#the poster in the back room of the book shop and the thought associated with it just has me reeling

[ramdotexe]

i can’t believe pre-memory wipe harry was concerned about masculinity while running around wearing Snakeskin Heels

#the poster in the back room of the book shop and the thought associated with it just has me reeling #you are wearing HEELS harry #a gay man COMPLIMENTED your HEELS harry #disco elysium #harry

[angelisverba]

thinkin’ bout you

in which harry owns a flower shop and has a major crush on a girl who comes in to buy flowers every once in a while (and he’s too shy to ask for her number) 

word count: 17.3k

paring: florist!h and y/n

warnings: just some pinning and lustful yearning. m for mature...

author’s note: i’ve been working on this forever. not to pick fav’s but i think florist!h comes second to sl23... hes just so.......well, you’ll see!!

*    *    *    *    *    *

When Harry was given the option to go on a playdate with his car-loving and dirty-nailed schoolmates or spending the weekend at his nan’s house, he would often pick the latter. 

He preferred to spend his afternoons frolicking with her Siamese kitty in her wild-flower filled garden, sunbathing in the open grass, or napping on a quilted blanket under the large, round oak tree, with the kitty nestled into his tummy, keeping him warm. When he woke in the arms of his nan as she carried him inside the house for a glass of cool lemonade, he bore a band of pink sunburn over his button nose, and the blue and white striped Mickey shirt was sticking to the areas where his furry friend had provided an extra heat. 

So, it was safe to say that from the start, Harry’s tastes weren’t what could be considered ‘average’ or ‘normal’ or ‘straight’ for a heterosexual male of his age in current society. 

Not that he ever valued those opinions, but their impressions rang in the back of his loving head when the women who he brought to the comfort of his home made hurtful ‘joking’ comments on how ‘peculiar’  his choice of decor was or giving him prolonged strange looks before shaking their heads and yanking their clothes off so that they landed in a forgotten heap in some unimportant corner of his room. 

Granted, he still got a good shag, but it wasn’t enough to fulfill his desires regarding any actions associated with relationships. He wanted someone warm and soft and kind. Someone who wouldn’t judge his home, his music choices, his clothing, or anything else about him. A girlfriend, not a fuck. 

Long ago, he’d stopped caring about what others said about him. Adopting this mindset had given him some of the happiest and healthiest moments of his life (albeit occasionally, doubts merged with the ghastly shadows of his loneliness). Business at his flower shop increased as his charm increased with positivity, and a new life within him bloomed like a baby rose bud when he accepted that being single was okay. The ribbons of his bouquets bouncing with an added umf and the mist that landed on his skin when he changed the water in the flower buckets only enhanced the golden hue of his skin. 

Harry even took to renovating his home a bit. 

 Coincidentally, his apartment was located on the floor above his flower stop, and contained a significant amount of singular flowers in vases or bouquets in empty corners to prove it. An array of pastel colors smeared on the once blank walls. Bambi pink in his bedroom, sage green in his kitchen, and a French blue in his living room. The couch was a suede papaya three-seater with black and white checkered pillows, and the coffee table was an emerald-tiled piece standing on top of a geometric lavender carpet, a soft contrast against the dark oak of his floorboards. Harry’s taste in pop-culture, art, and literature was displayed on the frames hanging off his walls. Pictures and posters of his favorite pieces like Matisse’s Blue Nudes and Goldfish and The Dance II. An enhanced, enlarged photo of maraschino cherries and a raven haired pin-up girl. Another glass table by the end of the couch held a silver candlestick and a small statue.

Sometimes, the miniature Greek statue he bought at a thrift store of a man with his nakedness pure and unobscured to the viewers' eyes made his dick bloat against the seams of his pants. If he stared at it for too long, his eyes drawn to the softened cock between thighs that looked so flesh-like even though it was carved out of some clay or ceramic material, his mind would travel to sensual, honey-red places that he hadn’t been in so long. Harry’s imagination explored- as cheesy as it sounds- the sexual aspects of the male genitalia, and therefore his own sexual expeditions and how much he missed giving or receiving a good fuck. More often than not, he ended up with himself in his fist, forehead sparkling with perspiration under the candle lights in his room as his thighs and abdomen clenched with every buck of his yearning hips. 

The doorknob of his room was in the shape of an eye, the iris colored a brilliant blue. His king bed- no, frame, just a minimalist white base, pushed up against the wall with two tables on either side, both of them loaded articulately with vintage trinkets and ceramic ring trays shaped like seashells to hold his jewelry. His bedsheets were a stylish combination of pastel colors; lilac comforter, mint and sky pillows. Previously, they had been snow white sheets with strawberry print, but a woman he brought over said they looked like the sheets her five-year-old niece had. 

He changed them the week after that.

On the windowsill, a pot in the shape of a white, blue-eyed kitty with vines of string of hearts kissing the floor. A mirror in the shape of a heart with a pink trim besides the lightswitch, above his brown dresser. In the corner, a bookshelf stuffed with books that spilled over the seams, and perpendicular to it, the home of his pet chameleon, Owen (he wanted a cat, but when he went to the pet store and saw the dehydrated creature, he couldn’t leave him there). A 16 x 16 x 30 inch tank filled with a branch that cut across halfway. It was full of all the things he might need, maybe even too much of it, but it didn’t matter because when Harry was home Owen spent most of his time hanging off the collars of his shirts or snuggled in the ruffles of his hooded sweatshirt on his shoulder. The small, color changing friend adored his owner, and only morphed into a mild red color when Harry didn’t feed him more mango. 

The renovations occurred in his bathroom; a cherry-red covering the walls because it looked boring before (at least in his opinion).  The gold piping of the sink accentuated nicely with the darker color, and the sun seemed brighter when it streamed in through the window above his ceramic claw-footed tub. Owen particularly liked the misty showerhead stall in the corner, and as long as he kept his eyes to himself, Harry didn’t mind it if his green friend wrapped around the showerhead and enjoyed the mimicked tropical atmosphere. 

For awhile now, it had been just him and his chameleon (and maybe his mum’s cat if she was going out of town and needed a sitter) but he didn’t mind it. 

He got to meet new people everyday within the parameters of H’s Garden, and they all tended to overshare when it came to buying a bouquet. ‘My wife just had our son, want to see a picture?’ or ‘my boyfriend and I have our anniversary on Saturday’ and even ‘my sister had plastic surgery so me and my dad need something that says ‘congrats you look like Kim Kardashain now’ how ‘bout it?’ 

Stories ranged from sweet, to grotesque, to sad, to funny, and sometimes even evil- Harry didn’t like customers that gave flowers as a ‘fuck you’. He thought it was a waste of beauty and sacrifice. Flowers were living things that had their lives cut short in order to provide momentary satisfaction and life long memories to the receiver, not bitter feelings of revenge. Although it was still business, it pained him that such a pretty arrangement be misused. It was one of the cons of his work. He created what he considered to be masterpieces, and had no control over where they would end up, whether it be as a centerpiece for a candlelit dinner, or in the trash after the apology for a strong argument hadn’t been enough. 

However, Harry couldn’t deny that he didn’t love his job, because he did. 

When he turned 16, he’d determined that he wanted a peaceful life with a job that wouldn’t bore him. He wanted to be as stress free as possible, with his spirituality as a prominent highlight in his lifestyle. When he turned 18, he had determined that he wanted to be a florist, and began to save up to open his own shop with the occasional help of his friends and sister. He refused to take anything from his mother because he wanted to be the one giving her gifts and money and everything good after all of her sacrifices in raising him. Call him a momma’s boy. Harry loved his mother. 

Online seminars and college classes became his best friend, teaching him everything he needed to know about accounting, stocks, and how to keep his business going. He was a businessman first, florist second. During the slow seasons (the start of winter and an awkward half-week between summer and spring) he relied on his investments to triple-ensure that he had enough money to stay afloat. 

On his 22nd birthday, as a gift to himself, he signed the lease to the building that housed all of the pretty plants in temporary buckets full of flower food and water, and hired a graphic designer to design the cursive, golden letters that spelled out the name of his shop above the front door. 

 Now, three years later, he lived as happy as can be. 

And he wasn’t lonely anymore. 

Well, if you wanted to be technical, his relationship status was still a checkmark over the box labeled ‘single’, but his heart couldn’t be fluttering any harder at the sight of one of his regular customers, and she was there, creeping around in his brain to keep him company. 

She was the complete opposite of every girl he’d ever been with. She was sweet, kind, funny, and didn’t judge him for the way he dressed, or his profession. In fact, they bonded over things that previous women had… slyly berated him for. The color of his nails, the lace of his collar, the pattern of his flared pants,  and even the sheep on his baby blue sweater vest.  

She stole his heart the moment she walked through his door with a soft smile on her face, a sparkling gleam in her warm eyes, and placed it in her pocket the moment she said, “it smells lovely in here!”

Harry, awestruck and blushing because well, she was pretty and wore a shade of purple that somehow made her hair look so soft. Two strands of hair were pinned at the back of her head, essentially keeping the rest of it away from her face save for the few baby wisps that rested gently against her cheeks like a lover’s caress. The stuttering, stumbling cupid’s-bow-struck fool replied with, “thank you. It would be my pleasure to help you with anything you’d like,” and that had been his name, signed on the dotted line of a soul contract. Only she was not the devil. She was an angel. 

But even then, it wouldn’t matter. If she was the devil, if she was an angel, something in between or something new entirely he wouldn’t care because he was half gone for her already. 

“In that case,” she smiled, and Harry’s heart sang a melody it never had before. It was like the sun beamed from the spaces between her teeth and tickled the fuzzy spot beneath his earlobe. She had the most amazing voice, tranquil and clear and ethereal. “I just moved into a new apartment and wanted the place to feel like home. I thought maybe flowers would give it a little life.” 

He vividly remembers that the color of her cheeks changed to that of what is called a ‘blush’, but he didn’t know if it was a trick under the light, or a product of his wistful imagination. Her fingers gently skimmed the petals of a rose from it’s bucket near her hip, and one of the straps of the tote bag on her shoulder disrespectfully dropped away from her shoulder. He wanted to simultaneously rush over and fix it for her, and yell at the inanimate object for not being grateful of the fact that it had the opportunity to cling to her shoulder.

But, before either of these inner-conflicts met a sound resolve, her delicate fingers righted what was once wrong, and Harry cleared his throat, embarrassed because he’d stared for a little too long. He wanted so badly to ask for her name and how she liked her eggs in the morning, but instead he said, “there’s nothing like a bit of something pretty to brighten your day. Did you have something specific in mind?”

He hoped that the meaning of his words wasn’t caught on her, or that would be totally embarrassing and ‘loser’-like. 

When she walked out the door with a content smile on her lips, his own heart was beating faster than the flapping of a hummingbird’s tender wings. He was sure that he had never laid eyes on a pair of lips like hers, neither the feeling that blossomed in his chest at the thought that she might be smiling just for him to see and enjoy. 

Of course, it was a silly crush. One that clawed and gripped onto his sweaty palms with no sign of letting go. Maybe, Harry thought, it was because he hadn’t wet his wick in so long, and the interaction he’d had with her had sparked irrational, poem-inspiring feelings within the love cavern of his ribs. Because how could he fall head over heels with someone he didn’t even know? Surely, the swarm of hormone-pumped butterflies in his stomach was the beginning of a dead-end infatuation. 

Right? 

Harry went that entire day, appalled at the apparent angel he had the fortune of being in the presence of in her short fall from the tender heavens. He wondered where she placed the flowers she bought (an arrangement he was particularly proud of, full of lilac, delicate stems of lavender, and puffs of baby’s breath wrapped with a white bow) and where that tiny extension of him was. At the entrance of her home, right below the place she rested her hand against as she tugged her shoes off? At the center of her table? Maybe besides her bed? Where she would see the purple petals and white of him as he wrapped it every time she woke up or went to bed? He hoped- as much as it was a romantic thought- that it wasn’t the last one. He’s been so awkward, so pink. A blush on his cheeks he hadn’t remembered being there since the time he yelped, startled, at the unexpected pain of a tattoo needle, the artist pointedly peeved. Acting like such a boy. 

Right before crawling up the steps of his apartment, heart still bleeding with love-blood from the deadly tip of Cupid’s arrows, he made himself a mini version of the bouquet he’d made her, and placed it at the center of his tiled coffee table. 

*********

A few days trickled by, and the memory of her face drifted in and out of his mind like a giant sway of fabric slowly billowing in the wind. He was just so… struck by a slab of awe, stunned by her kind of beauty. Natural, the kind that hooks you in it’s purity, like the golden beams streaming in through transparent curtains on a warm spring afternoon. 

Her strawberry lips curved elegantly under her nose, and displayed a smile that leaked some sort of heady drug into the air because the air was sweet when he breathed it in. And when he handed the bundle of flowers over to her, the pads of her delicate fingers skimmed the rough ridges of his knuckles. He wondered immediately what kind of moisturizer she used, and if it smelled like honey or lavender or peaches. She smelled sweet. Sweeter than all of the flowers in his colorful soul shop put together. The colors that belong to her, on her person and worn by her, were more captivating than any of the tones that painted the petals on his plants. 

Owen got a kick out of this whole ordeal, though. Harry’s passionate mood had him divulging in munching and nibbling on things that tasted the way he felt; ambrosial, fresh and pure. It resulted in the purchasing of endless amounts of fruit, with many bites given to the tiny chameleon. Mangoes, strawberries, oranges, grapes, pears (Asian pears, if the store carried them, they were Harry’s favorite), peaches and guavas. The sudden craving for fruit might be explained as just a casual craving, but deep deep down inside, Harry knew that it was because he wanted to replicate the feeling that coursed through his golden veins when she giggled at something she happened to find funny. 

He wished that he had caught her name. The girl had paid in cash (and left a five dollar tip Harry fawned over), so he couldn’t have read it on her card, and he was halfway between charming and awkward that he didn’t even think of asking for it until the minute the door closed behind her, bells tinkling in announcement of her exit. He wished for a hundred different things, but he was not the type to live in regret. Not anymore. So after about a week of floundering in her memory, he meditated for an hour, tropical incense on one of his bedside tables, and cleared his mind as best he could. 

The next morning, he did the same thing. Woke up with heavy limbs, plopped himself down on his blue mat and stretched in various positions, his white boxers hanging low on his hips. His lips and eyes were sticky with sleep, and the back of his nose ached with cold air that he must’ve breathed in throughout the night after forgetting to close the window (again) but the pleasurable twinge of stretching aches between his joints were the perfect way to start his day. They urged his mind to transform into the still surface of water, clear and collected from any unproductive-pinning thoughts towards a girl he would most likely never see again. 

Even his clothes reflected his refreshed mindset.

Harry donned his favorite pair of flared  trousers in an earthy brown color, nestled snugly on his slender hips and around his thighs. The tight fit accentuated the way his back tapered into his waist, glutes shapely and sculpted. A maroon sweater vest that had a teddy bear embroidered on the middle of his chest, the small latte-toned stuffed animal seemingly childish, but on him it only directed attention to the spotlight daze of the velvety heart sheltered underneath his breathless plate. Underneath, a mustard long-sleeve shirt with tiny cherries printed on them. Some straight, some tilted or lopsided. His shoulders and biceps were hidden in the floofy bunches of cloth, anonymity given to the true thickness of his ink slathered skin. 

He looked like a corduroy dream. A thick milkshake of patterns and colors, but he managed to pull it off.

A tiny gold hoop on his right ear gleamed under the morning sun coming in through the windows and a pearl necklace rested against the downy skin of his throat. Slender fingered tipped with a coat of pure white, with his ring fingers accented in a shimmery pink. Chunky rings adorning the base of his digits; a silver rose, a band of dancing teddy bears (a running theme with him), two gold rings with his initials H and S on one hand, and a simple ruby stud from his graduating class. 

He looked good, he knew that he looked good, and was ready to begin a bright, healthy, non-pretty-girl-thought-polluted day. Even the old woman had pinched his cheek whom he had been assisting- a regular-had said he looked like a proper ‘nice boy’ along with ‘when are you going to her a lovely girl to help you run this place, Harry?’. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had momentarily sworn off women until his broken sentiments healed, and they had a long way to go. 

In the middle of wrapping a smashing set of tulips and fern stems with a cherry red bow, the bells adorning the top of the door frame dinges, announcing the entrance of another pleasant customer and giving passage to a gust of chilly air. Harry looked up to greet the customer with his usual pleasantries of ‘welcome! I’ll be with you in a moment!’, but the words died on his throat in a desperate hussle, just as the little mermaid had given up her voice to meet her gallant prince.  

It was his own personal little slice of heaven presented to him on the black and white checkered floors of his shop. Hair loose against her shoulders again, eyes cast downwards to inspect a bucket of fresh daisies that tickled the space above her bare knees. How she could wear a skirt in this biting weather, he didn’t know, and it partially prevented him from continuing his pursuit of admiring her because the first thought his caring mind jumped too was, ‘is she cold? And if so, does she need a sweater? Because I will gladly give her one.’ His second thought, however, was ‘how could someone be that beautiful?’. The third was something along the lines of ‘all my yoga has gone to shit, and I’m okay with that’. 

He cleared his throat, tightened the bow around the stems of the flowers in his hands and said, “I’ll be with you in a moment, love!” His head bowed, looking at his work because he wasn’t sure he could afford the medicals for the paralysis that was sure to take over his meek self if they made eye contact so soon. Harry needed a moment of homeostasis, his soul adjusting to her dulcet presence. 

The woman he was assisting, Edna, spoke, drawing him out of his daze, but he had been so deeply in thought that he had not heard what she said. 

“What was that?” He asked her. He grabbed Kraft paper from the roll by the register to wrap up her arrangement. 

“The girl. You like her?” She was smiling at him, wagging a finger the way his nan used to do when she caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. “Don’t lie to me, I recognize that look. I’ve given and received that look many times throughout my life.” 

The woman was not wrong. With age, comes wisdom, Harry thought, smiling to himself at being caught. A dimple carves itself into his cheek, nestling onto the space above the corner of his mouth as if he had no choice in the matter. The apples of his cheeks were shadowed with a dusky pink, and the tip of his nose was twitching like a rabbit when it stood on its rear and sniffed the air, only he was coy after just being caught and wanted to avoid the question as much as possible. 

“I’ve got no idea what y’talking about,” he chuckled, keeping his voice low so that the intriguing stranger in the store didn’t hear that their topic of discussion was her. He moved over to the register to ring her up, and even slid in a discount he applied to customers he liked. 

“Next time I come in,” Edna said, passing Harry her debit card, “I hope to hear that you got her number, dear. Don’t let these opportunities pass you up. Life is short. And who knows? She could be the one.” Harry gave her the card back after charging her, and handed her the flowers, too. All the while Edna was grinning at him, shaking her head like she knew something he didn’t. 

“Take care, Edna. And don’t forget to change the water every 2 days with the flower packets I placed at the stems,” he reminded her, sweetly wiggling his red-lacquered nails at her retreating woman as butterflies awakened in his stomach in a furious flood of nerves. The girl was looking around, her hands hovering over the up-turned faces of a bundle of lively sunflowers, browsing and quietly humming to herself as she waited. 

There was no backing out of this, even if he wanted to. And he didn’t! He didn’t want to back out. The girl was a customer, and he would have to approach her no matter what. But she was so pretty it was also intimidating. He doesn’t remember ever being this nervous while approaching someone, especially one he harbored feelings for. His heart was pounding so loud, he was sure it was audible. 

“Hello,” he wanted so badly to add ‘love’ at the end of his greeting. “Are y’finding everything a’right?” He asked her, his hands wringing themselves, palms moist with sweat from his unyielding need to impress her. The pink tip of his tongue poked out to swipe across his full bottom lip, and soon after that his teeth sunk down into it, nibbling with uncertainty. Harry made sure that he was standing straight, body aligned to face hers because in that psychology course he took once, he learned that it was a subconscious tactic to engage interest and pleasant replies to attempts at wooing another. 

At the sound of his voice, the girl jumped, startled at the sudden vibrations of Harry’s husky voice. Her delicate feet, he noticed, skittered on the floor from her tiny jump, and her doe eyes widened, shouldered rising and falling at a quicker pace than before from the new rush of light fear. When she realizes that it’s just him her hand flattered over the base of her neck and her collarbone in attempts to soothe her racing heart. 

“M’s sorry,” he whispers, his hand clamping over his mouth, and then lowering to his chin when he speaks again, “didn’t mean to scare y’love.” This time he can’t restrict himself. It comes so naturally, like the endearment was meant for her, and when a flush covers the bridge of her nose his first instinct is to coo at her for looking so cute. The second is a surge of guilt for having scared her to such an extent. 

“It’s okay,” she says, a little out of breath. The blush on her face was partly because she was embarrassed at her own reaction, while the other was that she had let herself act so freely and uncoordinated in front of someone that looked like him. Handsome and sweet and eyes so green they refreshed you upon first glance. Like the cool burn of water going into a mouth that had just chewed a stick of minty gum. “I want to buy these flowers.” 

God help him. Her voice alone was enough to make him melt. The lilts and melodies of her voice swarming all four of the ventricles in his heart with warmth, and every blood cell that passed contained a glowing heat, buzzing with her energy. 

She points to the sunflowers, her gaze lingering on them with longing. A soft smile toying on her mouth, and Harry could see the tendons in her throat stretch as she inhaled to add another thought to her sentence, “Do you sell vases by any chance?” The girl looked at him shyly, her eyelashes almost twinkling as she blinked, and his heart soared, “I had a really nice one in the shape of a big Coca-Cola bottle, and I accidentally knocked it over, so now I have nothing to put them in.” 

Harry is incredibly enamoured by subconscious gestures that take over her hands as she speaks, fiddling as if the vase she spoke about was in her hands, all in one piece before it was broken. He’s quiet throughout her tiny ramble, listening and taking note of her enticing antics. She’s looking down at the floor or the flowers or her hands, and when her eyes dance over to his steady gaze, “I’m rambling aren’t I?” she murmurs bashfully. 

“No, no it’s a’right. I can look in the back for something if y’like?” He suggested, arrowing a thumb to the ‘back’ he mentioned. “Did y’want anything in particular?”  

“Oh, I don’t wanna be a troubling customer!” She squeaked, concerned with becoming a nuisance she didn’t want to be. 

“Y’not a bother, love. M’promise. I’ll go look f’you. What color did y’have in mind?” He asked her, tone calm and soothing to reiterate his sentiment. She was not a bother. The only thing about her that bothered him was the fact that he did not know her name, and even that was his own fault for not asking her. 

His hands rest on his hips, tattooed cross momentarily hidden by the bunch of his sweater vest  as he waits for her to respond, his eyes locked on her mouth, her own tongue subtly licks her lips, adding a sparkly sheen to it that only drove him crazy. Ever the jilted fool, his mind jumps to what it would feel like to kiss her, or what it would feel like if she kissed him in other places. What fruits she tasted like, and what kind of kisser she was. A timid one? With a patient mouth waiting to be broken open with the force of his own? Frugal? Opening her mouth and giving him everything she had to offer. 

“Something pink, please. If you have it.” That smile again. One that told a million apologies it didn’t owe, with her eyes pinching at the corners with whatever nonsense culpability she felt. Her voice was sweet, Harry thought, like wind chimes on a summer morning. 

Feeling guilty for allowing such dirty thoughts to gallop through his mind when she was so… so pure. Like an angel. Even her way of presenting herself was shy and sweet, yet he was thinking about kissing her. Was that perverted? She was a customer he had seen twice, and his mind was already running wild with luscious assumptions; a sunday topped with a red cherry of sensuality. How awfully dirty of him. 

But! But those were not the only thoughts he had. He wanted to ask her what happened to cause her to drop her vase, and where she had bought it. If it was vintage, considering it was a Coca-cola bottle, and if she had any accidents while cleaning up the mess of broken glass. He wanted to hear her thoughts. No, better yet, he just wanted to hear her talk. He wanted to get to know her. To know if she was as nice as she looked. 

“‘Course,” he mumbled, his eyes shamefully downcast to the floor. “Be righ’ back.”

Harry stalked off to ‘the back of the store’. Truth was, there was no back of the store containing vases. There was only a small closet with boxes of items he might need around the store, like flower food, rubber bands, and decorative paper for the bouquets. A crate of bottled water for when he got too lazy to climb up the back stairs and into his home. 

His home. 

Plucking the keys from his pocket, a ring that held a ceramic swan his closest friend Mitch had gifted him with a humble admission of ‘saw this at a thrift store and thought about you, H, I had to buy it’, and five keys: one to the front door of his shop, one to the cash box in the register, one to the mailbox, another to the front door of his apartment, and one to his car. The one to his front door was painted at the head with pastel pink nail polish, so it was easy for him to pick out when he was dead tired after a long day of being on his feet (spunky shoes that he liked to wear sometimes didn’t help ease the ache on his back, and neither did his posture). 

The back door that led to the stairs had locks on both the inside and the outside. A deadbolt and chain on matching sides of the door to ensure comfortable sleep at night, and peaceful work time during the day. Not having to worry about curious children opening doors or nosy customers relieved him. It was a little amatuer, but the door made a loud noise when opened because it wasn’t quite level, and he had a tiny key so he could lock it from the outside, too. 

A loud shucking noise resonated through the store as he pulled the door open, and then again when he closed it behind him. The delicacy of his dainty yet large hands were nearly comical around the tiny golden pin stud that hung from the chain, almost slipping from his hands with nerves as he slid it in place. Harry didn’t think that she was nosy or anything like that, bit if he was going up to give her a vase of his own personal collection, he didn’t want her to find out and feel even more intrusive that she already did. 

He was a huge giver, and upon hearing her say that she broke her flower pot, his mind was already thinking about the perfect one to replace it. It just so happened to be sitting on his shelf with a bundle of dying lavender. Climbing up the stairs (the ache in his thighs was a mere twinge compared to what it was when he first moved here), Harry huffed and thought to himself all the ways he could ask for her name and number. 

Listen, I really like y’and would like to have y’number?”

Do y’wanna have my number so we can go out sometime if y’feel like it?”

“Is it alright if I get y’number so we can go out sometime?”

“Hey, love. What’s y’name?”

Nothing’s making sense to him. The pick up lines he had stored in his head for the rare times he would flirt with a girl were slipping from him. None of them seemed worded right to use with her. Too abrupt or too brisk. Not sweet enough. He wanted to treat her gently and to be worthwhile of her time. Plus, it also had to be smooth enough that it made her forget she was paying him for flowers or it would be awkward. He was a twenty-six man for crying out loud, not a twenty-one year old smile at the bar looking for a good time. This wasn’t a ‘good time’. This was… a courting. An inquiry to a relationship. A rose rose in a candlelit room. 

Harry opened his front door and moved in a quick jog to a table besides his hi-fi that held a translucent pale pink glass, fat at the base before twirling and widening a few inches at the lip. An image of a nude mermaid puffing out at the front like an engraving. Cuddling it into his breast, he grabbed the lavender, speed walked back to his kitchen where his toe banged against the metal of the trashcan as he pressed on the lever to open it. He hissed fuck under his breath and shucked the dead lavender into the bag before turning back to his door, closing it behind him, but not locking it because he didn’t want to keep her waiting. His feet moved quickly down the stairs, the one hand not holding onto the vase cupping a hand over the side of his hips that held his keys so they didn’t make much noise. 

The button on the chain slipped from his fingers a few times from their repeated clamminess, and when he was ready to finally twist the knob, he paused to take a breath and collect himself. Harry ran a hand through his hair, fixed his collar, and dusted off his pants legs. He wanted to look perfect for her. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he murmured to himself. He had a good feeling about this. About her. And if he messed this up because he looked bad or said something weird he would kick himself into a muddy ditch. 

Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and calmly walked back, “I’ve got the last one,” he said, tapping the tip of the vase with his pointer finger. It was a lie, right through his teeth, but he was happy to tell it in return for the way she was looking at him in that moment. His eyes rounded out as he approached her, like the curves of hearts that made up the heart-eye emoji, or the puppy-dog face. Just another physical display of his growing affinity towards her. 

“Oh my god!” She said,  “It's so pretty!” The trapped crystals in her irises twinkled with bewilderment at the treasure Harry’s presented her with.  She’s got a smile on her face, and he can’t help but think, ‘wow, she looks like a freshly bloomed white lily’. 

There’s a vintage print hanging in his corridor, a ‘flower language chart’ with different types of flowers and a sentence beneath them describing the messages they send. For example, red carnations= my heart aches for you. The description beneath white lilies reads ‘my love is pure’. 

She asked him if it wasn’t too pricey, and he made up some fake sale he had going on about a hybrid BOGO in which if she bought an arrangement she would get a vase included in her purchase (he added “I’ve got a shipment of new ones coming in an I need the space cleared out before they get here” just to make sure his fib is believable.) And he explains this so shyly. Harry can’t keep his eyes locked on hers because she’s staring at him with an intensity that lets him know she's really listening, and it makes him squirm.  The tips of his fingers tap against the vase, and he’s tripping over his tongue, which is ridiculous because he already talks so slow. 

“I guess I was right in waiting then,” she said casually, waiting for Harry to finish ringing her up. 

His finger froze over the touch screen of the sleek, modern device (he wanted nothing but the best for his store) and listened to the exciting roar of blood through his eardrums at her words. I guess I was right in waiting then? What did that mean? That she was planning on coming back to see him and didn’t? Of course, it could also mean that she was going to buy something else somewhere else, but he couldn’t stop the vine of ripe hope that swelled around his chest. And she looked so apprehensive while saying it. As if she was walking on glass and was looking for cracks as she stepped. As if she was waiting on him to catch on to something.

Harry cleared his throat and looked at her through the corner of his eye, trying to be as discreet as possible as his fingers continued their deliberate work on the screen, “What d’you mean, love?”

“I was going to stop by sooner, but I just got in my head about it,” the girl shrugged, and adjusted the ends of her cardigan so they wrapped around her torso. She had a different bag this time, one of those reusable market bags that was made up of holes, and it was filled with two books and a can of green tea from the vegan store down the street. Harry thinks he can make out one of the titles on one of the spines, which looks suspiciously similar to something that he has on his own shelf. 

“Why would y’get in y’own head about coming to m’flower shop, hmm? It’s hardly that intimidating,” he chuckles to play off the dashes of pink and red that are painting themselves across the bridge of his twitching nose, “I don’t bite, either.” 

And he hopes that his wistfulness isn’t meddling with his vision because he swears that he can see a matching reaction on her own doll face. “I know! I know, it’s just that I can’t help it sometimes. Talking to other people makes me nervous.” 

Harry could coo at her right now. He doesn’t, though. He nods and smiles at her before reading her total out to her, “That I get, too. But y’doing just fine with me, love.” 

Waiting patiently as she digs through her bag for cash, he tries to not stare. However, it’s impossible. His eyes had a mind of their own dragging against the forces of his will to feast on her image again. Her hands and the tip of her nose. The base of her neck and gentle swell of her clavicles. The swoops of hair that hung in a curtain from her shoulder as her head tilted in search, and the how her teeth bit down into her lip in concentration. Harry counted the amount of times her eyelashes met her waterline in those few seconds of comfortable silence. Three. 

“I thought I had cash on me today,” something in her bag clicks, and she pulls out the rectangular card Harry’s become familiar with, holding it out to him between two deft fingers, painted with red hearts on a white base. “I guess I used my last twenty at the organic food store down the street,” she said. 

“It is pretty easy to get lost in there, isn’t it?” He took her card from her, and tried not to make it obvious that he was eager to read her name off of it as he inserted it into the machine. The embossed letters into the plastic read y/n y/l/n, and when he turns back to look at her, he can’t help the smile that spreads across his boyish features.

Y/n. 

Y/n, y/n, y/n.

This is what it must feel to be let in on a secret that’s worth millions of dollars. It must, because Harry’s heart is soaring with a closure he didn’t know he needed. Y/n, y/n. Her name tickled him. Stroked him. Lathered him with the honey smoothness of the beeswax shampoo he bought at that fateful organic store. It was a fitting name. Sometimes, one could tell a person ‘you know, I actually thought you were a Amy or a Jessica’, because their looks and style just didn’t match the strength or modesty of their name. But not y/n. It fit her like a glove. There was no other way to make sense of the way Harry’s brain was thinking. The name was her. 

“What?” Her lips quirk up into a smile and her eyebrows dip in confusion. Why was he looking at her like that? Did she have something on her face? Here she was, opening up to a cute stranger and she had something on her face? This, she thought to herself, is humiliating. Her finger dusted off non-existent crumbs from the corners of her mouth, “do I have something on my face?”

“No! No, no.” Harry’s careful beam simmered down from it’s previous brightness, and his hand nervously filed through the swoop of chocolate curls sitting on his head like a cinnamon roll. “I just think y’name is pretty thas’ all.” 

He murmured the last part so that it was practically incoherent, and lowered his gaze as a searing heat stretching like saran wrap around his head and the divot on the nape of his neck.  Oh, God. He was fucking blushing. Great Harry. A normally favorite among the ladies had been reduced to murmurs and thick, uncoordinated movements. 

Like dropping her card when she piped up again. 

Voice as small and quaint as his had been, "you think my name is pretty?” Her fingers are wrapped around the frail straps of her bag, tight enough that her knuckles were white and Harry was scared that she’d bury her fingernails into her palm. 

“I think y’very pretty.” He whispered back. He can’t even bear to look at her in fear that he’s totally fucked himself over once and for all. His logic was this: what girl wants to be told by the guy they’re buying flowers that they’re pretty after he reads her name from her debit card? Especially one who (if outside female sources are to be believed) dresses “the way my mother did when she was a girl in the seventies”? Jesus, fuck. He must’ve looked ridiculous. 

Harry opened his mouth to backtrack and apologize for being so unorthodox in his workspace, a breath sitting on his tongue with words ready to spew out, but the bell began to chime and it yanks his head from the register to the front and instead he said, “welcome! I’ll be with you in a moment.” 

Flustered and full of regret, the flower connoisseur returned his wired gaze back to y/n, who… was smiling at him? The kind of smile that said ‘oh my god, I can’t believe you just said that. Now please say it again’? Was he… dreaming? Did he have to pinch himself in order to verify that he wasn-

“Thank you... what’s your name?” Y/n looked at the card from his hands and sunk her hand- carefully, as to not get her fingers stuck in any of the tiny holes- and there was another clicking noise before she took her hand back out. That angel-like smear of girlish happiness was still on her, decadently radiating positivity and secret affection. Goodness leaked from the seams of her bones; through the cracks of her breastplate, radiating from her chest to Harry’s. He could feel it now. He could feel that his previous assumptions about her nature were true. She was altruistic and tender, like the inside of a bird’s wing. 

“Harry. M’name’s Harry.” This time, he didn’t hide his happiness. Even his eyes shone with a heightened, clear and sparkly shade of liquid evergreen. The joy that bounced inside of him like ricocheting metal balls in a pin game machine. His slender hand, fawn-skinned and graceful like the legs of a deer, stretched out between them. His mother had taught him that along with the first introduction of his name, a handshake must be present, always. Dipping his head slightly, and his words spongy with love-ditz, Harry rumbled, “Nice to meet you, y/n.”  

She placed her hand in his, and was practically swallowed by only his palm. He curled his fingers around her, thumb and middle finger overlapping around the clammy center of hers. So she was nervous, just as he was. Y/n was trained on their embracing limbs, and he could feel a spot on his neck where the skin palpated from the rush of blood as she observed their entwined digits. Their hands moved up and down, up and down between them for longer than necessary until her chin twitched back up to meet his, and she blinked mawkishly, slowly, like the videos of rehabilitated barn owls Harry sees on his Instagram. 

Then, suddenly, as if she remembered she was not the only one present, y/n jolts upright and shakes her head dazedly. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Harry. I like your nail color,” she added. 

He’s cheesing. A shit-eating grin too big for his face and it carves dimples into the flesh of his cheeks. His name on her tongue had never sounded so appealing, like it was made for her and only her to say. Not even the turtle-doves that cooed outside his window in the mornings sounded as beautiful as she did saying his name. And she complimented her nails! She hadn’t scrutinized him like others had, instead, she displayed her admiration for them. No one- well, actually he can’t say that without offending Mitch- no female of his age had ever received him with such open-mindedness as hers. If he didn’t have any self-restraint, he would giggle. Instead, Harry pulled his hand back so that their perfect moment wasn’t sullied with bouts of bad timing, “thank y’love. I like yours, too. You’ll have t’come over sometime and paint mine, yeah?” 

Y/n laughed, and he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been too bold, “I’d love too!” With glee frozen on her, she turned to look over her shoulder at the customer who was browsing the flowers Harry had in buckets, “I don’t want to hold you back from a customer for so long. I’ll stop by again soon, Harry. Thank you so much for your help.” 

The moment her hands reached for the wrapped bundle of sunflowers and the mermaid vase, a metaphorical grey cloud of rain and thunder manifested in the space above his head, and blocked all of the sunshine from spanning across his toned, lithe body. Did she really have to go? He wanted to whine. Maybe even wrap himself around her ankles like a child that refused to leave the park. They were only just getting to a mutual spot of comfort! Forget the other customer, he wanted to shout. Harry would kick them out and flip the sign to ‘closed’ if it meant only a few more minutes in the presence of her candy-coated charisma. 

But he knows that’s unrealistic, and settles with, “it was my pleasure, y/n,” a flirty wink (at least he hopes it is), “I’ll be waiting f’your next visit.” His taffy lips wrapping effortlessly around his smooth words, fueled by her welcoming receptiveness to his advances. It would be easy to be himself in the future, a little smoother and eloquent in his language and feeling. He was usually clear with what he wanted from anyone, and made it a pleasurable experience in all aspects for both parties involved (once it was three). Harry wanted to sweep her off her feet, and he wanted it to be an enjoyable experience for the both of them. Revel in that feeling of blooming emotions in a new relationship. A healthy one, in which he wasn’t receiving back-handed compliments all the time. 

He wasn’t superficial enough to push anyone off the table based on looks alone, but it did help that y/n had the disposition of an angel. An ethereal voice, supple lips that looked so silky and soft they had to feel that way, too, and hands that felt so tender in his. Perfect for holding on a late night stroll, or over the center console of his car when -if they go out on dates. 

What really hooked, reeled, and sinked him, though, was the fact that she was so nice to him. From the start, she’d been nothing but polite and sweet with him. Don’t even get him started on the way he swooned at the tone of her voice when he said that her name was pretty! So quiet and velvety, careful and calculated like she wanted him to know that it was okay. That she wasn’t thrown off by his comment. He nearly toppled over, clutching his heart with his legs jutting straight up into the air like a frightened goat. 

It wasn’t until the bells stopped ringing the sad notice of her exit that Harry realized he passed up the perfect opportunity to ask for her number, and as he kicked himself over it, he walked with the perfect customer service face he could muster to help the other person in his store. 

***

Harry was having a shitty morning. 

Not the kind of morning where every aspect of his routine is a terrible mishap, but like the water being too cold and the stove not working or the bottle of oat milk in the fridge being empty so he couldn’t make coffee. No, everything was fine and rolling smoothly, as it should. 

His water was the perfect temperature and ran down the toned bumps and divots of his muscles like the relaxing thrums of a lover’s caress in the midst of prowling heat. As soon as it hit his back, he released a sigh of contentment, his shoulders hunching and head rolling back and his hands roamed his shoulders and the back of his neck, rubbing away any aches that existed. The branch of eucalyptus that hung from the golden pipe of his showerhead fused a thick minty scent into the steam that fogged the glass wall, and the calming aroma helped the tendons loosen like the deflating limpness of untied shoelaces. He spent a few minutes just standing there, inhaling and exhaling deeply and feeling his lungs open and stretch beneath his rib cage. 

It almost made him wish that he’d opted to use his tub for a hot bath instead. 

He was able to cook an egg just fine on his stove, with dashes of Everything Bagel Seasoning with a side of avocado and a slice of toasted cranberry walnut bread, the same thing he had every morning. The carton of oat milk was brand new from his trip to the market the day before, and his coffee tasted the same as it always did. But… he was just... sad. An melancholy soreness that eroded against the insides of his body, consuming him slowly but surely and leaving him with a lost feeling of emptiness and unimportance. 

He thinks he might know why he’s feeling this way. 

While he’s stirring his scrambled eggs, he’s wondering how y/n likes hers. Over easy? Sunny-side up? Scrambled, like him? Did she even like eggs in the morning? What did she eat in the morning? He knows that some people ‘aren’t hungry’ in the mornings, though that’s only because they’ve gone hungry in the mornings before for an extended time period, and after so long of not feeding their growling stomachs, their brain discontinues the signals of hunger. Harry hopes that isn’t the case with y/n, and that she’s eating the proper three meals a day every day. 

And while he dipped a mini vegan chocolate croissant that he got at Whole Foods, he also wonders what she likes to dip chocolate croissants into, or if she even likes chocolate croissants. If she was a person who likes sweet treats, like strawberry tarts with powdered sugar over them or something lighter, like fruit cut into small squares in a bowl. When Harry was younger and would visit his nan on the weekends, she would pick fresh strawberries from her garden and cut them up for him when he’d woken from his nap. Sometimes, she would even sprinkle half a tablespoon of sugar over them. He wonders if she’d ever eaten strawberries like that. 

It’s been a week and a half, he still hasn’t seen her, and his heart is yearning. 

Harry knows he’s not in the correct headspace to assist other people with a cheery disposition about an hour before opening time, and decides it’s best if he writes a note on the door about how the shop wouldn’t open that day because he didn’t want to taint the reputation of his business by snapping at a customer for the only bundle of sunflowers he had, or dissolve into a puddle of love-sick tears in the middle of ringing someone up. Though really the notice just says ‘H’s Garden will not be opening today. Sorry for the inconvenience!’ followed by a frowning face and a lopsided, filled-in heart. 

Harry drags his feet back up the stairs, his lower lip jutting out in a discreet but depressing pout, and grabs Owen from his tank so that the chameleon could curl into the shoulder of Harry’s hoodie while he moped on the couch to sappy rom-coms that would only make him think about her more. At least there was someone there with him, even if his small green friend only used him for mangoes and papaya. They sit together for the entirety of Romeo + Juliet, and when it’s over, Harry’s sniffly and standing up to return Owen to his enclosure and to clean because the riotous emotions that whirl within him are too much to process while sitting down. 

Cleaning wouldn’t help him solve his problems, but it would help him cram all of his worries into a tight corner at the back of his mind- sort of like when dirty laundry began to overflow in the hamper and it requires extra force to shove it all in, only to come all back out like a memory sponge. His tormented thoughts on y/n could be compared to a dramatic inner monologue, very similar to how Romeo feels about his Juliet. But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and y/n is the sun. Harry has the play on his book shelf (the one with the side-to-side modern English translation because he was never quite gifted in the English department) and as he reaches for a bandana to tie his hair back, he finds himself resonating with a particular line: parting is such a sweet sorrow.

There was no need to change any of his clothing, since he was already dressed in one of his more impromptu outfits; grey sweats and a white t-shirt that read ‘women are smarter’ in black across his chest. He tied the red bandana into a knot at the back of his head, and lifted it over his chin so that it settled on his forehead, sweeping his hair back with a final push back. It doesn’t get in his way when he crouches to clean his various tables, spraying cleaning products with his shirt pulled over his nose, another organic product that’s supposed to be less harmful and smells like cinnamon and sandalwood. His shoulder blades begin to ache because he’s being a little more aggressive than he has to be, but the green tiles were sparkling so he was content. 

He washes the dishes, mops the kitchen floor, vacuums the carpets, cleans Owen’s habitat, and tidies the mail that piled up on the table when he finally calls it quits. Scouring his brain for something to do, to keep him busy- his brain busy, Harry settles on the floor with his back to the edge of his bed. He’s shirtless now, and is in need of another shower but he’d rather not because he knows he might end up crying over the possibility that he’s scared y/n off. There’s a book in his hands and a Frank Ocean record playing softly in the background that mentions something about ‘I've been thinkin' 'bout you, do you think about me still?’ and it’s not helping his case at all.    

It’s no use. 

There’s a plague of darkness buzzing like cicadas in his ears. He fears rejection and criticism. That maybe, she was only pretending in order to make the situation more pleasant so it ended sooner. Most of all, he feared that it would always be this way. That he would never find someone who embraces who he is as a person. Always met with mean side-eye glances or second looks of displeasure and confusion. It isn’t always that way, though, because then that would mean he gets absolutely no action, and that isn’t true. 

Harry is very… well-educated in matters that concerned sexual intercourse, but it was always a one-night stand ordeal. It was never ‘I really like you we should go out sometime’. In fact, he noticed that only time his approaches were well received were those in which he was dressed in a calmer manner. Simple, solid colors with sneakers or a t-shirt. Girls would flirt back, make good conversation, allow him to buy them a few drinks, and when he’d take them to his apartment they’d ask why he lived on top of a flower-shop, and if it was his sister or female-friend’s palace that he was crashing. Sex would ensue, but his heart wouldn’t be as present and engaged as he wanted it to be. 

Wrong. It was always so fucking wrong, and God, if he didn’t get out of this apartment he’s going to breakdown and cry and there’s no one to call to come over because Mitch is on a trip with his girlfriend, Sarah, and his other friend Jeff is on his honeymoon in Sweden. They were the only two on his mental speed dial list during the rare occasions he had a crisis, as they were the two that Harry had ever really opened up to. Mitch was a bit closer to his heart. They’ve known each other since their school days and practically grew up together (at one point they had small crushes on each other, which were confessed years down the line). Jeff was the owner of Winsome where… where y/n had mentioned spending her last twenty dollar bill. He didn’t have an issue opening up to them. He liked opening up to them, but he didn’t understand why they were the only two that ever truly opened their arms to him. 

A walk, he decided, would help him… air out his brain. Calm down. Breathe a little deeper, a little easier. 

He threw his white shirt back on, and a forest green sweatshirt that donned the emblem of the school he went to earn his business degree that fit him wide around the shoulders and felt like a marshmallow. Putting on a pair of beat up shoes, he shoved his keys into his pocket, hobbling and nearly losing his balance because he was moving way too fast. The door closed behind him with a slam, and even though he was still wearing the bandana around his head, wispy stray curls framing his face in a wild mane, his distress palpable through his appearance, but he doesn’t care. He just needs to get out and feel the cool air against his skin. 

There’s a backdoor behind the stairs that will take him to a small alleyway that leads to a back parking lot where other shop owners that live at the top of their stores on the same side of his street parked their cars. He unlocks it from the inside, and throws his shoulder into it, desperate to her out. When it shuts behind him, he doesn’t turn back because it’s the kind to lock from the outside when closed. His fingers curl into the ends of his sleeve so that the tips of his fingers (nails now changed to a sparkling silver color) are the only parts of his hands visible. 

Rounding the corner, he whistled the cheeriest tune he can muster. His lips are puckered and his cheekbones high with the extension of his mouth. He’s not very happy on the inside, though he remembers reading something somewhere that if you pretend to be something long enough, you’ll eventually become it. If he pretends to be happy, then he’ll actually be happy. 

Right?

Harry rounds the corner of the parking lot and turns on to the main street. It’s only two in the afternoon, so there's people crawling in and out of shops anywhere. He even sees a man and a woman peeking into the window of his store, and he would feel bad if he wasn’t in a shitty mood already. He’s so out of it, that he nearly yells ‘get your hands off my windows!’. He doesn’t though, because for a moment the woman becomes y/n and the man becomes him, wrapping a ringed hand around her waist and whispering in her downy ear ‘they’re closed, darling, let’s go somewhere else’ and she straightens dejectedly, pouting playfully and standing up and her tippy toes so that she could press a quick kiss to his lips. 

That image fades though, and the couple continues with their stroll, hand in hand, and his heart is wrenching, writhing and trying to yank itself free from it’s place in his chest because it hurts too much to stay. 

Cars whizz past, and he skirts in and out of people on the sidewalk, keeping his pace fast and focused. There’s no intended destination, he’s just moving with the intent to forget the pretty girl who haunts him. Her voice is all he can hear. Her smile is all she can picture. And the rest of her is all he can imagine, which is exactly what hurts the most. Imagination only goes so far, fulfils so much with uncertainty of what the truth was and what wasn’t. Harry could imagine her with her feet up on the lip of a bubble filled tub, a glass of wine in her hands, but then…what kind of wine did she like? Or did she even like wine? And did she even have a bathtub to stretch out in after a long day? 

He curses the crimes he may have committed in past lives to deserve this torture. This unbearable pain that felt like he was being dunked in a slow-acting acid. He can do nothing about it but keep walking with labored will power. He passed his shop, and a bakery and a small thrift store that sells used clothing for way too much money. At the propped open double-doors of Jeff’s Winsome, he decides to talk in and browse. There’s so many items that smell good and taste good, that it was fun to just walk in and look. 

“Back again so soon, H?” 

Spinning on his heel, Harry comes face to face with Niall, a brunette, fit, Irish bloke with a chummy smile and a killer sense of humor. The two have brokered a sort of friendship, considering the amount of time (and money) that Harry spends there. Niall has even started calling him ‘H’ in silent homage to his flower shop. 

“Y’know I can’t stay away,” Harry attempted to joke, his lips pulling up in a weak smile, “plus, I think I needed s’more of the peppermint essential oils f’my diffuser.” 

“‘Course ya do! You're worse than the bloody vegan mums that come in asking for gluten free baby powder!” Niall cups a hand over his mouth and loudly whispers to so that only Harry catches his verbiage. There was a woman in the back of the store, looking through soaps in the limited kid’s section, the same exact kind that Niall was speaking about. “Go on and look around then, I’ll be here when you’re finished.” He said. 

Harry only nodded his acknowledgement, and moved in between wooden walnut shelves. The entire store had a caramel brown color scheme, with only the inventory adding color to it. Macramé potted succulents and plants added to the natural, outdoorsy feel. Winsome had an interesting mix of smells from all of the aromatherapy based products it housed, but it only added to the appeal. 

Currently, he held a packet of four lip balms that advertised to be ‘100% all naturally derived ingredients with no artificial additives' infused with ‘healing power of crystals’, two of them ‘citrine cherry' flavored, and the remaining ‘garnet guava’. The brand name is something in Italian that he can’t read, packaging thick and a triangle made of arrows in the corner signaling it can be decomposed and/or recycled. He had the same exact ones at home, only they were all misplaced and- 

“Harry?”

A small, timid voice called his name from behind him, and he froze. He knew that voice. It was the same one he had repeated over and over in his head for the past week, waiting for her promised arrival with a hopeful heart. 

His eyes go wide with recognition, body still and stiff like a deer caught in headlights. His heart begins to rump at a furious speed, loud in his ears like a million stampeding hooves. The packaged products in his hands shake, and then she speaks again, “Harry, is that you?” 

Is this really happening right now? He’s embarrassed at having been caught with lipstick in his hands of all things, but he can’t put them back now. It was too late for that. He lets them hang at his side, and turns around. He hopes there isn’t perspiration dripping from his temples because all of a sudden he wants to yank his sweater off. 

Harry turned, slowly. He feared that if he moved too fast she would fly away like a startled dove. 

“Y/n…” He’s breathless, but he manages a pitiful quirk of the corner of his mouth, which he licks over right after, “hi.” 

She’s wearing a dress this time, frilly at the hem which fell just above her knees. It’s pink and covered and lined with blood red trim at her forearms. A string of pearls glistens at the base of her throat, and her lips are covered in a sheen of lipstick. Her hair, however, is a tousled mess, pieces of it framing her face and untucked from her bun as if she had been jostling around. Her cheeks are flushed with the cold, and clearly that thin beige cardigan hanging off her elbows is doing nothing to keep her warm.

Y/n smiles at him, with the same shakiness, “f-for a second I thought I was talking to the wrong p-person.” 

 It’s quiet again, and they’re both fidgeting. Y/n’s knees knock together as she shifts her weight from foot to food, and Harry idly rubs his finger under his nose and sniffs boogies that aren’t there. She’s staring at the ground and rocking back and forth on her heels and he can’t think of anything to say because he’s so paralyzed by the fact that she’s actually standing in front of him, and looks as gorgeous as ever. Had he somehow manifested her presence? 

While she’s hiking up the ends of her sweater so that they’re situated properly on her shoulders, he says the first thing that comes to his mind. “Aren’t y’cold?”

Her head snaps up and she peeks at him from under her lashes while flattening a hand at her thigh, “a little bit.” 

Harry watches her tuck her hair behind her ears and wonders if she came walking from her apartment again. In the cold. Dress as she was. Not that he had a problem with the way that she was dressed! He understood that sometimes when people grew bored they used the smallest occasions to dress up and have some fun and get out of their homes. He did it too, sometimes. To clear his head. Hell, isn’t that what he was doing now?

“D’you need a ride home?” He stumbled over his tongue to backtrack, not wanting her to think that he was a wierdo or anything like that, “t-that is if y’walking, I wouldn’t want you to get sick or anything like that. S’bit chilly out today.” 

Y/n smiles shyly at him, a blush on the highest points of her cheeks, and rubs the side of her face against the fabric of her cardigan, “thank you, for the offer, but uhm… it’s my friend’s baby-shower-gender-reveal thing today and I came with my other friend to some last minute gifts and some flowers. I was going to buy some stuff from here because she’s crazy about the whole ‘no preservatives’ and all but, and I was also going to stop by your shop to buy some flowers, but I saw you were closed so I…I’m rambling again.” She sputtered out the last bit, and pressed the tips of her three middle fingers to her lips to stop the words from coming out. 

Harry smirked at her antics, but it’s more of a repressed smile, and the rest of his humor gleamed in the sea-glass of his eyes like a message in a bottle. 

“S’alright, love.” He’s still holding the lip balms in his hand, and he can feel the moisture that’s collecting on his palms dampening the Kraft like material as he gestured to her dress with the tip of his chin. “Y’wearing pink. I take it y’want the baby to be a girl?”

“Actually, I know it’s a girl. She told me,” y/n pips, shrugging smugly. 

Harry laughs at her this time, “Did you finish with all your purchases here? I can make an exception and open up f’you.”

“Oh, Harry, I don’t wanna bother you! Because if this was your day off then-”

He lifts a hand to get her to stop, and uses the opportunity to twist around and put back what he had in his hands. The conversation is flowing so smoothly now, that all of his previous worries are gone. He can only focus on her and the way her eyelashes fluttered and the crystalline sparkly in her voice. 

“Y/n, it’s fine. D’ya finish here? We can head over to the shop now if you’d like.” Harry points a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door. 

“Uh, no. I just got here so I still have to go grab some things,” she said, pushing her hair past her ears again. He thinks that she can probably tell the disheveled state her hair was in, because she begins to pop off a pin in her hair to readjust it. He doesn’t mind it, though. He thinks she looks cute. Angel-like. 

He nods, rolling his hands into fists within his sleeves so that the cuffs hang over his knuckles, and tries not to trip over his legs as he backs away. “A’right. I’ll wait f’you in the front, then. Take y’time, love.” 

“‘Kay,” she gleams at him, biting down on her bottom lip, and Harry turns away fully before he starts whining about how cute she is or before there’s a dent in the heather grey fabric of his sweatpants.  

At the front, Niall has his chin at the palm of his hand, and as he gets closer, Harry lifts his head to see that the brunette is wiggling his eyebrows mischievously. There's a shit-eating grin on his face that clearly points to a mountain of teasing in the near distance. 

“A little love-struck, mate?” He said, as soon as Harry was within hearing distance. At least he had the decency to keep his voice down, he thought. 

Harry flips him off, “oh, bug off.” 

Silver glitter sparkling on his nails, and his gaze strays to the floor, bashful of how clear his affection was. He turns to rest his bum against the counter and pulls out his phone to appear busy as he waits for y/n, mindlessly opening Instagram to have something to do (and to stop him from glancing at her ever two seconds).    

“Yup. I knew it. Have y’asked her out yet?” Niall doesn’t stop to let Harry refute his question, “y’know she comes in sometimes, after stopping by your place? And she just will not stop talking about how nice yeh were to her.”

Harry’s head snaps up from his screen so fast, something at the back of his neck creaks with the force. Instagram is long forgotten.

“What? Are you fuckin’ with me right now?” He doesn’t mean for his words to come as aggressive as they do, but the thought of her speaking to someone else about him is… well, it’s thrilling. 

Alarmed, Niall’s hands come up near his face in the motion of surrender, “no, man! Dead serious. Think she likes yeh, honestly.”

He can only say: “Fuck me.”

Niall is about to respond when a quiet voice breaks their stares, “I’m all finished.” 

“Already, babe? I’ll rig ya up, then!” 

He’s quick to slide the few products over the scanning square, and y/n and Harry stand beside each other silently, their height difference laughable. Niall’s gaze flickered between them with no commentary, and his lips pucker with a wiggling smile when he finally announces her total. A bit too much for a small changing blanket, oatmeal-based baby lotion, pacifiers with a lavender infused towel attached to ‘aid with goodnight night’s sleep’, and a bamboo hairbrush with a tuft of soft bristles. 

Nonetheless, she provides the money with a pleasant smile. Harry can see a bit of tightness around her eyes that suggests discomfort, but he doesn’t say anything. Niall hands her a paper bag with her purchase, “there yeh go! Have a good day now, y/n! And be good, to Harry!” 

Harry’s eyes widen at Niall’s last comment, and it takes every bit of self-restraint in him to not reach the other counter and whack him in the back of the head. Instead, he shakes and ducks his head in near shame.

Y/n, however, quips back with “I’ll be nice only if you’re nice,” and bumps her shoulder against his before walking towards the door, looking over her shoulder at Harry who’s smiling wide now, and trailing after her with no regard to Niall at all. 

He shouts something after them about being rude lovebirds, but Harry doesn’t care. He’s floating after this heaven-sent like cartoon characters being led to a freshly baked pie with their nose on the scent. His rump high in the air like the Lorax disappearing into the light in the clouds, utterly ignorant to everything else. 

When they’ve both stepped outside, they speak at the same time, 

“Let me just-”

“Do y’wanna put-” 

Harry and y/n giggle at each other, 

“You go first.” 

“Y’speak first.” 

And then they laugh again. Harry pretends to zip his lips and throws away the key, and she says radiantly, “I’ll drop this off in my friend’s car really fast and we can walk to your flower shop.” 

Watching her approach a car parked two spots away, a girl with blue, pink, and brown hair leans over to the passenger side, seat belt straining against her throat and when she sees Harry, she waves and it makes y/n push her back to her spot behind the driver’s  side. Whoever this girl is, she and Niall have to meet, seeing as they can’t mind their own business. He chuckled and waved back, that girl laughing along with him and it made y/n cover her face with her cardigan covered hands. 

“I’m sorry about Charlotte,” she said when she got back, “she doesn’t know how to mind her own.”

“A bit like Niall, it seems.” Harry said. He waits for her to catch up before beginning to walk down the street. Side to side, shoulder to shoulder. They’re so close, Harry can feel the warmth of her body heat through the fleece of his sweatshirt. It’s cold, and she’s still this warm? 

“Maybe,” her eyebrows raise, and her head tilts towards him, “they should meet.” 

“Tha’s exactly what I was thinkin’!” His voice rises with his excited agreement, and the tip of his nose wiggles as he scrunches his nose. 

As they get closer, to H’s Garden, Harry reaches into his pocket for his keys, fingering through them so that they wouldn’t have to stand in the cold for so long. He didn’t want her to get sick. 

“I’m sorry, Harry. I feel really bad about this,” she whispered beside him, looking up at him with doe eyes as she worried her lip between her teeth, the sheen of gloss adding an extra allure to her image at that moment. “It’s your day off, and I’m bugging you.” 

They stood in front of the door now, underneath the green umbrella cover that extended from the top of the door and down the side of the window. Harry waited for her to step into the little alcove created by the indent of the door before stepping in after her and jiggling the key into the lock. He resisted the urge to pull his lips down into a cooing frown at the look on her face. She really was worried about disturbing him. If only she knew that he spent the entire day moping (and nearly crying) over her. 

He sucked on his teeth, “oh, love, please worryin’ about it. Don’t wanna see that frown on y’pretty face anymore okay?” His confidence was slowly coming back, “s’not my day off, I just didn’t feel like speaking to customers today.” 

Shrugging, he opened the door, and took a step back to allow her to step through first. Y/n ducked her head as she passed him with a murmured ‘oh, okay’, and he followed right after her, wanting to get away from the cold too because he knew that his nose was probably pink at that moment, but what he didn’t anticipate was for y/n to stop right after breaching the threshold, and bend over at the waist to pick something up from the floor, causing Harry to bump into her at such an awkwardly sexual angle with all of his momentum. 

Considering he was half twisted away from her and in the middle of pulling out the key from it’s slot, the amount of force in Harry’s push from behind was enough to cause her to nearly fall forward, a surprised whimper slipping from her lips. Harry, determined not to see her fall, lets go of the key and reaches out just in time to grasp her hips on either side, pulling her back towards him mid-fall so that she doesn't collapse on her face. 

However, in the midst of all of this Harry forgets himself and uses a bit too much force. Not to mention, the implications of their position makes him hyper aware of every single place their bodies touched, her small frame against his lithe, tattooed body. 

This moment only lasts for a few seconds, but he can feel everything. 

He can feel the easy give of the skin of her hips underneath each finger that touched her, the softness of the flesh on her thighs against his sturdy knees. The fabric of his sweatpants is suddenly non-existent, and it’s almost as if he felt every taught tendon of her legs, frozen with efforts of helping catch or brace herself. The heat of her groin is flush against his, and it makes him want to scream with a sudden sensitivity. Her ass is practically seated on him, full and malleable against the points of his laurel covered hip bones. Harry’s semi-hunched, as her weight also pushed him back, and the position is doing nothing to help his frenzied mind settle. He feels like shit because he’s being a horny, pubescent kid instead of asking her if she’s okay, but then y/n moves back into him to straighten fully and their centers grind. Her dress is semi-bunched at the halfway point of her bum, and he can feel heat emanating from her, radiating back on his bloating cock. He has to stifle a moan when she pushes herself up with the tips of her fingers. 

Just as quickly as it started, it’s over. Y/n is dusting her bum off so that her dress falls and covers her modesty, and she’s beet red in the face, not looking at him. Which was fine by him, he was too ashamed to look into her eyes. 

He clears his throat (something he’s doing a lot around her) and asks if she’s okay. 

“Yes. Yes, I’m okay. This was on the floor,” she squeaked, holding up a neon yellow notice sheet in her hand. That damned thing was what caused all of this?

It’s a notice from the delivery men that said, ‘sorry! We missed you!’ with a time and date messily scrawled on the dotted lines. Harry had forgotten that he was getting a shipment of several plants that morning. 

Cursing, he takes it from her, “t-thank you. Now how ‘bout those flowers?”

It’s awkward, obviously, but y/n is severely silent. Harry’s still stuffy in his pants, but he ignores it and doesn’t add any fuel to the fire because there’s more pressing matters at hand than a boner. Y/n is the most quiet she’s ever been around him, considering all of her word vomits and ramblings, and he’s suffering. Definitely beating himself up in his head for having ruined the moment. He held onto her for a second too long, frozen. She must feel so embarrassed, and he was self-endulging like a fucking asshole. 

Harry asks her questions on what flowers she’d like, and she answers by pointing or bringing a stem to him, laying it on the counter without a word. A mixture of dahlias and baby’s breath with a handful of feverfew to make the pink in the dahlia’s stand out. He lays them out on his work table, cutting the ends at an angle where they need to be cutted and laying them out on a sheet of clear, dusty rose paper. Three packets of flower food are strewn at the corner, and y/n busies herself by fidgeting with them. He grows concerned when he makes a comment on the kinds of ribbons he had stored and she doesn’t say anything. Not even a nod or a hum. 

Eventually, he decides he’s had enough of her neglect, and pauses his work to devote her some attention.  

“Love, I’m sorry about what happened,” he said softly, trying to catch her eyes, “I know it probably made y’uncomfortable, and I didn’t do much to make the situation better, but I just didn’t wanna see y’fall.”

Y/n’s head is already dipped, so he can’t see her face, but when her shoulders begin to shake, he knows he’s utterly fucked. She starts to sniffle, and his eyes go wide. The paper crinkled as he set down the baby’s breath he’s holding in his hands. He hates seeing people cry, not because he didn’t know how to deal with it, but because he often ended up crying along with them. Also, he just didn’t want to see her cry. Harry wanted her to be happy, glowing, and smiling. Not dull with dollops of woeful distress in liquid form.

He rounds the corner and spares a look out to the street, wanting to make sure that there is no strange onlooker eavesdropping on their interaction. His hand reaches out to stroke her back or shoulder comfortingly, but he thinks better of it and drops his arm. She most likely would not like to be touched, considering what just happened between them. He drops his head, seeking face-to-face interaction, and speaks as gently as he can, “y/n, what’s wrong?” 

She avoids his search, and turns the other way while sniffling, “you probably think I’m weird now or something after that.” 

“No!” Harry exclaimed, jerking his head back as if he’d been struck, and her words practically had. He can’t believe that she would think that and even go as far as verbalizing her thoughts when he worshipped the ground she walked on and didn’t even know her that well, yet. “No, no. I don’t think that. Y’tripped, that’s all. Happens to everyone. If anythin’ I’m the weirdo for grabbin’ y’the way I did, and I’m really sorry about it.”

Y/n dig the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, “that was so embarrassing, I should’ve told you I was gonna stop or something. I always embarrass myself in front of cute boys and I never know what to do. I just-” 

Harry interrupts before she can dig herself further another hole. He highlights a segment of her words, dropping everything else in hopes of changing the conversation and taking her discomfort away, and mostly because he was bursting with relief and happiness. She had said that she thought he was cute, just how he thought that she was adorable, and nice, and everything good. They were on the same level, their minds in sync. Did that mean…

His voice is airy and light because of what she had just admitted, “y’think I’m cute?”

She stills with awareness of what she’s just said, and a puppy-like noise seeps from the back of the throat before her hands sink further into her eyes, embarrassed. Harry tenderly wraps his fingers around her small wrists and pulls her hands away from her face, murmuring about ‘don’t rub y’eyes anymore, love, y’gonna hurt’ with nothing but kindness. A millisecond of distraction speeds through his mind at the softness on the inside of her wrists. 

There’s a trickle of blubbering in her part, her bitten lips bumping against each other as she attempts to backtrack, “I mean- I- I-”

Harry decides that it’s now or never. It was a bit inconvenient, perhaps, but with her revelation his confidence soared and he was more prepared now to ask than he ever had been. So, he goes for it, “can I have y’number?” 

A moment of semi-uncomfortable silence as the unknown tips the scale. Would she say yes? Would she say no? His head was spinning and he hoped his nose didn’t start bleeding or something because y/n nods slowly, smiling, and then, “okay.” 

He’s elated. He was the polar opposite of what he had been that morning. If only Owen could see him then. He doesn’t waste any time reaching into his back pocket and handing her his unlocked phone. They don’t share any words, only coy glances and flirty quirks of the lips as the tips of her fingers move on his screen. Harry can’t believe that he’s finally getting her number, after nearly a month of pinning. 

When she’s finished, she clicks it off and sets it next to him with an added pat to the back of his suspiciously clean white phone case while he’s tying the flowers together with a loose rubber band at the ends to attach the food packets. He’s fine with working in silence now that she's not crying anymore. He throws occasional glances in her direction, and catches her watching his hands while fiddling with her own. Her brows were furrowed and her mouth was twitching. 

“Will you text me?” She asked him. 

He’s careful not to bruise any of the petals as he sets them down again, pausing with his ministrations to pick up his phone. He wiggles his eyebrows at her and types a quick ‘Hi. It’s Harry :)’. He hits send, “until you’re sick of me.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” She shakes her head, and Harry’s reminded Rachel McAdams in The Notebook while she’s in complete denial of her feelings for Noah. The comparison makes his heart flutter, considering the romance of the onscreen couple. “How much do I owe you?” 

Harry waves her off, “it’s on the house.” She begins to argue, but Harry stops her before she starts rambling again, “y’better go or you’ll be late, love.” He holds out the arrangement to her, tufts of baby’s breath poking out from between the vibrant dahlias like fluffy clouds, the feverfew looking like miniature white daisies in the center. 

She looks at it, and back at him before huffing, “fine, but you’ll have to let me return the favor.”

“Of course,” he smirks, “with dinner, maybe?” 

They’re both gleaming at each other now, “okay.” Y/n takes a step back, her body half twisted as she walks away, but it remains like that for a moment as her eyes rake him up and down, a murmur following, “bye, Harry.” 

His veins charge with electricity, and his dark taffy lips part at her actions. Had she just checked him out? He doesn’t recover quick enough to return her goodbye because the previous swirl of arousal in his navel was bristling back to life at the implications of that look. Calm, slow, steady, and her eyes remained doe-like and innocent. 

She had to have known exactly what she was doing, whispering his name the way she had, looking over her shoulder and under her eyelashes the way she did. Deviously provoking his thoughts to begin a new with a reinspired fervor. The space in his underwear was growing tighter by the second, a blissful ache swelling. 

Before any other customer stepped in after her, Harry locked the door, and jogged up the stairs to prepare himself a nice, hot bath, simultaneously cursing and thanking the stupid fucking delivery men.  

********

Harry can’t stop thinking. 

Obviously, this is a huge issue for him. He was constantly thinking, and well, who wasn’t? The process of thoughts wisping around in his brain was one that he often put an unnecessary amount of energy into because he had no one to filter these thoughts onto, releasing them through a conversation to prevent the exhaustion of his brain and heart. A prime example of these mishaps being the depressing slump that occupied his demeanor that very morning. 

This?

This was different.

As soon as the apartment door was shut behind him, Harry pulled the suffocating sweatshirt off of his upper body, fingers hooking in at the collar and yanking it off with a swift tug. It landed somewhere on his kitchen floor, and he didn’t stop to take note of its final destination. Instead, his legs instinctively took him to his bathroom. 

Chest heaving, Harry walked to the small window leaking sunlight and rolled the stick between his fingers to close the blinds. His thumb dipped into the waistband of his boxes and dragged them down lopsidedly, the tiger tattoo roaring as it became exposed. When the blinds are fully closed, the white extension clangs against the shutters from his aggressive release. His body was slowly being consumed by a raging fire stoked by the illicit images his brain conjured of the innocent, unsuspecting y/n.

His inner turmoil consisted of guilt for using her image that way and justification from the conspiring rake of her eyes along the upper half of him that was visible behind the counter. He was so fixated by her, that her look alone felt like a tempting caress along his skin. And it all happened in a matter of fucking seconds. That’s how gone he was. That’s how fucking gone he was. Harry guesses that the easy excitement also had to do with the fact that he hadn’t gotten laid in a while (he only ever gets lucky when he goes out to the bars with Mitch or Jeff, and they’d been gone for a significant amount of time) and the strong affinity he had for the girl who bought flowers from him.  

Explanation or not, he had to do something about the problem in his pants. He was painfully hard, and when he shucked his pants off fully, his underwear dragged with the movement and pressed against the tip of his swollen prick. A darkened patch of moisture bloomed where the head was, and he saw stars at the short pressure. He wouldn’t take his pants off just then, though. He liked to stall his pleasure as much as he could so that when he finally did cum, his stomach muscles contracted and his toes remained curled for more than ten seconds. 

He twisted the golden knobs of his tub so that the water would come rushing out at a borderline scalding temperature, and opened the small cabinet above the toilet for a bottle of almond and coconut shea butter bubbles. He uncapped it and bent over the edge of the tip, the cool, porcelain lip touching his crotch and provoking a choked whimper to leave him. Jerking his hips back, he poured the soapy liquid into the spot where the water cascaded, and retracted his hand when the beginning of froth formed along the surface. 

The heady sweet smell permeated the air with the rising levels of bubbles, and Harry couldn’t wait any longer. Because he liked to torture himself, he closed his eyes and slowly dragged the hell of his hand over the outline of his cock, a groan ripping though the silence. It’s so painfully good, that he does it one more time, and he jolts forward. He removes his hand, slips his thumbs underneath the waistband of his boxers, and lugs the fabric down his hips at an excruciatingly slow pace. The head of his member smearing precum all along as he moves and when he gets caught in the ripples of his boxers the muscles in his thighs flex at the ripple of pleasure that zips into his nerves. 

“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath. His mind was a spinning vintage reel of slideshow images of y/n. Y/n on bruised knees, her mouth wide open and her own drool on her tits, the tip of his cock flat on her tongue as she pleads with weepy eyes for him to cum down her throat. When he finally springs free of his underwear, a hefty slap rings out as his dick collides against his abdomen, right on the space underneath his belly button. 

There’s a stripe of liquid on the trail left by the mushroom head of his prick, and Harry’s eyes roll to the back of his head, throat straining as he hovers over the bathtub. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s ever been this hard over a girl before, and it’s driving him crazy. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to last as long as he usually does. As he swings a leg over the edge of the tub, the hot water encasing his calf, he’s thinking about how soft she is. The inside of her wrist and the palm of her hand. If she’s that soft on an external part of her body that’s used everyday, he can only wither away at the idea of what the inside of her thighs feel like. 

Bubbles are swarming up now, swathing his thighs and buttocks as he sinks into the sloshing water. When he’s completely seated and satisfied with the belly-button level of water, he clumsily throws a hand in the direction of the knobs to shut them off, and reclined his head against the curved end of the tub with his eyes shut. 

He hikes up his knees so that they’re resting against the porcelain walls, and mindlessly ruts up into the water at the filthy images he’s picturing, white foam collecting in sparse clouds over the math on his chest. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. It’s as if his body is being transported back to the moment his hips clashed with y/n’s. At the recollection, his mouth drops and his eyebrows pinch in a silent moan. The feel of her flesh underneath his fingertips has him bobbing in the water, and the next ideation has him gripping the base of his cock. 

Vividly, he pictured her on all fours, keening back onto him as her pussy enveloped him in warmth, a warmth that is almost replicated by the temperature of the water, dripping and making a mess of him but what’s turning him on most of all is the easy flushness of their bodies. He had felt the way her bum gave way under his hold, and he imagined the bounce of her flesh as he thrusted into her. 

He moaned a broken call of her name with his eyes still shut, and heard the trickling of water as his fist rolled up his stiff prick, squeezing at the tip so that a few more droplets of precum dribbled out. With his thumb, he rubbed over the red mushroom head and lathered it in slow, leisurely circles, a throb pulsating with the beat of his heart as he returned to flicking his wrist over himself. 

The way that he looked at him and the sound of his name on her lips seared into his memory. Airy and willowy, similar to it resonated in his brain with the fantasy of sinking into her for the first time, stretching her and having her preen and arch with desperate whimpers of his name for more. Harry considered himself to be ‘well-endowed’ and his size was a factor of what sent him careening over the edge as girls mewled over his size after he’d bottomed out. He wanted y/n to mewl under him, both of them falling apart at the seams at the mutual pleasures because if Harry’s this broken over just the thought of her, then he’s sure he’s going to lose himself beyond recognition after he’s buried himself into her velvety walls, slick with her arousal and so fucking warm. 

Just as she had been earlier that day. There had been two layers between them- the fabric of Harry’s pants and her panties- yet, he was still able to feel an immense heat from the apex of her thighs against his cock. He needed more than this. He needed her, not just his hand driving him closer to the edge. 

His jaw clenched as he bit back on a particularly loud moan, for no reason other than he enjoyed self-sabotage from time to time, and the speed of his jerking hand increased. His other hand gripped the side of the tub, and his legs flexed as he began to thrust up into his own fist, a trail of bubbles sticking to the tanned muscles. The cut rectangles of muscles of his abdomen glistened like freshly chopped cubes of apricot with the droplets of water that remained clinging to him. His breath came in labored, strained puffs as the palm of his hand twisted, tightening at the tip and loosening at the base. 

For a moment, he paused and cupped his balls, massaging them as the fantasy in his head continued. His mouth wrapping around y/n’s nipples, her eyes glazed over from previous orgasm that he wanted so badly to give her. She’d whine something soft and quiet to match her personality, ‘please, Harry, please I want more. Need another Harry, please’, and he’d speed up the movement of his hips, driving deep into her and cooing into her ear about, ‘c’mon, darling. Give m’another then. Y’want it so bad, yeah? Give me a’fucking ‘nother’, and she’d release a peircing moan that explodes in his eardrums while arching into him. She’d squeeze impossible tight around him, gushing with her own cum. 

The water in Harry’s tub sloshes around his ankles, and the muscles of his abdomen clench so that he’s closing in on himself, sputtering on an outrageously loud cry that he can’t contain and his hand increases the speed of his filthy ministrations because he’s right on the edge. He’s about to fucking cum and the back of his eyelids burns with the possible variances of y/n’s face in ecstasy provided by him with his nose deep in her cunt, lapping at the sweet honey that spills with every whimper of, ‘please let me cum, Harry. I’ll do anything, I’ll be good, please let me cum. 

He tensed violently, his face contorted painfully as white ropes spurt from the tip of his cock over his fist and onto his chest, blending with the white almond foam. His feet are braced against the edge of the tub and his head falls back and his stomach tenses even further, the final leaks of his cum dribbling out. 

With the fuzziness that comes after an orgasm, his body melts back into the water that’s still warm, and his jerks with a pant as he allows his softening prick to sink into the water. The head on his hair is matted in a chocolate smear across his forehead, and his lips are a raging heart of cherry blossoms, parted with arduous gasps of recovery breath. His hands fall into the water at his sides, and with the lapping movement of the liquid against his sensitive member, he ruts into nothing again. 

Reclined with his eyes closed and heartbeat slowing, Harry murmurs a final, “fuck me,” at the extreme sensations that had raked through his body. 

Somewhere in the muffled distance, his phone dings with the notification of a text message, and with a tired noise of resentment, he sits up and reaches for his sweatpants that lay in a messy puddle besides the tub. His fingers drip darkening spots onto the grey material as he rummages for his phone, and then he finally clicks it on...

It’s her name, lighting up his screen, and the text reads: 

y/n <3 : so… dinner? 

Harry doesn’t think he’s ever crushed on a girl this hard before because even though he’s just completely physically spent himself, there’s something stirring in the depths of his tummy just at seeing the heart she put next to her name. 

He couldn’t be happier. 

*    *    *    *    *    *

and here he is!! what do you guys think?? pls pls pls leave your feedback in my askbox! i’d love to hear your thoughts! and if you really really loved it, don’t be afraid to press that reblog button <3333

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #harry styles imagines #fanfiction #fanfic #harry edward styles #harry styles oneshot #harry styles one shot #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles smut #harry styles blurb #y/n x harry styles #harry styles x reader #reader x harry styles #self insert harry styles #fine line #hs1 #harry styles soft #harry styles fluff oneshot #harry styles smut fanfic #harry styles smut oneshot #harry styles fluff imagine #harry styles soft blurb #harry styles smut blurb #florist!h #florist!harry

[the-fiction-witch]

Control P12

TV SHOW THE QUEENS GAMBIT COUPLE: BENNY X READER RATING: SWEET + FLIRTY

I sat trying desperately to figure this chess problem out, whice and sent me it over the phone and I couldn't get my head around it either.

"Y/n?" I asked

"Yes Benny?" She perked up as she had been sat on the chair in her little blue dress reading one if her Romance books with the arty drawing of the woman and a man laid over a castle wall in a tight and lustful embrace

"pass me the fails within defensive play, would you darling" I asked her pointing roughly to where the book should have been on the shelf in the corner

"Of course" she smiled getting up and going over to the shelf leaning over to look for it, I couldn't help but smirk a little seeing how tighter her dress became when she bent over revealing everything to me as she hadn't worn panties this morning not sure why she just doesn't some days. She found the book and brought it over the swish if her fluffy slippers on the concrete floor where she wasn't completely picking up her feet

"Ahh thank you little lady" I smiled taking the book from her

"Your welcome Benny" she smiled giving my head a kiss and returning to the shelf

"What are you doing?' I asked her

"Sorting"

"Sorting?"

"Umm none of these books make any sense for where they are. I'm going to get them all out and onto the floor and I'm going to reorganize them"

"You're gonna get out every book in this house?"

"Yep"

"Oohh dear God"

"What?"

"I literally think we have more books than anything else in this house"

"Yep, so they need to be organized, for example, why is chess championship games 1954-57 next to love on the open sea, which is then next to Borgov's old book. This is not a good system for finding anything" she says

"Maybe I do it on purpose, so I get to watch you bent over looking through the bookcase" I smirked leaning on my hand

"Pervert"

"Love you"

"Love you too" she smiled blowing me a kiss "you're still a pervert Benny" she smiled as she began pulling off handfuls of books setting them on the rug

"Should you really be... book carrying right now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Given, what's happening to you" I hinted

"What's happening to me Benny?" She asks crossing her arms

"Ohh come in little lady, you're the smartest girl I know you can't be serious that you don't know?"

"Know what?"

"..... You don't even have a slight idea that you might be... you know again" I told her glancing to her stomach

"I had thought about it" she says "I don't thinks so"

"Why not?"

"It doesn't feel like it did last time, I think I've just put some weight on"

"How long has it been since you... had a bad time"

"Four and a half months"

"And you wonder why I get concerned, that can't be normal... and I have been fucking you alot"

"When don't you"

"Good point" I sighed "Did you want me to take you to the doctor?"

"No, I'm fine" she says

"Really?" I laughed "Mac and cheese" I smirked and she gaged putting her hand in front of her mouth to stop her throwing up "You're going to the doctor."

"Noooooo!" she whined

"Y/n" I sighed, going and helping her up "Please, even if it not... what we think it might be there must be something wrong with you" I told her giving her a cuddle "and if something is wrong then can fix it" I told her giving her cheek a kiss "and if it is what we think then, we best go shopping for a crib, and some maternity clothes" I told her and she smiled

"Okay Benny"

I sat in the car undeniably nervous about the results today, we had been once the took blood and did some other tests but today we find out what's wrong with her. She was nervous too I could tell, she kept her handbag in her lap hands on the strap in a vice like grip. Her little green and black dress around her loosely, her hair done and make up done even if she didn't much want to do it when she got up this morning. I smiled moving a hand to her leg as I drove.

"It's all gonna be fine"

"Easy for you too say" she says

"Y/n, you'll be fine little lady, either way we'll know what's wrong with you."

"Benny?"

"Yeah?"

"What if I am pregnant?"

"Then, we deal with it." I said "you where so excited last time you got pregnant, you seemed to excited to tell me then. Why now do you sound like you don't want it?"

"I just… I thought I couldn't, because of Mikey"

"We've been over this. My dick works remember"

"Not because of that benny. Because of what… Mikey has done to me"

"Y/n." I told her stopping the car as we got to the place anyways "just because something bad happened to baby, doesn't mean your broken forever. It was one little time you said it's happened before, but this time… he's a hundred miles away from you" I told her resting my hand on her stomach "and this time I know baby needs looking after too" I told her kissing her head "if not then they can fix you up. And if so then"

"Then we go shopping" she smiled "Benny, do you… want it to be a baby?"

"I do. I think you'd look cute pregnant. And I didn't get to know about the last time until it was too late, I don't ever want something like that to happen again, I just wanna know. And if… I have got you pregnant, again. Then I get to show you off and take care of you" I told her "and if you are maybe you can finally make some decisions in our wedding?"

"Maybe" she giggled hugging me tighly "will you still love me? If I'm pregnant?"

"I'll love you even more. Both of you"

"Will you still love me if I'm not?"

"Of course I will, just means I have to try harder" I told her giving her a kiss "come in or we'll be late little lady"

I sat undeniably a little freaked out, how can you not be in this place.

The women on the front desk glaring at you if you so much as move.

The elderly people who saw me come in with y/n and glared having made their assumptions already as to why we were here.

The screaming children sat playing with the box of toys on the carpet.

The Loud Buzz of the intercom, and the harsh slow tone of the receptionists calling various people to various rooms.

The hussle of nurses' shoes as they hurried here and there.

The old magazines with horrific articles and adverts.

The terrifying posters across the walls, unavoidable with nothing else to do,

'You could have it! and never know!'

'9 out of ten women will die! as a result of sexually transmitted diseases

'The Common cold Kills Hundreds every year!'

'ALL MEN! must have regular exams!'

I don't like it here. everywhere I look is scary!

I saw a doctor come around the corner to the examination rooms he looked over the room and spotted me

"Mr. Watts?" He asks

"Yes. What uhh what's wrong?" I asked getting up

He didn't speak he just leads me to the little room where y/n stood just getting her dress back on

"hey hun, you alright?" I asked her and she nods so I gave her a kiss and we sat on the little chairs with the doctor "so?"

"Firstly I take it the two of you are not married?"

"We're engaged," I said

"Ohh alright then" He nods "well then, Madam. You're pregnant," he says "Congratulations Mr Watts"

"How long?"

"You're around four to five months at the moment but your weight is skyrocketing so we are going to keep an eye on you and see how things go into your next trimester and we'll get you booked in for your first scan" The Doctor Explained

"Yeah, that uhh that sounds great" She smiled widely

"Good, You can sort that out at the front desk and I'll see you soon," He says

I smiled holding her hand and unable to take my hand off her stomach "I told you, you were pregnant"

"Yeah, Yeah Mr. Genius" she sighed

"So? Shopping?"

"Yeah, shopping for tiny baby things"

"tiny baby things? we don't even know if it's a boy or a girl?"

"so? we can get things..."

"Like what?"

"Like, A crib. some baby clothes. other little you know baby stuff"

"I don't know what babies need oddly enough I've never had one before," I told her as we got to our car, so I let her go and opened the door for her she smiled and gave my cheek a kiss "Careful you two"

"Benny. You just found out I'm pregnant, tone it down" she smiled putting patting my chest and getting in the car so I got in too "You tone it down. I'm exited okay, plus we know nothing is wrong" "Nothing's wrong? I'm growing a human being in my stomach, in gonna gain so much weight, a baby sized thing is going force it's head out my Virgina!" She panicked "Yep, and you'll be so beautiful the whole time" "Your not gonna say that when you see a head coming out of me" "Ohh no. No I'm not watching." "What!" "I'm going to the man room with a chess book and some coffee. And then after some time you will come get me and give me baby" "You are being in the room with me Benny" "Why? I'm not going to be any help. I'll likely be a hindrence?" "Your being in the room, it can take hours, have complications, I'll need to hold your hand, I might rip myself open, they might need to cut me open and scop half my organs out, I may shit myself" "Yeah. That's the crazy shit I'm trying to avoid." I told her "that and... I don't wanna watch a human come out of you" "Why not?" "Because my association is that. I stick my dick in there! That place is for my dick! An sometimes my hand and sometimes my mouth but mostly my dick. When I see that area my dick gets excited because you know that's it's place. But to what a head come out.... Uuuughh I think it'll break me in a new horrifying way" I explain "Your gonna be in the room even if I have to handcuff you to me" "Do I have to watch?" "No" "Then I will be in the room, unless I get thrown out" She glared at me "What? It's not my fault if a nurse tells me to fuck off" "Fine" she sighed "what do you think?" She asks as we got parked up at the stores "What?" I asked she took my hand putting it to her stomach "Do you think it's a boy? Or a girl?" She asked "I don't care. So long as there all ours" I smiled giving her tummy a kiss "come on mummy. Let's go baby shopping" I told her

[curvynerdfan]

Bookkeeper and the Biker

Thank you @xx—day-dreamer—xx for requesting and being patient! This piece was a lot of fun to write but took forever, sorry about that. I hope you like it! 💕

Also sorry for the overload of samcro gifs lol! I just love when you find gifs that fit the storyline

Jax x Reader

Y/N felt like her heart was gonna jump out of her chest. She was headed home. Well, her hometown, she hadn’t been “home” in over ten years. Her dad was killed on a run when she was sixteen and her mom used the opportunity to get her out of Charming. Not that Y/N wanted to leave. She always saw the club as her family but her mom despised SAMCRO after her dad passed. Y/N thought her mom blamed the MC for her dad’s death.

Y/N had flourished in her time away from Charming but still felt like something was missing. So she was going back. Over the past ten years, Y/N had grown her skills and felt confident in her decision to come back.

She loved growing up in Charming. She could remember running around the autoshop with Jax and Opie, driving Gemma insane because it wasn’t exactly safe. The clubhouse took hide-n-seek to a whole nother level and family dinners were her favorite club activity.

She called Gemma about a year ago and the mama bear of the club was ecstatic. At that point Y/N had no plans to move back. She just missed the rest of her family. They reminisced and caught up on each other’s lives. Gemma let her know how the club was doing and Y/N kept her second mom up-to-date on her life.

At some point, Y/N mentioned that her dream life consisted of running her own eclectic bookshop and living above it. She never thought her dream would become reality but Gemma had other plans. A two story shop in downtown Charming popped up on the market and momma Gemma called Y/N before a sign was outside the building. Once Gemma sent her all of the pictures and told her the price, Y/N snatched it up. While she had some savings, the purchase price was being covered by money her dad had left her in his will.Plus, her association with the clube convinced the owner to lower the asking price. She was given access to the fund when she turned 25 and she couldn't think of a better way to spend her money than to pursue her dreams. She even had money left over to purchase books and some furniture for her new place without dipping into her own savings.

Gemma told her she could stay in a clubhouse dorm until her apartment was set up. She pulled into the lot of Teller-Morrow and parked her car. Y/N felt the anxiety build and took a few deep breaths to settle her nerves.

“There is no reason to be nervous. It isn’t like you abandoned Jax or Ope. Hell, they may not even remember me, no biggie, no pressure”, she mumbled to herself, “Gemma invited you. No one goes against Gemma, right? And it’ll be nice to see my SAMCRO family. It’ll be great!” Y/N said, but she didn’t feel as confident as she sounded.

She opened the door and quickly stepped out before she could change her mind. Once completely out of the truck, she stretched her arm up high and arched her back. She grabbed her backpack and her duffle bag and locked up her truck before heading to the office to look for Gemma.

“Can I help you lassie?” A dark-haired Scotsman asked.

“Umm, yes please. I’m looking for Gemma.” she said.

“Ah, is she expecting you?” he questioned.

“Yes, you can just tell her Y/N is here.”, she clarified.

The Scotsman disappeared around the corner and Y/N took the time to take in her surroundings. Very little had changed. The Teller-Morrow signage was rusted and worn in some places, there was newer equipment It also looked there were members in SAMCRO than before based on the number of bikes parked in front of the clubhouse.

“Y/N! There you are baby!”, Gemma shouted as soon as she walked into the office.

Y/N couldn’t help but squeal when she launched herself at Gemma. They had always been close as she was growing up. Gemma taught Y/N how being a nerdy, tomboy didn’t mean that she wasn’t a beautiful badass too.

“Hey, momma.” she said when Gemma squeezed her tight.

Gemma leaned back to look her over and then kissed her cheeks in greeting before pulling Y/N out of the office and across the parking lot, ranting and raving about how great it will be to have a powerful woman back in Charming. Y/N just giggled and let herself be dragged around.

The momma bear had cleaned up a dorm for Y/N to have for however long she needed. While it still looked like a typical clubhouse dorm, there weren’t any posters of naked women or trash scattered around the room. There was also a gift basket of goodies on the bed for her.

Y/N hugged Gemma, “Thank you for going through all this trouble for me. I am happy to be home.”

“Not any trouble at all sweetheart. You’re not the only one happy that you’re back in Charming.I know Jax has been asking about you for a while!” Gemma said, nudging Y/N with an eyebrow raise.

Y/N’s face flushed, “Don’t start with that Gem! Neither one of us should get our hopes up.”, she mumbled.

Y/N has always been close to Jax and Opie but Jackson never fall into the brotherly category. She didn’t want to get excited about the idea of a relationship with Jax and possibly ruin the amazing friendship they have. Plus, she didn’t think she was his type. Gemma said he dated Tara for several years and was really hung up on her when she left. From what Y/N remembered, Tara was always snooty, looked down on the club, and had no desire to live a small town life.

“Baby, you know me, I wouldn’t lie to you. Jax has been head over heels for you from the get go. He kept asking if you remembered him, how you were doing, how he can help you find your place here. Hell, he stocked that top drawer over there with Reaper and SAMCRO shirts so anyone new knows you are important to us. I would wear one of those tonight if I were you!”, Gemma suggested, “Give him a chance before you close yourself off again”

Y/N nodded and decided not to argue when Gemma gave her that all knowing look. Gemma helped her unpack your bags before leaving the dorm. Y/N used the hours before the party to lay on the bed and order more materials for her shop. When she had about an hour before the party’s start time she decided to take a shower and get dolled up before joining the excitement.

After her shower, she rummaged through the drawer that was handpicked by Jax. Y/N ended up grabbing a black “fear the reaper” t-shirt, a pair of her ripped jeans and some old sneakers. Y/N knew better than to wear nice shoes to a SAMCRO party. Y/N decided to tie the t-shirt up so it showed a little bit of her mid-riff and enhanced her natural curves. She dried her hair and applied basic makeup before heading to the party.

Y/N weaved her way in and out of the crowd of club members, their old lady’s, croweaters, and wannabe bikers. She made it to the bar and ordered a double before making her way to Gemma. She was starving and knew the momma bear could direct her to the food.

“Damn babygirl! You are just trying to give these boys a run for their money huh?”, Gemma said approvingly, “Atta girl!”

Gemma fixed her up with a full plate and got her settled in with Tig and Piney. Y/N caught up with the guys and dug in on the delicious food Gemma cooked. All of the sudden to mammoth arms wrapped around her from behind and lifted her into the air.

“What in the world!”, Y/N squealed.

A hefty laugh was the only response she received before she was dropped back down onto her feet. She spun around quickly and then gasped.

“Opie!” her shout pierced his ears and he flinched.

“Damn, you still have pipes!”Ope exclaimed as he wrapped Y/N up in a hug.

Y/N and Opie spent the next thirty minutes talking about life and joking around. Opie knew she was moving back so it wasn’t a surprise, but it was finally true now that she was in front of him. He was going to get married soon and wanted her to be there on his special day. Y/N and Opie had always agreed on the simpler things in life. They wanted to find their person, fall in love, get married, have kids, and live in Charming surrounded by friends and family.

Y/N gave Opie a hug and promised to visit more. The noise was getting to her though, after such a long drive the party wasn’t really her scene. She made a quick stop at the ladies room before getting a refill at the bar.

Jax made his way through the party, greeting members and partygoers as he made his way to Opie. His friend had a massive grin on his face and Jax couldn’t help but laugh. It was rare for the giant man he thought of as a brother to look like a silly puppy.

“What has you smiling so big, brother?” he asked, looking over.

“Y/N” was Opie’s one word response.

“Where?”, Jax couldn’t hold back his excitement.

Opie laughed and reached out to physically turn Jax around. His best friend laughed even harder when Jax’s jaw dropped. She was stunning. Y/N was still the beautiful girl he grew up with but he could tell she was more confident and her curves had developed even more. She was wearing one of the shirts he had picked out for him. That caused an odd sense of satisfaction. Y/N got her drink from the bartender and made her way down the hall and away from the party, more importantly away from him.

Opie slapped his back, “What are you waiting for man? Go get your girl!”

Jax felt his cheek warm and shook his head before swaggering after her. At some point she drifted out of his sight. Jax wracked his brain for where she could have snuck off too. After checking her dorm and finding it empty, he realized where she was. He climbed the stairs but paused before opening the hatch to the roof. What was he going to say to her? He hadn’t seen her in almost ten years. His mom assured him that she would reciprocate his feelings but how do you tell your childhood friend you want to be more.

Y/N jumped when the hatch creeped behind her. She didn’t think anyone would find her up here, but if anyone could it would be Jax or Opie. To her surprise, it was Jax. ‘Dear lordy, he is even hotter now,ah and that clenched jaw oof’, Y/N shook her head to clear her mind.

“Jax, you found me.” She whispered in awe.

It was real now, she was really in front of him “Y/N… of course I found you.”, he said with a sigh.

“Wow! I mean, you look really good, umm, not that you have ever looked bad. Well i guess you look bad in the baddass biker MC VP kinda way, congrats by the way. You don’t look bad ugly, not that you have ever looked ugly, you still take my breath away. I am not some flustered sixteen year old anymore and,” Y/N paused awkwardly, “ Oh my god, that is not how I wanted this to go. It’s been such a long time.I’ve missed you and your mom said you missed me to but now I’m not sure because all you’ve done is stare at me so far, so maybe your mom was wron-” Y/N paused when lips were on hers.

She could feel Jax’s lips smirking against hers, “I missed you too”, he whispered before kissing her again.

Y/N hummed, pulling away from him, “That is the best way anyone has ever made me shut up”

She leaned against his chest before looking up at him again, “What does this mean, Jax?”

“Are you really staying this time?”, he asked.

Y/N nodded, smiling at the sheepish look on his face.

“Then, I want to make you my old lady someday. For now, we can just see how things go. I always pictured us ending up together, but I don’t want to force anything. Biker and a bookkeeper, who would’ve thought?” He smiled.

“I did”, Y/N grinned.

She pulled on Jax and had him join her on ‘their ledge’. He chuckled gently in her ear as he wrapped an arm around her. He couldn’t wait to see where this was going to go. The idea of the bookkeeper and the biker felt good.

Taglist: @justahopelessssromantic

#sons of anarchy imagine #request #jax teller #jackson teller #gemma teller #chibs telford #tig trager #opie winston #samcro #sons of anarchy #samcro imagine #sons of anarchy request #jax x reader #jax oneshot #momma gemma #big brother opie vibes #bookkeeper and the biker #my work

[datenoriko]

Wondering if I could request some reactionary Headcanons for the warlords where MC is a highly trained and skillful forensic scientist?

I’m so sorry this is waaaay overdue and writing-wise is still unsure of the style... I hope this one’s okay though~ TnT

p.s. I tried adding Kennyo & Motonari too, but brain won’t let me ><

p.s.s. Updated masterlist for my random shenanigans here!

*Every one of them thought MC would be scared of a dead body and multitudes of it on the battlefield and beyond it but...

ODA FORCES

Nobunaga

- “Huh, this fireball’s not afraid of the dead?” // “I examine them for a living.” Visibly impressed, a devilish smirk forms on his lips

- The Devil King is fascinated by you actively asking to take her to battles to study the bodies

- “Look at this! With that deep slice on his jugular vein, no wonder he’ll die pretty quickly due to all that blood loss.” // “On his what?” // “T-the blood vessel found on the neck, my lord.” // *is confused*

- Nobunaga considers this carefully and commissions the armour makers to improve their designs, and/or trade for more sturdy materials with the Portuguese (you know… aside trading for konpeito :3)

- Lets you examine more specimens to determine all possible deaths in battle, and then have it discussed at the next council. It’s a great help for them in terms of preparation & strategizing. After all, prevention and preparation is still much better!

Hideyoshi

- A worried mother hen as always, all he wanted is for you to stay away from the worst sights possible and definitely not going straight towards them! “What do I keep telling you?” // “Uh, stay away from the corpses…?”

- Just like how his lord would sneak away to have konpeito, you also tend to get around stealthily just to study “them”

- Being a highly observation person due to your work, you even know which wooden floor in Azuchi will make a creaking sound and by instinct you will avoid it

- But Mamayoshi is just as observant as you are, and he caught you one night

- “I know you were once this ‘forensic expert’ from where you came from, but you are a princess now and must behave like one!” Legend has it that the lecture continues...  

Mitsuhide

- Ah, he loves asking for your suggestions on how to get away with murder treason!

- I mean, he’s surely an expert but an additional piece of advice his little mouse wouldn’t hurt, right?

- “This place’s almost clean, I’d say.” // “’Almost’, little mouse? It scares me so that you have trained eyes for such matters. // “Is that a compliment? Anyway, I saw a strand of hair near the sliding door... and its color is much similar to yours. Care to explain?”

- Now he’s more careful than ever to leave any trace, knowing you can find him even with the smallest of clues

- The tables have turned for him after such a long time of being a sneaky fox

Masamune

- Oh boy, make sure you won’t overwork yourself by being with this man, being a battle-loving man that he is (meaning, more bodies and scenes to check out)

- At the same time, he finds it amusing that you proactively ask him to take you to his trips, campaigns and whatnots

- “It really is fun having you around, lass! Or should I say ‘partner’?” // “Damn straight, partner… now, let’s solve this case!” Cat-like grin commences for you two

- He sees you having fun hanging out at the scouts’ camp, chatting about experiences in the battlefield. your eyes would glimmer the more explicit they describe it. Creepy? Maybe a little, but at least he sees you happy about it… right?

- The One-Eyed Dragon will find this unusual, sure, but it certainly makes him want to know you more

Ieyasu

- Did he care at first? No, not really. He just wanted no involvement at first and to be left on his room alone, reading or eating extra-spicy food

- However, Yatsun gets curious when he finds you taking a peek at his medicinal work on a man he is a bit late to save :(

- “What are you doing here? You better not get in the way.” // “Oh no, poor man though… what’s the cause?” // “I am yet to find that out, if you’ll excuse me,---” // “Can I take a look?”

- He tries to pry you away from the room but being already in and touching the body leaves him no choice but to keep a close eye on you, making sure you’re not doing anything daft.

- “Huh, not bad.” Ieyasu says as you were able to identify the cause of death, deep inside he’s amazed of course. Later on he would let you join him in his post-mortem activities if the schedule allows to, but still keeping an eye on you to prevent any mishaps from happening

Mitsunari

- “Wow, MC-sama is unfazed as we all are in the battlefield! You truly are an amazing woman.” Did you see that sunny smile on his face as he says it???

- Your logical explanation as to identifying one’s death baffles the force’s cinnamon roll (because of the jargon used), otherwise it fascinates him

- Well, he’s never seen a woman who’s into dead bodies work-wise!

- Like some other warlords, he would ask you for advice when making strategies for the next battle

- When you went to his room one time to borrow a book, the first thing you said was “Am I in a crime scene?” when seeing piles of books around, untouched food and seeing a man unmoved in the middle of the room, reading and not even sensing your presence. “Ah no, just a normal room. I see.”

Ranmaru

- While in an errand, he sees you one day looking at a dead body about to be taken away. He is worried that the view might traumatize you for life… in the back of his mind he already has a plan to take you to a sweets shop and let you gorge in manjuu for the rest of the day

- “MC-sama, are you alright? You look shocked.” // “Yeah, I mean it looks to me that someone killed him when everybody says the opposite! I wanted to look into this so badly…” // “My apologies, but… what?”

- Of course it is never the answer he expected, but when you plead to help him solve it, this page is more than willing to do so

- Now both of you are going around the town looking for clues and asking who you think are involved; partners-in-crime!

- You did get to gorge on manjuu (and tea, lots of it) with Ranmaru when the case is solved!

UESUGI-TAKEDA FORCES

Kenshin

- Oh boy, make sure you won’t overwork yourself by being with this man, being a battle-loving man that he is pt.2

- “How dare you try to even speak with MC; draw your swords. Now.” // “Kenshin-sama, even if I’m used to seeing the deceased, please don’t do that. You’re scaring your own men!”

- He has little to no problem in taking her along to the battlefield, too! One more way to keep her in sight at all times

- Sometimes when you two are drinking and think he had too much you just had to stop him, to his slight annoyance. You have seen many deaths due to alcohol poisoning and definitely wouldn’t want him to be in the list… Bunshin Lord Kenshin appreciates the thought though

- Like Nobunaga, he allows you to do some research on the dead bodies, anything useful for the ongoing war

Shingen

- How can an angel such as you be associated with death and decay? He thinks

- But this daddy needs to accept the fact that you are quite comfortable around such! However once your investigation takes a scary turn expect him to nearby, comforting you with soothing words, or a hug… or eating sweet buns as many as you’d like to calm yourself down

- At first he is reluctant to let you get near the deceased, however whenever he sees your expression light up whenever he makes a cheesy comment (albeit in a rather awkward place) he thought of going along with it

- “Hm, this job of yours is unfitting in every way.” // “Oh yeah? How so?” // “You are brimming with life that I do think you are a goddess who descended upon us men.” // “Ah, here we go again…”

- You have to admit, his presence help you keep your sanity as you used to work alone for long periods of time

Yukimura

- “I thought you might be running away now once you see these.” // “As if they’ll chase me! Unless… are they still alive?” // “Weird woman…”

- This tsun does admire how brave you are after even making such joke

- Along with Sasuke, you three are pretty much effective when doing some investigation at the enemy’s base with you giving them (modern) tips of not getting caught. Unusual hiding spots? Hidden weapons? Suspicious people? All checked and cleared! 

- He has been doing that for a long while now, but hearing your strange ideas do sound plausible… especially when ninja friend is highly approving it

- If Sasuke trusts you, he surely starts to trust you (and your skills) too

Sasuke

- Once again, be paired up with Yuki and you three would make a great investigation/espionage team

- When investigating, you and memelord ninja are speaking to each other in partly jargon, partly heavily-memed language

- Possibly having watched and/or read crimes shows or movie you two are getting along so well

- “So here’s our undercover story: husband, wife and husband’s best friend---” // “Wait, do we get cool names too?!” // “Yeah, I’ll get to that part later… or I’ll do it now. Miyako, Tsune and Chozaburo; sounds cool?” // “Noice.”

- As the conversation continues, Yuki is left by himself to wonder how on earth did he get friends like you, shaking his head lightly as your talk no longer makes sense to him

Yoshimoto

- This beautiful mailman sees you one day sketching and as a man of the arts he comes over to look at what you’re drawing

- What he sees is a detailed sketch of a man, possibly a random person. The facial structure, features are all spot on! He is in full admiration mode

- “My, such a lovely piece you are making there. Has someone commissioned you to make him a portrait?” // “Actually Yoshimoto-san, I am making this to be posted around town. A wanted poster of some sorts… he’s a criminal.”

- You explained to him your job as a forensic artist, and he listens to every single word of it. Yoshimoto would find himself asking about your style of sketching as you continue drawing

- When the posters are up he is one of those people who would look at it for a long time; for him it’s not for memorizing the perp’s face, but simply to appreciate the art, fanning himself ever so gracefully

#ask #ask answered #november-solarstorms #nori's headcanon #ikesen #ikemen sengoku #ikesen headcanon #toyotomi hideyoshi #masamune #ieyasu #mitsuhide #ikesen mitsunari #ikemen sengoku ranmaru #kenshin #shingen #yukimura #ikesen sasuke #hideyoshi #I'm sorry it took so long :'( #*bows apologetically* #and the keep reading part is right after the question #i can't even move it #wth tumblr? are you okay?

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Chapter 120: The Beetle at Bay

The place felt weirdly small and cramped despite the fact there were only eight teenagers inside. The air smelt strongly of coffee, and Lily got a firsthand account as she landed on top of a booth and got the hot drink splashed across her lap for it, and she prayed they came across another dorm room in the castle to get the stain out of Alice's skirt. Sirius disrupted the lace as he smacked the window, Alice was brushing sugar out of her hair from an overturned table, and they all had pink confetti in every crease of their clothes from circling golden cherubs above as they got wearily to their feet, but none immediately recognized the place.

"Well, we're in Hogsmeade," Sirius offered, nose still pressed to the rain pattering window as he recognized the street and even Scrivenshaft's down the ways a bit. There was something odd on the window though, like a huge poster of someone moving. It didn't look flashy enough to be some new advertised product. It was raining too hard, and he couldn't get a good view to see it. He'd have liked to just go over there and hear the chapter from that store, but Alice already gave the door an experimental tug to no avail. "I just don't recognize this place," the scandal in his voice was eye-roll-inducing to the four non-Marauders. Even knowing exactly how they knew these grounds so well with their monthly romps with a werewolf didn't make their pigheaded assurances they knew every inch of this place feel less annoying.

"I suppose it stands to reason they'd add a few more buildings in time," Peter offered, wandering behind the counter and offering if anyone else would like a drink. He spotted the book in the booth behind Evans, the large black volume wasn't hard to miss in this place of reds and pinks, but nobody made a move towards it straight away. That last, horrible lingering sentence as heavy in the air as the brewed beans. They'd put it off for a bit and try to breathe the strong scent instead. "Let's just hope it wasn't Umbridge getting a foot out in this place," he added in disgust.

Lily didn't think it a particularly good idea when Pettigrew began handing out the highly caffeinated coffee to everyone, those boys didn't need any extra energy, but she was also starting to feel a little fatigued herself, and they weren't even slightly showing the same. Their sleep schedules were a bit off now, this would definitely do some good.

She slunk off to a corner booth by herself, deciding to leave Alice and Frank be in this clearly coupley place as Pettigrew handed them his first batch with a smile, and she watched in fascination once more as Potter and Lupin began quietly asking Sirius Black how his side was doing. He brushed off their concern with a grin that looked natural, not at all his usual haughty demeanor.

Regulus Black went shuffling behind the counter and began browsing through some of the pastries available, while Pettigrew surprised her by placing a mug down in front of her, she still somehow accidentally kept overlooking him when he'd been walking right towards her. He called over to Regulus though and the two joined the other three, Pettigrew had even grabbed the book on his pass through the place and read out the strange chapter title. Beetle at Bay? The only beatle that came to mind had to do with Rita Skeeter, but what could she be doing back here?

All conversations were silenced as he read the horrible opening, both somehow a good and bad thing all at once. The good news, they didn't have to wait and wonder what had made You-Know-Who so happy. The bad news?

Everything else.

The ten escaped convicts, and what they'd been in Azkaban for, plus blaming it all on Sirius.

Somehow Peter had remembered from the one time Remus had come over and last tasted coffee he'd hated the stuff, and had slipped him hot chocolate instead. It was this little detail that made all the difference to him as he alternately blew and sipped on it watching Peter read that awful article, seeing the color bleeding back out of his face and how very aware all of them were it wasn't Sirius those Death Eaters had more in common with in this future.

Regulus shifted imperceptibly closer to him, hiding his own face with his long hair as he put far too much care in stirring the drink with a biscuit. The other three just chose not to acknowledge the moment and shifted restlessly in place, but the fact that none of them left the table or punched Wormtail was the best improvement he could currently have asked for.

Lily startled and nearly spilt her piping hot drink back into her lap when Frank and Alice joined her anyways, she sliding in the booth beside her and Frank across, both still cradling their own lurid pink steaming cups.

"Oh, you don't have to," she quickly tried to say, even though she wouldn't deny for a second their mere presence comforted her from thinking of that ghastly white-haired version of the kind faced girl beside her. "You can have an alone moment without me always hanging around."

"You're not bothering us," Frank scoffed at the notion.

"We've loved your company," Alice quickly agreed, "I only wish we'd talked more before all this began." She went a little red at the end though and stammered a bit, before stopping herself from saying anything else and wincing as she took a too-fast sip and scalded her tongue.

Lily sighed and looked back out the window, she knew full well why Alice and Frank had barely been on passing terms with her, the same as the rest of the school, and it wasn't because they were a year above her. Her association with Severus put her in the same bad company as those friends of his, no matter how much she begged of him to be rid of them as well, nobody in school wanted much to do with her because of him.

The most uneasy silence that had yet passed between them festered as Pettigrew read through Umbridge passing yet another ludicrous Decree, stopping the teachers from talking about anything but their own subject in light of this news. The following DA lessons that were the subsequent of this as well lit the couple's face with such pride and admiration for Neville's response that she felt almost dirty sitting next to them.

Her and Harry's father were barely on speaking terms. Her best friend made Harry's dreams and scar problem quantifiably worse, and now Ron was even voicing the thought Severus's motives were clear to no one, no matter how much Hermione continued assuring Dumbledore trusted him, that should have been good enough for everyone.

It only gave her a few more feeble rays of hope their wise headmaster must know something they didn't. He'd already been wrong before though during Harry's life, and she'd been having her own doubts long before now.

Finally Harry was setting out on his date with Cho, and Alice wasn't going to let Lily keep stewing in such thoughts that had her face puckered up like that when she should be enjoying hearing about Harry on his first date just like all of them were hoping to get a laugh at.

"Lily," she reached over and kindly put a hand on her arm, smiling wider when she didn't even attempt to shrug her off. "We're not going to stop talking to you when we get out of this, even if you do keep talking to Snape."

Lily winced for the 'if', was it so obvious even she was having doubts? She listened mournfully as Pettigrew began describing Harry and Cho's light conversation about Quidditch and watched as Frank began pouring heavy amounts of creamer into his coffee and then casually reaching over and doing so for Alice as well, then she turned back to watching Potter as he started trying to stack all of their finished drinks, and then go around fetching more cups with laughs and further challenges to his task from his friends.

"I've noticed you've been a little easier on him lately," Frank offered as he followed her wandering eye and offered a change of subject.

She snorted and immediately turned away as if she'd been doing no such thing, but Alice had a teasing smile in place now and a quirked brow to stop her from denying any such thing.

"He's still an arse," Lily said at once, summoning a biscuit to her from the counter and dunking it into her now cool drink. "Just because he hasn't gone around cursing us every time we've annoyed him during this doesn't mean he'll stop doing it the second we get back."

"Maybe, maybe not," Alice agreed passively, but there was still something in her tone that hinted she was holding back laughter at Lily's insistence of this. She hadn't told them of where she'd been that full moon night, how he'd let himself be separated from Black just to protect her like that- She flushed in frustration and gulped at her drink, unable to deny even to herself she'd been watching him quite a bit lately. So she found the arsehole had some fascinating layers and wouldn't mind dissecting him to see what some of those were now, he was still an arsehole first.

The name of this place was finally given to them, Madam Puddifoot's, how frilly, but Harry's date was quickly growing more memorable than even this quaint shop, as the poor teen blundered one disastrous answer after another with Cho, until finally she went out into the storm, in more tears than the rain could do. Regulus found himself watching in pure fascination, making a mental list of things he now at least knew not to do.

"Well, I finally don't feel so embarrassed about our first date," Frank chuckled a bit into the awkward silence.

"I told you not to worry about that darling, natural selection would have done that bird in," Alice laughed.

"What's this?" Sirius swiveled curiously in his seat, a dangerous decision as the cups were now listing precariously towards him, and he had a galleon going this would last until the end of the chapter.

"Butt out Black," Alice said quickly while Frank blushed slightly.

"Good luck with that," Remus snorted softly.

"He's always been the nosy one," his little brother quietly agreed.

"He doesn't just keep up with the school gossip for Moony's sake, don't let him tell you otherwise," Peter agreed without looking up.

"Why do I put up with any of you?" He asked in exasperation.

Alice was laughing even harder at the exchange by the end, a stark contrast to Hagrid's dour mood and still not revealing how he got those injuries.

"So, should I be jealous?" Frank finally swooped in and saved Lily from getting anything further directed at her, as his girlfriend fell back into chuckles and looked to turn back to the redhead. "Don't think I haven't noticed him flirting with you." He lovingly teased.

"I wouldn't leave you if Viktor Krum walked in the door right now," Alice assured, blowing him a kiss.

Lily was smiling fondly at the exchange as the beetle was finally explained, and indeed it was referring back to Rita Skeeter, having a rough go of life by the sounds of her description. As Hermione blackmailed her into helping, and Luna Lovegood all pulled together to put Harry's story out there his way, the boys were being such a loud mess it was a wonder if they could hear him at all as each were chanting at Peter to either hurry up, or slow down in his reading as the tower of cups was now tilting this way and that dangerously.

Finally, as they were teleported out of sight, they were all laughing at the show no matter the outcome.

#HP #Harry Potter #fanfiction #reading the books #OotP #Marauders #wolfstar #Jilly #James Potter #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #Peter Pettigrew #Regulus Black #Lily Evans #Alice Smith #Frank Longbottom

[ryqoshay]

Tri-Arame: Sleepover Night

Primary Pairing Trio: YuuAyuSetsu Words: ~3k Rating: G Time Frame: During their 2nd year in high school Story Arc: Stand Alone

----------

Author’s Note: My µ’s muse is rebelling against the drama I’m trying to write for my PTX set. So here’s some more fluff.

Summary: Setsuna took a rain check on watching the anime series that inspired her Koppe Pan order back in Ne, Wanna Bite? Now it’s time to cash in.

----------

“Uhm, Okaasan?” Nana asked trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice.

Why had she waited until the last possible minute to ask permission? What if she was denied? She’d have to cancel the plans to which she had looked forward all week.

“Yes, Nana?” Mrs. Nakagawa replied, looking up from her paperwork.

“Would it be alright if I stayed at a friend’s place tonight?”

“Oh? Someone from the student council?”

“No, a friend associated with the student council who is assisting with a project.” Nana explained. “There is a lot of preparation work that still needs to be done and I wasn’t the only one busy with tests this week.”

It wasn’t a complete lie. Ayumu had indeed helped her with student council work several times. So had Yuu, for that matter, as well as several other members of the idol club. Usually, their aid was reasoned away by them simply wishing to assist a friend, as well as allow her to more easily participate in club activities. This often led to her wondering if they knew how much their help was truly appreciated.

As for the mentioned project… Well, the club did have a Live coming up. And a member of the student council was participating. Granted that member was her, but…

“I see.” Mrs. Nakagawa nodded. “Very well then.”

Excitement bubbled up within Nana, but she quashed most of it, offering only a polite smile. “Thank you, Okaasan.”

Her mother offered a similar smile in return. “Have fun tonight.”

“I will.” Nana said before turning and heading to her room to pack.

----------

Setsuna was giddy with excitement as she undid her braids on the train. Her first sleepover with friends!

It wasn’t her first time visiting a friend’s home, but she hadn’t even done that in years. She had lost track of her childhood friends over the years, due in no small part to increasing expectations from her parents as she advanced in grades. The ban on her favored pastimes had been the final blow as she had to sneak around to continue to indulge, and that was best done alone.

Then she joined the student council and managed to become its president. Suddenly she had an excuse to stay out later or even just be out on weekends. She hated having to lie to her parents and did strive to be as truthful as possible, though she knew full well that a lie by omission was still a lie. But that had become her only way to become a school idol, to join the new club, to shop for manga and doujin and to hang out with friends.

And to spend time with those two.

Ayumu and Yuu had quickly become her closest friends after she joined the idol club. They had graciously given her an outlet through which to focus much of her enthusiasm for her hobbies. And this weekend they had agreed to marathon one of her favorite anime series with her. For the second time, Setsuna would be able have an actual conversation with friends about a beloved story, instead of just a one-sided explanation; the first being earlier that week as the three hung out together and purchased the latest book of Heavenly Life.

And she couldn’t wait.

Honestly, the train couldn’t arrive at the station quickly enough. And Setsuna knew she would have to resist the urge to run to the apartment complex where Ayumu and Yuu lived. For the sooner she arrived, the sooner they could start watching. And the sooner they finished the series, the sooner they could start talking about it.

----------

“Ah, Nakagawa-san.” Mrs. Uehara said upon opening the door. “Welcome. My daughters said you would be coming.”

“Daughters?” Setsuna couldn’t help repeating. Did Ayumu have a sister?

Mrs. Uehara chuckled. “I’m sorry.” She said shaking her head. “It’s a bit of a habit of mine. But Yuu is over here so often that she’s pretty much family at this point.”

A tiny flash of envy shot through Setsuna. How nice to be so close to someone. And not just them, but their family as well. Perhaps someday she could be that close to someone, or someones…? as well.

“Ah, pardon me.” Ayumu’s mother said after a slightly awkward moment. “Come in. Come in.” She opened the door fully and ushered Setsuna inside, introducing herself along the way. “Forgive my asking, but do you prefer to go by Nakagawa-san or Yuki-san?”

“Oh, uhm, actually,” She calls Yuu-san by her name, so maybe “Setsuna is fine.”

Mrs. Uehara smiled. “Setsuna it is then. I’ll go tell my daughters you’re here.” She laughed lightly again at her joke before taking a couple steps toward the hall. “Ayumu! Yuu! Setsuna is here!”

Before Setsuna could even finish removing her shoes, a twintailed girl was scampering around the corner.

“Setsuna-chan!” Yuu greeting joyously.

“I’m glad you could make it, Setsuna-chan.” Ayumu added, following at a more modest pace.

“I’ll have dinner ready soon.” Mrs. Uehara said, moving toward the kitchen. “I’ll send your father to fetch you once he’s home from work, Ayumu.”

“Thank you, Mama.” Ayumu replied.

“Thanks, Ayumama!” Yuu added, earning a blush from Ayumu and a chuckle from Mrs. Uehara. “C’mon, let’s go.” Yuu then said, grabbing both Ayumu and Setsuna’s hands before leading them down the hall.

Yuu opened a door, pulled the other two inside and…

Pink.

That was the first thought that came to Setsuna’s mind upon entering Ayumu’s room. The walls were pink. The clock and lamp on the headboard were pink. Pink curtains framed the balcony door, pink cloth decorated the shelves on the wall and a pink blanket covered something under said shelves. And what wasn’t pink was still some other light, fluffy pastel color. It was all… very Ayumu. Yes, that was the best description Setsuna could think up based on what she knew about her friend.

But beyond the cute colors, it was also very comfy, soft and warm. And welcoming. Setsuna immediately felt at home in the room.

Then her eye caught something. Or rather, a lot of somethings.

“They’re so cute…” She said, finding herself drawn to a display of plush animals.

“I know, right?” Yuu was the one to respond. “Ayumu wanted to pack them away because she thought they were too childish.”

“Y-Yuu-chan…” Ayumu protested.

“I should show you my collection sometime.” Setsuna said, resisting the urge to grab several animals and hug them, as she did not yet have such permission. “I have Kirara, Kyubey, Tamago Onsen, Dera Michimazzi, Kuroneko-sama, Sakamoto, Taroumaru, Ryo-Ohki…

Yuu started to chuckle. “Aren’t those all anime animals?”

“Yes.” Setsuna affirmed with a nod.

“I thought your parents forbid anime? I mean that’s why we’re having the marathon here, right?”

“Oh, uhm… my parents… don’t know they’re all from anime…” Setsuna admitted. “I haven’t told them, and they don’t seem to have looked into things online or anything. Posters, figures, and the like would be too obvious, so they’re the only merchandise I can display openly; I can pass them off as just being cute plushies.”

“Ah, I see.”

“And they’re not all from anime. I have Toothless as well.”

Yuu grinned. “A good choice.” She declared.

“Anyway, these are really cute too, Ayumu-san.” Setsuna turned her attention to the redhead.

“Thank you.” Ayumu replied. “You can touch them if you want, Setsuna-chan.” She added with an amused tone in her voice.

Was my desire that obvious? Setsuna wondered to herself. How embarrassing…

Setsuna swallowed down a blush and offered a smile instead. “Thank you.” She said, reaching for a pink rabbit to inspect. A pink bear had also caught her eye, but the rabbit seemed so Ayumu-like that she couldn’t help picking it over the others. It really was very cute, and she could easily tell why Ayumu liked it.

I wonder if there is one like Yuu-san here… Setsuna thought to herself as she continued to investigate the display.

“So, should we get a couple episodes in before dinner?” Yuu suggested.

“Yes.” Setsuna agreed enthusiastically, her attention reverting back to the original reason she was visiting.

“What site is the show on?” The twintailed girl asked as she sat down on a green pillow and opening what Setsuna assumed to be Ayumu’s laptop. “My parents have several accounts, so if its on one of them, I can sign in to it.”

“Actually, the series is old enough to be on the free sites.” Setsuna explained, choosing the blue pillow, and leaving the pink one for Ayumu.

“Oh, alright, uhm… here.” Yuu slid the computer over.

Setsuna started typing in the address, though as she did, she noticed both Yuu and Ayumu moving their pillows to either side of her. “Hm?” She hummed quizzically as they sat down.

“Since this is one of Setsuna-chan’s favorite series, she should have the best view of the screen.” Yuu answered before she could actually give voice to her question.

“But I’ve already seen it…” Setsuna rebutted.

“Setsuna-chan is also our guest and should have the best seat.” Ayumu added.

“Oh, uhm… alright.” Setsuna conceded. “Will we all fit?” She noted the tiny table did not have room on any one side for three people.

“It’s fine if we do this.” Yuu scooted in until her shoulder touched Setsuna’s.

So close… Eh? As Setsuna’s focus was on Yuu, Ayumu slid in from the other side, though not quite close enough to touch like Yuu. Setsuna wondered how red her face was as she quickly typed the title of the anime and found the first episode.

Setsuna was very much not used to watching anime like this. For so long she had watched alone, hiding from her parents and anyone she worried might not keep her secret. But this was simultaneously comforting and distracting.

Distractingly comfortable… Was that even a thing? While most of Setsuna wanted to pay attention to the anime on screen as the opening title began, there was no denying the part that wanted to focus on the surprisingly soothing warmth radiating from her two friends. She had only sat this way with her parents as a child, and the frequency had decreased dramatically as she grew older and her parents became busier with work.

As Setsuna felt her heartrate start to return to normal and the heat dissipate from her cheeks, she started to settle into the idea that this was a nice arrangement. She could get used to watching anime like this. She could probably even get used to Ayumu leaning in closer.

Yuu giggled, bringing Setsuna’s attention back to reality.

Ah yes, the protagonist’s introduction. Definitely a humorous moment, but there were funnier scenes yet to come, even in the first episode. What would Yuu think of those? Well, they did intend to talk about everything afterward, so perhaps she should just enjoy the show for now.

Setsuna relaxed and turned the entirety of her focus on the anime.

----------

Setsuna startled at the sound of knocking on the door. She turned her head to see said door open and a man she assumed to be Ayumu’s father poked his head into the room.

“Ayumu?” Mr. Uehara spoke. “Your mother sent me to say that dinner is ready.”

“Thank you, Papa.” Ayumu responded, starting to get up.

The man’s gaze shifted. “Hey, Yuu.” He greeted with a smile. “And… Setsuna, was it?”

“Yes.” Setsuna replied, getting up as well before bowing. “It is a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for having me tonight.”

“The pleasure is ours.” Mr. Uehara’s smile grew. “Ayumu and Yuu have told us a lot about you. It is nice to finally meet you.”

Ayumu-san and Yuu-san talked about me? Setsuna hoped it had been at least more good than bad, though judging by both Ayumu’s parents’ actions towards her thus far, that had been the case. And that realization caused warmth to spread through Setsuna’s chest.

Setsuna couldn’t help smiling as well as she followed the other three out to the Uehara dining room.

----------

The notification chime sounded on Setsuna’s phone as she got out of the bathtub. She padded one hand dry on her towel and unlocked the screen to find a message from Rina. The first-year was inviting the school idol club second-years to join a game she was playing. Well, except Ai, though Setsuna assumed she was already playing. She tapped the link so the app could download as she dried off, deciding the game might make for a fun activity to pass the time while Yuu and Ayumu took their turns bathing.

A few minutes later, Setsuna padded down the hall back to Ayumu’s room, already fully engrossed in the game’s tutorial.

“Yuu-san, Ayumu-san, this game… oh…” Setsuna cut off as the other two girls looked up from their own devices.

“It’s fun, isn’t it?” Yuu grinned as she set down her phone and stood before heading toward the door.

Ayumu had also put down her phone and traded it for a hair drier. “Come have a seat, Setsuna-chan.” She motioned to the pillow she was in the process of vacating before kneeling behind it. “I’ll dry your hair for you.”

“Oh, I can do that myself.” Setsuna declined. “Thank you for the offer though, Ayumu-san.”

“Are you sure?” Ayumu seemed confused and… disappointed? “I’d be happy to do it for you, Setsuna-chan.

“Ayumu just wants an excuse to play with your hair, Setsuna-chan.” Yuu chuckled.

Setsuna startled. She hadn’t realized Yuu was still in the room, apparently having stopped to watch. In response to the teasing, Ayumu’s cheeks flushed and Setsuna imagined her own were close to matching.

Although, why was she declining anyway? Memories of the braided bun lesson from earlier that week were still fresh in Setsuna’s mind had certainly caused her to want to accept, and yet she hadn’t. But accepting wasn’t forcing those desires on Ayumu or inconveniencing her or the like. Ayumu had made the offer.

“A-Alright…” Setsuna said after an awkward moment before taking a seat in front of Ayumu.

“Back in a few.” Yuu tossed over her shoulder as she left to head to the bath.

Ayumu flipped on the hairdryer and began running her fingers through Setsuna’s hair to spread out the strands for easier drying.

For her part, Setsuna was just about to relax into the session, when her phone pinged. She checked the screen to find Rina had sent an in-game gift. She accepted excitedly and began to play again.

“Uhm… Setsuna-chan.” Ayumu said after a moment. “I don’t mind if you play, but can you stop moving around while you do?”

“Oh… uhm… Sorry, Ayumu-san…” Setsuna replied, chastising herself for being rude while her host provided a wonderful service. Still, it would also be rude not to use Rina’s gift to the fullest, so she resumed her game, but made sure to remain still for Ayumu.

----------

Setsuna stared up at the ceiling, laying on her back on one of Ayumu’s guest futons. As sleepy as she felt, she was still buzzing a bit with lingering excitement from the events of the night. The three of them had successfully powered through the entire season with a few breaks for snacks and stretching before spending the next couple hours talking about the story. It was well past midnight, but it was the weekend so they could sleep in late in the morning before having a late breakfast, or early lunch, before Setsuna would head home to study.

Or perhaps… maybe she could study here? She had brought her books, even though she didn’t really expect to use them. And she really liked the welcoming atmosphere of Ayumu’s room, though really her apartment and family as a whole, if she was being honest. However, she didn’t want to impose by overstaying her welcome, and she certainly wasn’t going to just invite herself to stay. Still, it was a nice idea. Perhaps someday…

“Yuu-chan?” Setsuna heard Ayumu murmur, distracting her from her thoughts.

She heard the mattress shift and turned her head to see Yuu’s silhouette sliding under the duvet. She couldn’t quite understand Yuu’s response, but both girls in the bed fell silent after.

Strange. While it didn’t surprise Setsuna that a dating couple would share a bed, she couldn’t help wondering why Ayumu would bother setting out a guest futon for Yuu. Or question Yuu joining her.

Perhaps they were hiding the fact that they were dating and setting out the futon was a visual prop to convince Ayumu’s parents? No, that didn’t seem right. Neither Ayumu nor Yuu seemed the type to hide much, if anything, from their parents. Unlike Setsuna herself… Also, if Yuu’s parents were anything like Ayumu’s, Setsuna believed they wouldn’t have much of an issue with their daughters dating. The Ueharas already considered Yuu part of their family after all.

Were they, perhaps, not actually dating? That would explain Ayumu’s protest. And knowing Yuu’s casual approach to personal space, it wouldn’t surprise Setsuna in the least if she just did as she pleased. And Ayumu would let her. Still, that didn’t seem quite right either. Setsuna was fairly certain they were a couple. Their close bond was obvious to anyone who spent more than five minutes with them.

In any case, whether they were dating or not really wasn’t any of Setsuna’s business. So perhaps pondering the possibilities was inappropriate.

What was far more worth her mental energy was focusing on memories of how much fun she had this evening. For the first time, she had been able to not only watch anime together with friends, but also talk about it with them. All in person. Not over the internet. She had shared a meal with her friends’ family and gotten to know them a little. Setsuna couldn’t remember the last time she had gone to bed feeling so welcomed, accepted and… loved? Was that the right word?

Surely, she didn’t mean to imply that she went to bed at home feeling unloved. She knew her parents loved her, even if their way of showing that love was apparently very different than Ayumu’s parents. But even having only been in the Uehara home for not even half a day, she felt loved here. They were all so kind and Setsuna hoped she could come back and experience it all again.

Setsuna closed her eyes, allowing her mind to begin yet another replay of the day. Sleep would come eventually, but right now she was content just being this happy.

----------

Author’s Notes Continued in Followup Post

#YuuAyuSetsu #Takasaki Yuu #Yuki Setsuna #Uehara Ayumu #Tri-Arame #Love Live Nijigasaki #fanfic

[project-ohagi]

Dabi x Reader

Buy me a coffee!! <3

His fractured, starless life had one beacon of hope and solace - one thing that he longed to return to every night; one thing that fuelled the raging fire within him. You, a quirkless woman, gorgeous in appearance as well as soul, illuminated the labyrinthine void in which he had become lost. His dull world turned on its head. You loved him for all his little habits, all his sweet, genuine words, and all his imperfections. You had remained blissfully unaware of his chequered past, and although he wished to be more open with you, he refused to reveal who he really was. You didn't watch a lot of television, instead electing to read at every given opportunity. He memorised the titles of your favourite books, and the names of your favourite authors, so he knew exactly what to get for you come special occasions.

He knew which movies and fandoms fascinated you, and the names of all your co-workers (you know, just in case). Your perfect visage was scorched into his brain, embezzled with sparkles and flowery symbolism. If he ever cried, it was because of you, and just how emotional you were able to make him. Regret was swirling around his system, lurking in the darkest crevices imaginable. He wanted to remove himself from the veil he was tangled up in, but something compelled him to stay. The League of Villains had no knowledge of you, obviously, since Dabi didn't feel like being blackmailed, and he certainly didn't want you harmed because of a few stupid mistakes on his part.

What he didn't know, however, was that a small bundle of flesh and nerves was swimming in the confides of your womb. You were with child - his child - and absolutely elated. Your hairs stood on edge, while you paced around the compact apartment you shared with your long-time lover, Touya. Telling him would be no easy task - you revelled in apprehension. You weren't completely certain what your child's surname would be, considering Touya had never actually graced you with his. Regardless, you adored him, and doted on him whenever possible (you were exceptional at massages). Being without a superpower, yet more than content, you led quite a normal, average life. You attended university, pursuing a subject with which you were spellbound. Your life now was far better than that of your childhood, mostly because you now had Touya to love and comfort. There wasn't much room to dwell on the past, and you weren't particularly bothered about hounding your boyfriend for answers, and possibly pushing him away in the process.

He must have been a compulsive liar towards those whom he regarded as pawns or simply insignificant, but he never managed to fool you. This fact always made him smile; he was very proud of you. However, it was impossible to see through that which he hadn't even mentioned. His surname was a complete mystery to you, and he hadn't bothered to provide your intelligent head with a false one. Another piece of the shattered jigsaw was his background - you had never met his parents, and you were forever unaware of his siblings. He always seemed really touchy-feely about this topic. You also had no idea of his affiliation with the villains, despite his mugshot being plastered all over the news and billboards around town. Somehow, you bypassed every single one of the posters and brightly-coloured images on blinding, high-quality screens in shop windows. For this, he was extremely glad, and counted himself lucky.

If only the entire Earth was a figment of his twisted imagination, then perhaps Dabi could mould it into something new - a utopia in which the two of you were free to live and be happy, maybe even raise a few children. He wondered what it would be like to have mini pyromaniacs running around the place. Or arsonists. Whichever worked. In a heartbeat, though, he would revoke any association with the League, whisk you away and settle down with a cup of coffee. He would never permit you to comprehend his true nature, or all the unhelpful thought that wormed their way into his brain. He would keep you safe. His intentions were nothing but pure, but he was definitely willing to use the necessary force if you voiced the urge to abdicate the relationship.

You were a rare soul of amaranthine loveliness, blended with determination to excel and the perfect amount of maternal interest. It was as if he had struck the single, golden chord on a harp, and lured you out of hiding. You weren't exactly dependent on him, but you didn't deal well without him, either. The two of you would have been inseparable, if only you went out together in public. The villains never pressed for his biggest secret - the scars, and so they didn't realise that it was just a disguise. They were removable, and you had never seen him with them. He was a little embarrassed of them, in all honesty, and didn't wish for you to show disgust. They made him seem abused and broken. It was the optimal way to hide his true identity from his father, and therefore the general populace.

One day, however, everything changed for the worse.

Usually, Dabi was more cautious when returning home, so as not to put you in danger. This time, he was too excited, although that didn't show on his face. He could just feel that something good was about to happen. He didn't quite know what, but he felt that unfamiliar surge of excitement. This impeded his normal alertness, however. He failed to notice the heroes tailing him. He reached the apartment, walked up the stairs and into your awaiting arms. You almost cried with happiness. Finally, he was back, and you could tell him the wonderful news!

That was when the heroes chose to appear. Having utilised Edgeshot's quirk to evade the door, three of them soon stood in the hallway. Immediately, Dabi pushed you backwards, sensing that someone was about to use their ability. He was right. Your legs were shaking, and you wanted to fall to the ground, but you stayed strong. Your beautiful (e/c) eyes had widened, and you watched, transfixed, as your lover remained motionless. He met your eyes, and that was when you understood - he wouldn't use his quirk while you were in the vicinity. He refused, simply to keep you safe. You sobbed. What had he done to deserve such cruel treatment? All the man-handling seemed draconian and unnecessary. Suddenly, you felt a kick in your stomach. Whimpering, but trying not to further alarm your boyfriend, you covered your mouth with one hand.

The heroes apologised for the disturbance, and were about to leave, when you cried, "Wait! I need to tell him something! It's really important! I swear it won't take a second!"

Alas, they would not let you. Without a proper interrogation, they went off the assumption that the man you now knew as Dabi had drugged and kidnapped you for his own personal enjoyment, and you may have developed Stockholm Syndrome somewhere down the line. You tried as hard as possible to clear the air, but they weren't having any of it. They kept muttering things like "Poor thing" and "She must have had one hell of a time" behind your back. You cried and cried, for hours on end. You refused to eat or sleep. You wanted nothing more than to be back in your small apartment with your lover, Touya. The heroes had exposed you to the news reports on the villains, specifically the Vanguard Action Squad, of which Touya was the central focus. Through this, they hoped that your 'programming' would be reversed, but instead, you cried out for him every single day, pleading with police and heroes alike for his release.

When his unscarred visage was released into the calloused hands of the media, they instantly made the connection to the current number one hero, Enji Todoroki, and vehemently stated that Dabi must be his eldest son, Touya Todoroki. You supposed it made sense, but you honestly just wanted him back. You didn't care about his past, and you vowed not to question him. He could tell you in his own time, when he felt comfortable.

No more than a few months could have passed, but you were a dishevelled rag of hair and junk food. Wrappers and the like were scattered around your apartment, as you had taken to the complete opposite side of the spectrum - you had gone from eating nothing at all to eating anything and everything to fill the hole in your heart.

"Touya...Touya..." You bawled. "Just come back to me....p-please. You d-don't have to tell me anything...! I just want y-you back..."

You cuddled with his favourite pillow.

When you heard his voice, you thought you were hallucinating.

"Well, I'm back, and I'll tell you anything you want to know." The pleasant sound reverberated in your ears, causing you to look with a jolt.

Sure enough, he was home.

Touya Todoroki had returned to you, and this time, you would not let him leave again. Not when you were pregnant with his child.

[Word Count: 1536]

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia x reader #dabi #dabi x reader #todoroki x reader #touya todoroki #pregnancy scenario #my hero academia imagines

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One: Magical Loopholes

Chapter 31: Gone or Taken

He was torn. Inside, his emotions oscillated from the frenzied motions that came along with panic to the sluggish pit associated with depression.

Belle was gone. Her nightgown lay discarded on the floor. It was still warm, barely, but warm enough. She hadn't been gone for long, but then where had she gone and why?

Gone or taken?

That was the question.

Had she finally had enough? Had their argument today been enough to send her over the edge to make her leave him?

Or had someone lured her outside and taken her away? This town was full of enemies; it was why he wasn't so keen on taking her into town when she begged. He felt confident that no one had come onto his property, but she'd gone outside for "air" before. With magic it might not take much to lure her out past the property line so that he'd never sense another presence on his property.

Gone or taken?

The first roused fear in him, the second anger and panic.

Anger and panic. He needed to hold on to those. Most of his life had been driven by anger and panic. He'd learned that he could do a lot when he was angry and panicked, and even if Belle had gone of her own free will, he still needed to find her. Free will or not, he'd promised to take care of her. Out there in the world, she had nothing. No money, no friends, not a single idea about where she was. If she chose not to come back, then what did she plan on doing? Sleep on the street?

No. She'd look for something familiar, she'd try to play the role of the hero, she'd try to do what he hadn't done yet. She'd try to find her father or Gaston, the only other people she'd indicated she thought she knew in this town.

Those thoughts allowed more anger to pour through him. He'd promised to take care of her, and part of that promise meant that she'd never have to go back to her father, never have to play a part in his games again. He had to find her before she found him.

He snatched the nightgown off the floor, grabbed his jacket, and used magic to take him to the shop. First thing first, he dove for the black bag he kept in the corner. A potion, he could use a potion to find her. The magic he'd placed on her to keep her safe and hidden from others would hide her even from him, but with her nightgown, a tracking potion could work! It was a loophole he was happy to exploit only...he remembered too late that he'd given his Tracking Potion to David and hadn't made another one yet. That was no bother. He'd given it to him before he'd known there was a problem with the town line because he knew he could cast a Tracking Spell himself. A Tracking Spell would work around his magic just as well.

He clutched the nightgown Belle had been wearing in his hand pushed the spell into it only…

It glowed. Just as it was supposed to, it glowed brightly for only a second. And then the glow flickered out and faded. He looked around as if expecting to see her sitting on the cot or in the corner, he wandered out into the front room, but the place was untouched. He glanced back at the nightgown and cast the Tracking Spell over it again.

Again, it glowed as it was supposed to before flickering out and fading away just as…

Just as it was supposed to when the owner of the object had been found.

Him. He was the owner of the object. The nightgown...it wasn't hers. She'd worn it, but it was his magic that had created it, and so it recognized him as the owner. It was finding him. But there were other things, things that she'd found around the house that she'd confessed had belonged to her long ago! But what? He hadn't been paying attention when they'd had that conversation. And the items had been random, a book or two, a shoe, maybe a pillow…he couldn't remember.

And there was her teacup…

He was halfway to the case where he was storing it before he stopped. Her teacup…from his tea set, bathed in his blood and magic so that it would find its way to him in this world. It might recognize itself as her own, just as half a dozen other things in his home might, but he needed to find her. He didn't have time to run around trying to find that one magical item that would take him to her. He didn't have anything of hers to cast a spell on, not even in a carnal way. Blood, skin, saliva, they hadn't so much as kissed this morning before she'd disappeared, and they hadn't had sex last night; there was nothing he could harvest for a potion. Except…

Blood to blood. Her father. Her blood would flow in his veins and vise versa. And he suspected that if she left on her own, then that was the place she would go to. He'd cut her off.

If he couldn't get to her first, then he'd get to where she was going first. If she was going there at all, he reminded himself. He wandered into the back room where the drawings that she'd made of her father were still waiting to be tossed out with the other trash, and from a drawer, he pulled forth the amateur drawing of her that her father had done. He wasn't sure what he wanted to believe. He wasn't sure how to marry the person she'd been to the one she was now. Part of him believed that if she left on her own and had nowhere to go, then she'd go to her father. Another part of him believed there was a slim chance of that happening. Not just because she wouldn't want to, but she wouldn't know how.

She had nothing to go on here. She had no idea who her father was here or what he did. But if she did know…that was the first place he'd look. Out on her own, confused, scared…she'd want something familiar. There was a slim chance she was there, but if she was…if she was, then he had to know. He'd always known this day was coming, a day that she walked out on him because she couldn't handle the monster the way she thought she could. He'd promised himself that when that day came, he'd accept it he just…he thought he'd had more time. He hoped they'd have more time. He'd hoped that he might be able to tell her about Baelfire, and yet when he'd had the opportunity this morning-

Later, those were thoughts for later, after he had a hint about where she was. He needed to go to the flower shop. If she was there and wanted to stay with her father, then he'd accept it. If she wasn't there…he shivered. If she wasn't there, then he might have a problem that required a bit more thought. He just had to know if she was safe. That was the priority. He just needed to know where she was so he could protect her from Regina, among others.

"You!" Moe spat out the moment he entered the flower shop. He'd walked there. Not because he was dying for air but because part of him had hoped he might see her on the street or hear something about someone who was looking for him or Moe. But the trip had been wholly uneventful. Until now. Now Moe French glared at him, red in the face, his heart racing, fear pouring from him so that it stank up the place, an achievement for a man who owned a flower shop. He could understand his fear. At the moment, he understood that emotion all too well.

"Rest easy…I'm not here for you. At least not today," he warned in a tone that certainly carried the implication of a threat to it. But he let the words linger there as he showed the man the poster he'd brought. "I was wondering if you'd heard from your daughter?"

Immediately, Moe snatched it out of his hands. "Is this some kind of cruel joke?" he snapped. "I wouldn't have made this flyer if I knew where she was. The only reason she's missing is because of the deal I made with you."

Belle's deal. He wanted so badly to correct him. It was Belle who had stood up and made that deal, who had negotiated it, who had paid the price. Maurice had just benefited from it as he let it happen, and it turned his stomach still today. Watching him look over that paper with sorrow and longing all the while knowing what Belle had told him about her life, how trapped she'd been…it made him want to take a cane to man again.

"I'd held out. I hoped she might have survived such a wicked trade."

"And she has."

"Why hasn't she come looking for me?"

"Oh, she did," he assured him, crossing his hands over his cane to keep the smile he felt inside from blooming on his face. He wanted him to know the truth of it. He wanted him to feel guilty. But considering the situation and the position he found himself in, he opted for implications instead of pesky details. Now was probably not the time to confess that they'd been living together since the Curse broke quite happily until this morning. Now was probably not the time to confess that they'd been sleeping together, even if he did hatefully want the man to know that Belle had been the one to make that decision. He wanted him to know those things, but at the moment, he thought it was better to leave out the details and allow him to take from it what he would. "She even made a flyer like this one."

"Well, let me guess. You took care of it by throwing it in the trash."

"I don't expect you to help me!" he growled, stepping forward and grabbing the paper out of his hands for himself. He did so want to make Moe flinch, to make him cry and scream again. But that would help his current situation, not if Belle came by. What had his aunts always told him in difficult situations? Best behavior. He had to be on his best behavior now. He didn't need help from French, but he might just need assurance. He hated to be indebted to the man for anything, but if it got back to Belle somehow…she was softer than her father; tenderhearted. She'd make sure he knew she was alright.

"I just want to know she's safe."

"And now, thanks to you, neither one of us knows where she is. You're a monster, Rumpelstiltskin," he muttered before he turned and walked into the back room.

#Rumbelle #Rumple #Rumeplstiltskin #Dark One #Mr. Gold #Belle #Moe French #Maurice #ouat #ouat fanfiction #fanfic

[superman86to99]

Adventures of Superman #506 (November 1993)

Superman vs. Superboy! I mean, vs. Superman, since the Kid still insists that Superboy is definitely NOT his name and never will be. The two Supermen meet while the younger, radder one is dealing with some sort of deformed flying babies that are trying to kill him, which is the sort of thing that happens to you when you wear an “S” emblem on your chest.

These turn out to be deformed flying babies THAT EXPLODE, but the Kid is able to push them away with his (very non-Superman-esque) telekinesis powers. He then deduces that these things must have come out of Project Cadmus, the top secret genetic experimentation facility that created him, and brushes off the elder Superman to get back at those geeks by doing what he does best: being a brat on live TV.

So I guess the “top secret” part of Cadmus’ description is no longer accurate, thanks to the Kid. On the other hand, I kinda feel like the people of Metropolis deserved to know that there's a nearby government facility churning out genetic atrocities into their sewers.

The Cadmus gang sends Guardian to bring their wayward creation home so they can talk to him. Obviously the Kid isn't very interested, and for a while it looks like we might get the fight scene teased in the cover, but then Superman the First convinces Superman the Second that he should at least hear them out. And, while at it, ask Cadmus to tell him exactly what the hell he is. If he’s Superman’s clone, why does he have those weird TK powers? The Kid agrees, but... he doesn't like the answers he gets.

The Kid finds out that he's NOT a clone of Superman since, as established a while back, Kryptonians are damn hard to clone. So, since Cadmus was determined to create a new Superman after the original appeared to be dead, they instead took a clone of a regular, non-super man and genetically modified it to approximate Superman's powers (for instance, translating Superman’s “aura” into a telekinetic field). But who was that human DNA donor? Surely it was someone good and cool!

Just after the Kid wonders that, the quite evil and deeply uncool Director Westfield bursts into the lab and demands that this "super-punk" be taken into custody, probably so they can flush him down the toilet like Cadmus' other failed experiments. Superman makes Westfield see that making Cadmus' whistleblower disappear wouldn't look very good right now, but they can't just let him run around unsupervised. So, at Guardian's recommendation, the esteemed telepath Dubbilex is assigned to follow the Kid wherever he goes. I smell a sitcom! (Or a spin-off comic.)

As a last order of business, the Kid decides to give Superman his trademark to the Superman name, which his manager Rex Leech doesn't take too well. So what are they gonna call this teenage “S” emblem-wearing hero now? Superman has an interesting suggestion: SUPERBOY. Our young friend still isn't a fan.

But after storming out and thinking about it for a couple of pages (and trying out the name on some guys robbing a jewelry shop), the Kid realizes he's "earned" the title of Superboy and accepts it. Character development! And just in time for his solo series. ("That Non-Superman Clone Who Also Calls Himself Superman" wouldn't look good on a cover.)

Plotline-Watch:

The final page shows a shadowy figure shaped like the recently introduced Bloodthirst outfitting someone with a weapon-teleporting gizmo, then calling him "Bloodsport"... except that this dude is quite paler than the Bloodsport we met way back in Superman #4 (in an issue inked by current writer Karl Kesel, so you'd think he'd remember the character). This looks nothing like Idris Elba! What gives?!

Superboy is still bummed out because his friend Tana Moon left Metropolis without telling him where she was going, which is now known as "ghosting". In the end, Rex talks about sending Superboy on a promotional tour to establish his new brand, and the first destination of that tour will be... exactly where Tana went to hide from Superboy. This is now known as "time to get a restraining order."

Clark Kent is slowly morphing into a hipster the longer he rooms with Jimmy Olsen. For a long time I assumed all the bands listed in the panel below were made up, but turns out the only non-existing ones are “James Rock” and "Axel Rose". Luckily, Superboy was happy to give Clark's old apartment back to him (apparently only Pulitzer-winning journalists can afford it), so Jimmy won't hipsterize him for much longer.

Westfield gladly assigns Dubbilex to Superboy because it means there won't be a telepath at Cadmus to read his thoughts and find out about his evil plans (like sending the ugly flying babies after Superboy). Very clever, Westfield! Except for the fact that he thought that right in front of Dubbilex, who clearly "heard" the whole thing.

Incidentally, there's an apparent error in this issue when Superboy thinks "They won't take me without a fight!" and Guardian shows up and says "That's too bad, son. Because I don't want to fight you." How did Guardian know what Superboy was thinking? Obviously, Dubbilex patched Guardian through to Superboy's mind to assist in finding him. Now where's my damn Baldy Award?!

Is it me or is this page reminiscent of the cover to Superboy Prime's first appearance during Crisis on Infinite Earths?

Patreon-Watch:

Special thanks to your Patreon pals Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, and Samuel Doran, and welcome aboard to Bheki Latha (our first $6.50 patron ever!), Mark Syp, and Ryan Bush! You are all excellent. This month they got to read a long-ass post entitled 45 Things I Learned by Reading the “Death of Superman” Novel (Part 1), in which I talked about the stuff Roger Stern added to the canon in the first part of the Death and Life of Superman book. This includes Superman’s private thoughts on the JLI (and Guy Gardner in particular), what Lex Jr. calls Supergirl in bed, and Professor Hamilton getting romantic. Find out more at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99

But now: the Don Sparrow show! Take it away, Don.

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

The end of an era, at least temporarily, as Tom Grummett draws his last Adventures of Superman issue, moving onto Superboy (and I think still doing Robin at this time?) with Karl Kesel.  He’ll return for the quarterly Superman: Man of Tomorrow and other things, but it’s a long gap until he does.

A pretty good cover, with Superman and Superboy about to tussle.   Though it can be seen as cheaping out on the backgrounds, I always love radial rays as an effect.  

Inside the issue, we have a great splash page of Superboy getting attacked by botched clones, and I love the gesture here—having his head snapping away from the camera adds to the motion and action.  Great stuff. 

Though he won’t be drawing her again for a while, Grummett excels at the new, shorter-haired Lois in these pages.  Superman soaring to the skies is a great panel as well, and I especially like the way his cape and fist slightly break the panel barrier, giving it a sense of motion, again.

The sequence of Guardian acrobatically flipping from one ledge to another is very well drawn.  Ditto the splash on page 13, where Superboy loses his temper.  The body language in this whole sequence tells the story very well, as Superman is calm and patient, confident in his ability not only to reach Superboy with his words, but also withstand him physically.  

The way Superboy snaps the carpet, but controls it mentally with his Tactile Telekinesis is a great example of his unique powers in use.  It reminds me of a technique they tried on the CW Supergirl show (but almost immediately abandoned) where they made like the Kryptonian fabric of their capes was like “smart fabric” and could be used as a weapon.  

Lastly, the dreamy, child-like expression on Superboy’s face during the Peter Pan exchange is wonderful, and a fitting end for Tom’s run on the book. [Max: You mean the William Shatner exchange, Don.]

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I almost never like it when they reference pop culture stuff in Superman comics, particularly music.  Karl Kesel isn’t the worst offender in that department (that would be JM DeMatties a few years down the line, who had Clark Kent bizarrely asserting he loved the Beastie Boys) but Clark’s discussion with Jimmy about an apparently fictional musician working with a rolodex of early nineties names makes me cringe (as does trying to imagine how awful a “Hip Hop Lyle Lovett” or “Grunge Frank Sinatra” would sound).

The car poster on the wall of Jimmy’s bachelor pad looks for all the world like Robin’s Redbird, also a Tom Grummett creation.  (Fun fact:  Tom once told me he still gets {very small} royalty cheques from the Batman & Robin movie, because Robin’s motorcycle was called the Redbird, though that might no longer be true with Paul Levitz no longer in charge of such matters.)

Superboy (in no less than his third time calling those pink creatures “spuds”) references John Candy and Joe Flaherty’s “Farm Film Celebrity Blow Up” where the guests would frequently “blow up real good” and it does my SCTV loving Canadian heart good.  

It’s interesting (and a little sad) that they again note that Superboy knows things (pop culture, etc) without ever having experienced it.  I feel like there’s a lot they could do with this concept.

This issue reads very much like the end of the Superboy “Reign” issues, as Superman is more of a secondary character to the kid.  All of it begs the question of why Superman, or Guardian put up with Cadmus.  Superman has said in previous issues that he has moral problems with how Cadmus treats life with their cloning experiments, and they’ve attacked him in the past (and also stole his corpse!) so other than the fact that it’s a launchpad for Superboy’s series, there’s really no reason any of these heroes should associate with Cadmus.  Especially Guardian, who comes off as little more than an errand boy here.  He wants to bring Superboy in, but won’t promise Superboy won’t be harmed or imprisoned?  

Nice to see Superboy return to his “Slammin’” catch phrase!

An interesting bit of foreshadowing when Superboy asks Big Words whose clone he is, and who immediately enters but Westfield. [Max: That’s right, Westfield! Not Luthor! Sorry, sorry.]

#superman #karl kesel #tom grummett #doug hazlewood #superboy #project cadmus #paul westfield #dubbilex #guardian #carl packard #rex leech #roxy leech #bloodthirst #bloodsport #hip-hop lyle lovett #grunge sinatra

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 31

Very sunny out today, and for once the virulent children are not out tempting fate with their shrieking play. Social distancing has come very slowly to our apartment complex, as late as early this past week I had to explain to my neighbor that no, my son could not come over to play with her daughter, and then explain again when the daughter came to our door. Jeezy Creezy, people! Last night, since it was the last official night of "spring break" and because he has kept his room clean all week, I let the kiddo stay up until we went to bed, which wound up being around 2am. He woke up before either of us this morning, came out to the living room, and slept on the couch until nearly 11. But it was fun. We watched television and read books and ate brownies. 

Today I have been organizing, for certain values of organizing, my yarn arts supplies. Ever since we moved in here, a year and a half ago now, my yarn and notions have been spread between a bin shelf in the living room, another one in the kitten room, and a box of yarn in my closet. This Christmas my mother in law gifted me a very excellent knitting tote with lots of spaces for projects, extra yarn, and supplies. It's not big enough for even a fraction of the yarn, of course, but it's great for holding hooks, needles, scissors, counters, and all the other stuff that makes knitting and crochet easier. Unfortunately when I went to load it up, I realized that many of my supplies had gone astray, especially my interchangeable needles, which I have since found all over the house, mainly in half-finished projects from previous years. (Starting things is so much more fun than finishing them!) So as I've been organizing, I've also been looking up old patterns and finishing up old works in progress. I currently have nearly all of my needles back in their case, plus I found my crochet hook carrier with all the hooks I haven't been able to find for months. Excellent progress! 

Yesterday's big excitement was driving to Williamsburg for the "farmer's market." I love their market, but of course it is shut down for the duration. The market association moved online, put up a menu of items being sold by different vendors, and arranged for online sales with delivery or pickup. I pulled up, gave my name, and they put the stuff right into my trunk, all very socially distant! I now have two butternut squash a dozen baby herb plants for my balcony, and thirteen beautiful multicolor eggs. Happy Easter to me! 

Six days left until bar exam results come out. Do you remember in February when I made daily updates about my bar study, how anxious I was, how much it consumed my life? Now it hardly seems like it matters at all. I want to have passed, obviously, but it barely seems, I dunno, relevant right now. Like an artifact from a whole other time in my life. In the last days before the exam, I socialized a little on Reddit with other examinees-to-be, because it was nice to all stress out together in those last weeks of February. One poster from California was freaking out all that last week because the test administrators would not allow the wearing of face masks, and the risk of contagion with so many people in one room was unacceptable. We all, without exception, thought that person was nuts. Like literally, like the stress of the test was manifesting itself through inflated fears of a disease that wasn't even in this country.  I think about that person a lot now. They never did come back to say they told us so. 

My birthday is coming up too, and that's at least more fun to think about. Thirty-eight does feel like kind of a lot, but it's not a milestone birthday and I'm at least old enough to not be heartbroken not to have a party. (SO glad that my son's tenth birthday was in January and we went all out then!) I've got a cake mix and my favorite frosting, and ingredients for a birthday dinner on my aspirational shopping list. The shopping list has grown even more, the more days that pass since our last shopping pickup. Ten days now, and even that was a fairly small one, just perishable essentials and hygiene. We're going to have to do something fairly soon because the milk is about to go over, and though I have cans of evaporated, it is not the same. One cannot eat birthday cake without cold milk, it's just not right. I figure we can probably go four more days without more than mild psychological suffering, and I just won't think about the fact that this is an Easter with no candy. 

Last night was the Good Friday Tenebrae service at church, one that I try not to miss. Online this year obviously, so I streamed it in the bedroom with five Ikea tealights and a fleece blanket for the shroud. The kiddo helped me with the candles (he is a huuuge fan of lighting and blowing out candles) and was surprisingly reverent during the service. We covered the candles and I promised him he can light them again Easter morning. As for the Easter basket, maybe we'll just go all out for Cinco de Mayo. 

#quarantine #covid-19 #tenebrae #easter #bar exam

[misfit-among-the-angels]

Ah I love so many of those cute questions! And I know you like stuff to distract you, so how about you answer all of them? 😘 Can be in batches or all at once.

I hope you are talking about these questions c:

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?I don’t eat cereal tbh

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day?YES! I loove cold, especially when it’s all snowy around, then I feel so alive!

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?I have two bookmarks so I don’t use any other objects as bookmarks

4: how do you take your coffee/tea?I take my tea with two spoons of sugar and sometimes with milk if it’s black tea

5: are you self-conscious of your smile?Oh hell yea, I hate my smile most of the time

6: do you keep plants?Nope, I’m not much into keeping plans

7: do you name your plants?Nope

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?I used to write... Now i barely use any artistic stuff to express them :/

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?Nope

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?I sleep on back and on my both sides

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends?Oh, I had so many that are now dead because I don’t talk to them anymore. One of them was naming my bag after Janick (lol). That there is one where we call Richard Kruspe Diva, this is such an old inside joke that usually I’m not even saying his name, just saying Diva. 

12: what’s your favorite planet?Saturn probably

13: what’s something that made you smile today?That Tobi post on facebook

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?Oh it would be messy but with so many posters all around since we both love them

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!Mercury is still shrinking

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish?Idk, I just love every kind of pasta

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?I’d love to try black and maybe turquoise 

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.Me talking only about Rammstein for 5 hours straight and my best friend had to listen to that and he did. I still say sorry every time we remember that

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it?I have my travel journal where I write about every trip I went to

20: what’s your favorite eye color?Green and brown

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces.Oh that’s got to be my red backpack. She’s been to almost every trip I went to since probably 2016. She is old but she is the best one but soon it’s gonna be the time for her to retire 

22: are you a morning person?Hell no

23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?Sleep

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?Maybe my best friend, I mean he already know probably every secret I had

25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into?I haven’t broken into any place

26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit?Maybe my New rock boots?? I mean idk

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor?Spearmint

28: sunrise or sunset?Sunset

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?She used to make necklaces and make it as a birthday gift. I still have two  necklaces that she made for me as a gift and I still wear them and I still love them

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared?Oh yea

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.Socks are cool and I love them, only that I usually forget to buy them and then I’m like “damn it, I’d love some nice socks to this outfit but I don’t have any..”

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends.I think it was 2015 summer and I was totally drunk with my best friend, we were both fangirling/fanboying over Tobi and I remember he did something really hot and sexy - he poured some whiskey on my neck and licked it. Idk if he remembers that but my gods, I still can remember that and yea lol

33: what’s your fave pastry?Pies, cakes, buns of various kinds

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?It was a big pink sheep, I loved it so much because it was so cute and big and yea. I don’t think I named it. Idk, I hope my mother didn’t throw it away

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?I don’t really use them, tho I have one for when I’m writing

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now?Danheim and Wardruna

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?Totally messy

38: tell us about your pet peeves!This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I really hate those fans who are like “I’m gonna die if I won’t be in a first row and I’ll do absolutely EVERYTHING to be there”. Yes, I get them and yes we all live being in a first row but man, those fans are so damn annoying. Like sure, I always try to be in a first row but I don’t bitch if I’m not

39: what color do you wear the most?Black, bit of red and blue

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you?My Mjolnir necklace. Well my old one was missing and till this day I haven’t found it so I bought the one I have now and well, it’s my amulet so it means a lot to me

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving?Good omens by  Terry Pratchett‎ and ‎Neil Gaiman

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it!I don’t really have favorite one

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with?This makes me sad because I never did that

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything?Last autumn when I was in Krakow

45: do you trust your instincts a lot?I dunno

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of.I’m so bad and thinking of puns tbh

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?Beetroot soup

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today?Darkness. Oh no, I loooove darkness now

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought?YES, I love it. Last ones were the newest Rammstein album and Wardruna -  Runaljod - Ragnarok

50: what’s an odd thing you collect?I don’t think I collect any odd things

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?Sooner than now by Sin cos tan

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far?I don’t think I have any???

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them?I’ve seen Beetlejuice and Pulp fiction and I love both of them

54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face?Me

55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point?Cry

56: what are some things you find endearing in people?The way they talk about something they are passionate about, the way they blush or try to be modest

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics?I always have goosebumps when listening to it and yes I do sing along 

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?Group of friends? hahah, it’s so bold to assume that I have a group of friends.. 

59: what’s your favorite myth?I love the myth of Ragnarok

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?Nope, I don’t like it

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received?Can’t remember in both cases tbh

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind?I don’t drink juice in the morning

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?I try to keep them organized 

64: what color is the sky where you are right now?Dark but almost clear with few clouds

65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with?YES

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like?Maybe something like this

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?I dunno, sometimes I love it sometimes I don’t

68: what’s winter like where you live?We used to have cool snowy winters

69: what are your favorite board games?Monopoly

70: have you ever used a ouija board?Nope

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea?Black

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it?I guess, never thought about this much

73: what are some of your worst habits?Being lazy, kinda being hot head

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns.Smart, pretty, tall, has a good heart, funny, serious, helpful, has their own strong opinion about a lot of things, stubborn 

75: tell us about your pets!I don’t have any :/

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t?I dunno, maybe

77: pink or yellow lemonade?Neither

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?Neither

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?My best friend giving me a nickname which happened to be the one I use a lot now

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?It’s creamy color, well I had a small voice of choosing them but I’m okay with them 

81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of.Oh no, I suck at describing stuff like this

82: are/were you good in school?Noo, I was sooo bad in school

83: what’s some of your favorite album art?

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?Yep, I have so many plans for them. I’m still planning on getting more band/lyric related tattoos, also Tolkien one and the one with wolf and triquetra

85: do you read comics? what are your faves?I tried to get into reading them but I can’t buy any of them here and I hate reading them online

86: do you like concept albums? which ones?Yep, well basically all Avantasia albums lol

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?The Matrix, Kill Bill, Intouchables, Wild tales, The legend of 1900, Scent of a woman, Wag the dog

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy?Idk

89: are you close to your parents?Not really

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities.Krakow. The city that feels home to me, not only because it holds so much history of Lithuania but also because there is something about it that I just can’t describe... As my dad said it is a king city and it feels so, Krakow has a Wavel castle and so many other ancient buildings, maybe that’s why I love it so much. Even it seems that the life in it goes bit differently from any other cities, but from small Old town streets to Jewish district and to beautiful cemeteries everything makes me so happy there.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year?I do plan to travel to Poland, then to Czech republic and then to Germany

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch?Cheese, yes I love myself a lot of cheese on my pasta

93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most?I don’t have any other hairstyles other than the one I have in all my pictures

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday?My best friend

95: what are your plans for this weekend?Don’t have any

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?It depends on my mood

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house?ENFP, libra and i have no idea of my hogwarts house and I don’t really care

98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it?Last autumn, yes, I love hiking

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. Far From Heaven by Battle beast Dancing With The Beast by Battle beast So Good It Hurts by Lord of the lost Harvest by NightwishRunaway train by Avantasia Hoffnung by Doro I Wish by Battle beast Traust by Heilung Serpentine by Pretty maids Ich weiß es nicht by Lindemann

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why?Definitely past, because I have so many mistakes to fix and so many moments to relive

Thank you and sorry if my answers suck

#anon #answered

[celilasart]

The Little Potions Boy - Chapter 3

I’m so sorry that chapter 3 took me so long to finish, but tumblr gate happened and it just sucked all my motivation right out of me. And then the chapter just kept getting longer and longer, but everything is relevant to what is going to come. So here it is! Read Chapter 3 under the cut or on AO3 💚 Chapter 1 can be found here

Thursday, 3 December 1998

“You take care of yourself and come back safely, alright?” Draco stroked the snowy owl over her beautiful head before sending her off on her long flight across the ocean. Seeing Susan always reminded Draco of the snowy owl of a certain Gryffindor, and how said Gryffindor’s face used to light up when he saw her at breakfast.

Draco took a deep breath, put his gloves back on and went back to work. Thinking about Hogwarts wasn’t a good idea. He had so many regrets; things he shouldn’t have done because he should have known better, things he did even when he did know better… And with the regrets always also came the memories of his friends, the good ones when they had all been together, laughing in the Slytherin common room, and the bad ones when he had lost them one after the other. Vince in the Fiendfyre. Greg and Theo, who would be in Azkaban for another year or two. Pansy and Blaise, who had both been shipped off to some relatives abroad, waiting for … what exactly? For time to pass? For people to forget about their association with Him?

Draco sighed and continued filling up the water bowls. No, thinking about Hogwarts didn’t do him any good. He couldn’t change his past and he was stuck in a present where he couldn’t even afford to write to his mother without saving up, so letters to friends were unfortunately out of the question at the moment. Ironic for someone working in an owlery… But at least he had “his” owls for company.

This close to Christmas, the owls of the Owl Post owlery were working overtime. Merchants, customers, friends or family members: everybody was using them to order products, deliver goods and presents, or send letters. Owning just one owl was simply not enough at a time like this, and so a steady flow of customers kept everybody at the Owl Post office busy. This day had been especially long. There were currently 97 owls in the owlery and a few dozen should return from their errands during the night. Taking care of all them was a very time-consuming task, even with magic. On top of that, Mr Willis had held one of his famous “You’re a Death Eater, this is a punishment, work harder” speeches which had cost Draco even more time, so now he was once again the last to leave.

Heavy snowfall greeted him when he locked the old oak door of the owlery, and he was just walking into Diagon Alley through the narrow passageway which led around the building when he heard weak chirping to his right. Draco knew that birds were very good at hiding any sign of injury or illness, so he had learned over the last few months to observe all his feathery friends very closely and notice the smallest irregularities in their behavior. A distressed sounding bird, even with a tiny voice like this, was like an alarm signal to Draco’s ears, something he simply couldn’t ignore.

He held himself very still and listened for the sound, hoping he would be able to make it out again despite the wizards and witches still strolling through Diagon Alley now that the shops were closed. There it was! The weak chirping seemed to be coming from the entrance of the Owl Post office. Draco walked closer and continued to listen.

Two little box trees with Christmas decorations and fairy lights were in front of each shop, giving the Wizarding district a festive look, especially with all the snowflakes whirling around. Under one of those small evergreen trees, Draco found a tiny dirty bird, shivering in the icy cold and chirping miserably.

“Oh, you poor little thing,” Draco whispered and crouched down. “Let me warm you up first and then we can check if you’re injured, okay? Don’t be afraid, it’s just a bit of magic.”

With very slow, deliberate movements, Draco took his wand out of his winter coat and whispered a warming charm, pulling his magic back as much as possible. The bird was so small that he didn’t want to overheat it or cause burns.

Next, he cast some diagnostic spells he had learned during his first few days working at the owlery. Mr Willis might have been a grumpy old man, but he knew how to take care of owls and had taught Draco the basics.

“Hmm… these readings are worrisome, little one. Your wing is injured and you have a slight concussion.” Draco looked at some of the readings which were still floating through the air. The bird seemed to enjoy the warming charm and cocked its head to the side, following the floating numbers with a curious gaze.

“High stress levels, that’s understandable. Hmm… but this here’s not good; it looks like the beginnings of pneumonia. How long have you been sitting out in the cold?” Draco waved the readings away with a flick of his wand.

“Okay, tell you what. We’ll try a tiny numbing spell for your wing, all right?” Draco explained to the bird exactly what he was doing. Of course, he knew that birds couldn’t understand wizards as well as magical owls did, but he had noticed that the owls always reacted to the tone of his voice, so he kept whispering soothingly.

“Now that you aren’t in so much pain anymore, I can immobilize your wing for easy transportation because we really need to get you out of the cold.” A murmured spell and another flick with his wand, and … “There, that should do it.”

Draco put his wand away, opened his coat further and took his left arm out of his coat sleeve. Now he could take the bird carefully into his gloved hands, while one arm was inside his coat. The bird looked like a ball of admittedly very dirty feathers and fit perfectly into his palm. It didn’t seem to be afraid at all, looking at Draco trustingly.

“Merlin, you are filthy.” Draco was chatting with the bird, cradling it to his body. He held the winter coat closed with his right hand and hoped it would offer enough protection from the icy wind and snow while he walked back to his flat on Knockturn Alley. “Were you dragged through the mud by a cat? Or did you hit something in flight and fall into a puddle? The first thing we’ll do at home is get you cleaned up, and then we’ll have dinner. Does that sound like a plan?”

Draco’s flat didn’t really deserve to be called that. It was just a run-down single room with adjoining bathroom in the cellar of a shop on Knockturn Alley. Slippery, uneven stairs led down to the entrance, but before he could walk those down, he saw frantic movement in one of the first floor windows. And sure enough, a few seconds later his landlord stormed out of the house, clad in a thick woolen robe, horrendous Christmas-themed joggers and pink slippers.

Great. Draco had hoped to avoid an encounter since he knew exactly what it was about. He tried to keep the bird hidden, pulled back his shoulders, and hoped this wouldn’t turn ugly.

“Malfoy! It’s the third! Where’s the rent?!”

“Good Evening, Witherby. I’m sorry, you’ll get it as soon as the Owl Post office pays me.” His hand holding the bird was shaking inside his winter coat. Please don’t let him discover the bird on top of it all. “We’re overrun with customers this close to Christmas. It must have slipped Willis’s mind that it was the first two days ago. I’ll remind him about my salary tomorrow.”

“Humph,” Mr Witherby narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. He was almost a head shorter than Draco, but that didn’t change the fact that this was his shop, his house, his cellar, and if he wanted, Draco would be homeless in a heartbeat. “You do that, boy,” he said between clenched teeth, stabbing a finger repeatedly into Draco’s ribcage. “You bring me that money. Just because I knew your father doesn’t mean you get to stay here for free! Got that?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Draco nodded once, said “Good night” and was finally able to flee down the stairs to his room. When the door closed behind him, he walked the three steps to his bed on shaky legs and sat down heavily.

“Merlin,” Draco muttered.

Excited chirping brought him out of his thoughts, so he shrugged his coat off and held the bird closer to his face.

“Hello, you! I’m sorry, I didn’t want to make you wait,” he said, trying to go for a cheerful and carefree tone. His little guest had quite enough troubles which needed to be taken care of first before Draco could think about wallowing in self-pity.

“Right,” Draco yawned and got up from the bed. “Bath, food, sleep. First you, then me. And maybe a name for you, what do you think?”

Draco chatted on while rearranging a few things on his work table, making space for the bird with one hand before carefully setting it down and taking off his gloves.

His room didn’t hold much. A single bed was standing along one wall with a small bookshelf at its head. He’d engorged his favourite potions books and a few of his dragon sculptures when he’d moved in, and left most his other possessions shrunken down in one of the trunks at the end of the bed. Seeing those familiar items always gave him a sense of safety and home. The same could be said about his blue cauldron and his brewing utensils which were on the work table standing opposite the bed. A small sink with a cupboard above it was on the wall between bed and work table, and right next to the sink, a door led to the bathroom. Draco had tried to make the place as comfortable as possible, hanging up the posters he’d had in his dorm room at Hogwarts, on which famous Quidditch players zoomed around on their brooms or posed enticingly. A huge Slytherin banner was stuck to the wall next to the entrance. Above the banner, a tiny charmed window close to the ceiling gave the illusion of a view into rolling hills under a starry sky. In reality, the window just let you see the dirty facade of the houses opposite; not even a tiny bit of sky could be seen through it, no matter what angle you tried. So Draco had charmed the window as best as he could, and had tried to replicate the view out of his bedroom window at the Manor. On the floor of his basement room was a thick warm rug, also from his room at the Manor. He’d had this dark purple rug forever and loved curling up on it with a blanket, a cup of tea and a good book. He could read there for hours.

But first things first! Draco looked at the dirty bird, which was more mud brown and grey than anything else right now, and fetched his wand from his coat on the bed.

“Well then, what do you actually look like under all this dirt?”

Draco performed some complicated wand movements and spoke the accompanying cleaning spell — an appropriate one for birds since it didn’t destroy the water-repelling properties of their feathers — and came face to face with a still disheveled, yet clean red-yellowish bird. It had about doubled in volume, now that the dirt wasn’t weighing down its feathers, and looked like a ball of fluff on thin legs, quite a few feathers still going in all directions.

Draco just stared at it, and the bird stared back at Draco — with its cute green eyes, encircled by dark round markings.

“I…,” Draco swallowed. Fuck! This damn bird looked like a certain disheveled Gryffindor, glasses and house colours and crazy hair and all. Only the famous scar was missing. He narrowed his eyes, pulled a few times on his bottom lip while thinking and then said determinedly: “Git.”

The bird, which had started hopping around on the table, exploring its surroundings, was currently facing away from Draco. When it heard the one-syllable word, it looked back, watching Draco curiously.

“Your name’s Git. I think it’s fitting.” Draco proclaimed. “You’ll probably be nothing but trouble,” he grumbled, then couldn’t help himself and continued: “But damn it, you’re a cute ball of fluff, aren’t you, my boy?” He stroked Git over his tiny head, then accioed a small plate, filled it with a careful Aguamenti and put it in front of the bird.

“Now let’s see what we have to eat for you. I think I have some owl treats left. You could nibble on those for tonight, and we’ll get some more appropriate food for you tomorrow. Maybe some sunflower seeds? Would you like that?”

Draco rummaged through one of his trunks while talking to the bird. He never got owl post here, his mother’s letters were always delivered to the Owl Post office, so he didn’t have any treats at hand, but maybe there were still some between his Hogwarts things.

“Oh, wait, I might have a few in my coat pocket.” And yes, there were two owl treats and a few crumbs left from his work day. “There you go. Bon appétit, mon petit.”

Draco let the owl food drop on the table next to Git’s plate before being finally able to take care of his own needs.

After a hot shower and some cold dinner with bread, cheese and a green apple, Draco felt infinitely better. He’d eaten at his work table next to Git and shared his food with the little rascal. The bird had wanted to nibble on everything.

Now, Draco was sitting on his bed, leafing through one of his potions books, while Git was still on the work table, hopping around, inspecting everything and chirping happily about his discoveries.

Draco had had to put up heavy silencing charms when he moved in because of his nightmares. He renewed them regularly, which meant that Git could now make as much noise as he liked without any fear of disturbing the landlord.

Ah, there it was. Draco had finally found the chapter about mending bones, and was now trying to figure out how many drops of Skele-Gro he could safely administer to Git in order to heal his wing. Thank Merlin, all the potions and ingredients from the Manor — at least those which weren’t confiscated by the Ministry — were also in Draco’s trunks. Buying potions really was out of the question with his meager funds.

Draco yawned again and rubbed his eyes as the letters started swimming on the page. He really needed to get some sleep; he only had to figure this out first. The day had been hell, and tomorrow, it all began anew. Just this time, he had a little fireball of a bird to keep him company; at least until Git was well enough to find a warm spot during winter.

Notes

Bon appétit, mon petit. = Enjoy your meal, my little one.

#drarry #25 days of drarry #25daysofdracoandharry #25 days of draco and harry #the little potions boy #draco malfoy #harry potter #epilogue what epilogue #fairy tail retelling #based on the little match girl #by hans christian andersen #gosh #i'll try to catch up #harry's chapters should be a bit shorter at the moment #until both of them meet at least #thank you so much for sticking around #i hope you like our new character #on day 4 we're back with harry in romania #thank you so much for reading

[truthofherdreams]

life behind the camera (#3)

also on ao3 + main instalment + outtakes

“So, Peter’s mother,” is how Lara Jean introduces the subject as she sits on John Ambrose’s couch.

He’s done filming for today’s video, laptop propped up in front of him and slowly importing the video he will then start to edit. She caught him at a good time – not yet too busy – but still he arches a surprised eyebrow at her.

“Rachel Kavinsky,” he spells out slowly, deliberately. “Doesn’t like me much, to be honest.”

“What, you? No! You’re like, the poster boy for parents to like.”

He grins and she’s reminded of how handsome he is, in such a different way. Peter is Hollywood-handsome, the kind you find in magazines and movies and everywhere. John is more old-school, like he tumbled out of a black and white movie and decided to just salary living in modern times. Not for the first time, LJ wonders why he’s not dating anyone. It would be so easy for him to find someone to fall in love in love with him.

“Right,” he laughs. “She’s the exception though.” LJ doesn’t reply anything, but her confusion must show in the puzzled look on her face, because John sighs a little. His shoulders drop, slouching a bit as he looks for his words. “Peter ever told you what we were doing before moving to LA?”

She shakes her head. She knows they moved here when they were 19, and Chris followed them a few months later when Peter convinced her to join the squad. Greg was already living in LA when they met him, and Lucas showed up about a year later. Then came along Lara Jean, a few years down the road. But she never questioned what happened before, or how it all led them where they are, because she already knows. Passion, hard work, and their fair share of luck. She’s been through it too.

John sighs as he leans further into his seat. “Of course, he wouldn’t,” he says with a shake of the head, hand rubbing against his face. “We were both in college together, same room and everything. I was valedictorian so I got a scholarship for my grades; Peter got in with a scholarship for the Lacrosse team. That’s when his channel really started to explode too, because we had more time to film and edit and actually create quality content.”

She gets it, she thinks. It’s not something she can relate to herself, because her channel was already doing good enough by the time she left high school, so she only had to find a part-time job in the local bakery to help daddy with the bills. It wasn’t long before she was able to live off her channel, and she only waited until Kitty was done with school too before they moved to LA together. She never got to worry about a degree, or college, or even getting in.

But Peter did. Peter got it, did a full year of it while still producing content every week for his online audience. “You both dropped out to come to LA,” she guesses and finishes for John. It does make sense.

“That we did. And it was mostly my idea, so of course Rachel blames me for influencing Peter, and keeping him from his brilliant sport career, and all of this. I think it’s easier for her to blame me than to blame Peter, which is fine. We don’t interact nearly enough for it to be a problem, but. Yeah. She doesn’t like me much.”

“That’s stupid,” she comments. Because it really is, in a way. “I don’t know anyone who could force Peter to do something he doesn’t want.”

John’s smile is pleased, if a little shy, before he snorts a laugh and raises an eyebrow. “Well, I do know one person.”

Lara Jean finds herself blushing.

…

Lara Jean’s history with Oregon stops at one or two visits to Portland during tours, and that’s about it. She’s never been anywhere else, especially not somewhere as remotely lost in the middle of nowhere as Greenpoint. Their plane lands in the little hours of the morning, and then Peter rents a car at the airport, and everything is grey and cold outside, having her adjust the scarf around her neck and missing California’s weather already. She can’t remember her life before being able to wear skirts without tights, a life where cardigan were not just a night option.

They drive for two hours before Greenpoint’s town sign welcomes them. It’s a little town like there are so many in the USA, not unlike the one Lara Jean comes from. Houses built in residential areas, a sad little main street, corner shops everywhere, one lone Walmart at the outskirt of town. Try as she might, she can’t picture Peter and Chris and John growing up here. It’s too quiet, too empty. Like they had to compensate with their loud Youtube personalities to fill the void left by the town, like being loud on camera was overcompensating for the quiet of the place.

Peter drives by his old high school, just to show her. There’s a football stadium he says used to be for lacrosse practice too, and this one building where the cafeteria was, where John and he came up with so many ideas for Vines and videos. Lara Jean has seen pictures, Peter-as-a-teenager with his too tall body and too skinny shoulders, John with a stupid haircut, clothes that looked ridiculous. She tries to associate those images to everything she sees around her. But there is so little of Peter in those buildings.

His house is different. Better. There are family pictures everywhere, for one, him and Owen at different periods of their lives, from babies to toddlers to young adults. Boy sneakers still lined up by the door. A few sport trophies on display in the living room, and the fridge packed with Peter’s favourite snacks and those bottles of kombucha nobody else drinks.

His bedroom is the best.

It’s like someone froze time when he was seventeen, its own little millennial bubble. The bed is made, dark blue tartan, but everything else is a rightful mess. An old laptop sits on the desk, next to a mirrorless camera. Posters from overrated movies he’s forced her to watch at least once are on the walls, along with pictures of him and John, him and Owen, and even one of him and Gen that he takes down and throws in the bin. A few books here and there, mostly comics or hard scifi. More trophies than Lara Jean thought possible to win during a high school career. And clothes everywhere, one lone lacrosse stick, soccer and basket balls in the corners.

“This is so you,” she grins as she sits on his bed. It bounces a little.

“How so?” he asks as he drops their overnight bag in a corner and joins her. Kicking his shoes off, he lies down with his back against the wall, pulling at her hand until she lies down against his side.

“All over the place!”

He makes a face and she laughs. Maybe it should be weird, knowing what this bedroom has seen. She’s learnt enough from John and Chris, and sometimes even Peter, to know he only ever dated Gen before he dated her, no one else. This bedroom must have been the witness of many makeout session disguised as homework together, late-night phone calls, date planning. Lara Jean doesn’t want to be weird about it, because it is in the past. Gen’s shadow no longer has the power it once held on them, on her. She doesn’t feel second-best, or second anything. Peter loves her, and it is all that matters.

Still. Still, possessiveness surges through her as she wraps one hand around the collar of his shirt and pulls him toward her. Peter lets out a small noise at the back of his throat but doesn’t complain when she kisses him. Instead, one of his arm circles her waist and, before she knows it, Lara Jean’s back is against the mattress, Peter towering above her. She somehow wonders if this is what it feels like, making out with your high school boyfriend when the parents are not home.

“LJ,” he whispers against her lips, voice already breathless and broken. It’s been months of dating, properly dating, but Lara Jean still loves that rush, the one that comes with the knowledge of the effect she has on him. She hopes it never goes away, how it makes her heart beat faster and her skin warmer to his touch.

His hand sneaks under her skin, fingers splayed against the small of her back and bringing a shiver down her spine. She arches to be closer to him, mouth opening in a wordless gasp when his mouth find the pulsing point on her neck. That is new territory, after months of her being afraid of physical intimacy. She was so scared before, but she can’t remember why when only a touch of his hands or a kiss down her jaw lights her entire body on fire.

“I’ve been dreaming about this,” he admits with a chuckles as he noses at her collarbone.

She laughs too, and it comes out ragged and breathy. “Really?”

He nods, and lets his teeth graze against her skin.

Downstairs, a door slams.

They both startle

“Peter? Are you home?”

“Fuck.”

He lets go of her quickly and sits up. She does the same, fixing her top then her dress, carding her fingers through her hair so she can pull it up into a decent ponytail. There is no hiding the disaster that is Peter’s hair though, not when he’s been growing it out a bit and it’s now a mess of curls going in every direction. It’s hard to tame it, or at least make it look like Lara Jean didn’t just spend ten minutes destroying it with her fingers.

There is nothing to be done about their red cheeks, or the bulge in Peter’s pants, either.

“Hey, mom!” he calls back loudly. “Down in a second!”

He doesn’t meet Lara Jean’s eyes, but the way he tightens his lips is very telling; he’s trying hard not to laugh at the situation. So Lara Jean slaps his shoulder, faking affront and not-so-faking embarrassment, which truly makes him laugh. He’s already up, checking his reflexion in the mirror on his wardrobe, when Lara Jean tries to fix her tights and to ignore the warmth pooling deep in her stomach. That will have to wait.

“Ready?” he asks softly, after another attempt at fixing his hair.

“To meet your mom after a hardcore makeout session? Sure!”

He laughs once more and leans down to kiss her, hard and fast, which does nothing to help her forget how wet she already was from his kisses alone. Not exactly the right mindset for when you are about to meet your boyfriend’s mother, and her cheeks turn a deeper shade of crimson.

“It’ll be fine, don’t worry. She loves you already.”

That she does.

Rachel is nothing short of amazing as she coos over how pretty Lara Jean is, or how nice it was of her to bring a fresh batch of macadamia nut and white chocolate cookies, or how excited she is to finally meet one of Peter’s girlfriends. Lara Jean raises a eyebrow his way at that comment, but fills it in her ‘for later’ box. It probably shouldn’t thrill her that much, to know Gen and Mrs Kavinsky didn’t have much of a relationship, but it does. She isn’t even the slightest bit ashamed of how competitive she is, when it comes to being a more important girlfriend than Gen. Probably because she wins every round.

“It’s so sad Owen couldn’t come back for the weekend. I feel like I never get to see the both of you at the same time anymore.”

Peter rolls his eyes behind his mother’s back, but there is nothing short of fondness in the motion, before he grabs a bottle of apple juice in the fridge and pours them all drinks. “You saw us both at Christmas, mom. It was like, five months ago.”

“An eternity,” she comments. Then, turning to Lara Jean, “How do your parent cope with you being so far from them?”

She tenses, just a little, but enough for Peter to notice. He winces visibly. “Mom, I told you LJ’s mom passed away. It’s only her dad now.”

His mother lets out a little ‘oh’ of surprise, but Lara Jean cuts her off before she can even think of offering an empty apology. She is used to those by now, after all. “Actually, our mother wanted us to leave the nest and live our best lives. My older sister went to uni in Scotland, so LA is right next door for my father, in comparison.”

“And you guys facetime all the time. Which we do too, mom, if you remember!”

“Still,” his mother sighs, moving closer to him so she can wrap one arm around his shoulders. She’s almost as tall as Peter is. “You could visit more often.”

He kisses her cheek. “I will, I promise.”

…

Dinner is a quiet affair of homemade lasagna followed by bowls of ice cream in front of the television. Mrs Kavinsky doesn’t do the embarrassing thing with the family albums, but she does offer her fair share of embarrassing childhood stories that have Lara Jean laughing and Peter blushing.

They both offer to take care of the dishes, and work in comfortable silence side by side, the same way they do after a night in at Lara Jean’s. Everything is so peaceful and quiet, she understands how it makes for a lovely place to raise up children.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” he tells her once all the dirty dishes are either in the dishwasher or cleaned and put away. “I told her about your mom but…”

“It’s fine, don’t worry.” She sits on the kitchen island, and smiles when Peter puts his hands on her knees to pull them apart and stand between her legs. He smiles too, and they stay like this for a while, forehead against forehead, silent and loving. Which of course means Lara Jean has to ruin it. “You never told me what happened with your dad.”

Peter sucks in a breath. “They got a divorce when I was six. Owen was just a baby back then. As far as I know, he’s got a brand new family now. It’s like, whatever.”

Her fingers find his jaw, nails scratching against his late-evening shadow. He closes his eyes and leans against her touch. “We don’t have to talk about it, but it’s not whatever.”

He smiles, his hands grabbing her hips a little too possessively. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

“It’s always worth a repeat.”

#covinsky #covinsky fanfic #covinsky ff #to all the boys I've loved before #fanfic #ff: tatbilb #ff: do it for the views

[till-the-blue-skies-chase]

July 10, 2018

The Owl House looks super cool! I have a feeling it’ll have a Gravity Falls-esq atmosphere, what with the horror-comedy genre. I don’t expect it to be anything but gorgeous, and even the skeptic in me saying that every show I love will have a disappointing cop-out ending is quieter than usual. I’m super pumped for this series, and I just wanted a place to collect promotion material and analyze them. Currently I’m going by the description and a few images from Tumblr and the Disney Wiki page, but if you have any other official information or doodles from twitter, I’d love to hear about them!

“The series is a horror-comedy series that follows Luz, a self-assured teenage human girl who accidentally stumbles upon a portal to the Demon Realm. There she befriends a rebellious witch, Eda, and an adorably tiny warrior, King. Despite not having magical abilities, Luz pursues her dream of becoming a witch by serving as Eda's apprentice at the Owl House and ultimately finds a new family in an unlikely setting”

I want to know how to pronounce her name. I call her ‘Luz’ in my head, with a short ‘u’, but I wonder if it’ll be pronounced ‘looz’ which sounds...well, like a term used to describe a certain room in the house. It also sounds like ‘lose’, which is interesting as well.

I’d put her age at around fourteen or fifteen, certainly not lower than thirteen. But this is coming from someone who though Gideon Gleeful was in his thirties, so I’m probably not the best at age estimates.

‘Accidentally stumbles upon a portal’? I wonder if it’s a sort of rip in reality, a magical artifact, a magical portal opened accidentally by a spell, or a villain's doing? Like perhaps they were trying to gain entrance to the mortal realm? -Like another demon we know?-

(That aside, I wonder if we’ll get a little Bill cameo. Like I’m guessing well see a little triangle doodled on the corner of a book. A really tiny easter egg.)

Back to Luz; what about her family? Does she have parents? She goes on to (I’m assuming) live in the demon realm for a while, so I’m super curious about her mortal world family. Is she an orphan? Are her parents awful? Does she have any siblings? Friends? I worry for them and I worry for her.

Is Luz safe in the demon realm? Will she have to be wary about being a human surrounded by supernatural creatures?

How will she get to know Eda and King? Will they rescue her from some sort of threat? Will they be the first people she meets?

How old is King? What about his family? Was he training to be a warrior? How do he and Eda know each other? Was he an acquaintance of hers before she started rebelling?

I’m very interested in the magical system and this world in general; who rules the place? Who is Eda rebelling against? Societal convention or an authority figure?

What exactly is “The Owl House”? I’m taking a guess and saying that it’s either the name of a class in this world or is a name given to people who associate with Eda, given that she’s known as ‘The Owl Lady’ (more on that later).

I’m also intrigued by the fact that the description implies that having ingrained magical abilities is one thing, and being able to perform magic just by training is another. I’m wondering if she actually has no potential to do magic and trains to be able to from scratch/ learns how to use the staff, or if she actually does have some magical abilities and has to work to discover and hone them.

Luz’s character design is so cute!

She and Eda have the same gold eyes; I wonder if this has to do with magical abilities or is symbolism. OR *puts tinfoil hat on* Luz is actually Eda’s daughter, and she was sent to the mortal world- yeah, probably the former. In fact, there seems to be a sort of gold motif around these three; Luz and Eda’s eyes, the latter’s nails and necklace (or whatever that gold thing on her dress is), King’s collar, the sparkles all around them...food for thought.

I see the creepy looking building in the background with “The Owl Sh-” (I can only assume it says ‘shop’)  written on it; more on that later. I’m assuming this is where Eda lives/works. I suppose she runs a shop of sorts?

There’s a massive stained glass design of a red eye on the top of the building. Hmm.

Eda looks a little villainous in this image, so I’m wondering if she will be introduced or come off as sinister. King is also so darn cute.

Cool mom nonchalantly throws magical bug at son, unfazed by daughter’s bewilderment.

Luz seems to have a slightly different outfit here; the pink gradient on her shoes is gone (maybe that was a trick of the lighting) and so are the pink shapes on the bottom of her leggings. The strings of her shirt are gone, and her irises aren’t visible here, though that may be because of that expression. The irises return in later drawings.

So, front and center in the background; ‘The Owl Lady’ is at large with a comically heavy price on her head.

So, first of all, she freaking framed her ‘wanted’ poster. I’m guessing Eda is quite proud of this. I love her for that.

This photo also implies that she’s known King for a while, and he’s likely wanted as an accomplice.

I’m curious as to whether this reward was placed by a personal enemy or by a governing body or other authority figure.  

She’s known as the ‘Owl Lady’; she’s probably a bit of an enigma. That being said, the building on the first photo probably said ‘Owl Shop’ on it, so...Maybe whoever wanted to capture her could search the building that looks pretty darn suspicious? This points to the building being either abandoned or obscured heavily by magic. Or the fact that they know where she is but can’t actually capture her.

Has she failed to have been captured because of her power or because of her being in hiding?

The shop thing is so weird. I don’t even know what to make of it. I guess she owns or lives in this store, but maybe I’m taking the ‘living in the workspace’ thing straight from Gravity Falls.

It seems that they use a dollar sign to represent whatever currency they use.

On to the rest of the background; Eda has an accordian. I need answers. Somebody came in second place for something at some point and she felt the need to hang the medal on her wall. Eda, you better have a good explanation for the friking hand on your wall because otherwise I’m dubbing you ‘Hand Witch 2.0’.

She also has a foam finger and radio; does the demon realm just have similar technology to the mortal world or is it something that perhaps ‘fell through’, maybe through a portal like how Luz did? If so, how interested is she in these items to have kept and displayed them in her home? Was this a reason she was interested in Luz and agreed to teach her magic?

It’s a little hidden by Luz’s hand, but it looks as if there’s an eye with a slitted pupil as a decoration in the center of the couch. HMMM.

The lamp, I’m assuming, is lit by magic, but it would be pretty darn cool if the demon realm had electricity.  

Other notable items; an umbrella, what looks like a small photograph of sorts, or something else in a little frame, an askew corner of what looks like cardboard or paper thumb-tacked to the wall, a cow skull, the thing in a oval frame that King is obscuring, the sword and axe.

I suppose the satchel belongs to Luz; it looks brighter than everything else and has a little purple dinosaur sticker that matches her shirt. I guess this may be her school bag?

Why is King wearing a collar? Is it an identification thing from when he was working/training as a warrior?

I’m so curious about the recurring owls! The frame has an owl on it too. Is Eda known as ‘The Owl Lady’ just because of her staff?

I’m curious about that staff too; Eda holds it here but other official doodles show only Luz with it. I’m guessing that the staff helps her enhance/control her powers, or it’s just a sort of broom, and that she will eventually pass it on to Luz.

Eda reminds me of Pearl for some reason? Just the way she looks, and seems to carry and present herself, coupled with the fact that she’s rebellious and carries a long, stick-shaped weapon. I doubt her personality would match up, though. I think she’d be a bit more like Garnet in that she’ll be hard to impress and powerful, and a bit like Stan Pines in that she will be very sly and deceitful along with wanting to bond with and protect others. Of course, you can’t always describe a character completely in terms of others. She’ll likely be an interesting person nonetheless. I’m looking forward to seeing what she’s like and seeing just how wrong my guesses are.

I have a feeling Luz is going to be a smartass. She looks like a snarky person, but also a little bit of a dork.

I love King already. I’m guessing he’ll be quite loyal to both Eda and Luz. I feel like he’s going to be a sort of younger brother type to Luz.

Other photos of interest, though I’m not sure how official they are;

Luz doing some magic with her hand. I’m wondering again about the magic system; is she only able to do this because she’s holding the staff or because she’s practiced?

Is she reciting a spell or just speaking or yelling while doing magic?

So her staff doubles as a ‘broom’ sort of thing? Interesting!

Please tell he that owl isn’t sentient. I’m hoping it falls more into ‘magic that works like technology’ than it does full on sentience like Aladdin’s magic carpet.

Confirmation that King has two eyes; when I first saw the first two photos, I was worried because his right (?) eye was closed.

They’re eating ice cream here, and again I’m wondering about how technology will work in this show. They had to get this ice cream from somewhere and had to keep it cool somewhere, so it looks like there’s a market for ice cream in the demon realm and Eda either has a freezer or keeps them cold with magic.

Or maybe I’m completely wrong about the premise and Luz is hopping between realities. I’m so worried for this child. Is she going to get home she’s probably been reported missing are her family/friends okay.

There’s...another eye shape on the side of the couch. What. Is. With. The. Bill. Cipher. Eyes.

Eda is unimpressed by tiny demon trying to steal her ice cream. Threatens to light him on fire. I wonder what that little guy is doing there. Perhaps those little creatures are the equivalent of mice.

More evidence for King being a little brother type to Luz! I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to love their interactions! Cuties!

The fact that King is eating ice cream from a cone suggests that they got it in the demon realm. You can get ice cream in a cone prepackaged (like with those drumsticks ice cream) but it’s more common to get it at an actual ice cream store.

Or maybe I’m just over analyzing a couple of doodles for an animated kids show that’s not going to air for almost a year from now. I don’t know what I’m doing. I wrote five pages. Twelve if you include all the photos.

Some plot predictions;

I imagine Luz will be adamant about wanting to learn magic, and Eda will be skeptical about teaching her. I’m thinking they’ll have a bit of tension going into it.

I don’t know where the exact tweet is, but Alex Hirsch described it as ‘making the censors want to quit’. Gravity Falls definitely pushed the boundaries (hard) for the creep factor, but I’ve got a feeling this show will do much worse. I’m looking forward to seeing a deeply unsettling world and some very dark story elements.

I’m sure that all of them will get to be badass together at some point and I look forward to that day.

Just waiting here to see how yet another ‘goofy kid’s show’ tears my heart out. Fun times for all.

Images and description pulled from:

http://danaterrace.tumblr.com/tagged/the-owl-house

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/The_Owl_House

#the owl house #the owl house meta #luz #eda #king #reuploading bc my stuff just wont show up in the tags #super exited for the show though! hoping to do more meta soon...