was the man that had introduced her to love in the first place, despite the couple of boyfriends she had prior to the detective. He showed her how powerful a relationship could be, how it could make her feel like she was forever floating on a cloud when he was in the room. But more importantly - most importantly - he had given her the little girl that was sound asleep a couple rooms over, who’d pushed them into parenthood in all its beauty. 

“I’m sorry.” Pulling his hands away was like the penny dropping for Y/n. This was it, he’d logged out, he’d let go, he’d checked out. Y/n’s hands lingered on the bag for a moment, until she pulled them into her chest realising how cold and alien they felt without his. Jay watched as Y/n’s eyes zoned out and the wall he’d spent the six years of their relationship destroying was built back up in milliseconds. Her face was distant, eyes dull and glazed, lips parted. His chest burnt with guilt as he took in the consequences to his confession, he wanted to go over and hug her. Hold her one last time and tell her that it was all going to be okay, but he knew if he did he’d never find the nerve to leave and everything would get worse.

Following him out of the bedroom and towards the front door, Y/n felt trapped inside her own body. She was unable to communicate but every other sense felt ten times stronger. Her skin prickled as she watched Jay grab his car keys out of the poorly made dish that the pair of them had crafted during one of their first dates at a poetry class that Kim had given Jay a coupon for. However his attention was stolen by the framed photos around it, his entire body freezing. His fingers reached out for the little girl that had been captured a couple months ago with her father’s badge around her neck and his large boots swallowing both her little legs. 

Ruby Halstead was as beautiful as her mother, that Jay knew from the day she was born. Although she’d been unlucky enough to adopt his personality, with her funny facial expressions and humour. At age two, Jay felt like she was already a tiny adult with the way she acted, and the thought of ever losing her made his heart burn. Letting the tip of his pointer finger run along her face, he glanced over his shoulder at the zombified woman. 

“Whatever happens between us,” He breathed out, turning back to the picture. “Please never let it ever affect her.” Y/n’s inner voice scoffed humourlessly at his request, whilst externally her dead stare didn’t even shift. Did he seriously think that low of her? Had it gotten so bad between them that he’d forgotten that she would never play around with her daughter’s life, how ever fucked her’s may be. “Maybe when I have a more permanent address we can sort something out, you now, custody wise.” 

How were they even having this conversation? Y/n couldn’t believe he could look her in the face with such words directed towards her. How did they end up here? She couldn’t pinpoint how it had all gone so horribly wrong. 

“Y/n-.” Even the way he said her name had changed. Once upon a time, in a period of their lives that felt like a fictional fairytale in comparison to this, he’d mumble her name like it was a prayer. Every time it was followed by a small smile and a small exhale as it seemed to take the breath from his lungs in a surreal kind of way. Now though, she could feel the way it scalded his tongue. Nevertheless, the call brought Y/n back to the front of her mind, her head slightly shaking as she realised how disorientated she’d become. 

“If you walk out of that door you will never walk back through it.” Her eyes pulled up and the fire lit inside of them introduced a new light into the room. Jay gulped as he realised that she was speaking from the bottom of her heart. It was his last chance, that’s how Y/n thought of it. He could come back to her, give it all one last chance. They were his family after all, weren’t they? Realising that the decision was already well and truly made in his mind, Y/n looked down at her hand and sighed at the ring that no longer glistened the same way as when she’d received it. Feeling a sob lodge in her throat, she didn’t let it out and wouldn’t whilst Jay was still in the house. Tugging the diamond decorated band off of her finger, she stared at it for a moment, lips dipping into a frown. Three years she had been waiting for them to get married, under their bed were folders of planning she had done whilst he was at work. She’d picked out a dress, a location, a cake, but now they were nothing, they meant nothing. 

Holding out the jewellery piece towards Jay, the man looked down at it with sombre eyes. He remembered how he had fretted at the side of his brother, searching for the perfect ring. He wanted a piece that summed up their love, summed up how he felt about her. Something as equally beautiful and powerful as Y/n was. When he’d found the one he’d given her, all he’d ever think of whilst looking at it was the happiness that spilled over her face that night he’d gotten on one knee. That was suppose to be the start of their life together forever, how wrong they were. Nodding in gratitude, Jay placed the ring into the pocket of his jeans and unlocked the front door. The cool wind called him back into the world as a single man, a place he hoped he would find himself once again. 

“For the record,” She called out when Jay had reached the bottom of their garden, his head turned in an instant. Seeing her stood there, the light from the living room lamp creating a halo around her, he felt doubts creep under his skin. “I was so so happy with you, Halstead.” Then the door was slammed shut and Jay listened to the lock click confirming that he’d done it - he was officially locked out of Y/n life. Sighing softly, his feet plodded away from the house and out of the world that they had created and shared together. 

—

6 months later

“-And so I told him, George, it’s not like you forgot to buy milk or something, you slept with our neighbour… three times.” Amelia, Y/n’s eldest sister, complained over a cup of coffee that had certainly gone cold considering how long she’d been retelling the story of her and her husband’s latest fight. The entire time, Y/n had tried to be supportive and attentively listening to her sister’s troubles but her eyes kept flicking to the clock behind her on the wall of the cafe. 

15 minutes, she thought. 15 minutes and she’d get to see her baby again. 

“Are you even listening to me?” The scoff that emitted from Amelia’s lips had Y/n’s head snapping back towards her, a guilty look plastered on her face as she smiled innocently. The older sister narrowed her eyes knowing fully well the answer was ‘no’, but she equally knew that this time of the week was always the worst for the single mother of one. “Another weekend at Jay’s, huh?” 

Her sister’s tone wasn’t the warmest, her eyes rolling at the mention of the detective that had quite literally broken the little sister Amelia had once known. She’d never forget the screams and cries down the phone early in the morning, as Y/n blubbered through an explanation of how the man she’d meant to be marrying walked out to start what he claimed to be ‘his own life again’. Her sister instincts had coaxed her into wanting to go find the son of a bitch and feed her thoughts into his ear until he had to call the police - but Y/n fought her on the matter. She was torn apart, broken upon repair - granted - but Jay was still Jay to her. She didn’t want any harm coming his way, nor did she want their daughter to see her aunt hating on her dad. 

“Mhmm,” Y/n hummed, a small sigh breaking her lips apart as she took the final sip of her third cup of coffee. It didn’t feel right saying ‘Jay’s’, for it had been so long since their names had been broken. It was always ‘Jay and Y/n’, it was always suppose to be. “I tell you I count down the hours from the moment I drop her off on Friday, pathetic isn’t it?” It was selfish to admit - that’s why she only ever did so in her sister’s company - but she didn’t love sending Ruby off to Jay’s, despite them both coming to the agreement to do so. However back then Jay’s meant the father and daughter spending the weekend together, just them two. Now, though, that was no longer the case. 

“It isn’t pathetic, it’s just sad.” Amelia corrected, not doing the best to make Y/n feel better as she sunk deeper into her chair. Her hands rubbed at her eyes, not feeling quite alive as she should. “I take it that Hilary is still in the picture.” Once again the older woman rolled her eyes. Y/n smiled sadly, although tried to make it look as warm and friendly as possible.

“Her name’s Hailey and yeah, from what I hear from Ruby.” She shrugged, hoping that it somehow made her look far less interested than she was. In reality the thought of her ex-fiancee’s blonde coworker and now girlfriend cozying up with him and their daughter kept her awake at night. Upon hearing the news a full two and a half months after their breakup, Y/n thought that it was some kind of joke. Mainly because it had come from her daughter who’d mentioned something about ‘aunt Hailey sleeping in daddy’s bed’. She hadn’t been told from the horse’s mouth so to speak, or any of her so called friends that she shared with the man like Kim or Kevin. But after digging - which mostly included speaking to the firefighters in Molly’s - it turned out that it was very much the truth and Jay’s soul searching had ended with him in the bed of Hailey Upon, who - bare in mind - Jay had reassured Y/n was no more than a good friend for three years.

“Do you think it was all planned?” Amelia suddenly asked, as her face soured at the thoughts in her head. Y/n tilted her head in confusion, begging for her to continue whatever she was thinking. “Do you think they were having some sort of affair this whole time and she asked him to leave you? I mean, what kind of man leaves his fiancee and kid and then shacks up with someone new 2 months later?” Her words began to cause an unreachable itch to form in the back of Y/n’s mind, conjuring ideas that she hadn’t even been close to having in the months she’d been mourning her relationship. She’d always assumed that something was there between the two, but never would she think that Jay would go further than having some idle feelings - at least whilst she was still lying in bed besides him. 

“Why would you say that?” Y/n groaned, fingers raking through her hair in stress. Amelia spotted her mistake as the woman began zoning out, travelling to the depths of her thoughts to examine the plaguing suggestion made by her eldest sister. Sitting up straight, she reached out and grabbed Y/n’s hands.

“I’m sorry, that was just me being stupid.” She tried to reassure Y/n, thumb stroking her knuckles. “You know what I’m like, I think everyone is like George-.” 

“Do you think he ever loved me?” Y/n mumbled, eyes watery as she looked up at her sister who she hadn’t been listening to. Her hands shook off Amelia’s as she was stunned by the question. She sat there wide eyed not knowing how to restart her senses and provide Y/n with an answer that prevented the forecasted spiralling. For her to ask such a question, Amelia soon realised that the so called ‘healing’ she’d undergone was a lie. She was still as broken as the day they’d broken up. Which made sense since it hadn’t been that long, but knowing that Y/n had been keeping it hidden from everyone was sickening.

“I-I think so. I mean, yes of course he did. He must have.” Again severely unhelpful words of wisdom from her sister. Looking at the clock one final time, she realised she had to go. Standing up ,her chair scraped across the floor producing a teeth clenching noise, but she didn’t even flinch. Her lips mumbled something about talking to Amelia later, and suddenly she was out the door. He must have loved her once upon a time. Walking down the street, people had to go out of their way to avoid bumping into her semi-conscious self, searching for where she’d parked her car. Did he love Hailey more?

Shaking her head when she sat in the front seat, hands gripping the wheel, Y/n knew she couldn’t be in such a state with her daughter around. She didn’t want Ruby to worry about her, not now, not ever. The aftermath of the breakup had made her realise just how much she desired never to let her daughter catch wind of the chaos occurring behind her eyes. Telling her baby that her dad would no longer be living with them without hinting that she was internally shattered was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. Rightly so, Ruby had been upset, but came around to the idea upon realising her dad would still be around. So as far as Y/n was concerned, that was the only pain Ruby would have to endure when it came to her and Jay. She would never breath a word of what happened between them no matter how old Ruby became. Getting rid of enough fog in her mind that she felt it was safe to start driving, Y/n started the engine and switched the radio on, turning it up loud enough not to give her thoughts a chance to deafen her. 

When she pulled up outside of Jay’s newly rented house, she sat in her car for a moment, doing some last minute preparations. Taking deep breaths, she practiced in the mirror how she would smile when that door opened and revealed Jay or Hailey. It didn’t feel right, but it was what had to be done. After he’d moved on so quickly, there wasn’t much room for her to still be holding on to their relationship. She didn’t want them knowing that she was still such a mess, the thought made her violently nauseous. A loud knock on the passenger window sent her jumping in her seat, slapping the sun visor shut as she turned with wide eyes spotting the smile sporting detective waving at her through the closed window. Fuck sake, she thought waving back with a flavourless smile. 

Getting out of the car, she didn’t even make it around the car before he was calling out for her. 

“Ruby won’t be long, Hailey is just helping get her things.” Jay spoke softly, like he knew that he was dealing with an active explosive. To the mother, it felt a little too degrading like he thought she was weak and fragile, she didn’t like it. Nodding her head, she reaching the sidewalk, standing a good 2 metres away from the man that she once couldn’t bare being 2 inches away from. Clearing her throat only seemed to make the silence between them more awkward. Y/n was playing with her fingers, picking away the old nail polish wishing her daughter - who was no better than herself - would hurry up and save her from having to endure any more of this torture. 

“We had kind of a big lunch, so don’t be surprised if she doesn’t want much tonight.” Jay offered, glancing over at the woman that for once in her life looked timid. Her skin seemed paler than it normally did, her body was held up without the usual confidence and power that she would usually carry. His fingers prickled to go reach out to her, to run them along her cheek and see if they still made them light up with delight. But he rejected them quickly, stuffing them into his trouser pockets as they both waited for the little girl that they shared. 

“Okay.” She nodded, looking up letting her hands fall to her sides, leaning back against her parked car. The silence returned and the man wondered if this was the time for him to tell her. His senses became instantly more aware of the cold metal that currently rested on his finger. When was the right time to break it to your ex that you- before Jay could finish his thought Ruby’s voice came booming out of the house. 

“Mommy, Mommy!” Her little feet tapped against the porch in her trainers as she came running down the stairs recklessly and jumped into her mother’s arms. The detective watched how just the sight of Ruby sent life shooting through Y/n’s face once again, her body crouching to catch the girl. Spinning around listening to her squeals, Jay couldn’t hide the grin on his face at the reunion. His eyes instinctively moved back to the porch where Hailey was awkwardly stood with Ruby’s backpack in hand and a posture keeping her from moving forward. Frowning, the blonde caught the man’s eye and mouthed ‘have you told her yet?’, to which he shook his head.

“Oh my- have you gotten bigger? I think you’ve gotten bigger.” Y/n grinned, poking the small dimples that marked both of Ruby’s cheeks. The girl was happy about the comment, squealing in delight as her mom returned her feet to rest back on the pavement, although her hand stuck with Y/n’s. The sensation was not one that the woman could put into words, she just wished it would never end. 

“Um, Y/n do you think we could have a word?” Jay asked appearing besides them both this time with Ruby’s backpack. Taking it warily, the woman looked towards him in confusion. They only ever talked about Ruby, and that was over text. When they did speak in person it was… painful. So why would he voluntarily put both of them through it? She wondered, eyes narrowing as she switched her gaze over to a cowering Hailey. 

“Are you going to tell Mommy about you two getting married?” And just like that the entire plan that Jay had derived in his head was ruined by the words of his three year old, grinning daughter. Y/n’s hand immediately released the bag, whilst the other clutched onto Ruby tighter. Her lips parting as a heartbreaking breath fell out, and the world collapsed beneath her feet. Married? She choked on the word even in her mind. They got married? Needing confirmation that what Ruby spoke was true, Y/n eyes flew to both of their hands where - sure enough - she found both of them sporting identical bands on their fingers. No, no, no, no, no. She couldn’t breath, her chest was being squeezed so tightly she was sure that the soul was being pulled out of her body through her mouth. 

“We need to go.” She insisted, lips moving quickly but her mind wasn’t processing anything. It was like she was going into shut down and there was no way to stop it. Leaning down, Y/n grabbed the Paw Patrol bag back up and gently guided Ruby towards the back seat and into her car seat. Watching the way the woman’s hands shook as she opened the door and the sound of her breaths rough and uneasy, Jay didn’t know what to do. Hailey’s face was drowned in guilt as he gestured for her to go inside and that he would handle this. This was his mess, it was his responsibility. 

“Y/n.” He spoke, when she’d closed the door and was trying to get passed him to get in her own seat, but he was there - every way she went he was always there blocking her. 

“Move.” She ordered, voice low not wanting the toddler in the car to hear the way her voice was an open warning for what was to come if he didn’t obey. Grabbing a hold of her hands, Jay ignored her - typical. Trying to shake him off, he wouldn’t loosen his grip. Just like his scent around the house, no matter how many sheets she washed, how hard she scrubbed he just wouldn’t leave her alone. He was always there, taunting her. 

“We should talk about this. I have so much to explain.” She scoffed in his face. 

“Explain? Fucking hell, don’t you think it’s a little late for that?” The humourless laugh that escaped her chest was like a bullet that soured right into Jay’s heart. His defences were hopeless, as they always had been when it came to Y/n. Even though they weren’t in a romantic relationship anymore, didn’t mean he’d completely erased her from his life. What she did to him wasn’t something that went away, she was forever a weakness to him. “Now maybe you should go back in and join your wife because we are going home.” Shaking one last time, Jay’s hand fell from her wrists and she finally got into the car and was sailing down the road away from the newlyweds with a freshly broken heart. 

“Mommy?” Ruby called out with a weak voice. Looking into the mirror at where she was watching her, Y/n nodded with a small gentle smile as her eyes lit up with tears. “Are you okay?” Her concern was written all over her face, clearly not understanding the nuclear bomb she’d let slip moments before. Shaking her head, Y/n blinked away the majority of the tears.

“I’m okay, baby, Don’t you worry.” Lies.

—

“Married? He fucking married her?” Amelia yelled into Y/n’s ear as she sat on the couch with a large glass of wine, having put Ruby to bed a couple hours prior. The large sips she was taking seemed to slowly be working at freeing up the tense muscled that embraced her entire body. This was certainly not her first glass of the dark red liquid, nor would it be her last if it all went to plan. The moment she she got a moment to herself she had to call her sister, needing to hear from someone else that the news was as crazy as it was making her feel. And without many friends, Amelia was first and only choice. “Oh you must be pissed.” The sound of her taking a large sip of her own glass of wine on the other end of the line made the younger sister smile dazed by the effects of the alcohol.

“I was engaged to him for three years and he couldn’t even commit to a flower arrangement. But now suddenly he’s in the ‘fuck it let’s get married’ mood? Hell yes I’m pissed.” She fumed, staring at the thick folder of wedding prep that was currently holding up one end of the coffee table after it broke a couple of months back. How much time she had wasted on that, for what? Knowing fully well that it was 99% her work too, other than the cake that Jay had once said ‘looked good’ and then ran out to go to work. How had she been so blind? 

“Did you even know they were engaged?” Amelia asked, wondering if she had missed that information somewhere between her George rants. However hearing Y/n’s grunt of disagreement she realised it was just her sister’s shitty ex being her sister’s shitty ex. Y/n shifted so her head was resting on the arm of the sofa, her eyes staring plainly up at the ceiling feeling hot tears drip slowly down the side of her face. Wiping them away furiously, she hated that she was feeling so sad. She’d prefer just to be angry, incredibly angry sounded great right about now. But her luck seemed non-existent at this point. “I’m so sorry. Y/n/n. You don’t deserve any of this.” 

Y/n was beginning to doubt that. She must have done something. Whether that was to Jay or just someone random she’d come across in life, which ultimately had fucked up her karma. Because how could she have been shot down over and over and over. She had to be getting punished for something. 

Just as she was about to open her mouth and say something, there was a soft but clear knock on her front door. Freezing, she sat up and placed her wine glass onto the coffee table. Amelia must have heard it too for she was soon asking who was coming around at this time, to which Y/n didn’t have an answer for her. She hadn’t invited anyone around. Promising to call her sister back, and Amelia making her promise not to get killed by a possible murderer at her front door, they hung up the call and Y/n approached the front door. Clicking the lock, Y/n hesitantly pulled at the large slab of wood and peered into the darkness of the night. Squinting at the dramatic change in light, Y/n was suddenly wishing that it had been a murderer as she noted the glum looking Jay Halstead on her doorstep. 

“Don’t tell me she’s kicked you out already. Or did you leave her? I know that’s more your style.” She snorted opening the door a little wider so he got to see her full body but not enough that he could sneak past her. Jay didn’t respond, knowing that the woman that was very clearly drunk needed to get this kind of stuff off her chest. She’d been crying, that was clear. It was sad that he knew the sight a little too well considering the end of their relationship where all she seemed to be doing was cry as Jay stressed about the unsettled war playing out inside of him. 

“Can I come in?” He asked, not pushing her knowing that he had no right asking such a thing. And by the way her face turned into a look of disgust, she felt the exact same. Shaking her head as she turned around clearly needing a moment, before turning around and pointing an accusing finger at the detective. 

“How dare you!” Even when buzzed with the alcohol units flowing through her veins, she was still aware of the sleeping girl in the house, keeping her voice low but sharp enough that the words cut into Jay’s chest. “You shouldn’t have come here. You’ve wasted your time, I don’t want to talk to you.” Turning around ready to go back into the house and drink another bottle of wine before passing out. But Jay had no intention of leaving things this way, he’d been sat thinking about her since she’d left earlier. Her face, her ridgid posture, her uneven breathing were playing like a never ending slideshow behind his eyes.

“What? So you are never going to speak to me again? Is that it?” His frustration surfaced, as he took a step forward grabbing ahold of her left wrist anchoring her in her spot. His touch that she once wanted to drown in, was now suffocating her silently. Turning to look at the way his large hand encircled her wrist sparked a similar frustration within her, her hand yanking back with force.

“You know what that doesn’t sound a terrible suggestion. I think I’m going to take you up on that offer.” She sassed, with a her lips pulling up into a disingenuous smile. Despite the darkness outside, the porch light allowed Jay to get a good look into the woman’s eyes and prejudge the demons that he would likely have to face the longer this conversation went on.  

“I know I hurt you-.” His tone softened in an attempt to sooth her, but if anything it riled her up. Who was he to talk to her like that? 

“You don’t know shit!” Throwing her hands in the air in frustration, Jay’s lips zipped shut. “I know you like to think you know everything but you don’t know the fucking half of it, Jay Halstead.” He watched as his name stung her tongue, her face contorting into a look of pain. It had been once been like a lungful of fresh air for the woman, something that would make her heart rate soar and eyes to soften. The name of her lover, her soulmate. But now it was just a reminder of all the pain she’d experienced over the last six months. 

“Then tell me. Let’s go in and talk about it.” 

“I told you that once you walked out you aren’t coming back in. I stand by that.” She stood strong in the doorway. Stubbornness was not a stranger to the woman, she stuck by her word, she wasn’t gonna bend just because of the beautiful green eyes begging her to. Maybe she would have considered it in the past, but she wasn’t letting him under her skin, she couldn’t.

“Oh come on.” Jay groaned, head falling back with his eyes shut, as his hands rubbed down his face. He was tired, it was one of the first things Y/n had picked out when she had gotten a good look at him. And whilst tiredness was an accessory Jay wore on a daily basis due to the nature of his job, this was different, this was exhaustion. The kind that could only be summoned by continuous nights of guilt keeping one awake and depriving them of peace. 

“No.” She shook her head finally. 

“Then- then can we sit on the porch. Talk out here at least?” Pointing towards the step of the porch, Y/n thought about it for a moment. Her bottom lip sucked in between her teeth as she stared between the man and where he was pointing. Did she really want to do this? Listen to him as he tried to rid himself of the blame in search of reassurance that he wasn’t the worst person in the world? “Please?” Jay’s eyes seemed to water, with the small light illuminating the tears that pooled in them. 

“Ten minutes. Maximum.” She mumbled, moving away from the door, shutting it behind her to stop the cold from entering. Plopping down onto the step, she watched as Jay’s body relaxed and relief flooded his insides. A small smile pricked his lips as he realised not all hope was lost, and he moved to take a seat next to the mother of his child. 

“I’ll take what I can get.” He mumbled, falling down besides her, their knees touching due to the limited space that the step provided them with. The contact was strange, Y/n had expected that she’d want to pull away and hiss at how it pained her, but instead she found the warmth of his touch like a siren calling her to back in. It took everything in her to ignore the ideas floating around, and instead turn her focus towards the rotting wood beneath her feet. There was a period of silence where neither of them knew who was going to start this whole ‘discussion’. When so much was left unsaid where did you begin? “I assume you have questions.” That was a given, Jay knew. He’d expected her to at least look at him, when this close to her she would never have looked anywhere else. Before it all went down at least.

“When did you get engaged?” She asked, chewing on the skin around her fingers not liking that all of this was happening and the buzz she’d been sporting had started to wear off. She needed the artificial confidence, she was relying on it right now to keep her sat next to the man she’d been avoiding talking to for months

“Same day we got married.” Y/n was slightly more content knowing that it hadn’t been a complete secret. If he had been hiding their engagement for a while and then gotten married maybe she’d be a little bit more mad. But the result was all the same. He’d gotten married and she wasn’t 100% sure she would know now, had it not been for her daughter that couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.

“Which was?” She pressed further, not liking how he seemed to be avoiding answering directly. 

“Last Tuesday.”

“I assume it wasn’t big get together?” She knew the answer. For Jay not to invite Ruby, it had to be something small. 

“Just me and her.” He responded.

“Intimiate. Cute.” Wanting to roll her eyes, she resisted the urge instead mumbling the words showing she couldn’t care less despite being the one to ask the question. However Jay didn’t hold anything back, his eyes flicking back quickly as his foot kicked a rock around.

“Don’t lie to me.” The order made Y/n look at him incredulously.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” She snapped back. “Does everyone know?” 

“The unit know if that’s what you mean.” He confessed, realising he might be throwing all his friends under the bus but he didn’t entirely know the full extent yet. Nodding her head, Y/n’s gaze ran off as her thoughts consumed her mind. “The rings were kind of a give away.” Jay confessed, bringing the attention to what rested on his finger.

“Of course.” She should have known. It was all making a lot more sense. Y/n’s mind suddenly thought of her earlier conversation with her sister, and she couldn’t stop herself from searching for answers. “Were you seeing her whilst we were still together?”

“What? No. No, absolutely not.” Jay shook his head vigorously, lips parting in surprise. “Why would you even think that?”

“Six months ago I was engaged and now my fiancee is married to another woman. What do you mean why would I think that?” Incredible, she thought. She didn’t remember Jay being so… dumb. In the emotional sense at least. A few years back he could take a brief glance in her eyes and tell every thought she’d produced in the last 30 minutes. To him, she had been a book made for Kindergarteners. Now, she was written in a foreign language hidden on the top shelf of the bookcase that he simply couldn’t reach.

“Yeah but- that doesn’t have anything to do with us. I wouldn’t have done that to you, Y/n. I loved you, I still love you-.” Jay began, letting his tongue run away with him until a tut from Y/n’s mouth silenced him and his brain finally caught up with the sounds his mouth was making.

“No. We aren’t doing that. You don’t love me!” Shrugging him off, Y/n didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to know how everything would be okay, because he still cared for her. What was she meant to do with that? He was married now. He was most likely planning on starting a family with Hailey and he was leaving her to unravel at the thought that he still loved her? He was selfish. He was cruel. He would forever be her tormentor.

“Hailey and I just happened, after we broke up I was vulnerable. I needed her and she was there, it just felt natural being together. And I don’t want to be without her, getting married was the right choice for us.” The way he spoke was slow and soft, as though waiting for her to suddenly blow and everything around them to crumble into dust. He didn’t trust her to be calm about the situation, and rightfully so, Y/n could think of many words to describe how she was feeling and calm wasn’t in the top 1000. “I want to apologise. The way that I handled this whole thing was so wrong of me. I didn’t want to hurt you, I never did.” Jay confessed, but Y/n was having none of it. Shaking her head in amazement, sending him the fakest of grins.

“Do you even know what you are apologising for, Jay?” She didn’t know if she was angry, frustrated or just straight up sad. Everything was melting together in her head when their eyes met, he knew how she could get drawn in them when they were on her. Maybe that explained the look in them. Clearing her throat, Y/n realised this was her time to get everything off her chest. He was offering up the floor for it, she knew this was her one and only chance. “I lost everything. I lost my fiancé, my ideal happy family, I lost my friends. I haven’t heard from Kim, Kevin, Adam, any of them since we broke up. I thought they were our friends, but it turns out all these years I was just your plus one in the friend group. Do you know how alone I felt- feel? And then to find out when I was struggling to get out of bed, let alone feed myself and look after my daughter, you were out dating again? Getting engaged? Getting married? Fuck, if I didn’t have that little girl in there I don’t know where I would have ended up.”

“Don’t say that.” 

“You told me not to lie to you.” She bit back. “What we had, it was good wasn’t it? Like for the last six months I have been trying to pin point the moment you stopped loving me. And I know we had trouble towards the end and I didn’t fully bounce back after having Ruby but what did I do to make you stop loving me?” She rambled, arms crossing over her chest as she noted that the temperature had dropped massively since she’d been out earlier. 

“You didn’t do anything.” He rejected immediately, brows furrowing thinking that those thoughts ever passed her mind. They’d shared so many ‘I love yous’ over the years it was hard for him to comprehend that for even a second she would think he ever didn’t love her. Everyone they met always commented on the way they adored each other, Jay had been teased about it at work for years and had not let it bother him for he knew it was true. But this whole time Y/n had not? “I never stopped loving you, that was never the issue.”

“Then enlighten me, please.” She begged, eyes wide pleading for him to disclose something that would cool the scolding mark that irritated her mind every waking moment. 

“It was all me. You did nothing wrong.” Holding her face in his hands, his touch was gentle as he cupped her cheeks. Feeling the heat under them, he internally smiled knowing that despite the drastic changes she somewhere inside still was very much victim to his touch. A little reminder of the love that they had created and endured over their long term relationship. Y/n tried to pull away, not believing his take on ‘it’s not you it’s me’. However Jay seemed to hold on tighter, shaking his head. “I’m being serious. I don’t know what happened but I wasn’t happy with who I was anymore. I couldn’t settle in my own skin, I felt like I was trapped and I just needed out.” 

“So it wasn’t me,” Y/n sniffed, no longer ashamed to let the repressed sadness overflow onto her face. “I didn’t do anything wrong?” She questioned, feeling six months worth of confusion lift from her chest and shoulders. Hiding her face in her heads, she soon felt Jay wrap his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close with his forehead pressed against the side of her head where he let out a small breath of air, feeling his air ways tighten and eyes water. He’d let her suffer, simmer in the unknown all alone, he was a terrible person. God, he knew it. Seeing her break wasn’t a common sight, and that ripped through him over and over as he inhaled the same perfume she’d been wearing since they started dating.

“I couldn’t have asked to be loved by a better woman than you, Y/n Y/l/n,” He assured with a low voice, pressing is lips against the top of her head, lips lingering as he looked up to the stars and his tears began to stroll down his cheeks. “You are beautiful, inside and out. And I am sorry that for even a moment I ever treated you like you weren’t. But that’s on me, not you.” Pressing a second, then a third kiss on her head. The both just sat there crying whilst the man cradled the woman, knowing that he couldn’t let go of her just yet. Despite thinking about his wife sat at home waiting for him, he was instinctively pulled back to Y/n every time. 

“I didn’t think that there would ever be a time after you Jay. I don’t know what I’m suppose to do now.” Her admission was one the man hadn’t expected when the conversation first started. Gently moving her hair from her face to get a full look at her face, his bottom lip trembled with sadness knowing all the responsibility for it was his own. 

“You’ll find someone,” He nodded with a reassuring smile, although sadness was all that Y/n could see. “Someone far better than me who will treat you like you should have been treated. I promise you this world has a lot more to offer than what I was able to give you.” Both of them cracked the smallest smiles at one another, as it finally dawned on the pair that this was actually it. There had been a couple of fights that they had in the past that had lead them to having a short break, normally it was no longer than a week and it’d end with both of them apologising profusely and realising how stupid the entire ‘fight’ had been. However this time it felt far more permeant, for it was. Jay was married, it still didn’t feel right to admit but Y/n knew she couldn’t hide from the truth. There was no going back to how it was, never again. 

Taking his hands off his face, she kept them in her own looking down at them and stopping her gaze on the thick metal ring that was a constant reminder of the blonde that was back home waiting for him. Jay watched hesitantly, not sure what was happening as his hands were being comfortably held in a way only Y/n could hold them. It reminded him of the early days of their relationship, where they’d lay in bed late at night, her tucked in his sides and she would trace the patterns of her palms telling him what each like was and what it meant for his future. Sometimes he’d find it difficult to listen for the sight of her stole his attention every time. She was so beautiful, she still was. There was no other woman like Y/n Y/l/n he’d decided long ago.

“You should probably get back. She must be worried.” Y/n whispered, gently placing Jay’s hands back onto his knees. They both turned back to face the night and away form each other, neither of them making a move to get up or distance themselves. They knew this wasn’t ‘goodbye’, the little girl that was sound asleep in the house assured that much. They would be in one another’s life for the rest of time, perhaps why it was that much harder to process. They didn’t know how to me ‘Jay’ and ‘Y/n’ for they had always been ‘Jay and Y/n’. “I’m-,” Y/n broke the silence, stopping as she choked on her words. Eyes not moving from looking ahead, despite Jay turning to look at her again. “I’m happy that you are happy.” She finally got out, glancing over at him for a moment she flashed him a miniature sad but honest and genuine smile. “I’m happy that she makes you happy.”

And without giving time Jay to respond, Y/n was on her feet walking back towards the door. Giving him one final look from where he sat, she walked back inside wordlessly and locked the door behind her, Jay listening to the lock click shut. It was done, he decided, this was her goodbye.

#jay halstead fanfic #jay halstead fanfiction #jayhalstead #jay halstead imagine #jay halstead #Jay Halstead fic #jay halstead x reader #jay halstead x you #jay #cpd #chicago pd #halstead #haileyupton #hailey #upstead #upton #hailey upton #chicagopd #chicago one #chicago police

[mysteriawrites]

Hi! I was wondering if I could get a matchup please?

I'm an Aries, infp,9w8, which is an odd combination I think lol. I'm pretty short only 5'1, I get told I have a pretty athletic build like a volleyball player, but I play zero sports. I tend to get insecure of my looks cause I don't look my age at all, people always think I'm like four or so years younger than I actually am. I like dyeing my hair colors like hot pink, and lavender. I'm pretty introverted on the surface as I'm like hella scared of rejection, but once I get to know someone I'm very chatty and bubbly, I love reading, writing and listening to music (late 90s early 2000s pop rock/indie mostly). I'm the therapist friend but also the goblin friend. My love language is physical touch and words of affirmation, both giving and receiving, though with physical affection it tends to be a lot more of poking and playfully punching others (if they are fine with it ofc). I'm very sensitive, like painfully so, I get told a lot that I'm a "bleeding heart" and I tend to cry when people raise their voices at me which is very annoying.

Thank you! I hope you have a good day/night :)

Hello hello thank you for the request. DRUMROLL PLEASE!!!

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

HEX HAYWIRE!!!

You and Hex go pretty well together. You both seem quiet at first but are actually hiding a rather chaotic side and can even be slightly insecure. I think that because you two understand what the other is going through, it makes it easier to express your love and bring each other up.

You and Hex met when you were enrolled in Xsoleil. You had the power of healing and immortality which many would kill for, but no one was aware of how much of a curse it actually was.

You had lived for a very, very, very long time. You made friends and lost them to time, found love and lost love, you saw the world build and destroy for centuries without much you could do about it.

All the memories and feelings good and bad began to pile up in your head and darkened your heart. To the point where you thought it would be better to wonder the earth alone from now on.

Until you arrived at the institute that is. How you ended up there no one is entirely sure (author chan couldn’t come up with any ideas), but they decided it would be best if you had some counseling.

And that was how you met Hex Haywire. At first it started as a typical councilor and client type deal. You were forced by the school to come in once a week and talk to him and he would sit and listen intently.

Over time you would open up to him more and more as you slowly let down the walls you had been building for centuries.

One day after hours you had forgotten something in a classroom that you needed for your homework, so you went to go get it. As you went down the hall you passed by Hex’s office and heard sobbing.

You knew it was after hours, so he probably wasn’t with another student. You became worried that maybe he was hurt or in danger, so you knocked on his door. The door opened to reveal a very disheveled Hex who greeted you with a smile.

Now Hex has learned to become very good at hiding his emotions in order to be strong for others, but you somehow could feel that something was not right with him. So, you invited him to have tea and talk with you.

Ever since then you two became each other's support. He would help you whenever you two had counseling sessions, and you would help him take a load off after hours with midnight tea and chatting.

It took him awhile to open up to you for he didn't want to burden you, but eventually he learned to rely on you as well. Things were peaceful for a while. Until they weren't.

One day you walked into Hex's office to a very serious looking Hex. You asked him what was wrong, and after a moment of silence he told you that he could no longer be your counselor and that you guys should probably stop hanging out together too.

You asked him why and he was reluctant to answer. You felt betrayed and hurt. You had finally been brave enough to get your walls down with someone, and they don't want to be friends anymore.

You demanded to know why, and it became a heated argument. When the tension reached its peak, Hex revealed that the reason he couldn't keep seeing you anymore is because he had fallen in love with you.

It was unprofessional and a conflict of interest for a counselor to have romantic feelings for his client. However, his feelings for you grew, and it ate him up inside to be able to be with you so he figured it would better to stop seeing each other all together.

As he confessed his feelings, you began to feel guilty for pushing him but also a different feeling. You realized that you as well could not bear the thought of losing Hex. You too were in love with him.

After a long and emotional talk, you and Hex confessed your feelings. You decided to take things slow for now, but sure enough you two became a very serious couple.

You two would mainly spend your days cuddling and watching a movie, listening to music together, or showering each other with compliments. You two can also be a bit teasing sometimes (he especially likes to tease you about the height difference between you two), but you guys know not to take it too far.

You are each other's support system and wouldn't have it any other way.

RUNNERS UP: Ike Eveland

#multi fandom blog #multifandom account #matchups #multifandom #multifandom writer #multi fandoms posts #multifandom fanfiction #multifandom x reader #multifandom imagines #nijisanji en #hex haywire #hex haywire x reader #xsoliel

[hummingbird-of-light]

In Our Favor

Part 123

McCoy

McCoy sighed and pulled Scotty backwards with him on the bed.

“I went over to the counseling building and made an appointment.”

Scotty popped up on his elbow to look down at the prince.

“Ye did?”

“I kind of had to after Flores put it in my file,” McCoy said with a hint of humor.

“I’m glad ye did!” Scotty said, leaning over and kissing McCoy. “I’m sure it will help love. Do ye want me to come with ye?” Scotty asked the question nervously as he looked at McCoy.

“I would love you to,” McCoy said. He reached up and pulled Scotty for another kiss. “But you can’t.”

“What? Why not?” Scotty’s voice raised and indignation entered it.

“Because you’ll still be in class. It’s Wednesday at 16:45.”

“Oh.” Scotty settled back down next to McCoy. “Well, I can meet ye over there afterward.”

McCoy gave a nod. “I’d like that.”

“What else might ye like?” Scotty asked, winking at McCoy as his hand slipped under McCoy’s shirt.

“What were you thinking?” McCoy grinned back, pulling Scotty closer.

“What’s winter going to be like?” McCoy asked as he snuggled closer to Scotty.

“Not sure mo ghràdh. Why? Are ye cold already?” Scotty reached to pull the blanket up over both of them from where it had tangled at the bottom of the bed.

“The breeze is always cool,” McCoy frowned. “I just wondered if it was going to be cold like at school before or what.”

“Oh I don’t think it gets that cold here,” Scotty said thoughtfully. “But I’ll keep ye warm.” His smile was nearly a grin as McCoy looked at him.

“Pretty sure you can’t walk around and keep me warm like this,” McCoy raised a brow and laughed as he glanced down at their bare bodies.

“I’m a proud Scotsman!” Scotty declared. “I’ve nothing to hide!”

McCoy laughed. “You really want to prove that?”

“Absolutely not!” Scotty said with fake horror in his voice. “Only ye get to see me like this,” he said softly. “Tha gaol agam ort.”

McCoy smiled and repeated the Gaelic words. They still never came as easily to his tongue as they did for his husband, but the way it made Scotty smile was always worth it.

“Did ye want to go have lunch, or…?”

“We can stay here a while longer?” McCoy asked.

“Sure love.”

“You guys are late,” Sulu said as McCoy and Scotty sat down for lunch.

“Took a nap,” McCoy shrugged.

“Sure,” Jim looked over with a wild grin. “‘Napped.’”

McCoy rolled his eyes, but noticed a slight flush on Scotty’s face. His husband had turned right away to Aporal.

“What!? That is not right at all!” Jaylah exclaimed a moment later.

“What isn’t?” Uhura asked.

“Admiral Kinnear took our devices to check we weren’t the ones who went to the press,” Aporal said with an eye roll. “Of course we aren’t.”

“Maybe Father should look into this,” McCoy began thoughtfully. “The personal devices of a member of the royal family being searched…”

“But Len, I’m not—”

“You are.”

“You married him, you are,” Aporal stated.

“And you,” McCoy said looking over. “With your connections as well.”

“It might be best to leave that well enough alone si— Leonard.” Spock corrected himself quickly. “Involving the king into what is Starfleet business may make things complicated. He has no authority here.”

“That’s true Spock,” McCoy conceded. “I gave up that side of things to come here.”

“It will be fine Prince. Don’t worry.” Aporal gave him a confident grin.

“Leonard,” he corrected automatically, knowing Aporal wouldn’t use it. He sighed to himself, resigned to yet another nickname. He wished he could be as confident about Kinnear as Aporal was, but he had promised Scotty he wouldn’t get himself in more trouble. He intended to keep that promise.

Part 124

Scotty

After lunch, Scotty and Leonard took a walk. The sun was shining and it was nice to just bathe in its light for a little while and forget about the worries.

However, from time to time, Scotty had to think of the people searching through his technical devices. It wasn't fair that they were allowed to look at all the private stuff. Messages, pictures and everything else. It belonged to him alone. No one should have the right to look at it.

"What's wrong, leannan?"

Scotty felt Leonard squeezing his hand so he turned his head to look at his husband. A sigh escaped his mouth.

"I was just thinking about my comm and PADD being searched through. I know that the people will keep it confidential, but... I still feel uncomfortable about it."

Leonard nodded understandingly.

"I can believe that. Are you sure that you don't want me to talk to Father about it?"

Scotty slowly shook his head.

"Nae, mo ghràdh. Spock is right. It'll only cause more problems."

This wasn't Georgiares. It was Starfleet and therefore they couldn't rely on David's power anymore.

"I'm sure Aporal will get it sorted out."

"Yeah... I guess you're right. Man, if I had known that he has friends in high places... Guess we're lucky to have him on our side, huh?" Leonard asked and Scotty couldn't help but chuckle.

"Aye. No one wants to mess with Aporal."

The Scotsman really wondered whoever had talked to the press. He assumed that it was someone who had a history with Kinnear, maybe an Andorian ex-member of Starfleet. Well... in the end it didn't matter who it was as long as both the admiral and Francis would get punished.

After dinner Scotty, Leonard and Aporal walked to Kinnear's office together. Scotty had told his husband that he could wait in their room, but Leonard had insisted on coming with them. He clearly wanted to protect Scotty, holding his hand all the way.

Aporal was the one to knock on the door. His face showed that he didn't worry about a thing. And Scotty really hoped that he was right about that.

The door opened to reveal Lt. Cmdr. Sullivan.

"Good evening, cadets."

"Good evening, sir."

Sullivan glanced over his shoulder to a place the students couldn't see from where they were standing.

"Admiral? It's Cadet Scott-McCoy and Cadet Tallister."

"Yeah, yeah. Give them their devices back and then send them away."

Scotty winced slightly at the angry voice of Kinnear. The man was apparently not too happy about the fact that his people hadn't found anything.

"Of course, sir."

Sullivan moved back into the room, leaving the door open a little bit, then returned with Scotty and Aporal's stuff.

"Here you go," he said gently, handing them PADDs and comms.

Scotty gave Cora's brother a grateful nod.

"Thank ye."

Aporal didn't say anything to the officer. Instead he only turned to Scotty and Leonard.

"See ya around, Scottish boy. Prince."

"It's Leonard," Scotty's husband called after him, but Aporal ignored it.

"Incorrigible," Leonard muttered quietly, then looked at Sullivan.

"Sir."

Both Scotty and Leonard gave the older man a nod, then said their goodbyes.

#star trek #montgomery scott #leonard mccoy #scones #au #in our favor

[error-core-animations]

The Counsel of Heads has decreed that further testing is necessary. Will you submit willingly, or will I need to use force?

@tmntstorycomp

art by @utopeaaa

"Um," Mikey stared at the figure, terrified his father had been discovered. "Testing for what? Also, what's the Council of Heads? Is that, uh, a special part of the Foot that deals with really bad criminals?" Please, please don't be! His dad hadn't done anything wrong, he'd been a victim of torture and experimentation! He wasn't the one who should be punished!

He knew that lying would just get him and his family in deeper trouble, but maybe he could twist the truth? He hoped the Council wouldn't hurt Pops...

@tmntstorycomp

#rottmnt #soulmates (evil) au #rottmnt mikey #soooooo. due to Things and Events in the sm(e) universe. uhm. The council of heads doesn't exist. the Foot clan is closer to that role. #under the guidance and supervision of another power ofc #I don't wanna reveal too much before I actually put it in the fic but. yk.

[insatiablesonao3]

Ngl I had been rooting for Eric and hoping his talk with Lola would kickstart some real changes and we'd get to see him make good on his vow to "always put my girl first." But alas. 😡 God, Kimberlyn deserves so much better. Biggest red flag for me was that whole counseling session--like, he made the arrangements. And was clearly uncomfortable from the start, and we later realize it's because he's nervous about confessing this breach of trust/commitment. But it just feels so bizarre that he had no problem popping up on the trail @ her hotels to get some fun alone time with her but then when there is real work that needs to happen, and a hard conversation needs to happen, he once again pulled in third party people to bear witness (aka the therapist) and started unloading what sounded like accusations about Kimberlyn's lack of availability etc. And like, my guy. You have blindsided her at least ten times since we've been introduced to you and Kimberlyn has rolled with it each time. I feel like maybe your apologies for kissing your ex would have sounded more sincere if you actually worded it like you were taking accountability instead of blaming your wife.

I haven't been a fan of Eric at all since the beginning of the show. Everything you are saying details what I think about their relationship to a T.

He's picking the worst time to confront her with his own insecurities. Boo boo, if you needed a woman that would have answered to you at the snap of your fingers, maybe you should have stayed with that ex-girlfriend of yours instead of trying to make Kim into a woman she already said she won't become. Kim has never lead him on regarding work, she always told him her career was very important.

They have been raised in different households, it shows. Especially with Eric's mother that expects Kim to be a stay at home mom and raise their future kids.

#insatiables answers #ray green wicked4good asks #the girls on the bus #kimberlyn kendrick

[runwithwolvcs]

Right Where You Left Me

Part Two: Invisible String Warnings: Mentions of Death

My head aches from the lack of sleep I got the night before. Delta had decided at the last minute to start her science project and I had been roped in to glueing little glow in the dark stars to a black bristol board until the morning sun shone bright through the dining room window.

Resting my head on my forearms, closing my eyes to subside the burning sensation. Maybe I can just take a small nap…

“Look alive, Saskia!”

 I grimace at his choice of words but sit up anyways, picking my pencil back up and rereading the questions in front of me for the millionth time as if the answer would just magically pop into my head.

“I hate to be that friend, but Paul Lahote has been staring at the back of your head for almost the entire period,” Tessa said, scribbling an answer down on her worksheet. He’s been doing that ever since I’ve gotten back to school. They gave me two weeks to ‘grieve’, before handing me all the work I’d missed, with a small goodluck catching up. If only Paul could grow the balls to say something to me, anything. So I'd finally have an excuse to yell at him, throw a massive fit over the fact that I trusted him with a secret and when that secret blew up in my face unexpectedly, he just watched from the sidelines. Not saying a word.

I roll my eyes, “What’s the answer for question four?”

“Um, hello? You’re the one that gives me the answers, remember?” 

“I didn’t read the chapter.” Ignoring the look of concern she shot at me, I wrote down what I think the answer could be before setting my pencil down, completely giving up on the assignment.

“Maybe you should go back to fucking, Lahote. I’m sure he’s still down, even if he is into all that gang stuff. You're still a smokeshow.” Tessa suggests before going back to chewing on the end of her pen, 

“I’d rather sit through another one of Mrs. Bear’s grief counselling sessions.” I say in a harsh tone, before mimicking the counsellor's voice, “Grief is the price we pay for love.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her attempt to counsel me, so I left and I haven't been back. I felt as though grief counselling would just prolong the process anyways. I don’t need to talk about my problems, I lived with them and that was hard enough as it was.

“I can’t believe she said that to you, as if her stupid hallmark quotes would actually help you grieve.” 

I shrug and lean my head in my hands, “As long as Delta is doing well, nothing else matters.”

“Is she still doing that baking class over at the Clearwaters bakery?”

I nod, “yeah, Leahs mom has helped out a lot. Keeping Delta busy and whatever.”

Sue Clearwater was like a second mother. She helped a lot during my mom's chemo treatment, being a volunteer nurse at the hospital in Forks, the neighbouring town. Sue and her sister owned a small bakery that taught kids how to bake every wednesdays and Fridays, which Delta was fond of. I made sure she got the chance to go whenever she asked, even if it meant sitting in the parking lot doing my homework while I waited.

“Now you just need to keep busy, preferably in someone's bed. What about Cal?”

I got to tell her that, that is the most ridiculous idea she has ever had, and she's had many but the bell rings. I never told her about what Paul had said to me, and what Shiloh had said to him. My anger simmers at the fact that even Shiloh had the decency to express his condolences.

“Mr. Lahote stay after class please, the rest of you hand in your questions and you're free to go.” Mr Faire announces and everyone begins to pack up and head on with their days.

I slowly gather my things, losing the battle I had been winning with my mind all class long, glancing back at the boy who disappeared from every inch of my life. His window is no longer an escape for me to use as I please. He’s talking to Jared Cameron, another one of Sam’s groupies, and his girlfriend Kim. I look away before he can catch me staring and shove the rest of my things in my bag. 

Walking up to the teachers desk, I’m the last to hand in my worksheet besides the three lingerers. It's like they can’t do anything independently, always stuck to each other like magnets.

I handed the teacher my paper, knowing that the grade for it was not ideal. I’ve stopped caring, it’s not like I’m going to college anytime soon. Not while my sister still needs me here.

“A lot of these are still unanswered” He notes disapprovingly.

“I didn’t have time to read the chapter last night.” I tell him honestly, between my other three classes and Delta needing help with her own homework, I couldn’t even find the time to take the book out of my bag.

He sighs, “I get that with your mom passing recently, life might be a bit hectic for you, but it’s no excuse for not fulfilling your responsibilities in school. I expect more from you.”

“Well maybe if you actually taught us something inside of just forcing us to read sixty pages of worthless material every night, I would have been more prepared.” I snapped at him before turning on my heel, and walking straight into what felt like a brick wall. Paul's hands steadied me from tripping over my own two feet, his unusually hot hands scorching my skin causing me to jerk away from him. I can’t look at him, the frustrated tears in my eyes blur my vision as I push past him and head for the door.

--

I am an idiot. 

I took Tessa's advice and invited Calian over, as if in the year that we had broken up, he had somehow learned how to please a woman. With Delta at a friend's house for a sleepover, and my dad working the night shift, I didn’t want to be alone in our house. It would be the first time since she was gone, and I couldn’t stomach it.

I sat in his lap, my clothes discarded long ago, in just my  bra and panties. His shirt is lost on the floor with mine as he kisses at my neck and I try to build some kind of friction, rocking my hips against his. He doesn’t get the message.

My phone rings and I look at the caller ID from where I’m seated. Paul Lahote.

I let it ring, sending it voicemail. I sigh in content as the thought of him trying to contact me fades from my mind.

It rings again.

I snatch my phone off of my bedside table and harshly hit answer.

“What do you want?” I ask, Calian doesn’t stop his assault on my neck. I have to chew on the inside of my cheek as palms my breast, roughly tweaking the hard nub.

“I’m locked out, can you climb through my window and let me in?” Paul's voice sounded desperate. 

“No, I’m busy.”

“It’s raining.” He tried and I rolled my eyes.

“It’s always raining.” I remind him. We live in the wettest state in America, the constant cover of clouds was depressing, but home.

“Please, Saskia.” he says, his tone laced with annoyance. Fuck this, I think before hanging up on him.

I grab Calians discarded tshirt and throw it on, “I'll be right back, my neighbours locked out.”

 I opened my window to see that it was partially open, as if he meant to open it and then changed his mind. I raise it further, giving me enough space to get into his room before climbing in.

His room looked the exact same as it did when I last visited him in the middle of the night. I glare at the halfnaked woman in a fancy car, still the only poster left in his room before bounding down the stairs and unlocking the door, nearly ripping the door off its hinges as I open it.

“Thanks, I owe you.” Paul says relieved and I roll my eyes.  Looking at him with an annoyed gaze before saying, “Whatever.”

His eyes connected with mine, and it was like time stopped around us. I couldn't breathe. His hard, angry eyes softened and the look of knowing crossed his face.  The man in front of me looked completely and utterly captivated, he’s never looked at me like this before, not even when I was sprawled out naked in his sheets. His usual dark, rage infused eyes held the peace that I had been searching looking for in the past few years. The solace I had so desperately tried to find in him through our late night escapades. I felt as though there was suddenly an invisible string connecting myself to him, pulled as tight as could be causing me pain if i were to try and pull away. I’ve never felt this feeling before, like a gold rush.

Gasping softly, I take a step back from him. My hand pressed against my chest as if to stop my heart from beating out of my chest.

His eyes roamed my barely clothed body, like I was a shiny new toy just for him.

Paul's eyes hardened at the realisation of who’s shirt I was wearing, and it wasn’t his, “Where's your clothes?”

“Like I said, I’m busy. So if you’ll excuse me.” I mutter, trying to squeeze past his hulking figure. I avoid his gaze, afraid that I’ll grovel for him. He didn’t deserve it, not after all that he’s done, more so hasn’t done.

But his hair was damp, and dishevelled from the rain. His t-shirt slick to his body, extenuating his muscles.

I bite my lip. Would it be so bad?

Stop it, Saskia. You’re just tired, that's it, I try to convince myself.

He blocks my exit, “With who?”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t. We just, we have sex so, I would like to know what diseases you’re getting and  from where.” he spits out, his tone drowning in jealousy before adding, “To be safe.”

“We haven’t hooked up in months, Paul. So, no, it’s none of your business who I hang out with, especially considering your new friends.” I remind him, before sarcastically saying, “Consider yourself safe.”

He scoffed, “I’ve been dealing with stuff, that doesn’t mean I wanted our deal to end.”

He’s been dealing with stuff. His excuse was laughable. Paul didn’t even have the decency to check in when my mom died and now he wants me to sympathise about how hard his life has been?

 No chance.

“Well it did. It's over. Done. Goodbye.” Pushing past him, I only make it down the first two steps of his porch before he's grabbing ahold of my arm.

“Sask, wait.”

Looking back at him, annoyed beyond belief, I ask, “What, Paul?”

“Everything alright man?” The voice sounds from my porch and I look from Paul to see Calian, shirtless in just his soccer shorts, standing on my porch. Great timing, I think to myself.

“Yeah, Cal. Just got locked out.” He says, before looking back at me. I can’t read his emotions, but he doesn’t look happy as he says, “Thanks, again, Saskia.”

I scoff in annoyance, taking my arm back from his grip and crossing the lawn that separates the two properties and back inside my house. Cal's hand on my lower back as he guides me back to my room feels wrong and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m about to make a huge mistake.

---

I rush to my locker in between periods to switch out my textbooks. It's routine at this point. I feel a warm hand on my arm, pulling me into the nearest classroom before I can even get my combination into the lock. I look at who has a grip on my arm to see Paul. He shuts the door behind us and stands in front of it, his face unreadable. When did he get so good at hiding his emotions? The boy was as short fused as they come, you know when he was in a good mood and when he was not. As he stands in front of me, I have no idea what I’m in for.

“Did you do the reading for Mr.Faires class?” his voice was rigid.

Bad mood.

“No, I didn’t have time.”

“You had time to fuck Calian.” he gritted. His eyes gave me a once over, looking for evidence of the night before. Though he wasn’t going to find anything. Calian and I had settled for a movie after I shot down his advances after my altercation with Paul. Thats it.

“I didn’t fuck him.” he stays in my way and my patience is wearing thin, “Move.”

“Jared said there's going to be a pop quiz on last night's reading,” he offers, his body language completely changing at the knowledge that I didn’t fuck my exboyfriend.

“And you’re telling me this, why exactly?” I am confused, why is this information that I would need?

“So he doesn’t rip on you again.”

“His opinion of me means nothing.” I make a move to go around him, but he puts his hands on my shoulders, stopping me.

“He made you cry.” So he did see me. 

“Fuck you, Paul.” I grit.

“Ask nicely.” he grinned, bringing his hand up to play with the end of my braid as his eyebrow furrowed, a look of inner turmoil, “You don’t sleep well, do you? Your lights are always on..”

I cross my arms over my chest, “Why do you care?”

But he was right, I don’t sleep, too many things to do and not enough time in the day. The nightmares I keep to myself don’t help. Though I would never tell anyone, they wouldn’t understand. My mom died of cancer, a slow and nondramatic death. She wasn’t murdered, she didn’t have a freak accident, or swerve from hitting a deer. She knew death was coming, I knew her death was coming.

So why the nightmares?

She haunts me, I’m convinced. Or maybe it's the guilt of knowing my dad was cheating on her and letting her die thinking she was in a monogamous marriage. Was it wrong? Maybe. But I wanted her to be happy, I didn’t want her to question her life and the people in its loyalty as the bright, white light came for her.

When I close my eyes, all I see is her, pulling me through the dark forest. She hands me a piece of paper and  tells me to run to them and get help, that she’ll distract it. I don't ever see what it is, because everytime I turn around to look I jolt awake in a panic.  I don’t know who I was supposed to look for, or how they could help. It feels so real, her fear seeps into my mind even when I’m awake. Sleep is not worth it.

“I care about you, Sask. I’m not the best at showing it, but I do.”

I scoff, “No, you don’t.”

Paul opens his mouth to refute but I don’t let him. Whatever he has to say is bullshit, it always has been., “My mom died, and you couldn’t have cared less. You didn’t even reach out, nothing!”

“I wanted to, I just…” he starts, but I’m not done.

“What? Sam didn’t let you.” I ask loudly.

“Saskia.” It sounds like a warning and he takes a step back from.

“I didn’t peg you as being the type of guy to be someone's bitch.” The malice in my tone makes him flinch, and I almost feel guilty.

“Stop.” Paul nearly growls, taking another step back. He can’t even look at me.

I shake my head at him, “You’re pathetic. Just stay away from me!”

I roughly yank the door open and on the other side is Jared Cameron. Great, I think to myself, the other bitch.

“Hey Saskia,” he says with a warm smile, “Paul in there?”

“No idea who the fuck that is.” I say as I push past him. Pulling out my phone and calling the one person who would understand what I’m going through. 

Leah Clearwater.

#paul lahote #paul lahote x oc #paul lahote imagine #paul lahote fanfic #twilight wolves #twilight wolf pack #twilight

[disorganizedkitten]

#girlsprotectinggirls one shot fic question! Sorta. Are you a fan of Marvel at all? Or any other superhero media? Because I love that forum system, and thought it would be amazing if it connected all sorts of heroes. What other fandoms do you think could use a support system for their heroes?

OKAY SO I absolutely am! Not enough of a fan to always know what's going on, but I have my series and universes (marvel rising is the most recent) and can recognize most of the art.

Have you read You have (1) New message by chipanddealer? Because it's very *mwah* and definitely affects my answer; but yeah! I think if I went around and just added in all my favorites, I'd find a way for there to be a SuperHero one and a Hero one, because I love the trope of 'hero of the story is overwhelmed and meets retired hero from another story and gets mentored'. I love it so much.

Specifically, I think my ideal chat fic at this very moment would include Jackie Chan Adventures, Miraculous Ladybug, (Harry Potter? maybe?) and Danny Phantom, but just a large one for fun would definitely be a huge mishmash. Harry Potter, Trollhunters, Marvel (rising), Miraculous, JCA, DP, some nice Kim Possible but she has to either be the youngest and just starting her website or the oldest and the mom hero, and maybe some Gargoyles? There's not really a Young Hero(TM) in Gargoyles but there are a lot of traumatized old as dirt men and women who have some nice commentary on loyalty, betrayal, and living through grief.

Oh and Scooby-Doo. A chatfic with any of the superheroes-gotta-have-a-plot and scooby-doo-we-invented-and-immortalized-the-episodic-formula would be wild in the best way.

As an actual 'heroes' forum I definitely want it- not quite open but very near to it? Like, there should be a spot for 'I just did a thing and now I think I might be starting a vigilante career what do I do' and a bunch of other new and old heroes can pop in with Things I Wish I'd Known When I Started (like a stretching routine!), and that's a lot more accessible than the rest, which in #girlsupportinggirls is for "vetted" heroes and vigilantes, and idk if I ever decided how they were vetted but it was a thing.

Oh and winx club should be in this.

So glad this isn't an essay there's probably no clear form of thought, but back to the original question of "what other media do I think could do with a support system" and the answer is All Of Them. Except Stranger Things, because while they absolutely do and I haven't watched the series through, I do have to forever give them props for having a parent who not only cares but actively involves herself in the things that are threatening her children, without being an oblivious/clueless/useless/gag character who just causes more problems.

Which is why a non "hero" forum would have a lot of people - Percy Jackson and Magnus Chase characters, for one, because they could do with support and - ooh DP/MC crossover - grow up to be some pretty sick mentor candidates. "I didn't wanna be a halfblood; I didn't ask to be a hero seeking praise," lives rent free in my brain and likely forever will.

I read a pretty awesome Trollhunters/Miraculous pen pal fic once back when trollhunters was the only Tales of Arcadia out, which was lovely, but since we're at it 3Below/DC would be a very nice crossover, there are plenty of aliens to play support and grief counselling.

Um. I lost where I was going with this, I'm very sure, but we should add a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys/Scooby-Doo either chatfic or casefic to the list of things that exist in a perfect world and also maybe my to-do list.

Okay FINAL list for the current 'perfect' "someone support these kids who are doing their best/thrown in the deep end/need a hug desperately" is Kim Possible, Nancy Drew, Scooby-Doo, Hardy Boys, and maybe Winx Club for the well-adjusted and likely give the best advice, probably play a mentor role; Dectective Comics, Marvel, Danny Phantom, Miraculous Ladybug, Trollhunters/Tales of Arcadia, and Harry Potter for the 'have advice but as peers and also are definitely using solving your problems as a distraction from their own'; Winx Club (the anime), Gargoyles, and Jackie Chan Adventures could be in either of these, and technically I guess so could Marvel and Detective Comics, but Winx and JCA have much more 'they grow up and get their crap together' vibes than DC and Marvel. Harry Potter could also also go in the mentor category which would be lovely, a prophecy child who survived their prophecy travelling the world/the interwebs and supporting other child heroes and chosen ones however he can.

Gargoyles and Batman should definitely meet sometime, it's been a while since I watched Gargoyles but I feel like they could learn from each other.

...I forgot the riordanverse but you know what it's fine they can be there and just log in once every three apocalypses.

#Jaymeow Speaks #girlssupportinggirls #riordiverse #Winx Club #Harry Potter #jackie chan adventures #DC #Marvel #Danny Phantom #Crossovers #chatfics #Trollhunters #tales of arcadia #Nancy Drew #Scooby-Doo #hardy boys #Gargoyles #Silverwhiteraven #Ask Box Things

[flowerfan2]

Read the coda to 8.03 on A03 here, or from the beginning here.

A continuous story of season 3 episode codas which creates one unified story - the Ted/Trent interactions we don’t see...

Chapter 8

Ted watches the cab with Michelle and Henry in it pull away from the curb and drive off down the street.   He’s pretty sure Michelle sussed out what he was trying to do as she left, when he wouldn’t let go of Henry’s backpack, but it still hadn’t worked – he wasn’t able to tell for sure whether she was wearing a ring or not.  He doesn’t think so.

He doesn’t think, frankly, that Michelle and Jake are necessarily going to make it as a couple, not if Jake gets annoyed when he and Michelle chat like old times.  It seems like Jake should understand that’s how they connect – he does have the benefit of all those counseling sessions when he was theoretically helping them work on their marriage – and yet he seemed annoyed at their easy banter.  Of course, banter alone doesn’t make a healthy relationship, as Michelle so often reminded him.

Ted doesn’t know why he can’t let go of all this.  He’s not the first person to get divorced, the world is full of them.  Hell, Trent is divorced, and Rebecca.  Pretty much everyone he spends his time with is either single or in a dysfunctional relationship of one kind or another.

He should really listen to what Rebecca said.  Stop letting yesterday get in the way of today.  There’s a handsome man out there that is waiting for him to make up his mind, and as patient as Trent is, he might not wait forever.  So what, exactly, is holding him back?

He allows himself a good long sigh, straightens his back, and calls Trent.

*****

Trent should be surprised to see Ted’s name pop up on his phone, but he’s not.  He knows Michelle and Henry are heading back to the U.S. tonight, and he has prepared himself for another long, agonizing talk where he consoles Ted about his feelings for someone who isn’t Trent.  

Trent had thought Ted was finally coming to terms with it all.  Last week at the pub Ted had sat close and looked at him fondly, given Trent hope that maybe they were on their way back to being together.  But then Michelle and Henry came to visit and that hateful, unethical excuse for a therapist whisked her away to Paris, and Ted was spiraling about his ex once more.

Trent has already heard all about the fun Ted, Beard and Henry had together, including their great Beatles sing-along.  It stings that now Beard hangs out with Ted and Henry, when over the summer it had been Trent and Darla showing Ted and Henry all their favorite places in London.  But that was when Ted wanted to be with Trent, and now he’s still not sure.  Or at least, not sure enough.

Trent answers his phone.  Just because he wants something doesn’t mean he’s going to get it, and no amount of self-pity is going to keep him from being there for Ted when he needs it.

“Hello?”

“How you holdin’ up, buttercup?”

Trent frowns.  “I rather thought I’d be asking you that.”

“Nah, I’m good.”  A pause.  “Really good, actually.”  Ted’s voice has dropped a register, and Trent feels his breath catch.  “Wonderin’ if you were free tonight?”

An hour later Ted and Trent are curled up together on Trent’s couch, jazz playing softly in the background, mostly empty tumblers of whiskey on the coffee table.  Ted is lying on his side, pressed against Trent’s chest, and playing with his hair as they make out like horny but somewhat lazy teenagers.

Ted’s hand starts to wander south, and Trent, despite himself or maybe in a delayed burst of good sense, stops his progress by taking his hand in his.

“Ted.”

Ted noses at Trent’s jaw.  “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.  What’s up, sugar?”

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

Ted freezes.  “Oh.”  It’s only one syllable, but the hurt comes through.

“It’s not that I don’t want to-”

“Then what is it, exactly?”  Ted sits up, awkwardly disentangling them and shoving himself to the other end of the couch.  “All this time, I thought you were pining for me, was I wrong about that?  Did I somehow misread your intentions, Mr. Crimm?”

“There’s no need to get angry, Ted-”

“Don’t you tell me how to feel.”  Ted gets up, stumbling as he straightens his clothes.  “I thought you wanted this.”

“I do want this,” Trent says, keeping his voice calm.  He rises and puts his hands on Ted’s shoulders, stilling his anxious sway.  “I want you.”  

Ted is blinking furiously, but the message gets through.  “You do, right?  I’m not – I’m not too late?”

“No, sweetheart, you’re not too late.”  Trent puts his arms around Ted and pulls him close, cradling Ted’s head against his own.  “I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it – I want you.”

“I want you too,” Ted mumbles, tucking his face against Trent’s neck.  

They stand there like that for a long moment, Trent rubbing circles on Ted’s back while Ted finds his equilibrium.

“Thank you,” Ted says finally, pulling away enough to meet Trent’s gaze.  

“For what?”

Ted brushes his fingers through his hair, already mussed from their make-out session.  “For making us slow down.  For knowing…”. Ted looks away, scrubs a hand over his face and shakes his head.  “For knowing that it isn’t a good idea to do” he waves a hand around “too much, just yet.”  He looks up at Trent, vulnerable and open.  “But, soon, maybe?”

“I’d like that,” Trent says, and presses a chaste kiss to Ted’s lips.  It’s sweeter than any kiss they’ve shared so far tonight.  “I’d like that very much.”

#Ted Lasso #Ted Lasso fic #Trent Crimm #Ted/Trent #Tent #Tent fic #Ted/Trent fic