#they have his va already working on the game get the dude to do a couple lines for nishiki to make an afterlife scene or whatever

[rivaiin]

not really a spoiler but. them putting tonight again in the karaoke in gaiden is like. vile at this point

#miik plays yakuza #gaiden spoilers #look if they do get rid of kiryu in 8 and nishiki doesnt make some kind of appearance ill start biting #they have his va already working on the game get the dude to do a couple lines for nishiki to make an afterlife scene or whatever #im really enjoying gaiden so far but im trying to take it slow so it lasts longer #really missed these games tbh #also going through the temple fight in chapter 1 made me remember how fucking good ishin was i need to replay that one soon

[slocumjoe]

If you were to rate the Fo4 companions from most to least favourite how would you rate them?

I can't list them in order, because I have too many feelings on them....and also, I love them all! It's just...there's such a Rollercoaster of quality of writing, of character concept, of VA performance, of actual attention and care given to the meat-and-potatoes aspects...

Like, I can say I have a favorite (Danse) and a least favorite (Piper) and a dude in the middle who I give not a crap about (Deacon), but I still like these characters??? They're fun! Its just, I like my idea of them more than what's actually there.

So, uhhhh

RORY TALKS ABOUT THE COMPANIONS 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

this is basically a long-post of a bunch of mini-essays, so grab a snack or nice bev and get cozy

Cait, to me, is a prime example of "this character sounds better on paper". I've already complained about her three greatest flaws; being bloated, being mishandled, and being a very confused character. If I were to describe Cait, it would be that she's a troubled young woman who was traumatized all her life, but understands that it's effected her heavily and wants to work past it and better herself.

In game, she's...an Irish Girl. She talks about drinking and fucking and fighting. If not that, she's detailing her absolutely horrific life. It gives me tonal whiplash. I feel like they were too busy adding things on rather than fleshing her out. I mean, really...what is the significance of the Tough Irish Girl type in the wasteland, where everyone acts that way? Is Cait an example of your average wastelander, someone whos supposed to show the daily life in this world? Well...no, that can't be it, she's put away from others, an outsider who doesn't fit in whatever circumstances she finds herself in. She doesn't belong with raiders, she doesn't fit into the average civilian life. So, is she about ostracization and how even after being nuked, there still is a society to ostracize people? That is brought up in text, but that's not at all Cait's thing, that concept is with Hancock.

I travel with Cait to quickly get her affinity up to speedrun her "recovery" (see the Cait breakdown to learn my thoughts on That Fucking Chair) because I want her to get better...but I don't like traveling with her that much. It's not just that she often disagrees with my usual choices, she's just rather flat. I don't get the impression that the writers really considered her psychology, what she stood for, what someone should or could take away from her.

But I like her conceptually. There's a lot of fun and emotional catharsis to be had with a traumatized character like her, someone who has to navigate life after escaping her bad situations, and not knowing what to do with the survival instincts she had to cultivate, but no longer needs.

Codsworth is inoffensive to me, and I like sassy but polite characters. I find them refreshing in settings like Fallout. I had more fun imagining his lines as thinly-veiled bitching than sincerity, though. I think he's fine, just simple. Simple is best, sometimes. I wouldn't trust Beth to give the indentured servitude robot an even remotely palatable story, given how they handled the synths and their whole thing...

But Codsworth, I like having him around. He's the lemon water to the black coffee, sugary soda, whiskey, and occasional cups of tar. He's needed at a palette cleanser.

Curie should have been a main plot companion, argue with the wall. She's a Ms. Nanny who becomes a synth, which are functionally human beings. She has a lot of narrative potential, being an example and counterargument for many different things.

Unfortunately, she's kept mostly a secret, being the most hidden companion, and she's left as a simple French maid fantasy. I'm not even sure why they bothered to make her a doctor. It has nothing to do with how she's actually handled and presented. Curie's more often blushing than meaningfully interacting with the world. She talks to Amari, she becomes a synth, and the rest of her story is just her going KYAA~ at the SS. I wish they gave her some edge, some weirdness. I like my version where she's this slightly pretentious, condescending, incredibly old-seeming entity that clearly doesnt come from around here.

Danse...my boy. My boy. I adore him. You don't need me to explain why. And you don't need me to explain why his incomplete writing infuriates me.

I've said before he's very similar to Hancock, and since I have something else I want to discuss about with Johnny down in this, I'll use Danse's slot to discuss it, very quickly.

Danse and Hancock are remarkably similar people and characters, even there is parts that drift or parallel in their differences.

Substance dependency (Hancock does chems, Danse is a canonical alcoholic)

They both struggled to find their footing and place in the world, and hate the people they were in their act 1's (Hancock's takes place during his founding of Goodneighbor, Danse's after BB)

They're fiercely loyal and protective of 'their people', even if it can take a LOT for them to consider someone 'their people'

Both are suicidal and identity plays a huge part (Hancock pretends to be someone he isn't, Danse is desperate to be the person he thought he was this whole time/hates that he isn't who he thought he was)

Both of these characters are two sides of the same coin. It's just that Danse's upbringing led him to believe in authority and control being the best way to help and take care of the wasteland, Hancock's upbringing (filled with corrupt authority and control) led him to believe in an egalitarian, we-all-lift mindset where the people have the power, he's just the guy who people talk to about any issues. It's somewhat implied that Cutler was similar to Hancock, judging by Danse's few lines about Cutler.

So uuuhhh Todd where the fuck is the last 2 arcs for danse and last arc for hancock? todd? todd where the fu

As said above, Deacon is nothing to me. I like him. I don't care about him much. I think he's fun to play with, but the moment you start getting into his backstory/angst, I slide right the fuck off.

Okay, the Barb thing. Dead wife. Fucking boring story, done to death. At the point I met Deacon, I had already met Mac, Nick, knew of Longfellow and his deal. So it was like "JESUS they really dont know any other reason for a dude to be sad, do they." But the thing that keeps me from caring about Deacon is that no one can agree if Barb is real. If that actually happened.

...his backstory is supposed to inform his character. Why is Deacon doing this? Because of his backstory. If his backstory isn't real, we know nothing about Deacon, and he is, functionally, not a character. Why does Deacon lie if Barb didnt happen? Dunno. He just...does. Why is Deacon helping synths? Uhh...we needed an RR companion? Deacon's character rides or dies on Barb. If she's real, then the rest of him makes sense. She's the windex and towel to the cloudy glass house that is the rest of him. If she isn't, Deacon...doesn't matter, in any meaningful way. He's a guy in the RR who lies about everything, which means you can't care about him. Because there is nothing to care about, because it's all bullshit.

So, that's my thoughts on Deacon, in-canon. I don't know what his deal is or if his proposed deal is genuine, so I can't click with him. But in my own canon, Barb is real, so my Deacon ken-doll does appeal to me. But in Fallout 4, in text, I regard him the same as I do Tom Bombadil. To give you an idea of how flimsy Deacon is in text, a prevailing fan theory from around 2017-18 was that Deacon was Mrs. Rosa's son. Mrs. Rosa was a pre-war neighbor. Her son was a kid. The fact that Deacon is so weird and fluid and almost omniscient isn't a plus for me, it isn't a point of fascination. It's a puzzle that I know doesn't have a finished product, so I leave and go hang out with Danse, who can't speak if he isn't being absurdly blunt.

Gage is a character that deserved a better DLC. The more I think about Nuka World the more I kinda wish it was just Gage and the handmade rifle, instead the map...but that's about Nuka World. Gage himself could have easily been a swing and a miss and fall face-first into the dirt, but he's a surprisingly well-written character? There are layers of psychology with him. You can look at an action or opinion he has, and map it to something that happened to him. You can literally unravel why he does what he does, is who he is. His writers had a concept for him, and they worked backwards to understand why he would become that way.

What really sells him is his VA. Rolston put his whole pussy into that performance. Gage has so many lines that would be utter cringe if not full-assed. The "That vault suit makes your ass look great" line comes to mind...i've seen modded followers with similar lines, and jesus christ i want to pepper spray some of them. It helps that Gage has multiple faucets to his personality. It also helps that he is intentionally distinct from the other raiders, and occasionally doesn't associate with them, himself. It gives him standards and principles, which help give him shape and dimension. Good character. He isn't my favorite, that's Danse, but he's up there.

Hancock is such a waste of a character and it boggles me no one else seems to think so.

He starts on a bad note because his core reason for existing, is Beth wanted a historical figure reference. There's a reason he gives you a history lesson about John Hancock, it's so everyone knows exaclty what Johnny Ghoulie is a reference to. It's not even so much a reference, because it is a direct mimicking. I cannot stand the moments in 4 where something exists because the team learned a fun historical trivia fact, and wanted to pepper in that they did research. I've already bitched about their love of this with the Railroad at some point on this blog.

I genuinely wouldn't mind Hancock if he wasn't pulling so limp-dickedly. It's specifically the contrivance of explaining why this dude is called John Hancock, in John Hancock's clothing. It's okay if they pull from history and allude to it, But Hancock is just...some history stuff tacked on, with no real thought or care. The clothing, the name, the catchphrase. I feel like this is Disney's Hamilton on Ice.

But moving away from that...what is the point of Hancock?

Is his character about drug use and addiction? NOPE, only Cait's addiction is noteworthy. Okay...idenity issues, since he's larping? Not really. It could be, but that's not at all of interest to the story/writing itself. The Hancock thing is an aesthetic, not a trait. So, don't have that either. Is his character about leadership, in any capacity? Kinda, I guess. He briefly mentions insecurities and guilt about it a few times. But if I said "Hancock's story is about leadership", most people would raise an eyebrow and ask why. Not because it's...wrong, it's just not prominent enough to say that's his story, definitively.

So...what is the point of him? What should I take away from Hancock? Duty to the people? Preston does that, and does it better/more explicitly. Regret about past actions? Mac does that. Protecting the people from political corruption? Piper's thing (AND WE'LL GET TO FUCKING PIPER.) What is there to Hancock that isn't done by another companion? It isn't his depression because ALL these bitches be suicidal. What is unique to Hancock? Pretending to be someone else? Deacon. Drugs? Cait. Trying to figure out who you are, removed from the expections that come with having been someone else? Nick. Leadership, and the failures of it? Danse. Struggling to navigate the world in a new, different body, as a new person, functionally? Curie.

The only thing I can think of is mentioned only twice, and is immediately brushed off; the questionable nature of your leader being buddy-buddy with you, and acting like 'one of the bros' even as they hold power over you and have resources you don't. Parasocial government, if you will. It's brought up by Finn and Bobby No-Nose and is shut down/forgotten.

So...the only thing unique to Hancock, and it's regulated to, like, 3 individual throw-away lines. 2 of which you can miss.

Great.

Again, I like him. I just like him when I'm writing him, and can actually have him work through his shit and concepts. But as he stands, he's just...hey, y'know John Hancock? New Vegas also pulled from history, but New Vegas had shit to say about it. There was debating. There was actual philosophy and politics. There wasn't some dude named Caesar who was just...hanging out. What does Fallout 4 say about John Hancock?

Here's something you can say about Hancock; Hancock owned slaves. He inherited them from his uncle, Thomas Hancock. He later freed them due to terms in Thomas' will. But the guy Fallout 4 meagerly puts up as a figure of freedom and independence, and duty to fellow man, was a slave owner, and had slave owning family.

So, what does that mean for our Hancock? Who looked up to this guy, mantled him, and this guy is, in some way, a perversion of his own ideals.

And our Hancock's favorite quote is from Lincoln. Who started the Civil War. Did Lincoln own slaves? Contested, i couldn't find any clear answers. But Hancock mantles a slave owner, using a quote from the president that would try to outlaw slavery, while pushing for freedom and independence and anarchist rhetoric.

Is that the best you can do with Hancock? No. But it's an example.

MacCready, I've compared to a can of Campbell's soup. He's simple, he's decently-done. He's not Codsworth's lemon water but he isn't Cait's tar. I often struggle to write MacCready because he's so simple. There's not much there, he isn't a complex character. He's not even a complex person. And I like that! I like that the grumpy mercenary is a normal guy, who's just going through the motions and has simple desires. His type is often tar and I'm happy to see that subverted.

Its just that his lack of complexity means there's not much to say about him that you don't already know. He's accessible, which is a good thing. Most people don't want to drink tar, but if you're reaching for a fun beverage, you're not often reaching for water, either.

I think the best thing about MacCready is how excellent he is as a romance option. I think he's the strongest romantic choice in the game, period, largely due to him being a simple guy. I would go for MacCready IRL, because he's a good dad, he has good work ethic, and he's emotionally available and isn't afraid to talk feelings, without being a clusterfuck of issues. I love Danse, but you have to talk him out of suicide before you do anything, and he himself will admit that there's going to be a lot of issues simply because he doesn't know what he's doing or what he wants out of his new life.

You don't get that with MacCready. He knows what he wants and who he is and what he cares about. He's such a solid romantic interest, and there's incredible fic potential with the Sole Survivor and MacCready both as soon-to-be grieving parents.

On the flipside, I can't understand people who romance Nick and think its all sunshine and roses. Mini-rant, but /rad-roche (i think thats their user?) has the right idea, with Nick being a hot mess of unresolved issues who is never not projecting or in denial. Nick is not fit for a romantic relationship, not in the state you see him in game. Especially not before Far Harbor. Especially if you don't get the good ending of Far Harbor. I know, bisexual women, I'm sorry. He's got more shit than Danse and Hancock combined. I write romantic Nick prompts as if this isn't the case, but make no mistake. Me giving yall what you want is not me under the impression that this is a good idea.

Anyway. Nick himself.

Dead wife. Booo. I've already complained about his dumbass quest, which i really dislike for all its contrivances. Also, I find him mismatched with the world around him, and I wish there was more attention paid to that. He's a stock character playing out in real life (in Fallout 4's real life, that is). He's a 40's noir flick detective. This character does not belong in a post-apocalypse. This is an urban setting character. Fallout is not urban.

But that doesn't mean he can't exist! I just wish they went more ham with it. I mean, how does a detective function in a lawless wasteland, full of secrets simply because there's so few people see shit happening, know what goes down? It's an information blackout, out there, and a detective is all about information. Nick deserved to be let loose and go full camp on it all. Instead, we got 2 piddly little piss stains of "mystery" side quests. With someone as clashing as Nick, you really need to either sand down the edges to make him fit, or make the fact he's so weird part of the Thing. Nick is played incredibly straight, and given that that man is clearly lgbtq+, i find that almost a waste. Let this man be deranged. This is why Far Harbor is best Nick. He's holding together in the base game, but i don't want him holding together. I want him to suffer. I want him to monolog like Hamlet before driving a cane into someone's forehead.

Now, as for Piper...

Oh, Piper.

You were doomed.

You were so fucking doomed.

I've written about Piper and her shitty paper multiple times, so if you want a refresher, go to my blog > pinned post > meta section, and find the Piper posts. My peer review of The Synthetic Truth will be your best look into what I think of Piper.

The thing is, if you removed her awfully done journalism aspect, I'd like her base form! When she isn't going on and on about shit that's either wrong, baseless, or presumptuous, she's sassy, she's community-orianted, she's mischievous, she's kinda sardonic. She has a sugar problem. She's a burnt out 20 year old with a parentification issue. There's a lot to like here! The problem is they set up the journalism, fuck it up, and then veer hard-right and crash into the "I'm raising a kid when I'm not even an adult either" thing, where it had no build up or time to unfold naturally.

In my own little world, Piper's journalism fuckups are addressed and have consequences. I don't want her smoothed out and perfect, I want her glaring flaws to be intentional and acknowledged. And that just doesn't happen in text.

Ive also got a ramble on my thoughts on Preston. I've said before I don't like his voice acting most of the time, and I actually got a lot of pushback?? But the people who disagreed didnt...disagree...they just pointed out that John Gentry had a gnarly recording circumstance. I think it was that his first takes weren't supposed to be the final product, because he wasn't really intended to be the VA? Something like that, I forget. Point is, I said John Gentry obviously had a rough time in the booth, and wasn't given a fair shot, and people went "No, his voice acting is good! John Gentry just had a rough time with his line recording and wasn't given a fair shot!"

M-ma'am. Thats...what I said.

If it makes anyone feel better, I don't like the majority of the voice acting in this game...a lot of it is very 'modded skyrim character.' Remember the Skyrim Romance Mod? Thats what most of it sounds like to me. Remember Mrs. Peabody? Holy shit. Do not let anyone involved in that cook ever again. I also have personal beef with Nate. The male VA for the SS...someone, somewhere, made a bunch of choices. It was the wrong one, frequently. (The only good male SS line i can think of is the one romancing Danse. Has some texture to it. It's shy and cute, very good)

As for Preston himself, love him, love my paragon good-guy characters. He's such a sweetheart but he's down for bloodshed. I adore those kinds of characters, those "do no harm, take no shit" types. He's treated as a fluffball by fanon (when not suffering racist ass takes or absolute disregard), but Preston has got some lovely edges to him. If you go through his dialogue page and his approvals, you'll find he can be hard at times. There are moments he approves of 'asshole' choices, which is very fun. I love this dude.

Anyway hot take. IF HE WAS WHITE, ALL OF THESE BITCHES WOULD LIKE HIM. YEAH. I SAID IT. He'd be a depressed white man who's buff and kind and snarky, and you Danse girlies, you Nick girlies, you Deacon girlies, all of them would love him too. He is tailor made for standom but nooo, he isn't #FFFFFF so I guess he's doomed to stupid ass settlement jokes.

Yall lack taste. Hawk puhtoo.

SPEAKING OF AWFUL FUCKING TASTE, LEAVE MY BABY X6-88 ALONE.

X6-88 is so unappreciated. Grotesquely so, by both Bethesda and fans.

X6-88, I've said many times, is a spoiled rich man's cat who sits all poised and hisses if you so much as look at it if you're below a certain tax bracket. He's fussy and egotistical and snippy and dislikes bugs, children, water, heights, and generally anything above ground. He gushes over Danse and thinks he's the coolest. He'll let you kill the Institute if you're Railroad or Minutemen and have high affinity with him. He'll brag about getting to travel with you with his courser buddies. He's a fucking dork.

X6-88 is a nerd/prep who could be goth if left in a Hot Topic to run wild, but until then, he's in a suit for his private school and he's going to sit on HIS bench at recess and snipe at the rival school children with his friends and then he goes home and complains that his english eacher failed him on his Roman history test for writing it in perfect Latin. That is X6-88.

If you don't like X6-88 we cannot be friends. Fuckiung look at him. He's such a little shit. He's perfect.

[torakubi]

If it’s okay I have a couples questions :)

•Do you have a favorite Postal Dude?

•Favorite Postal game?

•Not sure if ur able to answer this but do u think there is a specific Pdude that Poostal and Doe would really get along with?

•Was there any inspo used to design Poostall Dude? Or was he kinda easier to make since there is tons of guy postal dudes already lol. (I wanna add that I love Poostall Dudes hair in the back.. it reminds me of cat ears 🐱)

My fav POSTAL Dude is hard to choose... it's between P3 and Redux for me. POOSTALL Dude bc I'm biased (his va is my best friend)

POSTAL 2: Paradise Lost, loved the aesthetics loved the story and loved the p2-p3 banter

i can't speak for the canon since that's not for me to decide, but for fun and UNOFFICIAL/NON-CANON I would say P2 and POOSTALL are buddies, whereas Doe and P4 are buddies

I didn't do the concept work for POOSTALL Dude, it was my buddy meulinex over on twitter who did the conceptual work! But the general process from what I remember was:

- he started off as a hobo, stoner-like character a la Jay & Silent Bob - Further down the line he started to look more like a derivative of base POSTAL Dude - I loved his spiky back hair so whenever I draw him I try to exaggerate it a good bit :) - I'll attach the thread meulinex did when the game first came out which has some neat insight right here

#postal #poostall royale #unofficial musings

[davyjoneslockr]

Narancia for the character game! Or, if someone else beat me to Nara, Coco Jumbo

(For this ask game)

First impression: Okay so fun fact, my partner is a huge Narancia fan, and has been since before we met (which was actually because of JJBA lol, but I digress), so before I got to Vento Aureo, I already knew quite a bit about him from their infodumping. So I went into it kinda biased, but I did really like him from the start. I thought he was cute and fun and was a good silly childish character to balance out all the depressing shit happening elsewhere.

Impression now: Hhhhhhhhh. Love this little dude. I think he’s the second-best written character in that part (behind Bucciarati) and he occupies so much of my brain at all times you have no idea. He’s cute and silly, but not innocent, and his whole story really emphasizes the tragedy of VA. I like that, on a level only comparable to Giorno, he exercises a ton of agency – not only in getting on the boat, but by disobeying Bucciarati’s orders to leave Passione alone and go home. People don’t talk enough about how, unlike the others, Narancia actually had the chance to live a normal life, but didn’t take it. Narancia effectively ruined his own life for the sake of companionship. Augh. And I sobbed so hard over his death. Still do every time I watch it. Whatever. Fantastic character I adore him

Favorite moment: That scene where he’s in the turtle with Trish, and, even though she’s trying to hide her feelings, he reads her perfectly and lays everything out in a way that shocks even her. Even though there’s a lot of jokes about Narancia’s book smarts, he’s really fucking emotionally intelligent – more than anyone else in the gang, I’d say, easily – and that’s super important. It’s the reason he was able to get on the boat when Fugo wasn’t. There’s a few moments in Purple Haze Feedback, in flashbacks, where Narancia holds the fact that he’s older over Fugo’s head, and jokingly equates age with superiority and experience or whatever. But the truth is, he actually is wiser and understands the world better than Fugo (or, really, anyone else). Genuinely love that so much.

Idea for a story: Hopping on the pre-canon train again, but I really want to write about the period after Bucciarati sends him back home to return to school, up to the point where he goes behind his back and joins the gang. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t have Bucciarati to guide him towards Polpo, nor did he likely know what a stand was before his initiation. He had to figure all that out by himself and go into it blind. I don’t see enough fanwork about that, and it’s a shame, because I think there’s a lot of really interesting stuff to theorize about there.

Unpopular opinion: Hate hate HATE it when people treat him like a toddler. Like I said, he’s not innocent, and while he can be a bit childish, the infantilization he gets from the fandom is a bit much. Every time I see someone claim he should’ve been younger than Fugo, I’m like. NO. THATS THE POINT. LIKE I SAID HE’S OLDER AND WISER AND MORE MATURE AND THAT’S IMPORTANT. Also I feel like it’s weird how people constantly portray him like a child and rag on his intelligence when it seems likely that he has a learning disorder but we’re not ready for that conversation are we.

Favorite relationship: Ohh boy where do I start. Romantically I obviously adore Naramis and I really like Naratrish as well. Friends to lovers who act as each other’s solace from the horrors of their daily life + two sides of the same coin who naturally seem to understand each other but have to work to see where their own self projection ends and the other begins. Both fantastic dynamics imo. And his relationship with Fugo drives me insane oh my goddd. They’re exes they’re best friends they hurt each other constantly they love each other so deeply they know each other so well they’ll never be able to fully understand each other. They’re soulmates but not in a romantic sense just in two people who wouldn’t be complete had the other not occupied a space in their life. Etc.

Favorite headcanon: HIS SKIRT WAS HIS MOM’S AND HE TOOK IT WHEN HE RAN AWAY FOR GOOD also when he’s older because he lives to be older shhhh he gets a little growth spurt and ends up just barely taller than Fugo smiles. Autistic ADHD icon as well :]

#hey sorry these are taking so long but i will do all of them don’t worry!! #also forgot coco jumbo uhhhh fuck. turtle so awesome love that his dub name is coco large #jjba #jjba headcanons #narancia ghirga

[arcplaysgames]

hey so i noticed this guy in the intro sequence and are you telling me Chaz is getting a fucking persona because that's fucking dope, his outfit looks so silly, is that FRINGE i see???? amazing

ANYWAY we're trying to get out of this Palace and protect our new chobit when

CHOBIT GOT A FUCKING PERSONA?

Actually the game..... is unsure???????? lmao It has no idea what the fuck this is and all of the skills have a little ? after them which is VERY funny.

I DO know that a Pithos is a term for the old earthenware pots that the old Greeks used. It is also related to the myth of Pandora and is the actual vessel she carried around, which we tend to mistranslate to "box."

I know this because there is a Linux client for the Pandora radio service called Pithos that I used ages ago.

I am very interested in the possibility of Sophia being associated with Pandora, but also just her name is interesting. P5 Vanilla had a lot of Gnostic shit going on, and in Gnosticism, Sophia was.... gdi was she associated with Abraxas or Yaldaboath? I'm not looking it up, the POINT IS that Sophia is definitely a name from that whole mythos.

oh fuck she was literally found in a box, PANDORA'S box, oh for god's sake. Persona!!!!! lmao.

You're doing great, Sophia.

I MANAGED TO GRAB A CAP OF REVERIE POLE DANCING, YOU ARE WELCOME.

Reverie's life path should either be a social worker or a housespouse who moonlights as a burlesque dancer. Those are the ONLY two options. I lean towards the latter because I want Reverie to be a trophy wife and spend all of Akechi's his husband's money on outrageous outfits.

SOPHIA IS GREAT. The way her VA goes from this not-quite-but-almost monotone cadence to these verbal SFX moments is DELIGHTFUL.

Anyway, she finds a portal out of the Palace and doesn't actually want to leave the Metaverse?

Ryuji, if she dies the moment we leave the Metaverse, I will kill you, dude.

BUT NO ITS EVEN BETTER

SHE IS IN THE PHONE

so canonically Futaba has hacked Reverie's phone and can monitor him that way. then there was the Metanav malware shit. now we got the EMMA adware nightmare. and now Sophia is in there too.

Reverie, what the fuck is wrong with your phone, bro?

oh god she's not even an app she's fucking Bonzai Buddy, i'm dying. this game is great so far. zero notes.

IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE THOUGH

it's not a palace, it's a jail.

That......... is interesting. Those are practically opposite concepts, honestly, palace vs jail. I wonder if instead of the situation in P5 where the cognitive world bent around the distorted desires of the ruler based on their real life issues, a jail might be an inversion. What if you have the call of the void intrusive thought kinda shit which is fairly harmless and then something happens that traps you in a cage of those desires? Morgana mentions that he's getting faint hints of Treasure in there but not actually detecting A Legit Treasure, so what if something else is going on here?

ANYWAY that's pure conjecture and the game might just being calling palaces by a new name.

i have missed you yusuke kitagawa, welcome back.

ALSO I GOTTA SAY. Ryuji's VA is doing so much fucking work, it's so nice. Like, all my issues with the clunky writing of P5 Vanilla are gone, this feels much closer to the naturalistic style of P4G (though it hasn't quite hit that apex yet, tbh, but we're early on).

I like that Morgana already feels a kinship with Sophia based on their similar experiences not knowing what they are and where they came from.

If Sophia winds up being, like, Igor's version of Duolingo, I will laugh.

Back to the point: We gotta figure out what the fuck is up with Alice, so vacation plans are on hold.

someone please feed Yusuke, i don't know if he's eaten since Reverie left Tokyo.

morgana i don't know if you realize but you are basically going to be sophia's mentor. you must advise her how to be a good companion and friend, which includes having the best jokes, being a great teacher, how to fit in a carryone, and purring. i believe in you, morgana.

I THINK I LIKE PERSONA 5 STRIKERS, FOLKS

i want to fluff her too, she looks so COZY in that thing. I understand where Ann is coming from. Just give her a hug and rubrubrub those arms. uwu

#p5s #persona liveblog

[briarborealisocs]

ASK BOX.

Do any of your ocs want kids??? Are any of them vehemently against it??? I am so curious, especially talking to Nat about Nuri has gotten me thinking about my OCs and what they'd want in their future.

oh a very interesting question!! i dont usually think about this in regards to my characters because i prefer not to think too much about romance in my writing (i am aroace and find other dynamics easier to write) but hmmmm yes i think i will give it a go

you will find many of my characters are on the aroace spectrum as well because the projection game goes too hard

whoopsverse:

kiska doesnt really want biological kids because shes. immortal. and it would be weird. but she's VERY maternal. she adopts vas almost every reincarnation cycle and even beyond vas she's the type to pick up strays. she's a great mom too, she does her absolute best to learn everything she can about parenting

vas is . 15 years old usually! i dont think kids are ever really on her mind when i write her. i know some teenagers are already thinking about having a family, vas is not one of them lol. but she grows up Eventually and i think if she found someone she really trusted and loved she wouldnt be opposed to having kids, adopted or otherwise. back when vas was a grown woman in older drafts, her story was actually a romance! and she did have kids with her partner, aaron, in some aus. so hypothetically she could want kids, but i dont think about it much because shes 15 and a gremlin and i dont think she plans for romance or family life, its something that finds her when shes older sometimes though

project starstruck:

since boreal and austral are kind of my sonas to an extent, uhhh... nah haha i dont think theyd want kids. austral definitely wouldnt, shes the type to be a Cool Aunt with a dog or a cat and several trips to italy HAHA. austral also has pretty bad parental issues that make her even more hesitant to have kids, even if she wasnt aroace.

boreal honestly might want kids someday but i dont think shes very interested in finding a partner to raise them with. i do have it in mind that boreal becomes a kindergarten teacher though! she loves kids and is very good with them, i just dont think she'd have any of her own.

sshs:

there are sooo many characters here! i'll only talk about the ones that do probably want kids, and ignore the ones who are already canonically parents

leon definitely wants kids. he's a real teddy bear of a guy and he wants to be a dad someday, maybe even a stay at home dad if his future wife makes enough money to support the house on her own. he's dated on and off but nothing ever really worked out for him so far. he really really values family and would love to raise one on his own... he's kind of got other priorities right now that make dating hard, though haha. especially because his crush is an aromantic villain

dani i feel like also wants kids. my gut instinct was that she would not want kids but i think... not biological kids, probably, maybe? but she wouldnt be opposed to, when shes a lot older, having a kid or two of her own. i will say that currently its probably one of the LAST things on her mind, she doesnt even know what college she's gonna go to, much less what her romantic prospects are.

brendan (the dad-aged hero i havent formally introduced you to yet) probably WANTED kids but was never able to settle down due to his hero duties coming first. i think he probably still wants to have a family someday but its looking less and less likely the older he gets. dont worry dude, youll find someone someday

maia (dani's best friend who i also havent formally introduced you to yet) also wants kids someday. it actually is something thats been on her mind despite being a teenager, she's very grounded and the "plan ahead" type and shes already thinking about what she'll need to do if she wants to raise a family someday... girl its alright you can relax. you dont even have a girlfriend yet

the weaver's apprentice:

dijah doesnt hate kids? but she definitely does not want one of her own. maybe she gets baby fever every once in a while but then she remembers the reality of having to raise a child for 18+ years and decides she is NOT equipped for that, Thank You!

the owl house:

sol does not want kids. or a partner. or romance. but maybe someday when shes a lot older she'll take on an apprentice who becomes like a kid to her. (vague shrug) i love that trope and i feel like sol could pull it off if she wanted to. she definitely doesnt want kids though. she wants a potion empire and to hang out with her best friends

#asked and answered #thank you!!! this was a fun one #i never think about this stuff because i personally dont want romance or kids #but my characters arent me!! #shocking i know #whoopsverse #oc: kiska #oc: vas #project starstruck #oc: austral #oc: boreal #sshs #oc: leon #oc: dani #oc: brendan #oc: maia #the weaver's apprentice #oc: dijah #toh oc #oc: solstice

[beevean]

After looking through that Omens doc, I asked my friend to translate what the Eggman VA's breakdown on the stream was about and just... wow, have a look

One of the devs: "*laughs* Damn, he sucks..."

VA: "Ok guys, enough is enough, bye. (Turns game off)... This is f***ing ridiculous. I just- No, no, I'm tired of this s**t. This boss.... I've had it up to here with this f***ing boss! And these as***les are all laughing like "this boss is cool, everything is cool, you just suck", I just... I just don't want to do this anymore. I keep DYING and DYING and I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO- I'm being f***ed by this bullet hell s**t, by all these projectiles, by those tiny enemies, CAN'T GRAB ANY RINGS, CAN'T GET ENOUGH ENERGY, CAN'T GET BLOODY ANYTHING, just... F**k it. Just F**k. It. All. Enough! No more of this! And like, I know, I know I'm basically cutting all my contacts with the devs and our work relationship as a whole by doing this, but I just- I just don't care at this point! I'm tired of it all... (angry pencil scribbles) No, guys, THERE HAS TO BE A LIMIT TO THIS! I know you like watching funny haha youtube guys suffer when they play your BS hard game, but this! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU INTENTIONALLY TORTURE YOUR PLAYERS! THEY RAGEQUIT! Not everyone has this ability to pass your BS bullet hell bosses on their first try! I managed it with the first boss, I managed it with the second one, I suffered through the whole f***ing Eggman fight, and I was already ready to quit it all by that part, but I somehow managed! But this boss, noooo, just, noooo, I can't take this crap anymore... F**k it all..."

Poor man sounded seriously close to rage quitting but understanding his rant makes it worse :\

"I don't want to do this anymore" man I feel bad. I know what it feels to hit that point where the game is physically making you sick and you can't go on. And he was streaming and being watched by his colleagues so there was even more pressure on him.

Also he really sounds angry against the devs. Someone on Reddit said that they were joking when they were making fun of him, but still, the dude was legit mad and they did not help him. No wonder he didn't want anything to do with them anymore.

I wish him well in better projects.

EDIT: apparently he apologized for his outburst and said that he’s in a good relationship with his friends:

https://twitter.com/eugene_mcgreen/status/1558126985074835462

https://twitter.com/eugene_mcgreen/status/1558127127014277123

https://twitter.com/eugene_mcgreen/status/1558127234887684102

I don’t think he needed to apologize, but it was very mature of him and I commend him for that

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic omens

[rosemary-bells]

okay so i. um. coughs. i f. i finall y read the luke anny ssr card story. voice acting and all. and. i. h. hoo boy.

i'm just gonna go in and start screaming for a few paragraphs maybe possibly. im not one to review things at all but whatever i have like a hundred years worth of things to say. i was gonna go n post abt this as i read but then i was like na h ill just make a bunch of memes and cry later

like first part(s) of the story i was already screaming and crying over that flashback where hes arguing w aaron. highkey i was like bro is this rly the time to tell luke to make this romantic. rly. then later on it was nothing but sadness and heartache and crying and i was like yknow what maybe he was right about this

first meme! i saw peanut and i was like oh m y god. my little boy. my baby. hes back. highkey i miss the kid. he's not present enough in luke stories lmao. the fact that luke styled the lil handle on peanut was. hooo. i was like man i cant believe this is the perfect man maybe? (im kidding. hes far from perfect but he is baby.)

also highkey during his classical music lore session i was like "lmao shouldve made it fur elise" and then i was like Hm. i also highkey love the fact that they changed the music for the music box bits. that was cute. love that they used the main theme on the default card screen too. very nice

every time he mentioned larping schumann or brahms i was like man is this rly the time lmao. altho i am happy it brought him resolution

meme two i dont have that many memes again most of this is just me ranting for a bit. the voice acting was literally peak though. every time he yelled, or even every time he was quiet, you could really get all that hesitation and heartbreak, all at once. it was amazing. it was heartaching. loved it. i cant speak for the other dubs since i use jpn but like. i bet they were. immaculate.

also highkey im still so miffed that they didnt give rosa voice acting. i could rant abt this for hours but to keep it short, like. mhy is always at its strongest when its not making a self-insert, yknow? in some cases, self-insert characters work, but when your choices don't matter too much, in an otome game, which are mostly character driven, trying to make her too basic is just kind of eh ig. she does get a pretty solid character from what we have, though. like, shes got a strong personality. very passionate abt justice to the point of embarrassment. very honest. is generally driven a bit more by her heart than her brain. like seafood. that sort of thing. she's already her own character, so i just wish they gave her a va. its gotten to the point in which ive literally started imagining a va for her. she kind of sounds like shirayuki (jpn) in my mind...

also man fr he really did think that romantic partners were the only way to receive proper emotional support. she has friends, man. she's a strong kid who you left for like, 8 years. have some faith in her, yknow? also god, that line where he was like "As long as he can make you happy." god. that just stung, man. im thinking abt him in other routes and like, 3/4 times he really just gave up, didn't he?

on that note i also thought the towel that he was using to dry her hair was just. on top of her head the entire time, so thinking abt all these dramatic scenes w her just doing that was funny. ik thats not how it worked but like still. also did she rly run to her parent's house in that outfit? in the storm? ik she wasnt thinking but oof dude shes gonna catch the worst cold after all this blows over

that kiss scene though. man. the orchestra music playing. i always love that theme, even if it does feel mis-timed at moments. it just feels so refreshing. rly does make it feel like a "kiss of fervor" (also how he just caresses her arm during the kiss. how gentle. what a sweet guy. he rly just wants to comfort her.) he even used 大好き instead of just 好き like man. ... man.

and then that bit where they called each other their greatest treasure... and then, how he said "I swear, I will do everything I can to live, so that I can be with you." man. it was cheesy but it rly did feel like the rainbow after the storm. it rly is all abt learning to love yourself because of how loved you are. like wow. man. it rly is abt loving someone so much that you want to live for them. live w them. man.

all in all, super cheesy card. it was a short-ish storyline, but i highkey loved it. it was cute. it was precious. i nearly cried. (more or less did when i found out his badge was called "Luke's Vow" like hooo. oh my god) i Enjoy. looking forward to the 2nd anny's cards....

the final meme. its another version of the last one but hey accurate lmao i was shaking crying screaming sobbing throwing up the entire time but by god was my heart full

#buzz #tears of themis #tears of themis spoilers #highkey this is just a rant lmao dont mind me #i havent read the other card stories (didnt wanna summon for em. im dedicated and need to save s-chips) but ill probably google em later an #i bet they are so much lighter comapred to this. surely theres gonna be drama yeah but nothing thats gonna make me like want to lie down fo #r a hundred years. man. luke stans suffer but he is too good a boy not to suffer for #i have a final today but its okay. i earned this. #sorry for the long post have a good day #or night. idk lmao #im gonna go catch up on genshin soon. #highkey i cant even look @ the tag on tumblr rn because of the second anny. i dont wanna spoil it for myself lmao. pain #anyways byeeeee

[soartfullydone]

The way my sheer EXCITEMENT for every new FFVII: Rebirth thing is quickly soured by how badly I cringe at the new English voice cast. Part of it is about how they sound, which is middling to bad, but there's something even more crucial missing from all their performances and that's personality.

Hearing Tyler Hoechlin strain to hit the register George Newbern could've nailed effortlessly, to the point where it sounds like he's just listlessly reading Sephiroth's lines, is painful. George's performance had levels, so much arrogance and suggestiveness, vulnerability and authority. Tyler just sounds like he's desperately trying to imitate George and failing, which tells me they should've just hired George.

Tifa's and Aerith's VAs make them sound like nails-on-a-chalkboard anime girls instead of the grown-ass women they are. I watched in real time as Aerith's Advent Children VA turned one of my best friends gay and the remake VA turned her right back straight again lol

Do I even need to mention Zack's VA and how awful he's doing? Rick Gomez, I'm so sorry. You made so many people love Zack and be moved by his story when they were convinced they would hate Zack because he wasn't Cloud. You should've been allowed to keep telling his story.

Trading Wally Wingert as Rufus for whoever is attempting it now is a personal blow I'll never get over. Throwing the range of the Riddler right into the garbage, smh smh.

The fact that they have to put extra bass behind Rude's VA when Crispin Freeman is still accepting work, like c'mon.

Reno used to drip sex thanks to Quinton Flynn, but I literally could not get up that tower fast enough to shut up his new whiny little bitch ass voice.

Losing Steve Blum to some dude who makes Vincent sound indistinguishable from Sephiroth is par for the course by now, but I'll mourn it forever anyway.

Cloud's new VA is probably the only one I can stand, but tbh, anything he can do, Steve Burton could've also done, sorry.

Fact is, this was almost a perfect project, and I will FOREVER have it out for the clown at Square Enix USA who made the decision to not even TALK to the legacy cast and brought in a bunch of television actors who don't have the chops for voice acting work. I don't know if that person is the same as the Voice Director, but omg, they need help with their job, too, if not. Honestly, fuck all the new "VA's," too. They knew whose work they were stealing. I'm done giving them a pass if they can't even make me believe their performances nearly three games deep. "PERSONALLY I like the new VA's better—" This post is not for you. This post is for me to bitch, but just in case: They suck. They replaced talented voice actors who already knew and embodied these characters and who didn't suck because they know how to voice act and not just read lines. Next.

#still frothing at the mouth for the game but #i will NEVER let it go!!!! #this was not the series i should've been forced to play in japanese!!! #i will bitch about it forever!!!! #this is a threat and a promise!!!!

[s-brant]

Angels Roll Their Eyes (2/2)

(gif: @toesure) (PART ONE)

Summary: Hurricane Agatha approaches Kildare Island during the aftermath of the eventful Fourth of July party. JJ and Y/N are determined to continue avoiding each other after what happened at the party, but John B has other plans for them.

Warnings: Smut, strong language, angst, implied physical abuse, depictions of anxiety/panic attacks, and sickeningly sweet fluff.

Word Count: 24k

A/N: Here we goooo! To celebrate the trailer dropping today, here’s part two to Devils Roll The Dice. If you haven’t read the first part, I suggest you read it and come back so this makes sense. This one has all the drama and spice, so buckle up! Thank you for the love and support on the first part. Let me know if you enjoyed this and have fun, cause I had a blast writing it.

Hurricane Agatha.

It was the first thing she heard about as soon as she woke up yesterday to the sound of her phone blaring with an obnoxious tone that reminds her of waking up too early in the morning for work or school.

Her sleepy eyes couldn't make out who was calling, so she pressed the button to answer and lifted the phone to hear her mom's voice squawking through the speaker at her about the hurricane projected to hit the island in the middle of the night tonight.

The problem is, her parents are out of town this week, leaving her all alone to prep the house and endure the storm alone. And for someone who flinches whenever she thinks she hears the sound of thunder in the sky, that is the worst it can get.

It's a fear her friends are conscious of. One time when they were out on the HMS Pogue, a quick summer storm started to drift overhead and it took all of her self control to not fall into a blind panic when thunder began to rumble above. John B was already steering them back in the direction of the Chateau but she knew it would do nothing to calm her nerves until she was back inside of the house.

The anxiety was starting to become too overwhelming when JJ sat down beside her and threw his arm over her shoulder. It was their first month of knowing one another, so the casual friendly gesture made her jump at first and turn her head to look at him, but he acted like everything was normal.

The next person to notice was John B. With JJ currently out of commission, the only person she thought to call to help her prep the house for the incoming storm was him. Since they never got hurricanes up where she used to live her whole life, she needed someone who's been through a couple to help her while her parents weren't home.

That's how she ended up here. Sweating bullets in the front yard of her house as she unloads the contents of the van with John B was not how she envisioned her Saturday night to go, but she's glad she has someone who's willing to help.

In the past five months of being with the Pogues, she's learned that it's lovely to have friends. She never used to have any before she moved, so in situations like this or when she got so drunk at the party, she never would've had anyone to be there for her. It's quiet moments of kindness and companionship like this that make her realize how much better life has been on the other side of uprooting everything to move here—self-inflicted boy drama and all.

The sandbag on her shoulder sends a growing ache through her back muscles with every step she takes to follow him up the length of unpaved dirt path up to her front door. As usual, he makes it look way easier than it is, and it almost makes her want to laugh at how different they are.

Most of her new friends are effortless, naturally picking up anything they decide to try at while she is inept by comparison. It's part of what attracted her to JJ in the first place. He may have his insecurities the same way every other individual does, but in her eyes, he has nothing to be insecure of. Even when he wipes out on a wave and appears out of the water with sand clumped in his salt-kissed strands of blonde hair, he manages to make it look cool.

"What are you smiling about?"

John B's laughter makes her look up from where she concentrated on the dirt path to see him looking back at her. He stands at the entrance to her house with the rest of the sandbags they carried up placed meticulously in front of the door to prevent water from entering the house. They did the same thing with the back door an hour ago.

Is she smiling? She hadn't even realized her expression changed from one of exhaustion and fear at the dark clouds closing in above to a grin, so her face instantly drops in guilt. After running out on JJ for the second time two days ago to go to work, any mention of him from their friends has left her drowning in shame.

She can't recall the bulk of her memories from the night of the Fourth of July party, but she fills in the gaps between those flashes of memory with what their friends told her about it.

Thanks to her overindulgence, there are holes poked in the fabric of her memory.

It jumps from her last fully sober moment of seeing JJ across the room with the kook girl to dancing clumsily with Kie to the floral scent of her makeup wipes that she can't attach a specific visual image to.

Then, she can remember waking up with a start in the middle of the night to throw up in a pot beside the bed while he held back her hair. Before John B explained it, she was quite confused after waking up about how she somehow got from being jealous over JJ flirting with another girl to waking up in the same bed as him.

She grunts as she plops the last sandbag down into place and decides to take a seat on the steps leading up to the door.

"It wasn't anything special," Y/N says and watches him come down to sit next to her, "I was just thinking about taking something so I can pass out and avoid having a panic attack over this stupid storm."

Unlike JJ, she isn't that skilled of a liar. It's obvious to anyone who knows her well when she does it based on the way her eye contact begins to drift away and her voice raises in pitch when she speaks. She's too honest with her friends to handle keeping secrets from them, which is why it's been so difficult for her with everything that has happened recently. Not only does she lie to the Pogues, she also avoids them by association in the process of trying to avoid JJ.

Regardless of how obvious her bluffing is, John B doesn't call her out on it. Instead, he focuses on a different part of what she said.

"Are you sure you're gonna be okay alone? I know your parents are out of town till next week..." he trails off into concerned silence.

The tip of her sneaker hangs off of the edge of the bottom step and absentmindedly digs a line into the dirt as she takes in his question.

Being alone when she's prone to panicking is a recipe for disaster. Anxiety and loneliness have a relationship similar to that of a weapon and ammunition. It takes very little for her to fall down the rabbit hole of obsessive thinking and break down into a hyperventilating, fearful mess, especially when no one else is there to tug her out of those dark thoughts.

Most of the time, the people who help her with that are her parents. If they're home during one of these episodes, she'll come stumbling downstairs to them from her room for help, and they'll do everything they can to bring her down from hysterics. Her friends, on the other hand, have yet to witness her have one of those moments.

"Having people with me helps, you know? But it is what it is, I'll just try to cope the best I can and hope for the best."

He nods, and though he's a portrait of understanding, she wonders if he finds it as juvenile and stupid as she does.

Logically, she knows that this anxiety is something many people experience. She understands that it's something that is mostly out of her control but can't help but tear herself apart over it.

She thinks to herself, What kind of weirdo can't sit inside during a thunderstorm or hurricane without losing their shit? Why am I not the one in control of my own mind when this happens?

Do her friends think similar things? Do they think it's as pathetic as she does, or is she just paranoid that they pick her flaws apart as much as she does? And, of course, she wonders what JJ would think if he saw her panic like that. He may have seen her start to become anxious on the HMS Pogue, but he hasn't seen her panic panic before, not in the way that her parents have, and she wonders if he'd think less of her for it.

Right when she's about to change the topic and steer him away from a chance to think of how ridiculous she's being about the approaching hurricane, he says something that makes her look back over at him.

"Then come spend the night at the Chateau. I can distract you. We can play board games and shit."

"Really?" she asks.

The idea of anyone wanting to waste an entire night playing board games and possibly signing themselves up for having to talk her down from a panic attack makes her heart melt.

"Yeah, why not? You need a friend tonight. You know any of us would do anything for you. You're like my little sister, dude, we'd all probably hack off a limb if we thought it'd help you. Especially JJ."

John B's last second name-drop is designed specifically for where he wants this conversation to go. Underneath the need to get his friends back to normal, he does feel a little guilty for having to do this. She thinks he's only offering to let her stay with him to help her—and he is, even if there weren't a rift between her and JJ, he'd still offer—but he has a different reason.

"Right," she says softly. "Speaking of which...is he gonna be there tonight?"

With how often he escapes his house to spend a night or two in temporary safety at the Chateau, it's not an unfounded assumption. He and John B spend more time together than any of them because of this, and when she goes over to hang out, she knows that he and JJ often come as a package deal.

He tries to play it cool and not give up anything that could make her suspicious of him, looking off at the van parked in the driveway as he takes a second to collect his thoughts. It's never easy for him to deceive people he cares about, even if it's for their own good. It wasn't easy when he invited JJ to spend the night a few hours ago with the knowledge that he'd soon invite Y/N too either, but he managed.

As always, Pope is the brains behind this operation. He was the one to suggest inviting them both over to wait out Agatha together when the three of them put their heads together to come up with a solution to their oblivious friends' drama. After JJ stormed out of the house the morning after the party, they knew they had to do something about it. This was what it came to.

"Nah. I offered but he said he's staying at home until this whole thing blows over."

He isn't sure why she buys into it.

She knows JJ well enough to know that he would literally rather eat glass than be trapped in a confined space with his dad for an entire day. Perhaps it's only because it's what she wants to believe. She wants to believe that she won't have to see him again tonight after everything that happened. How can she handle having to tell him why got so drunk that night and made an ass of herself? She can't bear to tell him all of that unnecessary drama started because she was jealous.

What right does she have to feel that way? He isn't hers. They aren't together, and she thinks it's quite obvious that he doesn't want a relationship out of whatever it is they have together. It was one night. She has no right to be mad at him for flirting with other girls because of it.

"Then I'll definitely be taking you up on that offer. Thank you," she says.

The old wooden stairs make a squealing sound when she stands to make her way inside to gather her things for the night, but the feeling of a warm hand gripping her forearm stops her mid-step. Her eyes follow down the length of her arm back to where he sits, glancing at her with this knowing look in his eyes that makes her want to turn and hide.

"When are you gonna talk things out with him, Y/N?" he asks. "He misses you."

Since the party, no one has had the courage to burst her bubble of pretending not to care until now, but now that someone has, all of her bottled up emotions stir inside of her at a simple concept she hadn't considered yet.

JJ misses her.

For the first time since they began this stupid game of cat and mouse, she is confronted with how desperately she misses him back. So consumed with the task of concealing everything that happened and trying to avoid him, she hadn't acknowledged that all she ever really wants is to be with him lately.

She misses his jokes and the way he looks at her when she giggles at them. She misses his smile when they play fight on the HMS Pogue. She even misses when he dangles her over the edge of the boat as a means to end the wrestling match, making her squirm in his strong hold as he threatens to toss her overboard.

But what she misses most of all is how he never lets her fall in. It's something about the way he looks at her as he pulls her back onboard, how time itself seems to stop in the moment between when he's still holding her and when she feels her feet touch the deck again.

Then, they'll suddenly want nothing to do with each other for the next half hour.

JJ will make himself busy forgetting the way her hands felt holding onto his shoulders for dear life, burning the memory of her palm prints into his skin for the next few hours. And she'll try her hardest to forget that charming smile and the feeling of his arms around her. But it won't work, not really, and when they're both laying down to sleep at night, they'll have one thing keeping them awake.

She takes a second to internalize what he said and avoid exposing the effect it has on her to hear it before asking, "Did he tell you that?"

The sky overhead grows darker and darker by the second, but she has yet to notice it due to the topic of their conversation. With JJ involved, her attention shrinks to a tunnel leading only to him. There's no room for anything else but the audacious idea planted in the back of her mind that he might miss her as much as she misses him.

"No, he didn't," John B admits, and right when she's about to say more in response, he cuts her off, "but hear me out. I've known him since we were kids, so I can tell when things aren't right with him, and ever since your relationship with him got complicated, I picked up on some weird vibes."

Y/N doesn't give anything away with how she reacts. He can't tell if she's about to bolt like JJ did or stay to talk and open up to him. All she does is cross her arms over her chest and lean back against the railing.

"Weird in what way?"

"Weird in a way that makes me think you two have to talk it out before you ruin your friendship. I've never seen him act this way over a girl."

That doesn't surprise her. He has a reputation for chasing after any girl available to him, something the Pogues have gently teased him about, and it factors into why she doesn't want to have this dreaded conversation with him. She doesn't want to sit there and listen to him tell her that she was just another one of those girls to him.

Going for broke and being honest about what he thinks of their situation is a better strategy for trying to get her to talk to JJ than the other way around. John B can look back on what happened the morning after the party and see where they went wrong in their approach of trying to get him to talk, but she's less unpredictable and turbulent than he is. The fact that she's hearing him out is enough proof of their differences.

She sighs.

"I know we need to talk sooner or later, but it's hard, you know? I'm so embarrassed of how everything went down at the party, even though I was too fucked up to remember most of it, and I just—" There's a brief second that lapses between when she stops and when she starts again where he can almost see her working through it in her head. "I don't wanna get hurt."

John B's face falls at the mention of the party and her feelings surrounding it.

"You have nothing to be embarrassed of. You drank too much but who cares? The only person who should be embarrassed about that night is the guy that tried to take advantage of you."

That part is the most fuzzy in her mind.

She can remember what led up to it and the moment she saw JJ pull him away from her, but she can't remember anything about the interaction itself. It wasn't as if he did anything to her—not yet—but the thought of it alone makes her skin crawl because she's seen that before. She's been the JJ in that situation, pulling a wasted Touron away from someone who thought nobody would be looking out for other people at the party, and she knows how quickly those situations can escalate past "harmless" flirting.

The sound of JJ shouting at Tyler echoes in her mind as she reaches for any remaining memories left from the party. He said it right after he punched him, when he was starting to rush forward to follow him onto the ground and pin him there.

"If I see you near my girl again, you're fucking dead! You got that?"

She doesn't remember realizing that he called her that at the moment. She was confused and upset and all she wanted to do was stop him from getting himself in trouble, so she pulled him away from hitting Tyler again without realizing what he said. And even now, she tries to avoid acknowledging it. She reasons with herself, telling herself that he was pissed off and didn't mean it, because if he did, why hasn't he told her how he feels yet?

Y/N looks up and sees how dark the converging clouds have gotten in the time since they began working on prepping the house for the hurricane, so her next words are shakier than usual.

"I guess you're right." She pushes off of her spot against the railing. "But can we not talk about JJ tonight? I kind of wanna hang out and forget about the rest of the stuff I've got going on right now."

This makes him feel a pang of guilt inside of him for the ulterior motive he's kept hidden from her for the duration of the conversation, but he knows it's for the best. Even if her and JJ's inevitable conversation goes in the wrong direction and they don't end up mending fences, it's better that they let it out sooner than later. If they wait any longer, it'll make it worse, and he knows that they're stubborn enough to keep this childish game going for another week or so.

So, he keeps her in the dark for now and offers a kind, "Sure, that's cool with me," despite knowing how messy the night will soon become.

A smile pokes at the edges of her mouth, making the sides of her eyes crinkle, and she extends a hand to help him up from where he sits.

"Now," she says as they make their way inside the house for her to pack a bag, "are you ready to get absolutely crushed in Monopoly?"

It started to rain before they left her house, and by the time they pull into the driveway of the Chateau, it's pouring down on them with violent winds whipping droplets at their faces hard enough to hurt.

The rapid pace of her pulse beats with such an intensity, she can feel it in her head. They shouldn't have taken so much time at her place before heading over here. While she was packing, they talked and dilly-dallied the whole time, and now they pay the price for it.

If she knew that it would start this soon into the night, she probably would've hurried things along sooner, but it's too late. She's already starting to feel that tightness in her chest and each breath of air feels less satisfying with every inhale. It's not so bad that she loses complete control of herself, but it's getting there, and she can't express how badly she doesn't want to lose her shit in front of John B.

The passenger side door is slammed shut by the force of the wind behind her, the noise becoming swallowed up in the rest of the budding storm, and she stifles a sound of surprise that escapes her in reaction to it. They're lucky they made it here in the first place. Any later in the night and they probably would've had to take refuge at her place until it blew over.

She decides to focus on how the edges of her white sneakers are swallowed up by the muddy earth on her way through the front yard to distract herself. It stains them a deep brown color and simultaneously washes them clean from the rain coming down from above, which she'd probably be annoyed about if she weren't such a nervous wreck. But, because she's too busy keeping her backpack raised over her head to shield herself from the rain on her way up to the front door, it's not high up on her list of priorities.

Since both the screen door and the door behind it are unlocked, she doesn't hesitate to come bursting into the house as she usually does.

Y/N lets out a deep breath, feeling that telltale tension in her chest and shoulders, and laughs at the sight of John B running in as she kicks off her shoes. His t-shirt is speckled with rainwater, and his hair is saturated enough with it to stick to the sides of his face after he crosses the threshold into the Chateau.

The sound of her laughter makes JJ's heart stop from where he stands in the kitchen.

"There was an umbrella right on the dashboard, why didn't you take—"

Her heart might as well have stopped just as abruptly as the sentence she was in the middle of saying when she turned and saw him standing there.

Maybe they're both a tad too dramatic, but it takes a full few seconds for them to stop staring at each other in surprise. He looks like a deer in the headlights, eyes wide with surprise like he was caught doing something he shouldn't even though all he was doing was grabbing a beer from the fridge.

It's been two days since they last saw each other. For him, the last glimpse he got of her was when he peeked through the blinds to see her pedaling away on her bike to go to work, but hers was somewhat different.

The last time she saw him, he was asleep. Their legs were tangled together underneath the sheets and his face was smushed against her chest, allowing her to feel the soft puffs of his exhales on her skin every few seconds. It's a wonder that she managed to slip away unnoticed once she remembered she had work that morning. He was holding her closely, so closely that she found it hard to discern where she ended and he began in the dazed, hungover headspace she woke up in.

It's when the conversation she had with John B on the front steps of her house comes back to the forefront of her mind that she puts together what's happening right now. Now that they're here, it's far too late to leave. With how aggressively the wind and rain batter the area surrounding the house, it's obvious that they're not going anywhere.

It seems to click with them at the same time, because JJ turns to look at him only a half second after she does.

Y/N says, completely serious, "If you did what I think you did, I'm gonna kill you."

Before either of them can think of doing anything, John B shoots out from the doorway and runs past her in the direction of the hallway where his bedroom is.

"Gotta catch me first!"

They both chase him, JJ hopping over the back of the couch to run after him, but they end up coming to a screeching halt at the shut door right when they hear the lock turn and click.

Neither of them knows what they were planning to do when they caught him, cause it isn't like they'd hurt him, but they bang on the door nonetheless. The sound is drowned out by the sound of the wind and rain pounding the outside walls of the house, picking up speed, and for a second she wants to kick the door open.

She shouts, "John B! Open this door!"

The last thing she wanted tonight was to be trapped in a house with the one person she didn't want to see. Doesn't John B realize how embarrassing it is for her to be around him when she knows that he's gonna reject her? He may have said something about JJ never acting so weird over a girl before, but he's wrong. There's no way JJ actually wants her...right?

"I can't hear you, this storm's kinda loud!" he yells back at them through the locked door. "Maybe try again later!"

Neither of them wants to acknowledge the other. In fact, they don't even want to look at each other right now, so all they can do to stop themselves from acknowledging the elephant in the room is continue trying to get answers out of John B. What does he think that locking them together in the Chateau for the night will accomplish other than make them ignore their own drama and team up to plot their revenge on him?

Though he's significantly less angry than she is, JJ pulls the doorknob enough to make the door whine on its hinges and pleads with their friend, "This isn't funny, John B. Open the door."

"Not until you guys stop being immature and talk to each other."

She furrows her brows at him even though he can't see her, saying, "It's none of your business. You can't just trap us here cause you think you know what's best for us."

The sound of thunder rumbling above the house makes her flinch, hand shooting out to latch onto JJ's arm on an instinct she couldn't consciously resist. Feeling the warmth of his skin beneath her palm and the fingers clutched around his wrist sends shocks of familiar electricity up her body. Touching him always makes her feel hyperaware of herself, leaving her to wonder if he can sense her pulse picking up or notice how her breathing pattern turns uneven.

With that being said, it's safe to say that the night they spent together took that sensation of electricity and hyperawareness to a height it hadn't reached before.

That time, it wasn't a brush of their hands or an arm over her shoulder, it was the epitome of physical closeness. She couldn't handle it. He was so sickeningly sweet with her, yet, at the same time, he knew all of the right times to be commanding and in control too. There were awkward moments at first, sure, but once they became comfortable with each other, it was game over.

And whenever they've touched since, she hasn't been able to get those memories off of her mind. It's less prevalent now, since she's only holding onto him out of fear, but it's still there underneath it all—the unfiltered desperation of the lust in his eyes, the low noises that escaped his parted lips, and the strong pair of hands that pinned her hips down on the mattress to give him the leverage to really give it to her at the intensity she begged for.

It's pathetically easy for her to be sucked right back into the vortex of emotions, memories, and fears that haunt her whenever they touch, but he brings her back out of it just as easily when he speaks.

"You okay?"

John B was as good as forgotten by him as soon as he felt her jolt next to him and grab onto his wrist like she was hanging from a ravine and he was the only thing preventing her from falling. It makes him feel like a fool, but even when they're ignoring each other, the urge to comfort and protect her from anything that displeases her never disappears. He'd literally fistfight Zeus if it meant there'd be less thunder to scare her.

If he weren't hiding behind a locked door to avoid their wrath, JB would probably be calling him a simp right about now.

The concern on his face is so pure and unaffected by any of the chaos that surrounds them, both physical and emotional, that it makes her stomach turn with a sick feeling. God, he really does care about her. Why does that scare her? Why doesn't she want to believe that he cares? Why is she so set on believing that he wanted nothing more than a quick fuck from her?

Her eyes turn down to see their connected hands, realizing all in one moment what she did and pulling her hand away as if she were burned.

"I—Yeah," she stops, looking up at him, then back to the closed bedroom door, "I'm fine. You know how it is, it's just the storm."

They're both left with no choice but to face the music after days of avoidance that had no good reason behind it other than the respective doubts and fears they have. Yet even now that they're standing here, unsure of what comes next, they're hesitant to say or do anything that might disrupt the illusion they've created in the week and a half since they first ruined their friendship for good.

It feels as though the tension that has been boiling between them is coming close to turning explosive and all it will take is one tremor of their self-control for it to spill over.

Every feeling they have feels so contradictory. They want to but they also don't. They almost do it, then hesitate and decide to ignore each other for days. At the party, this tug of war game was at its peak for JJ when she was telling him about her jealousy and cuddling up to him, but he couldn't do it then, not when she was drunk. And by the time he had a whole night to think it over and see her biking away, he didn't want to risk it.

She looks away from him, hoping that "out of sight, out of mind" may ring true for once, and says to John B through the door, "Whatever, have fun. I won't hold JJ back when you finally come out of there though."

He won't actually do anything to him, maybe just a non-serious fight that'll end with her walking in on them rolling around on the floor trying to wrestle each other, but she likes to fuck with him anyway. For the dick move he just pulled, she thinks he can withstand a little teasing.

Without anything else to say, Y/N turns and walks off to make herself useful elsewhere—anything to distract from the buzzing, anxious energy that surrounds her from both the hurricane and being forced to confront JJ. She tries to play it cool though she is anything but at the moment, allowing herself to grimace once her back is turned to the blonde boy still standing against the wall in the hallway.

Maybe if she keeps pushing this false sense of normalcy, it'll work. It worked when they both started pretending things never happened between them initially after they had sex, so who's to say it can't work now?

All they have to do is get through the next 12-24 hours without talking and all will be well. Right?

They tried.

They truly tried to get through the night without inciting chaos within the Chateau, but, for these two idiots, not inciting chaos is a task easier said than done. Not only was John B much more stubborn with staying in his room than either of them bargained for, he didn't even attempt to speak to them for the first five hours and they were left with nothing to do but find new ways to avoid talking to each other.

It was simple in the beginning.

She went off on her own and sat with her headphones in to drown out the sounds of the storm.

With her eyes fluttered shut to block out anything but the sound of The Cure blasting into her ears, there was no reason for her to have to worry about anything once her nerves began to settle. Since the songs drowned out any sound and all she could see was darkness behind her closed eyelids, she was able to drift away with the distraction of the music.

The thing is, after a while, she started to see pieces of him in every song she skipped to. She made it a full minute into Just Like Heaven before a supercut of her most treasured memories of him began appearing in her head. Fade Into You? Skipped as soon as the first dreamy lyric flooded in through the tangled cords of the headphones. Cloud 9? Forty seconds in. By the time Dirty Little Secret came on, she decided that her playlist was mocking her.

The headphones were out of her ears, hastily wrapped up, and stowed away in the small pocket of her overnight bag before the chorus of the song could hit. Thankfully for her, JJ wasn't looking when she ripped the headphones out and put them away in a huff, so by the time he turned to see her again, she was laying down on the couch to "nap"—meaning she laid awake for another hour and cursed John B for making her endure this.

While she was daydreaming of a John B voodoo doll, JJ was worried about her.

Yes, the topic of their relationship/friendship/situationship/whatever-the-fuck-it-is was bombarding him against his will every five seconds, but not without him coming back to his concern for her. A small sound of thunder on an otherwise perfect day was enough to make her zone out and start getting antsy that day on the boat, so he didn't want to know how bad it could get during a time like this.

He tried to play it cool, and, in all honesty, his remaining scraps of sanity lasted a lot longer than hers. Four and a half hours passed, then, as the storm began to do its worst on their town, the power flickered out and left them in complete darkness. At that point, John B was passed out in his bedroom, so he didn't care nor notice when they had to find a few candles and stumble through the dark.

Somewhere along the way, having to search through the dark house for candles to light and place around the living room led them here...he isn't quite sure how.

JJ can hardly open his eyes enough to see through the rain that pounds against him the second he runs after her through the back door. The wind is so aggressive and unrelenting, it almost sends him stumbling a few steps when he follows her blurry figure a few paces behind where she tries to flee the house in a panic.

"Get back inside!" he shouts as he picks up his speed to catch up, "Y/N!"

The part of him that isn't focused on the pure physicality of trying to see and move through the stormy weather is utterly overwhelmed with fear. Not for himself but for her. She's deathly afraid of mild storms, let alone hurricanes, and yet she ran through the back door when he tried comforting her through an anxiety attack. One would think that she wouldn't want to go directly into the thing she fears the most, but what sent her running for the hills wasn't the panic itself, it was him.

It's hard for her to think rationally in this state, but all she knows is that he was there, he was saying all the right things and holding her, and she couldn't do it. The fear began to blend to one centered around both him and the storm. The hours of useless distractions and ruminating in her thoughts built up to this point of contention, then it snapped.

Between the thunder, his voice, and the voice in the back of her head that was urging her to confess her feelings and do as John B advised them to, it became too much. Maybe it was the most idiotic split-second decision she made without any regard for logic or reason or her safety, but she bailed. For the third time, she couldn't handle the pressure and ran from him.

The only difference is that he couldn't let her leave this time.

He gasps for air against the streams of water flowing down his face, soaking his hair and making it hang in his eyes to obstruct his view more than the weather already has. It happened so fast, neither of them are wearing shoes. His feet sink into the muddy yard with every stride he takes in his frantic pursuit of her and it frustrates him no end because of how it slows him down.

There's endless dangerous possibilities with her being out here. She could be knocked over into the marsh by the wind, or stuck and hurt by a piece of debris—merely thinking about it makes him call out her name louder in the hopes that it'll wake her from her panicked trance.

After trudging through the mud all the way to the edge of the yard, he finally manages to get to her.

"What are you doing?" JJ shouts, turning her around and grabbing onto both of her arms as if one gust of wind would sweep her away if he didn't, "You're gonna get hurt!"

Stumbling backwards in the direction of the screened-in porch that surrounds the back door, he uses their difference in strength to tug her away in the direction she came out in. The rain makes it difficult to keep a firm grasp on her, and she almost slips away a couple of times when the wind picks up enough to make him too unsteady to hold on.

His arms slip around her waist for a better grasp on her the closer they come to reaching the house. The last thing he wants is to almost get her back inside and lose her at the last second. She isn't thinking rationally right now with the panic she feels taking full control of her responses. He knows firsthand how it feels to be thrown headfirst into a panic attack, he's been in her shoes before and knows better than anyone the lengths your irrational mind will go to if it means survival. And for whatever reason, her response is flight, not fight.

The door to the screen porch takes all of his effort to open against the power of the wind blowing it back against the house.

He grits his teeth as he forces it open, one arm secured around her midsection, and helps her in before he slips inside too. The second he lets go of the door, it's sent slamming back into place and rattling in the frame behind them, but he doesn't spend anymore time on it other than the few seconds it takes to lock it. As soon as it clicks with him that they're safe—most importantly, that she's safe—he whips around to face her with a cold rage flowing through his veins.

"What the fuck?"

She stands in front of him with water pouring off of her in rapid drops onto the rug, and there are no thoughts in her head outside of the ones telling her to leave. Her tears blend in with the droplets of rain so seamlessly that he wouldn't know she's crying if not for the sound of it.

In between her rapid breaths and sobs, she yells back at him, "I was scared, okay?"

"Why'd you run out into the storm if you—"

"I wasn't afraid of the storm, I was afraid of you!"

The silence that follows is louder than anything they've experienced. Nothing can rival it, not the thunder, the rain, or anything can drown it out while he stares at her in shock. His eyes are wide, lips slightly parted as he reaches for something, anything, he can say in response to that, but there's nothing. For once, he is absolutely speechless.

Things got awkward between them in the initial aftermath of last week, but not like this. There was never an instance where he felt like there was nothing left for him to say to her to fill the uncomfortable silence that always brought forth memories of them together until now. Until she said the last thing he wanted or expected to hear.

His anger subsides as he picks over what he did in his head for anything that could've made her feel unsafe.

Before it evolved into him chasing after her through the hurricane, he noticed how terrible it had gotten for her when he lit the first candle. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and her chest began to rise and fall faster with each second that passed. He could see it on her face that things were getting worse, but, now that he thinks of it, it got worse once he reached out to put his hand on her shoulder.

It felt like a dream sequence in his head, so hazy and faraway now that it's over, and he was so stunned by what she was doing, he didn't run after her until a few seconds later. There was a delay in which he stood there in surprise and tried to process what the hell just happened to no avail. Though it wasn't very long, he remembers it feeling like eternity tucked into the cramped space of four seconds.

JJ's voice is softer than she's ever heard it, asking into the void of the near-darkness that encloses them, "What'd I do?" And it breaks her heart in half to hear him sound so concerned, so terrified of the idea that he did something to hurt her when all he did was try to help. "I never meant to scare you, I swear. I know how bad it can get sometimes, and I know we haven't been talking but I'd never try to hurt you if that's what you thought..."

His thoughts run rampant with the possibilities of what she was thinking at the time, and he realizes that he can't stand the idea of her thinking anything badly of him. He never cares about what people think, but, fuck, he loathes the idea of her having any ill feelings toward him.

Y/N immediately starts shaking her head, her face scrunching with the emotion and incessant tears.

"I know you'd never hurt me. I was scared because..." she stops herself mid sentence, catching it right when she was about to admit the one thing she promised herself she wouldn't.

But the need to say it doesn't go away this time. Usually, once she catches herself she comes to her senses and realizes how foolish it would've been to confess, but this time is different. This time, the urge to speak her mind and tell him everything sticks around. The words left unsaid creep up her throat, thrashing and begging to let out after months of being pushed aside.

The look in her eyes is strangely reminiscent of the way she looked at him the night they hooked up, almost yearning in its nature, and he couldn't be more confused. She's scared of him, but she's looking at him like she did when she was two seconds away from jumping his bones. And if he didn't do anything wrong, why was she afraid enough to face her worst fear in order to avoid him?

"Because what?" he asks.

That frustration from when they first stepped into the porch hasn't vanished, it only took a backseat once she said she was afraid of him, not the storm, and he can feel it stirring up again. He's tired of not having answers. He's tired of mixed signals and loneliness and unrequited love. Most of all, he's tired of her running away all the time. At this point, he questions whether or not it's worth it to expose his feelings to her and suffer the consequences.

John B was right. This isn't healthy for them, nor is it healthy for them to put their friends through this along with them, and it might be better to not be friends than to stay this way forever. At least that way they wouldn't be wishing for answers that would never come for the rest of their time together.

She decides at this moment that this has to be said before it gets worse, before she runs away again like a scared, immature child and ruins everything.

"Because," she has to shout over the lightning that cracks down on the earth down the street, something she would be trembling in fear over if she weren't so focused on him, "I've been in love with you for a couple months and it scares me more than anything, even this stupid fucking storm! And I've tried so hard to ignore it because I know you don't feel the same way, but you touched me and I just"—a soft cry escapes her—"I couldn't do it anymore."

There it is.

After months of ruminating over it and hiding everything, he knows, and her immediate feeling after she says it isn't what she thought it would be. She expected trepidation and regret, but what she finds on the other side isn't either of those, it's relief. Her dad often tells her when she's nervous about something that the anticipation is worse than the thing itself, and that has never been as true her as it is now.

However, some of the nerves return with the time that passes after she spoke in complete silence. Much like the delayed reaction he had to her running out of the house, it isn't as long as it feels to her. It's a short span of time that it takes for her words to process with him, but it feels like an eternity that he stands there with his head facing the floor in quiet contemplation.

Her heart sinks.

This means he doesn't feel the same way, doesn't it? If he were the one telling her he loved her, she likely would've leaped into his arms and said it back, but he stays where he is.

Then, after what feels like forever, she thinks she sees him start to smile and feels like she's losing her mind. It's quite dark out here, so there's only a limited amount of light to allow her to see his features, but there's no doubting it when a flash of lightning floods the porch with a split-second of harsh light.

Oh God, why is he smiling? What does it mean?

Much to her frustration, the first thing he says after her confession isn't much help in making her understand his feelings either.

"Why didn't you just talk to me?"

Why? The voice in the back of her mind asks incredulously. Is he seriously asking why? He ignored me too. He didn't want to talk about it either, so what else was I supposed to do?

Maybe she was undeniably worse when it came to the avoidance and lack of communication, but he could've reached out to her too. They both could've. Instead, they spent day after day waiting for the other to make the move and pushed the tension further and further until it finally broke. Now she's waiting for him to hurry up and reject her so she can move on with her life.

She shivers from the wind blowing at her wet skin through the screens separating them from the outside world, crossing her arms over her body to hug herself. His eyes follow her movements down to the breaths that are slowly evening out without her realizing it. It turns out that confessing your love for the guy you've been crushing on since the day you met him is a hell of a distraction.

"I thought you wouldn't wanna hear me being all emotional and shit over a one time thing. You've literally never had an actual relationship before. And that's fine," she rambles, "I'll be okay eventually, but that's not who you are and there isn't a problem with that. I just caught feelings when I shouldn't have."

In her defense, she isn't making baseless assumptions about him, he hasn't had a relationship before. His love life hasn't ever really revolved around love itself, it was mostly comprised of random chicks he'd meet at parties or at the beach during the summertime when tourists come to visit the island. Out of all of them, he's the last one the Pogues would expect to fall in love with someone and commit to a relationship, but then...

He looks over at her with a swell of emotion within him that he's never felt before. It wasn't like he hadn't known before now. He did. He even said it out loud to himself that morning after the party, but this is when it feels the most real. Now that she's said it to him, he doesn't feel so stupid for toying with the four letter word in the back of his mind for the entirety of the past week.

In all honesty, he was the last person he would've expected to fall in love with someone this quickly too. He thought he knew himself better than this. He thought he could keep himself hidden away and not let anyone close enough to see him—the real him, faults and feelings and vulnerability included—but she proved him wrong. In walked Y/N with her pretty smile, teeny bikini bottoms, and oddly strong opinions on Ratatouille, and he stood no chance.

This sudden crescendo of emotion only continues to grow when he watches her shiver, soaked to the skin, across from him and decides that he never wants to deny himself of her again. Those feelings of inadequacy that forced him to question his relationship with her may not have gone away, not by a long shot, but they can't stop him anymore. Nothing can.

Like a light flickering to life in this swirling, stormy darkness, she hears JJ's voice asking her, "What if it is who I am?"

It was said so softly, she nearly lost it beneath the rain and wind. But it was not said with a lack of certainty, which is why she questions if she heard him correctly. He sounded so sure of himself that it feels too good to be true. After his reaction, or lack thereof, to her telling him she loved him, she accepted what was coming and this was not it.

"What?"

He doesn't miss a beat.

"You heard me." There's a pause. "Maybe I needed to meet the right girl."

There is no way he's saying what she thinks he's saying because if he is...if he is then that means the tears and frustration have all been for nothing because he loves her back. But if he loves her, then what was with the kook girl? Was it to make her jealous, or is she misinterpreting him right now and he was flirting with that girl because he doesn't have real feelings for her?

"JJ..." she trails off, looking down and thinking to herself how thankful she is that it's too dark for him to fully see how nervous he made her, "don't do that."

Partly, he should feel offended that she'd think he'd toy with her feelings like that, but he isn't. He's too busy wondering what on earth made this poor girl so insecure to think that someone has to be joking to confess their love to her. It makes him wonder if anyone wronged her before she moved here, and he feels that switch of impulsive anger inside of him flip at the thought.

But that anger has nowhere to go, so it shifts into something different—a need to spend every waking moment of the rest of their time together proving to her that she doesn't have to be so afraid. Does it make him a hypocrite? Probably. It wasn't too long ago that he was telling the Pogues how much he didn't deserve to be with her, but he doesn't see himself the same way he sees her. In his head, he has reasons to believe he doesn't deserve her love, but how could she ever think that herself?

He steps closer to her, the movement something so natural and unconscious to him that he doesn't recognize he does it until he hears her breath hitch in the back of her throat. They were already close enough to reach out and touch each other if they wanted to, yet now it's the kind of closeness that wipes the slate of her mind clean with nothing else but the thought of him there to stay.

He starts to say, "I'm not fucking with you, dude, I'm being serious—"

"Then prove it."

Oh.

The sound of his unfinished sentence lingers on the tip of his tongue as he blinks away his surprise at what she said, though it was less of a statement and more of a challenge. What the challenge is, he isn't too sure, but he thinks there could be a couple of meanings there.

The fire in her eyes when she looked up at him is one he recognizes very well, it stars in one too many of his daydreams that center around their secret night together. She rose to the occasion without fail and matched his chaos every time, and that steely-eyed stare is reminiscent of it.

Yet, the sexual undertone isn't the only part of it to be discovered. There's a clear meaning there for him to actually prove it, to put his money where his mouth is, grow a pair, and tell her how he feels with no room for confusion. No more miscommunication, running away, or insecurity getting between them, just a clear cut confession like hers.

His hand runs through his hair to sweep it out of his eyes and keep the wet strands from dripping down his face. It helps him see her a little better too, grounding him to the moment and calming him at the dimmed sight of her expectant, wide eyed gaze.

There were a million versions of this whenever he let himself imagine admitting it. He only let himself picture it on the worst days, days like the one two days ago when he went home to his dad, ending the night by cleaning his own cuts and inspecting his own bruises in his locked bedroom. He did it to distract himself from wanting to storm out of the room and finally kill the son of a bitch after years of suffering in silence.

JJ closed his eyes, shaking with anger, and dreamed of how he'd tell her. There were versions with long speeches that were far too sappy to exist outside of the realm of his imagination. There were versions with him burying the words between friendly jokes to play down the extent of his feelings too, but he thought it worked best in its simplest form.

So he puts it as simply as it gets, lips fighting a soft smile as he crosses the space between them and rushes in to kiss her. It's charged with an accumulation of the pent up love, anger, and sexual desire that has been repressed until now, resulting in something utterly explosive.

He stops for a second to whisper, "I love you too," into her parted lips, and she finally lets herself go at the sound of those words.

Forget that they've only known each other for five months, when you know you know. This is the real deal. This is the kind of feeling that possesses every accessible inch of her heart and she'd never be open enough to admit that to anyone but him at the moment, but neither of them minds that. It's such a new, rapidly developing feeling that they want to protect it and keep it close to them for the time being.

His arms twine around her waist, tugging her the last bit forward and leaving no space between their bodies this time. The sudden movement draws a sharp gasp from the back of her throat and sends her hands out to brace themselves on his shoulders. The sound of the gasp that disappears into their connected mouths only fuels him on more. It makes him more eager with how he touches her with his hands drifting down the plane of her back, one of which playfully slipping beneath the hem of her soaked shirt in a way that makes her smile into the kiss.

He knows exactly what he does to her. He can sense it in the small reactions that would often go overlooked if it were someone less familiar with her.

It's easy to tell by the way she completely surrenders herself to him, letting out these soft little noises she doesn't even realize she's making when he takes control of the interaction and kisses her like he's starved for it. In a way, he is starving for affection and attention from her. He never knew it was something he needed so badly until he got it, and now he never wants to go without having her again.

That's why it doesn't surprise him when she starts getting antsy after a moment or two, especially after keeping away from him for days.

Her hands run down the length of his chest over the soaked t-shirt, taking a quiet victory in how his stomach flinches inward in response to her exploring touch, and she could swear his next exhale trembles as she continues lower. Never once does she break the kiss, which, by the way, has gone past the point of being passionate and straight to downright needy, but her concentration does falter. The perfectly paced rhythm of her mouth moving with his is interrupted when she touches him over the fabric of his shorts.

Those plushy soft lips go on an exploration of their own too. Leaving him with the first opportunity to catch his breath in minutes, she dips her head beneath the sharp edge of jaw in pursuit of the sweet spot she remembers reducing him to a grabby, moaning mess the last time they did this. It doesn't take her long, not if the tightening of his arms around her and the satisfied hum of a moan she feels vibrate beneath her mouth has anything to say for it.

He loses himself in it for a second or two...okay, fine, maybe ten.

The separate sensations combined spark a flame inside of him that burns so hopelessly for whatever she'll give him. His mind sends him images of them together, both real memories from their first time together and imagined fantasies he only let himself visit in his dreams, and he realizes how thinly spread his self control has become lately.

First, it's the thought of her from last week, thoughts of her gasping, writhing, and begging beneath him that makes his cock throb under the teasing contact of her hand through his shorts. But then he's brought elsewhere. Then, though he hasn't thought of it since the day after the party, he thinks of the mix of jealousy and anger he felt when he saw Tyler with her.

He remembers being sane one moment and charging across the room like a madman the next. He remembers how it felt to watch another person's hands slip under her dress, how it felt to see someone else try to kiss her the way he had, and this raw wound of a memory is all it takes to spur him into action.

It happens so quickly, she doesn't even notice what's happening until he has her scooped up in his arms with her legs around his waist. She doesn't even have the chance to voice her surprise or crack a joke at the expense of his neediness before he reconnects their paused kiss with enough force to make her teeth ache in the collision.

JJ's rings are colder than ice, digging into the flesh of her thighs as he holds them with a tight grip and blindly takes the few steps necessary to reach the back entrance of the house. His wet handprint smudges on one of the cracked-open glass doors and sends droplets of water dribbling down the surface. The teardrop of rain zig-zags at the swinging motion of the door on their way in, only changing course again when he nudges it shut behind him a little too loudly.

"Wh"—her question is cut off by him laying her down on the rug-covered floor in between the couch and coffee table—"What if John B wakes up?"

His first thought was to bring her into the spare bedroom, but then he realized that it shares a wall with John B. Then, he considered the pull out couch but realized that would be louder than the room adjacent to their friend's. His only conclusion was this.

It isn't nearly as romantic as either of them would've pictured, but they're not exactly picky either. They're so desperate for it, they'd likely do it on the porch in the middle of a hurricane if there weren't another option. And in their own weird way, they make it romantic.

There's no one else she'd rather risk rug burn for, and that is the peak of romance.

"John B sleeps like a fuckin' rock," JJ says, "and it's own his fault for trapping us here anyway."

He follows her down onto the floor without a second thought, not even looking up to see if they woke their friend with the sound of the door shutting behind them.

Hovered above her, he looks particularly captivating in the flickering candlelight. The fire burning in one of the three-wick candles they scoured the bathroom cabinets for brings out the warm hues in his blonde hair and highlights every edge of the angular face that looks down at her. The porch was far too dark for her to see him in all of his near-perfection, but this is enough for her to notice a multitude of things.

His slicked back, wet hair allows her to see his features better and the way he looks at her...it's enough to make anyone feel red in the face. How hadn't she see it before? She knows it was denial, but, somehow, she used to overlook the small hints along the way like how he looks at her like she's the only thing that makes sense to him. For the first time in a while, she allows herself to embrace the idea of being loved without looking for something to justify her fears surrounding it.

The sound of her voice brings him out of the mesmerized trance he fell under at the sight of her.

"I've missed you," she says softly, "like a lot."

The sweet admission slows him down for a second, making him stop to ignore the distracting desire that she sparked to life a moment ago and take the time to cherish this moment of rare serenity with her.

It's a wonder that she hasn't even acknowledged the storm raging on outside since they've come back in. It's all thanks to him, of course, since she's been too focused on everything happening between them, but it surprises him. It makes a sense of pride flare up in him on her behalf for being capable of forgetting something she fears so much.

But, on the other hand, it reminds him of how distraught she was right before their conversation/argument on the porch shifted from her panic to the topic of their relationship, and he can't help but hesitate a little.

"I missed you too." The hand he isn't using to support himself above her cups her face, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. "Are you okay though? You were just crying and I don't wanna make you—"

"Yes."

It was so said so quickly, there was zero hesitation. It's not that it doesn't surprise him that she's as eager as he is after what started to happen out on the porch, but it does make his eyes widen a little. His mouth curls with a slight grin. It's the kind that never fails to make her stomach fluttering and light with butterflies.

"You don't have to worry about me. I'm okay, and I promise I'll let you know if I'm not," Y/N clarifies.

"Okay."

There's a short moment where all they do is look at each other with a complete loss for words to convey what they feel right now. It isn't as awkward as it would've been prior to tonight. Before they confessed their feelings, they wouldn't have been able to look at one another for any longer than a few seconds without needing to walk away to break the tension. Now, things have changed. They don't feel the need to conceal how much they care anymore.

They're still the same bickering duo they've always been with the added fun of being head over heels. She never used to understand how some people could let their feelings for another person drive them crazy, but it's done more than make her crazy this past week. It made her jealous, obsessive, and somehow happy too, and no one has ever made her feel so many varying emotions in her life.

Her fingertips graze the stretch of skin between where his cargo shorts sit on his hips and his shirt rides up the side of his torso, and he swallows thickly at the feeling.

"Do I make you nervous?" she asks.

Her lilting, smooth voice is enough to soothe any nerves he could possibly have. It's as if hearing her ask that paired with the hand teasing the waistband of his shorts pulled him back to the place he'd been before when she was teasing him over his clothes.

He answers honestly, his head going fuzzy with the crushing desire that courses through him, "Not as nervous as I make you," and closes the space between them again.

The cheeky comment doesn't go unnoticed by her, not one bit. It makes her face heat up in embarrassment that is purely instinct after having to hide her feelings from her for so long. Maybe after they've been together for longer, it won't make her blush every time he acknowledges the effect he has on her out loud, but that day isn't today. Today, she goes hot in the face from a sole second of his attention, let alone this.

JJ lets his hand climb up the length of her torso as they kiss as if they have all the time in the world, as if their best friend isn't sleeping less than twenty feet away from them, until it flattens at the base of her neck. It doesn't curl around her neck and squeeze, nor does it do anything but remind her how much she loves the feeling of him touching her, the large palm of his hand simply stays draped over her throat to flaunt his ability to sway her nerves.

She's pretty sure if it were anyone else, it wouldn't work, but he's JJ for fuck's sake, and the quiet display of dominance sends an exhilarating little thrill rumbling through her. It isn't anything over the top or exaggerated like some people would do in an attempt to stake a claim over the person they love, just a simple gesture that they both know the meaning of.

She's his. After five months of friendship, two months of silent pining, and a week of sexually confused hell, she's his, and he'll never let her forget it.

The wind rattles the windows over the couch with its force and she notices that his hips grind into hers at the sudden sound. Even in the midst of such a heated moment, it's downright cute how he still makes an effort to distract her from what she fears. And, boy, does it work.

Their panting breaths in the brief seconds they allow themselves to break away from each other are the only sounds audible in the small living room. The storm drowns it all out for now, including the noises that start to leave them from the steadily building pleasure of their bodies moving together.

She can feel how hard he is through the layers that separate them with every absentminded thrust that brushes the fabric of her panties up against her clit each time. It leaves her breathless and wondering, despite already knowing, what it'll feel like when he finally slips inside of her again.

They both fantasized about it in the time they spent apart. Neither of them would dare deny it, least of all JJ. It actually became frustrating after a while because she started to become the only scenario he could conjure to get himself off when he had a rare moment of privacy. His fantasies, all stemming from the night that was so perfect, he began to question the reality of it, linger in his head.

The best part of his fantasies were the parts of them based in truth, and if he knows anything about her when she's in this state, it's that she's needy. Her tongue swipes along his bottom lip in a silent urging to let her deepen the kiss, and he complies without a second to spare, willing to entertain her every whim so long as she keeps being so good for him.

He revels in her muffled squeak of a moan when he presses down on the sides of her throat at the precise moment his hips grind down to meet hers. She can't keep herself still for any longer than a half-second, always meeting his movements halfway and unknowingly doing another thing that will be the death of him.

She leads his shirt up his body without having to second guess herself, knowing that he's always on the same wavelength as her no matter what. This was how it was the last time too. Anything she did, he was already one step ahead, and tonight isn't much different. By the time her hands ball up the dripping cotton fabric, JJ is lifting the hand off of her neck to reach for the neckline of the shirt and help tug it off.

There's a sense of urgency in everything they do. Charged up with frustration and jealousy that brewed within the days they spent apart, there's nothing to stop them from reducing themselves to a pair of panting, impatient lovers too consumed in each other to care about the outside world.

The sopping wet fabric is thrown beyond her line of sight and lands on the hardwood floor with a 'thwack' that accompanies their cacophony of moans and gasps, and she whimpers at the sight of him. It may have to do with the fact that he's guiding their bodies together at a cadence and pressure perfect enough to make her legs tremble, but seeing him like this does nothing but aid the sensation.

Golden skin glistening under the candlelight, tendrils of half-dry blonde hair falling into his face with the lazy effort of his movements, and a stray raindrop that squeezed from the wet shirt dripping down his chest...she's not gonna make it out of tonight alive, is she? In her memory, she knew he was a sight to see in the midst of a heated moment, but, fuck, memories do not hold up beside the real experience of it.

Y/N is so caught up in his seemingly endless beauty, she doesn't notice him peeling her damp denim shorts off of her hips until they're halfway down her legs, and the only reason she does notice is because he must shift his position to do it. Suddenly, the budding feeling that stirred from their needy antics is plucked away and left to ache for more in the absence of him between her thighs.

Her middle and index fingers hook around the front of his necklace to pull him back down to her, but he doesn't budge at first. He's too busy trying to rid her of her shirt to care.

It was too much of a distraction while they kissed for him to resist slipping it off of her when he got the chance to. Much to his frustration when he first realized they were trapped with each other, she's braless underneath, and it's only worse now that the t-shirt is soaked to her skin and clinging to every delicate curve.

Once the clothing gives way to the canvas of her bare skin, he submits to her urgency and follows her down by the fingers hooked around his necklace without any qualms.

As soon as they resume, it's as if they never stopped to begin with, and they start to realize how seamlessly they fit together as the seconds elapse. Neither of them are actively thinking about it while he dips his hand into the front of her panties, but it is in their subconscious.

It's a revelation of sorts, an ah-ha moment where it hits them both in a sweeping realization that it was obvious from the day they met. They should've known sooner, they should've dropped their pride and admitted it as soon as the first inklings of desire began to pop up, but they didn't. Instead, it washes over them now and they let the current take them away together.

Her mouth falls open against his cheek at the feeling of his fingers swiping through the arousal that pools in her underwear for him, dragging the wetness over his fingertips and spreading it up to brush fleetingly against her clit. It's a split-second of a touch that it makes her hips lift up off the floor on their own accord to seek out more. It makes her dig her nails into the skin stretching over his taut shoulder muscles in a wordless plea for more that he doesn't indulge her in at first.

He makes her earn it from him without having to say a single word. He touches her, but he doesn't touch where she wants or ease his fingers into her to satisfy the need she feels yet. It's a blessing and a curse that he manages to turn her on to such an extent. He does it for her like nothing else can, so much so that she's noticed a distinct difference in how it feels when she's alone versus when they're together. When she's alone, it can tend to feel like active effort, but when she's with him, it's as natural as the urge to breathe.

His smirk is felt against her skin the entire time she begs for it through the revealing actions of her body—her hips jerking up toward him, her chest pressing tightly to his, and the sound of her murmuring, "Please," in a breathy tone that could stop his heart.

"Tell me what you want," JJ says, every word constrained and tight in a way that tells her he's a lot less composed than he lets on, and "accidentally" swipes his thumb over her clit again. "Talk to me, baby."

She almost forgot in their time apart how much of an effect he has on her, but this is the best reminder of that she could possibly imagine. If she could, she would find a way to bottle the feeling he gives her and keep it with her forever so that, no matter what happens between them, she'll never have the misfortune of forgetting him.

What he said simultaneously melts her heart and frustrates her to no end because he knows! He knows damn well what she wants from him and won't give it to her unless she asks for it, and she hates herself for loving it. She hates herself for enjoying the flushed-face embarrassment it brings to her cheeks to be so open with him about what she needs.

She swallows the lump in her throat and tries to focus through the clouded landscape of her head to speak to him. It's hard to concentrate when he's above her like this, touching her, calling her pet names, and looking at her like that.

With his lips worshiping the sensitive skin along her neck, she finds it hard to choke out the words, "I want you," into the humid air that has infiltrated the house.

It's not a lie. Anything regarding her wanting him or any related feeling is no longer something she can hide anymore, but they both know it isn't exactly what he wanted. No matter how it took his breath away to hear her say it, he was seeking something more specific. He was aiming to make her ask, maybe even beg, for it. They're both too impatient to wait and based on how wet his fingertips are from barely dipping into her, he can tell she's as eager as he is.

It's been thirteen days too long since the last time they allowed themselves to meet this way, and neither of them wants to let it happen again.

She was nearly trembling with the urge to go to him whenever they were together in the company of their friends, unable to think about anything except for how badly she wanted him. All the while, he appeared so unbothered, especially on the night of the party when he flirted with someone else, that she didn't even believe he felt the same way back. Thankfully for her, she couldn't have been more wrong.

He clicks his tongue and says, still teasing her with light touches that never linger in one place for too long, "That wasn't very specific."

Part of her should know that he's about to do something based on how he withdraws his head from its cherished place in the crook of her neck, but she's too caught up in the anticipation and seeing his face for the first time in a minute to think about it. How dare he look so good? She could cry in frustration, although she might actually already be tearing up a little with the rush of neediness hitting her in its full force.

Never has she felt so turned on by so little physical contact before. It usually takes longer for her to get to this point, whether it be alone or in the past with previous partners, yet all it took was being kissed, touched, and being given his undivided attention and now...She realizes she's in trouble. He has her in an emotional and sexual chokehold at this point, and she fears that no one can compare.

"I want—" her voice is snuffed out in an instant when he eases two fingers into her, "Oh!"

So that's why he pulled away from her neck to look at her.

It was worth abandoning the mark forming on her neck just to see the expression on her face shift. She gets this cute look when anything overwhelming starts to happen where her brows scrunch a little to create a soft wrinkle between them as her mouth drops open in a moan. And after ten steady minutes of doing nothing but some over the clothes action and painstaking teasing, this is as overwhelming as it gets without it crossing the line to being too much.

It never occurred to her how much larger his fingers are compared to hers until now. This type of pleasure is like an itch only someone else can scratch to her, she feels virtually nothing when she does it to herself, but when he does it, it's like an explosive being set off inside of her. Especially with the thumb that sneaks up to circle her clit without stopping to tease her again, she is putty in his hands at this point.

Every smooth stroke of his fingers into her reaches a spot she can never quite find on her own, and she can feel the cold bite of rings when they're buried into her to the knuckle.

It's a surprise every time, even when she knows to expect it. Like a delightful chill running up through her body and down her spine exactly how it's intended to. It strikes an idea in her head for when he eventually pulls them out of her, conjuring the image of her sucking them clean for him just for the sake of imagining what it'll do to him.

With that idea tucked away in the back of her mind, he's the center of her world right now. All she breathes, thinks, and feels is him. Whether it be the sight of him, or the feelings he's giving her, or even the taste of his kiss that still lingers on her tongue, it connects to one common thread.

"What were you saying?" JJ asks, and she wants to wipe that smirk right off his face.

It's virtually impossible for her to piece together a coherent thought, let alone a sentence detailing every filthy idea she has for him, but she tries. It takes another moment or two of her succumbing to the rapid incline of pleasure that he gives her, watching her in wonder through any greedy buck of her hips or gasping inhale that makes her head loll back onto the floor.

At first, what she wanted to say was that she wanted him to touch her, to do anything more than the fleeting touches he gave before. Now, she wants more than that. Now that she's drawn in closer to the eventual high that's to come, she doesn't want it to happen like this. She wants to feel closer to him than this, wants to feel him throb inside of her and fuck her with all of the urgency and desperation that has accumulated in their time apart.

That's why her hands start to grab at the belt loops of his shorts to tug him closer by them, meeting his gaze through the hazy bliss of his fingers pumping into her. It's not enough.

"Please"—she keeps pulling him closer to her, so close that there's hardly any space left to cross, and he revels in her desperation—"just fuck me already..."

Internally, JJ is losing his shit.

Though this was what he wanted, what he coaxed out of her with the teasing and the pretend sense of a nonchalant attitude on his part, it hits him harder than he expected it to to hear her say it. It's not necessarily the act of begging itself either, it's the fact that she's the one doing it. She may have been jealous of the girl at the party, but she had nothing to worry about. Not in the slightest.

Before her, he never thought he'd fall for someone this way. It's not like he had a hatred for love or anything, he understood the appeal, it simply wasn't his thing.

He was perfectly content with his only form of companionship being his friends. Then, she came along and changed it. So to hear her say something like that isn't just breathtaking, it's the kind of thing that makes his heart ache for her. It hits him precisely where she wanted it to, and he has never felt as consumed with love the way he does now.

JJ can do nothing to stop himself from pouncing on her at this point, like some animalistic form of himself has worn down the restraint he used to keep himself at bay.

The loss she feels when his fingers slip away from her is an emptiness she mourns at first before she realizes what's happening. He pulls away slightly to reach down between them for the front of his shorts, and their hands clash as they both frantically try to undo them together. The rings adorning his fingers glisten when they catch the light and remind her of the thought that popped into her head when she first felt their coldness against her skin.

That idea paired with the promise of what they're trying to accomplish in their uncoordinated attempt to get the rest of their clothes off makes her want to press her thighs together. Her hands abandon the task of undoing his shorts for the sake of ridding herself of the last layer that separates her from him.

Her most embarrassing old pair of brightly colored panties, courtesy of past Y/N's questionable decision to trust her mom to buy some on her behalf, are hardly a sight to behold. They're the kind that come in a value pack from Walmart, vibrant blue with the word, "Tuesday," printed on the front of them, and she could hide her face into the rug in shame if she weren't so determined to get them off. Of all the days to wear the day of the week undies her mom accidentally got her, of course she chose today.

By the time she reaches for the waistband, he has pushed his shorts and underwear down his thighs and comes back to her with just as much excitement as he left with, but when he helps her tug her panties down her legs, he laughs. Apparently, he had also been too eager to touch her to notice what was written on them before.

"Cute," he breathes out through a laugh, then adds as the cotton fabric slips over her knees, "Pretty sure it's not Tuesday though."

"If you tell anyone, I swear I'll—"

He cuts her off, "Whatever you wanna threaten me with won't work, chances are I'm gonna be into it."

Her eyes are alight with a certain fire he's had yet to fully lure out of her. Even her voice is slightly more airy and seductive as a result of it.

"Promise?"

JJ grins down at her as he finally tosses her panties aside with the rest of their clothes, "Cross my heart, pretty girl."

His hands grip her thighs and tug her down the  rug to him with a quick jolt that snaps them out of the playful nature of their back and forth teasing. No matter how lighthearted of an interruption it was, the mini-conversation might as well have never existed for how easily they fall back into it again.

She watches with her forehead pressed against his as he strokes himself a few times, then drags his tip, messy with precome, through her wet heat. And though she watches it happen, her body still arches into his when he lines up with her and sinks his hips forward.

She anticipated it, but she still gasps and digs her nails into his biceps at the sensation of him pushing into her. Neither of them bothers to worry about the obvious lack of a condom—it was discussed the first time around when he offered and she told him it was okay. He's often the one to silence the alarm on her phone warning her in its title to, "Take your birth control or else, bitch," while she searches her bag for it anyway, so he trusts her.

Both of them prefer it this way enough to risk the  minuscule failure rate of the pill anyway. It's more intimate, closer, and they can both feel the warmth of each other in a way that would've been somewhat muted with an added layer between them. It makes the feeling of him entering her all the more gratifying as she tenses up around him in reaction, drawing a groan from where his parted lips brush against hers.

She lifts her head off of the floor as much as she can to capture his mouth with her own and stifle the sonorous sound despite the storm doing a better job of it.

It seems that every blast of wind and roll of thunder is in their favor tonight, so much so that he isn't even worried about getting walked in on. It's not a thought in his head at this point, the only thought he's capable of having is this. Forgive him for being shortsighted, but he doesn't give a shit if John B notices or hears what's happening when he's buried inside of her so deeply.

His hips are flush with the backs of her thighs in a matter of seconds, and right when he pauses to give her a breather, he feels her shake her head ever so slightly against where their faces are pressed together.

The touch of her hands on his hips is not timid by any means, it's commanding. Her palm prints singe an indelible claim into the surface of his skin as she guides him to start moving without a second spared to dwindle the discomfort of him filling her up. It's less like a pain and more of a pressure blooming from the insistent presence of him, not so overwhelming that it's painful, but it's an effort to breathe evenly and the only thing that'll ease this transitional moment is to continue.

At first, their bodies start to rock together lazily as though on autopilot. They'd hardly be conscious of the fact that they're doing anything if not for the initial sensations of heady ecstasy that flash like the sparks of a lighter in response to their movements. As soon as he felt her hands coax him into action, he sighed happily and surrendered himself to the instinct of wanting to move.

The merging of their bodies is less of the aggressive rutting motions they'll surely succumb to once their current pace is no longer satisfying, but that doesn't make it any less intense. She's partly sure that this is one of the most vulnerable moments either of them has ever had when it comes to sex, and it wouldn't work if it weren't them together. No other person could consume her the way he does, taking up every unoccupied space of her soul until there's nothing left but the silent begging of her heart for him.

Their kiss is messy when it breaks to allow them the chance to suck down a couple breaths of air, saliva shining on his lips in between the seconds it takes them to come crashing back together.

It's loving enough to rot her teeth with its sweetness, a slow but impossibly deep grinding of their hips together that continually presses the tip of him into that sweet spot inside of her, but it takes a turn.

Not only do her hands shift from his hips up to the sides of his waist to get a firmer hold on him, the kiss starts to become vigorous, almost hungry, in search of something more. The dreamlike sequence of the first moment or so they spent slowly fucking under the warm hues of candlelight starts to unravel to reveal the baser instincts that guide them forward.

"Fuck, you feel so good," he whispers the praise into her mouth.

As soon as the words are said, he can feel the effect it has on her. The hands braced on his waist pull his body closer to her at the same moment that she involuntarily squeezes down around him, making the smooth drag of his cock against the velvet-soft heat of her walls even tighter than he thought possible.

The sudden feeling of it makes his first returning thrust much harder than the last. He jerks forward into her with none of the restraint he's retained for the past few moments, and her reaction is nothing short of perfection, at least from his perspective. He watches her throw her head back in a moan, hips bucking to him in pursuit of more, and feels the tips of her fingernails digging crescent-shaped marks into the unmarred skin along his waist.

"JJ!" she gasps in surprise, and if her initial reaction weren't enough to spur him on in a frenzied state of desire, this is.

He almost forgot how intense it had been the first time. Their confessions of love preceding this made them both somewhat softer and sweeter in their approach when they started, but he knows how she likes it.

Nobody would expect it from her. He's another story entirely, especially considering how much John B and Pope know about him, but her? He didn't have any in depth conversations about it with either of them, so none of their friends know how dirty she is.

But when you start to tease it out of her, she's got a side to her that makes his blood run hot. Considering how polite she is, he sure as hell didn't see it coming. For fuck's sake, she's the kind of person who'll apologize to a chair if she bumps into it. With that in mind he never thought she'd be the type to demand such things of him.

Just like that, with one moan of his name, it's like she flipped a switch in him that they forgot was there in the first place. It'll never stop surprising him how little it takes to get him going when he's with her, and he doesn't see that changing no matter how long they spend together in the future. Just a touch from her is all it takes, so it's needless to say that the sound of her calling out his name was more than enough.

Those slow, deep movements he made to sink into her again and again have turned rapid and rough, but still controlled enough to have a semblance of precision to them, hitting in all the right places.

"I bet," JJ speaks lowly, "that you want John B to walk out and see us right now."

She doesn't want to admit how much of an instantaneous effect those words have on her, but the feeling of her clenching around him as she bites back a moan completely betrays her. Partly, she worries that he'll take that the wrong way and think it has something to do with John B when it has nothing to do with him at all, but he doesn't. For the spare second of thought she's allowed to have before her mind goes hazy again, she notes how much more eager he is on the upstroke of the next thrust.

Noticing how right he was in his assumption about her liking the risk of getting caught jumpstarts his heart and makes everything he does rougher. She can sense that he's starting to lose control over himself and is acting on instinct alone.

It makes her much more sensitive to everything he does, and all she can do is cling to him and enjoy it as she takes in everything he says and does. It's hard to pick one thing to focus on between the switch up in pace and what he said.

"You want John B to know you like getting fucked like a slut, don't you?"

She could get off on the sound of his voice alone. Hearing him say stuff like that kills her, it makes the swirling bliss that builds in the pit of her abdomen with every thrust he gives her triple in its extremity.

Her legs are tightly wound around his hips to keep him as near to her as possible, her hands sliding up around his waist to keep a steady grasp on him while he pounds into her. The rug scratches at her back enough to make it sting alongside the immense pleasure building in her, but she doesn't care. When blended with the good sensations, the pain underscores the addictive feeling of him inside of her, fucking her exactly how she asked him too.

Looking up at him when he's like this is simply unreal. There's no other way of describing it in her eyes except for that. He's so stunning, she's inclined to believe that he isn't even real as a means of explaining it. This shouldn't be real. It should be one of her daydreams while she steals covert stares at him as they hang out with the Pogues, but it isn't. She can't wrap her head around it.

Those strands of hair that were damp from the rain are mostly dry as they fall into his eyes with the force of his movements. The sight of him alone, set aside from the rest of it, is enough to make her writhe beneath him and claw at his back in tandem with another thrust that sends her jolting against the rug.

He takes one of his hands up from where they both held her hips for leverage to weave his fingers into the roots of her hair.

He demands between the panting breaths and moans that flood the limited space between them, tugging on her hair, "Answer me."

She instantly blurts out the words, "I want him to see us." The feeling of him tilting her head back by the fistful of hair he has wrapped up in his hand is her persistent reminder to concentrate enough to continue, and she bites down on her lip to contain a moan before speaking again, "I want him to know..."

Her cheeks burn with the mere thought of it, let alone saying it out loud. He's the only person she'd ever let in on this intimate side of her, the side that makes her crazy when she hears him say stuff like this. The reason she feels so comfortable doing this with him is that she knows he understands her. It's as if he can read her mind without even having to try, knowing exactly what to say and when to say it.

It wouldn't matter if the topic of their exhibitionism were any other Pogue or a stranger, it isn't about who it is, it's about the thrill attached to the concept of almost getting seen during such a heated moment. In all actuality, John B is probably snoring face down into his pillow right now with no care for what's happening out here, but he knows what it does to her when they push the boundaries of decency this way. It's the same rush he gets from stealing random, useless things every so often, it's the thrill of getting away with something.

The hand tangled up in the roots of her hair sneaks down between their colliding bodies to rub her clit, and her mouth drops open to take in a shaky breath.

The sight of her beneath him is undoing in and of itself. Head tilted enough to expose her neck to him, chest rising and falling rapidly with her breaths, and breasts bouncing gently with the momentum of their actions—seeing her this way makes his thrusts ramp up into more of a frenzied, uncontainable pace rather than one with the same control and cadence as before. But it's mostly the eye contact that kills him. She doesn't dare to shut her eyes the entire time, as if she can sense that he'll tell her to look at him again the second she does.

"You want him to know what?" he asks, and she knows he won't let her get away with not saying it.

She whines, utterly helpless to the climax starting to build inside of her, "Please."

What she's pleading for, she isn't quite sure, but he can tell by how she's acting that she's starting to get closer, and he wants nothing more than to tease her with the impending chance of her orgasm.

"If you wanna come, you're gonna have to do a lot better than that."

Just like that, he withdraws his hand from between them and leaves her desperate, blindly grasping for the peak she was so close to reaching, she could almost feel it already.

With JJ rocking into her at a relaxed, slower rhythm, the pleasure hasn't disappeared completely. It's there, but she can sense the feeling of her orgasm receding as quickly as it had creeped up on her as soon as he slips his hand out from between them.

It's instantly clear to him how desperate she is as all of her previous shyness surrounding having to admit this to him out loud withers away in seconds. She isn't beneath begging again at this point. He could tell her to crawl across the floor to him and she'd happily do it for the chance of touching him. It's pathetic but true. As much as she has him wrapped around her finger, he has done the same to her and she isn't afraid to admit it anymore.

Her hips jerk toward him in search of the familiar frenzy they were in before that sent her to the brink of climax, but he is impressively stubborn. Despite the fact that it physically pains him to dial it back again, he tries to keep the signs of his own frustration at bay. She knew what she had to say to get what she wants, so he'll only cave when she does.

This time around, she doesn't give a fuck about how badly she blushes or the voice in the back of her mind telling her she should keep this side of her to herself. This time, the one thing she needs to do to prompt her to open her mouth and speak the dirty words he asked her less than a moment ago is look at him. One second of staring up at him and here she is, driven mad enough to say or do anything to get him to pick up where they left off.

She says between the soft noises and breaths coming from them both, clinging to him through every slow but deep thrust that sends sparks ricocheting through her body, "I want John B to know I like getting fucked like slut." Her voice is breathless, and he hangs off of each word as she pauses, looking up at him with a challenging attitude swirling in those pretty eyes. "So stop being a tease and fuck me like one."

His jaw clenches at the bratty statement, one he's too far gone to resist at this point, and right when he's about to respond to her, she speaks again.

"Either that," she says, and a deceptively sweet smile crosses her kiss-swollen lips, "or I can go ask him to—"

She doesn't even get the chance to voice the rest of that thought before he's set into motion.

The hands on her hips flip her over with such casual strength, all she can do is yelp in surprise at the sudden movement that blurs the living room in her peripheral version until she lands with her hands and knees pressing into the rug. He was so swift in pulling out of her and tossing her onto her front like she was nothing more than a rag doll, she hardly had the time to take a breath before she ended up here.

There's hardly any time between when he pulled out to flip her over and when he returns to her again, but it feels like an eternity for them. The few second transition might as well be a few years as she feels his hands guiding her body where he wants it, pushing down on her back until it arches just so, and falls down onto her arms. But as soon as she gets situated, she feels a pair of hands yanking her arms away from where they were braced against the floor and put them behind her back.

It's only then, when he has an unflinching grasp on where he keeps her wrists behind her back with one of his hands, that she is met with the relief of him sinking into her again.

Y/N's jaw goes slack, and she cries out into the rug that her cheek is pressed into as he gives her no chance to adjust or catch her breath before resuming the brutal pace they kept a moment ago. Mentioning anyone else but him doing this to her was the quickest way to get him to snap, so it's safe to say that she's getting what she wanted. After all, she did what he asked, it's fair that she gets rewarded for it.

Amidst the sounds of the storm waging war on the landscape outside of the house, the one thing she can hear over the buzzing pleasure that drowns out her senses is the sinful blend of sounds they create together. It's the sound of their bodies merging, his name falling from her lips, and the curses he makes under his breath that never fail to drive her a little wild.

The hand that isn't holding her arms behind her slides down the length of her curved back until it wraps around her throat to pin her down, and her reaction is everything he could ask for. Seeing her rock back against him to meet him halfway makes his grip on her wrists tighten enough to turn his knuckles white.

Her hair is spread in endless directions in a fan around her head, and he can only see one side of her face from where he kneels behind her, but that glimpse is more than enough. Brows scrunched in pleasure, mouth dropped open in a gape as soft 'uh's and 'ah's escape her on the upstroke of each thrust—she's a mess right now. A beautiful, perfect mess.

"Oh God, JJ," she moans between her rapid breaths and the strong hand constricting her neck, "I'm so close. Please, just let me come."

It took virtually nothing for her to be pushed right back to the edge of the peak she was at less than a minute ago. It took a mere half-minute of this and she's once again reduced to incoherent pleas for more and shaking with no control over herself. Her legs tremble with the effort to keep herself up in this position, and she isn't even the one doing most of the work. In all fairness, this change in position has made the intensity triple. It's deeper this way, and with how harshly he slams into her, it's as though she can feel it in the base of her abdomen.

It's the enjoyable type of pain, however, not the bad type. It'll surely end up with her being sore tomorrow, but she can't hide how much she loves the painful pleasure of how rough it's getting. Being denied an orgasm when she was so, so close to it was initially disappointing too, but it was worth it. If the build up to what would've been her climax before was a spark, this is a flourishing fire spreading through her with no chance of smothering the flames.

He lets go of her throat and taps the side of her jaw in a silent request that she picks up immediately, letting her lips fall open to suck his fingers into her mouth without a second of hesitation.

The taste of her arousal on them is faint, but still there, and it occurs to her that she thought about this earlier before things evolved into chaos. Her tongue swirls around the tips of his fingers as he starts to pull them away in what feels like the blink of an eye to her, leaving him to remember what it felt like when her lips were once wrapped around a more sensitive part of him a week and a half ago.

The one other time he let himself remember it was when they were on the boat with the Pogues, yet that wasn't really of his own volition. It was hot out, so Kiara bought ice pops for them and his mind wandered far from where it should've stayed.

Shining with her saliva, his fingers are pulled from her lips with a soft 'pop' in pursuit of that sensitive collection of nerves at the apex of her thighs. She just needs is a little push to go over the edge, and when he slips his hand down her body to rub tight circles onto her clit, she loses whatever remnants of control over herself she had left.

The steady rhythm of her hips moving back against him falters as she is overwhelmed with the separate sensations culminating into one and giving her the push she needs to come. Her entire body tenses up in anticipation, and since she's pinned to the floor with her hands behind her back, she can only lay there and savor the feeling as it hits her.

After what felt like ages of having it build and build within her, then having it taken away to start the process over again, finally being given a release is a relief beyond any she's felt before.

It's so consuming, it takes away her ability to think of anything outside of how it feels to dissolve into the shockwaves of euphoria rushing through her. Every pulsing wave is prolonged by him, not even through the peak of it does he let up on his precise touches and unforgiving thrusts into her that turn a typical orgasm into the most intense thing she's ever felt.

She's melting in his arms through it all, and as if the change in position didn't make it worse, her involuntary spasms leave him hanging on by a thread.

JJ collapses onto her, barely having the chance to keep himself propped up on his arms as he lets go of her wrists and falls forward onto her sweat-slick back.

The heat of his panting exhales raises goosebumps in its wake where his face is buried into the curve of her neck, and he whines at the impossibly tight feeling of her squeezing around his cock through the end of her climax. Those sounds he doesn't realize he's making have her writhing through the aftershocks, answering with a sound of her own that almost makes him come instantly.

For that reason, he makes the decision to pull out and flip her onto her back.

At this point, she's so dazed and fucked out that she doesn't register any of it until she notices the hollow absence of him inside of her, but it doesn't matter when his face appears through the partial darkness above her.

Despite how sensitive she is right now, the sight of him makes her hands reach out blindly to pull him closer again. They're frantic in their need to get back to one another, grasping and clawing until he finds his way back to her in less than a second, hiking her legs up around his waist with a touch that is somehow demanding and tender at the same time.

It's only when he's inside of her again that it occurs to her why he rolled her onto her back again, and it makes her want to kiss him until her lips turn numb. It may be undeniably hotter to pin someone down and fuck them hoarse, but, no, that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to be able to look at her, to see her face, and the thought of that has her biting back a sudden confession of love. She isn't sure why she doesn't say it right away, since it isn't like they haven't already done it, but she keeps it to herself for a second first.

It's different now. It's not less passionate or frenetic. It isn't as if he isn't being as rough with her as he was before, but they can both sense a shift in the energy between them as soon as he reenters her. It's less about the pursuit of pleasure and more about the feelings they've kept hidden away for so long. It's a simultaneous realization that hits them a little late after they initially confessed their feelings for each other: this is reality. It's real, and when she touches him this time, he isn't going to disappear if she opens her eyes.

The realization of what happened tonight had yet to hit them until right this second, but now that it has, they move forward with a sense of sentimentality that remained partly dormant before.

If there's anything JJ dislikes, it's being vulnerable. The idea of letting someone in to see every part of him, including the parts he doesn't want to see of himself, has always terrified him after years of being made to believe he's undeserving, yet he isn't uncomfortable right now. Somehow, he feels safe with her. Sex has never been something so emotional for him until now, until her, and he doesn't want it differently.

Their bodies are drawn in close, her arms thrown around his neck, and he's so close, he can feel the muscles leading down past his lower abdomen contract with the inevitable approach of his orgasm. She can sense it too in how he acts.

When he gets close, he becomes clingier and lets his feelings get the better of him. His hands squeeze at her hips, sliding up her sides and back down to hike one of her legs up high around his waist to press deeper into her. He can't bear to allow his touch to stay in one place for too long before exploring another part of her, wanting to memorize the delicate intricacies of her body in its entirety.

It's as if she can read his mind too, cause even when she's sensitive enough to gasp when he pushes her thigh to her chest and throws his remaining energy into fucking her at a satisfying pace, she understands what he needs. She knows to reach up and run her fingers through his hair, to tug on it gently until the light strands are taut from his scalp. She knows to lift her head off of the floor enough to trail tender kisses along his face, his jaw, his neck—anywhere she can access.

"Come for me," she says into a kiss placed on the edge of his cheekbone, reeling in overstimulation as she jolts with his quickening thrusts, "I want to watch you..."

Hearing those words, paired with the kisses and fingers pulling on his hair, does it for him. It doesn't take more for his hips to falter and jerk forward into her a final few times before he comes.

Their foreheads press together as they cling to one another for stability, though it's mostly JJ clinging to her while she watches in adoration, and she has to bite her lip to contain a moan at how it feels. The aftershocks of her orgasm have yet to fade as the feeling of pulsing warmth inside of her makes them stronger, reigniting the fire she felt a moment ago if only for a second.

There's a closeness to this situation that they hadn't felt the last time, and they know it has everything to do with what was said before this happened. The sex itself feels like a dream sequence in her mind now that she's coming down from it with him, moving together slowly and gently beneath the candlelight until they ride out the ends of their highs. It was like they were put under a trance by each other, and now that it's over, the first thoughts that come to mind are of what comes next.

It's not the sole topic on their minds though. They're more focused on catching their breath from where they lay, tangled up together, on the living room floor. As soon as the very last of his orgasm faded from him, he fell onto her without a single ounce of energy left to spare. He's careful not to crush her, but, for the most part, he relaxes on top of her and lets his head rest on her heaving chest.

Strong arms slip down to loop around her waist, and she sure that she couldn't get him to release her if she wanted to, which she doesn't.

But they can't stay like this, not for any longer than a few moments anyway, since they don't know how if John B might wake up and come out of the safety of his bedroom after hours of leaving them to their own devices. JJ was right. He's out cold, but for as much as it turned them on in the heat of the moment, neither of them finds getting caught by him as hot with the clarity of their rational minds coming back to them.

He's the one to break the silence.

"As much as I wanna stay like this, we should probably move in case John B wakes up."

The sound of his voice settles in her with the effects of a sedative. It calms her more than anything else could, especially with the added comfort of him cuddling her so closely. One of her hands strokes through his hair and pushes the damp tendrils of sunshine away from his face as he cranes his neck to look up at her. And, for fuck's sake, what else is she to do except admire him?

His cheeks are dusted pink in a way they often are when he spends too much time outside without one of his hats shielding his face, and she thinks he's never looked better.

Ever since they became friends, she's had this theory about him. In the unrealistic landscape of her overactive imagination, JJ didn't come to this world the way the rest of them did. To her, it seems impossible that someone so good, even in his worst moments, could've come from someone like his dad.

So, in idle moments where she would watch him on a day out with the Pogues or daydream about him, she decided that he's the sun.

She imagines he was created in those breathtaking but brief moments where the sun meets the horizon atop the ocean and washes the sky with a vast array of colors. She likes to think he's the incarnation of it. Golden, warm, and bright for everyone but himself, he keeps the world light for her and their friends without intending to.

Some days are warmer than others too. Some days, the light is dimmed by another bruise beneath his clothes or a bad run-in with some kooks, but today is not like that. This moment is eighty-five and sunny with a balmy breeze. Looking at him right now feels like basking in the sun, and she'd burn here forever if he let her.

Without realizing she zoned out, she jolts when he pinches her arm to rouse her from her ridiculous thoughts. He has this dopey half-smile on his face that nearly draws her back into them again.

"You know what they say," he says, "if you take a picture..."

Her soft laughter invades the room, filling his heart with this light, fluttery feeling that always finds him when she's near. His smile grows as she playfully shoves him and reaches above their heads for her wet shirt to cover up with just in case. Odds are, their friend isn't waking up at the exact moment before they seclude themselves to the spare room and get dressed, but she doesn't wanna take that chance.

"I wasn't staring."

She was totally staring. But who could blame her? When someone looks at a person the way he looks at her, how could they ever stay away?

"Whatever you say."

JJ keeps smiling to himself while he pulls his underwear and shorts up his legs and waits for her to be decent enough to sneak past John B's bedroom to the bathroom at the end of the hallway.

The clothes are soaked through with rainwater, so they feel quite uncomfortable to slip back on, but they merely redress enough to be covered. She stole his shirt to avoid putting her shorts back on, the hem of the grey tee hanging right at the tops of her thighs when she walks. As soon as she slips her panties back on and picks up the rest of their cold, wet clothes, that's the cue he needs to scoop her up and take her away.

Y/N curses under her breath in surprise at feeling her feet being plucked off the ground, but she relaxes again once she's settled in his arms, realizing that it was just him who snuck up behind her and lifted her into his arms.

She doesn't say anything on the way to the bathroom. Instead, she lays her head on his shoulder in exhaustion and finds herself staring at the mark she left behind on his neck.

It's a deep, purplish red against the backdrop of his tan skin...the Pogues will surely notice the next time they see him. And while it will make her blush, it won't make her scared as it once would've. There may be a lingering sense of doubt and insecurity within her, but she wants this with him. Even if it means being teased by their friends or dealing with the jealousy of watching kook girls and tourons at parties hit on him, she wants this.

By the time the shower is spraying the rainwater from her hair and washing her clean of sweat sticking to her skin, she realizes that he isn't saying anything either, but she doesn't think it's out of any awkwardness or miscommunication. There's truly nothing to say, at least for now.

Though they didn't have the chance to talk in depth about everything yet, neither of them thinks of that right now. All they know is that they're together, whether it be officially or not, and it feels good. For once, something in his life feels right, and he lets himself enjoy it in silence.

The shower is a cramped space when shared between them and the wet clothes they have draped over the back edge of the tub, but they make it work. It's not like they mind anyway.

They bump into one another whenever they do so much as breathe, and the white walls echo the sounds of her giggling when he tries to tickle her. She leans her head back against his chest and lets out a laugh with shampoo dripping down the front of her face, and he'll be damned if he ever heard a sound as intoxicating as that.

It's a little weird. He's never been as soft and loving with a person before, and he has already felt overwhelmed in the lulls of quiet between them when he's given the chance to think about it.

When she washes his hair for him, insisting that she must return the favor after he so kindly washed hers, he was struck with the same mixture of wanting to simultaneously lean into and pull away from her that he felt the night of the party.

The warmth of the water loosens his sore muscles, washing suds of the green apple scented shampoo over his shoulders and down, down, down until it circles the drain beside his feet. All the while, her fingertips are delicately tracing over a healing bruise on his torso. Those pretty lips of hers are painted in a suppressed frown that she can't hide from him.

"Are you okay?" Y/N asks.

His instant reaction is to fake a smile, to brush it off and distract her as he usually does, yet he doesn't. He forces himself to remain neutral and not push her away.

"Happens all the time," he murmurs, shrugging and averting his eyes to reach for the soap off on the ledge.

The hands holding either side of his waist tighten as he tries to turn, pulling him back to her with more strength than he knew to anticipate from her. Their chests gently collide back together beneath the stream of water, and she can feel his breathing catch for a second or so in response.

The fact that their relationship has changed doesn't change how she handles this aspect of his life. Their new confessions don't have an impact on the part of his life he never wants to let anyone see, so she isn't going to force him to talk about it because they're trying out this whole relationship thing now. He has hard boundaries that she knows not to push sometimes. That's the way it is, and it might change as they grow closer but she knows to accept it for the moment.

As soon as he hears what she has to say next, he could crumble in relief at the realization that their new dynamic doesn't change anything.

"I didn't necessarily mean...that...I meant generally, you know? It's just that—" she sighs, "you shrink away a little when I hold you, and I wondered if I was making you uncomfortable."

Before she could finish the sentence, JJ was already thinking of what to say to prove her wrong, because that's not it. That's not what it is, and if she thinks she's done anything wrong, he'll do anything to convince her otherwise because it isn't her. It's him.

It's his dad lingering in the darker trenches of his mind, commanding his fear and attention so that even when he isn't physically present, he's still here. Part of why he denied wanting her was because he knew these types of things would arise in the beginning, that there would be difficult adjustments to make and conversations to be had, and he didn't want her to leave him as soon as she was faced with one of these things.

He shakes his head.

"You didn't do anything."

The feeing of her chest rising and falling with his begins to steady him after a moment of allowing the initial hesitation to dissolve. His internal reaction to her touch is the mental incarnation of a flinch. It's him waiting for the other shoe to drop and expecting her to do something, to hurt him, before his mind catches up with his heart. But once he realizes everything's okay, he loves it.

"It's kinda embarrassing, but I guess when you touch me, I'm expecting something else," he says softly, scared that if he speaks too loudly, everyone in the world will know how weak he feels.

She should've figured, but hearing him say it is different than wondering what the reasoning behind it is. Hearing him admit it after months of strict avoidance on the topic is a sucker punch to the gut.

Both times they had sex, he was too distracted and thoughtless to get caught up in that part of himself, but it's when the bliss of the afterglow disappears that it creeps back in. That's why he could always handle touch when it came in that context. It was his way of obtaining what he wanted without having to face this side of it—a temporary fix to a greater web of issues.

But there's nothing temporary about her. He doesn't want her to leave him, not without him resisting the urge to beg her on his knees to stay and at least remain his friend, so there's no choice but to face these momentary challenges head on.

She pauses for a second, thinking, then says, "You don't have to be embarrassed about it, I get it. We'll just have to take it day by day then. We can take it slow, and you'll let me know if it gets to be too much, okay?"

It's hard not to be shocked by how well she's taking it. A lot of people probably wouldn't feel too great after someone they love tells them they expect to be hit whenever they touch them, yet she's taking it in stride.

Things are back to normal as soon as she sees the grin on his face.

"So, you're saying you're gonna be trying not to throw yourself at me all the time?" JJ asks, then clicks his tongue as though in thought. "I give you a week. Tops."

Her eyes go wide as she looks at him. She holds her hand over her heart as she pretends to be scandalized by such an accusation, but they know it's true. They both can't keep their hands off of one another, which is why it confuses him. How can he want to reject and enjoy her touch at the same time? Sure, the discomfort disappears after the first split-second, but the fact that it happens in the first place annoys him to no end.

She rolls her eyes and tries to hide the fact that she's giggling as she reaches for the soap.

"You're a little shit, you know that?"

He doesn't miss a beat, saying back, "Yeah but I'm your little shit, so I feel like that says more about you than it does me."

While he's too busy rinsing the rest of the shampoo out of his hair, she smiles to herself at what he said.

Hers.

Nobody has ever been hers before, or proclaimed themselves as belonging to her as proudly and casually as he just did, and her heart melts over the sweet sentiment he didn't think twice about.

Less than a day ago, she was agonizing over her relationship with him and trying to ignore how powerful those feelings for him were, and now they're here. She no longer has to steal glances when he looks away or hide how jealous she feels when other girls flirt with him. To finally let the tension disappear is an immense weight off of her shoulders.

The rest of the shower is as quiet as the start of it was, and that comfortable silence continues through from when they're drying off and redressing to when they hit the mattress in the spare bedroom with tired sighs.

After the day they had, the mere suggestion of sleep is enough to make them start yawning, so being able to slip beneath the sheets and rest their heads almost sings her to sleep instantly.

Their bodies are laying in the exact outlines of where they laid the night of the party, the only difference this time being their mindsets. This time around, they aren't holding themselves back from anything, and it's most evident in the little things. Like how she doesn't turn around to shield her face from him, instead laying with her head propped on the other end of his favorite pillow.

They're so close, their noses brush if they make any slight movements, and this would be enough for him to submit to the urge to drift into sleep if not for the fact that he feels her jolt when thunder rumbles loudly outside of the window.

Much like his own fears being pushed to the side amidst their desire for each other, her anxiety about the storm wasn't on her mind until they laid down to sleep.

She was so wrapped up in him and everything that happened between them that she didn't have the time to think again until now, until she hears the violent patter of rain against the roof and feels her stomach drop at the sound of the thunder. Suddenly, she's not the one reassuring him about his fearful reactions, it's the other way around.

His warm hand takes hers, snatching it up as though he's worried it'll disappear if he doesn't take it quickly enough, and she lets him. Her eyes flutter shut with the release of a slow, deep breath, and she lets the presence of his hand in hers bring her back to earth.

JJ asks into the darkness, "Can I take you out on a real date?" After a beat of silence, the comforting sound of his voice returns to her. "Not that this isn't fun, but I think you deserve a little more effort than John B's living room floor."

A short-lived chuckle escapes her—a win as far as he's concerned. It's difficult to lure her head from the clouds when she gets this way, and it isn't like he has much experience with calming her during these moments either, but that sounded good to him. It sounded like she wasn't thinking about the increased pace of her heart or the howling wind outside.

He was planning on asking anyway. However fitting of a first night together this was, he wants to take her out for real sometime soon. He doesn't have much money for it, like at all, but they can come up with something special together, even if it's similar to the same shit they usually do together. As long as it's time alone together, they don't necessarily care if it's a perfectly traditional first date.

The tip of his thumb rubs comforting circles onto the back of her hand in the brief time it takes her to respond, stroking the soft skin as if to tell her that everything's okay. It seems to say, I'm right here. Nothing can hurt you. And it might make her crazy, but she believes him. JJ could take her back out into the eye of the hurricane at this very moment and she'd still believe his unspoken promise of not letting her into harm's way.

"Of course," she says, then pauses, and the sound of her sleepy voice hardly reaches his ears when she speaks again, "...I'm sorry I avoided you for the past few days. I was scared to tell you how I felt but I shouldn't have left that morning."

The memory of waking up in his arms is fresh in the forefront of her mind, so much so that she can remember the way his breath felt where it exhaled in warm puffs onto her skin.

In the first few moments of consciousness, it was peaceful.

She laid awake for a minute or two to count his breaths and soak in the comfort of being cuddled up next to him, wishing she could stay there for hours. It wasn't until another moment passed that it clicked with her where she was and what was going on between them recently, and that was what prompted her to slip away from the bed to get ready for her day at work.

It was the second time in a row that she left him in that bed with nothing to wake up to but the cold absence of her body between the sheets he slept under, and he can't deny that it's part of why he holds onto her hand so tightly tonight. Even though she's promised him otherwise, he can't help but think she'll be gone by the time he wakes up. At this point, he's struggling to stay conscious. She can see those pretty eyes drooping more and more by the second, yet the hand holding hers doesn't loosen its grip.

He takes a deep breath and scoots closer to her, keeping his one hand in hers while the other arm drapes itself over her waist, and he can feel her relax into the touch.

"It's okay," he says.

It's easier for him to adjust to so much physical contact when he's the one initiating. He knows that's why she only reached out to hold his hand. If she had it her way, she would've already been cuddling with him as soon as they laid down, but he likes that she gives him the space to initiate it. In the ways it counts the most, she cares about him more than anyone else has.

The touch in itself is his way of accepting her apology. However, truth be told, he already forgave her for it before knowing his love was reciprocated could be a possibility.

Right when she's about to fall asleep, the screen door slamming open and shut with the wind on the back porch makes her whip her head around to look over her shoulder in the direction of the sound. It seems like every time he successfully distracts her from it, the storm finds new ways of reminding her of what's happening outside of the safety of the Chateau.

There's the sound of a barely audible, sharp inhale, then her whispering into the dark room as she looks at the closed door, "I can't believe I went out into that. What the fuck was I thinking?"

It's beginning to close in on her again; the sounds of the storm, the sense of being trapped no matter how safe they truly are, and the rising tidal wave of anxiety that picks up speed the more she tries to will it to stop. This is the part where she tries to relieve it in some way, usually by smoking weed to sleep or going to one of her parents so they can help her through it, but she can't help herself right now.

Debris was being picked and tossed around in the wind like it weighed nothing when she was out there, she could've been knocked into the marsh or struck by a piece of debris.

How could she be so stupid?

Not only could she have hurt herself, she could've hurt JJ knowing that he'd likely follow her out into the storm to bring her back inside, and the thought of him being hurt makes the tension in her chest heavier. Her breathing picks up speed, the anxiety starting to snowball out of control when—

"Hey, look at me," JJ says, reaching up to turn her head to face him, and she damn near crumbles in relief at feeling his hand cup her cheek. It doesn't make it all disappear, but it provides a momentary comfort that she doesn't take for granted. "You're safe here. You know damn well I'll do anything to protect you. I mean, shit, dude, if I have to go out there and tell that rain to fuck off, I will."

This draws out a laugh from her, chest stuttering with the happy sound through the tears glistening in her eyes, and he never wants to stop hearing it. His thumb swipes away the first teardrop that falls before it can slip over the apples of her cheeks. I'm Her quiet cries and shaky breaths continue for a while after the laughter disappears. For a second or two, he watches with his thumb still wiping her tears away and hopes that it'll be enough to comfort her, but it can't do it completely.

He pulls away from her to get up from the bed with an idea popping into his mind, but upon hearing her whine at the loss of contact with him, he pauses to say, "I'll be back quick, don't worry."

The remaining humorous side of her left wonders if he's actually gonna go tell the rain to fuck off, but he's just opening the bedroom door to trot out into the living room.

A candle burning on the coffee table illuminates the space for him, guiding him straight to the forgotten backpack she left slumped against the arm of the couch hours before their relationship was changed for the better. It takes him an instant to get there and back with the bag in hand, and he's digging through it for a second before climbing back into bed with her.

If anyone else rifled through her bag, sifted through her personal belongings, and dug her phone out of it, she'd probably be annoyed, but she never is with him. She's inherently protective of her things, but JJ can do whatever he wants and it has always been that way. It should've been the first warning of what was to come.

He pulls the sheet back over his body and scoots up close to her, trying to resist the urge to retreat at first when he maneuvers her to lay with her head on his shoulder. It should trigger the flight or fight response that often alarms in his head, but he's able to push it away.

She's so vulnerable right now, so gentle and in need of the warmth of another person that he isn't as intimidated. It's not that she couldn't hurt him if she wanted to right now, she could, but he knows her. He knows that the last thing she'd ever want to do is hurt him, so he has to remind himself of that and give himself the permission to enjoy the physical intimacy of her touch. The part of him that questions if he even deserves it can't reach him now, not when he's so focused on her.

"Thumb?" he asks with the phone held out expectantly.

The screen is less than two inches from her face, so she has to push it back slightly, but she flattens her thumb to the button without further hesitation.

When he unwraps the pair of headphones from around the palm of his hand and plugs them into the charging port, she realizes why he left in the first place.

When she was facing away from him, eyes shut and headphones in to distract herself with music earlier, he was stealing glances at her every so often. He tried to keep away from her for the most part. It was difficult though, especially knowing what she said about being jealous the night of the party and knowing how scared she was of the hurricane. He couldn't help but keep an eye on her, for both his own selfish needs and his worry for her.

He keeps an arm tucked around her, pressing her body into his while he pops one of the headphones into her ear and the other into his. The thing is, her eyes aren't trained on the screen like his are once he starts looking through her vast collection of not-so-legally acquired music for a song that suits both of their tastes, they're trained on him.

Their taste in music tends to diverge in certain ways and overlap in others, so there's always a fifty/fifty shot of him liking what she plays when she's the one picking the music. That is why he smiles to himself and halts the endless scrolling in its tracks to hover his thumb over one song.

He obviously heard it before she played it that one time, but it's different for him now. They were riding together in the backseat of the Twinkie on the way to the beach with John B, Kie, and Pope when they let her take her turn to play a song.

That's how it is with them, the driver goes first, then it goes to the front seat passenger, and so on and so on until they make their way back to the beginning of the rotation. It was her turn when she picked this song, and it could've been the song, or the sunset shining through the window, but he felt as though his heart exploded when he looked at her in the middle of it.

He remembers feeling confused, confused as to why he couldn't catch his breath and why he suddenly adored the song he only heard casually a couple of times.

It was her. It was everything about her. The soft hum of her voice murmuring the lyrics, too shy to actually sing them in the presence of anyone else, was too delicate for the others to appreciate over the sounds of the van. He heard it though. He clung to it and admired her, so unashamed in his staring that he didn't realize he was doing it. It wasn't until she noticed that he stopped.

"Do I still have ice cream on my face or something?"

Her fingers came up to wipe at the corner over her mouth, and the action sent him turning his attention away quicker than he knew he could move, pulling the lighter out of his pocket to fiddle with as he mumbled, "Yeah, but you got it off now."

The cheery melody of Just Like Heaven bursts out of each headphone into their ears.

How did he know? How is he constantly reading her mind without realizing it?

This was her first song on the couch that she couldn't stand to sit through without thinking, naturally, of him when confronted with the topic of love. Somehow, it's like he knew that, and instead of feeling exposed and scared he'll know her feelings like before, she feels loved.

She is never skipping this song again.

"Go to sleep," he murmurs, clicking the screen off and resting it on his stomach.

It takes him a short thirty seconds to fall into an easy, calm pattern of breathing that tells her he isn't asleep, but soon will be. But she's fighting her sleepiness to continue looking at him. His eyes are fluttered shut, hair messy on the pillow, and she'd want to reach up to kiss him if he weren't trying to fall asleep.

Instead, she settles for matching her quickened breaths to the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath her hand and shuts her eyes along with him.

By the time the song reaches its end, she thinks he's asleep, but she still whispers, "Thank you," and feels his arm squeeze around her body in response.

The next songs fade into white noise at this point for her, drowning out the storm to the point where she begins to forget it's happening out there.

Maybe they can be each other's safe place when things get rough. After all, he handled this wonderfully considering his lack of experience with her anxiety and she never pushes him on his plethora of unsorted issues, even when she wants so badly to be the one to initiate the touch.

She never makes him think she pities him, or wants to "fix" him like so many partners with savior complexes who will never try to understand how it feels often do in these situations. With each other, maybe it doesn't have to be so complicated anymore, even when they have those inevitable arguments here or there.

The last thing he does before allowing himself to be dragged under is brush his lips on her forehead in a tender kiss. And when he eventually wakes to the rising sun shining through the windows in the aftermath of the violent hurricane, she's still there.

Tag List: @jjjmaybank, @its-simply-fanfiction, @naughtydild0swaggins.

#jj maybank #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank smut #outer banks #obx s2 #obx #fanfiction

[wormstacheangel]

Day 2 of @spnprideweek and part 2 of sobrenatural fic

Dean ended up coming home a little sooner than he should have, but he didn’t want to lose the shower to Sam. He didn’t want to be sweaty and cochino for his not date with Cas.

Maybe he should have cooled it with the cumbia, making it too obvious that Dean was in a good mood because as soon as he was heading out the door—smelling great, he may add—su Tio called him over to the kitchen.

“¡Oye! ¿A dónde vas tan cambiado?” Tio Bobby was by the stove, smashing the beans for dinner, as he raised his eyebrows at Dean. Sam was standing by the sink peeling tomatillos as he cranes his neck to look over at Dean.

“Dude, what did you do? Break the damn cologne bottle?”

“Es mucho?” Dean lifted his arm to smell himself. “It’s fine!”

“¿Me vas a contestar?” Bobby threw in some whole chiles into the beans and let them simmer away. “¿Quieres que te hable en inglés? Where are you going, niño feo?”

“Estas siego, viejo!” Dean walked over to the small mirror that hung on the wall. You can barely see yourself in it because of the Jesus painting on it, but it still worked. “I’m just going out with some friends.”

“Mmm.” Bobby hummed in reply, going back to turn off the beans once they looked how he wanted it. “Llévate a tu hermano.”

“Tio!” Dean turns around, wide-eyed and heart racing. “I can’t take Sam!”

“I’ll go get my coat!” Sam rinsed off his sticky hands and started to walk out of the kitchen, but Dean grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him in close. Pinning him down against his chest, which was difficult considering the kid is a damn giant.

“You aren’t coming with,” Dean mutters to him before begging Bobby again. “Tio, I’ll take Sammy with me tomorrow! Nomas hoy no.”

“¿Y porque no?”

Dean looks between curious eyes, not knowing how to explain himself. He can’t say he’s going out with a friend cause then there would be no reason why Sam couldn’t tag along. But he didn’t want to come out to his Tio and brother now! Fuck that shit; he’ll just lie.

[continue reading under the tab or on ao3]

“I’m going to meet up with Cassie.” Technically true.

Bobby’s eyes widened, and Sam’s grin grew while he wiggled himself free from Dean’s grip. They both liked Cassie and were mad at Dean for breaking things up between them. However, it wasn’t tough when Cassie rarely gave him any attention, always busy with work and school. She had to know Dean was holding her back, so he broke it off. She was mad at him for a while but ultimately thanked him for doing something she didn’t have the courage to do. Rumors still spread, though, because of course, they do, about Dean cheating, but he didn’t care much about those.

Su Tio, though, cared a lot. Dean has to constantly remind him that Dean didn’t cheat on her, and he just broke it off cause Cassie was too smart for him.

Cas is probably too smart for him too.

“Okay, pues, have fun! Bring her home to say hi.” Bobby practically pushed him out the door with Sam happily towering behind him with the same annoying grin.

Dean wondered how disappointed they would be if they found out he was going out with a guy instead.

Dean drove to Cas’s house, waiting outside a few minutes before seven. He wasn’t sure what he should do. Does he honk the horn, or is that too rude? Should he park and get out of the car to knock? That seemed too much like a date thing. And he still wasn’t sure if this was a date or two not-strangers hanging out.

He stayed in the middle of the street, unsure of what to do until finally, the front door opened, and Cas stepped out with a jacked hanging on his arm. He stood outside and squinted at the car before tilting his body down to check if that was Dean.

Dean’s panic from before melted away while he nervously waved at Cas. He saw Cas’s eyes widen with a slow-growing grin before he practically ran over to Dean.

As soon as Cas opened the door, Dean felt so sure that there was nothing more right than having Cas sitting in his passenger side.

“You ready to go, Angelito?” Dean looked Cas over; he’s dressed in dark jeans and a grey long sleeve. He has never seen Cas in anything but that rumpled old suit. He never minded the suit, but now he wished he could burn it because all that suit did was hide Cas’s muscled body. Dean couldn’t stop the whistle that escaped his lips as he said, “Mira! You look good, Cas.”

The compliment was shocking to them both, for Dean especially. He awkwardly cleared his throat while trying to think of an excuse. Maybe even use the whole English as a second language excuse, but Cas quietly responded with a, “Thanks, Dean. You look pretty good yourself.”

And maybe those words broke him. He knew he was attractive but having Cas say that made his head spin.

“Your car is beautiful, by the way. I wasn’t sure if that was you in here.”

“Did you expect me to come in that bike?” Dean jokes before slowly driving away from the house, Los Angeles Azules playing softly on the radio did not make things any less awkward.

“I don’t know what I expected. I’m just glad you came, Dean.”

Dean stopped at the end of the block and turned towards the guy sitting beside him. Cas was already looking at him with puppy dog eyes and a beautiful, hopeful smile. His breath catches in his throat as his mind gets overwhelmed with wanting to reach out and touch Cas. Just to make sure the beautiful boy in his passenger seat was real and make sure que su corazon isn’t just playing games with him.

Instead, he tightened his hold on the steering wheel, fingers burning in protest, as he melts into Cas’s smile. Wanting to relax and just be with him for tonight, not caring que alguien lo va mirar. Enjoy this non-date that looks like it has the chance to become an actual one.

But is that what Dean actually wanted?

“Dean,” Cas reached over to gently touch his arm as if knowing that Dean’s mind had wandered off. He looked hesitant, as if not sure if he was allowed to. “Do you want to go eat? We can if you want.”

Dean looked down at the hand that was burning him through his clothes, knowing damn well that Cas was giving him the chance to make this into something more. Algo que se sentía que iba a ser cósmico en su vida. Y Dean quería eso en su vida.

“Yeah,” Dean answered both questions. His hand loosened on the wheel before he reached over to take Cas’s hand in his. Hearing Cas’s breath catch in a gasp, but he didn’t look up at him; instead, Dean twined their fingers together before letting them sit in the seat between them. Dean focused back on the road before turning left to his side of town. “I got the perfect place. Te va gustar! You’re not like vegan or anything, right?”

“No.” Dean turned to catch Cas looking at him still and knew they were both feeling the same excited electricity that clouded the car just by the giddiness in his voice. “Where are you taking me on our, oh um…Oh! primero! Primero date, Dean?”

Ahi esta! La confirmación que necesitaba. This is an actual date! Pero, las palabras no le dieron pánico. No. Instead, Dean squeezed Cas’s hand as he laughed, feeling like he would just fly away if he didn’t hold on.

“You passed high school Spanish, Cas?”

“I did, but google translate did most of the work.”

When Dean parked outside the familiar food truck, he squeezed Cas’s hand once before they got out. They walked together, bumping shoulders while their hands stayed buried in their pockets. Cas didn’t question their lack of touch; instead, he smiled up at Dean as he listened to him rave about his friend Victor’s food.

“Not as good as mine, but it’s good,” Dean adds as they make it to the front of the window, where Victor can hear him.

“Cabron!” Victor said with no fire in his tone but a growing grin across his face. He held his hand out for Dean to take for a handshake. “Nice to see you, primo. Where’s Sam?”

“Lo deje en la casa!” When Dean took a step back, he put his arm around Cas’s shoulder to squeeze him close. “Pero, I brought a new customer.”

“Hi.” Cas looked a little shaken up, and Dean just wanted to lean closer to leave a kiss on his cheek, but he restrained. No necesita mas chisme circling around about him. “I’m Cas.”

“Victor.” Victor raised an eyebrow at him but reached over to shake Cas’s hand in response. “What can I get you and the pendejo around you?”

“Oh. Dean isn’t-” Cas frowned over at Dean, but Dean just shook his head, letting him know that it was okay. Cas squinted at him before he gave a small smile, not understanding but accepting. “You order for me?”

“Sure, Angelito. Anything you don’t like?”

“As long as it’s not so spicy, I don’t mind anything.”

Cas stayed stiff under Dean’s arm as they ordered and waited for their food. Eventually, Dean couldn’t help himself; the street light and the neon sign were the only things keeping this place lit, but it was still pretty dark, so he turned his face to press his nose against Cas’s temple.

“¿Qué pasa, Angelito? What’s wrong?”

“Dean.” Cas sounded shocked as he started to move back, but Dean held him a little tighter. “Someone is gonna see you.”

“Que miran. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

Cas sighed but relaxed back into Dean. “I just didn’t like him calling you that. You aren’t stupid, Dean.” Dean chuckled, and Cas turned to look at him, glaring. “I don’t see how this is funny.”

“Ay, mi Angelito, he didn’t say it in a mean way. It’s just the way we talk to each other. He’s my friend.”

Cas blinked at him a few times before he fell back against Dean, his arms crossed over his chest. “Well, I don’t like it.”

“Trust me, Cas, it’s fine. Quedate conmigo long enough, and you’ll be calling me the same thing.”

Cas didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and Dean wondered if he said the wrong thing again, but then Cas clicked his tongue before turning to Dean. “I don’t know what…um, that word you said means. Que..que-?”

“Quedate?” Cas nodded, looking back at Dean, waiting for him to explain. It brought warmth to Dean’s chest, knowing he’ll have to repeat it in English when before it came out as a joke. He swallowed hard as he looked back at those baby blues. The words barely came out in a quiet whisper, “Quedate. Stay. Conmigo. With me. I said, stay with me.”

“Oh.” Cas looked down at Dean’s lips as he talked. “I can-I can do that.”

Dean hummed a response as his eyes traveled down to Cas’s tongue poking out to lick at his lips. His heart was hammering in his chest until it came to a stop when he heard, “Dean! Oye, cabron! I ain’t calling your name again!”

They pulled apart, and Dean jogged over alone to grab their bag of food. Dean decided to get a few of his favorites and drinks.

“Victor,” Dean called his friend over again. “No le digas a nadie que estaba aquí. Okay? Or I’m gonna steal all your customers otra vez.”

Victor’s eyes traveled from Dean to Cas, who was waiting where Dean left him looking angelic under the streetlamp, before falling back to Dean. He wondered what could be going through Victor’s mind right that moment, but then he heard his friend let out a heavy sigh.

“Whatever you say, primo.”

“Thanks. Call me tomorrow, and I’ll work for you this weekend!” Dean starts walking backward, back to Cas.

“Shit! Really? ¡No juegues conmigo, Dean!”

“Llámame mañana!”

Dean makes it back to Cas, who automatically reaches for the drinks to help, and motions for him to walk back to the car.

“Come on. I wanna take you somewhere else.”

Dean drove them somewhere nicer, more private, but still a parking lot.

As soon as Dean parks the car, he opens his door, “Come on; we can sit on the hood. You might wanna put that jacket on.”

Cas looks excited when he opens the car door and walks out into the parking lot that faces the beach. “Dean! Won’t we get a ticket?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just bring the drinks.”

They sat on the hood of the impala, eating and talking, as the sounds of the waves crashing to the shore mixed with la musica norteña coming from inside the car. Dean soon finds out that Cas doesn’t know how to dance, so he puts on one of his favorite mixtapes, and cumbia plays loudly through the speaker.

They danced in front of the headlights, if you can call it dancing. They always ended up bursting into fits of laughter as they fell into each other because Cas did have two left feet. Eventually, Dean just took Cas from around the waist, and they just spun around in circles.

Feeling Cas wrap his arms around Dean’s neck to hold him as their grins were so close together made Dean’s heart leap. Eventually, Cas’s forehead fell against Dean’s, and the dancing slowed to a nice sway even though the beat was only getting quicker.

“Cas?” He answered Dean with a soft hum. “Me estas gustando mas cada segundo.”

“I don’t know-”

“I like you.” Dean’s eyes closed as he leaned in to brush their noses together. “Mi Angelito.”

Dean never thought he would be here in this situation with a guy, but he has never wanted anything more in his life. Feeling strong hands run through his hair as a strong and firm body pressed against him. He loved the intoxicating smell of Cas’s woodsy shampoo that he would have never smelled on a girl. The stubble of beard rubbed against his chin as Cas turned his head until finally, fucking finally, he had those pink lips on his.

He should be scared. Esto no es algo que debería hacer con El pinche Sonidito playing in the background. He shouldn’t have one hand behind Cas’s neck to deepen the kiss, and his toes shouldn’t curl up when he feels Cas’s heavy sigh inside his mouth. He shouldn’t become so quickly addicted to Cas’s hands reaching under Dean’s shirt to press firmly at his back, feeling the familiar slight burn become a damn forest fire in him.

Esto no es algo que debería querer. Cas no es alguien que debería querer pero aqui esta. Queriendo a nadie más pero a Cas. Cas. Cas.

Cas pulled away just enough only to have their noses touching, their breaths still mixing, as he whispered. “I like you too, Dean.”

And yeah. That was it. That was all it took.

Las cadenas del maldito miedo that held him back from even thinking of wanting Cas this way, se rompieron. Dean ya pertenece completamente a Cas.

Cas grinned as he looked back at Dean, his hand reaching to cradle his face gently. His thumb was caressing Dean’s freckles on his cheek before he happily announced. “¡Me gustas mucho!”

Dean laughed, his arms reaching down to wrap around Cas’s waist and spin him around. Both of them laughing as they continued dancing and kissing until it was late enough that they had to go home.

#inspo from a real date of mine! #instead of the beach we went to a lake and we had to leave early cause i thought I was gonna die #being in mexico and around water just makes me think of the llorona and i get scared so sue me #but this is much better #destiel #deancas #fic #destiel fluff #destiel fic #destiel fanfic #latinenatural #sobrenatural #wormstachewrites #my writing #spnprideweek #also yes i know im late for day two but life has been a mess

[atopearth]

Brothers Conflict (Passion Pink) Part 2 - Asahina Kaname Route

Okay, I'm not the most interested in Kaname since he feels like such a pervert lmao, but we'll see I guess loll. LOL I hate it when Kaname makes everything become so sexual, but I really like his voice so I'm confused😭 It's so cute how Ema is becoming more snarky with her responses to Kaname because he's so over the top with what he says lol. I love how Ukyo is the one who scolds Tsubaki and Kaname for troubling Ema with their incessant flirting, like geez to them lol! I love how Ukyo told Kaname to like get away from her forever😂😂 Anyway, I think I'm already kinda warming up to Kaname, just because on the dates, he's not so "crazy" about her and acts normal lol, but still really loving and sweet. I liked how he held her hand when she got a bit cold after the dolphin show, he probably knew she would be uncomfortable if he hugged her, so he did that at least and I think that was quite considerate of him considering how he usually acts haha. Lmao when the right option was to say that she wants to be like Kaname (kind and attentive), it was kinda cute how he laughed and thought she was cute for saying that hahaha.

Aww I love the zoo one where Ema doesn't go check out Tsubaki and Azusa filming because it's a day out with Kaname and she wants to properly spend time with him because of that. Lmao when Ema got turned off on going on the rollercoaster after Kaname said it would be wonderful to hold her hand and kiss her when it gets to the highest part on the ride lolll. Well, he didn't explicitly say her but he might as well have😂 Aww, even though I thought Ema was really reckless to overdo it looking for Wataru in the rain, but I think alike Kaname, it was really nice to see that she cares so much for the brothers that she was so obstinate about finding him before caring about herself. I would have loved to see Kaname hug her~~ I agree with Kaname though, there's something about listening to the waves at night, seeing the sky and the ocean kinda merge together, and you start to think about how vast everything is and how small other things are. It really helps to calm you down, but I guess at the same time it can be unsettling though haha. Kaname is such a sweet talker to say that he would save her before she would even get scared or cry hahaha. I definitely love the more serious Kaname, there's something really mature and alluring about him when he's not joking around haha. LOL when he went over to the water and tripped over seaweed😂😂 It was so cute how he pulled her into the water too for laughing at him. OMG I DIDN'T EXPECT THAT!! I knew he was going to be corny and say that love is mightier than the pen and the sword but I honestly didn't think he would kiss her so suddenly!!! The CG is so beautiful btw. Something I wish Masaomi's route had was something like a kiss CG though, that would have been so nice, they were just so polite with each other all the time, it was kinda sad we never got to see anything more romantic, it was still cute though of course but yeah~ I'm really enjoying Kaname's route now.

Okay, I died when Ema fed Kaname her Bento when they went to the park, like omggg that's so cute. Honestly though for Ema, regardless of whether she likes Kaname or not, I think it's a bit hard to act normal with him after he kissed her like that on the family holiday lol. Omggg, Kaname was pretty pushy, but honestly him asking if he could kiss her again and stuff was pretty hot lolll! Especially when he licked or kissed her ear or something loll omg. He's moving wayy too fast for Ema's innocent mind haha. But at least even though he's pushy, he's never really forced her to do anything, and the drive to the night view was something she was okay with going to with Kaname. But she did trust him to not overdo it and he did push her past her boundaries a bit so yeah...it was hot but also I felt bad for Ema. Okay, Kaname apologised to her, that's good. I guess her avoiding him and Iori telling Kaname how down she seemed helped him realise he might have gone a bit too far lol. Omgg when drunk Subaru pushed Ema down though, like it was hot, but I felt so bad for her because she was scared, I think Azusa comforting her after he saw them though was what made my heart melt. He's so sweet, I love Azusa😭 Anyway, ever since I checked Kaname's VA and realised that it's Suwabe Junichi (VA for Archer from Fate/stay night), I was like, no wonder why I love his voice!! Hahaha, and yes, now I like Kaname even more loll. I'm so glad Ukyo was there to hit Kaname at the cultural festival, lmao at the things he says sometimes, like seriously, super inappropriate lol. But lmao at Kaname announcing to her classmate that he's Ema's boyfriend loll.

Honey in cafe au lait?? Is that a thing??🤔 Anyway, I usually hate it when the guy is jealous and possessive, but honestly when Kaname got jealous and mad, I couldn't help but feel a bit happy because it was kinda..cute? Hahaha. On the other hand, Azusa being a bit "mad" that Kaname took Ema away was cute too, I love him loll. It's kinda interesting how Ema always thinks Kaname is playing around with her and isn't serious at all, but then she does stuff like stay over in his room hahaha, anyway, it's cute how he always says good morning to her~ When Ema asked if they could sleep together (since she couldn't sleep), I knew Kaname would find it difficult to hold himself back, but dangg, the kisses🥰🥰🥲 Awww Kaname let her use his arm as a pillow, that's actually really cute. Anyway lmao I find it hilarious that Juli the squirrel is calling her pitiful for spending Christmas Eve playing games hahahah. It's kinda cute how hardcore Ema is when it comes to games though lol. Lmaoo at Yusuke and Tsubaki's new year's wishes, they're so silly😂 It was kinda interesting to see both Ema and Kaname bury the kitten, mainly because it was nice to hear that the idea of the dead's souls/hearts returning to the side of those who think about them is a nice way to view death? Honestly though, I really want to like Kaname but his "romantic scenes" have been irking me quite a bit, especially the last one sleepover CG(?), like I really like how hot he sounds and I alwaysss get enraptured by his voice but seriously, he needs to stop lol. Like, if Ema was more receptive to his advances, I think I wouldn't be as uncomfortable but she's always telling him no and to stop it, but he just continues and says afterwards that he held himself back already. Like excuse me dude, if you held yourself back, you wouldn't be practically forcing yourself on Ema and touching her without her permission especially when she says no. Like seriously, he's the adult here! Anyway, yeah I feel like the only time I liked him was around the kiss scene lol. On the other hand, I find it interesting that Ema still thinks Kaname is just playing around with her when he's kissed her and stuff. To be fair though, he's always teasing her and he's never seriously told her his feelings in a way that she would understand as not playing with her so I'd say it's more his fault, especially since she's younger and more naive, and she considers him her brother so...

Very Kaname-like to give Ema perfume for White Day and then tell her to only use it when she goes out with him haha. HAHAHA, I just realised I missed out on a funny zoo date where Kaname asks Ema what animal she thinks he would prefer compared to Juli, and she said it probably doesn't really matter to him because he likes human girls the most😂😂 I mean, it's nice that Ema finally realised her feelings when she saw Kaname with another girl and Tsubaki and Yusuke said he always does that and is never serious about any girl, but it was pretty random and sudden tbh lol. I feel like it could have been done better especially since most of Kaname and Ema's recent scenes have just been him "attacking" her lol. I'm glad that Tsubaki who is usually as playful as Kaname is, is now shouting at Kaname telling him to stop playing around with her if he isn't serious, because really, if she doesn't understand and think so, there's no point if he thinks he is serious. Oh wow, did Kaname just break his phone to prove that he's serious about her and won't talk to other people? Lol! Whaaat! Kaname quit being a monk and went to his mother's company?? Honestly though, I'm rather suspicious of this monk thing, like was he actually a host all along? Lol, I mean, we never actually got to see him do anything related to his work this whole entire route lol. Anyway, the kyodai/brother ending is really weird considering the flow of events and how Kaname kissed her and stuff for alllll those months, like that doesn't make sense!! Lol anyway doesn't matter. Btw, Kaname in the epilogue(?) is sooo hot in a suit, and omggg at Ukyo discovering their relationship in the worst way especially with how Kaname says stuff lol. Otherwise, the CG was niceeee 🥰

Overall, I loveee Suwabe Junichi's voice and I really think he made Kaname a better character than he actually was lmao. Honestly, I really enjoyed the beginning of this route and I really thought I'd love their relationship because of how forward Kaname is, but I think from the middle onwards, I lost a lot of interest because of how clunky the flow of events were, and the events themselves were rather disappointing I guess. Most of the events that happened after the kiss was mostly just Kaname "teasing" Ema and a lot of them were more uncomfortable than sexy even though his voice really made me love and hate it lolll. My heart was confused haha. Kaname does a lot of things that are a bit over for me especially since Ema isn't very receptive towards it and tells him to stop but he really doesn't and touches her quiteeee a bit, so yeah I didn't like it all that much, but at the same time I could never really understand Ema either? Lol. Like, she seemed so confused throughout the route about Kaname and I feel like she only liked him because I "chose" him through the dialogue options than because she really liked him lol. I think a lot of it was just awkward, especially her revelation that she likes him, like lady, you saw him with Hikaru before too lol, but anyway their "confession" of love to each other was also pretty underwhelming considering how frustrating their relationship was throughout the route lol. Otherwise, I loved Kaname's voice and if you ignore how much he touches Ema and says so many inappropriate crap, he's actually pretty sweet and loving. I definitely prefer Masaomi overall though haha.

#brothers conflict

[fbfh]

thankful for my (found) family - demisquad + reader thanksgiving special

2.4k

platonic everyone + reader, implied future/potential leo x reader if you look real close, thalia has a girlfriend that I had to make up bc they never mention hunters of artemis but go off rick, calypso is not included bc she acts more like an antagonist imo, gif doesn’t have anything to do with it besides nostalgia lmao

happy thanksgiving <33

You and Leo are cooking in the kitchen 

You have been all day

The doorbell rings, and Annabeth goes to answer, binder full of travel plans in hand

“That should be-”

Clarisse enters with a loud greeting and a hug to everyone in arms reach

Percy’s loud cheers echo from the living room as he calls out the new score of the football game he’s keeping everyone updated on

She drops her bag, hopping over the back of the couch to watch with Percy

“Woah woah, catch me up Jackson! What'd I miss?”

Hazel is helping Rachel make cute diy table settings and party favors 

Rachel, as with most art projects she takes on, is very focused on making it Martha Stewart levels of cute and amazing 

Frank and Piper are keeping everyone updated on the parade 

Frank pops down the stairs, calling out, “The last performance just ended, the dog show starts in 5!”

Hazel drops what she's doing and exclaims, “THERE’S A DOG SHOW?!” 

She runs upstairs to watch with Frank, her yellow dress swishing behind her

You chuckle, calling over to Annabeth as you mix batter in a bowl, " Hey Annabeth, how are the travel plans looking?"

She shuffles through some papers in her binder

"Magnus and Alex had another layover, but they should still be able to make it in time. Thalia and her hunter friend will be here in 10, and Travis's flight got delayed because of a sudden snow storm."

"Really?" You reply, "This time of year? That's pretty ironic for a son of Hermes..."

"I know, I'm looking at some shuttle services to see if that would be faster…" Annabeth replies

Nico enters, stealing a couple appetizers, "This is so stupid, I could just go get him."

Will, right behind him, eats the appetizer Nico hands him and replies, "No you can't. Doctors orders."

Nico starts to protest 

Will shoots him a look 

"Boyfriend's orders."

Nico tries in vain to stare him down,  "… Va’ a farti fottere." he says, cracking a smile

"Love you too," Will counters 

You and Leo shoo them out of the kitchen before they steal more of your recipes

Jason and Grover walk by with a bunch of pillows and blankets, setting up guest rooms. 

Grover calls through the pile of fluff he's carrying, "Hey, we're gonna need a few more pillows-"

Jason, over his pile of bedding, corrects, "A lot more!" And Annabeth runs over to help carry some of the blankets he's about to drop

"-A lot more pillows…"

You grab your keys

"okay uh… Grover, do you want to head to the store to get some more pillows-"

Leo, vigorously sautéing something adds over his shoulder, "And basil! And, uh… red wine vinegar, olive oil, and potatoes."

You rip a piece of paper off the notepad on the fridge and scribble a quick list 

You're probably going to need some more ice, too 

Tyson, very distressed, holds up an empty container of mellowcream pumpkins, declaring, "THERE'S NO MORE BABY PUMPKINS!" :(

you loudly add candy pumpkins to the list

Rachel approaches. 

"Are you going to the store?"

"Yeah," you reply, "how's crafting going? You need anything? "

"We're almost out of glitter and mod podge. It's not looking good. We could use some more fake leaves, warm toned glitter, and rhinestones - the nice ones."

Grover looks slightly lost 

You narrate as you add to the list, "Fancy rhinestones, mod podge, fake leaves, red, yellow, orange, and brown glitter…"

Tyson, still distressed, yells, "AND BABY PUMPKINS!"

:(

You hold up the paper, "Already on the list, bud, Grover's gonna get them!"

"What if he gets the wrong kind?" Tyson asks 

You, turn to Grover quietly, "Grover, can you take Tyson?"

Grover nods

"Hey Tyson, Grover has a lot of stuff to get, could you go be his shopping buddy? That way you can pick out the right baby pumpkins."

He doesn't look convinced

He wants to keep working on a secret project he’s been doing out by the garage

"And…" you add, sweetening the deal, "you can get two candies for the way home."

He agrees

You turn to Grover; "I'll call you guys an uber-"

"I'll drive."

You all turn around, shocked to see Reyna awake. 

You thought she was still passed out 

She showed up at 9am and immediately fell asleep from traveling all night 

"Reyna, hi! Are you sure-"

"We'll be fine, I need to stretch my legs a little." She proves by rolling her shoulders

"Okay, as long as you're sure," you hand her the paper, re-entering the kitchen

She takes the paper from your hand as you shut off the beeping timer and grab a pair of oven mitts from the drawer

Reyna examines the paper, "...This is a weird list. Where are we supposed to get all this?"

Leo moves to the side as you pull out the rolls from the oven, using tongs to set them on a wire cooling rack, "Maybe target?"

Leo, still very focused on cooking, announces, "If you get me generic brand spices I will burn this place to the ground."

"O-kay," you turn back to Reyna, laughing, "there's a Wegmans and a Joanne's right next to the TJ Maxx, you can probably find everything there."

"We'll be back within the hour." She states, taking your keys. 

Rachel meets her at the door. "Here, use my card. Also, make sure you get the flat backed swarovski crystals. And please pick some glitter with a nice color shift!"

You remind them to call or text with any questions and be safe

Heading back into the kitchen, you fill up a big bowl with carrots, celery, cucumbers, and mushrooms

You grab two cutting boards, knives, peelers, and a plastic bag for the peels, tips, and tails

You set it all down on the coffee table in front Percy and Clarisse

“Can you guys get the relish tray started?” 

They agree, and immediately return to yelling at the referee

You shake your head laughing, and head back to the kitchen

“How we looking, Sparky?”

“Stuffing cups just went up in the oven, pie crust dough is chilling, and the green beans are almost done sauteeing. Rolls are cooling - could you stir the cranberry sauce? - and… the turkey is going up as soon as the stuffing is out.”

You stir the sauce as you continue talking

“Great! We’re making good time so far. Oh, I found a recipe for brown sugar pie, which Frank requested - apparently it’s a Canadian Thanksgiving thing - so I figured if you’re doing turkey I can handle the pies.” 

He pours some cooking wine into the pan, and shakes it as the alcohol burns off

“Sounds like a plan, babycakes.” 

You laugh at the nickname, and grab butter, salt, some herbs, and a stick blender to finish the potatoes

A few minutes later, you hear the door open 

Reyna and the boys are back already? That was quick

You wonder if they need help bringing groceries in

“Eeeey get over here you knucklehead!” 

Bags drop, and you hear Jason laughing in protest

You poke your head out of the kitchen, and see Thalia with Jason in a headlock

In spite of the fact that he’s about half a foot taller than her, she’s still noogie-ing him, pretending she can’t hear him objecting through his laughs

She finally lets him go, greeting everyone as he adjusts his glasses

She bear hugs Annabeth, punches Percy in the arm, and high fives and hugs pretty much everyone else

You run up the stairs to the guest room Grover was setting up before he left

You finish making the bed head back down, meeting Frank and Hazel on the way 

"Oh, Hazel, what did you think of the dog show?"

"It blew my wig!" She says giddily 

A confused smile settles on your face

"It was awesome and she loved it," Frank translates smoothly

He and Will are understandably best at deciphering 40s slang

Thalia is introducing everyone to Amber, a girl she’d met on the hunt and become really close with

You greet her, and turn to Thalia

“Your room is all set up if you wanna get settled in,” you turn to Amber, “and yours will be ready soon,” 

They share a look

“Oh,” Thalia starts grabbing their bags, “that’s fine, we can share a room. We share a tent on the hunt all the time, right Ambie?”

"Oh,”

And then it clicks

“yeah, however you’re comfortable.”

You grab one of the bags, and help them upstairs

“Why don’t you guys take a while to settle in, I’ll tell the others you’re resting.”

They thank you, and you start to leave

“By the way,” you poke your head back in, “you two seem really cute together. Welcome to the family, Amber.” 

She blushes and Thalia gives you an appreciative look

You nod and head back down

You let the others know they’re going to nap for a little while, and not to wake them up

“Hey, any travel updates?” You ask Annabeth, on your way back into the kitchen

“Alex just texted, she and Magnus are finally on their way, should be here in the next few hours. As for Travis…” 

She holds out her phone, showing you Travis’s tiktok

He’s filming the mirror in the airport bathroom

“So uh, my flight’s delayed, I’m bored, I’m gonna fuck with some people,” he holds out a hand full of stickers that look like outlets

He records himself putting them around the airport, then gets people’s reactions when they try to use them

He ends the video asking for more prank ideas

You look back up at Annabeth, holding back a laugh, “Seems like he’s doing okay,” 

“Oh,” she replies, “that’s not all.”

She scrolls up, showing the next prank video where Travis goes around the airport having fake phone conversations to get people’s reactions

Conversation topics including ‘I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but slept with your grandma’, ‘hey bro I can’t come to the party, also turns out I’m going to be your stepdad’, ‘hey dude remember that old lady we used to cat sit for? Well, I found out I got chlamydia from her, so…’, and ‘yeah man, I’m so excited for the poetry slam. Also, it turns out my jazz fever is actually syphilis.’. 

Your hand flies over your mouth, trying not to laugh loudly enough to wake Thalia and Amber

“Yeah,” Annabeth says, fighting her own laughter, “he’s doing okay.”

You start putting together ingredients for pie filling

“That is the most in character thing I could have imagined,” you laugh, and Annabeth shows Leo the videos

“There’s a bunch more, too,” she adds, “Around making tiktoks, he found a bus heading this way. He’ll be here in a few hours.” 

“Cutting it close,” you muse, filling pies, “I’m glad he’s not stuck at the airport though. How about Connor?” 

“Haven’t heard much from him, but he said he'll be here in time for dinner."

A little while later, Thalia and Amber re enter, joining Percy and Clarisse in the living room 

The door opens shortly after, and Tyson enters, arms full of containers of candy pumpkins 

Reyna and Grover are right behind him

You take Grover's bags, announcing that Thalia got here a little while ago

He bleats excitedly and runs to hug her, Reyna right on his heels

Piper and Tyson bring in the rest of the groceries

Tyson sets down the last bags in the kitchen, looks out the window, yells, "IT'S ALMOST SUNSET!", and runs back out into the back yard, presumably to finish his mystery project 

Everyone eventually makes their way to the living room, nibbling on appetizers and watching classic Thanksgiving specials 

The food is almost done, all that's left is decorating the pies and a little tidying up 

You walk over to Leo, placing your hand on his shoulder 

He looks up at you

"Why don't you go take a quick shower and change before dinner," you muse, knowing the hoodie and jeans he's been cooking in all day isn't the outfit he'd picked out, "I'll wrap things up in here,"

He thanks you, dramatically presses a kiss to your forehead, and exits the kitchen 

You decorate the pies distractedly, catching the doorbell right before the second ring 

You smile at the people about to enter

"Annabeth," you call, "Magnus and Alex are here!" 

She drops what she's doing, and runs over to greet them 

Leo is back down stairs a short while later 

His brick red hoodie replaced with a burgundy one - his fancy hoodie as he calls it - a heavy flannel layered on top, and a beanie pulled over his almost dry hair

His pyrokinesis makes you forget how cold he gets sometimes 

You're about to go upstairs to change out of your cooking clothes when Tyson enters dramatically 

"The surprise is done!"

Everyone files outside to see what Tyson made as he leads you all out to the garage 

Perfectly attached to the side, is a very small horse stable 

"Wow!" Percy starts, "Great job, dude!"

Tyson is beaming as he's showered with confused praise 

"So uh," Percy ventures, "what did you build it for?"

"Maybe something like this?!" Descending voices declare in unicen 

Travis and Connor land in front of you on no other than Blackjack

Everyone erupts into cheers

“I thought you were stuck at the airport! What about those tiktoks?”

“Saved in my drafts, baby!” Travis laughs

Percy greets Blackjack and everyone else heads back inside with Travis and Connor 

You run upstairs to shower quickly and change, and are back downstairs just in time for appetizers and drinks 

You're about to take a sip of coffee when the door opens 

An irregular set of footsteps echoes into the room, along with a familiar voice 

"Ah, children, I hope there's room for one more," 

Everyone turns in surprise as Chiron enters the room 

After lots of warm excited greetings and making sure he has a warm cup of tea, he settles in to chat for a while

"I was on my way to meet with my more, ah, rambunctious cousins, but I couldn't let a day like today pass without stopping by."

After two cups of tea and lovely conversations, Chiron heads out to meet up with the other party ponies 

Thalia, Percy, and Will get all the food on the dining room table while Rachel makes the finishing touches to the centerpieces 

Everyone finds their seat, and you make the first toast

"I think I can speak for everyone when I say I'm thankful for you guys - my found family."

Every glass is raised

You can all drink to that. 

#Heroes of Olympus #heroes of olympus headcanons #heroes of olympus x reader #Leo Valdez #pjo imagine #also the thing nico says to will means go fuck yourself in italian #bc he is a warm gushy affectionate boyfriend #:) #I was gonna put a translation but i think it's funnier if you google translate it yourself #especially if it says fuck you or some shit like that #never fails to make me laugh #also this was the first thanksgiving i can remember not being debilitatingly dissappointed on #so uh #i'm rlly happy abt that thanks mom ily #yeah when you cut a narcissist out of your life your debilitating dissappointment rates plummet #it's a nice feeling #lmfao oversharing hours are coming to a close #I hope you all had a good day today #if you don't celebrate american thanksgiving i hope your thursday was nice #ily all and I'm so grateful for all of you #I'm gonna try to answer all your nice asks soon i have had zero social juice or i would have done it already #cause i really wanna <333 #I love you babes #you're all the best xoxo #fr how did I manage to attract such nice people to my blog #not gonna look this gift horse in the mouth #anyway good night I hoep you enjou six or so pages of domestic hoo holiday fluff #bc I sure did uwu

[katie-writes24]

Five Of A Kind

Pairing: Poly!Hamilsquad x reader

Warnings: Language, fluff, opinionated comments towards the Spider-Man movies, I guess some things are implied, but barely

Just something I came up with. I’m a sucker for Poly!hamilsquad :) Takes place at the start of their relationship. Uh, shoutout to Pinterest for giving me prompt ideas ig? I’m going to start working on more requests after this. Enjoy!

She sat in a booth in the corner, watching through the window the busy streets of New York. The sun had been replaced by heavy clouds, and it was obvious it would rain any minute.

She tapped an impatient finger against the handle of her mug, looking at her phone once more before the seat across her was filled by John and Lafayette.

“About time,” She raises a brow and John looked back sheepishly.

“At least we’re not the last ones here,” Just then a waiter came over and took their drink orders. When he left, Laf took her hand into his.

“How are you, mon ange? We have not seen you in a while.” Y/N felt a pang of guilt hit her. She had been absent from the past months movie and game nights, missed out on a couple of dates, all due to school work piling up.

“I know, I’m sorry. Just had a lot of work to do. I swear, I won’t cancel again.” She smiled and Laf kissed her knuckles, only to be startled when Hercules threw an arm around him, pulling him into a kiss.

“Ce qui ne va pas avec vous? You scared me!” Laf put a hand to his heart while John snickered beside him.

Hercules chuckled and sat down next to Y/N, placing an arm at the back of the booth and kissing her cheek. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Alex is last, as usual. Give me my ten dollars,” He nudged Laf who rolled his eyes, but pulled out a bill from his wallet. The waiter came back with their drinks and took Herc’s order, as well as a coffee for Alex.

“Has he been working this late the whole week?” She asked. Though she has been doing the same recently, they all knew college classes and his job were totally different. Alex working late would only bring more tension, stress and sleep deprivation to them all.

“Just the past two days,” John shook his head, looking out the window as the rain came. “Dude doesn’t even think time exist anymore.”

“Speak of the devil,” Hercules nodded towards the front of the cafe, and they all watched him walk over.

“Fifteen minutes? That’s a new record, man.” Y/N said bitterly, but not really meaning it.

“Water falls from the sky and people don’t know how to drive.” Alexander sits next to Laf and takes off his jacket. “I’m sorry, I’ll buy this time.”

“Bribery will get you nowhere,” She sipped from her mug, but willingly ordered her meal carefree.

~~~~~

“So...it’s one character?”

“Correct.”

“But three different actors?”

“Right.”

“In three different...worlds?” Lafayette tilted his head as he watched the screen.

“Well...kinda. It’s basically in the same universe, but just different stories. Like the last Peter Parker is set in the same timeline as the Avengers.” Alex shoves more popcorn in his mouth as Laf narrows his eyes.

“I do not get it.”

“You don’t have to get it, babe,” John smiles and runs his hand through Y/N’s hair.

“Uh, yes, he does have to get it if we’re going to binge all of the Spider-Man movies,” She looked up at John as if he was crazy. He giggled and leaned down to kiss her forehead.

“All you have to understand is Andrew Garfield was the worst Spider-Man,” Hercules said, earning agreeing hums from Alex.

“But he is the cutest one,” Y/N smiled as she watched said actor on screen in his suit.

“Oh, I can totally fight with you on that!” Alex gave her an accusing stare.

“Non, I think he’s pretty cute!” Laf snuggles further into John, and the latter tilts his head up and gives him a peck on his jaw.

“You haven’t even seen Tom Holland yet, your opinions aren’t valid right now!” Alex throws popcorn at his head from the other couch.

“Shhhhh, this is the best part...” Herc put his finger up to Alex’s lips, and he quickly took it into his mouth, causing Hercules to groan in annoyance.

~~~~~

The bell above the door jingled, Hercules looking up from the suit he was working on. His concentrated frown turned into a warming smile as he saw her walk in with a plastic bag in her hand.

“Tell me there’s something edible in there?” He leaned his arms against the counter and smirked as she froze in her steps.

“Are you saying my presence isn’t enough for you?” Y/N scoffed and set the bag down next to him. “But yes, I might have some food in here.”

“I thought you had class?” Herc smiled as she pulled out two containers of burgers.

“I just finished, thought you’d be hungry. I knew you had to come in early, and from John’s drunk text last night, it seemed like you didn’t get enough sleep.” She laughed as he rolled his eyes.

“I got maybe four hours. I don’t know how Alex does it,” He munched on a fry and intertwined their hands together. “Thanks for the food.”

“Of course,” Y/N smiled and the two ate in comfortable silence after that. She could see the different types of fabric thrown across the back tables. It was an obvious sign of stress, it looked like Herc’s office at his apartment. When they finished their meal, she cleared her throat, “Hey, don’t stress yourself out okay? I know you guys are understaffed, but that doesn’t mean all the work has to be thrown on you.”

“I know, but I was the only one on shift today, which means I get all the new orders.” He ran a hand over his face and sighed. “I should probably get back to work.”

“Sure,” She started to leave, but his hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his chest. She leaned into the embrace and smiled.

“You can stay if you want? I could use the company,” He kisses her head and leans back to look into her eyes.

“I guess I could work on some essays,” She leaned up and kissed him soundly. “Thanks.”

~~~~~

She knocked on the door as she tried to shake off the snow sticking to her coat. It opened a moment later with a relieved looking Aaron on the other side.

“Thank god,” He sighed and stepped to the side to let her in.

“Still hasn’t been out of his room?” Y/N stripped out of her jacket and looked around the messy apartment.

“Not since this morning, and it was only to get another coffee. I’m surprised you guys didn’t check on him sooner.” Aaron raised a brow as she chuckled.

“We talked to him two nights ago, and he seemed fine. Trust me, this isn’t the worse it’s been.” She knocked on his bedroom door, and after not receiving an answer, she opened it slowly.

Alexander was sitting at his desk, back to the door and typing away on his laptop. She sighed as she looked around the room. Cans of energy drinks and candy wrappers had been thrown hazardously near the small trash can in the corner, along with shreds of paper. His bedsheets were thrown carelessly and different documents laid on top.

Y/N shook her head and walked towards where he was seated at his computer chair. She wrapped her arms around the him and leaned her head on his shoulder.

“You are freezing,” He winced, voice hoarse like he hasn’t spoken in days.

“How long have you been sitting here?” She asked, eyes roaming over the paragraphs he was typing.

“Today?”

“Alex!” She tutted disapprovingly, reaching for his laptop to close it, but he was quicker, grabbing at her hand.

“No! I just need to finish this real quick!” Shoving her hand away, he leaned forward and typed faster.

“You’ve been in here for hours, for all I know days,” Y/N’s hands wrapped around his, and squeezed them. “When’s the last time you ate something? Or showered? Or walked around?”

The silence was enough to fill her question.

“You’re not taking care of yourself, Al. And do you remember that we had plans tonight? We were all gonna go ice skating.”

“Fuck, it’s already Saturday,” Alex ran a hand over his face and grumbled. “I’m sorry.”

There was frustration in his voice, and she would be lying if Y/N said she didn’t feel bad for him. He has been stressed about work lately, picking up a lot of other people’s slack and working late hours. She held him closer and kissed his neck softly, his own hand coming up to her arm and rubbing a soothing thumb across it. They stayed like that, until he eventually leaned forward and started typing away again, saving the document once again.

“When’s your deadline?”

“Tuesday.”

“Are you kidding me?!” She slammed the computer closed and pulled him away from the chair.

~~~~~

“What the hell, John?” Hercules slammed his cards against the table as John laughed.

“You guys suck at this game,” He smirked and laid his cards out.

“You’re cheating, its so obvious that you’re cheating,” Alex walked away from the table, Laf smirking at how easy it was for him to get mad.

“It’s just a game, mon amie,” Laf chuckled as Alex flipped him off.

“I’m turning in, I gotta work the early shift tomorrow,” Hercules stretched his arms and yawned.

“You are all welcomed to stay the night, there is plenty of space,” Laf offered, hope in his voice. He liked when he didn’t have to go to sleep alone, which is something that hasn’t happened in quite a while.

“I can’t Laf, I got an early meeting,” Alex frowned as he put in his shoes.

“Me too, and I got to be early or Lee will never let me hear the end of it,” John kissed the top of Laf’s head and walked towards Alex.

“I can stay, I don’t have class tomorrow,” Y/N grinned as Laf turned from disappointed to excited.

“Don’t have too much fun, you two,” Hercules smiled and kissed them both goodbye, Alex and John doing the same before leaving the house.

Laf wiggled his eyebrows with a smirk at her, which she pushed his shoulder and walked upstairs to his room. He soon followed and gave her a pair of pajamas to change into.

They fell into bed easily, Y/N cuddled up into his side as he wrapped his arms around her protectively. She could hear his heartbeat and sighed with content.

“What are you thinking about, cherie?” He whispered, not wanting to disturb the quiet.

She hesitated before answering, “How great this all has been...all of us, together. It’s pretty amazing.”

“That it is,” Laf kissed her forehead and smiled. “I wouldn’t trade these past months for anything.”

Y/N leaned forward and captured his lips, not moving until he tilted his head to deepen the kiss. He held her cheek with care, pecking her lips a few more times before pulling away.

“Get some sleep, Y/N. For all I know you could be schemeing with all this kissing.” She chuckled and kissed him one last time before turning over and leaning into his chest. He kissed the back of her neck before wishing her sweet dreams.

~~~~~

Classes had finally ended for the semester, which meant Y/N was making plans to catch up on sleep. Yet, despite her wishes to stay in her dorm for the break, the boys offered for her to switch between their homes, saying that it would allow them to spend more time together, and, let’s face it, they all didn’t like going to sleep alone.

The first weekend, they all wanted to celebrate her successful school semester, and while they wanted to go out and party, she was perfectly content with ordering take out and being lazy on Alex’s sofa.

Y/N was spread out across John, face buried in his chest while he ran his hand up her back comfortingly. She was drifting in and out of consciousness, startling between an explosion on the TV and Hercules loud laughter.

She was almost asleep when she felt John’s fingers begin to move across her spine. He had a pattern, going back and forth and up and down, almost like he was writing something. A couple minutes later she went to turn over so her face would be towards the cushion, before she figured out what he was writing.

“I love you, too,” Y/N mumbled, barely giving it a second thought before she knocked out completely.

John stared at her in shock, eyes wide and a blush across his cheeks. Even though the volume was loud, the other boys could hear her clearly, looking over in amusement, shock and adoration.

John swallowed and embraced Y/N, nuzzling into her neck and smiling as she snored.

Let me know if you want to be tagged!!!!

@dontblinkumightmiss @wwaywardwinchester

#hamilton #hamilton imagine #hamilsquad #hamilsquad x reader #poly!hamilsquad x reader #polyhamilsquad x reader #john laurens x reader #alexander hamilton x reader #hercules mulligan x reader #marquis de lafayette x reader #lafayette x reader #hamilton fic #hamilsquad fic #ohhh the soft boys #brings me joy #my writings #uh this is like my third fic of referencing superhero movies? #and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon #sorry not even remotely sorry

[derireo]

The way I SMILED at the nicknames from Autumn Troupe, especially at NYAM AND PUDDING T^T Im curious about the other troupes now, if it's okay;;

yes!! the nicknames i chose for juza are really cute– i rlly wish we could get sound clips of the va saying them tbh LOL. sry this one took a bit of time, i had difficult figuring out the other troupes,, for those who haven't seen it yet, here's autumn troupe's!

Spring, Summer, Winter Troupes: Pet Names

He doesn't understand how pet names work!

He'll probably just call you _______ Chan!

Okay, but fr lol,,. I don't really see him using pet names? The way he speaks is already affectionate as it is and he uses the Chan honorific a lot with you in a sweet manner. Maybe when he's older and feels more comfortable, he'll call you something like Babe!

Babe (public & private)

Baby ("")

My love ("")

It's cheesy, all of them, but he makes it work somehow??? There is just so much love in his voice when he calls you by any of these names, so much so that it even stuns the other members and people around him, haha. You know that heart animation when Izumi does the bare minimum? That's what he looks like when he calls for you.

Dude (public & private)

Babe ("")

Sweetheart {"")

Calls you by your name most of the time, says Dude when he's playing a video game or something– not that you mind too much. Is normally whining when he's using a pet name, but don't worry, he is very affectionate with them as well. Whenever he comes back from work, he mutters a soft, but tired: "I'm home, Sweetheart." and it's sho cute! 

Princess (public & private)

My love ("")

Sweetheart ("")

Truly, a prince. These pet names are all used very playfully, but serious at the same time. He's not shy to use them and he gets really confused when he sees how flustered you get after calling for you. He wishes you wouldn't though, he truly sees you as a princess!! He's really close to asking you to marry him!!!!!

Cutie (private)

Bun (private)

Tsuzuru does not like using pet names outside of private life. From what I remember from the story, he doesn't share a lot about himself with the others and even gets upset with Kazunari when he mentions something without his permission. Tsuzuru really likes you, no doubt, but he prefers to be all sweet and loving to you when nobody's looking. In a way, nicknames have become really special between you guys.

He'll pass out before he even gets a word in

I'm not even joking, he reads so much shoujo manga that he'd get super excited to be having this chance. He'd think of something super romantic to say as he like did a fucking kabedon on you lol but legit he'll black out before anything happens LMAOO

No nicknames for u LOL

He would barf if he was forced to call u something other than ur name. He'll probably just stick with 'idiot" and leave it at that; don't expect too much from Yuki 😔

Stubborn brat,,,,, He Will get really embarrassed if you ask him to call you something cute, and he'll relent, but seriously? He'll never do it again unless You Beg.

Cutie (public)

He gets flustered easily, he's not going to be able to call you anything else LMAO!!! He may act all cool but his game is Weak, so don't let his acting chops fool you, baby. Cutie is mostly used in a teasing manner, but he really means it. He thinks you are awfully cute, d'aw come here and let me give u a hug

Saan! (public & private)

Kaku! ("")

Literally just triangle, he's not too creative, but he likes the ring to it. He only uses these when he hasn't seen you the whole day and he spots you across the room or something. He'll call for you all of a sudden and it'll startle everyone who is within a 10-mile radius from him. (idk how far that reaches im canadian)

Beb (private)

Hon (strictly– no honey. public & private)

Beb is a sups affectionate nickname and it sounds so much better than 'babe' when it comes out of his mouth! He only uses it in private though because he thinks it's super adorable how you respond when he says it. Also, Honey is too long of a word (too many syllables) and Hon totally suits his style! It really goes BAM for him and that's wickedt

'Mello (public & private)

Floofs (private)

He likes soft things. 'Mello being the last part of marshmallow and Floofs because he Loves resting his head in your lap cause ur thighs go squish and then he go night night. Doesn't really see the point in nicknames tbh, but he gets really lazy calling your own name sometimes. + he thinks he embarrasses you when he calls you by your pet name.

Beloved (public & private)

Sweetheart ("")

Love ("")

He's got a lot to call you. He is a poet, but I am not so I can't give you anything better than this! It's romantic though isn't it, haha. You're his muse, so a lot of his poems are inspired by the daily things you two do together. Beloved is probably one of his favourite things to call you because it rolls off his tongue so nicely, he uses this nickname the most. Love and Sweetheart are used in whispers or when he wants only you to hear it when having a conversation in public.

Bud, probably (i hate him. public)

Sweetheart (when he's feeling like a bad bitch! private)

Baby (private)

I've got this love-hate thing with Tasuku, but don't worry, I don't actually hate him. Nicknames aren't really his thing, hence the Bud only being used in public. Baby is the nickname he uses when he is feeling very affectionate and loving, but Sweetheart is his greatest weapon of all. He uses it with his low voice, using that rumble from his chest as he holds you in his arms, his large hands trailing up your body. When Sweetheart is uttered, the lilt in his voice shows how amused he is by your trembling.

Petal (public & private)

Buttercup ("")

So sweet. What a sweet boy. Considering he loves flowers, I wouldn't put it past him to call you Petal or Buttercup. And he loves loves loves using them too! Petal is used when he's addressing you during a conversation or just wanting to catch your attention. Buttercup is mostly used when he's greeting you with a hello or goodbye! He even laughs sometimes when he uses your nicknames, but they make him feel all soft and fuzzy inside!

Little Bunny (private)

Pup (private)

Baby (public)

Honey/Hon (public)

He's got so much of these up his sleeve, you better prepare your funeral in advance because He's Not Paying lmao. He really likes the animal nicknames though, they're very cute and suit you quite well.... A little erotic though so he's sparse when he uses them lol. Baby and Honey sounds so nice coming from him, his voice is so decadent and slow and he smirks a little when he uses it on you!

#a3! #a3! act! addict! actors! #a3! imagines #a3! actor training game #sakuya sakuma #masumi usui #itaru chigasaki #citron a3! #tsuzuru minagi #tenma sumeragi #yuki rurikawa #muku sakisaka #misumi ikaruga #kazunari miyoshi #hisoka mikage #homare arisugawa #tasuku takato #azuma yukishiro #tsumugi tsukioka

[ae0nx]

FRUITS BASKET S2 EPISODE 9 RECAP AKA THE KYORU CHRONICLES PART I

Look... I’m gonna be honest. I wasn’t really in the mood to do a Fruits Basket recap this week. The world’s always a mess but this time it was definitely a personal attack and I’m still dealing with it but this episode was a needed mental break. A bit triggering at times... but it was golden.

Let’s goooo...

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

Lol, I love how the creators right out the gate were just like: “Look... you know what time it is...” 🤡😺

- I love Kyo in that green jacket, I don’t even know why 😂It definitely fits in well with the autumnal scene and his hair... He gets outfit appreciation this week again for the same outfit... just because.

HEART EYES, MOTHERFUCKER

*grooves to the opening song like an AC character*

- Tohru’s so happy that Kyo was invited that she’s in tears? On one hand... SO sweet! On the other hand... girl. 😩

Another adored moment between these two. Even though this episode is all about Kyo’s feelings for Tohru. I adore seeing how easy things are between him and Tohru now. At allll timesss. Gimme bucket loads of kyoru content, mannnn

Even though I’m still frustrated at these kids fighting each other, I really appreciate that this moment (and even previous episodes) has shown that Yuki has slowly been figuring out how to play the game of appeasing Akito but also trying to figure out how he can be better and stronger and more clever than the shitty situation that he’s been given. The walls are crumbling, indeed... Yuki wins Best Boi this week. I would’ve given it to Kyo but I lowkey give it to him every week so...

Tee hee... 😺✨💖

...Right, I genuinely don’t know what to say on an emotional front about the Akito and Kyo scene besides “this moment is gross and awful and Akito is a terrible, disgusting, manipulative person” so I’m just gonna talk about my appreciation for how the scene was displayed and edited.

That anime fish eye lens used for intense situations? Classic.

I really did like the flashback scene though. It starts when we see Kyo literally physically threatening Akito and yet Akito through words alone bests him... easily. The colour toning is great, it gives a slightly underwater feel which just increases the suffocating feeling. The way the scene flips from this scene to present day showing how Kyo, despite the time gap and despite all the personal developments, is still in Akito’s suffocating and entrapped position. 

I love how inhuman the designers and animators make Akito through their movements and body poses. I’ve gone into it before but I thought it was worth saying again-again.

HEARTBREAKING. But, this is some visually stunning content. I love this full on visual representation of Akito’s curse. Seeing how different it is from the other zodiac members (obviously) but also how it could be interpreted as a metaphor for how tied Kyo is to his fate in his position in the zodiac. The stuff of nightmares! Chilling!

- Kyo saying ‘please, stop’ broke. my. heart. Yuma Uchida, as always, was great. I love how different he sounded when he said that. So hurt and weak, it’s almost alien for Kyo...

- Dickheadedness aside... I really find Akito’s view on perfection being monstrous an interesting viewpoint... (even if they are mostly saying it just so they can have the upper hand)

THIS IS THE MOMENT, GUYS...

I ACTUALLY SQUEALED. 😍It hurts so goood....

- I’m glad that Momiji’s question from ‘The Foolish Traveller’ moment was brought back again to bring a full circle as to how Kyo felt about Tohru. Such a great throwback.

- But wow, Kyo having to say he hates Tohru to protect her from Akito. Aka the ONLY MEMBER OF THE ZODIAC WHO DENIED THEIR LOVE FOR ANOTHER PERSON TO PROTECT THEM, CAN I JUST SAY. Golden. Heartbreaking. Kyoru.

- STOP HITTING, KYO!!!

Not so much of a comment on what was said in this scene but more so the position of Kyo’s body. I’m sorry, I’ve turned into one of those yoga heads right now and there’s no going back. 

I noticed his position is somewhat between a ‘child’s pose’ and one of the variations of a ‘cat-cow pose’. Child’s pose is known for showing vulnerability and surrender. And the cat side of the cat-cow pose is known for tensing everything up for eventual release into cow pose (as well as it easing out your spine). Also known as by cats... getting ready for attack.

I feel like this winds back to what I was observing about Yuki earlier in which he’s pretty much playing the game that Akito has set up but he’s approaching it in a smarter more clever way. And I think through this visual representation, it shows Kyo is doing the same. 

I wouldn’t say that both Kyo and Yuki are at the point where they feel they are worthy of happiness and believe in themselves and are ready to tear the wall down but you can see... they’re kinda getting ready to do so... whether they’ve noticed or not.

Lol. Ohhhhh, the times that we’re in...

- Yuki and Kyo working weirdly in sync is always my favourite <3

Oh... kid... 💔 All of Kyo’s thoughts of whether he deserves to live and questioning why he keeps going on is... a lot... to say the least...

- I do really love the way Kazuma’s VA delivered the speech of how hope will always bloom again even if you crush it. Toshiyuki Morikawa pretty much nailed how Kazuma would say it in a frank and stern way but also making it seem gentle enough to accept as advice. We stan.

Also, this!!!! 👆🏾

KYOKOOOOOOO 😭(I envy anime only fans sooooooo bad rn, hee hee heeeee)

At first, I didn’t really love the fact that Kyo and Yuki knew (or knew of) Tohru before the beginning of the Fruits Basket story as it kinda ties into my disdain for the ‘tied together by fate’ plot line. But as time goes by, I can’t help but just be swayed by how cute the younger versions of the trio are and the uwu feels. Whatever... it cute. For the most part anyway...

I was literally hitting my chair arms by how frustratingly bittersweet this last scene was. Kyo’s ‘I’m putting up a happy front so the love of my life doesn’t worry’ face?! <3

Tohru’s genuine happiness to see Kyo?! <33

<333!!!! Look, I was already dead by this point but THEN

👀... 

AND THENNNNNN

💔🤬

BUT THENNNN!!!!

Like what am I meant to do with my heart at this point, dude? Do I mend it? Do I guard it? Like... what?!?!

That was a hell of a last few minutes. I love this episode.

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

This was really fun! A great way to take my mind off current things. It wasn’t all smiles but it showed pretty much how a glimmer of hope is enough to keep going and that’s exactly what I needed to hear this week and probably for the rest of my life :) 

Hope you are all keeping mentally as well as physically well and #blacklivesmatter. ALWAYS. 💜

See you next week!

#fruits basket #furuba #fruits basket 2020