#still not sure why my download quality sucks

[alexisrosemullens]

Amy Santiago in Operation Broken Feather

#b99edit #brooklyn nine nine #brooklyn 99 #sitcomedit #usersitcom #nessa007 #userlauraj #userrlaura #janielook #tusercarolina #dailyb99gifs #cinematv #dailytvwomen #dailywomen #femalecharacters #amy santiago #mine #if you can't tell i'm rewatching b99 #still not sure why my download quality sucks

[jame7t]

Can I ask if you use OBS for streaming? And also any tips for an aspiring streamy girl? *looks at you with the wettest eyes*

I do use OBS ! If youre not really familiar with it, its totally worth looking up some simple tutorials for. Once you can get a grasp on the program in general, its super modular and fun to mess around with. I think my biggest pieces of advice for streaming are like. 1: IGNORE those numbers queen. It can be super easy to see streamers with anywhere from 29-100 viewers and feel sucks about an average of like. 1-4. but literally anyone who uses twitch- or any platform- has to start there unless you're already situated on a different platform!

These are my average viewers from 2020- its taken me a long time to do anything on twitch, but its been a hell of a lot of fun, and its let me meet some of my best friends in the world because of it! Streaming is a great way to meet people, which brings me to point 2: Absolutely be careful who you meet! I've met a lot of really great people on the site- but as much as small streamers gotta stick together, there's some real stinkers out there who only want to 'network' with you. I won't pretend im BFFs with everyone I interact with on the platform- we're like neighbors <3- but I can confidently say I've never spoken to someone with intentions of clout chasing. The internet's the internet- stay safe out there lmao Ironically this becomes less of a problem the more you stream, you kinda learn to spot it, but back when I was at around 300 followers I absolutely had some incidents where people were playing some real booboo games to try get closer to me. Lots of streamers have promo channels in their respective discords- places you can link your stream when you're going live- just make sure you're an active-ish member of the community if you plan on doing that! Chatters are way more likely to stop by if they recognize you- and its pretty rude to be completely silent in 45 discords unless you're going live- 3: have fun!! Twitch is still just a hobby for me- its admittedly helped me out of a few rougher financial months at random points in the last few years- but im still very far away from making it my full time job in any capacity. Pace yourself- play games with your friends- and have fun! Worrying about growth and money is a pointless endeavor- because twitch will not help you grow! 4: Use Other Platforms: (as well, i mean) There's a lot of youtube videos and tutorials debating the best streaming site- "ahh heres why i left twitch forever vs aahhh heres why im leaving youtube forever" but it boils down to Sites Is Sucks ALWAYS. Forever. If you want to grow on twitch- or any site- make sure you're posting about your streams elsewhere too! Not JUST stream promo posts, but highlights and clips as well! If you can get some sort of editing software, subtitling them expands their reach a TON across the board, though it does take more time to subtitle them. People wont know what youre doing unless you tell them! Now, this does mean you might have to download the dreaded tiktok- I can't speak for the quality of that site in terms of getting people to watch streams; but twitch itself has sent me emails in the past recommending I post clips to tiktok. Plenty of streamers do it- use your best judgement, and what sites you think you can adapt to! Tiktok honestly might be better for getting your clips out there without a preexisting audience- when I first started streaming, I had 6000 followers on tumblr and my promo posts regularly got 1-4 notes- Nothing against those 6000; a promo post is tragically similar to an ad! Of course they wouldnt click it. They dont know how sweet and awesome and silly i am and how my friends mash me with hammers. Theyd want to see that. [The Promo Posts Were Also MID] Some of these things might sound weirdly specific or erratic but its 1 AM and im just recounting some random knowledge ive gained- none of this is a science of course, people might swear the opposite for some of these things. But! Have Fun

[grimescum]

how to download canva elements without pro (2 methods)!!

made this for a variety of reasons. mostly because i hate using any program that isnt ibispaint 😭 i'm pretty sure the first one will work with any editing/art program, though!

★ editing method

1. open a blank design from the "custom size" option. the size i used in both examples was 5000 x 5000

that's WAY bigger than you'd ever need. a better size is probably somewhere in the 1000-3000 range, but i was just testing it out here

2. start fitting elements onto your canvas. be smart about it and try to fit in as many as possible! don't be scared to resize elements, the quality won't be affected

working with monochrome elements

1A. what you need for this method are pure black and white elements. not all of them are by default, but you can easily recolor some of them by using the color tab here

the ones that aren't recolorable require using the effects/adjust/filter tools instead. i'll explain that in the "working with colored elements" portion since a good chunk of elements are already recolorable

either way, when you're finished, export it as a png!

2A. load it into an editing program of your choice. i personally use ibispaint, but i'm sure most art/editing programs have a similar feature

press "clear white (color)" from the three dots near the bottom, and then you're done! all you have to do from here is save as a transparent png

working with colored elements

1B. you'll want to wait until the page is full before you start changing the colors this time. once you're done, save this version as a png, you'll need it later.

2B. now, recolor what you're able to by using the aforementioned color tool. canva already speeds up the process if you have several elements of the same color. in my case, the 6 on the lower left could not be recolored. this is where the effects/adjust/filter tools come into play!

first and foremost: if you don't see the "adjust" option at first, tap "effects" and select duotone. you'll want the select the "mono" palette near the end to make this easier. once you've done that, unselect and reselect the element again. you should be able to see the adjust option now!

change the brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, vibrance, saturation, and clarity values to -100, change the blacks value to 100. this should work with most elements, but sometimes they're still too light, as pictured here:

this is easy to fix by going back into the effects tab, then duotone, then "custom". change both the highlights and shadows to pure black (remember to make sure of this, btw! you can always edit this in post if you forget), and then you're done! export this as a png and open your editing program of choice.

3B. import both of the finished versions onto the same canvas. select the "clear white (color)" option for the black and white one, then "select opacity", then select the colored version and copy that layer.

then you're done! note that the smaller the canvas, the more white artifacts you'll see around your pngs, hence why i made mine so big.

★ google docs method

this one kind of sucks to do. its good for getting the individual pngs in high quality, but its tedious, and some files will randomly corrupt for reasons i'm unsure of. i wont be spending much time explaining it as a result.

1. open a blank design. use the docs template. place in all of the elements you want (try to keep it at a relatively small amount— i usually had around 10-25 at once), and after you've done so, hit save. save it as a docx file!!!

2. open google docs and load in the docx file. you'll be able to view it without being able to download anything at this stage- that's okay!google docs should have an option to convert the file into a doc.

3. once you've done that (it took forever on mobile, i had to do it on computer instead), go to "save as" and choose the option that says "web page (html, zipped)". it'll save as a zip file with two folders inside. all you need is to unzip the one labeled "images", and you're done!

for more information (and pictures), check out this guide on how to extract pictures from different file types

#flea's tutorials #new tag ooo #canva #editblr #pngs #idk im sleepy

[shelienead]

Let’s ramble a little

I was thinking about Castle, how it’s still so popular even here on Tumblr which I consider a slowly dying site. Whereas a lot of other fandoms have simply left or have found another subjects of interest, Castle is still going strong and keeping it’s loyal fan base, though certainly a little smaller than it used to be. I don’t think there are many other cancelled TV shows of this genre (police procedural drama) still receiving such amount of love as Castle. With that said, the circumstances surrounding its cancellation and all the other “bad stuff” around it suck even more. But I don’t really want to go there as it’s a big can of worms which I don’t wanna open ever again.

Anyways, it’s an obvious thing to say that the actors did a fantastic job bringing their characters to life. So I’m not gonna be rambling about how for example Stana’s Kate Beckett is a badass, super sexy, flawed and believable cop who is literally destined to be loved by the viewers or how she and Castle makes a perfect couple not only for the hardcore shippers. No, no, no, this is all true but it’s a well known acknowledged fact, therefore not the reason why I write this - idk what it is - let’s say a shitpost that nobody’s gonna read anyway.

What I think brings up the greatness of this show and helps keeping it alive the most, is fanfiction. Yes, due to fanfiction we can enjoy the lives of these characters (mainly Beckett and Castle ofc) in a way that the show itself could never provide us. Some of these talented authors have created amazing expanded worlds for this beloved couple or a completely new AUs which are a pleasure to explore. And by the talented authors I mean crazy talented, simply awesome ones. There are tons of writers for many different fandoms but how many of them write the quality content? Not so many, I’m afraid. But that’s not the case with Castle! I’m not saying all the stories in this fandom are good but there are many for sure. I’m confident to say that Castle fanfiction has some of the best writers who could be selling bestsellers (and maybe they are, this idk). Unfortunatelly, most of them aren’t active anymore or worse, they deleted their stories (or their work was simply removed for whatever reason) which saddens me the most. There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to reread some fic which simply cannot be found anymore. And I’m definitely planning on rereading some of these gems again and again so maybe I should download my favourites just to be safe. Nevertheless, as long as the fanfic stories are here, the show will be alive as it’s a very necessary complement for me to enjoy the world of Richard Castle to the fullest extent. 

Through this post I wanted to give appreciation and thanks to all the writers out there even if none of them will see this. 

REWATCH, (RE)READ, REPEAT

#castle abc #castle fanfiction #phew...that's a much longer post than I intended to write #the best thing for all of you who come across this is to scroll past it and ignore it #tumblr is not what it used to be but I still like coming back #when i'm bored or when i need to let something out while being anonymous :D #i would never write anything longer than 3 sentences under my name when it's not in my native language :DD

[xblubotx]

You know something?

I really do miss Tumblr. I don’t really use the search engine in other social media’s aside from Twitter from time to time. The only thing I don’t like about Tumblr right now is how much it crashes. This could just be my phone being old, but holy shit it crashes so often.

I can barely use the DMs, they take forever to load up, and it doesn’t help they always start there. Also, I don’t know if this is on purpose or they are just bad at coding, but you can download files if you know how to use the elements tool on your computer. SERIOUSLY, out of all the places to get the CLONE HIGH THEME SONG IN FULL HIGH QUALITY AUDIO, it had to come from here. Wow, like damn.

Maybe this year, I’ll finally get around to posting it on YouTube, because I recreated some promotional art in higher quality just to upload it. I’ll make sure to credit the OP though, as it was thanks to them they could bless us with such clear audio.

As much as I think this site is in a shadow of it’s former glory, it still manages to make me come back from time to time. I know the PORNO PURGE OF 18 really killed it for most people, to the point where they all moved to Twitter, but let’s be honest, you stumbled onto that shit every 5 seconds without purposefully looking for it. It would have been a better idea to just have a private account option like Twitter does, but that’s ignoring the context for why Tumblr had the purge to begin with.

Overall, I do miss this website and all the wackass stories that have spawned from it. I’m not sure if Tumblr will ever have anymore bizarre stories coming from it the way it use to with how small it’s gotten, but maybe that’s for the best. When you’re huge like Twitter, it’s a hellscape, and I guess so was Tumblr during the previous decade. But now it’s more calm and collective. No more stupid dramas or whatever’s.

Also all of my sisters use Tumblr unlike Instagram or GOD FOR BID Twitter. And I like having that connection with them through this website.

Now let’s hope this bitch sends, because Tumblr really sucks at posting this shit and I can’t copy everything as one. Only one paragraph at a time. ASSHOLES.

#blutalks

[cnwilks]

A little unsolicited advice

I posted this article on my Facebook page in 2020, and it has been shared several times. I've grown accustomed to my posting activity being regarded with great indifference, so it was a pleasant surprise. Here's the full post, preserved for posterity, with some bad grammar fixed.

***

One of my high school classmates made a post last night about buying his teenage daughter her first guitar as a Christmas gift, and might not fully realize what a great gift that it truly is. Here's a little unsolicited advice as my gift to you as we approach the holiday season. Kind of a novel, but it's a subject of great personal importance:

1. Don't buy an instrument at a pawn shop. It used to be a good place to buy musical instruments before the internet, but now they will charge you close to full retail. And people desperate enough to pawn their musical instruments rarely buy quality gear.

2. You get what you pay for(ish). To that point, even if you can afford a really expensive instrument, don't buy one for your children until they've earned it. Most name-brand manufacturers (Fender, DW, Pearl, Ibanez, Zildjian, Sabian) make highly affordable entry-level instruments that are fine to start with and still useful when you get more experienced. If you can only remember one brand name, remember that Yamaha makes almost every instrument, and the cheapest Yamaha anything is incredible. Don't waste your money on off-brand starter sets they sell at Best Buy and other retailers. It will only save you a little, and you won't have a "real" instrument manufactured with pride by a company that doesn't make anything else. My Fender acoustic is the cheapest one they sell, but I wouldn't be remotely embarrassed to hand it to Eric Clapton if he insisted on entertaining my dinner party guests. It sure wouldn't be the first time someone played one of my guitars better than me. On jam night, Tony W Costello Reed played my Classical guitar once, and I said, "Oh, so that's how it's supposed to sound!"

3. Buy your instrument in a music store, preferably locally owned. You'll get a better price ordering online, but you won't get to pick things up and try them out (and most will match online prices in-store, even from a competitor). The people who work in those stores are barely functional at best in all of the areas that count, but they know everything about the gear they sell and want it all. Listen to them.

4. Hold your kids accountable. Music is a "get to" and not a "got to," but much more enjoyable if done well and approached as a craft. They should have fun but also spend time on the stuff that's not fun until it is. You can learn to play G, C, and D on guitar in seconds and theoretically play 80% of all popular music ever written. But you must play each one millions of times to truly learn them. Learning a new instrument sucks at first, and it's hard to stay motivated. That's why your kids need to commit to a reasonable amount of time practicing (or engaging in music-related activity) each day and stick with it no matter what. 5-10 minutes is enough. They can and should play more each day, but never less. There will be days when they absolutely can't bear the thought of practicing. Those are the days to get a cloth and wipe down their instrument, change their strings, organize their sheet music folder, download the tab for a new song, or watch a tutorial. Even listening to a song counts as practice. There will come a day when they won't be able to put their instrument down, but most people have years of complete suck in them before they can even really start learning. I had been in the middle school band for over two years before I got my first drum set, and it was a year and a half before I could get all four limbs to work together. That's why discipline is so important. They're learning a craft and have to put the reps in. Jimi sucked once too.

5. Music should never be used or taken away as punishment. When your kids inevitably ground themselves, make them clean your gutters and take away their cell phones. But they should never be denied access to their instrument or any other means of creative expression under any circumstances. There are plenty of things that you can take away that they will miss much more, but you should always encourage them to express their anger through song and other constructive ways. Or, better yet, employ reverse psychology. Tell them that it would really piss you off if they were to write a funny song about what squares that you and your spouse are and turn their mediocre rap talent into a smash hit TV show, a tremendous film career, Scientology, and a drop dead gorgeous wife who publicly rationalizes cheating on you on talk shows. They'll love their guitar or keyboard more than playing Pokemon or Among Us if they think they're using it to rebel against you, and the only drawback is that your kids' friends might think you're lame. But they already do. And you are. And that's okay. You gave up trying to be cool long ago, and they will, too, one day. But parenting means letting them feel good about themselves for a little bit until life beats them down.

6. Be patient as they learn. My parents clearly didn't find my drums as fascinating as I did, but they provided them and always let me play them as loudly as I wanted. They just turned up the TV while I was practicing and could do so to my heart's content until 10:00. It clearly didn't break their hearts when we moved band practice over to the Babb compound for a while, but I now realize that it was merely enough to tolerate us. You're going to hear sounds that can only be compared to sacks of drowning kittens and hyenas being simultaneously castrated and skinned alive for a very long time. The paint is going to peel off your walls, and your plants are going to die. You will pine for the sounds of your neighbor's leaf blower on some days. Your home will likely be visited by hordes of looking youth carrying additional noisemakers, that they will play badly as a group, and several more who will be there to watch them. They're going to park piece of shit cars in front of your house, and you're going to spend the GDP of a developing country on Cokes and Doritos. But it's all part of a bigger plan. Children who learn music tend to pursue more education and maintain more of a global focus. They tend to be around more interesting people. The skills translate to other things and lead to a more well-rounded kid. They will be much more sensitive, confident, compassionate, and better decision-makers. Buying them instruments now will mean that they will vote for the right candidates, climb the career ladder, and eventually choose a better nursing home for you.

Finally, do not ever hesitate to ask the musicians in your life for help or be afraid to inconvenience them. They are dying to share their expertise with you and your kids. I've always got your back on anything drum-related, and know enough to be dangerous about most other instruments. Even if I don't like you, I won't let you get ripped off.

#music #musical instruments

[imnosuperman12]

Best Man Speech

Good evening everyone!

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Daniel and I’m Mark’s favorite brother. Thanks everyone for coming out to support tonight! 

Growing up, I always looked up to my big brother. In a very literal way because I was shorter than Mark until I started college. (But now on a good day, I’m taller than him by about a centimeter. Or at least my driver’s license says so.) 

I also looked up to him in a way you would look up to any role model. I had a Pokémon backpack in 1st grade because he had the red and blue version on the original Gameboy. I listened to songs by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Incubus, because he taught me how to download songs off Limewire. I even learned how to drive in the Health Careers High School parking lot because he let me drive his car (though if he were to tell the story, he would tell you that I ran his Honda Civic over the curb on my first try because I didn’t know my right from my left). 

I think above all that, I’m most grateful that God blessed me in making sure we are the same shoe size, and that basically all his clothes also fit me. To this day, my closet is 90% hand me downs.

All jokes aside, Mark it’s been such a privilege watching you grow up and mature into the man you are today. You’re the glue of your Clark and Health Careers High School friend groups who remain close to this day. You navigated life as the eldest child, with all the independence and stubbornness that comes with that. You showed me that as scary as it is to move across the country to follow your dreams in a new city, you can still show up for your family and the people you care about back here in Texas. And I’ll forever be grateful for that lesson.

Now I’m particularly emotional tonight because I don’t get to just talk about the groom, but I also get to talk about the bride too. 

For those of you who don’t know, I had the privilege of meeting Anvy when we were 14 years old. She was actually one of my first friends in high school because we were in first period band class together our freshman year at Health Careers. We eventually became teammates and competed in local and state competitions together. And honestly, at one point in time, Anvy was consistently in my MySpace top 10. Which for you millennials in the room, was a big deal in the 2010s.

Some of my core memories from those years include trying a gallon boba challenge at Suck It when it was on DeZavala (even though half our team was lactose intolerant), practicing how we would sign our professional signatures in cursive (which is why I know your full name is Anvy Thai Vu), and even just spelling words in new ways (like the color grey spelled G R E Y, and the word color spelled C O L O U R).

Now let’s fast forward to 2020. And to be vulnerable here, I have never been in love. But I do know what love looks like. I see love in my parents who have now led a marriage for going on 33 years. One that isn’t always big romantic gestures, but one that endures and chooses each other each and every day. I see love in my sister, who poured her heart out into single handedly planning and executing a rehearsal dinner just a few days ago, without expecting much in return.

And I see love so clearly in how Mark and Anvy cared for each other through COVID. It was a scary time to have a loved one (much less 2 loved ones) in the world’s epicenter of a pandemic, shown all over the news for months. But I’m forever grateful that you had each other to lean on when times got hard. When subways were hazardous, y’all learned how to ride electric unicycles. When life got mundane, you found adventure in new recipes and hobbies (including giving Maxx honestly a better quality of life than me). When life slowed down and gave us no choice, you still continued to choose each other. And that is my hope for you in the years to come.

For those of you that do not speak Tagalog, the Philippine national language, the words Kuya and Ate are reserved for referring to an older sibling in a respectful way. And for the longest time me and Kristina avoided giving Mark the satisfaction.

But in this moment, I invite everyone to raise a glass to my Ate Anvy and Kuya Mark. Mahal ko kayo. Congratulations to you both. I wish y’all a lifetime of happiness.

[mjlovesella]

Dead Bart:

Excerpt: Dead Bart is a creepypasta story about a lost episode of The Simpsons that is rumored to exist.

When they began airing The Simpsons TV show, Fox had a strange way of numbering each episode. There are a few unexplained gaps in the numbering and the TV station refuses to explain why. The reason for this is that there was a lost episode in Season 1. From what has been pieced together, the episode’s production number was 7G06, the title was “Dead Bart”.

Finding any details about this missing episode is extremely difficult, None of the staff who were working on the show at the time will discuss it. The lost episode was written entirely by Matt Groening, the creator of the TV show. During production of the first season, they say that Matt Groening began to act very strangely. He became unusually quiet, nervous and withdrawn.

The episode labeled 7G06, Moaning Lisa, was made later and given Dead Bart’s production code to hide the latter’s existence.

When anyone involved with The Simpsons was asked about this, they suddenly became extremely angry and refused to talk about it. They even went so far as to forbid anyone from communicating directly with Matt Groening.

In fact, when the show’s producer was giving a presentation at an event, someone in the crowd asked about the rumored lost episode. The producer immediately walked off the stage, ending the question and answer session half-way through.

A few years ago, I was attending a fan convention where Matt Groening was invited to speak to the crowd. After the event, I managed to follow him backstage and had a chance to talk to him alone, just as he was about to leave. When I happened to mention the lost episode, all color suddenly drained from his face and he began to tremble.

I pressed him for details, but he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. He quickly grabbed a piece of paper, scribbled something on it, and thrust it into my hand. After begging me never to mention the lost episode again, he rushed out of the building.

Looking down at the piece of paper I was holding, I noticed that it had a website address on it. When I got home, I typed the URL into my browser, and it brought me to a Website that was completely black, except for a single link.

As soon as I clicked on the link, a video file started downloading. When I clicked Play, I realized it was an episode of The Simpsons. The title of the file was “Dead Bart”.

The episode started off like any other, but the quality of the animation was noticably poor. The first half of the episode was pretty normal, but the way the characters behaved was a very odd. Homer seemed much more angry than usual, Marge just looked incredibly depressed and Lisa seemed stressed out and nervous. The most disturbing thing was that Bart seemed to be seething with anger and hatred for his parents.

The plot of the episode involved the Simpsons going on a holiday. The plane was taking off and Bart was fooling around, as usual. However, when the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, Bart broke a window and was suddenly sucked out. The next scene showed Bart’s dead body lying on the airport runway. He was barely recognizable and the animation showed an almost photo-realistic drawing of his twisted and mangled corpse.

The second half began with Homer, Marge and Lisa sitting around their kitchen table, sobing and crying. As the crying went on and on, it became more pained and more realistic. The animation started to decay and you could hear strange murmuring in the background. The characters could barely be made out. The screen was stretching and blurring, making them look like deformed shadows with random bright colors thrown on them. There were also faces looking in the window, flashing in and out so you were never sure what they looked like.

This unnerving sobbing and crying went on for almost the entire second half. Towards the end, a title card appeared, reading “One Year Later”. Homer, Marge and Lisa were still sitting at the kitchen table, but now they were shockingly thin. They looked almost like skeletons and there was no sign of Maggie or the pets.

Homer, Marge and Lisa decided to visit Bart’s grave. Springfield was completely deserted and, as they walked towards the cemetery, all of the other houses seemed to be crumbling and abandoned. When they finally reached the grave, Bart’s body was just lying in front of his tombstone, looking just like it did before.

The Simpsons just stood there, staring at Bart’s bloody corpse. The camera zoomed in on Homer’s face and his mouth began moving, but you couldn’t hear what he was saying. The camera zoomed out again and the episode came to a close. There were no credits. The camera just lingered on the tombstones in the background. Each tombstone had the name of every Simpsons guest star engraved on it. Some that no one had heard of in 1989, some that haven’t even been on the show yet. All of the names had a date of death engraved next to them.

For guests who have died since then, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, the dates of their death were exactly correct. The final image was of the entire Simpson family sitting on their couch, their bodies mangled and lifeless. All of this was drawn in the same hyper-realistic style that had been used on Bart’s corpse.

When the episode finished, a thought suddenly occurred to me. You could try to use the tombstones to predict the death of people who have guest-starred on the Simpsons who are still alive.

However, there was something very odd about most of the guest stars who haven’t died yet.

All of their deaths are listed as the same date.

[wonderful-wells-writing]

Fanclub; Chapter 1

EoWells x Reader

Some of the STAR Labs employees have a secret fanclub where they discuss Harrison Wells and share pictures they take when they think he isn't looking. Problem is it's not quite as secret as they think it is. The man himself seems to have taken an interest in the the little group, finding it to be the perfect place to find willing partners to satisfy his needs. And you're his next pick.

Work is dying down for the evening at STAR Labs. Chemists are checking that all the storage units are set to the proper temperatures. Engineers are making sure that everything that needs to be powered down is. Lab techs are cleaning up their stations. But nearly everybody is discussing their plans for the weekend.

There is one worker who is not engaging in such conversations. You are currently crammed between two sections of machinery, determined to get this wiring finished before leaving for the day. That way, Monday, bright and early your team can start doing test runs.

You are not engaging in conversation with others but rather are talking to yourself as you work. “Some red over here, blue wire over there.” Your grin would light up the room if anybody could see it. “I just love when a color-coded array comes together.” There’s a buzz on your right butt-cheek, and you squeal in surprise.

“Everything alright in there?” One of the other scientists looks up from the desk.

“Yeah, Bri,” you extract yourself from the machine parts. “My phone just went off, and I thought something shocked me.”

“Girl, I can not tell you how often that happens to me,” Bri takes her purse from a drawer and a jacket off the chair. “So, what are your plans for the weekend. More number crunching?”

You pull your phone from your back pocket. “Actually my college roommate is having a bachelorette party tonight. So I said I would swing by the bar for a bit.”

“Sounds fun,” Bri gives a wave before heading to the door. “Don’t party too hard.”

She returns the wave before opening a group chat app on her phone to see what the notification is about.

KittyCat42; O.M.G did you see Dr. Wells today? a shirt THAT tight can not be workplace appropriate!!!

Attached is a photo taken from a smartphone at an angle in which the subject does not seem to be aware their picture is being taken. Dr. Harrison Wells is leaning over a desk, examining something on a monitor. Kitty is right; his shirt is very tight, his biceps bulge through the long black sleeves.

You grin, considering sending a reply, but another message comes in first.

YummyBitch73; Think he’s got plans? Looking that good, he’s got to be going out tonight.

Your thumbs move across the screen to type a quick response.

BabyDoll14; Maybe he has a date tonight?

KittyCat42; wonder who the lucky girl is?

You lean against a nearby workbench, smirking at the screen.

---

On the other side of the lab, somebody picks up their phone to check the barrage of notifications coming in. They chuckle before adding their own two cents.

Speedy22: Hey, who knows, it could be a lucky guy.

YummyBitch73: Oh you wish, he is a lady killer through and through

BabyDoll14: I mean, who are we to judge if it’s a lucky lady or gent. Maybe he swings one way, maybe he swings both ways. Who cares, we’re just here to talk about his ass behind his back.

“Speedy’ nods, almost respecting the woman on the other side of the screen for staying objective about objectifying her boss.

Speedy22: Speaking of ass, I got this one yesterday

He opens his gallery and scrolls until an ‘appropriate picture is found. A nice shot of Dr. Wells from behind; the quality is incredible for a smartphone shot. The man’s shirt is riding up, showing a nice strip of the skin of his back, even a bit of where his boxers rise above the waistband of his hands.

YummyBitch73: Damn Speedy, you always get the good ones. You’ll have to teach me some photography lessons sometime.

KittyCat42: what kind of camera are you using? The quality is so gooooood.

“Hey,” a woman’s voice draws his attention away from his device. “Are you staying late again tonight?”

Harrison Wells takes a breath to look her up and down, mentally running through his mind all the employees to try and remember who it is at his office door. “I’ll be headed out soon; I just have to wrap some things up.”

He recalls who she is when he sees the look she’s giving him. Brianna Masters, a specialist working down in Lab C. She would have had to go out of her way to get to his office before leaving. Self-proclaimed president of the Dr. Wells Fanclub, he had just been interacting with the group chat of; after the former president left with a job offer at Mercury Labs. She had been making goo-goo eyes at him since her interview three months ago.

“Well,” Bri twirls a curl of her hair, fluttering her eyelashes. “Harrison, you know I was wondering if you might like to take me out to get some drinks tonight?”

Dr. Wells tries to hide his displeasure at the thought. She wasn’t his type, physically, mentally, emotionally, “I have plans in the morning that require a clear head. Miss. Masters. Now is there anything of importance that you need?” The man was not adverse to flights of fancy to pass the time; he wouldn’t be keeping an eye on the little Fanclub of his if he wasn’t willing to look for ‘interested parties,’ but this particular woman has been of no real interest to him.

For reasons such as how she pouts at his response, “Well, having fun is important.” She mutters before wandering off down the hall, turning her attention to her phone.

YummyBitch73; holy Shit! He just asked me out for drinks. It sucks so much that I have to drive out to Coast City; I”d have taken him up in a heartbeat otherwise.

----

Back in Lab C, you finally finish with the maintenance on the machine. You check your phone once more while heading over to the desk and nearly cackle at what you’re reading. Everybody knows that Bri is full of shit, but there’s no point in calling it out and causing discourse.

You mute the phone to focus on your computer. While humming a quiet tune, you work on moving files to the USB stick plugged into the monitor.

“Fuck,” you whisper, seeing the download time in comparison to the clock on the screen. Of course, you could just leave it be, take the weekend off. It’s not like you get paid extra to run calculations at home.

17 minutes later

“Nonononono, wait, please!” You’re half running to the street as the bus pulls away, leaving you in the illuminated circle of a streetlamp, cursing yourself. That was going to be the last bus coming this way for the night. If you walk home, you’ll never make it in time to change for the party. You might not even make the event at all. You pace up and down the sidewalk, contemplating your options.

A car pulls up beside you, tinted window rolling down, “Need a lift?”

You stop, shocked, “Oh, no I…” you pause, looking through the window, “Dr. Wells, hi...hey.” You swallow your pride. “I would really love to get a ride on-with, with you.” Internally you cringe at how that came out, but figure he probably wouldn’t have heard such a minor slip.

The lock clicks open, and you reach for the door.

“Maple Apartments on South 11th street, right?” Harrison glances at you as you get in the car.

You pause before shutting the door, “do I want to know how you know that?”

He laughs, and you jump a bit at it, “I can see how that would sound a little suspicious.” His smile is reassuring, and his blue eyes are kind behind his glasses. “It was on your registration forms when you started. I enter new employee data myself. Total recall can be useful even for small matters.”

You breathe a sigh of relief, shutting the door and buckling in. “I really appreciate this Dr. Wells, I would have been so late tonight if I didn’t get home to change soon.”

“Bit plans tonight?” Harrison asks as he starts driving. Truth is he had suspected you’d be missing her bus. He had seen you running after the last bus or driven past you walking home numerous times out his way out. You had quite the habit of working until the absolute last moment.

You smile, twiddling your thumbs to keep your hands occupied. “Yeah, I’m meeting a friend at the new bar that opened down the street from my place. She’s getting married soon, and since I can’t make the wedding, I promised I would spend at least a couple hours at her bachelorette party.” You aren’t exactly sure why you’re volunteering this information to your boss. It would be inappropriate to be so casual with him; then again, it’s also inappropriate to be part of a Fanclub that secretly takes pictures of him and talks about how great his ass looks.

Harrison ‘hmms’ in thought. “Why can’t you make it to the wedding?” He glances at you out of the corner of his eye, taking a moment to take in the way you sit, act, look, before returning his eyes to the road.

“Oh, they scheduled it for a Wednesday, so,” you look towards him just moments after he looks away. The first thing you notice is his hair; whenever you’ve seen him in the morning, it’s perfectly combed and straight, but it seems like as the day went on, it began to take on a life of its own. While the back is still nice and neat, the front is sticking out in all kinds of directions.

“You could have asked for the day off,” Dr. Wells offers, “Am I such a terrible boss that you think I”d deny you some vacation after all your hard work?”

You feel a heat rise to your cheeks at what seems to be a compliment to her work ethic, “Oh no, I don’t think that at all. It’s just that, well, we have so much work to do. Every day we get a little closer to your dreams of the particle accelerator, and I want to contribute absolutely everything I can to that dream.” You smile. “You’re going to do such incredible things for the world of science Dr. Wells, and I don’t want to waste any time that could be spent helping you.”

The man is somewhat stunned by this. He’d attributed her long hours and determination to personal ambition. “What about you? Do you want history to remember you for your achievements?”

You bite your lower lip in thought at the question, “I mean sure, it would be nice to be recognized for my contribution, but,” she takes a deep breath, “I’m more concerned about how my work will impact the world, not so much if I’m remembered for it. Anyways you’re the true genius. I can tell that STAR Labs will make big changes and put humanity on a path towards the future. As long as I get to be a part of that, it’s all I really need.”

Harrison does a low chuckle at your sentiment, amused by the naivety. You speak with such hope and wonder and admiration. If you knew the truth, how horrified would you be? The realization of the end goal of the particle accelerator, the effects across history that your determination would wreak.

He grins, “Well, I am glad to have such a dedicated employee, but I do believe that one off day is not going to hurt our progress.”

You purse your lips, “You don’t come down to Lab C very often; you’d be surprised how off the rails things can go when I’m not there. Anyways I would rather work than go to a wedding. It’s not my kind of scene.”

He can sense that you are holding something back but doesn’t press the issue any further. He’s reached your apartment building anyways.

“If you change your mind, I’ll be more than happy to give you the time off,” he says as he parks.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you reach for the door handle, “oh, and thank you so much for the ride. I really owe you one.”

Dr. Wells makes a mental note about cashing in that favor later. “You just stay safe and enjoy yourself tonight.” He smiles warmly at you as you wave goodbye, but when the door shuts, his grin turns a bit darker. He watches you walk away, eyes tracing the curve of your figure, resting on the beautiful shape of your rear, right up until you disappear into your building.

As he begins to drive away, he catches sight of himself in the rearview mirror. There is something about this form of his that seems to drive the ladies crazy, and he wasn’t opposed to taking advantage of that. While pulling back into the street and driving away, he thinks on his situation.

For 13 years now, Eobard Thawne has been trapped in this god-forsaken time period. For a while, he had focused solely on his mission, rarely interacting with others unless it served a greater purpose. But he was still a man, subject to desire. At first, it was almost enough to make him regret allowing Harrison Well’s wife to die, she could have filled his needs easily. But that woman had been intelligent; she’d have discovered his identity eventually, so allowing her to die had been for the best.

Still, after a few years of isolation, Thawne had found the need unbearable and began seeing ways to fill the hole that was forming in his chest. Little flings, one-off nights where he indulged his carnal side, allowed himself the pleasure of another’s body before quickly parting ways with them, when he discovered that a fanclub devoted to him had been formed amongst his employees, that made the whole thing easier.

Joining the group chat under a false name was easy enough. It inflated his ego every time he read them discussing how great they thought he looked, and he was more than happy to provide material for them to gush over. And with that, it was like he had been given a list of women who would fuck him with no questions asked. All he had to do was choose. Of course, he has to be wary of those who might get too clingy or go off telling other people. But it’s not that hard to week those types out of the pack.

Thawne notices magenta neon as he’s driving. A club with a grand opening sign out front. He smiles, knowing that now not only does he have a new prey lure in, but the perfect hunting ground as well.

#eowells x reader #eowells fanfiction #harrison wells x reader #harrison wells fanfiction #eowells #harrison wells #jade writes

[p-eppermintea]

love is a drug (but it never comes with a warning)

AO3 LINK

Pairing: Erwin Smith / Levi Ackerman (Eruri) Characters: Erwin Smith, Levi Ackerman, Isabel Magnolia, Farlan Church Rating: Explicit Warnings: No warnings apply Word Count: 13186 Tags: Sexual Content, Hook-up to Lovers, Pining, Angst, Croissant the cat, Love Confessions, Christmas, Yes I wrote the Christmas scenes in June

Excerpt / Summary:

So, here’s the thing. Levi really isn’t the type of person who invites strangers over for sex. Sure, he had a couple of hook-ups, quick fumbles, and one-night stands after nights out in his younger years – but that’s about the extent of it.

--

NOTE: I started this in October and very slowly finished it over the past 8-ish months. Quality control courtesy of ADHD and my inability to force myself to edit, mixed with my impatience to post. Sorry about mistakes!

So, here’s the thing.

Levi really isn’t the type of person who invites strangers over for sex. Sure, he had a couple of hook-ups, quick fumbles, and one-night stands after nights out in his younger years – but that’s about the extent of it.

The older he gets, the less he cares about sex. He’s slowly paying off a mortgage, has hobbies and a good job and a couple of even better friends. Meeting people just seems like a waste of time, and sex is just so unnecessary and messy.

But after almost two years of celibacy and with the house to himself for the weekend, he caves and downloads Grindr. He pours himself a glass of wine, downs it, and meanders around the house for a little bit. He feeds his cat. Pours himself another glass of wine. Polishes his already meticulously clean coffee table. He finally opens the app properly.

Making a profile doesn’t take him too long, and most of that time is taken up by choosing a profile picture. He settles on the gym photo he sent to Isabel a week earlier. He doesn’t really take a lot of photos of himself either, so it’s not exactly hard for him to choose.

Levi takes one look at the array of profiles before he sighs heavily and throws his phone to the other side of the couch. This is so stupid.

He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous. He’s thirty, for fuck’s sake. He’s gone through all of the stupid hormonal-fuelled confusion from his teen and early adult years, and he hasn’t been self-conscious about himself for as long as he can remember. He doesn’t even get nervous before big presentations. So why is this making his heart race and his palms sweat?

He sits and finishes his drink slowly, listening as his phone buzzes every now and then in front of him.

About twenty minutes pass before he eventually gives in and grabs his phone again.

Three messages. Alright, not bad. He can deal with three messages.

They aren’t really anything special. It’s about what Levi expected; “Top or bottom?”, “Come here often?”. And, of course, a dick pic straight away. Levi scoffs at that last one. It’s an okay photo, he supposes. It’s a just dick, though, there isn’t really much more to it. He’s worth more than some low-effort and unsolicited dick pic, though, so the message is ultimately ignored.

He’s actually a little disappointed by the choices. Maybe he’s a bit too old for this, but it just seems like people have gotten lazy when it comes to looking for hookups. They could’ve at least put some effort into their first messages, for fuck’s sake.

Levi shoots a lazy reply of “Switch” to the first guy. He looks okay in his profile picture. Attractive, but with soft features and the build of a particularly thin tree. He doesn’t really find himself gravitating towards that type of man too often.

Mr. Cheesy-Pick-Up-Line is more his type. Tall, wide shoulders, chiselled, and downright handsome. Erwin, thirty-five. A little bit closer to his age, too.

Too bad his first message is so lame.

Erwin: Come here often?

Levi: What is this, the nineties? Does that even ever work?

Levi: I just downloaded this.

Erwin: Not yet, but I’ve got my fingers crossed! What brings you here?

Levi: Looking for a hook-up, I guess.

Erwin: Any luck?

Levi: Not yet. Unless one mediocre dick pic counts.

Erwin: Unfortunate. I find that it’s quite rare to find a decent one. I could definitely send a much better one

Erwin: That was a joke. I think. Unless…?

This guy is so lame.

Levi: Ha. Ha. Ha. Hilarious.

He chews on his lip, contemplating. He flicks off the lid of the wine bottle and takes a swig. Fuck it. He might as well throw himself right in the deep end and get it over with.

Levi: Alright then. I’ll warn you though, I’m a tough crowd to impress.

And, well.

It’s something, alright. He was right, at least – it is much better. Warm early-morning lighting, with soft shadows that define the sharp planes of his hips. He’s kneeling on a bed, hard and curved in his hand, and okay. Levi’s stomach twists deliciously.

Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.

Levi: When can you come over?

--

When turns out to be right this minute.

Levi chews on his fingernails for the entire forty minutes it takes for Erwin to get to his house.

It’s not until he hears a car door slamming closed out on his driveway that it finally sets in. He’s known this guy for approximately… What, an hour now? And he’s coming over. To his house. At damn near ten o’clock at night.

Oh God, what if he’s a total catfish. Or a serial killer?

By the time there’s a knock at the door, Levi still hasn’t decided whether or not he can actually go through with it. He spends way too long pacing by the door and swearing to himself under his breath. He picks up his cat, and puts her down, and then picks her up again, before finally opening the door.

Erwin is standing in front of him, way taller and way more handsome than his photo looked. “Levi?”

The cat squirms in his arms. “Um.” Levi swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “Yeah, that’s me.” He steps aside and gestures inside, inviting him in.

Erwin steps inside, moving slowly and smiling kindly at Levi on his way past. “Cute cat,” he comments while Levi is bumping the door closed with his hip. He steps closer – way too close – and immediately starts rubbing behind her ears.

“Her name is Croissant,” Levi mumbles. She’s a little sand-coloured thing, with big green eyes and a fluffy tail. The name suits her. “She’s my housemate’s cat.”

Erwin laughs. “Nice to meet you, Croissant.” He’s leaning down and cooing over her, and she’s purring. That little shit, who almost never purrs when Levi is petting her, is actually purring.

Before Levi can get too annoyed that Erwin is giving the cat more attention, Erwin straightens up and looks at Levi with a bright grin. “How shall we do this, then?” he asks. “Would you feel more comfortable if we sit down and talk first, or just get into it?”

Levi contemplates for a moment, Croissant squirming in his arms until she breaks free from his hold and dashes off into the kitchen. It’s not like they’re on a date or anything, so getting to know each other first seems a little pointless to him. “What do you usually do?”

“I don’t do this too often, but when I do, I find it easier to start slow.” He’s already pretty close, but he steps forwards, moving more and more into Levi’s space. They’re basically breathing in each other’s mouths. Levi wets his dry as fuck lips and shuffles nervously. “Is this okay?”

Levi nods, and Erwin’s hand starts travelling lightly up his arm. His body jerks automatically in response, but he quickly relaxes. His hand eventually stops on Levi’s elbow, and he leans even closer. “Tell me when to stop,” he mumbles.

Erwin is taking his sweet time, studying Levi’s face. He squirms under his steely blue gaze. The anticipation is fucking killing him. It’s almost unbearable.

So Levi kisses Erwin first. He raises up onto the tips of his toes and smashes their lips together, throwing his arms up around Erwin’s neck, slow be damned.

It’s good, as far as first kisses go. Erwin is soft and tender, but there’s this underlying dominance to him. He allows Erwin to kiss his way into his mouth, his hands sliding up Levi’s arms and finding their way onto his cheeks.

They move slowly to the living room, hands and mouths roaming carelessly, and clothes slowly finding themselves strewn out on the floor. They fall onto the couch together, Erwin pulling Levi’s shirt off over his head and dropping it onto the floor next to them. Levi shudders at the sight of clothes discarded on the floor haphazardly, but then Erwin is kissing him again, and pushing him down into the couch cushions, and climbing on top of him, and suddenly he just doesn’t mind.

“Do you mind if I mark you?” Erwin asks, looking down at Levi with narrow eyes.

Levi’s breath catches in his throat, and he shakes his head quickly. Erwin moves downwards, and Levi’s head immediately falls back to expose his neck, his eyes rolling back when Erwin’s lips attach to his skin.

Part of Levi wants to roll Erwin over and make him beg – he usually takes on a more dominant role during sex. But they’ve only been making out for about ten minutes, and Levi just wants to lay there and let Erwin do whatever he wants to him, as many times as he wants. Levi groans quietly as Erwin digs his teeth into his skin and sucks hard.

They just seem to click.

--

Afterwards, when they’re both sweaty and exhausted and very much satisfied, Levi makes Erwin a cup of tea, and they sit in the kitchen and drink in silence.

After Levi’s usual hook-ups, he usually either kicks the guy out, or passes out immediately afterwards and pretends to still be asleep in the morning as he sneaks out, never to be seen again. He doesn’t have time for casual conversation with random guys from clubs.

This time feels different – he actually kind of likes Erwin. He’s definitely the best sex he’s ever had, that’s for sure. He really has no idea what to say, though.

Croissant is sitting in the doorway, eyeing them both suspiciously. Levi can feel her judging them.

“So,” Erwin starts, setting his cup down. “What happens now?”

“I don’t know,” Levi admits. He takes a sip of his tea. “You do this more than I do, you tell me.”

“I mean… unless you’d like me to go, perhaps we could put on a movie?” Erwin’s eyebrows wriggle suggestively. It’s stupid, and lame, and annoyingly cute. “And not watch it?”

And that’s how they find themselves back on Levi’s couch, making out lazily with some shitty rom-com that Erwin chose playing on the TV.

Erwin is exactly the right size for Levi to be far too comfortable lying on top of him. He’s big enough to wrap himself almost completely around Levi’s body. He feels oddly secure.

He’s also the perfect size, it seems, for Croissant to insert herself directly in-between them, pushing her little head between the two of them and lying down directly on Erwin’s chest. She starts purring immediately, flexing her claws in Erwin’s shirt, and flicking Levi with her tail.

“Oh wow,” Levi says, sitting up and crossing his arms. “Are you some kind of cat hypnotist or something?”

Erwin laughs, scratching Croissant behind the ears. “I guess she just likes me.”

Levi scoffs. “The little bitch doesn’t like anyone except my dumbshit housemate,” he replies. “She doesn’t even like me that much.”

“That’s surprising, you’re very pleasant,” Erwin replies, smiling cheekily. The joke is obvious behind his eyes and toothy smile.

“If my stupid cat wasn’t between us right now, I’d kick your ass.”

Erwin laughs, a bright and hearty sound that rumbles deep in his chest and startles Croissant. She merely looks at him in alarm for a moment, and then goes back to purring. He continues to fuss over her, making little kissy faces and squishing her face delicately in his hands. “You are so cute,” he coos, wrapping his arms around her gently and pulling her closer to his chest.

All Levi can really do is just watch as his Grindr hook-up, still in just his underwear and a T-shirt, gives his cat more attention than him. He can’t help but smile a little bit to himself, though, as he watches Erwin interacting with Croissant. It’s actually pretty endearing, in a way.

“I think someone’s in love,” Levi comments. He watches for a little bit longer, before his erection starts to go down and he gets a little too impatient. “Okay, time’s up. Shove her off and pay attention to me again.”

Erwin rubs his nose lovingly against Croissant’s forehead and picks her up, putting her down on the carpet. She looks disappointed, but opts for staring up at them instead of jumping up again. He looks back up at Levi and wets his lips, pulling him down with a large hand on the back of his neck.

It’s not until after half a movie, two more rounds, and a few episodes of Friends later, that Erwin yawns loudly, stretching his arms over his head.

“It’s late,” Levi observes. The clock above the TV reads somewhere after 2 AM. He really wasn’t intending for Erwin to stay for so long, but part of him really didn’t want him to leave. If anyone asks him, he’ll probably say that hormones were compelling him to let Erwin stay – it has been a while since he’s had any kind of sex, after all. But the truth is that he actually just really likes spending time with him.

“Yeah,” Erwin replies slowly.

“You’re probably too tired to drive home.”

“I guess I am, yeah.” Erwin’s eyebrow rises, waiting.

Levi looks down at his hands, scraping at an invisible speck on his thumbnail. “So maybe you should stay for the night. Y’know. So you don’t fall asleep at the wheel and die.”

Erwin huffs out a laugh. “That sounds good to me.”

Levi stands up, rubbing at his tired eyes with his sleeve. He reaches out his hand sheepishly, and leads Erwin into his bedroom – Croissant following close by.

“Just don’t leave in the middle of the night and steal my shit,” Levi grumbles. “I’ll know.”

--

When Levi wakes up at 9 AM in the morning (which is uncharacteristically late for him), he’s almost shocked that Erwin is still in the bed with him. For some reason, he kind of expected him to get up and disappear during the night. He doesn’t seem like the type, but there’s always the possibility. And of course, Croissant is curled up on the pillow, right next to his head, and snoring quietly.

He sits up in bed and watches them for a little bit. While Croissant is a bit of a cuddle bug sometimes, she’s never really connected with anyone as quickly as she seems to be connecting with Erwin. Even when Isabel brought her home as a rescue kitten – it took her a couple of months to get to this point. What’s so special about Erwin, then?

Levi is almost tempted to take a photo of the two for Isabel, but he really doesn’t want to be that guy who takes weird creepy photos of his hook-ups. He also doesn’t even want to think about all the questions and comments she’ll have for him. Knowing her, she’d be on the first train back, just to get a glimpse at Erwin. No, it’s probably better he keeps this to himself. She’ll inevitably find out eventually, though.

Erwin shifts and groans in his sleep, and Levi startles, whipping his head the other way. He quietly crawls out of bed and retreats into his en suite, closing the door carefully behind him. He busies himself with brushing his teeth, keeping an ear out in case Erwin stirs more.

He has no idea what he’s going to do when Erwin wakes up. He supposes he should make him breakfast and tea, and then what? Would it be rude to ask him to leave after that? He could always use work as an excuse if he needs to.

Levi sits on the side of the bathtub for a little bit, eyeing the spiderweb in the corner of his ceiling with disgust. It’s been there for a few weeks, but he doesn’t have the heart to get rid of it while there’s a spider still living there. After all, she keeps the flies out.

He sighs loudly and gets up, leaving the bathroom quietly. Erwin is sitting up in bed with Croissant, stroking her back quietly. Unfazed by Levi’s re-entrance, she rolls over onto her back, purring loudly as Erwin rubs her belly.

“Wow, you have her so whipped,” Levi observes.

Erwin smiles up at Levi. “I guess I just have the magic touch or something.”

Levi lingers in the doorway, shuffling his feet. He watches as Erwin leans over and presses his face into Croissant’s chest, scratching her cheeks. It’s stupidly cute, and Levi hates it.

“Um, so,” Levi starts. “Sleep well?” He cringes. Small talk really isn’t his thing, obviously.

Erwin sits up, smiling handsomely up at Levi. “I did, thank you.”

Levi sits down on the edge of the bed, reaching out to Croissant and softly petting her head. She looks up at him, looking downright offended that he’d even dare to look at her right now. In one swift motion, she flips over and bolts out of the room, sprinting down the hallway at full speed.

They both sit in silence, avoiding eye contact like the plague. Or, at least Levi avoids it. When he finally looks up at Erwin, he’s looking right back at him. His cheeks turn hot.

It’s not long until Erwin is pushing him down into the mattress and slowly kissing his way down Levi’s chest. His mouth is hot and wet when he takes him all the way down.

--

Levi makes both of them breakfast and they eat quietly in the kitchen, exchanging casual small talk every now and then. Erwin is a sous chef. He has no siblings, both of his parents are dead, and he lives alone. He likes dogs more than cats, but cats are cool, too.

They both have such regular, boring lives. No wonder Erwin is so freaky in bed.

Erwin puts his empty teacup down carefully and stretches, groaning loudly as he does. “I have to go,” he starts. Levi deflates a little, strangely disappointed. Erwin continues, “I’d really like to see you again, though.”

“I’d like that too.”

They say an awkward goodbye to each other at the door. Levi gives Erwin his phone number with a shy, “Call me whenever,” and watches as Erwin gets in his car and drives away.

Croissant sits by the door for most of the day.

--

Levi: I think you broke my cat.

Erwin: Oh?

The image Levi attaches is of Croissant, sleeping right next to the front door.

Levi: She’s been here since you left yesterday.

Erwin: I guess she misses me!

He also replies with a dorky laughing emote, and seriously Levi is so close to just blocking him. What is he, eighty-five?

Levi: My housemate came home, and the cat barely even looked at her. Usually, you can’t keep them away from each other.

Erwin: Oops! :)

Levi: She might get too lovesick, so you might have to come over again soon, maybe.

Levi physically cringes after hitting send on that one. This sort of weird flirting thing is new to him, but he quite likes Erwin. He never knew how enjoyable slightly awkward non-conversations and really good sex could actually be. It’s enjoyable enough to actually let himself talk like this, he supposes.

Erwin: Just tell me when

--

When Erwin comes over for the second time that Tuesday afternoon, he immediately scoops Croissant up into his arms and rocks her in his arms, pressing little kisses onto her forehead. She squirms in his arms until he loosens his grip and climbs up onto his shoulders.

Isabel slides up next to Levi, eyeing them both curiously. “Wow, I thought he was joking,” she comments, eyes wide. “But there she is, happy as a peach.”

They go through the weird introductory stage as fast as they can. Luckily, Isabel and Erwin are both rays of fucking sunshine, so they get along really easily, readily going into a full conversation about Croissant while Levi stands there awkwardly. They don’t talk for too long – Croissant is far too insistent on Erwin’s full attention for that – and soon move to the kitchen. The plan is for Erwin to cook dinner, Isabel to “have a nosy at her big bro’s new man” (her words), and Levi to suffer eternally until she finally leaves them alone.

Isabel sits herself down on one of the bar stools at the kitchen island, resting her chin in her hands and looking between Levi and Erwin. She’s smiling uncontrollably at them, and it’s seriously creeping Levi out. She makes a happy little noise when Erwin sets Croissant down in her lap. Surprisingly, she settles right down, staring back at Erwin with big eyes.

Isabel and Erwin get back into their easy conversation, with Levi chiming in every now and then, while Erwin gets to work. He’s making vegan spaghetti and meatballs, as per Isabel’s request. Levi and Isabel half-play Scrabble while they wait, and Croissant eventually jumps down from her lap in favour of following Erwin around the kitchen – nearly tripping him up every five minutes.

It’s getting dark outside by the time Erwin finishes. Levi pours them all a glass of wine each, and they eat at the dining table.

Surprisingly to himself, Levi finds himself really enjoying himself. Erwin and Isabel seem to get along really well, which is good. He probably wouldn’t be able to see him anymore if she didn’t like him. It’s not exactly hard to get Isabel to like you, so if she doesn’t like someone, there must really be something wrong with them – especially if they’re willing to make dinner. And enough for leftovers, at that.

“God, you should cook for us every day,” Isabel groans, shoving her clear plate forwards. “I will give you Levi’s entire paycheque to be the head chef at Casa de Levi and Isabel.”

Erwin laughs, scratching his neck and blushing bashfully. “Oh, well…” he trails off, glancing at Levi, who just shrugs. “In that case, I’d quit my job in a heartbeat. I’ll even cook dinners for little Croissant here.” He looks down at her, where she insisted on curling up on his lap while they ate. She’s usually not allowed to be at the dinner table while they eat, but… well, Levi couldn’t exactly say no to all three of them, could he?

Isabel claps her hands together and looks at Levi with mock-pleading eyes, jutting out her bottom lip. “Oh please, Levi, can we keep him?”

Levi raises an eyebrow and pretends to think about it for a moment. He might as well play along. “I guess so, but only if you promise to clean up after him.”

Next to him, Erwin chuckles quietly. He reaches over subtly and places a hand on Levi’s knee under the table. Levi nearly jumps out of his skin, but manages to disguise it as shifting in his seat. His hand shifts, moving upwards slowly and eventually settling again high up on his thigh. When he glances at Erwin, all he gets is a small, polite smile.

Isabel grins hugely at Erwin, leaning forwards. “Looks like you’re staying here forever, then.”

“You’ll have to help me pack a bag,” he counters, somehow smiling back with the same intensity as Isabel. All while slowly sliding his hand between Levi’s thighs. When he opens his legs a little bit more, almost instinctively, Erwin’s hand moves further forwards. He rubs Levi through his jeans slowly, and Levi feels himself hardening, and okay, okay, okay.

Levi jumps up, completely startling Croissant and causing her to wriggle off of Erwin’s lap and shoot off out of the kitchen. “I’ll clean up,” he blurts out. He busies himself with taking all of the plates and empty wine glasses to the sink. Erwin looks up at Levi as he takes his plate, one eyebrow raised in concern. He smiles minutely, just to assure him that everything’s okay.

He cleans the dishes as quickly as he can manage whilst still being as meticulous as he usually is, and Erwin and Isabel continue their casual conversation quietly amongst themselves. He dries off his hands and turns around, tossing the handtowel at Isabel’s head. “Alright, fuck off now, it’s my turn.”

Isabel stands up abruptly and throws the towel back at him, missing completely. She’s smiling. “Alright, Mr. Grumpy Bones, I’m going!” She turns to Erwin on her way out and gives a little wave. “It was nice to meet you, I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah, you too!”

She turns back just before she leaves the room and stares Levi down, her eyes saying, “Don’t you dare fuck in the kitchen,” in every way.

Levi huffs and slowly walks towards Erwin, waiting until he hears Isabel close her bedroom door behind her until he finally throws one leg over Erwin’s legs and climbs into his lap. “That was pretty mean,” he tells him, quiet and under his breath. He grazes his lips lightly against Erwin’s cheek, feeling him shudder.

“What was?” Erwin asks, smirking slyly.

“You know.” He nudges Erwin’s lips gently; not kissing him yet, but teasing. He puts a hand on Erwin’s cheek, using his thumb to part his lips and open up his mouth, and Erwin chases Levi’s tongue with his own.

They finally kiss, Erwin sighing contently and wrapping his arms perfectly around Levi’s waist. “Which one’s your bedroom again?” Erwin’s words come out as a whisper against Levi’s lips. They kiss again, and Erwin pulls Levi even closer, their chests pressing together. He slides his arms down and heaves both him and Levi up in one movement.

Levi’s legs wrap around Erwin’s waist, clinging to him like his life depends on it. “First door on the left down the corridor, make it quick.”

--

They have their first kind-of-but-really-not date on the following Friday.

It starts with Isabel harassing Levi from the second he gets home from work about how they “absolutely must go out tonight!” As much as he hates to admit it, Levi has never really been able to say no to her – and she knows it, too. That’s why there are photos of them all over the house, and a cat called Croissant.

Levi plays along and protests weakly for all of two minutes before giving in; she really does have him wrapped around her little finger. He feigns annoyance as he trudges to the bathroom to shower, just for the drama of it all. Truth is, they haven’t really had a night out together for a while. She’s been working pretty hard recently, and she deserves to have a nice time.

Levi showers as quickly and as thoroughly as he can manage without Isabel knocking the door down. He barely gets his underwear on before she’s barging into his bedroom and insisting that he dress up, immediately digging through his wardrobe to find him a shirt. She throws a dark blue button-down with white flowers to him – a shirt that she had gifted to him a few months ago after receiving her first paycheque. Levi isn’t really a flowers person at all, but it’s his favourite shirt. He’s allowed to be a sentimental bitch every once and a while.

Isabel pretty much forces him into a pair of inappropriately tight dress pants and pats him sweetly on the cheek. “So handsome!”

He shrugs her off of him, his cheeks growing warm. “Yeah yeah, get ready, and let’s fuckin’ go.”

She orders them both an Uber into the city – with one stop on the way to pick Farlan up – and walks them so quickly to the bar that she’s practically running. They end up in a fancy-looking underground cocktail lounge on the main street. It’s not quite dark out yet, and the clouds are grey and dense with rain. It had rained for most of the day already, but it didn’t seem like it would stop any time soon. Inside, there’s dim, warm lighting from the little chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, swing music playing on the speakers, and a lit fireplace. The whole nine yards.

They’re escorted to a small booth in the corner and given a couple of food and drink menus. Farlan and Levi go into a conversation about their respective days at work while Isabel immediately snatches up the menus and pours over them.

It’s been far too long since Levi and Farlan last caught up properly, but they fly back into comfortable conversation with ease. The three of them have a lot to talk about, especially after a couple of drinks each.

Levi gets up after a while to use the bathroom, slash buy the next round, slash flirt awkwardly with the stupidly cute bartender while he makes their drinks. When he walks back to their table, there are noticeably a couple more strawberries in the glasses than usual. He supposes that’s all he’ll get from his weird flirty banter, but he’s okay with that. He admires the professionality more than he cares for getting his number.

He barely sits back down and starts up the conversation again before Isabel gasps loudly, squirming in her seat. “Erwin’s here!” she squeaks, far too loudly, and pointing at the other side of the restaurant.

And yep. There he is. Of course, she invited him.

Levi hides behind his drink and watches as Erwin rushes over, all handsome and tall and button-up shirt tucked in with the sleeves rolled up and a stupid navy tie, and who even gave him the right to look that good?

“God, sorry I’m late,” Erwin says hurriedly. “We were late with closing, and then I got stuck in some traffic, and then I had to go home and change, and –”

Isabel cuts him off with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry about it!” She stands up from her seat next to Levi and pats the now-vacant chair. “Sit! I’ll get you a drink – the espresso martinis here are so good.”

She runs off to the bar before Erwin can get another word in, let alone protest to her spending money on him.

There’s a long beat of weird, awkward silence before Farlan sticks his hand out, switching from awkward to his usual friendly self in a split second. “You’re Erwin, then,” he remarks.

Erwin shakes Farlan’s hand. “And you must be Farlan,” he counters. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Isabel.”

“Likewise,” Farlan responds, not without taking a not-so-subtle glance at Levi and raising his eyebrows suggestively. It takes every bit of strength in Levi’s being not to throw his drink straight at him. Instead, he just chews on his flimsy paper straw and grunts in acknowledgement.

“I think you just might be Isabel’s new favourite person,” Farlan continues. “She’s already completely smitten.”

Right on cue, Isabel gently places two espresso martinis down onto the table, before sitting down heavily herself next to Farlan. “If you and Levi split up, I’m totally swooping in and making you my housewife,” she jokes. “I do love some good home cooking.”

Erwin laughs nervously and sips his drink. “Well, I mean… There isn’t really anything to split up,” he adds in, glancing warily at Levi. “So… I suppose I could be your housewife whenever, then.”

All Levi can do is stare down into his drink and fidget with his hands. It is true that they aren’t actually together, but there’s something about the way Erwin said it, just like that - and he sounded so sure about it. For some reason, it hurt.

Levi tries so hard not to wear his emotions on his sleeve. Everyone who’s known him for more than a minute knows that he’d rather shove his head into a spider web than show his emotions, but that hit him differently for some reason. Perhaps it’s just the fact that he was always under the impression that there was something to split up – they’ve been seeing each other regularly for a while – longer than anyone has ever wanted to be around Levi for, other than Isabel and Farlan. Does Erwin actually think that way, or is he saying it because he thinks that’s what Levi thinks?

The thought of that, and coupled with the fact that Isabel didn’t even mention that he was coming, sends his brain into overload. He listens to Isabel and Farlan continue to talk at Erwin, until the staticky feeling in his brain starts to become too much and he downs the rest of his drink in one go. “Excuse me,” he says, getting up on wobbly legs and high tailing it to the bathroom as fast as he can.

He washes his hands once. And again. And then once more, for his own peace of mind.

Levi sighs and stares at himself in the mirror – at his tired, sunken-in eyes; the dryness of his lips and the paleness of his skin; his messy, dark hair. Every part of his brain is screaming at him. That he’s not good enough for Erwin; that he’s just going to leave him at the first chance he gets. It shouldn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, just let it play out. His throat is dry, but he swallows down his anxiety and turns the tap on again, frantically dispensing soap onto his hand.

Two men enter the bathroom, chatting obnoxiously loudly with each other, and Levi uses it as an opportunity to escape back to their table. Nobody says anything, thank God¸ but Isabel slowly pushes a pink cocktail in a jar towards him. She gives him her best puppy-dog eyes, and he forgives her instantly. Of course he does.

His heartbeat thumps loudly in his ears as he sits down next to Erwin. He’s good at acting natural, so he warily hooks his foot around Erwin’s calf and puts a hand down on his thigh. He gets a warm smile in return, and Erwin leans in closer.

“So… Isabel didn’t mention that I was coming, then,” Erwin starts, quietly.

“No, she didn’t.”

“She said that she’s sorry for making you uncomfortable,” he offers.

Levi sighs. “Yeah, I know she is. She just got a bit carried away.”

Erwin raises an eyebrow at him. “There’s not much she can’t get away with with you, huh?” He sounds surprised, as if he hasn’t been in the same room as both of them at once. It’s laughably obvious how lenient Levi is with Isabel. She could come home with a whole litter of kittens, and he’d let her keep all of them if it would make her happy.

Of course, he wouldn’t actually tell her that, because she’d probably come home with a box full of cats the next day. But the sentiment is still there.

Levi shrugs passively. “She’s like a little sister to me,” he explains. “It’d be very un-big-brotherly of me to not let her get away with everything.”

That seems to make Erwin smile. “That’s really sweet.”

They sip their drinks together, in a silence that’s comfortable but still so painfully awkward.

Across the table, Isabel and Farlan are arguing over a basket of sweet potato fries – Farlan keeps stealing all of the crispy ones before Isabel can even look at them, how dare he. They’re both laughing about it, but Levi really wouldn’t be surprised if Isabel jumped over the table and started clawing at him.

Levi stays mostly quiet for the next hour or so, only chiming in on conversation every now and then. He just sits and sips on cocktail after cocktail, sinking into a fuzzy haze. By the time everyone starts to get ready to leave, his cheeks are numb, and it takes him a good few seconds to stand up on his shaky legs.

“We should head home before I spend all of my money,” Isabel sighs, pulling her coat over her shoulders.

Erwin slowly stands up and looks around at them, unsure what to do with himself. Isabel hooks her arm around Erwin’s and pulls herself close to his side.

“Come back to ours,” she says, looking up at him. “I have some wine left, and you can stay the night.” She turns to Levi. God, she knows he can’t resist her stupid puppy-dog eyes. “Right?”

Levi shrugs, acting as nonchalant as he can. “Sounds good.”

Erwin smiles, “Sounds good to me, too.”

--

It’s not long until Isabel is wine-drunk and singing and swaying around the kitchen with Croissant huddled securely to her chest, whilst Levi, Erwin, and Farlan play Uno at the table. It’s definitely not Levi’s game of choice – not by a long shot. He’s unnecessarily competitive and impatient, and everyone knows that when you mix that with Uno, friendships get destroyed and someone ends up crying. He sits there, grumpy as ever and holding about fifteen cards, and glares at Farlan from across the table. He somehow managed to get all of the pick up four and reversal cards, completely fucking Levi over, because he’s a fucking coward who doesn’t even dare target the new guy.

“Fucking hell Is, it’s your turn,” Levi groans, picking up her hand and throwing it at her weakly. The cards flutter down around her and land softly at her feet.

“Noooo, no cards. Time to dance with the baby.” The baby, who is actually a four-year-old adult cat, seems content to just sit in her arms and be swayed.

Erwin looks on with amusement. It’s the first time since they got home that Croissant hasn’t stuck to Erwin like glue. (Although, she did get a bit upset about being stolen from her comfortable perch on his lap.)

“My turn, then!” Farlan says. He’s far too excited, Levi notices. And… yep, another pick up two card. Yet again, Levi doesn’t have anything to refute it with. He grumbles in annoyance as he picks up another two. He’s so getting his ass beaten later.

Next to him, Erwin takes his turn, happily exclaiming, “Uno!” as he sets down a yellow reversal card.

Levi throws his card onto the pile unceremoniously, and then Farlan takes his turn, and ultimately, Erwin is declared the winner.

“Thank fuck that’s over,” Levi hisses, dropping the rest of his cards onto the table. “I forgot that you’re an asshole.”

Farlan laughs happily. “Not my fault you’re bad at Uno.”

“I will punch you, and you know I will,” Levi challenges, standing up. It’s all just casual banter, and they both know that he probably wouldn’t punch Farlan. (Probably.)

“Let’s go, then!” Farlan jumps to his feet, puffing out his chest comically. He moves into an open space and beckons at Levi, planting his feet down firmly on the ground and bracing himself.

Erwin looks alarmed, but he doesn’t say anything. He just watches quietly as Levi lets out a (reasonably volumed) war cry and immediately pounces on Farlan like a cat. Their actual cat squirms out of Isabel’s arms and bolts off out of the kitchen. They wrestle with each other, and it’s like they’re kids again. Except much less messy, and more… two men who are getting way too old for wrestling.

Levi manages to pin Farlan down, jamming his hands under his shirt and wriggling them against his sides. He tickles Farlan until he’s a mess of laughter and surprisingly high-pitched noises, thrashing around and begging him to stop.

“It’s like watching two puppies fight,” Erwin remarks amusedly. He steps back cautiously when Levi’s head whips around to look at him.

“You wanna go too, big boy?”

Erwin raises an eyebrow at him. “You really think you could take me down?” he challenges. He thinks for a second before adding a wary sounding, “Short stuff?”

Isabel and Farlan gasp dramatically. “You didn’t,” Isabel laughed.

Levi gets up rather ungracefully and starts towards Erwin, flipping his hair out of his face and cracking his knuckles. Erwin doesn’t seem to be too worried by his “boy on the streets” intimidation tactic. He seems confident that Levi won’t actually hurt him or anything, but they both know that Levi is stronger than he looks.

Levi is also a lot quicker than he looks, too, and he manages to dodge around Erwin and jump up onto his back. He uses all of his weight to clumsily pull Erwin down onto the ground, rolling him over onto his back and throwing a leg over his body to straddle him. Isabel cheers for him enthusiastically. Even though Erwin’s tipsy state makes it a lot easier to take him down, he still huffs in triumph at his win.

“I wasn’t expecting you to actually be able to do it,” Erwin observes. He subtly places a hand on Levi’s thigh, stroking it gently. “I stand corrected.”

Levi grumbles under his breath nervously, his face warm and flushed. He moves to stand up and Erwin strikes, wrapping his arms around Levi and flipping him over onto the ground. The impact knocks the wind out of Levi’s lungs a little bit, and he gasps for breath.

“You dirty bitch,” Levi hisses, immediately struggling to regain control. Erwin just laughs and sits down heavily on his thighs, restricting his movement.

Erwin shrugs, grabbing Levi’s hands and pinning them down by his head. “You don’t win by playing nice and following rules.”

Levi sticks up his nose at Erwin, giving him his best annoyed face.

All he gets in return is a big grin as Erwin leans down, pressing a kiss on the tip of his nose. “For such an angry little man, you sure are cute,” he points out.

From the kitchen, Farlan fakes gagging sounds. “I’m going to throw up, stop it.” Isabel giggles next to him.

Just to be rude, Erwin leans down and kisses Levi properly, laughing against his mouth. And what kind of person would Levi be if he didn’t kiss him back?

--

It happens slowly, but eventually, Erwin ends up spending most of his time at Levi and Isabel’s place. It started as one or two times a week, but then Levi suggests that it could be nice if Erwin spent a weekend there. After that, his toothbrush starts making an appearance in the bathroom, and Levi finds at least three pairs of his underwear in his wardrobe. They go to work at the same time, Levi comes home, and then he and Croissant just sit and wait for Erwin to come back a couple of hours. Sometimes it feels like years, but he doesn’t think too far into that.

Levi isn’t entirely sure what it is that keeps Erwin coming back. It could be that he gets along with Isabel really well. Both her and Croissant seem to follow him around wherever he goes. He comes home one day to all three of them asleep on the couch, some cheesy TV show playing in the background. He tries not to feel too jealous about their bond, because he and Erwin do still spend plenty of time alone together. But Levi just seems to struggle to connect with people in the same way that Isabel has always been able to, and he’s always been uncomfortably insecure about that.

Awkward lapses in conversation slowly turn into comfortable silences, though, and slowly but surely, it gets easier.

It’s hard for Levi to believe that someone like Erwin could genuinely like him, sometimes. He wouldn’t exactly brand himself as someone who’s easy to tolerate, never mind actually like. But apparently Erwin, who is relentlessly pleasant to be around and far easier to get along with than Levi is himself, really, actually, genuinely likes him.

Levi brushes his teeth and stares at Erwin’s razor, sitting on the side of the sink. It’s just sitting there, like it pays rent or something. And it should annoy him, but it doesn’t. Erwin is very slowly invading his home, his social life, his thoughts. Surprisingly, he’s okay with it. What started out as a hook-up and then really good casual sex is now… a friendship, he guesses. The sex is still good too, which is a bonus.

He sighs and puts his toothbrush back in its holder. What is he turning into?

--

They don’t see each other for about two weeks, making sure to text every now and then and communicate through Isabel. Even Levi will admit that it gets a little sad around the house without Erwin around. Croissant goes all around the house trying to find him, and Levi feels bad enough for her that he lets her sleep in his bed for a couple of nights.

Levi comes home on Thursday night from what is turning out to be his longest and most exhausting week in a long time. He fully intends on just lying on the kitchen floor with his cat for the next few hours and disintegrating into a pile of sand. He groans, hanging his work bag up on the hook by the front door, and heads towards the kitchen. The smell of sautéing onions gets stronger the closer he gets, accompanied by some faint pop song on the radio. “God, Isabel, I swear,” he starts, “if another one of the assholes I work with tests me, I’m going to start punching.”

He rounds the corner into the kitchen, only to be met by broad shoulders and blond hair. He blinks at Erwin, standing at the stove with Levi’s stupid old apron on. It’s pink, with big black letters on that front that invite you to kiss the cook. It’s also about two sizes too small on Erwin, and Levi has to work hard to suppress his laughter. “My, Isabel, you sure do look different today, did you cut your hair?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Erwin replies, turning back to the stove. “She let me in and went out for the night.”

“Right,” Levi says, suspicious. He approaches the kitchen island cautiously. Croissant is sitting on one of the stools, flicking her fluffy tail and watching Erwin intently. He sits on the stool next to her and reaches over to pet her head.

“I mean,” Erwin continues, pushing the contents of the pan around slowly, “she told me you were having a bad week and invited me over. Y’know, to help make you feel better.”

While he has never met them, Levi knows that Erwin has friends of his own. Which, as Levi understands it, loosely translates to having something better to do with his time. He doesn’t say that, though, because the last time he brought it up, Erwin just looked really sad and said, “What could be better than this?” Levi felt guilty for a whole week after that.

“I have this whole thing planned for tonight, so you can just go sit down and relax,” Erwin explains, reaching over to turn the kettle on. “I’ll bring a cup of tea out for you.”

Levi starts to protest, but Erwin gives him a look of pure don’t even try that’s somehow scary enough to scare Levi, of all people, into just shutting up and following instructions.

He heads into the living room, taking off his blazer on the way and folding it up neatly, placing it carefully on one of the armchairs. He throws himself down onto the couch, clicking the on button on the TV remote. He doesn’t really indulge himself on TV at all, but flips the channel until he lands on the opening song of this soap opera that he and Isabel started watching ages ago. She slowly lost interest and stopped watching, but Levi still catches up on it every now and then.

Erwin comes in and sets a mug down on the coffee table, taking care to put a coaster down first. Levi watches as he meticulously shifts the coaster around until it’s in the exact spot (more or less) that Levi puts it every time he uses it. He softly kisses Levi on the forehead on his way out, having said nothing about his evening TV viewing choices – Levi sighs in relief at that.

Levi takes a big gulp of his tea and sits back. He swims in and out of consciousness for a little bit, only half paying attention to his show. It’s been such a long and shitty week that he can’t even watch his favourite soap opera for longer than ten minutes without just wanting to fall asleep immediately.

The next thing he knows, Erwin is standing over Levi and gently shaking his shoulder. “Dinner’s ready,” he says softly when Levi opens his eyes.

Levi groans and crawls off of the couch, still half asleep. His soap’s credits sequence is playing on the TV, so at least he hasn’t been asleep for too long. He follows Erwin to the dining room, yawning obnoxiously loudly as he trails slowly behind him. “Thanks for making dinner,” he mumbles. “I’m so exhausted, I probably would’ve forgotten to eat again.”

Erwin laughs quietly. “Yeah, Isabel mentioned that you haven’t been eating properly.”

“Figures,” Levi sighs, sitting down at the table. There’s a big bowl of spaghetti bolognese (with real meat) in front of him, and a big loaf of garlic bread in the middle of the table. “Oh God,” he moans, reaching straight for the end piece of the loaf. “I am so in love.”

He doesn’t even try to back-peddle on that – he just immediately blocks it out of his memories and shoves the entire slice of garlic bread into his mouth at once. Thankfully, Erwin just sits down and doesn’t mention it at all, looking noticeably redder in the face.

Levi scarfs down his dinner in record time, downing an entire glass of water afterwards. “You’re too good at this,” he sighs. “Maybe you should be our live-in chef.”

“I’m sure Isabel will be very happy to hear that,” Erwin replies. “And Croissant, of course. She was absolutely screaming at me when I got here.”

“Stupid fucking cat.” Levi says it with all of the love he can muster. After all, they’re not that dissimilar when it comes to Erwin these days – always wanting to spend time with each other. He almost rolls his eyes at himself – he’s turned into such a fucking sap, it almost makes him sick.

They sit there for a little longer while Erwin finishes his own dinner, keeping up quiet casual conversation. Levi slowly eats away at the rest of the garlic bread, despite having eaten way too much and way too quickly. The bread is just so good, though, that he can’t resist.

Erwin takes their plates to the kitchen and gets to tidying up. Levi rests his chin in his hands and watches him work. He cleans up thoroughly and efficiently, and fuck, Levi should not be as turned on by that as he is – and yet…

Before he fully realises he’s doing it, Levi gets up from his seat and approaches Erwin, turning him around and kissing him straight on the lips. Between the tea, dinner, cleaning up afterwards, and just being here in general – Levi just can’t resist. He has always been independent, never relying on anyone, but letting Erwin look after him for just one night is just so refreshing.

Levi pulls back slowly and watches as Erwin stands there with his eyes still closed and his lips still parted and looking so beautiful; and before he can stop it, a little voice in his mind says, “Fuck, I’m in love with you.”

“Oh,” he says, out loud. It’s the first time he’s ever allowed himself to think about it. It slipped out, really – he’s been in denial about it for months now, shoving any thought even beginning with L deep into a little locked box in his mind.

Erwin opens his eyes and raises an eyebrow. He replies with a quiet, “Oh?” in return.

Levi laughs nervously, pulling away and backing the fuck up and out of Erwin’s general vicinity as fast as he can. He’s suddenly sweating buckets, and he can feel it sliding down his back – taunting him. “Oh!” he repeats. “Would you just look at the time.” He pulls his sleeve up to reveal his watch-less wrist. “I should go take a shower.”

Erwin looks conflicted for a second, cocking his head to the side like a confused dog, but he suddenly perks up and reaches out to grab Levi’s arm before he can run off to the bathroom. Any reaction to Levi’s sudden weirdness is thrown out the window as a shy smile spreads across his face. “Wait here a minute. I was going to draw you a bath as a nice surprise.” He pauses. “Well, I suppose it’s not much of a surprise now, but…”

“Oh,” Levi says again. He cringes at his overuse of the word and digs his nails into his palm, cursing this ridiculous gay panic. “That sounds good.”

Erwin happily trots off towards the bathroom, leaving Levi to stand around awkwardly in the kitchen. It’s almost too good. Dinner and a bath wouldn’t exactly be the most luxurious thing in the world in a lot of people’s eyes, but the most that Levi has ever gotten in terms of – he guesses – romantic gestures, is a one-night stand ordering food to his house after sex.

Erwin is making things very difficult for him, indeed.

While he’s in the kitchen, Levi busies himself with feeding Croissant for the night. The spoilt little cat meows loudly at his feet as he’s tipping a tin of Fancy Feast onto her plate. He puts the plate down for her and she immediately goes for it, scarfing the entire thing down in record time. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think she was being starved to death.

Levi squats down next to Croissant and strokes her back while she eats. It must be nice to be a cat, he thinks. Sitting around all day, not having to go to work or file taxes. Or deal with the feelings that you’ve been repressing for your friend-with-benefits, that have now reared their ugly little head despite how far you try to shove them down.

Not that Levi is bitter about it or anything.

Erwin calls out to him from the bathroom, and Levi gives Croissant one final scratch under the chin before he heads off to the bathroom.

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t a bathroom filled to the brim with candles, a portable speaker playing quiet classical music, and a bath full of bubbles. Erwin is sitting down on the edge of the toilet lid, looking nervous as all hell.

It’s romantic, that’s for sure.

And all Levi can do is just start laughing. To make it worse, the sad, dejected look on Erwin’s face just makes him laugh even more. “Oh, God- Erwin, no, don’t worry,” he huffs. “This is really lovely, I swear.”

He’s not sure he’s ever referred to anything as lovely before in his life, but he’s being truthful. He forces his face back into a neutral expression and crosses over to the other side of the bedroom in a couple of strides, taking Erwin’s face in his hands and kissing him. “Really. Thank you.”

Levi starts to undress himself, placing his folded clothes in a neat, ordered pile on the counter by the sink. He can feel Erwin’s eyes burning into him as he takes off his underwear, and then even hotter still as he steps carefully into the bathtub and sinks down into the water. He sighs, and closes his eyes, and suddenly all of the stupid shit from the past week melts away in a mix of green tea scented bubble bath and vanilla candles. Fuck, it feels good.

“Are you going to join me or just sit there and stare at me like a creep for an hour?” Levi asks, rolling his head to face Erwin.

Erwin is hardly able to hold his excitement as he gets to his feet, taking his clothes off in record time. Levi sits forwards so that Erwin can slip into the tub behind him. The tub is pretty big, but Erwin still has to bend his knees to be able to sit in it. It’s still comfortable though, and Levi lets Erwin wrap his arms around his waist and pull him back against his chest.

With Erwin’s lips pressing little kisses against his cheeks and his fingers stroking little circles on his ribs – this may be the most relaxed he’s ever been.

--

After they get out of the bath and dry off, Erwin leads Levi to the bedroom. As if dinner and a bath weren’t enough, he gets Levi to lie naked and face-down on the bed for a massage. Erwin puts down a towel, brings a couple of candles in from the bathroom and sits, also naked, on the back of Levi’s knees.

The massage oil is cold as it drips onto his back, but it smells like coconut and it soon warms up when Erwin’s large hands glide up from the base of his spine to his shoulders. His entire body feels like it’s melting into the sheets as Erwin works out some of the most egregious knots in his shoulders and neck.

Levi sighs contentedly. “You better not have anything else planned. This is already so much.”

“This is the last thing,” Erwin chuckles. He leans over Levi’s body, pressing his chest against his back and kissing the back of his neck, and moving a short distance down his spine. “I promise.”

All Levi can do whilst Erwin is massaging his entire body is just lie there and moan quietly. He’s not really the type of guy to get massages, so he doesn’t have anything to compare it to, but Erwin does a damn good job at it. It’s hard for him to believe that anyone could do any better – especially when Erwin lightly presses his fingers between the tops of Levi’s thighs, sliding them up and cupping his buttocks firmly in his hands. From that point on, Levi is almost painfully hard.

He starts to squirm in his spot – not out of discomfort or anything, but pure anticipation. It’s obviously turning out to be one of those sorts of massages; especially with Erwin’s erection pressing firmly between his thighs. Levi isn’t exactly complaining about it, but Erwin sure is taking his sweet time to move onto anything further.

“Okay,” Erwin mumbles, sitting up on his knees a little bit. “Turn around.”

Levi flips himself over, raising his arms up to cover his eyes. Erwin applies more oil onto his hands and Levi can’t help but sigh as his hands move up his stomach and press into his chest. His gentle fingers circle Levi’s nipples, and God, he’s never felt so sensitive there in his life. He gasps loudly and arches his back when Erwin finally brushes the pads of his thumbs over them.

“Fuck, fuck,” Levi hisses, squeezing his eyes shut. His cock is throbbing and leaking against his stomach. Thankfully, Erwin decides not to tease him too much this time and goes straight into slowly moving his palm up the shaft of Levi’s cock before loosely wrapping his hand around it. He uses his other hand to nudge Levi’s legs apart and rub against his inner thighs, eventually sliding down between his cheeks to caress his perineum. It almost feels like too much stimulation, but in a good way. Honestly, he feels a little cheated that none of the hand jobs he’s ever received have felt like this.

Erwin’s hands speed up, his fingers inching further down to press and rub up against his entrance. Levi draws in a sharp breath when his middle finger finally penetrates him. He doesn’t take his time in sliding his finger further in, eliciting a loud moan from Levi when he crooks his finger up into his prostate.

He seems to be getting a lot of satisfaction in the reactions he’s getting from Levi, if the soft smile on his face is anything to go by. “How are you feeling?” he asks, tightening his grip a little bit.

Levi sighs, “Good, good,” and lifts his legs up a little bit for easier access. Erwin takes it as an opportunity to add in another finger, pressing a firm kiss onto Levi’s knee. His fingers press up against Levi’s prostate at the same moment his other thumb rubs against his frenulum, and Levi’s whole body twitches almost violently. Erwin raises a thick eyebrow at that, letting out a soft, “Oh?”

Having found the sweet spot, he sticks to stroking those two places in particular, and the more he strokes, the more vocal Levi gets. It’s the loudest he’s ever been during sex – which isn’t that much of a challenge to beat, since he was usually strangely quiet. But the noises he’s making are downright pathetic. Even so, coupled with the fact that he’s legitimately panting and his body keeps twitching involuntarily, he can’t bring himself to feel too embarrassed about his body’s reaction to the stimulation.

His orgasm builds up in the pits of his stomach, tingling up his spine, and Erwin just keeps speeding up little by little. Luckily for Levi, it doesn’t take too long for his entire body to explode with pleasure – and explode it does. Levi comes, and his whole body shakes with it, and it just keeps going. His pathetic little moans evolve into frantic crying – so bad that he has to shove his face into the sheets to muffle most of it. “Fuck, fuck fuck fuck, fuck,” Levi hisses, scrunching his eyes shut and practically crying into the sheets. “Fuck, I love you, Jesus fuck.”

Tears roll down his cheeks as his body starts to calm down a little bit, and he manages to wipe them away with the back of his hand. Erwin doesn’t say anything – he just strokes Levi’s hair and leans in to press little kisses on his forehead.

They lie there for a few moments, Erwin whispering praise in Levi’s ear as he tries to calm down and stop the physical aftershocks of his orgasm. It takes him a good ten minutes for his body to finally settle and stop feeling like it’s floating. He looks up at Erwin, and then it clicks. Oh no.

“That was… um,” Levi starts. He digs his fingernails into the palms of his hands and cringes internally. Erwin is looking back at him with wide eyes. There’s no way he missed it. Change the subject as quickly as you can. “I think you’ve killed me.”

“Is that good or bad?” Erwin asks, giving Levi a pitiful little smile.

“Good,” Levi confirms. “I totally blacked out for a minute there. Like… I almost have no idea what happened.”

Erwin looks a little confused, but Levi just chooses to ignore it and rolls away. He sits up, and immediately his vision floods with static. He groans and waits a few moments before he crawls off of the bed. His legs nearly give way when he stands up, but he manages to stay on his feet and pull on his underwear without falling over. “I’m going to shower this oil off of me.”

“Good idea.”

“Are you staying the night…?” Levi asks warily, completely unsure of whether he wanted him to or not.

“I’d like to stay,” Erwin confirms.

“Okay.” Levi stands there awkwardly for a beat too long, before basically sprinting down the hall and into the bathroom. He closes the door behind him a little bit too hard and leans his back against the door, sliding his hands over his face.

Fuck.

--

“You did what?!”

Levi just sits there, looking down at his hands in shame. Needless to say, Isabel didn’t take the news of Levi accidentally telling Erwin he loved him and then completely back-pedalling – y’know, like a coward – very well. She leans forwards and smackshim on the head. “Ouch, you bitch!” Levi yelps, grabbing his head. “What was I supposed to do?!”

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know, maybe just fucking tell him how you feel?” Isabel exclaims.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Isabel counters. “You’re both obviously crazy for each other. Are you that stupid?”

All Levi can do is shrug. While it is true that he is a bit crazy about Erwin, he’s not really sure if he loves him. It’s not like he has anything else to compare to – he’s never been in a relationship or even really liked anyone before, so how should he know whether or not he’s in love with Erwin? They’ve been seeing each other for a while – longer than Levi has ever seen anyone by a longshot – and Levi cares about him just as much as he cares about Isabel and Farlan, but that doesn’t necessarily have to mean that he’s in love.

And what if Erwin doesn’t feel the same way about him? When Levi said that he loved him, Erwin didn’t say anything back. Granted, the entire situation was awkward and weird, but… He didn’t say anything about it then, and he hasn’t said anything about it since.

Isabel sighs, throwing her head down into her hands. “Why are you like this?” she groans, and Levi suddenly feels like a child who’s being lectured by his teacher. She lifts her head. “Do you remember when I was dating Sophie? And for months she was the only thing I talked or thought about. Like, it was so bad that you started spraying me with water every time I even said her name.”

“Yeah?”

“You sit around waiting for him to message, and if he’s not here you mope around the house all day until he asks if he can come over.”

“I don’t mope,” he argues.

…

Okay, maybe he does mope a little.

Isabel flaps her hand in his direction. “Whatever. I’m basically saying that you’re acting exactly like I used to, and it’s so obvious.” She sighs and leans forwards towards him. “Look. It’s okay if you don’t feel ready to tell him. If you’re too scared to acknowledge that you love him, or if you don’t think you do just yet, you don’t have to do anything at all.”

For the first time in a longtime, Levi doesn’t know what to do.

Maybe he is falling in love, but where does he go from there? If Erwin tells him that he loves him, do they start calling each other boyfriends? The idea of calling someone his boyfriend at thirty fucking years old just feels so weird to him – hell, it would’ve felt weird to him as a kid. And if Erwin doesn’t feel the same way and doesn’t want to see him anymore, what will he do then? He can’t even begin to imagine his life without Erwin in it anymore.

The idea of losing Erwin makes him feel sick.

Levi groans and throws his head back. “God fucking damn it,” he sighs. He brings his hands up to his face and digs his fingers into his eyelids. “I’m going to have to tell him for real, aren’t I?”

Chuckling, Isabel leans over to pat Levi’s knee. “Good luck.”

--

He doesn’t have anything close to a coherent plan in mind, but Levi invites Erwin over on the following Saturday.

He arrives at Levi’s house at noon with a paper bag full of different kinds of doughnuts and a cappuccino for Levi, who drinks it so fast that it burns his throat on the way down. The caffeine calms him down a little bit, but his hands are still shaking as Erwin says hello to Croissant, shouts his greeting to Isabel in her room, and throws himself down onto the couch.

He needs to say something.

Despite Levi’s jittery nerves, Erwin seems to be acting exactly the same as he always does. He smiles up at Levi and pats his knees, beckoning him to come and sit down. Levi complies, slowly slinking over to climb into Erwin’s lap. He pulls Levi down, kissing him on the mouth and sliding a hand up the back of his shirt. He idly strokes Levi’s back, fingers skimming over the ridges of his spine and causing Levi to melt even further into Erwin’s embrace.

Levi sighs happily, his hands immediately finding their place in Erwin’s hair and pushing his fingers through to separate the shitty hair-wax that he insists on using.

He really needs to say something. How hard does it have to be to tell someone that you love them, when you’ve already said it before?

But Erwin is warm, despite how cold it is outside, and Levi can feel himself finally calming down for the first time all day. Why does he even have to bring it up? It would be so much easier to just wait until Erwin brings it up himself. Or until he gets sick of him, Levi supposes – which would probably be so much worse, now that he thinks about it.

Winter is finally creeping up, and the more time he spends with Erwin, the more he begins to dread the idea of spending the season alone. He doesn’t peg himself for a particularly traditional person, nor a romantic, but spending the holiday season without him there would just feel wrong. Seeing people in their happy couples never really bothered Levi too much in the past, but there was always the tiniest feeling inside of his chest that felt a little too much like loneliness. Not to mention that they’ve all already gotten so used to Erwin being around, and Levi is in way too deep.

Erwin eases up, nudging his lips against Levi’s gently and slipping his hand down to his ass. He hums contentedly as Erwin’s long fingers dig firmly into his skin, acting as a way to pull him closer. His lips slowly find their way down Levi’s neck, and Erwin gently nudges his Adam’s apple with his tongue, eventually attaching onto his neck and sucking and licking its way down to his collarbone. There’s a sharp curl of pleasure deep within Levi’s core, and he can’t help the startled hiccup that forces its way out of his mouth.

“Fuuuck, alright.” Levi pulls back from Erwin suddenly and scrambles to climb off of his lap.

Erwin’s eyebrows shoot up and he sits up, carefully folding his hands in his lap. “What’s wrong?”

“God, um…” Levi shifts nervously. He wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans, sinking his teeth into the inside of his bottom lip. “You know, the other night. When I said… That I. Love you. Or whatever.”

Erwin blinks slowly at him. “I… didn’t think you’d want me to bring it up.”

“Yeah, well…” Levi digs his fingernails into his thigh and looks away. “I guess I’m bringing it up.”

“Okay,” Erwin says slowly. “You’re going to say that you didn’t mean it, right? Like, you just said it in the moment.” He sounds pretty sure of himself, Levi notices. He wonders if Erwin went through it in his head over and over, trying to convince himself that he didn’t mean it – just like Levi did.

Levi shrugs. “I did say it in the moment,” he confirms. He hazards a glance at Erwin for a second, and looks into his eyes, and sees just how startled he seems. There really isn’t any way he can’t tell him now, and the worst Erwin can do is reject him. It will only mean years of crippling embarrassment and loneliness for Levi, but he’s sure he’s been through worse in his life.

He takes a deep breath and turns around so that he isn’t facing Erwin anymore. Here goes. “The thing is,” he starts, slowly, “I think I do. Love you.”

There it is.

He did it, he did it, he did it.

Levi lets go of the huge sigh that’s been weighing him down all day. He’s still absolutely shitting himself, but it feels great to finally get it off of his chest. He has never laid his heart out to anyone like this before. He takes a couple of moments to breathe and slowly turns around to look at Erwin again. And… Erwin just staring at him with his mouth open was not exactly the reaction he thought he would get.

“I was–” Erwin’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat “…not expecting that.”

Levi is suddenly hit by a rush of oh fuck, oh God, oh no, and slowly pulls further back. He’s not sure exactly what he was expecting himself – total and complete rejection, maybe, but not… awkward, stunned silence. He can’t even run away, because it’s his house. Fuck, he knew he should’ve done it at Erwin’s place.

Still, he considers bolting anyway because he doesn’t think there is anything he has ever hated more than telling someone that he loves them for the first time and just getting stared at.

He’s just about to stand up and make his escape, but Erwin leans forwards and places a hand gently onto his thigh. “Tell me again.”

Levi clears his throat, and suddenly he’s completely nervous all over again. “I think I’m in love with you,” he mumbles. For good measure, he tentatively adds, “Erwin.”

Erwin suddenly leans in closer, pressing a hard kiss onto Levi’s mouth and sliding a hand up into his hair. He wraps an arm around Levi’s waist and pulls him in closer until their chests are pressed up against each other. He pulls back slowly, and he’s smiling, and he says, “I think I’m in love with you, too,” and Levi feels the weight lift off of his shoulders.

“You kept me waiting a little too long for that, y’know?” Levi says, leaning back. “I thought you were about to get up and leave.”

“I’m sorry.” Erwin chuckles, and kisses him again. “I would never do that to you, I promise.”

“That’s okay,” Levi says, just about melting. He pulls Erwin on top of him and kisses the hell out of him.

--

In all of the years that Levi has known Isabel, there has never been anything that has stopped her from going all out for Christmas, and this year is no different. She buys her presents months in advance, and absolutely insists on decorating immediately after Halloween.

Levi hates it. He hates Christmas, and he hates decorating, but it’s not like he could stop her. That would just be wrong.

Most of all, he hates the Christmas tree. He hates how the plastic leaves scratch his hands, and how difficult it is to screw it into the shitty metal stand, and he can’t stand the fact that Isabel and Farlan seemingly have no eye for decoration. They just throw ornaments and tinsel of all colours onto the tree and call it a day. It’s genuinely painful, and Isabel is lucky that he loves her so much. And if he subtly fixes her decoration monstrosities every now and then, no one has to know.

Levi watches in horror as Isabel haphazardly throws green tinsel onto the tree, completely covering up at least five of the baubles Levi had hung himself. She smirks sideways at Levi, and he concludes that there’s no way she isn’t doing it on purpose.

Beside him, Erwin chuckles quietly to himself and leans over to wrap an arm around Levi’s shoulders. “I can’t believe you’re just letting her do this,” he notes. “You must be more whipped than I thought.”

“He is!” Farlan says happily, tossing another string of tinsel at the tree. It lands almost directly on top of another string, and they just leave it there. Because they’re monsters.

Levi grumbles, crossing his arms. “She does it on purpose because she knows I can’t say anything about it,” he explains. He has to try extra hard not to cringe in disgust. “Christmas is the only time of the year where I’m not allowed to complain.”

Humming in what Levi chooses to believe to be a sympathetic manner, Erwin pulls on Levi’s shoulders until his head is resting in his lap. He takes the opportunity to curl up and shield his eyes from the horror unfolding in front of him, and pretty much melts into the couch as Erwin runs his fingers through his hair.

“And there’s still two months of Christmas left!” Isabel exclaims, clapping her hands excitedly.

“Yay,” Levi responds, completely unenthusiastically.

As November rolls on into December, Erwin and Farlan start to spend nearly every day at the house. It starts with Farlan, who usually spends most of the holidays with them every year, and Levi supposes that Erwin just follows his lead. It makes sense, he supposes, since Erwin doesn’t really have family to spend time with during the holidays either.

He wouldn’t admit it, but Levi is the happiest that he’s ever felt now that Erwin is around every day. They slowly fall into new routines, and it definitely helps that Erwin has plenty of time to bake holiday-themed treats. Whilst they both have time off of work, it’s easy to slip into a comfortable state of sitting down in front of the TV, cooking, “family bonding night” with Isabel and Farlan, and making out all week.

Levi can’t remember ever being excited for Christmas, but he bought Erwin an expensive Damascus-patterned Santoku knife, and there are some nights where he genuinely can’t get to sleep from how excited he is to see the look on his face when he gives it to him – and sometimes, from how nervous he is at the thought that Erwinn won’t even like it.

On Christmas Eve, he waits no later than 12:03am to sit Erwin down in front of the fireplace and give him the meticulously wrapped giftbox that has been giving him so much anxiety lately. He watches with a full heart as Erwin takes his time to unwrap it, being extra careful not to tear the wrapping paper or crease the nice ribbon that Levi used. He takes the lid off of the fancy wooden box that the knife resides inside, taking his sweet time as though he knows exactly how much the anticipation is killing Levi.

“Oh wow,” is all Erwin says once he sets the lid down. He gently picks up the knife and turns it around in his hands, not even attempting to stifle the huge grin that crosses his face. “This is lovely, Levi. I’m almost a bit scared to use it, it’s so nice.”

Levi just shrugs. “It can just be for decoration.”

Erwin gently puts the knife away and leans forwards to land a hard kiss on Levi’s mouth, “Thank you so much. I love it.” He adds, “I love you,” and Levi can’t help but push him down onto the floor and crawl on top of him. The world outside is slowly filling up with white snow and holiday chill, and the crackling fireplace isn’t the only thing keeping them so warm on their first of many Christmases together.

#Eruri #Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #Erwin Smith #Levi Ackerman #Eruri fic #Eruri fanfiction #Writing Tag

[the-edge-of-great]

(っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ friendsgiving ♥

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

The silence that immediately follows “How did you spend your holidays?” is brief but deafening. Her heart sinks. She looks to Luke for help, but he’s watching the guys on the couch, eyes jumping between Alex and Reggie; the weight of the conversation seems to rest on their shoulders, and they don’t notice because they’re too busy avoiding everything, especially their bandmates.

So Julie backtracks, quickly. “I’m sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t—Forget I said anything.” She reaches to fix the sheet music but realizes it’s already perfectly straight, and her hand falls flat, and there’s still an awkward silence, so she begins playing the start of Finally Free, which isn’t at all what they were working on, but this hasn’t happened before. She’s always been careful asking about their past because she doesn’t know how far is too far. And until now, she hasn’t struck out with any questions. They’ve been cool about it, mostly answering anything she wanted to know. If they didn’t want to talk about it, they kindly changed the subject. At some point, she thinks they became open books to her, and she them.

That’s why this question tumbled out so casually.

And that’s why the silence is scaring her.

Luke, finally, saves her. “We’d spend Thanksgiving with my dad’s family,” he tells her with a smile, which she immediately mirrors as her shoulders slump with relief, “and for Christmas, we’d go to my aunt’s place to party with my mom’s side. She actually lives in Pasadena.” He chuckles. It takes her all of five seconds to realize why that’s funny to him, and then she breathes a laugh and rolls her eyes.

“Holidays were always hectic for me,” Reggie says next. Julie’s heart flutters. “Like, three or four days of traveling to make sure we see both sides, both sets of grandparents, and somehow not barf from all the food.” He and Luke share a laugh, and Alex smiles faintly as he jumps to his feet.

“I just remembered,” he says, stepping over Luke, “I’m meeting Willie today.” He looks back at them briefly, his smile weak and probably forced, before vanishing.

Reggie and Luke share a look. Mumbling something about the beach, Reggie disappears too.

As soon as he’s gone, Julie’s face drops to her hands. “That was a disaster,” she groans.

“Family’s just a hard topic for them,” Luke replies quietly.

Chewing on her lip, Julie takes Alex’s spot next to him. “Tell me why?” she asks softly.

“Sure, since they outed all of my shit last month.” He chuckles.

“Whaaat?” Julie shakes her head. “They didn’t—” The look he gives her makes her stumble. Sheepishly, she adds, “They were trying to help.”

“I know.” Shaking his head, he explains, “Reggie’s parents fought a lot. So much that he didn’t like us coming over, like, ever. It was, seriously, all the time.”

“Fighting, like… arguing? Or…?”

“Just arguing,” he reassures. “They’d scream at each other, and sometimes at him if he got in the middle of it, but…” Luke sighs. “Just arguing.”

“And… Alex?”

He pauses, gaze dropping to his lap, and Julie’s stomach turns. She reaches for his hand, half to grab his attention again, half because she feels she’ll need a better alternative to digging her nails into her palm when she hears whatever he has to say. He intertwines their fingers, locking her hand in a grip tighter than she expected. If she wasn’t nervous before, she is now.

“Alex’s parents weren’t cool with him being gay.”

Julie sits up straighter. “What—What does that mean?” She needs better clarification because she knows what that could mean—she’s seen it on the news, on Tumblr and Twitter and Instagram, heard about it through the grapevine of high school—and her heart aches at the idea of Alex—sweet, caring Alex—going through anything of the sort.

“They didn’t kick him out which, I guess, is something, but they just… stopped caring. They stopped acknowledging him.”

Julie shakes her head. “They don’t deserve any praise for not kicking him out,” she says quietly, lip curling at her words. “Not for doing less than the bare minimum of being parents.”

“Getting angry over it is a lost cause.” He smiles sadly at her. “You don’t know how many times we talked about getting him out of his house. Both of ‘em. Bobby and I would spend nights out here, drawing up plans to run away to Vegas or something.”

“I should’ve never brought it up,” she mumbles. “I know holidays are hard for some people.”

“Hey, no, it’s okay.” He shakes his head, turning to her and taking her other hand in his. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. Besides, it was bound to come up eventually. Family’s just… different, you know?”

Julie sighs, shoulders slumping forward. She watches Luke’s thumb rub across her knuckles. Thanksgiving is in a few days; her house is going to be lively with the whole family. When Mom was alive, the studio was a place for the kids to hangout. Obviously, nobody went near it after she died. Dad locked it up before people began arriving. Julie wonders, as she looks around the room, if they’ll open it to the family again. Or maybe it should stay closed for the guys’ sake.

“So… No holidays?” she asks. “At all? ‘Cause… I have an idea…”

Luke raises an eyebrow. “What’re you thinking?”

“It’s this thing called… Friendsgiving.”

~**~**~**~

Star Wars and other movies downloaded to the computer? Check. Computer hooked up to the projector? Check. Two white sheets borrowed from Flynn strung up in front of the instruments? Check.

“Are the lights too much?” Julie asks, waving her phone around the room to show off her decorations. “They feel too much.”

“No, fairy lights are cute!” Flynn exclaims through the phone. “And you went through all the work hanging them up.”

“I know we think they’re cute, but will they think they’re cute?”

“Jules, they’re like puppies; they’ll be excited about anything.”

“Okay.” Julie nods. “Okay.” The lights are weaved around the loft railing and framing the sides of the sheets. She had to improvise with Christmas lights, so when she turns them on, instead of faint white, a soft rainbow glows off the loft and cascades down to the floor.

“Look okay?” she asks Flynn again. She doesn’t know why she’s so nervous. It’s just Luke, Reggie, and Alex… But Reggie and Alex haven’t had a good Thanksgiving in a while. So, okay, maybe there’s a little pressure for things to be perfect. Or a lot. Maybe the lights is overdoing it—

“Dude, what’s up with you?” she hears Alex say outside.

“They’re here!” Julie stage whispers.

“Okay?” Flynn says just as soft. “Go talk to them? And the lights are cute! Keep them on!”

“As Julie would say,” Reggie adds, voice getting louder as he nears the studio, “you’re acting hella sus.”

“Wait, wait,” Luke says, probably trying to stop him. “Just—Wait a second.”

“I’ll text you later,” Julie tells Flynn as she heads for the door.

“Julie!”

“What?!”

Flynn smiles at her. “They’re going to love it, okay?”

Julie stops, hand inches from the door handle. Taking a deep breath, she returns Flynn’s smile. “Thanks, Flynn.”

Feet shuffle out of the way of the door that swings open a few inches. Julie pokes her head out. “Hi there,” she says, grinning.

Alex squints at her. “You’re in on it too, huh?”

“Alex, honey, I planned it.”

Luke, who froze in the middle of holding Reggie back with arms around his chest when Julie stepped out, backs off and joins her by the door.

“And you guys never figured it out!” he says proudly, fist bumping her.

Reggie and Alex share a look that makes her think yeah, no, they totally figured something was going on. She giggles.

“Well, uh…” Julie glances over her shoulder. “You guys want to see what the secret is?” She leans against the door to push it open and waves them past. “Ta-da.”

Along with the Christmas lights is a lamp beside the couch, covered by a blanket to dim the brightness. In place of the coffee table she pushed to the side are pillows and blankets layered over each other. Board games she found in the loft are stacked high in the chair next to the couch. They’re a mixture of generations: some she received as Christmas and birthday gifts, and others that have been around for as long as she can remember—favorites among her family, especially her parents. Maybe the guys will remember them too.

The shelf behind the couch is empty except for the projector. She had to find an extension cord to plug in her computer and leave it safely on the couch (she may have tried to balance it on the shelf with the projector, but one close call was enough to look into alternatives).

After the door is latched behind her, she joins them in the middle of the room, playing with her hands. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she begins. “I didn’t mean to bring up any bad memories.”

Alex shakes his head. “It’s not your fault, Julie. You didn’t know.”

“But I do now. And… I don’t know how you guys feel about the holidays, but I hope you give this one a chance?” She steps around them, kicking off her shoes as she goes. “It’s not an official holiday, but over the years, it’s become more popular.” She steps onto the couch and looks back at them with a smile. “It’s called Friendsgiving. Families suck sometimes, and you can’t choose them. But, you can choose your friends.” Standing on her tiptoes, she flips the projector on. A light beam shoots past them and shines across the bed sheets. Two was a better decision than one, it seems. The picture has plenty of room to spread out. Perhaps not the best quality, but at least they can watch it full screen.

“I have all of the Star Wars movies downloaded,” she continues, stepping off the couch, “along with a few others if we get sick of the marathon. I don’t know if you like board games, but I found a few in the loft?” She points at the stack.

“You did… all of this for us?” Reggie asks, almost breathlessly.

“Well, yeah. And Luke helped.” Luke smiles when the guys look at him. Julie adds, “I don’t think I could’ve guessed your movie taste without him.”

“There are some good ones on there,” he promises.

Alex huffs a laugh. He spins in a slow circle, taking in everything. “This is awesome, Jules.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but… You’re wrong about one thing.” She freezes. Luke and Reggie look back at him. Alex shoves his hands in his jacket pockets, looking over each of them, the corner of his mouth curved in a smile. “You can choose the family that matters.”

“And it’s us?” Luke teases. “We’re your Chosen Ones?” As he and Reggie share a laugh, Alex walks away from them.

“C’mere,” he says with a laugh, pulling Julie into a hug. Alex gives some of the best hugs. He’s tall enough to tuck her head under his chin, and she can bury her face in his chest.

Luke and Reggie must move in, because Alex walks them near the couch. “No, no, she’s my Chosen One. You two go away.”

“We were here first,” Luke whines.

“But it’s Julie,” Reggie reasons. He shakes his head, a fond smile on his lips.

Luke nods. “Good point.”

“Still, you’re crazy if you think I’m just going to ignore group hug potential,” Reggie says, lunging for them. Alex pretends to try getting away, but he actually opens an arm for him, and now Julie’s squished between them. Not even a second later, Luke’s on her other side. They’re a mess of laughter until someone missteps. They fall in slow motion, it seems. Julie rolls off of Alex’s chest and into the arms of Luke, who hugs her to his chest immediately.

“Good thing Julie has all of the pillows of the universe here,” Alex jokes.

“Oh yeah, I called in every favor. They asked how many I wanted. I said yes.”

Reggie pushes himself up. He squints at the stack of board games. “No way! You have Candyland?”

Luke chuckles in her ear. “Are those Christmas lights?”

“I improvised.”

“I like it.”

Alex is looking at them. “Me too.”

Julie grins. “Thanks, guys.”

“Reg, Candyland or Star Wars?” Alex asks, rolling onto his stomach.

Reggie pauses, board game in his hands. “Can we… We can do both!”

Julie laughs out loud.

After a few minutes of clearing away the pillows (“Oh good, I thought we’d never see that rug again.”), setting up the game, and playing the movie, they’re ready: Candyland and Star Wars. Not how she ever imagined spending the day before Thanksgiving.

“Hey,” Julie says as she draws a card. It’s green. She looks up at them, smiling. “I love you guys, you know?”

They each share looks, grinning at one another. To her left, Luke draws next. “We know, Julie,” he says, moving his character forward. When he meets her eye, he tell her, “We love you, too.”

“Now, keep that in mind when I completely destroy all of you in these games,” Reggie warns.

Julie raises a challenging eyebrow.

“Bring it.”

#julie and the phantoms #jatp #julie molina #luke patterson #alex jatp #reggie jatp #some band fluff on this fine morning #this started out with a lot of angst potential but then i was like #no #i have a cuter idea #eog writes

[easilyconflicted]

We Might Still Get Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and Wind Waker for the Switch

 ***Disclaimer: I am not a trademark lawyer. I am only a regular person trying to make sense of the numbers. I am not making a formal stance as I may be reading the information wrong.***

***Warning: This is going to be very long with lots of pictures.***

A lot of people are bummed about there not being a Zelda All-Stars for the 35th anniversary. Some are even thinking that Skyward Sword HD is all we’ll get since it is already so close to the anniversary. But I’m here to say that we could probably still get it, or at least Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and Wind Waker separately. Here’s why I think that and it’s the same reason why I knew Skyward Sword was coming: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). You can also find the same information on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) database.

What’s so important about trademarks? I don’t know, but I know they are important enough that the government is involved with regulating it. All I know it essentially means you have ownership over that mark. Remember when the Fine Bros tried to trademark “React”? (link) The USPTO and WIPO database are public to search for any trademarks in any category.

A few months ago when people were starting to guess what Nintendo was going to come out with for the Zelda 35th anniversary, I happened to remember that you can use the USPTO database to figure out if a new product was coming out. I decided to look some things up. The first thing I searched was Skyward Sword. **Tumblr ruined the quality of the images, but if you click on it, the quality should be better.

Edit: Clicking on the image will NOT work if you are on desktop and directly on my blog because Tumblr sucks. You can right click and hit view image, but that will take you from the page. You can also zoom in with your browser controls if you don’t want to go back and forth between my page. Both options may still be hard to read, so right clicking, view image, then zoom may be be the best option.

A trademark for Skyward Sword? With the priority date (apparently when Nintendo filed in a different country), filing date (apparently when Nintendo filed application in the U.S.), and registration date (apparently when USPTO allowed it) all being in 2020? And in the “recorded electronic game programs; downloadable electronic game programs; recorded video game programs; downloadable video game programs; video game cartridges; and much more categories” categories and more? Why would a divisive game that is a decade old get a trademark in 2020? So that’s how I knew the game was coming to the Switch.

So what about the other games?

Ocarina of Time?

Also a 2020 trademark under the same category that Skyward Sword was in. Should note that the priority and filing dates are in 2020, but the registration date is in 2021.

Majora’s Mask?

Same as Oot and SS, but we have some differences. Priority and filing dates are in 2020, but there is no registration date. It does have published for opposition listed for 2021.

Wind Waker?

Same position as MM. Priority and filing dates are in 2020, but there is no registration date. It does have published for opposition listed in 2021.

Twilight Princess? *Spoiler: It doesn’t seem promising.

Yeah the years on this are 2007/2008. It does have a renewal date in 2018, but it is listed under the category of compact discs and other distinct categories. The other ones are under downloaded games or video cartridges categories. There seems to be no overlap.

Off topic, but when I search twilight princess, only two things pop up: TP’s trademark and that huge monstrosity of a filing. Like look at how many words they tried to trademark?! And it’s from one person! Edit: Turns out it is around 660 words! Apparently she went to court about it, too, if you are curious. (link) Back on topic.

I should note that I could not find a separate listing for Zelda All-Stars, but I also can’t find a separate listing for Mario All-Stars. Only Sunshine has a 2020 trademark listing; 64 has a 1996/2000 trademark with a 2020 renewal and Galaxy has a 2006/2007 one with a 2017 renewal. Again, I may be reading a lot of things wrong here. All that’s on the USPTO database; I’m getting more info on the WIPO. 

On WIPO, I did not find listings for Mario or Zelda All-Stars. 64′s active trademarks are from the late 90′s. Sunshine has 2020 trademarks. Galaxy has some active 2018 trademarks but not in the US. So It seems like there is some differing info. Let’s see about the Zelda games.

Skyward Sword has 2020 trademarks with some pending in Canada (CA), New Zealand (NZ), etc and some active in Australia (AU), Japan (JP), United States (US), etc. All filed under video game categories similar to the ones listed with USPTO and Skyward Sword’s trademark. Not surprised it is active in the US because if we compare it to the USPTO, SS has a registration date (when USPTO allowed Nintendo’s trademark).

Ocarina of Time has 2020 trademarks with some pending in CA, NZ, etc and some active in AU, US, JP, etc. All under video game categories. Not surprised it is active in the US since in the USPTO, it has a registration date.

Majora’s Mask has 2020 trademarks with some pending in CA, NZ, US, etc and some active in JP and AU. All under video game categories. It is pending on WIPO in the US and it also does not have a registration date in the USPTO database.

Wind Waker has 2020 trademarks with some pending in CA, US, NZ, etc and active in JP and AU. All under video game categories. Again, pending in the US and no registration date for the UPSTO.

Twilght Princess has 2006-2008 trademarks with them being active in JP, US, KR (Republic of Korea). All under video game categories.

What does this all mean? We already know that Skyward Sword is coming. So maybe Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and Wind Waker will be coming soon but I don’t know when. I think pending/registration dates may be a factor as to the timeline, especially in countries with a big gaming demographic. But again, there are still decent size countries with pending status for Skyward Sword, so there may be more to it. I don’t think Twilight Princess will be coming soon considering all the evidence and especially since it was already got ported in 2016 onto the Wii U, but maybe one day TP fans. I have been sitting on the USPTO info for a while and wanted to let somebody know, and now seems like the time.

Again, I am not versed on trademark terminology. Any extra information that isn’t directly from the databases came from a quick google search and my skimmed over analysis of it.

Edit: Ignore the next paragraph. I was an angry gremlin by time I finished this and was venting.

If there are any errors and I was not clear, I have been working on this for five hours. I also realized that WIPO was a thing while making this, so I had to go and research it. Tumblr glitched and ruined half my progress. It is also 5am where I am. I am tired.

But I hope you all learned some new information from this post. Also here are the links for the databases if you want to do your own research.

USPTO (click search our trademark database, I used basic word mark search) : https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/search

WIPO (Just type in the box by text but make sure to delete the search below goods/services if moving on to another search)  : https://www3.wipo.int/branddb/en/

#legend of zelda #loz #skyward sword #ocarina of time #majora's mask #wind waker #twilight princess #loz remakes #nintendo direct #nintendo #long post #look this is my first original post in years #leave me alone if its bad #don't follow me if you expect content like this #i just reblog shit I like #i'm just here to have a good time #but sometimes my brain says do it #and sometimes i say fuck it #i've spent so long trying to edit my grammar mistakes and all that bs

[foramomentonly]

20 or 28 from meet ugly prompts for Malex?

Prompt: I’m a famous singer and you’re the new techie who just tripped and pulled the plug out of my microphone mid-concert [extra awkward if they lip sync, extra badass if they keep singing and their voice is still on point]

Author’s Note: I don’t love this one. It got a bit away from me. I hope you like it, though! Multiple anons asked for it, so I hate that I might not have done it justice. 

Alex is distracted. 

Ostensibly, the job is simple: arrange the music equipment correctly, hook it up, and stay out of the way until and unless something breaks. Maria set it up for him, some easy, part-time work in an industry he’s actually interested in to help him explore his options. Between an extended hospital stay and rehab, his honorable discharge, and falling into mind-numbing contract work for the past six months, his new normal is looking pretty bleak. But the environment backstage twenty minutes before a show is chaotic in a way that even an active war zone never felt—or maybe Alex had just grown accustomed to that particular brand of shitshow—and the physical element of the work is taking more of a toll on his leg than expected. And then there’s the guy.

Alex had done his research before agreeing to work for Michael Guerin, rising country-folk star. He’d listened to his music—twangy, and the lyrics were a little obvious, but overall Alex approved—and of course he’d seen pictures, candids from shows and promotional material. But all that is a very different experience from watching Michael lean with practiced nonchalance against the back wall just offstage, flirting lazily with the bassist from the open act. He’s no taller than Alex, really, but his body seems impossibly long, hard and lithe in tight, dark denim and a chambray shirt three haphazardly-fastened buttons away from hanging open. His curls are a little longer than Alex remembers from pictures, light brown and tousled in a way that makes Alex think of sex; and, judging by the way Michael’s companion keeps tugging at them as he grins down at her, Alex is not the only one. Michael’s smile is open and inviting, and he gives it freely, but it’s also practiced, a bit of a cipher that he passes off as innuendo. It’s a clever distraction to the poor stage manager's assistant who is hovering to the side, anxiously waiting to escort the main act; to the woman he’s talking to, who missed her cue and had to scamper onstage a full minute after the rest of her band; and, inadvertently, to Alex, who finds himself wanting to both wrap himself up in the warmth of that smile and fuck it right off Michael Guerin’s smug face.

In a way, it’s reassuring; Alex’s hasn’t experienced this kind of dizzying lust since before his amputation, and his path to reintroducing himself to his body as a tool of pleasure has been rough. Moments like this one, when Alex would like nothing more than to strip himself bare and drag every delicious ounce of gratification out of his own body—whether he does that with Michael Guerin or just thinking of him—gives Alex an intoxicating sense of hope and promise that goes deeper than the thrill of desire. 

It doesn't help him concentrate, though, and between the ache in his hip, the dim lighting backstage, and the haze of lust clouding Alex's vision as he shoots another glance at Michael, now onstage and mid-croon, it feels in retrospect almost inevitable. Alex fails to pick up his foot, to see the length of cords traveling across the floor from the stage to the impressive sound system in the back, and he trips, catching himself roughly against one of the pillars that supports the backstage balcony, but pulling out at least three different wires as he goes. There's an offensively loud, metallic screech, a deep thump of bass, and Michael's voice goes from clear and booming to soft, trembling, and completely drown out by his band.

Everything that follows is in slow motion. Alex raising his head as the band stops playing and locking eyes with Michael, who gazes at him hard and steady. Alex is the only person in the vicinity, not to mention the only one clutching a pillar like a life raft, cheek pressed uncomfortably against the rough wood; there’s no way Michael doesn’t know he’s to blame. Michael holding his gaze from onstage, tapping his index finger slowly against the mic resting on the stand in front of him. When no sound reverberates, Michael shakes his head, and Alex’s eyes widen. He hears whispered shouts and scuffling behind him, but he already knows the sound system will have to be completely reset. 

“Bear with me,” Michael says in a loud, clear voice to his audience, finally releasing Alex from the inescapable hold of his arresting gaze. He sweeps up an acoustic guitar from the side of the stage, waves off his band, and slides onto a stool he drags front and center from just offstage. And then he begins to sing; voice like gravel, deep and rough, projected as best he can. It’s an intimate venue and an adoring audience, and as they begin to crowd closer to the stage, falling silent all on their own and lost to the spell of Michael’s tune, it dawns on Alex that Michael Guerin is going to pull this off. 

He should feel relieved, redeemed even, considering the mounting enthusiasm of the shrieking crowd as Michael performs a full hour-long set completely acoustic, no mic and unaccompanied. But the memory of Michael’s eyes on him, hard and blazing, leaves Alex unsettled and, ultimately, unsurprised when Michael finds him just outside the theatre’s back entrance after his set, the roar of an extremely lubricated crowd pleading for an encore fading as the heavy door slams shut behind him.

“Alex Manes?” he asks, leaning his forearms against the railing of the small concrete landing in a mirror of Alex’s own position.

“Yeah.”

“What the fuck, man?”

Alex winces at the rasp of Michael’s overextended voice.

“I’m sorry,” Alex breathes. “First day.”

“I get that,” Michael says with a practiced patience, running a hand through his sweaty curls. “But—You’re Maria’s friend, right? Maria DeLuca?”

Alex nods.

“Look, she told me a little, uh, a little about you. You’re background.”

Alex turns to look at Michael, brow furrowed in confusion, and Michael’s eyes slide pointedly down to Alex’s leg and back up again, meeting his gaze openly.

“If the job is too much for you right now, we cou—”

Alex cuts him off.

“I don’t need your pity,” he hisses, anger and frustration boiling over at this man who thinks he knows who Alex is, what his limits are because he knows one fucking thing about him.

“Why’d you hired me, anyway?” he demands, shaking his head and pushing off the railing to his full height to face Michael. “You obviously aren’t a fan of the military.”

Michael as a figure is inherently political—openly bisexual, a self-proclaimed descendent of Lavender Country—and his lyrics and iconography further distance him from the uber-patriotic conservativism of typical American country. It’s one of the qualities of Michael’s brand that initially drew Alex to him; but in this moment, underestimated and called out, Alex is tired of playing nice and he lashes out.

Michael rolls his eyes.

“Could ask you why you wanna work for me,” he shoots back, dropping his pretence of understanding and standing upright, turning to match Alex’s aggressive stance.

Alex glowers at him as they face off under the dull glow of the building’s security lights. 

“Look, man,” Michael finally says through clenched teeth, “you want me to thank you for your service?”

Alex scoffs.

“Pass.”

“Then what do you want?”

Alex pauses. That question. That’s the million-dollar fucking question. The one Alex hasn’t been able to answer for a year, maybe longer; maybe not since he was 18 years-old and enlisting, making the decision not to choose any type of future for himself. It’s why Alex hangs out at the Pony most nights when his workday is done, desperate for distraction; it’s why he downloaded Grindr, but hasn’t set up a profile, why he jots down lyrics and music, but never plays them aloud; and it’s why Maria called in this favor with her favorite former regular who made it big.

What does he want? 

To stop fucking thinking about what he wants and take it.

“I want to write for you,” Alex blurts, voice insistent and sure, his tone nearly a command. “And I want to fuck you.”

Michael laughs, loud and disbelieving. He takes Alex in, eyes dragging slowly down the length of his body, roving every inch of him hungrily before catching Alex’s gaze, smiling broad and dirty. He stares at Alex with the same insistent, heated look he shot him from onstage, a challenge and a plea, and Alex thinks maybe Michael needs to stop performing as much as Alex needs to stop thinking.

“In that order?” Michael growls, and Alex grins. 

This isn’t the lazy, flirtatious Michael Guerin he saw backstage, entrancing unsuspecting underlings for sport; or the easy, charming Michael Guerin of the stage. This Michael is darker, more intent, and he pushes rather than teases as he stalks closer to Alex, crowding him against the brick wall of the building and kissing him hard and filthy, teeth and tongue and no mercy. Alex groans and fists his hands in Michael's sweaty curls, tugging them to direct the angle of his head for better access as he nips and sucks his way up Michael's throat, tasting the salt of his sweat when Alex soothes a fresh bruise with his tongue.

“You know I quit, right?” Alex pants, pressing his hips into Michael’s and smirking when Michael groans low and grinds back harder. Michael presses his palms against the wall on either side of Alex’s head as Alex reaches between them, working Michael’s belt and jeans open hurriedly. 

“As long as you know you’re fired,” Michael murmurs in reply.

Alex pushes his hand down Michael’s open pants and wraps long fingers around his cock, nipping at Michael’s lower lip and grinning when he gasps, dark eyes falling shut as his hips begin to churn in time with the twist of Alex's wrist. 

“Fair enough.”

Over coffee the next morning Alex shows Michael his songs, and Michael instantly re-hires him.

#malex #malex fic #meet ugly prompts #alex manes #michael guerin #roswell new mexico #anon

[maximelebled]

How I encode videos for YouTube and archival

Hello everyone! This post is going to describe the way in which I export and encode my video work to send it over the Internet and archive it. I’ll be talking about everything I’ve discovered over the past 10 years of research on the topic, and I’ll be mentioning some of the pitfalls to avoid falling into.

There’s a tremendous amount of misguided information out there, and while I’m not going to claim I know everything there is to know on this subject, I would like to think that I’ve spent long enough researching various issues to speak about my own little setup that I’ve got going on... it’s kind of elaborate and complex, but it works great for me.

(UPDATE 2020/12/09: added, corrected, & elaborated on a few things.)

First rule, the most golden of them all!

There should only ever be one compression step: the one YouTube does. In practice, there will be at least two, because you can’t send a mathematically-lossless file to YouTube... but you can send one that’s extremely close, and perceptually pristine. 

The gist of it: none of your working files should be compressed if you can help it, and if they need to be, they should be as little as possible. (Because let’s face it, it’s pretty tricky to keep hours of game footage around in lossless form, let alone recording them as such in the first place.)

This means that any AVC files should be full (0-255) range, 4:4:4 YUV, if possible. If you use footage that’s recorded with, like, OBS, it’s theoretically possible to punch in a lossless mode for x264, and even a RGB mode, but last I checked, neither were compatible with Vegas Pro. You may have better luck with other video editors.

Make sure that the brightness levels and that the colors match what you should be seeing. This is something you should be doing at every single step of the way throughout your entire process. Always keep this in mind. Lagom.nl’s LCD calibration section has quite a few useful things you can use to make sure.

If you’re able to, set a GOP length / max keyframe range of 1 second in the encoder of your footage. Modern video codecs suck in video editors because they use all sorts of compression tricks which are great for video playback, but not so efficient with the ways video editors access and request video frames. (These formats are meant to be played forwards, and requesting frames in any other order, as NLEs do, has far-reaching implications that hurt performance.) 

Setting the max keyframe range to 1 second will mildly hurt compressability of that working footage but it will greatly limit the performance impact you’ll be putting your video editor’s decoder through.

A working file is a lossless file!

I’ve been using utvideo as my lossless codec of choice. (Remember, codec means encoder/decoder.) It compresses much like FLAC or ZIP files do: losslessly. And not just perceptual losslessness, but a mathematical one: what comes in will be exactly what comes out, bit for bit.

Download it here: https://github.com/umezawatakeshi/utvideo/releases

It’s an AVI VFW codec. In this instance, VFW means Video for Windows, and it’s just the... sort of universal API that any Windows program can call for. And AVI is the container, just like how MP4 and MKV are containers. MP4 as a file is not a video format, it’s a container. MPEG-4 AVC (aka H.264) is the video format specification you’re thinking of when you say “MP4″.

Here’s a typical AVI VFW window, you might have seen one in the wild already.

In apps that expose this setting, you can hit “configure” and set the prediction mode of utvideo to “median” to get some more efficient compression at the cost of slower decoding, but in practice this isn’t a problem.

Things to watch out for:

Any and all apps involved must support OpenDML AVIs. The original AVI spec is 2GB max only. This fixes that limitation. That’s normal, but make sure your apps support that. The OpenDML spec is from the mid-90s, so usually it’s not a problem. But for example, the SFM doesn’t support it.

The files WILL be very large. But they won’t be as large as they’d be if you had a truly uncompressed AVI.

SSDs are recommended within the bounds of reasonability, especially NVMe ones. 1080p30 should be within reach of traditional HDDs though.

utvideo will naturally perform better on CGI content rather than real-life footage and I would not recommend it at all for real-life footage, especially since you’re gonna get that in already-compressed form anyway. Do not convert your camera’s AVC/HEVC files to utvideo, it’s pointless. (Unless you were to do it as a proxy but still, kinda weird)

If you’re feeling adventurous, try out the YUV modes! They work great for matte passes, since those are often just luma-masks, so you don’t care about chroma subsampling.

If you don’t care about utvideo or don’t want to do AVIs for whatever reason, you could go the way of image sequences, but you’ll then be getting the OS-level overhead that comes with having dozens of thousands of files being accessed, etc.

They’re a valid option though. (Just not an efficient one in most cases.)

Some of my working files aren’t lossless...

Unfortunately we don’t all have 10 TB of storage in our computers. If you’re using compressed files as a source, make sure they get decoded properly by your video editing software. Make sure the colors, contrast, etc. match what you see in your “ground truth” player of choice. Make sure your “ground truth” player of choice really does represent the ground truth. Check with other devices if you can. You want to cross-reference to make sure.

One common thing that a lot of software screws up is BT.601 & BT.709 mixups. (It’s reds becoming a bit more orange.)

Ultimately you want your compressed footage to appear cohesive with your RGB footage. It should not have different ranges, different colors, etc. 

For reasons that I don’t fully understand myself, 99% of AVC/H.264 video is “limited range”. That means that internally it’s actually squeezed into 16-235 as opposed to the original starting 0-255 (which is full range). And a limited range video gets decoded back to 0-255 anyway.

Sony/Magix Vegas Pro will decode limited range video properly but it will NOT expand it back to full 0-255 range, so it will appear with grayish blacks and dimmer whites. You can go into the “Levels” Effects tab to apply a preset that fixes this.

Exporting your video.

A lot of video editors out there are going to “render” your video (that is to say, calculate and render what the frames of your video look like) and encode it at the same time with whatever’s bundled in the software.

Do not ever do this with Vegas Pro. Do not ever rely on the integrated AVC encoders of Vegas Pro. They expect full range input, and encode AVC video as if it were full range (yeah), so if you want normal looking video, you have to apply a Levels preset to squeeze it into 16-235 levels, but it’s... god, honestly, just save yourself the headache and don’t use them.

Instead, export a LOSSLESS AVI out of Vegas. (using utvideo!)

But you may be able to skip this step altogether if you use Adobe Media Encoder, or software that can interface directly with it.

Okay, what do I do with this lossless AVI?

Option 1: Adobe Media Encoder.

Premiere and AE integrate directly with Adobe Media Encoder. It’s good; it doesn’t mix up BT.601/709, for example. In this case, you won’t have to export an AVI, you should be able to export “straight from the software”.

However, the integrated AVC/HEVC encoders that Adobe has licensed (from MainConcept, I believe) aren’t at the top of their game. Even cranking up the bitrate super high won’t reach the level of pristine that you’d expect (it keeps on not really allocating bits to flatter parts of the image to make them fully clean), and they don’t expose a CRF mode (more on that later), so, technically, you could still go with something better.

But what I’m getting at is, it’s not wrong to go with AME. Just crank up the bitrate though. (Try to reach 0.3 bits per pixel.) Here’s my quick rough quick guideline of Adobe Media Encoder settings:

H.264/AVC (faster encode but far from the most efficient compression one can have)

Switch from Hardware to Software encoding (unless you’re really in a hurry... but if you’re gonna be using Hardware encoding you might as well switch to H.265/HEVC, see below.)

Set the profile to High (you may not be able to do this without the above)

Bitrate to... VBR 1-pass, 30mbps for 1080p, 90mbps for 4K. Set the maximum to x2. +50% to both target and max if fps = 60.

“Maximum Render Quality” doesn’t need to be ticked, this only affects scaling. Only tick it if you are changing the final resolution of the video during this encoder step (e.g. 1080p source to be encoded as 720p)

If using H.265/HEVC (smaller file size, better for using same file as archive)

Probably stick with hardware encoding due to how slow software encoding is.

Stick to Main profile & Main tier.

If hardware: quality: Highest (slowest)

If software: quality: Higher.

4K: set Level to 5.2, 60mbps

1440p: set Level to 5.1, 40mbps

1080p: keep Level to 5.0, 25mbps

If 60fps instead of 24/30: +50% to bitrate. In which case you might have to go up to Level 6.2, but this might cause local playback issues; more on "Levels” way further down the post.

Keep in mind however that hardware encoders are far less efficient in terms of compression, but boy howdy are they super fast. This is why they become kind of worth it when it comes to H.265/HEVC. Still won’t produce the kind of super pristine result I’d want, but acceptable for the vast majority of YouTube cases.

Option 2: other encoding GUIs...

Find software of your choice that integrates the x264 encoder, which is state-of-the-art. (Again, x264 is one encoder for the H.264/AVC codec specification. Just making sure there’s no confusion here.)

Handbrake is one common choice, but honestly, I haven’t used it enough to vouch for it. I don’t know if the settings it exposes are giving you proper control over the whole BT601/709 mess. It has some UI/UX choices which I find really questionable too.

If you’re feeling like a command-line masochist, you could try using ffmpeg, but be ready to pour over the documentation. (I haven’t managed to find out how to do the BT.709 conversion well in there yet.)

Personally, I use MeGUI, because it runs through Avisynth (a frameserver), which allows me to do some cool preprocessing and override some of the default behaviour that other encoder interfaces would do. It empowers you to get into the nitty gritty of things, with lots of plugins and scripts you can install, like this one:

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Dither_tools (grab it)

Once you’re in MeGUI, and it has finished updating its modules, you gotta hit CTRL+R to open the automated script creator. Select your input, hit “File Indexer” (not “One Click Encoder”), then just hit “Queue” so that Avisynth’s internal thingamajigs start indexing your AVI file. Once that’s done, you’ll be greeted with a video player and a template script.

In the script, all you need to add is this at the bottom:

dither_convert_rgb_to_yuv(matrix="709",output="YV12",mode=7)

This will perform the proper colorspace conversion, AND it does so with dithering! It’s the only software I know of which can do it with dithering!! I kid you not! Mode 7 means it’s doing it using a noise distribution that scales better and doesn’t create weird patterns when resizing the video (I would know, I’ve tried them all).

Your script should look like this, just 3 lines

LoadPlugin("D:\(path to megui, etc)\LSMASHSource.dll")

LWLibavVideoSource("F:\yourvideo.avi")

dither_convert_rgb_to_yuv(matrix="709",output="YV12",mode=7)

The colors WILL look messed up in the preview window but that’s normal. It’s one more example of how you should always be wary when you see an issue. Sometimes you don’t know what is misbehaving, and at which stage. Always try to troubleshoot at every step along the way, otherwise you will be chasing red herrings. Anyway...

Now, back in the main MeGUI window, we’ve got our first line complete (AviSynth script), the “Video Output” path should be autofilled, now we’re gonna touch the third line: “Encoder settings”. Make sure x264 is selected and hit “config” on the right.

Tick “show advanced settings.”

Set the encoding mode to “Const. Quality” (that’s CRF, constant rate factor). Instead of being encoded with a fixed bitrate, and then achieving variable quality with that amount of bits available, CRF instead encodes for a fixed quality, with a variable bitrate (whatever needs to be done to achieve that quality).

CRF 20 is the default, and it’s alright, but you probably want to go up to 15 if you really want to be pristine. I’m going up to 10 because I am unreasonable. (Lower is better, higher numbers means quality is worse.)

Because we’re operating under a Constant Quality metric, CRF 15 at encoder presets “fast” vs. “slow” will produce the same perceptual quality, but at different file sizes. Slow being smaller, of course. 

You probably want to be at “slow” at least, there isn’t that much point in going to “slower” or “veryslow”, but you can always do it if you have the CPU horsepower to spare.

Make sure AVC Profile is set to High. The default would be Main, but High unlocks a few more features of the spec that increase compressability, especially at higher resolutions. (8x8 transforms & intra prediction, quantization scaling matrices, cb/cr controls, etc.)

Make sure to also select a Level. This doesn’t mean ANYTHING by itself, but thankfully the x264 config window here is smart enough to actually apply settings which are meaningful with regards to the level.

A short explanation is that different devices have different decoding capabilities. A decade ago, a mobile phone might have only supported level 3 in hardware, meaning that it could only do main profile at 30mbps max, and if you went over that, it would either not decode the video or do it using the CPU instead of its hardware acceleration, resulting in massive battery usage. The GPU in your computer also supports a maximum level. 5.0 is a safe bet though.

If you don’t restrict the level accordingly to what your video card supports, you might see funny things happen during playback:

It’s nothing that would actually affect YouTube (AFAIK), but still, it’s best to constrain.

Finally, head over to the “misc” tab of the x264 config panel and tick these.

If the command line preview looks like mine does (see the screenshot from a few paragraphs ago) then everything should be fine.

x264 is configured, now let’s take care of the audio.

Likewise, “Audio Input” and “Audio Output” should be prefilled if MeGUI detected an audio track in your AVI file. Just switch the audio encoder over to FLAC, hit config, crank the slider to “smallest file, slow encode” and you’re good to go. FLAC = mathematically lossless audio. Again, we want to not compress anything, or as little as possible until YouTube does its own compression job, so you might as well go with FLAC, which will equal roughly 700 to 1000kbps of audio, instead of going with 320kbps of MP3/AAC, which might be perceptually lossless, but is still compressed (bad). The added size is nothing next to the high-quality video track you’re about to pump out. 

FLAC is not an audio format supported by the MP4 container, so MeGUI should have automagically changed the output to be using the MKV (Matroska) container. If it hasn’t, do it yourself.

Now, hit the “Autoencode” button in the lower right of the main window. And STOP, do not be hasty: in the new window, make sure “no target size” is selected before you do anything else. If you were to keep “file size” selected, then you would be effectively switched over to 2-pass encoding, which is another form of (bit)rate control. We don’t want that. We want CRF. 

Hit queue and once it’s done processing, you should have a brand new pristine MKV file that constains lossless audio and extra clean video! Make sure to double-check that everything matches—take screenshots of the same frames in the AVI and MKV files and compare them.

Now all you’ve got to do is send it to YouTube!

For archival... well, you could just go and crank up the preset to Placebo and reduce CRF a little bit—OR you could use the 2-pass “File Size” mode which will ensure that your video stream will be the exact size (give or take a couple %) you want it to be. You could also use x265 for your archival file buuuut I haven’t used it enough (on account of how slow it is) to make sure that it has no problems anywhere with the whole BT.601/708 thing. It doesn’t expose those metadata settings so who knows how other software’s going to treat those files in the future... (god forbid they get read as BT.2020)

You can use Mediainfo (or any player that integrates it, like my favorite, MPC-HC) to check the metadata of the file.

Good luck out there!

And remember to always double-check the behaviour of decoders at every step of the way with your setup. 99% of the time I see people talk about YouTube messing with the contrast of their video, it’s because they weren’t aware of how quirky Vegas can be with H.264/AVC input & its integrated encoder.

Hope this helps!

#video encoding #video editing #encoding #x264 #megui #avisynth

[starkaer]

it’ll last longer.

my @starkerkink prompter was @demons-sing-me-to-sleep, and i choose the third prompt. this was both all of the place and so much fun to write! hope you like it, though i didn’t manage to fit as many of your kinks as i’d like to. i might post it on ao3 later, but here we go!

tags: underage (peter is sixteen), incest, unnegotiated kink, mildly dubious consent, exploration of kink(s), unbetaed bc i’m a mess tm.

Nice! Peter will have the whole Stark Tower for himself, for more than a couple of days, for the very first time in his sixteen years. He had plans of inviting over Ned for the whole weekend, maybe bringing over Liz or Harry to try and impress them - maybe even invite that cute pizza boy in and let the things he saw online become reality. But, on the first day, he is going to do what he had been wanting to do for oh-so-longnow.

The tv in his room is indeed huge and he would never complain about it, but nothing could ever compare to the one in the living room. 4k porn. God, he is going to be living the teenage dream. Computer on the coffee table, a towel on his side, clothes not even on after the shower a couple of hours ago.

God, he is actually feeling nervous! He sighs to get the anxiety out, and gets to work. Connects the two screens, opens the secret folder he had put a password on, finds that nearly 3gb sized file (one of the ones he downloaded when he learned his dad had a meeting out of the state), and waits a few seconds for the show to start.

And then it started. A redhead twink, laying on a bed, flipping over a random comic book, only wearing the skimpiest of red speedos. He’s already so damn hard, and the muscled step-dad wasn’t even on the screen yet- oh, there he was. Bulging muscles, skin a dark-ish shade of golden, eyes clearly hungry.

That went on for nearly two hours, Peter stroking himself to the cliff but making sure to never fall in, since he wanted to enjoy as much of this as possible. He had watched all the highest quality porn he managed to download, but maybe he was in the mood for something new.

Maybe some amateur videos? Those typically had great positions. Or perhaps one of the spanking ones? He liked the whimpers from those, they did great things for him.

But then his eyes set down on something else, and his finger doesn’t take long to follow. A few seconds, and there were two men on his screen, the lighting not good enough for him to make every single detail out, but he didn’t mind. He knows very well what happens.

“Do you like that, Stark? Like a big man destroying your ass?”

That first line almost did push him down the cliff, his hand flying away from his pulsing red cock in order to avoid it; now it was becoming almost a game. That man was Steve Rogers, one of his father’s most long-lasting boyfriends, he later learned.

“Yeah, please, ruin me, sir! Fuck me until I can’t walk, please!”

That second line almost pushes him down the cliff, and his hand was still away from his pulsing red cock. That begging whore was his dad, he thought with a smirk, and his dick twitched in response.

Two videos later, his dad has two men deep in both of his holes, one with the best dirty talk of all the sextapes and the other with the longest dick he had ever seen. The moans his dad was making was unholy at best, and he knew this was going to be it - it was the last one, and he barely lasted through the one before with the long-haired one, the most brutal one who got Tony nearly in tears with his pounding.

Oh, it was coming! Oh, he was coming! This is-

“Peter, what the fuck is that?!”

Peter loves horror games, even liked the ones with the cheesy jumpscares - they got the adrenaline flowing, it was fun. But none of those ever made him jump quite as much as he did when his father’s voice came from behind him instead of from the screen.

He shoves his finger on the computer’s button so fast one would think he has superpowers, but it was clearly long past that point. “Hey, dad, you’re, um- You’re not supposed to be home.” His heart keeps drumming on his ears and brain, as he tries to cover his junk.

“What the fuck are you watching Peter? Why?! Why would you watch that, that’s-”

“I know! I know, dad, I know, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry-”

If whoever was that cold man had his father nearly in tears of pleasure, his father had him apologetically bawling on the floor. All it took was the slight tone of disgust on Tony’s voice to get him sobbing, begging for forgiveness. He was disgusting, and he knew it. All he could do is hope his dad would see how truly sorry he was, and maybe put him in a mental hospital, so those gross thoughts could go away and he could be a normal person, a normal teenager.

“Pete, don’t- don’t cry, it’s- It’s okay, it’s okay... You were just curious, that’s all, it’s okay, come here...” Oh, he was very much not just curious. That was nothing on those videos for him to be curious about anymore, he knew every detail very fucking well - but it felt so great to be hugged and apparently forgiven by his dad, he wouldn’t mind if that’s what Tony would have to believe in order to forgive him. “I just hate those videos, but you did nothing wrong, okay? I shouldn’t ever have filmed them, but that’s not on you.”

It took more ten or fifteen minutes of calming and soothing and tranquilizing for him to say anything. And, if he had his mind in place, those probably wouldn’t be his first words.

“Why do you hate them, though?” Head on his father’s lap, feet hanging off the couch in misery, it takes some seconds for him to get a response from above.

“They just don’t represent me well, I guess. Or at all, really.” There’s a good-humored tone to it, but then it gets a bit more serious. “I just... Now I just relate more to the other man, y’know?”

“You’re a top now, that’s what you’re saying?” The question is genuine, but not even Peter himself can’t help but laugh along with his dad when he realizes how simplified it was.

“I guess there’s also that, but...” The man takes a long breath, his face clearly showing he is trying to pick just the right words. “The thing is that... The things those men said to me... Now I prefer to say than to hear them. You know what I mean?”

“So... You’re a dominant, is that it?” There could have been some laughing again, since it was also apparently simplifying Tony’s answer, but the man just stared at him for a few seconds, almost admiring his words.

“Well, yeah... I didn’t know you knew what a dominant is, but yeah, that is what I mean, I guess. But also I’m just a very different person overall.”

“How do I know what I am?”

“Well...” There are butterflies in his stomach, and he tries not to think about how good his father’s thighs are as pillows. “When you watched those videos, did you like to hear what those men said? Do you, well, wish they were being said to you?” 

Cheeks turn bright red immediately. “Yeah.” It’s almost nothing, and his dad has to make a questioning sound to get a clear and louder version. “I think I did, yeah.”

“Well, that means you’re probably a submissive. But, like I said, those things can change with time. I used to enjoy those things being said to me, but now I prefer to say them. You’re too young to know for sure what you prefer, anyway, Pete.” He hopes ‘those things can change with time’ would include his taste for his own father’s sex-tapes.

“I’m really sorry, dad. I should never have watched them.”

“It’s okay, Pete, it’s okay. You’re a kid, you’re supposed to be curious about that kind of stuff. Do you... Do you have any other questions about them?”

“When was the one with uncle Bruce filmed? And who was the long-haired dude?”

“Oh, you do. Was hoping we could wrap things up. Okay, um...” He motions to Peter to get up, which he does, sitting on the couch like his father, heart beating fast.

“The one with uncle Bruce… Do you like that one?” He shyly nods, feeling even more gross, but...

But, ugh, that one was definitely his favorite one. He loved when those men called his dad the filthiest names - but that one was completely different, and so much better. Tony sets up the camera, eyes dark in lust and smirk on his lips, then turns on his back and drops to his knees and sucks Bruce dry. Once, twice, thrice, in twenty minutes. The simple image of the man adjusting his glasses while looking down to his father, shaking and trembling and whimpering for some reason, had powered many of his late-night jack offs.

His father lets out a long breath, but Peter can’t tell if it’s good or bad. The thought of ‘is he disgusted again?’ nearly brings tears to his eyes.

“Yeah, that is indeed a good one...” Like they’re talking about pizza toppings, not the man’s own sex-tapes. His dick is spasming and growing and redning, and he wonders if his father’s eyes are actually going from his face to his cock or if that’s his horny, gross imagination. “Do you know why uncle Bruce was crying like that?”

After some moments of nervous silence, he shakes his head, swallowing hard and waiting to see what his father is up to. “Do you want to find out?”

There’s another nod, but never a sound — Peter's mind is turning on itself, really. It hits him: his father, at that moment, was hitting on him. Without a doubt. And, with that question, his cock can’t get any harder. The image of him trembling and moaning while Tony works on his cock like the hungriest, meanest slut hits him like a truck, turning his cheeks bright red.

“Say it, then. Say that you want daddy to suck you off.”

Despite the request of a confirmation still in the air, his father is sliding down to his knees, and he can’t breathe for a second. He doesn’t say it, but he spreads his legs. He doesn’t say it, but he bites his lips. And then he says it, voice shaking more than uncle Bruce. “I want daddy to suck me off, please.” The ‘please’ was out of habit, and he would have laughed for it, if his father wasn’t about to give him the very first blowjob of his life.

His dick was standing nearly straight by now, hardened by his father’s words, and yet Tony’s big hand wrapped around it like it was a pencil. It was so agonizingly slow, but oh so fucking good. Up and down, up and down, always with a twist of his wrist — he wasn’t sure if he was wanting to scream in pleasure because it was someone else, or because it was his father, or really just because that technique was better than his basic quick-up-&-down-strokes-until-he-cums one. Probably all three.

Some more seconds of only masturbating, and his father’s lips were approaching his crotch. Tender kisses to his thighs, which felt both burning erotic and way too intimal (like when a whore has sex, but doesn’t kiss a client), and his father’s eyes are staring into his soul, but he doesn’t pay it much attention. He can deal with his soul later.

“Should I talk like them?” It clearly takes a few seconds for Tony to understand, and he’s scared he’s ruined the moment. “The men, on the videos?” And his father looks up to him, grinning like the devil.

“No...” A long, wet, epically slow lick to his cockhead has him squiming his hips forward for more, but his father doesn’t allow it. “But tell me, Pete, do you want daddy to make this little dick of yours warm?” Oh. That’s right. He was Tony in the videos, and Tony were those men. So he was the little whore, the cockhungry slut, and the fucking faggot — even if he was the one being sucked off. And that thought almost made him cum on the spot.

He didn’t know if Tony would wait for his confirmation this time, but he gave it immediately, nodding quickly, eyes closed in desperation and need. And so, he can’t see when his dad places his mouth around his throbbing dick, but he lets out a moan nearing a scream, and the edge is so close.

The mouth worked up and down his shaft, making lewdy, wet sounds all the way, and Peter looks to the edge he’s being pushed to. This feels so good, he doesn’t want to fall in yet. “Yeah, oh, dad…” He wasn’t required to make those noises, they come from somewhere between his very soul and his genitals.

But it doesn’t last one minute, and he’s being pushed off the edge, falling into the delicious, bright abyss, and screaming all the way down. When he opens his eyes, Tony's face is painted with his seeds, and seeing that is a thousand times hotter than watching any of those videos could ever be. In fact, one second of that blowjob was hotter than any of his thousand hours of jerking off to those videos.

“Oh, that was a lot, Pete.” He could get hard just from watching his father cleaning his hand, sucking the cum out of his fingers like it’s vanilla ice cream. Like giving his kid a blowjob is just his thursday.

“Yeah, I was, uh- I was jerking off for, like, two hours before, so, yeah, that’s why.” He wants to ask if that, the blowjob, will ever happen again (and also why dad isn’t cleaning his face), but knows he shouldn’t. This shouldn’t have happened, but he is so glad it did. “DAD, AH!”

Tony is back to sucking; and, instead of the blessing that was falling from that cliff, he’s falling from grace. It’s burning and cramping and hurting, and he is shaking and trembling and whimpering. Exactly like uncle Bruce.

“Please, dad, ah! It hurts, please!” It seems the more he tries to squirm away, the harder Tony sucks — for one second it hits that, perhaps, he is indeed sucking harder the more he struggles, perhaps he likes him to struggle, but that thought won’t make the cramps stop, so it’s of no real use for him. “Please, daaad!”

But, both as sudden as a lightning and as smooth as a cloud, the anguish leaves, and he is welcomed with another hard-on, and his hurt twitching and whimpering turns into jerking and asking for more. He now opens his eyes, but the sight of his father in his knees, looking deep into his eyes with a pulsating cock in his mouth takes all of his air away, so he closes them again.

He feels proud of passing the one minute mark, but it’s just some more minutes until the gagging sounds and the slick warmness take him down the marvelous cliff once again. There’s more of his semen on his dad’s face, but it seems like just when he's done squirting cum out, he’s falling from Mount Olympus for the second time, and it might be worse.

The cramps return with all force, drowning him in ache, all throughout his legs and his wrists and his elbows — and he can’t wait for the sweet release of sudden pleasure, but it doesn’t seem to be coming. He gives in to begging, “Dad, dad, please stop, please, ah!” And it still doesn’t come for what feels like days on end.

There’s tears falling down his cheeks, and he is grabbing the couch so hard it might break his fingers. His cock is getting hard again — but none of the sweet pleasure that came the first two times hits him, the cramps never go away. He continues to beg and cry and ask, until he comes again, and this time he realizes no more jizz really comes out. He doesn’t even open his eyes, waiting for the ache again, until his father speaks.

“Already dry, kid?” That’s when he allows himself to wake up, and is faced with the man’s face covered in his own cum. There’s quite a nice amount on his forehead and his right cheek. His nose, left cheek and goatee also have some of his liquid, and he thinks one of the eyes is red-ish, so he guesses some landed on there too. “Wanna clean me up or should I?”

He gives no response, breathing deeply from both relief and tiredness. His eyes are starting to weigh, and Tony must have taken it as a no. If he wasn’t so done with the cliffs and the edges for tonight, the sight of his father brushing his cum to his mouth and licking his lips and fingers clean of it like it’s vanilla — that would definitely get him hard. “You know why uncle Bruce was like that?”

Just a tired nod, and he’s dozing away. “You were even prettier than him...”

Just a warm smile, and he’s nearly gone. “Hope you don’t mind me recording it...”

Just a pair of closing eyes, and he’s done, but- “Maybe later I’ll explain the Bucky one to you…”

#starkerkink2020 #starker #starkercest #ironspider #my writings. #my stuff.

[murfeelee]

Weekend! Cyberpunk! Replies!

Thanks so much for all the supportive comments on my recent Cyberpunk INSP posts, everybody! 🤗

C2077 is quickly proving to be one of the hardest games I’ve extracted & converted CC from. All I can do is keep trying, but as I’ve shown y’all, I suck at this.

I don’t want y’all getting too excited -- I already said I don’t take CAS Requests, and that’s cuz CAS gives me the hardest time, and I get really discouraged when stuff doesn’t come out right.

So I sincerely thank y’all for being so supportive, regardless, even when I’m messing up & the CC quality’s not great. (Looking at you, Misty’s hair.)

________________________________________________

simsmono replied to your post “Yoru no Machi Pt1 - The Pickup  CAPTIONS AS TEXT -...”

Wow 👏 super awesome looking pics!!

ratztom replied to your post “Yoru no Machi Pt1 - The Pickup  CAPTIONS AS TEXT -...”

Beautiful as always ! I love this city vibe 😍☺️

SAAAAAME!! There’s no way I can emulate the sheer awesomeness of Night City; that’s why I’m calling mine Yoru no Machi instead. 😅

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen, bugs and all. I wish I lived there IRL. Keanu wasn’t even lying, Night City is BREATHTAKING.

________________________________________________

TYGER CLAWS REPLIES

obscurus-noctem replied to your post “C2077 WIPs Pt1: Tyger Claws (虎鉤衆)   Riding out...”

Yesss, love this! 👹

👹👺😈 ❤️

white-enamel-ts3 replied to your post “C2077 WIPs Pt1: Tyger Claws (虎鉤衆)   Riding out...”

I just saw this post.. wow just love every thing and every one, so i read your thoughts (lol how it has sounded) and i haven’t found out xd. I’m not playing cyberpunk2077 but cyberpunk style has always fascinated me and this post is great                          

LOL, thank you! The Tyger Claws are some of the most hostile enemies and they’re effing scumbags, but by god do they have the best style in the whole dang game. 👌

________________________________________________

VOODOO BOYS REPLIES

ashuriphoenix replied to your post “C2077 WIPs Pt2: Voodoo Boys A mysterious gang from...”

A lot of love went into this.  Even if you fail at everything you’re intending to convert, this still shows a lot of dedication!

Thank you.

white-enamel-ts3 replied to your post “C2077 WIPs Pt2: Voodoo Boys A mysterious gang from...”

they are sure to be a success because they really look great

I’m suuuuuper excited to share all the techno CC with y’all! ^0^

________________________________________________

MISTY REPLIES

obscurus-noctem replied to your post “Misty’s Esoterica Misty’s Esoterica is a new-age...”

This is excellent!! Looks exactly like cb2077!

rebelsimz reblogged your post “Misty’s Esoterica Misty’s Esoterica is a new-age...”

HOLY SHIT

jolifleurbleu replied to your post “Misty’s Esoterica Misty’s Esoterica is a new-age...”

Amazing work! It looks so great!

rysyu reblogged your post “Misty’s Esoterica Misty’s Esoterica is a new-age...”

OMG

jazzysimlife replied to your post “Misty’s Esoterica Misty’s Esoterica is a new-age...”

Can’t wait to download!

white-enamel-ts3 replied to your post “Misty’s Esoterica Misty’s Esoterica is a new-age...”

I can’t press the heart more than once to like it, but I LOVE this post ❤️like ❤️like❤️like❤️like❤️like

 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

________________________________________________

CC REPLIES

obscurus-noctem replied to your post “C2077 Misty INSP Set”

*screams* thank you so much!!! There were so many objects i was eyeing during cb2077 gameplay, they’re so cool

You and me both, I was like 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀  the whole time! XD An Asian-fusion New Age witch!? I’ve found my people! 😭

pattsimsblog reblogged your post “C2077 Misty INSP Set”

since i love cp2077 i need to share this with yall #yasss

headspacedad replied to your post “C2077 Misty INSP Set”

oh complete LOVE! I was hoping for Cyperpunk 2077 cc and I knew you’d be the one I could count on!  Thank you!

You know me too well! *high fives* I’ve been waiting for this effing game for effing years, and I HAD TO.

ratztom replied to your post “C2077 Misty INSP Set”

This is so cool ! *0*

descendantdragfi replied to your post “C2077 Misty INSP Set”

Thank you! Amazing work!

I’m blown away, y'all. Thank you! Happy simming!

#replies #sims 3 cyberpunk #murf is a derp