#each poster has a pattern
Text
in unholy denial
･ ｡ﾟ*. 18+, minors DNI . * ｡ﾟ･
pairing: wanda maximoff x reader
summary: you’re the perfect all-american girl; a good student, a weekly churchgoer, you’re even dating the high school quarter back. so it’s all a big shock to you when your family decides to send you to a conversion camp, claiming they believe you’re a lesbian. you don’t agree with their accusation, telling everyone that you don’t like girls at all. but then you meet your camp mate wanda maximoff, who seems determined to sway your mind in another direction…
warning(s): conversion therapy, homophobia (externalised and internalised), religious mentions (christianity), smut, fingering, thigh riding, loss of virginity, hickeys, slight dubcon (only kissing), swearing, pet names (princess, honey), wanda and r are in high school but of age (over 18), cheating (r has a bf), slightly innocent reader, nude magazine, etc. minors dni
author’s note: this is my first time writing and uploading smut so i really hope it’s not terrible 🙏🏻this is heavily inspired by ‘but i’m a cheerleader’, only this time it’s with teenage wanda and much more smutty :) i also took light inspiration from @imaginedanvrs and her fic ‘atonement’, and though i did take a different turn, check it out because all of their writing is amazing :))
wc: 11.7K words
The car is quite on the ride up. You stare out the window, watching as your world begins to disappear. The camp is just under two hours away from your home town; far away enough that it feels like a whole different world, but close enough that your parents can still come visit on the weekends.
You’re not being punished. At least that’s what your parents have told you. They just want what’s best for you, want to help you find the right journey in life. Apparently this camp was supposed to do that for you. Though, you could quite see how - the apparent problem they claim to be able to fix, not identifiable to any part of your mind.
When they’d first brought up the idea, you’d been quick to confusion. A conversion therapy camp? But you weren’t gay. You had a boyfriend, the football team’s best quarterback at that, and you two were very happy together. He was handsome and kind, and you loved him. Except for maybe when he tried to kiss you, always left feeling grossed out by the encounter as his tongue tried to play with yours. But he must just be a bad kisser. That was at least what you always told yourself…
Aside from that, there were so many things that couldn’t have possibly lead your parents to believe you were gay. You were one of the top students at school, always getting the highest grades. Every Sunday you attended church, said your nightly prayers each evening before you slept. You were in the church choir, for goodness sake!
Still, your parents had sat you down in the living room one night and had a very serious conversation with you. They were concerned mostly, worried that something sinister had crept in and was tainting your life. You’d used all of your excuses in protest but they’d came prepared with their own.
A few posters from your room, filled with woman in bikini tops. You liked the patterns. Songs from your playlist that held ulterior meaning. You just liked the way they sound. The fact you hated kissing your boyfriend; a few comments you’d made to your friends about other girls at church. You thought everyone felt that way…
In the end, they’d convinced you to come along to the program, claiming it was in your best interest to attend and get the help you need. Although you didn’t believe you needed any help at all, you had agreed. If this camp was going to help them feel better, you were willing to give it a go, even if it meant getting treatment for a nonexistent problem…
Still, your heart aches a little as your small family car drives away from the suburbs you are used to, the view soon replaced by dense forest trees and vibrant undergrowth. The program was set out almost like a Summer camp, out near a lake where members could swim during their free time. That was one of the activities you’d read in the pamphlet your parents had handed you, the camp explained in its entirety alongside its promise to guarantee positive results. You’d initially asked your parents how long you would have to spend there, worried about being forced to remain when there wasn’t a problem with you to begin with, but your mom had simply smiled back softly and replied, ‘let’s just see how you get on’.
You’re almost lost in thought when the car finally turns on to the last stretch of its journey. The sight ahead of you drags you back to the present moment, eyes now searching the wide opening in the trees as the camp comes into view. It’s easy to spot, the only buildings around for a long while, and the white shutters standing out vibrantly against the green trees. The lake comes into view too, shimmering in the morning summer sun.
Soon the car slows, coming to a halt outside what looks to be the main building, its size large compared to the other’s dotted around. The ranch-style house is painted a soft blue, the fixtures and wrap-around porch shining dazzling white. All in all, it looks rather beautiful.
Your parents are the first out the car, looking around as they close the doors. You follow a moment later, eyes drifting over your surroundings as you inhale the sweet smells of the forest air. A pair of footsteps soon diverts your attention, your gaze falling to a tall blonde man making his way in your direction from the large blue house. He’s dressed very similarly to the men you see at church; a pair of neat navy slacks and a matching blue and white gingham shirt. You and your parents come to stand together on one side of the car just as he reaches your feet.
“Good morning,” the blonde says, his grin reaching from ear to ear. “Mr and Mrs Y/L/N, isn’t it?” There’s an exchange of hand shakes as your parents confirm his assumption. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. And you must be young Y/N.” His gaze falls to you as he speaks, a hand outstretching in your direction.
You take it, shaking it gently as you nod your head. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”
The blonde lets out a low chuckle as he releases your hand, his attention turning back to your parents. “What a polite little girl you have,” he says, his smile widening. Your parents seem to take pride in his compliment, inching closer together as they stand and look over at you. “But please,” the man continues, turning back to you. “My name is reverend Steve so you can call me as such. Or just Steve if you prefer.” He smiles again as he shrugs his shoulders. “Sir always feels a bit too formal.”
There’s a trade of small laughter between the adults but you don’t find yourself joining in, still feeling a little apprehensive about this whole scenario.
“I do hope your journey here was alright.”
“Oh, just fine,” your father replies in response to reverend Steve’s question, smiling easily back at him.
“Good. I’m so glad to hear that. We’re just so happy to have Y/N here. And don’t worry, your daughter is in very good hands.”
Just at that moment, you notice another figure approaching your group, a woman, originating from the same place Steve had. When she reaches you, there’s a soft smile on her face, her red hair dazzling in the Summer sun. The reverend reaches one of his arms out, bringing the woman close to his side as his hand rests on her hip. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Natasha. She helps direct things around here, especially with the girls.”
Her hand also extends out to your parents to meet in a soft handshake as she smiles widely back at them. “Hi, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” With your parents, reciprocating the sentiment, the redhead then turns her attention to you. Her eyes sparkle a bright shade of green as the morning sun hits them. “Hello, Y/N,”
You find yourself momentarily stumbling over your words, something about the woman distracting you until she speaks. “Good morning,” you manage eventually, smiling back nervously.
In the time you’ve greeted her, it seems your parents have retrieved your luggage from the back of the car. “These are your bags?” Reverend Steve asks, reaching to pick them up. In truth, you hadn’t even noticed them being moved there. “I’ll just take these up to your dorm room, Y/N.” He smiles once more at you before he turns, walking towards the house with your belongings in tow.
“I’ll give them a little check over once we get there,” Natasha says, drawing your attention back to her. She passes you a playful wink that causes a strange feeling in your chest. “But I’m sure there’s nothing in there that will get you in trouble, hm?”
“I don’t think-“ Your response is cut off by your sudden realisation you’re standing alone, your parents retreating back to the car and already starting the engine. “Wait I-“
“Don’t worry.” The redhead’s words yet again distract you, pulling your attention away from the vehicle behind you. “They’ll be back at the weekend to visit. You’ll be seeing them again in no time.” Natasha turns to stand side by side with you, her hand resting on your back as she gently begins to press you forwards. “Now how about you just come with me and I can show you around the place. How does that sound?”
“A-alright,” you stumble, giving one glance back to the car that has already pulled away from the camp. You let the woman by your side guide you as you watch it slowly move further and further away up the road, officially leaving you all alone.
The tour Natasha gives you, however, helps to lift your spirits a little. The camp grounds are rather beautiful, the grass vibrant and speckled with small colourful flowers. The buildings themselves are also very pleasant, all adding to the soft summer camp feel the area had. Natasha first directs you to the small bunker home her and Steve resided in, claiming members were not allowed inside but there was a small bell if you ever needed them at any time. Next, she shows you the church; a small yet grand building with dazzling stained glass windows. As you walk the pews, Natasha tells you how their service is held each morning, directed by Steve himself.
“I hear you’re in your church choir?” Natasha quips as you take in the way the light hits the windows, spreading bright colours across the floor of the building.
“Yes,” you reply, lifting your head and smiling sheepishly. “I have been since I was thirteen.”
“You’ll have to sing for us one time,” Natasha says playfully, before beckoning you out of the church and off to your next destination. On your way, she explains a little of how their program works; a mixture of group lessons and singular sessions to help you understand your problem. “Do you still attend bible study, Y/N?” Natasha asks as you approach the main building.
Shyly, you turn to face her. “No. I stopped a few years ago when I turned sixteen.”
The redhead clicks her tongue but overall doesn’t seem too disappointed, still smiling over you. “Don’t worry,” she replies. “I’m sure our study will set you just right again.” She passes you another wink before you step in through another door that she opens ahead of you.
The building has a wide front opening, a set of grand stairs set out ahead in the expanse of the tall ceilings. At the bottom of them, you suddenly notice a tall girl standing there. She’s wearing a neat uniform, her long black hair pulled back into two braids. “Y/N,” Natasha says, gesturing towards the girl. “I’d like you to meet Kate. She’ll be your mentor while you settle in.”
The raven-hair girl smiles at you as she extends a hand. You shake it, sharing a quick greeting before she hands you a welcome packet. Natasha explains how all of the rules are written inside, alongside a list of other expectations and your schedule for your stay. You hold on to it against your chest as the pair walk you around the house on your continued tour.
Inside of the main building, it feels somewhat like a mixture of a house and a school. There are two classrooms, both filled with a set of students learning from a tutor at the front of the class. A large dining hall was also set up, functioning like a school canteen. Downstairs there were a few recreational spaces with small couches arranged around card tables, all littered with various bible verse posters along the walls. As you move upstairs, Natasha shows you the bathrooms and the couple isolation rooms they had, though she assured you, you most likely wouldn’t be spending any time in there.
“Now, let’s get you some uniform, hm?” Natasha says, moving further down the corridor. She opens a long cupboard, filled with rows of pleated skirts and crisp white shirts. She looks through the rails before handing you a set of uniform in your size. Her and Kate then give you some privacy in the cupboard to change while they step outside.
The uniform is light blue, the skirt pleated through with lines of navy. The sweater vest is a matching dark blue, the logo of the camp embroidered onto one breast. You pull it on over the white button shirt, followed by the long white socks and black patent shoes Natasha had also provided. When you step out of the cupboard, the older woman takes hold of your old clothes, claiming she’ll take care of them for you until you’d be needing them again. You’re not entirely sure what she means but she’s continuing on with the tour once more before you can truly give it much thought.
“These are the girl’s dormitories,” the redhead says as she opens another door, guiding you inside. As you step in, you notice two rows of small cots, lined up with matching pink floral bedsheets. You notice one on the end, your bags sat atop waiting for you. But what catches your eye even more, is the brunette girl splayed across one of the middle beds, a magazine between her hands. She looks up as all three of you walk into the room, her green eyes meeting directly with you.
“Miss Maximoff,” Natasha says as soon as she notices the girl. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your lessons right now?”
The girl diverts her gaze to the camp director. “I didn’t feel well so I came to lie down.”
The way the girl lay across her stomach, face perfectly amused as her eyes flitted across her magazine didn’t exactly come across to you as unwell. It seems that Natasha too picks up on her lie, simply passing the brunette a small scowl. “Nice try.”
There’s a moment where the girl stares back, almost daring the women with her gaze, but she soon gives up, instead rolling her eyes as a long frustrated sigh escapes her lips. “Fine,” she mumbles, lifting herself up from the bed and slowly walking towards you. As she does, you notice how her shirt is unbuttoned further down and how her skirt is rolled at her waist, climbing the front of her thighs.
Natasha seems unfazed by her antics, simply holding out her hand which the brunnete places her magazine into with another sigh. The redhead gives it a once over before staring back at the girl. “This is contraband. Where did you find it?”
The brunette simple smirks in response. Her shoulders briefly brushes against yours as she squeezes her way through your group, headed towards the door. Before she leaves, she turns, walking gently backwards as the smirk widens on her face. “The Lord showed me the way to it.” She turns again quickly, disappearing from the dormitory alongside her lingering gaze.
Natasha doesn’t make any move to follow her, simply inclines her head as as she shouts down the corridor. “Roll down your skirt, Miss Maximoff!” Her voice still echoing, the redhead then turns back to you, that perfect smile returning almost as quickly as it at dropped. “I’m so sorry about that,” she says, glancing down at you. “Some of the other girls are a little…challenged in finding the light. Sometimes they can be a bad influence but I’m sure if you just stick with Kate, you’ll be just fine.”
You glance at the tall girl stood beside you, her soft grin looking back. “If you have any questions, feel free to ask Kate. Or of course, me or Steve at any point,” Natasha adds, drawing your attention back to her. You nod in response and she smiles back, placing a hand on to your shoulder. “Now, how about we take a look at your bags?”
———
Settling in isn’t as hard as you thought it might be. Kate is nice, you discover quickly, and helps you get unpacked. You tuck your things away into the drawers under your bed, then some more of your belongings in to the bedside table - next to the complementary bible you find tucked inside. Kate explains you can put up some photos with blue tac if you wish, pointing out to some of the other girls’ beds who have done the same. You borrow some of said blue tac from her as you stick a photo of your family alongside one of you and your boyfriend up on to the wall.
Afterwards, Kate sits with you while you look through your welcome packet. A lot of it relates to the pamphlet your parents had given you before your arrival, talking all about the camp and its methods of tackling what they phrase, ‘the misdirection of youths towards homosexuality’. The entire idea is still a little scattered in your head, but you brush it aside as you delve further into the rules and scheduling of the camp.
There are quite a few rules written down, a lot of which you recognise from your own home regulations. No curse words are to be used, nor any other inappropriate language. The Lord’s name must not be used in vain. Members must pray before each meal and every night before bed. Uniform must be worn at all times.
Then there are other rules that make you feel a little more uncertain. There is strictly NO fraternising between members. No member is permitted in the opposite dormitory to which they are assigned. Any inappropriate belongings will be confiscated.
The last rule makes you wonder back to the girl you’d seen sat inside the dormitory. There have been something ‘inappropriate’ about her magazine, obviously leading to the confiscation by Natasha. You weren’t quite sure what about it could be so bad, the name you’d glanced at briefly unrecognisable before Natasha had quickly stashed it away from your sight. If anything, the whole ordeal had only made you more curious about the strange girl and what exactly she had been reading.
As if the universe could hear your thoughts, it’s barely a few hours later when you collide with the girl once more. It’s lunch time, Kate and you just having sat down with your plates of food after she’d explained how they were set out each meal time. The dining room is filling up, all of the other camp members filing in to take their place at differing tables. It’s as your inspecting the meal in front of you that a very particular member sets herself down in front you.
“Hey, newbie.”
Your head raises from the table as you hear the voice, looking up to meet the same pair of green eyes that you recalled from earlier. The brunette stares back at you, a small smile playing at her lips as she watches your face. “Uh…hi?”
You don’t get to say much more before Kate is speaking up, leaning over the table with a scowl. “Get lost, Maximoff. We don’t want you to sit with us.”
The brunnete turns to look at the other girl, a frown of her own appearing between two perfect brows. “Loosen up, Bishop. I just wanted to say hello to our newest addition.” As she finishes, her eyes trail back to you, the scowl dropping away to that same smirking expression. For a moment it seems as if she looks you up and down, scanning over your uniform before studying your face again. “I’m Wanda,” she says eventually, voice light. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
You smile back a little awkwardly, torn between your polite nature and the instructions you had received to avoid this exact girl sat opposite you. “Y/N,” you reply, letting your manners overtake the situation.
“Just go away, Wanda,” Kate butts in suddenly, her voice raised. “I’m her mentor, not you.”
The brunette screws up her face as she turns to the raven-haired girl, scoffing under her breath. “God Kate, you’re so fucking uptight.” She sighs loudly as she pushes herself up from the table. As she does, you notice how her skirt is still rolled at the waist. But you don’t settle on it too long, distracted as she begins to speak again. “I’ll see you around, Y/N,” Wanda says, her voice playful once more. Her eyes train on you for just a moment as she backs away from the table, another girl soon taking her place.
“Just ignore her,” Kate grumbles over to you. She begins to list a string of complaints about the girl but doesn’t get far, soon interrupted by Reverend Steve calling for grace at the front of the room. You bow your head as he begins to pray, clasping your hands under your chin just as you did with every meal you ate at home. A chorus of ‘amens’ rings out as the prayer finishes, all heads lifting once more to begin eating their lunch. As you lift yours, your gaze briefly flashes across the room, catching across the way, a pair of green eyes staring back at you. Wanda sits smirking, but you don’t see much else, quickly finding yourself flustered and looking away, turning your concentration instead to the plate of food sat in front of you.
———
Natasha’s office is very nice. That’s your first thought when you enter through the door, guided by her hand on the base of your spine. There are a few wide windows on one wall, white shutters open to give a view of the lake just down a grassy hill. Her desk sits in one corner, a plush vibrant chair close by, then across the way, a small couch. There are shelves littered with both plants and framed pictures, most depicting some sort of bible verse.
You sit yourself down on the sofa while Natasha settles in her chair beside her desk, pulling out a notebook as she turns to face you. There’s an exchange of pleasantries as she explains exactly how these private sessions will go and how anything you say is entirely confidential. You nod, sitting rather folded in on yourself, uncertainty still coursing through your body.
“So Y/N,” Natasha says eventually, crossing her legs over the other. “To start off, why don’t you tell me a little bit about the first time you experienced homosexual tendencies.”
The request is one that leaves you stumbling a little. “Oh I- well…” You swallow, landing on the same response you’d had every time your parents had suggested the idea. “I’m not actually gay. Everyone just thinks that I am.”
Natasha’s face changes, taking on a soft but curious expression. “And why do you say that?”
“Well I’m not,” you reply. “I don’t- I don’t like girls. I have a boyfriend.”
That fact alone seemed enough to you for this whole endeavour to be needless. You didn’t like girls, couldn’t like them. You and your boyfriend had been going strong for over two years. He was handsome, funny, and you were sure you loved him. Even if you did feel slightly disgusted every time his lips touched yours…
“Listen Y/N,” Natasha says, her voice calm. “I know this whole experience can seem a little daunting but we’re here to help you, okay?” She smiles softly, the intention of her words feeling truthful. “But the first step of your journey needs to be your admittance to your problem.”
It isn’t that you don’t feel comfortable telling Natasha about your problem, in fact you actually feel a strange warmth in your stomach whenever she talks to you, but in your mind, there was no problem to begin with. “I’m not gay.”
Natasha sighs at your answer. She adjusts herself in her seat, her soft gaze looking back at you. “Think about it like this; homosexuality is like a disease. These thoughts weave their way into your mind, changing your behaviour.” The redhead raises a set of perfect brows. “But we can’t begin to heal if we don’t have a proper diagnosis. Can’t administer the right treatment if we can’t admit we’re ill, right?”
Her analogy isn’t lost on you, somewhat similar to something you’d heard your pastor say back at your home church. “Yeah…I guess that makes sense.”
“Now what you’re experiencing can be fixed,” Natasha continues. “I’ve seen it fixed many times before. You can heal Y/N, break away from this and find the light of our good lord.” With his name, Natasha glances up to the cross hanging on the wall beside you. Your eyes follow too. “Don’t you want that?”
You turn back to the woman, your voice sounding small. “Of course I do.”
Natasha smiles. “That’s good.” She rearranges herself again, adjusting to hold her notebook and pen better. “Now, could you maybe tell me first time you can remember ever having thoughts about other women?”
“I don’t-I haven’t,” you stumble. “I don’t think about them like that.”
Like that. It was a phrase you’d repeated like a mantra in your head. You didn’t want a girlfriend, you didn’t want a girl to kiss you. You thought about girls the same way everyone else did. Sure, sometimes your eyes would fall to their ass when they walked to the front of class, or perhaps you got a bit hot and bothered in the changing rooms before gym, maybe even your favourite movie scene was the one where all the girls would go to the beach and play in the water. But that was what everyone else thought too…right?
“Alright,” Natasha says, sighing again. “I can see you’re really struggling with this, but that’s okay. I’m here to help you.” She smiles. “How about we take a little look at your family history, hm? See if that can get things kickstarted for us?”
You spend the rest of your session talking about your family. Natasha asks about extended members, questioning about any problems there may be down your blood line. But as far as you know, it all comes up clean, your entire family the same good Christian folks you’ve always known them to be.
Finding nothing of interest, Natasha moves on to talk about your childhood. She asks about your time at school, how long you’d attended church, what sort of friends you had. It’s all scribbled down on the notebook in her hand as you list off answers, all the perfect idiom of what a good Christian girl should be.
By the end of your session, you’ve spoke about almost everything that’s led you up to where you are now. Natasha asks again about your feelings towards women, trying to compare the reasons your parents sent you here to real acts of homosexuality. But all in all, it’s no use. At the end of the hour, you’re still in denial, refusing any accusation of your alleged problem. Thankfully, Natasha doesn’t seem angry, still smiling softly as you leave her office. She send you away with an assignment to think about what could be your ‘root’, what she terms the initial source of your unholy thoughts, determined once you figure this out, it will begin your journey to sanctuary.
———
The next few days pass by without much excitement. You begin to settle into your lessons, listening as a few ex-members of the program give speeches of their experiences, or as Steve talks about how God can help give meaning to your life. There are group therapy sessions you attend, though mostly sit quietly through, but listen while others talk about their own experiences and thoughts. It’s in them you notice a certain person who seems to stare at you from across the room. You try to avoid making eye contact but it seems each time you glance over, Wanda’s stare is trained on you.
Following what Natasha had said when you first arrived, you tried to stick to Kate’s side as much as possible, avoiding the other girl who seemed to look at you more often than not. When you weren’t in lessons you could avoid her, instead hanging around with Kate and her friends in the recreational spaces, sometimes watching one of the approved DVDs that lay beneath the TV. At meals, your group sits together, always saying your prayers before eating your food. But it seems even there you can’t escape the strange brunette, always catching her stare from across the room. It’s only in bible study, on the day that marks a week since your arrival, that you actually get to speak to her again.
Kate was sick today. She’d caught a head cold, presumably from her parents who came to visit her at the weekend. You had also had a visit, your mother and father asking every possible question about your stay and how you were finding camp. The visit had went well, but now a few days later you were left with no mentor to guide you throughout your day. It isn’t too much of a worry in your mind though, the layout and scheduling of the camp already becoming a familiar routine to your body. But what you aren’t used to, is a certain strange individual sitting in the seat where your mentor usually sat.
You don’t notice it is Wanda at first. Feeling the body slide against yours on the bench, your first thought is perhaps that Kate has made a miraculous recovery. But when you turn to face the individual and are met with piercing green eyes, you are certainly even more surprised. “Um,” you fumble, looking back at the brunette as you try to stumble for words. “That’s Kate’s seat.”
Wanda raises a brow, her head spinning to look around the room before it returns to you. “I don’t see her.” She smirks. “Besides, no seating arrangements, right?”
Technically she is correct. There is nothing actually stopping her from sitting beside you apart from your slight aversion to interacting with her. You slide your body away a few inches to the right, shifting away from the touch Wanda had initiated as she sat down a little to close. The brunette seems to notice, glancing down at the gap now settled between you, but she doesn’t say anything about it, instead just looking up at you as she flashes a set of white teeth. “So Y/N,” she begins, rolling your name easily over her tongue. “Where are you from?”
“Not far,” you reply, still inclined to politeness even with your anxiety around the interaction. You elaborate further, telling her the name of your town just two hours north of the camp.
Wanda hums at your response then crosses her legs on the bench. You try not to notice the way her rolled skirt flashes a pair of smooth pale legs. “I’m from down south,” she says. “Further than you, though. About six hours. My parents only come to visit about once a month.”
You met her eye as you try to think of a response, but before you can, you’re being interrupted. Reverend Steve calls out at the front of the class, silencing everyone so that he can begin calling the register. As names echo out across the room, you and Wanda’s conversation dies, but the soft warmth emanating from her body close to yours, does not leave for the rest of the lesson.
Having quit bible study over three years ago, you were a little worried you wouldn’t be able to keep up, but as Kate had told you last week, some of these kids had never even been to church, so the pace was definitely slow enough for you to follow along. The story Steve told today was one you knew rather well actually, one of the most prominent ones you could recall from your early teens. Still, you pay the upmost attention throughout the entire time he talks, eyes trained on his figure at the front of the classroom. What makes that a little difficult however, is the girl sat right beside you.
Wanda is easily distracted you notice quickly, constantly fidgeting with the pen in her hand - your pen actually, borrowed by the brunette when she claimed she had forgotten her own. You sit a little in shock as she casually graffitis the open bible sat upon the desk in front of her, mindlessly drawing squiggles and random shapes into the margin. You try your best to ignore her antics but it’s a little hard when she accidentally tosses her pen across the desk, following a failed attempt to spin it around her fingers. It lands over on your side, just to the right of your own bible. You go to reach for it to hand back to her but it seems she’s already moving before you can even get the chance.
Her body lifts slightly from the bench, stretching out across the table with one arm for her lost pen. As she does, her chest is brought closer to your face. Your eyes fall on the black cross hanging around her neck, then suddenly dip lower, catching the area of her shirt where her buttons are undone further than they should be. There’s the briefest of moments where your eyes linger there, passing over the ever so slightly visible cleavage that swells on her chest, but it’s less than seconds later you’re darting away. Wanda eventually picks her pen back up, after what feels like an eternity, and pulls back in her chair. You glance momentarily over at her, then quickly return to the bible open in front of you, trying your best to follow along with the passage Steve reads aloud while ignoring the strange sensation that has settled in your lower stomach.
———
Camp isn’t quite the way you imagined it to be. Before you arrived, you thought it would be entirely awful, like a prison only with more…God. But for most of your experience, it just feels like you’re back in school. Although, now your lessons about maths or science are replaced by those about God and the way into his heart. Just over two weeks in, you’ve picked up the swing of things quite nicely, falling into an easy routine as you move through the services and lessons with ease. The one thing you just can’t quite seem to grasp is the understanding of why you’re here in the first place.
You’ve had three private sessions now with Natasha, each of them as feeble at finding a change as the last. You’re still not ready to admit your problem, as Natasha puts it, reluctant to find the issue within yourself. But as you’ve said since before you even came, it’s a simple fact you aren’t gay. Natasha seems determined in her ways to make you see something different.
She’s handed you a book, walking out from your last session. The title reads, ‘My Sexuality and Me: Finding the Root of Homosexual Tendencies’. You’re tasked with reading it before your next session in hopes it might finally help you understand your own thoughts. For now, however, it has to wait. Leaving your session, you go up to the dorm to drop it by your bed, taking just a moment before you have to head to your next organised activity.
The camp helps run on a set of scheduled chores that the members have to carry out. It’s on a rota, something Kate had shown you on your very first day, and changes each week. There’s everything from weed picking to cleaning dishes, all work that helps to keep the camp in shape for everyone staying there. Reverend Steve mentioned something about the work ethic helping everyone be grateful for what the lord had given them.
You have to go down to check the rota, forgetting what was scheduled for you this week. Most of the others are already dotted around the camp doing their chores, apparently your one-on-one session running over slightly and causing you to be a little late. You make your way down the stairs to the main room where the rota is located, pinned into a notice board on the wall. But as you turn the corner at the bottom of the stairs, you notice that you are in fact, not alone.
Wanda turns almost immediately when you round the corner. She’s stood up against the notice board, back resting upon the wall with one foot lifted against it. A smile appears on her face as you come into view, her teeth shining around the piece of pink bubblegum she chews. “Hey, princess.”
You try not to scoff at the name - an endearment the brunette had coined after seeing you one night writing in your diary about your boyfriend, claiming you were like a locked away princess longing for her prince to come save her. You’d rolled your eyes at her comment at the time, and had to deal with its return each time you’d bumped into her in the past week. Now, you try to ignore it as you walk past her and stare up at the notice board trying to find the chore schedule. However, Wanda is speaking again before you even get the chance to locate it.
“Looks like it’s you and me this week.” You glance over at her, watching as a pink bubble forms at her lips. You want to ignore her teasing, looking back to the board to locate where you would be stationed, but when your eyes fall upon the schedule, you realise she is right. Written on the notice board, right below the date of the beginning of the week is your and Wanda’s name, then below it; house duty.
You turn back to look at her, a pair of green eyes glinting your way. For a moment you think there’s some kind of mistake. After all, you had always been with Kate before. But then, not far away from yours is indeed Kate’s name written, not on house duty, but on pantry organisation.
Wanda smirks as she rolls the gum in her mouth, eyes fixated on you as she blows another bubble. When it pops, she finally speaks again. “You’ve never done house duty, have you?”
She’s right. You’re in unfamiliar territory and you don’t have your usual mentor to help guide you. “No,” you reply simply, gently shaking your head.
Wanda breathes out a laugh, throwing her head back slightly as she drops her leg from the wall. “Come on, princess,” she says teasingly, walking to close the gap between you. “I’ll guide you.”
Her hand is reaching for yours before you can protest against it. Soft skin slips into yours, gripping hold and quickly dragging you down the corridor. You stumble slightly, surprised by the whole encounter but Wanda doesn’t seemed fazed. She simply pulls you along the hall like a lost puppy. When your brain restarts from the initial shock, you look down at the way your fingers are grasped between hers. It’s a simple interaction at its core, an innocuous hand hold as she shows you the way to go. You’d done the same thing with your own friends back home many of times, but something about this one feels a little different. Something about the way her soft skin is warm against yours creates an odd fuzz in your head.
“Here we are,” Wanda announces, suddenly dropping your hand. You try not to think about the way it now feels cold as you watch her reach for a door handle. It opens to a cupboard, full of what looks like cleaning supplies. “We basically just dust everything,” the brunette continues, turning back to look at you. “Just dust and vacuum the floors in every room in the house. Oh- but not the bathroom, someone else will be doing those.”
You find yourself nodding, the task seeming simple enough. You’d dusted plenty of times at home, this couldn’t be any different.
Wanda lets out another laugh, seemingly at your immediate obedience to follow through with your task. “Alright, princess,” she says, cracking her gum. She reaches in to the cupboard, picking up a cloth and a bottle of disinfect spray. “I’ll do upstairs, you do downstairs?”
There isn’t much room for objection even if you had any, Wanda already beginning to walk away with the cloth thrown over one of her shoulders. You reach down to grab similar materials, standing back up to watch her figure moving down the corridor. “Stop calling me that!” You call out, but the girl is gone before your sentence is even finished, the protest seemingly falling on deaf ears. A sigh escapes your lips as you close the cupboard door, determined to just ignore the other girl while you begin your designated chore.
You start with the class rooms, wiping each desk with the spray and then dusting the other surrounding surfaces. You quickly find nothing was too dirty, the uphold from the other members ensuring the work wasn’t too difficult. You move next to the dining hall, then the recreational spaces, your cloth picking up any small specks of dust that have come to rest on the furniture and surfaces. When you’ve wiped down each room, you return to the cupboard for the vacuum you’d spied earlier. It’s older than the one you have at home but easy enough to work, quickly making light work of vacuuming the entire bottom floor.
It’s probably half an hour later when you finish, at least that’s the guess you make without a watch. You tidy away the cleaning supplies back into the cupboard before doing a quick inspection of everything to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Satisfied everything is clean, you turn your attention to your missing task partner. You haven’t seen Wanda once, barely even heard her moving upstairs. So, devoid of what else to do, you decide to head up to check if she needed any help.
You check a few rooms before you find her, the closest spaces absent of her presence. It’s only when you open the door to the girls dormitory that you finally see her. Except, she’s not cleaning like you expected her to be, in fact the cloth is entirely disregarded on the bedside table. Instead, Wanda sits with her back against the headrest of her bed, legs crossed over the top of her floral sheets and a magazine sat across her lap.
The door almost slams behind you as you catch eye of her, shock and repel taking you over. “You’re supposed to be cleaning!”
Wanda’s eyes pick up as she hears you yell, meeting your stare across the room. A smirk appears on her face, her expression seeming very amused by your sudden entrance. “Believe me, what I’m doing is much more enjoyable.”
You scowl back, annoyed by the fact you’d just spent the last half hour cleaning the house while she had been sitting up here doing nothing for who knows how long. If you were more argumentative, you would think of something to say in retaliation, some quick quip to get back at her for being lazy. But you’d never been very good at arguing, never very good at holding your temper. So instead you simply hold your tongue as you walk further in the room, watching Wanda as she stared back at you. Suddenly, your eyes fall to the paper in her hand, reminded of how similar this situation felt to the first time you’d met her. Like then, the same curiosity comes over you as to what she might be looking at, particularly how it could be classified as contraband. With that in mind, the next words you utter are not with anger anymore, but instead interest. “What are you reading?”
“Oh this?” Wanda replies, closing the magazine and holding it up briefly. She smirks your way, the grin wide against her cheeks. “Playboy.”
The word was unfamiliar to your mind. “What?”
Wanda’s brow raise. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a playboy magazine.”
You notice in that moment she’d lost her gum from earlier. In fact, you wouldn’t be surprised if she’d stuck it under a piece of furniture somewhere. But still trying to focus on the conversation at hand, you simply shake your head in response.
Wanda looks surprised, her brows raising even further. You think she’s going to jest you further, make fun of you for not recognising the name of her treasured magazine, but instead she simply extends it out. “Look.”
You move slowly, slightly hesitant to approach. You know Natasha had confiscated something like this from Wanda before and you didn’t presume this new magazine was much different from that previously banned material. Still, your curiosity seems to be getting the better of you because you slowly sit down on Wanda’s bed, your legs hanging off the side whilst the brunette crosses hers. Against the covers of the bed, Wanda slides the magazine between the two of you, opening it to a random page. What is plastered over it causes your eyebrows to raise completely in shock.
Women. But not just any pictures of women. The magazine was covered in dozens of images of women in differing stages of nudity. Immediately when you saw it, you felt the need to pull your eyes away, knowing that these kind of images were most definitely not the kind you should be looking at. But at the same time, it was like you couldn’t stop. There are about four models across the two pages scattered with different images, sometimes wearing sets of black lacy lingerie, sometimes wearing nothing at all. Theres a strange sensation bubbling in your gut, an odd warmth spreading through your mind as you look down at the pictures. The pure immorality of it all is enough for you to shake your head viscously.
“This is-we’re not-you shouldn’t have that.” You stutter, the images imprinted in your brain making it harder to focus and find the right words. You’ve never seen anything like that before, never looked at a woman’s body so out in the open. Now you could see why Natasha had quickly confiscated Wanda’s magazine and hidden it away from your view. “How do you even have this?”
The brunette seems utterly unfazed by the material in front of you. More so, her face looks amused at your alarmed reaction. “I steal them out of my brother’s backpack when he comes to visit,” she replies casually, as if this is something she’s been doing for months. “He’s pretty oblivious so he never notices, always thinks he lost them. Besides, even if he did know, he couldn’t tell my parents. He’s not allowed them either.”
While Wanda explains, you have to fight against yourself to hold eye contact. In your peripheral, you can still see the open page of nude women, restraining yourself from your body’s seemingly natural instinct to look down. “This isn’t right,” you reply, shaking your head. “We shouldn’t be looking at that.”
Wanda scoffs, looking displeased at your disapproval. She reaches out for the magazine, pulling it back into her own lap as she glances down at the images. Then, she’s looking back up at you, face inquisitive. “You’ve really never seen one before?”
You’re not sure exactly where she thinks you were going to find such a thing, but you’re certain you’ve never seen anything of the sort before. “No,” you reply sternly, shaking your head once more.
Wanda laughs to herself, rolling her eyes. “You call yourself a lesbian and you don’t even know what a playboy is.”
Her words cause a deep frown to appear on your brow, your voice raising to almost a shout. “I’m not a lesbian.”
A perfect brow raises in your direction as Wanda looks at you. Her expression seems particularly amused. “No? How’d you end up here then?”
The question hits you hard, the same thing you’d been pondering to yourself over the last few weeks of your stay. “I’m not gay,” you reply harshly. “Everyone just thinks that I am.”
“And why do you think they think that?”
Wanda’s eyes meet your own as she speaks, the question another one familiar to your own mind. “I don’t know,” you shrug. “Stupid reasons.” You think back to the conversation you’d had with your parents, the first time any of this had even cropped up into your mind. “A few posters I had up in my room, a couple songs on my playlist. Oh, and I told my boyfriend I don’t like kissing him. Which is totally stupid. I’m pretty sure he’s just really bad at it.”
A chuckle emanates from Wanda’s throat. You’re not quite sure why, watching as she leans in closer to you. When she speaks again, her face is barely inches from your own. “Oh honey, you don’t like kissing him because you like kissing girls.”
“What?” you exclaim, taken aback by her accusation. That couldn’t possibly be right. “No! I don’t! I told you, I’m not a lesbian.”
Wanda smirks, her eyes trained on yours. “Okay, maybe not a lesbian but I bet you’ve thought about a girl while he’s kissing you.”
The idea was entirely preposterous. “No!” you yelled back. “I haven’t!”
But your anger is only met with amusement on Wanda’s side, her smirk only deepening as she leans back on the bed. “You’re cute when you lie.”
The words have you recoilling, the inclination behind them picked up on yet rejected by your brain. And yet, you could feel a warmth spreading to your cheeks, embarrassment flushing in.
“Have you ever kissed a girl?”
You snap on to Wanda as her question rings out, watching as she casually slides her magazine back behind her bedside table. “No,” you reply firmly. “Of course not.”
“Then how do you know you don’t like it?” The brunette sits up again, leaning in closer to you. Her eyes meet your own, a strange shadow seemingly passing over them. She watches you for a moment, in almost unreadable expression moving across her face. “Surely theres only one way to find out.”
Wanda’s voice is low, barely above a whisper. You find you’re too busy watching her lips to notice her leaning in even closer, face barely centimetres from your own. Suddenly, you pull back. “What are you doing?”
Wanda doesn’t miss a beat, continuing to lean in even as you pull away. One of her hands comes to rest on your thigh, fingers grazing the material of your pleated skirt. “It’s okay,” she says lowly. “I’m just trying to help you.”
Her advance doesn’t stop, face moving closer and close towards yours. It’s only when she’s almost touching you, you realise she’s trying to kiss you. “No,” you say quickly, pushing her back by the shoulders. “We can’t do that. It’s not right.”
Wanda sighs, relaxing her posture a little. She shifts in the bed, eyes still trained on you. For a moment she simply looks over your face before that smirk appears once more. “Maybe…” she says, angling her head. “But isn’t that the whole reason we’re here?” The question slightly throws you for a loop, your confusion allowing Wanda to move closer to you once more. “Don’t do you want to be a good girl and finish the program?”
The way her breath fans across your face sends an odd shiver down your neck, goosebumps appearing on your arms. Her choice of words seems to form an odd feeling in your stomach, but you try your best to brush it off, nodding your head in response to the question. You did want to finish the program. You wanted to be able to go back home to your family.
Wanda smiles at your answer, her head angling to the side as her voice takes a caring tone. “Well we both know what the first step is…You have to admit to yourself you like girls.” She leans in closer, her eyes briefly flashing down to your lips. “You can’t heal if you don’t admit you have a problem.”
Her words mirror those of Natasha’s, the same thing she’d been trying to get through to you for weeks. But you can’t help but fight the part of your brain that recalls everything you’ve been taught about attraction. “This isn’t right,” you say quietly. “You have to stop.” And yet you find yourself making no move to pull away from the girl whose face sits mere inches from your own.
“As I said, I’m just trying to help you.” Wanda’s voice is calm, understanding. “Once you realise you like girls, you can move on with the rest of the program.” Then the brunette shrugs a shoulder. “Or hey, you maybe hate it and realise you actually are straight.”
It makes some sense in your mind but you’re still hesitant, knowing that what Wanda was even suggesting was against everything you wanted to believe in. “I don’t think that we should-“
“Just don’t think.” Wanda cuts you off before you can finish, and before you can even process what’s happening, she closes the final gap between you. Her lips meet yours, soft and warm against your skin. It’s gentle but rough at the same time, your eyes fluttering closed. Then immediately, as the warmth leaves, they snap back open.
Wanda’s staring back at you, face smiling. “How’d that feel?” You notice that her eyes look a little blown out, pupils wide against the sea of green. “Feels good right?”
Suddenly you realise what’s just happened, every part of your upbringing screaming inside your head. “What? No!” you reply, flustering. “No, it didn’t feel good. It felt wrong.”
But some part of you creeps up in the back of your mind, a part you recognised and yet wanted to snuff out more than anything, a part that knew you were lying.
And apparently, Wanda can see right through to that part too. “I can see it on your face, honey,” she says, voice now teasing. Her eyes trace over your features and you wonder what exactly gave it away. There isn’t much time to think however, as before you know it, Wanda’s leaning in again. Her lips meet yours, a hand sliding to your thigh once more.
“Stop,” you reply, pulling away. “This isn’t right. We’re not supposed to-“
Wanda cuts you off again. “Don’t think about what we’re supposed to do. Think about what feels right.”
You notice again the wildness of her pupils, only for a moment, before she leans in again. Your eyes close on impact, her lips crashing into yours in another kiss. Only this time you instinctively lean into it, pursing your lips against hers. Wanda pushes back, her mouth opening just slightly to take in your lips and you find yourself leaning in. There’s a reminiscent taste of bubblegum, sweet on your tongue as her saliva begins to mix with your own. The hand on your thigh tightens, another placed on to the side of your face. For a second you don’t think about anything other than just how good this moment feels.
It’s seconds later Wanda pulls away, her touch lingering but her lips missing. You find your eyes opening, gazing back at the smirking brunette staring back at you. “It feels pretty good doesn’t it?”
You’re lost for words, sure of your answer to her question but so reluctant to admit it. Wanda smiles back at you, her grip on your leg slowly raising up, ever so slightly bunching the fabric of your skirt. Before you can formulate a response, she’s moving in towards you. Her face disappears into the crook of your neck, her warm breath fanning out across your skin before her lips attach. Without thinking, your head falls back, only giving the brunette more access to nip at the skin of your neck. Your eyes feel heavy, an odd sensation pooling deep in your body. “I can make you feel so good…”
The words reverberate across your skin, sending shivers down your neck and across your chest. A small whine exits your throat, unintended by any part of you but seemingly drawn out by the gentle touches of both Wanda’s lips and her fingers dancing across your skin. “Wanda…”
The brunette slowly pulls back, her face rising to meet with yours. Theres a look in her eye you can’t identify. “You’re already a sinner now, right?” she says, voice husky. “No harm in twisting the knife.”
There’s a moment where you want to turn away, to listen to the rational part of your brain that tells you this is all wrong. But right now there’s only one thing you can truly think of; just how good it felt with Wanda’s lips against your own.
Your hands grab at the brunettes shoulders as you pull her in, the pair of you colliding before you even recognise what you’re doing. The kiss comes fast, clashing together in your desperation for the girl to stop talking and just to feel her against you again. Wanda smirks against your lips, humming an amused noise before she’s all over you.
Her hands find purchase in your hair, entangling in the strands at the nape of your neck as she pulls you in closer to her body. Her kiss becomes fiercer, control quickly being regained as she presses her lips into yours. A small hum of your own escapes as she presses her tongue into your mouth, quickly taking over as you simply let her in without protest. And in that moment a thought crashes over your mind; gay or not, your boyfriend was definitely bad at kissing. Furthermore, Wanda was very, very good.
Your hands grips slightly at her shoulders as the brunette domineers the kiss, her lips almost possessive against your own as her hand clutches as your cheek, manipulating your position to give her full control. You feel her other hand begin to drift further up your legs, pushing your skirt up to your hips before climbing even higher. Delicate touches grace over your stomach, then softly against your chest. You release a small whine as Wanda nips at your lip with her teeth, at the same time, reaching to unbutton the top clasp of your shirt. Her fingers work faster than your mind can even process, too distracted by the touch of her lips to notice her quick work of opening your entire shirt. It’s only when she reaches to touch your chest, a gasp of realisation releases from your throat.
Wanda however, continues without missing a beat. As you gasp, she lets her lips leave your own, reappearing quickly on the side of your neck. Her hand tightens around the skin beneath it on your chest, fingers squeezing around your bra and grabbing hold of your breast beneath it. Her soft kisses continue to move lower as you whine softly, her touch against your chest sending shivers down your body.
Then, her mouth turns more aggressive, resting just at the curve of your breast she begins to suck on the flesh harder, nipping with her teeth before smoothing it over with her tongue. You whine softly, the new sensation novel to your body but so intrinsically intuned. For the first time your eyes open, looking down to where the brunette resides again your chest. You notice the way your necklace rests between the wisps of her hair, a silver cross that you’d worn every day for years. The image is enough to remind you of how wrong this is, how under no circumstances you should be letting a girl kiss you or touch your body like this. But before you can fully wrap your mind around the forbidden nature of the act, a new sensation is stripping a small gasp from your chest. Wanda’s fingers move back to your thighs, slipping up the exposed skin before coming to rest on your underwear underneath.
“Wanda…” you breathe heavily, worked up by her touch and yet knowing how wrong it all was. You shouldn’t be doing this, any of it, especially what Wanda was insinuating as she slipped her hand beneath your skirt.
“Shh, it’s okay.” The brunette replies with ease, her voice low and sensual. Her eyes raise back up to your face, meeting your gaze with a blown out expression. “Let me make you feel good, Y/N.”
And with that, her mouth is on yours again. Her kiss is enough to distract you from forming a response, eyes closing as the sweet taste of bubblegum coats your tongue once more. Then you feel her fingers again, pressing lightly against the material of your underwear, tracing the lines of your folds underneath. Small noises travel from your mouth to hers, receptive to her touch, but it’s when she presses her thumb to your clothed clit, a moan finally slips out.
The situation is entirely new to you, never having been touched by anyone this way before. You and your boyfriend had always said you’d wait till marriage, just like you knew you should. But here with Wanda, her lips against yours and her fingers tracing your most delicate areas, the endorphins flowing through your brain are enough to say to hell with it all.
You push harder into the kiss, grasping hold of Wanda’s shoulders as you try to gain the upper hand. But the brunette is much more experienced than you and doesn’t let up easily. Her hands move to your own shoulders and quickly begin to push the open shirt from them. Her lips remain on yours, strong and fierce, until the shirt has been slipped from your body. Then Wanda pulls away, her eyes drifting down over you for just a moment before she’s grabbing at you again. She spins you around, pulling you fully on to the bed as her hands press your shoulders down into the mattress. In a swift movement, she’s kicking off her shoes to the floor, then pulling yours off too. She comes to settle on top of you, knees placed either side of your legs as she looks down. Her hands are quick as she unbuttons her own shirt, tossing it to the side. Then, she’s moving to unclip her bra.
You feel your eyes widen slightly as Wanda’s bare chest is revealed to you. Before the magazine she’d shown you minutes before, it’s the first time you’ve looked at another woman so nude. And in that moment, despite what your brain is screaming out to you, you can’t help but think about how good she looks.
Wanda seems to notice your staring, her face pulling an entirely amused expression as she looks down at you. “I don’t see why you deprive yourself of this, Y/N,” she says, beginning to lean in. Her lips meet your neck, sucking gently as you feel her fingers slip behind your shoulder blades, seeking the clasp of your bra. “Can something truly be so wrong if it brings you so much pleasure?”
You try to reply to her question, brain racking all of the answers you know you should be saying. But then her lips are sucking at your neck and you’re arching into her touch, once again taken over entirely by the flush of pleasure underneath her control. Theres a release against your chest as Wanda unclips your bra, tossing it easily to the side along with her own. “So gorgeous,” the brunette murmurs, one hand coming to grab at your chest. Then her lips are on you again, kissing at the skin around your nipple. When she pulls it into her mouth, teeth grazing over the bud, a needy whine erupts in your throat. Wanda smirks against you, breathing out a laugh. “So sensitive.”
Her mouth continues to work around the skin of your chest, before you notice her fingers crawling over your stomach. They take hold of your skirt, pressing it up to bunch at your waist. Then Wanda is moving away, fingers quickly hooking themselves under the sides of your underwear as she begins to slide them down.
For a sudden moment, you’re acutely aware of what’s going on, of how you are quite literally in a dorm at a camp where this type of behaviour was attempted to be corrected. Not to mention the rule of any sort of fraternisation being entirely banned. “Wait,” you say, looking down at the brunette between your legs, suddenly afraid of what you were about to do. “I don’t think-“
“I told you to stop thinking,” Wanda replies, eyes snapping to yours. She continues to pull your underwear down, throwing them to the floor once they’ve passed your ankles. Before you can say anything more, her lips drown you in a kiss. The sweetness of it all is enough to wipe any of the doubt from your mind, so when Wanda’s hands dip between your legs, you don’t hesitate to let her. Deft fingers run between your folds, teasing you slightly as they brush gently across your clit. You sigh breathily between the breaks of your kiss, Wanda’s touch like electric to your skin.
“God, you’re so wet, Y/N,” the brunette whispers, pulling her face away to smirk down at you. “Is this all for me?”
She’s teasing you, making you think about how hesitant you’d been to this whole idea, and then about how receptive you were under her touch. But you don’t want to think about any of that, don’t want to remind yourself of how wrong this all was. All you want is for her to keep going. “Wanda…” you whine, squirming under her as her fingers teased your entrance. “Please.”
You don’t even truly know what you’re asking for her to do, all you know is you need her. Thankfully, the brunette is proficient in picking up your body’s signals. “Shh, it’s okay,” she whispers, breath fanning across your face. “I know what you need, princess. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
It’s only seconds later you feel her middle finger plunge into you. You let out a loud gasp at the contact, feeling her finger begin to move inside of you like nobody’s had before. Her name drips off your tongue, laced with pleasure, as her head moves back to your chest, tongue playing with your hardened nipple. Theres a mark resting there, red and throbbing below the skin of your cross. In the heat of the moment, you hands reach out to grasp the back of her head, intertwining with her hair as you feel her add another finger inside you.
The pleasure rolls of you in waves, Wanda’s touch like a skilled professional highly attuned to draw sweet subtle moans from your mouth. Her thumb circles your clit as she continues to pump her fingers inside of you, curling them to reach that spot that sends shivers up your spine.
“Fuck, Wanda,” you murmur, nails lightly scratching at her bare back.
The brunette chuckles, raising her head from your chest. “Now that’s not a very holy word, is it Y/N?” She smirks, and for a moment her touch is gone. You whine, chasing her fingers as they leave your needy core. Theres a second she lifts her weight and you see her reaching to remove her own underwear, then she’s back on you, this time sitting against just on of your thighs. You can feel her wetness against your skin, a soft moan escaping as she makes contact. “I wanna cum with you, okay?” she says, eyes meeting yours. You nod eagerly but your reply is swallowed up by a low cry as her fingers suddenly sink back into you.
Her speed picks up as she begins to curl inside you once again, a soft stream of curses leaving your lips at the unexplainable pleasure of her touch. You can feel Wanda begin to grind on to your thigh as she works, soft gasps escaping from her lips each time her clit brushes beautifully against your skin. She showers your praises as you whimper noises of your own, breaths heavy and moans unrestrained as she brings you closer and closer to that edge.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous, princess,” Wanda husks over you. “Such a pretty girl for me.”
Her words only add to the building feeling in your lower stomach, that familiar coil building from the times you’d reached down to pleasure yourself after your parents had went to bed - not that you would tell anyone that.
“Please, Wanda,” you whimper, back arching into her. “I’m close-please…”
One hand continues to pump inside you, paced perfectly as her curled fingers reached that spot with each thrust. The other come up to play with a perked nipple, the bud rolling though Wanda’s fingers as helpless whines spill from your mouth. “Just a minute, princess,” Wanda replies, her breathing heavy. “I’m almost there.”
Surprisingly, her pace doesn’t falter as she too climbs closer to her orgasm. Her moans grow louder, her cunt grinding harder against your thigh as she continues to swirl your clit at the perfect speed. It’s when you finally tense the muscles in your leg, that she finally falls apart.
You feel her soak your thigh, gasping desperately as she cums. You watch mesmerised as her face screws up, her jaw hanging loose as she rides out her orgasm on your leg, drunk on pleasure. It only adds to the bundling arousal pooling in your lower stomach.
“Cum, pretty girl” Wanda whispers, still coming down from her high. “Cum for me.”
And you do. With her fingers curling just right inside you, you finally tip over the edge. Your orgasm comes hard, crashing over you in a tidal wave as Wanda slowly circles your clit, guiding you through it. A guttural moan elicits from your throat, Wanda’s name lacing your tongue. That pleasant buzz takes over your mind as you feel her fingers slow, riding out your high, drunk on her touch. You’re on the brink of overstimulation when she finally removes her hand entirely. Eventually your eyelids flutter open, heavy from exhaustion, and you spy the brunette with her fingers deep isnide her mouth, her tongue lapping up every last bit of your arousal.
“So sweet,” she murmurs above you, both of your minds still fuzzy from the resounding pleasure. Eventually, the brunette moves herself away from your thigh, whining slightly as her core is exposed to the cool air. Her body flops down next to yours, shoulders touching as you lay cramped in the single cot. Your heavy breaths are the only sound for a long while, loud in the silence of the dormitory. Then finally, when you’ve managed to right your body again, your face turns to look at the girl beside you. Wanda is already staring back, green eyes wide as a huge smirk settles across her lips. She looks you up and down, her grin only widening as she husks, “You still wanna believe you’re not into girls?”.
#wanda maximoff x reader#wanda maximoff#wanda maximoff smut#wanda maximoff fanfiction#wanda maximoff fic#marvel
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You don't like silence
Part of the Metanoia series | Part 1 | Masterlist |
| SingleDad!Johnny x f!reader | 18+ MDNI | Johnny’s accent is thicker when he’s tired/talks to his family | CW grief, depression spiral, feelings of inadequacy, loss of appetite | Everyone has big feelings |
The house is silent, but inside your head a brumous storm swirls, wispy tendrils of fog curling around delicate gray matter.
Your routine—watching Johnny walk Isobel to school, going to work and coming home, just in time to glimpse Johnny leaving to retrieve her—has changed.
You still watch from the window, mug bleeding warmth into cold, stiff joints from between your palms. Peer around the curtains every morning as the pair amble down the pavement together.
A new month brings a steady influx of meetings and end of quarter reporting, projected sales and last minute production tweaks, but your days are no busier than normal. Rarely miss a lunch break. Leave no later than three each afternoon.
Dinner, if you have any, is ready by five.
Even so, restlessness lingers in the midnight moons hanging beneath your eyes, darkens the air around you with somnolent clouds, and you list in the torpid deluge that rains down.
Sleep evades you altogether most nights, and you’ve made a game of picking out patterns in the knockdown. Faces, animals; nebulous, nameless things.
Some nights, when the faces of strangers, burned into your retinas, find their way into the patterns of textured drywall, you listen.
Isobels room must be on the other side of yours, beds sharing a wall. On the nights you manage to make it upstairs, you can hear them both. Isobel’s slow and measured pronunciations. The lilt of Johnny’s voice, filling in the blanks where she pauses on a word she doesn’t yet know.
They’ve finished all of her animal books, which means the imitated roars of big cats and bleats of farmyard animals have morphed into exaggerated accents. Sing-song rhymes about the importance of kindness, accepting differences, and other life lessons told through colorful illustrations and whimsical narratives.
Every now and then, if you’re lucky, she falls asleep within a few pages, and you can pretend that the low, pillowy rumble of Johnny reading is just for you. A gentle coaxing made of velvety words, swaddling your mind, heavy with exhaustion, and cradling it to his chest against the maelstrom you’re spiraling in.
Sometimes she stirs, woken hours later in the placid, milky hours before dawn, just as your eyes begin to droop. Tiny feet patter across the hardwood like rain, muffled in uneven intervals by what must be a rug or runner in the hall, on her way to Johnny’s room or the washroom maybe.
You wonder if it’s full of frilly, feminine things, her room. Pinks and purples, dolls and plushies. Does she have princesses or ballerinas on her bedding? Do posters and drawings line her walls or does floral, pasted wallpaper?
She likes Mulan, you remember. A warrior. Fighter. Soldier. Like Johnny.
Probably not so frilly, then.
Perhaps they could make a fighter out of you. Press you into the mold of their little family–strengthened by loss and galvanized with love–and breathe life into clay limbs. Carve a soldier from the malleable earth. Shape you into something useful.
Now, most of your nights are spent huddled in the living room, listening to the droning of the television. Throw blankets suck you down into the sofa like quicksand and each breath draws them tighter and tighter around you, filling pockets of air with crushed velvet and fleece. Tonight, you let them swallow you whole. Sink willingly into a latibule of plaid and warm cashmere.
The cold and quiet of your empty home isn’t so bad when you can hear Johnny moving about on the other side of the wall. Isn’t so unbearable when the warm timbre of his voice chases away the numbing fog that muddles your head.
There are nights that he calls you, like he knows. Knows that you're drowning in the silence.
He does that now, after he puts Isobel to bed for the night. Calls to ask about your week. Casts a lifeline into the churning ocean between you, procellous waves lofting you on spuming peaks, and calls your name from the battered, broken shore.
A lighthouse calling to a ship, lost in the mist on a perilous sea.
Last Thursday he asked about the cookies you made with Isobel. Asked if you would be willing to share the recipe with him–teach him–so that he could make them with her for a school event coming up in the spring.
The tenderness with which he speaks of her is a balmy breeze for your gelid heart. Soothes the burn of ice floes in your veins. Melts weeks of tension from aching muscles.
Now, his voice is somber, pensive, as it filters through the lack of insulation between you. “Friday. No, ah havnae told ‘er yet. Jus’ got the call.” He pauses, and you think you hear a muffled sigh. He sounds tired, too, accent thicker than honeyed whiskey rolling off his tongue, dropping consonants in favor of deep, throaty vowels. “Aye, ah ken. She’ll be happy tae see ye though.”
He’s on the phone, talking about Isobel. They must have family visiting soon, or a family friend if Isobel knows them well enough to be excited.
You wonder what the MacTavish family is like, if they’re a rowdy bunch. If they’re a large, extended family. Johnny seems like the kind of man who comes from a close knit community, one where you grow up down the street from your cousins and spend summers terrorizing small towns together.
“I’ll talk tae ‘er in the mornin’. Ah- No.” There’s a pause again, and even with layers of sheetrock separating you, you can feel the weight of his silence. “No, Mam. She’s… ah worry. Leavin’ ‘er like this. Piss poor timin’.”
He’s leaving? Without Isobel?
It’s muffled through the wall, and you feel like you can’t have heard that correctly. He mentioned the army, but you had thought, with a child at home, that his work wouldn't be the sort that requires travel.
Ice floes turn to glaciers in your chest, frozen spikes threatening to pierce brittle, fragile muscle, and the clouds swirling overhead descend upon you.
Lost in the mist, and he’s leaving.
He’s leaving, and he’s taking the sun with him.
“Ye cannae keep it from the lassie forever, John. Ye havnae even told 'er what ye do?”
Christ, this woman…
“She knows ‘bout the army,” he defends. “Cannae say much more.”
Fenella MacTavish clucks her disapproval. “Ye’re heids full of mince.” Dishes clatter and a cupboard closes a bit too forcefully on the other end of the line.
Johnny runs a hand through the disheveled strands of his hair, overdue for a trim, well outside of regulation length. “Mam—”
“Dinnae ‘Mam’ me,” she cuts in. “John Alexander MacTavish, ye tell that lass what she’s gettin’ herself intae—or I will.”
“Mam,” he tries again, voice pitched low, “Not yet. Cannae send ‘er off, naw like I do wi’ Bell. It’s safe enough here.” You’re safe with him here. “Dinnae like knowin’ she’s alone—Christ, I can hardly stand tae have the wall between us when I ken she’s hurtin’—but there isnae anythin’ I can do that’s naw already been done. Kate’s made sure of that.”
Fenella huffs and he can’t quite make out the garbled muttering on his end, but he has a fair idea of what his mother is blathering about beneath her breath. “Kirsten—have ye gone tae see 'er?” she finally asks, mercifully shifting the conversation out of your direction. “Has Isobel?”
“No,” he admits, and guilt twists in barbed coils through his chest.
He’s been meaning to, to drive up for the weekend and take her to visit her mothers grave, now that she’s older. Stay with her gran and look through the old albums. She's only ever seen the few photos they have at home, hanging in the hall near the kitchen.
Sometimes she asks about her. If she liked the things she likes. The way rain freezes on the tall grasses and tree branches in the winter, making glass gardens of trellises and window boxes. Extra whipped cream and blueberries for her pancakes.
If she would have walked with them to school in the mornings. Take her to the park down the block in the summer. Hiking in the fall, looking for wisps darting about beneath the fallen abscission.
Isobel is so much like her mother there are days Johnny swears it’s her refusing to eat the dinner he’s made. That it’s her complaining about cold weather and overcast skies in the heart of winter, bemoaning how long they have until spring revives the land. Swears it’s her voice that wakes him in the middle of the night. Her ghost, standing in the dimly lit doorway of his bedroom, a blanket pulled ‘round her shoulders and a teddy dangling from her hand.
“I’ll take ‘er, then.” Johnny can hear the grief that tempers his mothers voice, turning anguish to steely resolve. “I’ll come by tomorrow evening, let ‘er have a few hours with ye at home before ye say yer goodbyes.”
“Thank ye, Mam,” he says on a strained exhale, lungs rattling with fragments of his own grief. It slices into old wounds until pockets of air become sanguineous aquifers, bubbling up in his throat and leaving a sour, metallic taste on his tongue.
“I meant what I said earlier,” she reminds him. “Ye tell yer lass. Dinnae leave ‘er in the dark like ye did Kirsten.”
The line goes silent and Johnny sinks back into the old corduroy sofa, pushed up against the wall beside a shelf overflowing with picture books in the living room, and a ragged sigh unfurls from his chest.
The television across from him is dark, turned off when he took Isobel upstairs for bed, but he can hear an old rerun of Taskmaster playing softly behind him.
He listens, every night, for you. For the sound of your fridge, opening and closing. The soft ‘clink’ of porcelain against granite. The oven timer or the microwave.
He prefers the former. Knows, after these last few weeks, that you cook when you’re in a good mood. Usually go to bed soon after. The sound of the microwave precedes long, muted evenings and little sound from your side of the wall. He won’t hear the stairs creak beneath your sluggish feet until the wee hours of the morning. If at all.
He listens in the mornings, too, while he makes Isobel’s breakfast. Makes sure he can hear you doing the same. Smiles to himself when he glimpses movement in the window beside your door, a miniscule swaying of the curtain, and he holds Isobel’s hand a little tighter as they navigate lingering ice patches on the pavement.
The phone call with his mother, making arrangements for Isobel, masked the sound of your movements earlier, and his fingers twitch against his leather phone case.
When your side of the wall is quiet, he knows a storm is brewing; that you’re sitting in the eye of it, waiting for the walls to close in around you.
He doesn’t know if you’ve eaten tonight. Can’t hear anything beyond the muffled television and occasional creak of the sofa beneath your shifting weight.
So he calls.
One… two… three… four… “Hi, Johnny.” Soft and breathy. Like the air the words are spoken on has borrowed from the softness of your lips as it spills into the receiver.
This is the way you sound when you’re tired, he’s learned, all soft and rounded syllables. Too exhausted, even for your own nervous habits. You don’t have the bandwidth to explain every little thing like you normally would; don’t bother with rationalizing your actions aloud.
“Hi, bonnie. What’s cookin’?” It’s cheesy as hell, but it earns a huff of a laugh from you and it tempers the jagged edge of his worry—a knife, lodged between his ribs.
“I, uh… I had leftovers. Takeaway, from a work thing.” He’s never seen you with takeaway. Always canvas bags full of groceries and the occasional frozen box dinner.
How empty is your fridge? When was the last time you went to the grocer?
“Didnae take ye for the ‘easy’ type. Ye always make me work for it.”
“Work for it?” He can picture the pinch of your brows. The way your lips quirk to the side when you’re confused.
“Aye, got me makin’ puppy eyes an’ beggin’ for yer scraps.” You laugh again, more of a scoff, but it eases some of his worry all the same.
“When have I ever made you beg, Johnny?” He’s been begging any higher power that will listen to see you smile again, and he’d give anything to see the smirk he knows is dancing at the corner of your mouth right now.
“Could do it tomorrow,” he blurts before he can think better of it. “Come over. Show me that recipe again.”
Don’t make him tell you he’s leaving over the phone.
“I thought… you said the charity event is at the end of March, right?”
“Aye, but I think I’ll need a few lessons ‘fore my bakin’s fit for auction.”
He needs to know—needs to see—that you’re well before he goes.
“And you want to start tomorrow?”
“Why not?” He’d have you baking in his kitchen now if it weren’t for the late hour.
There’s a stretch of silence, interrupted only by the faint crackling of static and the sound of your breathing. “Do you have flour? Sugar? Anything to bake with?” you ask, and he answers with a proud ‘yes’. “Okay… okay. I can come over after work tomorrow.”
“I’ll ‘ave Bell home early then. She’ll want tae help.” Your amused sigh echoes across the line, followed by the faint rustling of fabric and then the soft pattering of stocking-clad feet over hardwood, fourth and fifth step creaking softly as you climb the stairs. “Off tae bed?”
Another sigh–on the tail-end of a yawn, he realizes. “Yeah. Well, trying. Don’t get a lot of sleep these days,” you admit, and though he’s successfully abated the storm of your thoughts, he wishes he could disperse it entirely.
Be the shelter you seek, at the very least.
He’d nestle you in the warmth of his bed, tucked close and sleeping soundly in the cage of his arms. Anchor you to him with a leg hooked between yours, whispering adulation against the howling, taunting winds.
He would make himself a rock to let your tempestuous thoughts batter and besiege. Weathered and whittled down to pebbles on a beach, he’d roll in the undertow alongside you. And when he is but sand on the ocean floor, still, he would drift and settle wherever the storm of you takes him.
“I used tae read for my sister when we were weans. She’d wake, spooked from a dream, and come tae my room in the middle of the night.”
“You have a sister?” A door clicks closed and blankets whisper over sheets as you settle in for the night. “What’s she like?”
“A lot like our Mam. Headstrong. Stubborn.”
“Are you the oldest?” You sound further away. Muffled. Like you’ve got the blankets pulled up to your nose and the phone beside you on the pillow.
“I am,” he lilts.
“She gets it from you, then,” you murmur, and his chest tightens.
“She got a fair number of things from me, I’d wager.”
He continues on, speaking just above a low, gravelly whisper. Reminiscing his early years and the trouble the two of them got up to. Thick as thieves and wild as the kellas cats roaming the highlands.
Your interjections dwindle, turn to soft hums and slow, even breaths. Sleeping.
He listens for a few more minutes to the soft, sweet sounds you make, little chuffs and sleepy hums, the susurrations of shifting sheets and nightclothes, and he whispers into the darkness, “Goodnight, sweet girl.”
Work passes you by in a blur, meeting after meeting chipping away at the hours and minutes ticking by on the analog clock perched on your desk.
The drive home is uneventful and it feels as though you’ve passed through a wormhole somewhere along the way. Can’t quite remember making the turn into your neighborhood from the main road.
Normally, Johnny would be leaving to retrieve Isobel from school right now, but as you gather your things and step out of the car you hear your name being called from several houses down.
Braids bounce and red wellies squeak as Isobel darts ahead of Johnny, weaving around patches of ice to get to you, and you step up onto the pavement just in time to keep her from running into the road.
She barrels into you, wrapping her arms around your leg and smooshing her face against your slacks. “Ye’re back!” she squeals, fingers curling into the fabric.
She’s leaving.
Your hand settles atop her head, soft wisps of curls tickling the pads of your fingers where they’ve escaped their plaits. “Where did I go?” you ask, and she tips her head back to look up at you.
“Bubby said ye were busy with work. Sometimes he gets busy too, and I have to stay with my gran.”
They’re both leaving.
Johnny’s caught up with her, lingering a few steps away near the walkway leading to your door. When you look to where he stands, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, windbreaker bunched up around his forearms where a tattoo peeks out, the corners of his eyes glimmer.
A smile curves the corners of his mouth, and it’s an odd mixture of grief and happiness that flickers there in the crook of his lips and set of his brow, sloped upwards and creased in the middle. His hair is longer than you remember, scruffy sides and tufts of mohawk curling at the ends, loose strands tousled around his face.
Wind blows at your back and a single tear tracks down the sharp plane of his cheek, disappearing in the dark shadow of stubble that lines his jaw.
“I have been busy with work,” you confirm, peering down at Isobel once more. “But I didn’t leave.”
You’re staying, and they’re leaving.
The wind picks up and she presses closer, shielding herself from the cold behind your frame. “Let’s get ye inside and put yer book bag away. Then we can catch up over cookies an’ milk,” Johnny says as he closes the distance between you.
“Cookies?!” Her excitement carries on the wind, and his smile sharpens, bright and hopeful, but the whetted edge of sorrow undercuts the warmth.
“Aye, but we’ll have to make ‘em ourselves.” He brushes a stray lock from her eyes, fingers brushing against yours where his hand settles beside it on her crown, and dread blooms low in your stomach where warmth should.
She ducks away from you both, bolting towards their front stoop, and you’re left with both of your hands hovering in the air, his half curled over yours, staring after her.
You pull away first, adjusting your bag on your shoulder. “I just need to sort this–” You gesture to the tote full of binders and your laptop. “–and I'll be right over.”
He fishes his keys from his pocket and takes a step back, towards Isobel. “We’ll be waitin’,” he says with a wink, and turns to take her inside.
There's flour in your hair and matching handprints on your slacks, and neither Johnny nor Isobel have fared much better. You’re all a mess, and the cookies you’ve made are tantamount to your disheveled state–lumpy, dry masses of something more closely resembling a biscuit.
“Dunno what ah did wrong,” Johnny muses, breaking one in half and inspecting the crumbly texture.
You sit beside him at the kitchen table, watching Isobel dunk half a cookie into a glass of milk. “It’s the butter and flour. The ratio is imbalanced–not enough fat.” She doesn’t seem to mind, stuffing the entire piece in her mouth and readying the next, fingers covered in crumbs that fall in her milk.
Johnny shifts beside you, sliding out of his chair and taking a bite out of his cookie as he moves towards the fridge. “Still tastes good,” he says around a mouthful and pours two more glasses, placing one down in front of you when he returns. “But I’ll need another demonstration when I’m back, I think.”
You take a cookie from the plate in the middle of the table, breaking off a chunk to dunk in your milk, and ignore the mirrored sensation in your chest. You knew this was coming. You know he’s leaving.
“When you’re back? From where?” you probe. No need to dance around the subject.
He shifts again, uncharacteristically nervous, and speaks softly. “Have to leave for a little while, for work,” he explains. Your cookie turns pliant between your fingers and you bite off the softened corner, chewing slowly while you listen. “Willnae know where they’re sendin’ me to until the briefin’.”
“When are you leaving?” You stare down at the crumbs swirling in your glass.
“Tomorrow morning.”
The foreknowledge of his impending departure doesn’t make the break any cleaner. The fracturing feeling in your chest widens into fissures and chasms, jagged edges crumbling, tumbling down into the festering darkness.
When you lift your gaze you find that he’s been watching you–studying you–and his hand has crept across the table, close enough you can feel the warmth of him. “How long?” It comes out wobbly. Unsteady.
You’re drifting out to sea again.
“Few weeks. Maybe a month.” Your chest feels like it’s caving in.
There’s a knock at the door. A canary in a coal mine, warning come too late.
“Gran!” Isobel’s chair nearly topples as she pushes back from the table, racing from the kitchen to the front door.
Johnny’s hand covers yours, long, callused fingers curling around your clenched fist and squeezing. “I’ll be back before ye know it,” he murmurs, smoothing a strand of hair away from your face and tracing the curve of your jaw as he stands.
He only goes as far as the kitchen doorway. Your heart’s already somewhere in the North Sea.
“Hi, Mam.” He’s greeted by an older female voice and pulled into a hug by a woman a whole head shorter than him. Isobel hovers nearby, bouncing excitedly from foot to foot, and tugs at the older woman’s–her grandmother’s–cable knit sweater.
“Gran, come meet our friend!” she says, and tugs again until she lets go of Johnny.
You stand from the table on wobbly legs, fighting to balance your listing emotions and put on a warm smile as Johnny’s mother slides past him into the kitchen.
The resemblance between the three of them is uncanny. Johnny shares his mothers dark coloring, rich hair and warm skinned, and they all have the same eyes–steely hues of grey-blue, spiraling outwards from inky pupils like storm cells.
“So, this is the lassie next door ye willnae stop glaverin’ on about?” she asks no one in particular as she openly appraises you.
“Mam–” Johnny begins, a simmering warning, but she holds up a hand to silence him.
They carry themselves in a similar manner, in the set of their shoulders and broad stance. She may not stand as tall as he does but she’s no less imposing, and it’s an effort not to squirm under her scrutiny.
Seconds feel like hours as she looks you up and down, cataloging the flour on your pants and in your hair, glancing to her left where Johnny stands in a state of equal disarray, and a knowing look flickers like lightning in her storm cloud eyes.
“It’s good tae finally put a face wi’ a name,” she says, smiling, and pulls you into a hug, too. “Call me Fenella, or Fen, whichever ye like.”
You return the gesture hesitantly, looking over her shoulder to Johnny for guidance and finding none. He simply smiles back at you from where he leans against the doorway, something unreadable in his expression lingering beneath it.
“It’s nice to meet you too… I- I’d love to stay, but should probably be heading home. I have an early morning and wouldn’t want to intrude on your visit,” you say by way of excuse.
“Ah’m naw stayin’ long, dear,” she explains, finally pulling away. Isobel returns to her side, pressing her shoulder to her thigh, and Fenella’s hand settles on the crown of her head. “Here tae take the wean for a stay wi’ her gran.”
“Is yer bag ready, leannan? D’ya have all yer books for school?” Johnny asks from where he stands, hands having found their way into his pockets again. His shoulders droop, broad frame deflating before your eyes. Leaving her behind, even with his mother, takes a toll on him.
Isobel leans around her gran to say, “I’ave all my books. And Mr. Ghost.”
“Goan an’ get yer things then, Bell,” Fenella ushers her out of the kitchen, climbing the stairs behind her to her room.
You watch until they disappear above the half open staircase, but Johnny has been watching you. Watching you navigate the shoal of your emotions, razor sharp rock scraping against a flimsy hull.
“C’mere, lass,” he entreats, one arm outstretched towards you, and your feet move of their own accord, carrying you forward until his hand settles on your shoulder, momentarily moored in the eddy of a tide pool. “Didnae mean to tell ye in the middle of… this.” He gestures above him to the sound of footsteps overhead. “Only got the call yesterday.”
With your hands folded at your front, you stare down at them, picking at a loose thread on your sleeve. “It’s okay. I understand—”
“No, lass, it isnae okay,” he interrupts, hand gliding up your shoulder, your neck, and coming to rest on your cheek. He lifts your gaze back up to his and he’s wearing that nameless emotion, staring down at you with a pained expression.
This hurts him as much as it hurts you.
“The job I do, it isnae always… predictable. Dinnae get much warning when I’m called in for assignments. I should have warned ye…” his thumb traces soothing arcs over your cheek, but it does nothing for the gaping hole in your chest. “I’m sorry… I should have—”
“It’s okay, Johnny. Really.” The lie feels like rubbing salt into a wound, burns the back of your throat like you’re speaking around a lump made of sandpaper, and your voice comes out scratchy and raw.
His hand lingers on your cheek, eyes darting from yours to your nose, lips, cheeks, brow. Memorizing.
“Let me walk ye home?” You nod, unsure if you can speak around the cordolium lodged in your throat, and his hand moves from your cheek to your waist, guiding you through the razor rock and churning tide to the front door.
His arm remains firmly around you, fingers digging into your softness as he escorts you across the meager expanse of your lawn.
There’s an SUV, still running, parked in front of both houses and left to keep warm while Isobel gathers her things. She and Fenella step out into the brisk evening air just as you and Johnny reach the top of your stairs, and Isobel waves to you as they descend. Your arm feels leaden as you lift your hand into the air, waving back to her.
“She‘ll miss ye. Talks about ye all the time,” Johnny says beside you, unwilling to let you go just yet. “I’ll be missin’ ye too,” he admits, and you thought you’d found the bottom of the pit in your stomach. Thought you were already lying at the bottom of it.
You were wrong.
The well of your affection for them feels bottomless. The floor crumbles, residual tremors of the quaking in your chest, and you’re falling, falling, falling…Even with his arm around your waist.
You fell in love with the man in front of you. Fell in love with the darling little girl climbing into her grandmother's car. You’re already in love with Fenella and her dedication to her family.
You’ve been falling this whole time, no safety net in sight.
“I- …” Your voice cracks, and you try again. “I’ll miss you, too. Both of you.”
You’re falling, and they’re leaving.
There’s little warning, just a tug of your blouse, before you’re being folded into his arms. A wide palm cradles your head to his chest, fingers threading through your hair, and he presses his cheek to your crown.
“Won’t be able to use my phone a lot, but I’ll call when I can.” He murmurs his promise into your hair. “If… if I’m not here an’ somethin’ happens… I gave my Mum yer number. Saved hers in yer phone when I gave ye mine.” He pauses. Sucks in a shuddering breath before he continues. “Whatever it is, she’ll help.”
You nod your understanding and he pulls back just enough to see your face, guides your head to look up at him and says, “Promise me. Promise that ye’ll go to her if ye need anythin’,” with a desperation you’ve never heard from him.
So you make another promise. Let your eyes flutter closed as he presses his forehead to yours and ghosts his lips across the chilled skin of your brow.
And then he leaves.
Isobel is sorted, buckled into her car seat and saying her goodbye’s to Johnny, and Fenella MacTavish stands beside the driver’s side door, watching.
She’s said this goodbye a hundred times. Sent him off to god knows where to fight a war she’s never heard of. It never gets easier.
Isobel’s door closes, and her son turns to her with pain in his eyes. “I hate leaving ‘er.”
“Which one?” she intones, and Johnny leans his hip against the B pillar.
“Both of them. The three of ye.”
“Then make sure ye come back tae ‘er–tae all of us,” she advises, and pulls him into one last hug. “I cannae bury another child.”
Next>>>
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I broke down the hilarious amount of "Aziraphale tartans" so you don't have to.
I've been slowly going bonkers collecting the amount of times members of the cast/creators and fans of Good Omens over the years have referred to various things as "Aziraphale's tartan". Even on merchandise, I've seen wildly varying opinons about what pattern Aziraphale's tartan actually is. Your resident graphic designer has decided to sit down and just do the damned thing*.
Exhibit A) Tartan Origin
Sarah Arnett posted this image to her instagram in 2019, having created "Heaven's dress tartan for the character Aziraphale". However, the only time I've actually seen this pattern used in good omens is in the season 2 announcement poster made by Mickey, and maybe on a pair of socks Aziraphale wears in season 1, (but I'm not convinced).
So here's what that looks like. Note I've rotated the original pattern 90 degrees clockwise in my final pattern (far right) for reasons that will become clear shortly.
Exhibit B) Aziraphale's Bowtie, Thermos, Notebook etc.
This is the tartan that Aziraphale actually wears for most of seasons 1 & 2.** It's a recoloured version of the Exhibit A), and has been rotated 90 degrees on it's bowtie application so that the darker bars run vertical, and not horizontal. The problem is, while the direction of the pattern on his accessories doesn't change, it does on the bowtie. You can see examples of the tartan going right OR left in both season 1 and 2.
Exhibit C) Aziraphale's Brown Bowtie...
This Tartan isn't just a trick of the light. For the first park bench scene in season 1, Aziraphale is wearing a version of his regular bowtie, recoloured in brown and rotated 90 degrees, so that it fits with the direction of the original Exhibit A) Tartan, but not with the direction of the tartan on his Exhibit B) regular bowties. This bowtie was made special, from cloth cut in the opposite direction.
Exhibit D) Aziraphale's Magical Cravat!
Now this is where it starts to get interesting! I haven't seen many people discuss Aziraphale's magician disguise from season 1, but his cravat actually has both Exhibit B) and Exhibit C) tartans to create a contrasting double sided tartan: the outward facing brown, and the hidden, inward facing blue (according to costumer, because of lack of enough brown).
Exhibit E) Saraqael's and Muriel's Tartan
Don't be fooled, Saraqael's and Muriel's tartan may look similar in colour to Aziraphale's, but when you pick it apart, it's got inverse colours, and mildly squished horizontal striping. If you note the orange boxes in each picture, you can see the ratio of the blue stripe to the vertical stripes in each tartan is different, while keeping the overall pattern and ratio in each direction the same. Exhibit E) has a square intersection. It's also usually woven much larger. This tartan also introduces a small sliver of hunter green into the beige/blue/purple palette that's been seen so far.
Exhibit F) Gabriel's Tartan Blanket
Like the others, Gabriel's S2E1 blanket is a variation on the original Heaven's Dress Tartan. It's got very squished horizontal striping though, and is woven even larger than the Saraqael Tartan. Most noticeably though, while it has the same grey vertical striping as Exhibit E) it's now got even more green in it, and the purple is gone almost entirely (save one line).
Exhibit F) Have a bonus Crowlee Tartan from the Season 1 body swap miracle that matches none of these.
It's silver silk though. Can I get a wahoo....?
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*Disclaimer: I am not Scottish, and definitely not an expert in tartan, just a tired graphic designer. If you want tartan expertise, you can go here (although I don't really agree with what they say about the main colour pattern) https://livebloggingmydescentintomadness.tumblr.com/post/189300035060/a-discourse-on-tartan
**In order to deduce colours, I've used high quality BTS footage or photography in neutral lighting whenever possible. Especially in season 2, colour grading and post processing of the final show make colour matching between scenes and/or seasons impossible.
#good omens 2#art director talks good omens#go season 2#good omens season 2#good omens season two#good omens#good omens prime#go1#good omens season 1#tartan#crowley x aziraphale#aziraphale and crowley#aziraphale#costume#good omens costume meta#good omens analysis
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So my autistic ass was OBSESSED with The Titanic as a kid and one thing I keep thinking about with this whole lost submarine incident is the “name curse”.
White Star Line, the company that produced the Titanic, made three Olympic class ocean liners: The Olympic, The Titanic, and The Britannic.
(Seen in order top to bottom. Picture stolen from reddit. X )
The Olympic is the only of those three that did not sink.
Now, the “name curse” that comes in to play here is related to greek mytholoical races from which each ship has supposedly taken its name: The Olympic Gods (also just called Olympians), The Titans, and The Giants. The giants are involved due to a claim that The Britannic was originally called The Gigantic, based on an unofficial poster featuring the ship with the supposed name above it, as well as a contemporary newspaper stating that the company announced a ship with said name three years before The Britannic was launched.
Both The Giants and The Titans were races that were vanquished by The Olympic Gods in what are called the Titanomachy and Gigantomachy, with the latter event being less well know.
Another race of gigantic beings seen in greek mythology is The Cyclopes. The Cyclops were never vanquished by The Olympic Gods as they were never at odds with the gods, even crafting artifacts for the gods themselves, namely: Zeus’s thunderbolts, Poseidon’s trident, and Hades’s helmet of invisibility.
The submarine that went missing is part of the Cyclops class submarine line produced by OceanGate Inc., probably called such due to the design. Two vessels of the class have been produced with two more planned following a naming scheme of Cyclops I, Cyclops II, and so on. Cyclops II however was renamed to Titan specifically for its use in touristic viewing expeditions of The Titanic.
Now, more about the submarine itself;
Cyclops I performed well for its intended depth, Titan however has not, with OceanGate having lost track of it before. This is due to the vessel lacking a tracking beacon, as well as navigation controls and communication devices, relying on a support ship to text Titan’s captain its directions, as revealed by Journalist David Progue, who also said that they “turned off the ship’s internet to prevent tweeting.” Also, due to the lack of these features, Titan was denied official certification by ship classification societies for not meeting safety standards of ANY society. Problems started long before this, though.
During the testing of Titan’s design, OceanGate claimed that the dimensions and structure were partly designed and tested by NASA, Boeing (the plane company) and The University of Washington. All three of which have denied this. In fact, when Titan was first built, it was handed over to the company’s operations department with no testing whatsoever as well as an insufficient monitoring system. The Director of Operations, however, saw this and submitted a negative quality report, for which he was promptly fired. When they DID finally test it over a year later, the vessel resurfaced with signs of cyclic fatigue, which is the near microscopic bending of metal that happens before cracks appear. Instead of changing the design to prevent this from happening in future expeditions, the company simply replaced the damaged parts and called it good.
All in all, its just so funny to me that OceanGate used the same supposedly cursed naming pattern for its ONE safety violation riddled submarine only to send it to a lethal depth its not equipped to handle AND SOMEHOW not expect it to eventually crush like a soda can under a semi.
#titanic#the titanic#titan#oceangate#submarine#greek mythology#titans#olympic gods#olympians#cyclops#ships#greek gods#titan submarine#my post
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I forgot to put these on tumblr lol! These romcom posters were made as an 'anonymous' gift for returnofthelu for the 2023 Halloween Exchangeapalooza! Check out all the entries on AO3 here!
These are also avail as posters, prints and stickers on my RedBubble!
Support me on Patreon or send a tip on Kofi!
(ID in alt and under cut)
1. Movie poster based on Practical Magic, with the title in the top center and the names Guillermo de la Cruz and Nandor the Relentless along the top. Nandor is close up in the center, face worried and thrown into harsh shadows by candlelight. Guillermo is just behind him, staring determinedly at the viewer with a stake raised. Nandor's left hand is held out behind him, the back of it pressed to Guillermo's chest as if to hold him back. In the foreground in front of them is a cluster of lit candles and the silhouettes of dozens of bats flying past. A tagline reads 'for a vampire with a lifetime of heartbreak, falling out of love is the trickiest spell of all.' Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production.'
2. Movie poster based on While You Were Sleeping, with the names Guillermo de la Cruz and Nandor the Relentless along the top. Close up of Nandor in his super slumber robes, eyes half open, drooling and looking barely awake, head surrounded by question marks. Guillermo, a vampire, is beaming and hugging him around the neck from behind, a smear of blood on his cheek. The title 'While You Were In Super Slumber' lays across them in white with the tagline 'a story about love at second sight.' Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production.'
3. Movie poster based on The Wedding Planner, with the names Guillermo de la Cruz and Nandor the Relentless along the top with the tagline 'a romantic horror comedy about love, wishes, and other events you just can't plan for.' Waist up of Guillermo and Nandor on a background of white roses dripping with blood, pooling and staining at the bottom. Guillermo is leaning heavily against the bottom of the poster with both elbows, one hand holding up his face as he stares blankly into the middle distance, tired beyond belief with dark circles beneath his eyes. Nandor is leaning into him from behind, one arm propped on his shoulders and holding a pen while he gestures vaguely. The other hand is holding up a notebook. Nandor, also with dark circles beneath his eyes but with a more manic expression, is looking upward and appears in the middle of reciting some new list of demands. The title 'The Wedding Planner' is scrawled over the top of them in fancy font. Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production.'
4. Movie poster based on Pretty Woman, with the names Guillermo de la Cruz and Laszlo Cravensworth along the top. The title 'Pretty Vampire' is printed vertically on the right side with the tagline 'he flew into their lives, off the balcony, and needed medical attention.' In the center, Laszlo floats midair, facing left with one hand in his pocket. He is wearing a black suit with a patterned purple waistcoat and embroidered loafers. He is wrenched backward with a shocked and angry expression, bent almost in half, as Guillermo grabs onto his tie from behind. Guillermo, wearing a pink and red patterned sweater, black chinos, and black boots, is flailing midair, held up only by his death grip on Laszlo's tie as he pumps his legs back and forth in an effort to regain flight. His eyes are wide and panicked, teeth clenched together, and there are shadows of bat wings at his back. Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production.'
5. Movie poster based on The Vow, with the names Guillermo de la Cruz and Nandor the Relentless along the top. Nandor and Guillermo are facing each other in profile, intimately close and with their foreheads pressed together, smiling gently and staring into each other's eyes. Nandor has his hands on Guillermo's hips and Guillermo has one hand on Nandor's waist and the other tucked around the back of his neck. Several top buttons of Guillermo's shirt is open, and there is blood staining the collar and dripping sluggishly from two holes on his throat. Blood is also smeared around Nandor's mouth and chin. The title 'The Vow' is overlaid with the tagline 'his word is their bond'. Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production.'
6. Movie poster based on The Breakup, with the names Guillermo de la Cruz and Nandor the Relentless along the top. Nandor and vampire Guillermo are both sitting up on either side of a massive king-sized coffin with a double lid. A line of duct tape runs down the adjacent wall and divides the coffin down the middle. On the left, Guillermo, hair a mess and wearing a blue striped pajama set, sits with his knees to his chest, hugging his balled-up corner of their shared comforter to his chest and glaring off to the side, away from Nandor. On the right, Nandor, wearing a loose cream blouse, sits pouting with his arms crossed, glaring over at the side of Guillermo's head. The title over their heads says 'the break-up' with the tagline '…pick a side.' Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production. coming on a sheet near you November 2023.'
7. Movie poster based on Failure to Launch, with the names Guillermo de la Cruz and Laszlo Cravensworth along the top. Full body of Laszlo and Guillermo as Laszlo, wearing a burgundy and pink suit, cheerfully pushes Guillermo across the screen from behind, grinning at the viewer. Guillermo, wearing a teal and brown patterned cardigan, beige chinos, and boots, is leaning back into Laszlo, body fully straight and rigid, digging his heels in as they scrape along the ground. He looks anxious and terrified, hands up in front of him as if to protect him from whatever he's headed toward. The title above their heads reads 'failure to launch' with the tagline 'to leave the nest, some fledglings just need a little push.' Falling down from the title is a little black and orange bat, a dotted line following it down as it fails to fly upward. Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production.'
8. Movie poster based on 10 Things I Hate About You, with the title '10 Things I Ate Instead of You' large in the right center of frame with the names Nandor the Relentless and Guillermo de la Cruz above and below it, respectively. A tagline along the top reads 'how do I resent thee? let me count the ways'. In the center is Nandor from knees up, curled in an armchair with his knees tucked to one side, his left arm resting on the chair arm and his right elbow braced on the other to play idly with his hair. His expression is a practice in aloofness, looking off to the side. Behind him stands Guillermo, left arm leaning against the back of the chair and right elbow braced to lean his head against his hand. He stares longingly at the side of Nandor's head, face flushed and lips pressed together nervously. Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production.'
9. Movie poster based on You've Got Mail, with Guillermo and Nandor. Their names are listed at the top. They are walking casually toward the viewer on far sides of the image, looking off to the side away from each other with dreamy smiles, ignorant of the other's presence. Nandor is wearing a brown and gold belted tunic and boots, twiddling his fingers together. Guillermo is wearing black boots, gray chinos and vest, and his trenchcoat, a stake loose in his hand as it swings at his side. The background is blurry green and white, shadows stretching out in front of them. Between them, a tagline reads 'Someone you pass on the street may already be the love of your afterlife.' and then the title 'You've Got Mail' beneath. 'Text at the bottom says 'a beansprean production.' /end ID
#wwdits#nandermo#laszlermo#romcom#exchangeapalooza#mlm#guillermo de la cruz#nandor the relentless#laszlo cravensworth#what we do in the shadows#what we do in the shadows fx#my art#fanart#image described#the super slumber one is not avail in rb right now bc its under copyright review lmao#but im sure it will pop back up in a few days
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would you ever write a curious gaze type of concept ? especially for young dad!h like maybe he’s seen with one of his babies and the fan is observing him from afar
Curious Gazes
Three separate instances where the Styles family is seen out in the wild.
Young dad!Harry x Young mom!Reader universe
The School Teacher
“Thank you so much for meeting with me today, Ms. Y/l/n. Will your husband be joining us today?” Mrs. Keating said.
“No, sorry, he's away for work.”
Y/n smiled at the middle-aged woman as she sat in the seat across from Mrs. Keating's desk. She was Simone’s kindergarten teacher. She hadn’t spoken to Y/n too much outside of the initial parent’s meeting at the beginning of the school year, and she didn't participate much in the school's extracurricular activities, and she often pulled Simone from school. But Simone was excelling doing well and on top of all her schoolwork, so Mrs. Keating didn't see any red flags. Y/n was young, very young, that much was clear, but she tried not to hold it against the girl.
However, Mrs. Keating eventually had to call Y/n in for a meeting after a couple recurring incidences the last few days. It was nothing major, but Mrs. Keating thought it would be wise to get ahead of it before the situation had the potential to escalate.
“That’s okay, dear. We can go ahead and get started.” Simone's mother motioned for Mrs. Keating to continue as she folded one leg over the other in her seat. The teacher eyed Y/n's sneakers curiously before saying, "It has come to my attention that Simone has been going around telling students that her father is a famous musician."
Mrs. Keating had overheard Simone telling her fellow students that her dad was Harry Styles, someone Mrs. Keating only knew because her niece was a big fan. She didn't know much about the celebrity, but she saw a magazine headline or the occasional photograph. There was no way Harry Styles was Simone's father or Y/n's husband.
"Right, um, I'll have a talk with her when I get home," Y/n said, sounding a little surprised.
Mrs. Keating smiled warmly at the girl. "Lovely. I just wanted you to be aware of the situation. Lying is frowned upon at this school."
"She's—My daughter isn't lying," Y/n said. "My husband is a musician. He’s—"
"It's okay if that's the story you want to give to Simone," Mrs. Keating said. Perhaps Y/n didn't know who Simone's father was and she just told her daughter offhandedly that her dad was a celebrity. "But it's started quite a few arguments in the classroom and on the playground."
Y/n mumbled some kind of reply, and Mrs. Keating found herself saying, "Sorry, what was that, dear?"
"I said, I will talk to Simone about being mindful of the things we say and how we say them," Y/n said, clearer this time.
"Wonderful. Have a good day, Y/n."
"It's Mrs.—Nevermind. Have a good day, Mrs. Keating.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*
A few weeks after her meeting with Simone's teacher, everything seemed to be fine. She wasn't totally fond of Mrs. Keating's condescension, but there were no more incidences, and Harry and Y/n decided to wait to talk to the school's administration about everything. They wanted as little drama as possible.
And then it was Simone's turn for her class' "All About Me" presentation. She was supposed to make a poster that was, of course, all about her—favorite foods, favorite things to do at home, and of course, her family.
Y/n didn't think much of it, but that was mostly because Harry helped Simone with the project while he was on a brief break from touring. He and Simone had a lot of fun cutting out photographs with curvy patterned scissors, gluing on large bubbly letters that spelled out her name, and writing little paragraphs under each picture. And the glitter. Y/n knew she would be finding pink glitter around the house for years to come after this project.
Harry and Simone showed the finished project to Y/n, and she was thoroughly surprised by her husband's crafting skills. There were pictures of Simone in Holmes Chapel with Anne and Gemma, Simone's stuffed animals having a tea party (real china, because of course Uncle Louis thought Simone needed real china to have a proper tea party), Y/n and Simone at Disneyland with Mickey Mouse ears, and one of the whole family in the hospital when Collette was born. Harry was in a few pictures, obviously, but Y/n didn't think anyone in Simone's classmates would recognize him. It wasn't like there were pictures of him onstage or anything like that.
So she was surprised when a week after the project was turned in, Y/n was once again called into a meeting with her daughter's teacher.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*
"No husband again?" Mrs. Keating asked Y/n. Really, though, that didn't come as a surprise.
"Actually, he's just running a little late. He should be here in a few minutes."
"Well, I'd just like to speak to you about the project Simone turned in last week," the woman said. "I thought we had squashed this whole 'dad is a rockstar bit' at school, but she had a picture of Harry Styles on her poster."
"Yeah, well—"
"Yes, well," Mrs. Keating interrupted. "You see, it's not right to fill a child's head with delusions about who her father is, and honestly, I feel like a good mother wouldn't let her child get her hopes up in such a way."
It was one thing to let children to believe in Santa Claus, but for a mother to lie to her daughter about the identity of her father, especially such an outlandish lie, it was downright irresponsible in the teacher's book.
Y/n looked shocked, but Mrs. Keating didn't know why. Surely, the girl knew why she was called for another meeting today. The woman expected to have a calm, reasonable discussion about Simone, but Y/n took her by surprise and said, "You—You, know what? I'm not comfortable having this conversation with just you. I think I'd like to speak to the principal as well."
She looked affronted, Mrs. Keating thought, though she didn't know why. Nothing she said to the girl was unreasonable. It was clear Y/n needed some assistance on how she should raise her daughter. She was just trying to help the poor girl.
"Y/n, there's no need to get hostile, dear—"
"Hostile? You haven't seen anything yet. I swear to God—"
"Hey, sorry I'm late—Woah. Everything okay, darling?"
Mrs. Keating's eyes flitted to the door of her classroom, and her eyes widened in shock. That was...that was Harry Styles. In her classroom.
"No, we're leaving," Y/n said, stalking over to Harry and gripping his hand when she reached him.
Harry immediately rested a hand on Y/n's shoulder, his face filled with concern. They mumbled to each other for a few seconds, and all Mrs. Keating could do was flounder at the fact that Harry Styles had a daughter, and she was in her kindergarten class.
"Right," Mrs. Keating heard Harry say. "I think we'll continue this discussion another day."
Harry's voice was thick with emotion. Anger, Mrs. Keating realized. She scrambled to think of something to say that would smooth things over. "Mr. Styles, I'm so sorry about this, I—"
"I think it's my wife you owe an apology to, but as I said, we'll talk about it another day."
The pair left without another word, harry's arm slung around Y/n's shoulders.
The following week, Mrs. Keating was written up and was informed that Simone had transferred to a different school.
The Production Assistant
Amy didn't want to make an ass out of herself and assume anything, but she was pretty sure her boss was in love with her.
Well, Harry technically wasn't her boss, but she was a PA on the set of Don't Worry Darling, and he had a leading role, so he was basically her boss.
If Amy told anyone what she thought, they would all think she was crazy, which was why she didn't say anything. She just got this vibe from Harry. He always went out of his way to say hello to her and ask how she was doing, he gave her a kind smile whenever she passed by him, and he once brought her coffee, even though her job was to bring coffee to him!
She just had this gut feeling like there was this unspoken thing between them, but neither of them acted on it because there were so many prying eyes. It was honestly admirable how professional Harry was about the whole thing.
"Good morning Harry," Amy said as she knocked on his trailer door. "They're almost ready for you on set."
Harry stepped out of his trailer. He was in costume—a crisp suit and hair styled to perfection. He was just so dreamy, Amy thought, and when he smiled at her stomach erupted into butterflies. "Thanks, Amy. Always makin' sure I'm on time."
Amy blushed. "Just doing my job, Harry."
"Call me H. Most people do," he told her.
A nickname? Harry said "most people" called him H, but she knew that was probably him just saving face. He really did like her.
"Good luck!" Amy called to him as he walked onto the set of his 1950s-era home.
Harry gave her a thumbs-up and winked at her over his shoulder, which only solidified Amy's suspicions.
Harry Styles was definitely into her.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.
Amy was going to make her move today, she had to.
Between all the flirty smiles and jokes and that one time Harry called her "Ames," she couldn't take it anymore. She didn't care if they had to keep their relationship a secret, she just wanted them to address the elephant in the room.
Harry was in his trailer while production filmed a couple scenes that he wasn't in. He usually watched to give his friends moral support, but today he only left when he was called to set.
Amy approached his trailer, a coffee just the way he liked it in her hands. She was so excited, she didn’t hear two voices laughing until she opened the trailer door.
“Shove off, H!”
“Shove off? That’s rude.”
“You’re crushing me, you big baby!”
“That’s exactly what I am. You know how hard it is to get your attention these days? I’ve got a small army between me and you. And it’s just gonna get worse.”
“Well you’re the one who doesn’t know how to pull ou—Oh. Hello.”
Amy was frozen on the steps of Harry’s trailer, unsure of the sight in front of her. Harry was sitting on the sofa, but around his broad shoulders, she could see he was actually sitting on a young woman’s lap. Amy couldn’t see much, just half of a face and hair tied up into a ponytail, but alarm bells immediately rang in her head.
Having noticed his friend stopped talking, Harry craned his neck to look over at Amy. He grinned at her, but made no move to stand up from where he was perched on the young woman’s lap.
“Oh. Hey, Amy! Am I being called onto set? I thought my call time was at seven.”
All Amy could look at was the way the young woman’s hand rested so casually on Harry’s knee, like she didn’t have to think twice about touching him. It was so simple yet affectionate, exactly how Amy imagined being with Harry would be like.
Somehow, she managed to wrench her gaze away. “No. No, uh, I just thought I’d check in because you’re usually, um, usually on set with the rest of us.”
“I know. Sorry about that. I just got a surprise visit from Y/n here, and she’s just desperate for my attention.”
She could be a friend, Amy thought. Friends had friendly banter and were close like that. Amy decided to still hold out hope. All the signs were there that Harry liked her.
Said random girl pinched Harry’s arm, but he swatted her hand away. They giggled with each other and kept pushing each other around like school children, and Amy was suddenly filled with immense jealousy. Who was this girl? Didn’t she have any respect for the fact that someone else was in the trailer?
“Honestly, Amy, you can have him. He’s being a pain in the ass,” the woman, Y/n, said.
Harry immediately pouted at Y/n. “I’ll remember that,” he said, but Y/n merely rolled her eyes at him.
They began bickering again, and Amy took that as her cue to leave. As she walked back to set, Harry’s coffee still in her hands, she didn’t know what to think.
Before long, it was time for Harry to shoot his scenes, and Y/n was nowhere to be found. Harry was as friendly and good natured as ever, he even asked Amy to wish him luck before a first take!
She wanted to watch Harry film his scenes, but she was unfortunately called away to tend to other things. Amy ran around the lot, carrying messages and running things back and forth for whoever saw her walking by. It was exhausting at times, but it was a foot in the door, and that was what mattered.
Between errands, Amy found Harry at the craft services table, and without even thinking about it, she made a beeline for him.
“Hey, H,” she said, trying to sound like she ran into him by chance. “How’s the shoot going?”
“Good, I think. Thank you for asking,” he said, smiling at her. “How are you? Working hard or hardly working?”
Amy blushed and let out a laugh. He was so endearingly dorky, and he always made a point to ask how she was doing. He was just so thoughtful.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” she said.
“Good. Well, if no one told you today, I really appreciate your hard work. I’m sure this place would be in shambles if it wasn’t for you and everyone else working behind the scenes.”
Amy swore she was going to swoon any second now. Thankfully, she managed to keep it together. “O—Of course. I’m happy to help.”
“Can I trust you?” he asked her, his voice dropping so only Amy could hear him.
Gulping, she asked. “Of course.”
Harry stepped just a little bit closer, and Amy had to hold her breath as she waited for him to say what she’d been fantasizing about for weeks. “Do you mind going to my trailer and checking on Y/n?
Amy felt like the floor had been ripped out from under her feet. “Check? On—On Y/n?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes she doesn’t tell me how she’s really feeling, and I worry something’s bothering her.”
“Uh...Yes! Of—Of course,” she stuttered, willing thoughts back into her head.
Harry squeezed Amy’s shoulder affectionate. “Thank you, really. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
He was so endearing. His eyes, which were usually filled with something so warm and boyish and charming, so inherently Harry, but just then something flickered there, something softer.
But not for her, Amy realized. For Y/n.
With a couple more words shared with Harry, Amy set off for his trailer, mulling the last few weeks over in her head.
Could it all have been nothing? Did she really read into their interactions too much? Amy had never been in love before, but she was sure from that conversation with Harry that he was head over heels in love with Y/n. It sucked more than she wanted it to, though perhaps she should’ve known. Of course Harry would be in love with someone. Amy never stood a chance.
Knocking once on the trailer door, she popped her head in. Y/n was laying across the sofa, her arm draped over her eyes. When the door opened, though, she startled.
“Oh. Hey, Amy.”
She sounded kind but tired. “Hi. Harry wanted me to come by and ask if you need anything.”
She smiled, the kind of smile that said Y/n was familiar with this kind of treatment. “H is a bit of a mother hen, but I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” Amy asked, stepping into the trailer. “If you need water, a glass of wine, whatever you need, I can get it for you.”
“No wine for me, but a water would be nice, now that I think about it.”
Y/n stood up from the couch, but wobbled a bit. Amy rushed over and rested a hand on the young woman’s elbow. “Should I get Harry? If you’re sick, there’s a medical tent nearby—
“I’m fine, I promise. I know the symptoms by now,” she said. Y/n looked at Amy, almost as if she was assessing her. “I’m pregnant.”
Amy wasn’t sure she could handle much more today. “You’re...”
“Yep.”
“Does Harry...?”
“Know? No, but I think he suspects. He knows me pretty well by now.”
Y/n let Amy help her sit back down on the sofa. “It probably isn’t my place to pry, but you...you don’t sound excited.”
“Oh, I am, I’m just exhausted,” Y/n explained, and the smile on her face made Amy believe that. “It’s just...the pandemic. I’m worried about having the baby in conditions like this, you know?”
Amy didn’t have much to say to that. What could she say? She was twenty, there was no way she could be of any help to Y/n’s current situation.
“Sorry, you barely even know me. I think spending most of my time with children under ten years old makes me miss adult companionship,” she said, then her eyes widened. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
Amy understood the implication. She guessed from how unfazed Y/n seemed to be at being pregnant. She didn’t know how Y/n and Harry managed to keep so many secrets, though his little speech about trusting her earlier now made sense.
“You’re secret’s safe with me,” Amy promised, and meant it. “But I think you should see a doctor anyway.”
“You’re probably right, but I think I just need to sleep for a little. Thank you for checking in. Harry talks about you a lot. He was so nervous about jumping into acting, but you’ve been a friend to him when I couldn’t be here physically, so thank you.”
It was quite literally impossible to harbor any bitterness or ill will towards Y/n. She was so kind and genuine. Exactly the kind of person Harry Styles would have a baby with.
Smiling, Amy said, “Just doing my job.”
The Daycare Worker
The daycare Heather worked at was known to celebrities for its discretion. Everyone who worked there was hired with the most important rule being that they were not allowed to reveal the identities of the patrons or their children. No photos, which was a given at any daycare, no talking about who dropped children off, and definitely no selling stories. The daycare wanted to provide a place for celebrities to drop off their children without worrying about their children's photo appearing in a magazine or on social media.
Heather knew all of this and abided by all the rules. After working there for two years, she'd become desensitized to the people she worked for, and it wasn't like she saw them all that much anyways, it was the children she saw the most.
The only family she couldn't get her head around was Y/n's. As far as Heather knew, Y/n wasn't a celebrity, but she dropped off her kids, a mix of six, a couple days a week. Heather never asked, of course, but she assumed that whoever Y/n had her children with was the famous person. But her kids were cute, and very sweet and well-behaved, which could not be said for all the kids Heather took care of.
The next time Y/n dropped off her kids, Heather was at the check-in desk. She walked in with a baby carrier on her chest, little Natalia tucked in it as she pushed a stroller. Maeve ran ahead while Julian clung to the pair of jeans Y/n was wearing. He was often reluctant to leave his mom's side, but once he was playing with Maeve and the other children, he was happy as a clam.
"Good afternoon!" Heather chirped. "Dropping the four of them off?"
Y/n smiled at Heather, and she thought that while Y/n technically wasn't a celebrity, she was incredibly beautiful. "Good morning. Just the twins and Geneva today."
Heather helped get everyone checked in and let Maeve inside while Y/n got Geneva out of the stroller she was in. Julian made no move to go to the preschool room with his sister, but that was to be expected. Once Geneva and Maeve were settled in their proper rooms, Heather turned her focus on the little boy who was still clinging to his mother's leg.
"Your hair is getting so long, Julian!" she said, bending down to his level.
"I want it to look like Daddy's," he said, big green eyes looking back at her.
Y/n bent down to Julian then too. "Okay, JuJu. Mommy will be back in a little bit. I have to work and run a couple errands and then I'm gonna pick you up and we're gonna go see Daddy at work. How does that sound?"
Heather's ears perked at the mention of Julian's dad, who had yet to pick up from the daycare before, but she quickly focused back on Julian. "That sounds like a lot of fun!"
After a little more coaxing, Julian eventually let go of Y/n and joined Maeve in the daycare with only a little bit of sniffling. Y/n handed over the twins' lunch boxes and some snacks and diapers for GiGi. She left quickly, not wanting Julian to see her and start crying, thanking Heather over her shoulder on her way out.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.
Another day, another shift at the check-in desk.
Heather was currently manning the front on her own while holding Geneva in her arms. The room where the toddlers played was close to the desk, and sometimes Heather liked to lean over and pick up a baby just because it was always nice to cuddle a cute baby, and GiGi was definitely that.
As she held the toddler in her arms, Heather thought back on Y/n dropping off the kids earlier in the afternoon.
The mom had come in around the same time as she normally did, in the early afternoon once they were out of school, only the twins came in with pink and blue hair.
"Wow," Heather had said. "You guys look so cool! Who did your hair?"
"Daddy!" Maeve said, her cotton candy blue hair bouncing as she skipped over to show Heather her new hair.
"Yep. Dad died their hair. We're not very happy with Daddy right now," Y/n said through a smile.
Heather tried to hide her laugh, though the situation was a little funny. "I'm guessing the hair was a surprise?"
"Yep!" Y/n said, still smiling, probably so she didn't upset her kids. "After I explicitly told him to wait until the summer because they go to a private school, but did he listen? No." Seeming to realize she was ranting to a daycare employee, Y/n shook her head. "Sorry, that was unnecessary, but Dad is picking up today. He's on the approved pick-up list, so everything should be fine."
"Great! Have a good day!" Heather said, a little more excited than she normally was. It wasn't like she spent all of her time wondering who the kids' famous father was, but she also couldn't help but be curious.
A couple hours later, and Heather was holding Geneva while Maeve and Julian played with toy cars and Natalia slept soundly in the nap room. It was getting to be about that time when they went home, and Heather was slowly filling with anticipation.
"Do you want to go play, GiGi?" Heather asked, pinching the toddler's cheek. Geneva shook her head and tightened her little legs around Heather's waist. "Fine by me," she said, switching the toddler to her other arm.
Heather was happy to hold Geneva and play with her at the front of the daycare. She was, for all intents and purposes, a relatively easy baby. She was calm and babbling until she noticed someone come to the front desk. "Dada!"
"Hi, GiGi! Did you have fun today?"
Now, Heather didn't live under a rock, and perhaps it was embarrassing, but she didn't have to turn around to know who had come to pick up Geneva. She gave herself two seconds to get ahold of herself and turn around to face Harry Styles, the person who was quite literally her phone background.
"H—Hi. You must be here to pick up Geneva, Natalia, and the twins," Heather said, grateful that she sounded relatively normal. She had no intentions of freaking Harry out.
Harry's grin was wide as he took Geneva from Heather's arms. "I am. My wife said to be here at four thirty, so here I am."
Wife. Harry Styles had a wife. And children. Not just one baby, but multiple children, and the rest of the world was none the wiser. It was nearly impossible to wrap her head around—she wasn’t even going to think about the fact that Simone was almost ten years old and what that might mean—but she tried her best to save her freak out for after he and his kids left.
"Right. She said you'd be coming. I'll call for them."
Heather tried her best to ignore the way Harry freaking Styles was kissing Geneva's cheeks repeatedly and using a baby voice to talk to her, otherwise she would probably melt into a puddle in front of him, which was definitely against company policy. She called for the twins and collected a sleeping Natalia from the nap room, who fussed a little but eventually settled when she was in her father's arms.
"Daddy!"
Maeve and Julian ran up to Harry excitedly, whose grin only widened as they rushed over to him. "There are my little monkeys! How are you?"
"We colored a picture for you!" Maeve said.
"Yeah, so you can give it to Mommy and she won't be mad at you anymore," Julian added.
Harry laughed and marveled at the picture his kids handed to him, Natalia still sleeping soundly despite the commotion. "I would say don't worry about that, but I think this will do the trick."
In no time, Natalia was strapped into the baby carrier that Harry put on with ease and the twins were in their jackets. Heather thought seeing Harry Styles with a baby strapped to his chest and the twins hanging off his arms was about the cutest thing she would ever see.
With a kind smile, Harry thanked Heather and went over to where Geneva's stroller was so he could get her into it, and though she knew she shouldn't have, she strained her ears to hear what he said to the twins as he left the daycare.
"She's really mad at me?"
"She did that thing where she smiles even though she's not happy," Maeve told him.
"Worse than I thought," he said solemnly, though Heather was sure he was joking. Kind of. "Well, what do you think, monkeys? Flowers? Date night? Spa day?"
"I think just saying you're sorry will work," Julian said, looking at Harry with those big eyes of his, ones that he got from his father, Heather now realized.
Harry looked down at Julian with a start. "You know what, Jules? I think you might be the smartest man I know."
He hefted Julian onto his hip and kissed his cheek until Julian erupted into a fit of giggles. And as she saw Harry's eyes crinkle with joy, she realized that was the cutest thing she'd ever seen.
They eventually left, Harry saying something about stopping by the studio before heading home, which the twins cheered about. Once they were gone, Heather let out a huge breath, finally feeling like she could breathe normally again.
She didn't know the whole story. She didn't know how Harry and Y/n met or what it might have been like to keep such a monumental secret from the world. As far as the public knew, Harry had ended a public relationship, when in reality, it seems like he'd been in a private one for a very long time. And a happy one, at that.
For a moment, Heather's fingers itched for her phone so she could call her friend and tell her what happened today, but she couldn't. And she didn't want to, she realized. Not really. Harry's family was happy living in anonymity. Heather wasn't going to ruin that for them, and she realized just how much trust and faith he and Y/n must have put in this facility to have their children come here, and she was glad to be someone that (technically) Harry Styles trusted, and that was pretty fucking cool.
#harry styles#young dad! harry#young mom! reader#young parent!harry styles#harry styles blurb#harry styles x reader#harry styles fanfic#harry styles oneshot#harry styles imagine#harry styles fanfiction#harry styles x you#harry styles fluff#harry styles writing#harry styles one shot#harry styles fic
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Yu Yu Hakusho POP UP Corner
Traditional Japanese Design
I really loved this collab, the japanese pattern is beautiful! Kurama has his hair in a ponytail again.
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Price: 1,815 each
Size: Height: ~15cm (maximum)/Width: ~15cm (maximum)
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■ Bonus
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I Was Always Yours
Pairings: Noah Sebastian x Reader
Words: 4.1k
Part Two
Warnings: smut 18+, fluff, swearing, unprotected s*x (pls wrap it b4 u tap it), female recieving, PnV penetration.
Summary: You grew up with Nick Ruffilo and Noah, but its been years since you’ve seen your best friends due to them being away touring. When Ruffilo came back to your hometown, opening his home tattoo studio, you get the opportunity to reconnect with him, and Noah. Deep down you’ve always had something for Noah, and it turns out he’s always felt something for you too. Perhaps seeing eachother years later, after you’ve both changed, sparked something.
Author note: This is short haired Noah era! <3 I just couldn’t resist using the beautiful photo of Noah above :3 Also, I haven’t written on tumblr in years, but I thought I’d come back with this fluff/smut! Enjoy if this finds you! <3
PS. THIS IS A FANFIC ABOUT REAL PEOPLE IN FICTIONAL SCENARIOS. I AM NOT IMPLYING THIS IS HOW THESE PEOPLE ARE IRL OR THAT THIS SITUATION WOULD HAPPEN. IT IS FOR FANFIC PURPOSES ONLY!
I finally gathered the courage to turn off my car, letting the crisp autumn air bite at my cheeks as I stepped outside. Taking in a shaky breath I allowed my legs to carry me towards the door, my hands clammy and fingers fidgety.
The boys were always simple- and even their nice townhouse was in an everyday neighbourhood, with nothing elaborate on the outside. Just as it had always been, as if time never flew by.
I didn’t know why I was so nervous. I’ve known Nick and Noah for years. We were neighbours growing up, went to high school together, and even shared memories from our adulthood. These boys knew me and I knew them, but I knew that things were different now.
The boys had just finished tour, and have grown exponentially in their music careers. They walked around with security now, and had fans dedicated to finding out everything about their lives- they’ve become a spectacle; no longer just Nick, or just Noah.
The nerves also came because I didn’t even know if I’d be seeing Noah. Admittedly, he was my first crush; and really, I don’t think it ever left. When I first met him in seventh grade he sported a shaggy haircut and a dorky grin, and he’s held my heart with iron bars ever since. Over the years I had just accepted that my feelings would never be reciprocated, and we both dated other people on and off.
It’s been almost three years since I last got to see him due to the pandemic, and we only ever texted each other on big life events, like birthdays, or during the release of their album. I knew the boys were back when Nick sent out a message that he was looking to tattoo again. I sported a few of Nick’s pieces, but I was looking to get a cover-up of a bad decision I made during a past relationship. I texted Nick asking if he was available, and here I am; right outside Nick’s house.
I sighed deeply, trying to persuade the anxiety out of my lungs, before knocking, following the pattern I had always used when I was younger. Within seconds I was greeted by a pair of grey-green eyes and a wide smile, my nervousness beginning to cease.
“Y/N!” I was pulled into a bone-crushing hug, and I let out a sigh of relief I didn’t know I was holding in. My grin matched his own as I wrapped my arms around him, squeezing back, laughing.
“It’s nice to see you Ruffilo.”
We pulled away from each other and shared another smile. I took off my leather Doc Martens, straightening my fuzzy red polka-dot socks before giving him another hug, smiling into his neck.
“It’s been way too long,” Nick said, giving me an empathetic glance as we separated. “Life has just been crazy.”
“Yeah, I almost wonder if I should be bowing to you right now considering how famous you’ve gotten,” I couldn’t help but laugh, and Nick rolled his eyes, leading me down the hall. The place was neat; white paint, and light flooring. Various Bad Omen’s posters and records hung neatly on the wall, along with other abstract art pieces. It was delicate and simple, just as they way they always kept it. It’s nice to see that they haven’t changed in that regard.
“Trust me, no bowing is required.” Nick turned back to face me, his smile radiating, before motioning at a door ahead, and I walked into a small office filled with tattoo supplies. It was Nick’s mini-home tattoo studio.
“Wow, this is awesome Nick. You’ve always wanted your own little studio.” I said, looking at his work plastered on the wall, soaking it in with awe.
He sighed happily, “Yeah, when we were looking for a house that was one of my requirements. I needed my own space; just because we make music doesn’t mean I’ll give up tattooing.”
I nodded, taking a seat on the chair. “Thank you for seeing me by the way, I appreciate you squeezing me in.”
“Hey, for you, I’d do anything.” He smiled warmly, sitting across from me.
Nick and I chatted for almost an hour before even starting the tattoo. We caught up and talked about tours, and I loved getting to listen to his stories about performing and getting to travel the world. It seemed like the dream, especially considering that before the pandemic, they joked about only pleasing ten fans.
However, the entire time I felt distracted. The only thing my mind kept wandering to was if Noah was home, or if he was going to show up. I felt ashamed being so disconnected from the conversation with Nick; because he was someone I cared about deeply. Yet, my thoughts took me elsewhere.
“You alright?” Nick asked gently, as he started preparing his supplies, glancing at me teasingly.
“Oh yeah! I’m good!” I smiled reassuringly and Nick echoed me, chuckling to himself.
“What?” I asked him, the cheesy grin plastered on his face making me nervous.
“Noah will be home soon, he’s just out with Davis.”
I stared at him, my cheeks beginning to flush, “Okay, cool?” I shrugged nonchalantly, but my stomach immediately began doing spirals, nerves bubbling throughout my veins.
Nick wiped my thigh, preparing the location for the stencil quietly before asking, “You never told him how you felt?”
I watched him cautiously, eyes flickering between his hands and his eyes, “I- I don’t feel anything,” I shook my head, ears getting even hotter. “That was so long ago.”
Nick looked up through his lashes, looking very unconvinced, “Sure, and I don’t play in a band.”
Rolling my eyes, I gave him an annoyed smile, “It would be nice to see him. It’s been a long time- and he doesn’t post anything online anymore, or text.”
Nick nodded as he wiped and re-drew the outline on my leg, “Noah’s been pretty recluse. He’s gotten a lot of anxiety from the fame; mostly just sticks to himself when we finish shows. Plus, he doesn’t enjoy dealing with some of the fans.”
I frowned, feeling myself get sad. Noah has always been pretty introverted, but it looked like he was getting out of his shell on stage. He was playing into the pretty boy facade he had going, and he knew he was hot. I’ve seen plenty of videos from the tour.
“Well, I hope he is doing alright,” I said softly, looking around the room again for any form of distraction.
As if on cue I heard the front door open, and a yell cascaded down the hall, “You better not have a girl in your room,” he had teased.
Immediately I felt the hair on my neck stand in anticipation, realizing that the voice belonged to Noah. My fingers began to tingle as all the blood rushed towards my face, my chest losing any ounce of breath I was just able to exhale.
His voice bounded across the walls again, “but, these are some pretty sick boots.”
“Got someone even better,” Nick yelled back, laughing, “In the tattoo room.”
A head of brunette hair popped in the doorway, his eyes immediately widening as if his whole world suddenly began to spin within milliseconds. A small flush of colour ran down his ears onto the tops of his cheekbones, before a wide, childlike smile appeared on his face. He stepped into the room, immediately crossing his arms, and leaning on the side of the table as if he thought he was doing something charming.
“No fucking way, look what the cat dragged in,” his Virginian accent dancing off his tongue.
I looked back at him, my heart racing even faster. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him, but he did take my breath away. Noah looked older, but healthy, becoming a lot more muscular and defined, despite his height and lank still being there. His hair was short, a layer of bangs hanging across his forehead in a messy sweep. It was the first time I’d seen him in person without his long hair, all 13 inches gone; but it suited him. I soaked in his appearance, noticing a few new tattoos layered around his fingers as well, my heart yearning.
“Is that really my Y/N/N?” he stared at me, the grin not leaving his face, especially after using my childhood nickname. Noah walked towards me shyly with open arms, squinting his eyes in contentment as he invited me in for a hug.
“the one and only.” I breathed a nervous laugh, standing up. Shaky limbs carried me over to him and he wrapped his arms around me, engulfing me within his body.
I composed myself, inhaling slowly, before hugging back, squeezing his torso. I felt so small compared to him, yet I still fit right between his arms, as if I was meant to always be there, a spot reserved just for me. We rocked back and forth in a tight embrace, his chest vibrating as he let out a happy chuckle.
“Oh my god, it’s been so long.” I could hear the happiness radiating off of him.
I sighed with relief at his reaction; he must’ve missed me too. He held onto me for a moment more, and I breathed in his scent, recognizing his favourite Dior cologne. Smiling into his chest, It felt comfortable- it felt familiar. Years of memories flooded back, my heart recalling, reminding myself that he was who I had been missing in my life all along.
“Wow, you’ve changed Y/N,” Noah said as he pulled away, stepping back slightly, taking me in with a look of awe. He absorbed all of me, drinking in my image, before grabbing the sides of my face, and staring into me with an immense amount of appreciation.
I looked up at him in admiration, studying his deep October eyes as they sang unspoken words, retelling a story that only our bodies knew.
“Your hair,” I said as my hand unconsciously found its way to his locks.
My fingers flowed down his no longer existing threads, reminiscing of his past image. That chapter of his life was gone. He’s been reborn into a much more confident man, a newer version of the Noah that once was. I almost longed for his old appearance, because I didn’t know this Noah- but by the way his eyes gleamed, he was still mine.
Noah chuckled, “Yeah, I was tired of getting it in my mouth when singing.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, leaning into his hand, before pulling away to look at Nick.
Nick gave us a sly smile, shaking his head gently.
“I didn’t expect to see you,” Noah sighed, still smiling. I swear it hasn’t left his face since he saw me. He looked over at Nick, “And you didn’t even tell me?”
“I thought it would be a fun surprise,” Nick looked at Noah playfully, before patting the tattoo chair. I took a seat again, positioning my thigh within Nick's reach.
“You’re getting some ink?” Noah asked, folding his arms in approval as he leaned over me, looking at the stencil outlined on my skin.
“Yeah, Nick said he wanted to tattoo again, and I needed an excuse to visit,” I said cheekily.
Noah nodded repeatedly, still analyzing my thigh. “You never needed an excuse. You should’ve texted us. Texted me.”
I shrugged, “I didn’t want to get in the way. You guys are busy- especially now. the last thing you need is unnecessary messages or phone calls.”
“I haven’t seen you in like three years Y/N,” Noah said, sighing a sad smile. He sat down on a stool, folding his ankle over his knee.
Nick began to outline the tattoo, and I winced briefly, “I know.”
“You never came to see us on this tour.” Noah looked at the floor, analyzing the outline of his white vans. I glanced at him quickly, before concentrating on Nick’s hands. “You know we’d have gotten you in right?”
I gave him a mournful look, “I’d pay just like everyone else, Noah. I don’t expect anything…but I honestly just got super busy.”
“I was really hoping you’d be there.”
I felt my heart clench and my chest tighten at his words. “I’m sorry.” I peered over at him, barely being able to maintain eye contact as I chewed the inside of my cheek.
“I’m sorry I didn’t invite you either; it does go both ways,” Noah said, and we shared a wry smile.
“You should come see us this weekend,” Nick said while concentrating. I furrowed my eyebrows as he scratched along my skin, the area beginning to redden. Despite having multiple tattoos, I never enjoyed the experience of getting them.
“What time? And where?” I asked, biting the inside of my cheek, and closing my eyes at the burning sensation.
Noah scrolled on his phone before I felt my own buzz. Looking at it, I saw a message from Noah. It was a ticket with VIP access.
“I don’t need VIP,” I looked at him in appreciation.
Noah smiled down at his phone, “Well last time I checked, VIP stands for ‘very important persons’, and arguably our childhood bestie is in that category.”
“Well, thank you.” I smiled gratefully, butterflies still knocking on every organ in my body.
“So,” Noah began, shifting positions so he was leaning his elbows on his knees, peering over to stare at my leg, “You and Sean broke it off?”
I followed his gaze, staring at the faded puzzle piece beneath the purple markings of Nick's outline.
Sean was my first serious boyfriend. We were friends in high school, and admittedly always had some sort of connection. We started dating, and were together for four years; before I found somebody else sleeping with him in our bedroom.
I looked longingly at the puzzle piece, my eyes snapping away once Nick began lining on top of it, covering away the layers of regret, “He cheated on me.”
Turning to face Noah, his face immediately shifted from sympathetic to anger, “What a complete fucking tool.” He spat, folding his arms in the chair. Noah’s reaction surprised me, but I nodded in agreement.
“Yep.” I sighed, shrugging my shoulders, “Note to self, don’t get a matching tattoo. You probably won't be with that person forever.” I said, pessimistically.
Noah was quiet for a moment, his teeth chewing on his bottom lip as he contemplated his question, “Did you catch him?”
I nodded, furrowing my eyebrows in annoyance, “In our bedroom too.”
Noah scoffed, audibly groaning while he tilted his head back in hostility, “Pathetic piece of shit. I never liked him being with you.”
My heart raced as Noah glared at the puzzle piece that began to disappear on my thigh, “At least now you’ll get to have a better piece of art on your body.”
“Exactly,” I smiled proudly, watching Nick’s hands run along the skin, “and it’s the one and only Nicholas Ruffilo’s handy work too.”
Nick glanced up smiling. It was quiet for a moment, and I chewed on my lip, anxious to ask.
“What about you? Any ladies?” I said to Noah playfully, winking. Deep down though, I was hoping the answer was no one.
Noah gave me a small smile, “No one at the moment, last relationship ended poorly.”
“That makes two of us.” I chuckled sorrowfully
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Noah pushed me against the bedroom door, lips attached to my own hastily. His kiss was desperate and hungry as he cupped my face in his hands, and I felt weak in the knees as our hips were pushed together, the heat radiating off of him.
“You have no idea how long I have waited to do this.” He breathed between kisses.
My hands found their way to Noah’s hair, rubbing my fingers along his scalp affectionately. I smiled through his lips, eagerly holding myself against him.
“It was so worth the wait.” He whispered, pulling away and putting his forehead against my own. He stared into me, right through me with so much intent. I had always wanted to kiss him, and my heart skipped a beat as I realized where he was, succumbing to me.
I closed my eyes, smiling, “you have no idea how badly I wanted that too.”
He smiled widely, glancing down at my lips again, this time pulling me into his arms while kissing me with force and passion.
“Tell me how badly,” he whispered, running his fingers delicately across my waist and I melted into his touch.
“Honestly? Probably ever since we met.” I admitted, my face turning red with embarrassment at the confession, “and it’s never gone away.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Noah pulled away from the kiss, running his hand up my arm to cup the side of my face again, thumb tracing a gentle circle along my cheekbone. He looked desperate for an answer as if this was all he’s ever wanted to hear. I felt Noah’s heartbeat racing rapidly through his chest, which heaved heavily against my own.
“I never thought you felt that way, and I didn’t want to push anything because I didn’t want to lose you,” I confessed, looking away nervously.
Noah hummed quietly, pulling my chin towards him in another delicate kiss. His lips were warm and gentle. “You’ll never lose me. No matter how long it’s been.”
Noah began running his hands up and down my sides before sliding them between my skin and the hem of my jeans. Immediately I felt flush, and I let my own hands ride up his black t-shirt. His skin was soft and warm, and my fingertips began to tingle with nerves.
Noah hooked his fingers in the loop of my jeans, tugging me towards him and trailing us toward his desk. My thighs hit the back of it, and Noah lifted me gently, placing me on top, and positioning himself between my legs. His warm hands caressed my lower back, creating goosebumps as his nails trailed up and down the skin lightly. I shivered from the sensation.
Noah’s tongue swiped my bottom lip, and I allowed him to kiss me deeper, our tongues melding together. I began tugging at his shirt, and Noah let out a low chuckle.
“You sure you want to do this?” Noah pulled away from my lips to stare into my eyes, looking at me sternly, and analyzing every movement I made.
“yes,” I whined, almost embarrassingly needy, “Do you?”
Noah hung his head, shaking it slowly, “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to fuck someone so badly in my entire life,” He looked up with hooded eyes.
“Then take me however you want.” I sighed, pulling at his shirt again, and Noah looked at me darkly with lust, his October eyes fading into an onyx abyss.
Noah pulled his shirt over his head, exposing his tattooed chest; I stared at the ink longingly, remembering when he first got his desolate tattoo. I traced my fingers over the letters delicately, smiling to myself. This moment between us felt like I was reminiscing over all my lost time with Noah.
“Do you still feel this way?” I asked softly, as Noah pulled off my own shirt, leaving me exposed in my pink laced bra. Noah placed his hand on top of mine as I traced the last letter.
He shook his head, “No, but it will always be a reminder of when I felt empty.”
“I'm glad you don’t feel that way anymore,” I whispered, and Noah’s hands explored my body once again, before pulling on the hem of my jeans.
Bringing me into a kiss again, he fiddled with the zipper before tugging my pants down my legs, leaving me exposed in my underwear.
“I’ve probably envisioned you naked weekly.” Noah admitted as he kissed down my neck, hands roaming over every inch of skin in desperation, “I need to taste you, princess.”
I blushed at his words, and Noah’s kisses trailed further from my neck, teeth grazing across my collarbone to between my breasts. His breath quickened as he kissed lower and lower, licking down my stomach until he stopped right at the edge of my underwear.
“This okay?” He breathed heavily, his own face flushing. I nodded, and Noah pulled at the lace, revealing me.
“Fuck,” He groaned, looking up through his eyelashes briefly before placing his mouth against me, letting his slim fingers trace patterns across the sensitive skin.
Noah’s tongue circled me before he inserted two fingers, and I let out a moan. He pumped slowly, moaning quietly against me, “Oh, you wouldn’t want Nick to hear.”
I squeezed my thighs together around his head in pleasure, and Noah’s free hand gripped my thigh, pulling me even closer.
I began to pant faster, trying to be quiet, “Oh my god Noah,” I let my head fall back, resting against the wall as Noah ate me out feverishly, like this was his last meal. His fingers curled upwards, the repetitive motion sending my abdomen into a knot of fulfillment, my legs shaking against his body.
“Fuck, I need to stop or I'm going to come in my pants- and I don’t want to yet.” Noah’s eyebrows furrowed with pleasure. Taking his fingers that were inside me into his mouth, he licked them clean before pulling himself up. I watched in disbelief- that was probably the hottest thing I’ve ever seen him do; even compared to Noah’s stage performances of The Death of Peace of Mind. He grabbed my ass, hoisting me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist. Noah was extremely hard, his clothed member digging into me as he carried me towards his bed; he kissed me again and I tasted myself off of his tongue.
Noah laid me on the bed, kissing along my neck again as my hands roamed his hair before he unclasped my bra and pulled my panties down, exposing me fully to him.
“You are gorgeous, shit,” Noah mumbled, absorbing me with his eyes as he pulled his shorts down hastily, and I couldn’t help but let my own eyes wander across Noah’s fully exposed body, swallowing hard.
A new warmth washed over me as I got even wetter between my legs, the familiar feeling of excitement preparing my body for Noah’s; but this was different. This time it was Noah, here in front of me. Noah ran his fingers along my folds, moaning and internally begging to replace his hands with his own heat longing to be touched.
Noah spit into his hand and I watched attentively, following his every move as my body shivered. Noah rubbed along himself, before positioning his body above mine.
We shared eye-contact again and I nodded in approval before Noah pushed inside, his body immediately shuddering as I moved my hips against his, and he sighed deeply, squeezing his eyes closed briefly.
“God fucking dammit, you feel so good, princess.”
My legs parted as Noah’s body sunk into mine, his thrusts getting deeper and heavier. I let out another moan, “Oh- my-god-Noah.”
Words were coiled at my throat as Noah pounded into me, hands on either side of my head, his necklace dangling in my face.
“Look at me.” Noah’s voice was rough, and I stared into his eyes. He watched me with every thrust, and I mumbled a string of messy swears, my body clenching around his.
Noah’s arms wrapped around my body, pulling me up so I was positioned on top of him, but so that there was enough leverage for him to continue to thrust into me from below. This new position allowed him to penetrate me deeper and groaned with every entrance of his body into mine.
Noah grabbed the back of my neck and the middle of my back, holding me still as he fully gave himself into me before pulling me into another kiss. His mouth attached to mine hastily, bucking his hips aimlessly. Noah’s moans were almost louder than mine as he shamelessly allowed himself a pleasure.
“Mark me, Noah, show me I was always yours.” I whimpered, and Noah immediately attached to my neck, biting and sucking against the delicate skin that was pinned along my neck.
I heaved into his ear, resting my forehead on his shoulder as he held my hips, allowing myself to completely undo myself, moaning as my body reached my climax.
“Fuck me, Noah,” I panted, gripping his arms as I clenched around him, letting him thrust into me as I rode out my high.
Noah pulled my neck back to look at him again, sweat dripping across his forehead and his eyebrows furrowed in rapture, “please let me cum inside you Y/N.”
I nodded, kissing him eagerly, our saliva melding together as Noah moaned into the kiss. His body quivered as he released himself, exhaling in short breaths of satisfaction.
“Holy shit,” Noah mumbled into my neck, and I held onto him, a smile plastering itself onto my face. We sat there for a moment, panting against each other as our chests heaved, sweat attaching us together. I ran my fingers along Noah’s hair again, absorbing his handsome features, and taking him in.
He looked up at me, his eyes back to their October glow, but now replaced with a gleam of devotion. He tucked the loose strands of my H/C hair behind my ear.
I placed my lips lightly on his, “I missed you so fucking much Noah.”
“I missed you so much princess,” Noah’s hand grabbed the back of my head gently, caressing me into his chest and holding on protectively. He pulled a blanket over us as we lay together out of breath, both relishing the high of our orgasms and the story we just created together.
“I guess I thought you got too busy to be my friend,” I whispered vulnerably as we lay underneath his covers, the story we created longing against my skin.
Noah’s head rested on top of my own, and I felt his body stiffen slightly, “life has been crazy, everything is so different now. We are no longer just screaming in my garage.” He rubbed my arm, nails trailing across my skin once again.
I nodded against him in understanding, “I know. I hope you know I watched every single concert online that I could. I followed so many fan pages just to keep updated on how you were doing.”
Noah pulled me away from him softly, he looked at me with awe, “Did you really?”
“Of course.” I looked up, smiling at him in adoration.
“I was always hoping you’d show up again at my doorstep sometime. You have no idea how happy I am right now.” He laughed, pulling me into him again. I smiled against his chest, absorbing this moment, worried it might be my last.
“I love you, Noah Sebastian Davis.”
“I love you most Y/N Y/L/N.”
Part Two if you want more smut ;)
#bad omens#noah sebastian#bad omens band#bad omens smut#noah sebastian smut#smut#metal#metalcore#noah sebastian fluff#noah sebastian davis#bad omens x reader#noah sebastian x reader#noah sebastian and reader#x reader#reader insert
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Tidbit: The “Posterization” Effect of Panels Due to the Consequences of GIF Color Quantization (and Increased Contrast (And Also The Tangential Matter of Dithering))
There’s this misconception that the color banding and patterned dithering found in panels is an entirely deliberate, calculated effect Hussie manipulated the image into looking with some specific filter, but this isn’t the case, exactly. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision he took but rather an unavoidable consequence of the medium he partook in: digital art in an age where bandwidth and storage was at a premium.
Not to delve too deeply into the history and technicalities of it, but the long and the short of it is back in the early nineties to late aughts (and even a bit further into the 10s), transferring and storing data over the web was not as fast, plentiful, and affordable as it is now. Filesize was a much more important consideration than the fidelity of an image when displaying it on the web. Especially so when you’re a hobbyist on a budget and paying for your own webhosting, or using a free service with a modest upload limit (even per file!). Besides, what good would it be to post your images online if it takes ages to load them over people's dial-up Internet? Don't even get me STARTED on the meager memory and power the average iGPU had to work with, too.
The original comic strip's resolution was a little more than halved and saved as a GIF rather than a large PNG. That's about an 82.13% reduction in filesize!
So in the early days it was very common for people to take their scans, photographs, and digital drawings and scale them down and publish them as smaller lossily compressed JPEGs or lossless GIFs, the latter of which came at the cost of color range. But it had a wider range of browser support and the feature to be used for animations compared to its successor format, PNG ("PNG's not GIF").
You'd've been hard-pressed to find Hussie use any PNGs himself then. In fact, I think literally the only times he's ever personally employed them and not delegate the artwork to a member of the art team were some of the tiny shrunken down text of a character talking far in the distance and a few select little icons.
PNGs support semi-transparency unlike GIFs, which is why Hussie used them to preserve the anti-aliasing on the text without having to add an opaque background color.
While PNGs can utilize over 16 million colors in a single image, GIFs have a hard limit of 256 colors per frame. For reference, this small image alone has 604 colors:
For those who can't do the math, 256 is a pretty damn small number.
Smaller still were the palettes in a great deal of MSPA's panels early on in its run. Amazingly, a GIF such as this only uses 7 colors (8 if you count the alpha (which it is)).
Not that they were always strictly so low; occasionally some in the later acts of Homestuck had pretty high counts. This panel uses all 256 spots available, in fact.
If he had lowered the number any smaller, the quality would have been god-awful.
To the untrained eye, these bands of color below may seem to be the result of a posterization filter (an effect that reduces smooth areas of color into fewer harsh solid regions), but it's really because the image was exported as a GIF with no dithering applied.
Dithering, to the uninitiated, is how these colors are arranged together to compensate for the paltry palette, producing illusory additional colors. There are three algorithms in Photoshop for this: Diffusion, Pattern, and Noise.
Above is the original image and below is the image reduced to a completely binary 1-bit black and white color palette, to make the effect of each dithering algorithm more obvious.
Diffusion seemingly displaces the pixels around randomly, but it uses error diffusion to calculate what color each pixel should be. In other words, math bullshit. The Floyd-Steinberg algorithm is one such implementation of it, and is usually what this type of error diffusion dithering is called in other software, or some misnomer-ed variation thereof.
The usage of Pattern may hearken back to retro video game graphics for you, as older consoles also suffered from color palette limitations. Sometimes called Ordered dithering because of the orderly patterns it produces. At least, I assumed so. Its etymological roots probably stem from more math bullshit again.
True to its name, Noise is noisy. It’s visually similar to Diffusion dithering, except much more random looking. At least, when binarized like this. Truth be told, I can’t tell the difference between the two at all when using a fuller color table on an image with a lot of detail. It was mainly intended to be used when exporting individual slices of an image that was to be “stitched” back together on a webpage, to mitigate visible seams in the dithering around the edges.
To sate your curiosity, here's how the image looks with no dithering at all:
People easily confuse an undithered gif as being the result of posterization, and you couldn't fault them for thinking so. They look almost entirely the same!
Although I was already aware of this fact when I was much younger, I'm guilty of posterizing myself while editing images back then. Figured I may as well reduce the color count beforehand to help keep the exported GIF looking as intended. I view this as a complete waste of time now, though, and amateurish. Takes away a bit of the authenticity of MSPA art, how the colors and details are so variable between panels. As for WHY they were so variable to begin with, choosing the settings to save the image as requires a judicious examination on a case-by-case basis. In other words, just playing around with the settings until it looks decent.
It's the process of striking a fine balance between an acceptable file size and a "meh, good enough" visual quality that I mentioned earlier. How many colors can you take away until it starts to look shit? Which dithering algorithm helps make it look not as shit while not totally ruining the compression efficacy?
Take, for example, this panel from Problem Sleuth. It has 16 colors, an average amount for the comic, and uses Diffusion dithering. Filesize: 34.5 KB.
Then there's this panel right afterwards. It has 8 colors (again, technically 7 + alpha channel since it's an animated gif), and uses Noise dithering this time. Filesize: 34.0 KB.
The more colors and animation frames there are, and the more complicated dithering there is, the bigger the file size is going to be. Despite the second panel having half the color count of the first, the heavily noisy dithering alone was enough to inflate the file size back up. On top of that, there's extra image information layered in for the animation, leaving only a mere 0.5 kilobyte difference between the two panels.
So why would Hussie pick the algorithm that compresses worse than the other? The answer: diffusion causes the dithering to jitter around between frames of animation. Recall its description from before, how it functions on nerd shit like math calculations. The way it calculates what each pixel's color will be is decided by the pixels' colors surrounding it, to put it simply. Any difference in the placement of pixels will cause these cascading changes in the dithering like the butterfly effect.
Diffusion dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 25.2 KB
This isn't the case with Noise or Pattern dithering, since their algorithms use either a texture or a definite array of numbers (more boring nerd shit).
Noise dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 31.9 KB
Pattern dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 23.1 KB
There's a lot more I'd like to talk about, like the different color reduction algorithms, which dither algorithms generally compress better in what cases, and the upward and downward trends of each one’s use over the course of a comic, but since this isn’t a deep dive on GIF optimization, I might save that for another time. This post is already reaching further past the original scope it was meant to cover, and less than 10 images can be uploaded before hitting the limit, which is NOWHERE near enough for me. I should really reevaluate my definition of the word “tidbit”… Anyway, just know that this post suffers from sample selection bias, so while the panels above came from an early section of Problem Sleuth that generally had static panels with diffusion dithering and animated panels with noise dithering, there certainly were animated panels with diffusion later on despite the dither-jittering.
Alright, time to shotgun through the rest of this post, screw segueing. Increasing the contrast almost entirely with “Use Legacy” enabled spreads the tones of the image out evenly, causing the shadows and highlights to clip into pure black and white. The midtones become purely saturated colors. Using the Levels adjustment filter instead, moving both shadow and highlight input level sliders towards the middle also accomplishes the same thing, because, you know, linear readjustment. I'm really resisting the urge to go off on another tangent about color channels and the RGB additive color model.
Anyway, there aren't any examples in MSPA that are quite this extreme (at least in color, but I'll save that for a later post), but an image sufficiently high in contrast can be mistaken for being posterized at a glance. Hence the Guy Fieri banner. In preparation for this post, I was attempting to make a pixel-perfect recreation of that panel but hit a wall trying to figure out which and how many filters were used and what each one's settings were, so I sought the wisdom of those in the official Photoshop Discord server. The very first suggestion I got was a posterization filter, by someone who was a supposed senior professional and server moderator, no less. Fucking dipshit, there's too much detail preserved for it to be posterization. Dude totally dissed me and my efforts too, so fuck that moron. I spit on his name and curse his children, and his children's children. The philistines I have to put up with...
In the end, the bloody Guy Fieri recreation proved to be too much for me to get right. I got sort of close at times, but no cigar. These were some of the closest I could manage:
You might be left befuddled after all this, struggling to remember what the point of the blogpost even was. I had meant for it to be a clarification of GIFs and an argument against using the posterization filter, thinking it was never used in MSPA, but while gathering reference images, I found a panel from the Felt intermission that actually WAS posterized! So I’ll eat crow on this one... Whatever, it’s literally the ONE TIME ever.
I can tell it's posterization and not gif color quantization because of the pattern dithering and decently preserved details on the bomb and bull penis cane. There would have had to have been no dithering and way fewer colors than the 32, most of which were allotted to the bomb and cane. You can't really selectively choose what gets dithered or more colors like this otherwise.
Thank you for reading if you've gotten this far. That all might have been a lot to take in at once, so if you're still unclear about something, please don't hesitate to leave a question! And as always, here are the PSDs used in this post that are free to peruse.
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What to get each Heartsteel member for the holidays
Aphelios: 1. Stuff to decorate his studio with. 2. Moon-themed things. 3. Why do I feel like he’s similar to me and collects SOMETHING. For me it’s owl things (I fucking love owls.) and cool enamel pins! I could see Phel collecting really cool enamel pins or some sort of trinket. 4. To go with #3. A place to put said trinkets (for example a cork board/pin banner to hang pins on). [I should take a photo of my cork board that has all my pins and stuff on it so you can see what I mean!]
Ezreal: 1. Book discussing an ancient civilization he’s been interested in. 2. A book going over works of an artist/artistic period/movement he really likes. (I did that for my dad this year about an artist he likes and he almost started crying he was so excited. It was so fucking cute. I’ve been waiting to give him that book since JULY. 🥹)
Kayn: 1. Accessories for a guitar (like a custom embroidered guitar strap or picks). 2. I feel like he’d primarily play electric, but I definitely think he’d play/have an acoustic guitar. You can find some really cool wood-burned acoustic guitars for (relatively) cheap. (A good instrument is expensive (I know this from playing viola) but compared to electric guitars, acoustics are definitely more affordable.) 3. I have a fun embroidery hoop hanging on my wall and it’s all fancy and shit and it says “DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO” and I think something like that fits Kayn so perfectly. (I need to take a photo and post it for y’all. It’s one of my favorite things lmao.)
K’Sante: 1. A really fancy set of colored pencils and a really nice sketch pad that he can use for sketching out his designs. 2. A new sewing machine/sewing kit. 3. FABRIC. Get this man nice fabric so he can bring his designs to life! Especially if he’s shown you a design he really loves, or that you really love, get fabric for that specific design.
Sett: 1. Brand new fancy sewing kit he’s been talking about. (I absolutely love that he’s canonically a sewing expert. I fucking love it so much). 2. If not a full kit then a really nice seam ripper or specific tool he maybe needs an upgrade on. Could be customized to him. I think he’d love that! 3. Really nice set of pots/pans/kitchen utensils. (I’m thinking like the hex clad pans I keep hearing about.)
Sett Extra: You better get something for his mama!!! As someone who has a mother who is a knitting machine, I know exactly what to get. 1. Some really really lovely and fancy yarn. 2. Knitting pattern books that she doesn’t have. 3. A yarn bowl (it’s literally a bowl that the yarn sits in, and there’s a little hole or design that allows the end to come out so you don’t have to keep unwinding the yarn or anything. And it’s easy to keep your space neat while knitting. My mother LOVES HERS. My dad accidentally broke her first one and she was devastated! [A new/nicer one was her Christmas present from my dad last year.])
Yone: 1. Some god damn peace and quiet and sleep. This man needs a break lmao. 2. But actually, stuff to decorate his studio with (for example a funny little do not disturb sign that he can put on the door, some posters or something. 3. Maybe some small framed photos of the two of you that he can put on his desk. You’re his muse after all (and you help him not go insane during late nights.)
EXTRA-
Alune: She deserves some gifts toooooooo!! 1. This woman deserves a damn spa day. Do I even have to explain myself? Like she deserves some serious pampering. 2. Another one who I could see collecting something fun. Probably moon related lol.
#writerblue275 gremlin hours#heartsteel#heartsteel x reader#headcanon#heartsteel aphelios#heartsteel ezreal#heartsteel kayn#heartsteel k'sante#heartsteel sett#heartsteel yone#heartsteel alune#league of legends#heartsteel fluff#happy holidays
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Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 41
Adric missed K9 and would write him letters. (Short story: A Boy's Tale)
Tegan missed Nyssa a lot and felt as though Turlough had a bond with the Doctor that she wasn't company to. (Short story: Qualia)
Early Gallifreyans worshipped one of their two moons (Pazithi Gallifreya) as a virgin goddess. (Novel: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)
After Inquisitor Darkel dismissed the Sixth Doctor's charges from The Trial of a Time Lord, she had to go lie down in a dark room for a while because he and the Valeyard were too much for her. (Short story: The Inquisitor)
There are roughly one million versions of Clara Oswald according to the Encyclopaedia Gallifreya. (Short story: Citation Needed)
The Master tried to interfere with the Fifth Doctor’s regeneration into his Sixth, but the Doctor had psychically called out to his former companions (Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, etc etc), who convinced him to ignore the Master and helped him regenerate. (Audio: Winter; Television: The Caves of Androzani)
The Doctor keeps a copy of Every Gallifreyan Child's Pop-Up Book of Nasty Creatures From Other Dimensions in the TARDIS library. It pops up in four dimensions. (Novel: All-Consuming Fire)
The Fifth Doctor talked so much about River Song after meeting and becoming absolutely enamored with her that Tegan pushed him against the wall and demanded that he stop. (Audio: Expiry Dating)
The Seventh Doctor met Katarina as a young girl. He gave her family enough gold to feed them for a year. (Short story: An Unfulfilled Dream)
In 1969, a journalist named Chrissie Allen did an article on Amelia Williams. Amy told her she wanted to write a story about a young girl lost in New York City, who is scared but will use her magic powers to take on the world. She was very confident when she said the girl was really out there in New York. (Short story: The Girl Who Never Grew Up)
The Eye of Harmony located in the TARDIS is only symbolic of the real Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey. (Novel: The Eight Doctors)
If someone accesses the Eye of Harmony without the Rod, Sash, or Great Key of Rassilon, they will be turned inside out and killed. (Audio: Insurgency)
A young Magnus, who would one day become the War Chief, once tried to drain Artron energy out of a sphere retrieved from the time vortex. He was opposed by the First Doctor, referred to as "Thete," who set the energy free after discovering it was alive. This was considered to be their "falling out" moment. (Comic: Flashback)
The Fifth Doctor has tried to sacrifice himself so often that Nyssa can recognize his blank face as an I'm-about-to-sacrifice-myself face. (Audio: The Darkening Eye)
Each incarnation of the Doctor thinks that they make their own identity, but in reality, the TARDIS knows that their travels are never "accidental." For example, she could have easily returned to 1960s London when the First Doctor was trying to drop off Barbara and Ian, but she said she thought it was more important that he have fun and learn from his human companions who the Doctor actually was. (Short story: What the TARDIS thought of "Time Lord Victorious")
The Doctor's TARDIS bedroom (at least at the time of his Fifth incarnation) had an original Jackson Pollock on the door. It had a four poster bed with awnings, silk sheets, and a toy rabbit. The Fifth Doctor would hang his coat up with a Mickey Mouse hanger and sleep in question mark patterned pajamas. (Novel: Divided Loyalties)
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#doctor who#dw#dr who#classic who#new who#big finish#big finish doctor who#big finish audios#dw eu#doctor who eu#doctor who expanded universe#fifth doctor#adric#tegan jovanka#nyssa#vislor turlough#sixth doctor#the valeyard#clara oswald#amy pond#the master#river song#seventh doctor#katarina#magnus#theta sigma#the war chief#first doctor#barbara wright#ian chesterton
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sunkissed+starstruck
suna hcs on my mind || fem reader
suna has the lightest sprinkling of freckles across his face; starting at the outer corner of his eyes and dispersing over the expanses of his cheekbones. only a handful of people know, though. his mom, who chastised him for not wearing sunscreen when roaming around town with the miya twins. his teammates on the court, though they don’t really care nor feel the need to bring it up. and you, perhaps the only person whose allowed anywhere near enough to see the light brown specks.
in high school, suna was too shy for his own good. hiding behind a mask, hiding behind a book, hiding behind his teammates, hiding in the back of the class, suna at every waking moment desired to be erased from sight. which is why no one ever took notice of his freckles, nonetheless taken notice of him. why or how you did, was beyond him.
the sun had set long ago, and chemistry homework discarded ages before. suna’s bedroom is basked in a golden glow from a single bedside lamp, one that’s fit for a young child (it embarrassed him to no end when you came in, but you swore it was cute and endearing). the entire room is decorated as if it were for a toddler and teenager, at the same time. the walls are painted a bright, baby blue which doesn’t match the angsty band posters and volleyball medals. among the textbooks on physics, advanced calculus and history are trinkets and toys meant for a small toddler.
and holy hell is suna nervous right now. pretty girl in his room, in his bed, on his lap. you can tell, the way his eyes shift around, never meeting yours, and the light pink flush that spreads from his cheeks to his ears. it’s so cute it’s funny; you can’t even count on your own ten fingers the amount of times you’ve been over to suna’s house, studies in his room, napped in his bed, seated yourself on his lap, yet he still gets so flustered.
“rin, babe,” the nicknames roll of your tongue, but it still sends a shock up suna’s spine when he hears it from you.
“mmm” his gaze finally meets your, wide and eager to hear your next words.
“you’ve got freckles.” you cup his face gently, tilting it to see more clearly in the dark room. he lets you, tilting his face back and forth against the light.
“yeah...” suna’s not quite sure if the freckles are a good or bad thing. yeah, his mom got mad at him at first, but now he’s got you tracing the dots from one side of his face to the other. there’s the slightest smile on your face, as you play a game of ‘connect the dots’ on your boyfriend’s face.
you want to memorize every feature, every freckle on his face. the one vaguely shaped like a heart beneath his left eye, how there’s more sprinkled on the bridge of his nose, the way the specks curve up towards his temples and slightly fall down to the fullness of his cheeks. you can even make out the big dipper on his right cheekbone. you want the patterns, his face, engraved in the back of your eyelids so when you close your eyes all you see if your rin. when you lay against his chest for a nap after homework, all you’ll see is him. when you fall back against the soft grass in his backyard and gaze up at the stars, all you’ll see is the patterns of suna rintarou forever memorialized in the universe.
you feel like a renaissance astronomer when you gaze at suna. with each passing year you spend with him, you always find a new star in your universe to note down, a new constellation to map.
“ah!” you gasp, jabbing a finger into suna’s cheek. “a new one!”
you’re still on suna’s bed; only his childhood room has shifted to a college dorm. the room’s still dimly lit by a single lamp, one that no longer childish. there’s still angsty posters and volleyball medals hanging on the wall, painted a slate gray rather than the baby blue you’ve grown to love. there’s still homework to toil over and exams to cram for, but that’s all that has seemingly changed.
his heart shaped freckle is still beneath his left eye, the big dipper still resides on his right cheek. but as the earth makes its laps around the sun, and it continues to kiss his face as much as you do with each passing day, it blesses you with more and more specks on his face for you to memorize.
“really?” suna lightheartedly swats your finger away with a light chuckle. “i’ve been wearing sunscreen too.”
“gosh, don’t.” you fall against him with a dramatic sigh. “i love your freckles.”
he snorts, arm encircling your waist to comfortably pull you against him. “what do you mean ‘don’t’? uv rays are no joke. you want me to look 60 at 20?”
“no! just love your freckles, that’s all.”
an: this was sitting in my drafts for months lol but was thinking of dear felix when i thought of this hehe
#haikyuu x reader#suna rintaro#suna rintarou#suna x reader#suna fluff#haikyuu fluff#suna rintarou x reader#suna rintaro x reader
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Download from the Internet Archive here.
Download from Itch.io here.
You are encouraged to print or otherwise share these with as many people as possible!
[ID: A single-page pamphlet titled, "Mickey Mouse is now in the Public Domain!", with "public domain" underlined and bolded for emphasis.
The body of the flyer reads:
"The copy-rights for the animations “Steamboat Willie”, “The Gallopin Gaucho”, “Plane Crazy”, and several promotional posters for them have expired!
But what does this mean for you?
Let’s start with the shorter list:
What you cannot do:
Trick people into thinking the art you are selling of Mickey Mouse is official Disney merch, or sanctioned by Disney
Sell art of Mickey that includes *specific designs* still protected by Disney’s copyright
What you can do:
Share, edit, remix, remaster, and sell the original animations that are now in the Public Domain.
Sell digital, traditional, and written art that you have made of Mickey, Minnie, and Pete, with no permission required!
Add new colors and patterns to Mickey, Minnie, and Pete’s classic outfits, or design them brand new outfits altogether!
Create new stories with Mickey, Minnie, and Pete, as animations, movies, books, or comics, and sell them!
Some common misconceptions…
Some people think that you have to stick to the original designs to the letter, IE: keeping them black and white, not having gloves on Mickey, and not letting them talk – but this is just a misunderstanding of what the Public Domain is! You can design and use them in any way you want, as long as you aren’t using a *specific design* still protected by Disney’s copy-rights. They can have color outfits, gloves, and talk! They belong to all of us now! Have fun!"
Framing the flyer at the top right, middle left, and bottom right are three pictures of Mickey Mouse with red shorts, a tan face, brown shoes, and gold buttons, with a pink tongue when his mouth is open.
In the first, at the title, he has his arms thrown into the air with joy.
In the second, at the "what you can do" section, he is looking excitedly at something in front of him.
In the last, at the "common misconceptions" section, he's wearing a black hat with a red stripe, posed with a smile as he looks at something in front of him.
Each is posed to be facing the text, as though they are reacting to it with excitement.
End ID.]
#described images#Mickey Mouse#Public Domain#Minnie Mouse#Pete the cat#Misinformation correction#writing prompts#art prompt#writing prompt#writing ideas#art ideas#anticapitalism#anticapitalist#kill the rich#eat the rich#fuck Disney#Disney#copyright#free characters#education
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Death: Caleb Wittebane (and the Grimwalkers)
Upright: Endings, letting go, release, change, transition, transformation, new beginnings
Reversed: resisting change, fear of change, repeating negative patterns, stagnancy, decay, dependency
The Death card has more positive connotations than you might assume; while it may reference a literal death (such as Caleb’s), it can also signify a significant phase or aspect of your life that is ending, or that needs to end, making way for new beginnings. Caleb’s life in the human realm “ended” when he chose a life with Evelyn in the demon realm, letting go of the biases instilled in him by human society and embracing his new life. On a darker note, Death’s meaning is reflected in the Grimwalker cycle—to Philip, the “real” Caleb died when he chose the Demon realm, and each subsequent “corrupted” version of Caleb must die to allow for a new one to be created.
Therein lies the reversed meanings of the Death card; Philip is unhealthily attached to this false image of Caleb he holds in his mind, which he imposes onto each Grimwalker. Belos is the Owl House’s poster child for resistance to and fear of change, having stubbornly held onto his Puritan ideals for literal centuries. In repeating and perpetuating this violent cycle, in refusing to move on, he has stagnated entirely and is ultimately reduced to the state of decay we see in his cursed form. In For the Future we see Caleb’s ghost appear before him when he’s literally falling apart, a harbinger of death and a sign that his era of influence over the Boiling Isles will soon come to an end.
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Health and Hybrids (VII)👽👻💚
[I can't remember the original prompt posters for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and whatever prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]
PART ONE is here PART TWOis here PART THREEis here PART FOUR is here and PART FIVE is here PART SIX is here and this is lucky number seven baby 💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts
Where we last left off... Martian Manhunter did a Whoopsie. Things are better than they were though, so...success? YJ got in trouble with Batman but Danny wasn't exactly cognizant enough to notice so that got relegated to the tags.
Trigger warnings for this story: body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) | my awful attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.
💚👻👽👻💚
The debriefing team meets J’onn in a meeting room not too far from the cafeteria. By the time he makes it to the correct floor, the team has clearly been waiting on him; on the table are a pack of Chocco cookies, a large order of fries, and a ten pack of chicken nuggets.
J’onn inclines his head. It’s nice to see that his favorite meal is remembered. “Thank you, Batman.”
Batman’s nod is equally as formal. The human is already most of the way through his italian sub. “No thanks needed. Were you successful in your contact with the entity?”
Ah. Right to the details, then. J’onn obliges the question with a seat at the table. Black Canary, a chair to his right, gently scoots over to provide him more space.
In the end, J’onn is relieved to have a prop in his hands. It creates a small, if flimsy barrier between himself and the images the boy had shown him.
What he knows now…
J’onn sighs.
The room is peaceful— likely intentionally so, in order to ease the oncoming conversation. Wonder Woman and Black Canary sit beside each other, their individual meals open and half-eaten between them. As the facilitator of the conversation, Batman sits at the end of the table; as the secretary of the meeting, Superman sits beside him, his sloppy joe in one hand and a keyboard beneath the other.
J’onn quietly tears open the packaging of his pack of cookies. Plucks one from its plastic insert inside. Chews. Swallows.
“The first thing to note is that although the entity's primary language is not known to me, he is extremely familiar with humans— and, likely, with Earth.”
Superman swallows the rest of his sandwich in one gulp, nods, and begins to type. Batman turns to face J’onn directly. “How so?”
“He has many memories of flying freely in Earth’s atmosphere, specifically; the stars line up with the star patterns as viewed from this planet. He is intimately familiar with several aspects of Earth’s culture, including the idea of ‘a bedroom’, which he identified as his own, and a childhood toy, which was a scale model of an Earth spacecraft. If I was shown a variety of options, I could likely pick out which craft specifically. He has a mind for detail.”
Superman’s fingers flick rapid-fire over the keyboard. J’onn happens to be aware of the Krytponian’s career, as the local telepath, but rarely is the man's passion so clearly shown; the focus and quick hands certainly project an air of professionalism around an otherwise at-ease debriefing room.
“You’re using he/him,” the Kryptonian observes, making additional notes in the margins of the in-progress report. “How did that come about?”
“He does have an understanding of the most common gender identities of Earth, and has a favored one. How he came about it…” J’onn inhales. It is a very human gesture. “…I do not know his origins for certain, but I have several theories.”
Batman cuts off an oncoming question from Superman with a silent wave of his hand. “Base information first. Questions and theoreticals at the end.”
Superman’s face at the hindering of his professional instincts is perhaps less than completely mature. “Yes, yes.”
J’onn takes a second cookie.
It’s easy to report on certain things; the entity's initial inability to communicate without acute pain, the subsequent reaction of the teenage team, the eventual discovery of clear communication and transference of emotion.
“Not all of his thoughts were particularly clear.” J’onn nibbles on the edge of his cookie. Black Canary pushes aside her empty tray of California rolls to give her pen and notepad space. This portion of the debrief necessitates more of her skills. “Most of the memories that he aimed to show me were value-neutral, or otherwise unrelated memories, likely due to the stress of his current and deeply traumatic situation. He preferred memories that did not have pain or distress associated with them. When prompted—I displayed my own perspective of the crash we had found him in— the associated memories that were brought up implied that not only was he the pilot of the craft, but that he had a hand in building it.”
Superman’s rhythmic tapping undercuts the soft conversation. “So he is sapient, then, despite the difficulties in communication,” Wonder Woman confirms softly.
“More than. There are echoes of formalized schooling and other instruction in his mind, although I couldn’t discern the topics of the lessons.”
“Were there other beings like him? Anyone we could reach out to? Family members, friends…?”
J’onn hesitates. There’s no way to confirm what he saw. However…
“…There are memories that he has of his own person, in which he looks very human. His self-conceptualization is of an adolescent human boy.”
The grief in the room is palpable. J’onn doesn’t have to look up to feel it press in on him from all sides.
“I suspect that…in the same way that Superman has largely spent his life on Earth, this boy has at least spent several years on Earth as well. There are glosses of memories of an adapted human house, though I was unable to safely explore how far back they went. There are humans who prominently play a role in his self-image and expected worldview, although the mental representations of them have scarred over with some form of psychological trauma. Overall, despite his current form, there was likely a time this child felt safe around both humans and human scientists.”
Silence rules over the room.
“...Do we know what changed that?” Black Canary asks, without looking up from her notes. Her pencil eraser taps quietly against the table.
J’onn sets the package of cookies to the side. “Not…so exactly. There were hints of memories threaded throughout the recalled moments that he did not wish to pin down. Claustrophobia. Fear of incarceration. The fear of physical harm done to him— and the psychological harm of knowing with exact certainty that there were those willing to hurt him. …Intimate betrayal.”
Superman and Black Canary’s eyes quietly close. Batman looks hardly moved under his cowl; if J’onn could not feel the man’s stress spike in the air, he might not have ever known how worried the human was.
J’onn isn’t actually meant to know Superman’s circumstances as to his arrival on planet Earth, but there are equally few ways that any of the league can hide the entirety of their thoughts from him— especially at the time of his initial arrival into the League, when mental defenses had yet to be erected in a comprehensive manner. This situation smacks strongly of the story of Clark Kent, son of his human parents.
“There is no way to confirm my guess without further conversation on the topic. However, it is incredibly likely that he lived under the radar, on Earth, for a lengthy enough span of time to acclimate to human society. The discovery of his non-human biology would have spurred further action, and the result would have given reason for his fear of medical professionals, scientists, and adult humans. Likely, the other humans in his memories meant to support him, and were prevented from doing so or injured in the process. The vehicle that had crashed back to Earth would have served as—”
“—An escape route,” several voices overlap together.
J’onn nods. His fingers steeple together. “There is no way to know how far into space he had gotten, or if his escape was aided by others of his species, or even if the point of origin was in low atmosphere or Earth's orbit. Either way, our patient is alone now, is in extreme background pain, has lost perception in several of his senses that exclude taste, and has reluctantly bonded with the junior team due to a lack of more familiar presences.”
Batman’s emotional presence circles into a silent exhale of frustration. “That would be Impulse’s under-the table operation,” the human correctly identifies, dry as the desert.
(J’onn is certain that the vigilante will never reveal it, even to himself, but the exhale has its own quiet, microscopic tinge of reluctant amusement.)
“I don’t think it qualifies as under-the-table if you have a running file on his activities, dated and timed by every individual interaction,” Superman points out, not even bothering to glance at the now-slightly-peeved Batman.
“Hn.”
“Oh, very mature.”
“It was not league sanctioned.”
“Neither are the majority of your movements,” Wonder Woman points out. The fork from her salad punctuates her sentence with a tease and a wave. “If you informed us your security plans for the Watchtower any earlier than a week after you had already installed the new measures, I would assume you were an imposter and prepare for battle.”
Batman hardly looks put out. He achieves deception with his whole body. J’onn genuinely admires how discordant his behavior and churning thoughts can be.
“Hn.”
“Oh, very well-spoken,” Black Canary flatters insincerely, toying with her pencil against her paper.
It would be very immature of Batman to sulk. Therefore, he does not.
“Returning to the point of this meeting… Are there any other pertinent details we ought to know?”
J’onn considers shrugging. He packs three chocco cookies into his mouth instead, chews, and swallows. There are only two cookies left in the pack, now.
“The biological mechanism utilized for his empathic sense is vibrationally-based. That would be why my initial attempt at communication failed so tremendously; if he does have a neurological center, it is too deeply damaged to interpret telepathic input. He has a fondness for astronomy, can recognize the color red with greatest ease, and likely needs high contrast if we would like him to recognize any materials we provide. He imprinted on Impulse likely because the boy’s presence in the Speedforce mimics the energy readings he expects to see in those of his species.”
Superman hums. His fingers fly. “So he must have met others of his species before.”
J’onn makes a so-so motion. “There is no way to be certain. His abilities may be instinctually pre-programmed, or he may have had access to outside materials to teach him.”
Batman’s arms cross. His sandwich, which had been sitting on the table, is now entirely vanished— wrapper and all. “Was there any evidence as to either particular theory you were able to pick up on?”
“...No.” Hadn’t he indicated such?
“Was there any personal information you were able to pick up on?”
J’onn has to think about that one. The topic hadn’t come up during their mental exchange, when so much more of the focus had been on creating basic understanding of the Watchtower, his presence within their base as a patient and not as a prisoner, and his current location on the moon. Anything else that J’onn might have gleaned would have to be determined on supposition and analysis.
“...He enjoys astronomy.” J’onn tries to recall the exact memories he had seen, and only ends up reiterating what he has already said. Perhaps highlighting certain moments will make the narrative clearer. “His childhood dwelling had little stickers on his ceiling. They would stay lit even when the room went dark—”
“...Glow in the dark stars,” Superman whispers under his breath. J’onn exhales. This isn’t a familiar point of human culture for him. He’s glad his description is recognizable.
“Yes. He organized them to mimic Earth's constellations. He had smaller, handheld versions of rocket ships. Even if he had not known of extraterrestrial origins, he was drawn to the cosmos.”
Batman coughs. The gesture is a reflex to suppress some welling emotion. J’onn pretends that it works. “Both items are…markers of a young child,” Batman admits. “Indications of a quite young, very human childhood.”
Ah. J’onn can more deeply recognize the sense of tragedy welling in the air. The items are astronomy-based yes, but they equally highlight his age.
“When he donned a human appearance, he matched the coloration of the human family who took him in. As fleeting as their acquaintance might have been, he modeled his human form after them— solidly enough and surely enough that, if he feels strong enough to form a mental self-representation, I can see the outline of it in his memories.” No details, beyond vague hints in the entity's mind of his hair and her eyes and their skin.
“Very loved,” Wonder Woman murmurs.
“Very young, and very loved,” Black Canary reiterates with a sigh. Her notes are a black mess of graphite. “And now he fears adult humans.”
“Yes,” J’onn admits. The cookies are gone. He sets the wrapper to the side. He reaches for the chicken nuggets. “That said, he has an instinctual familiarity with black and with red hair, will likely experience less fear with a female profile as opposed to a male, and responded favorably when offered the chance to interact with an adult who did not mean him harm. The fact that we have largely indestructible adults at our disposal works to our advantage.”
It is very, very clear who exactly fills that description. Wonder Woman sits up straight, laces her fingers together, and very kindly curtails her smugness. If Superman and Batman would like to be jealous of her current position, they may do so at their own discretion.
#Batman and Superman: HEY#Wonder Woman: No HEY. I get to see the baby :)#health and hybrids#dp x dc#dpxdc#dcu crossover#dcxdp#danny phantom#tw medical#tw gore#tw body horror#kinda#cryptid!au#spooky dude has some new friends#faer fic#IIIIIIIINNNNNNNN SPAAAAAAAAACE
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4t2 conversion of syboulette's little dino kids bedroom [download - sfs folder]
i think this might be the most beautiful @syboubou set i've converted to date, every square inch of it is absolute adorable CUTENESS and i could not resist! i LOVE IT! i hope you guys enjoy this as much as i enjoyed converting it 💕 there are a total of 25 items and 8 wallpapers (which each have left/right variants!)
this set is meant to pair nicely with my previous conversion of syboulette's dreamy toddler set! and the addons found here.
unlike my previous conversions, this set is large enough--and has enough recolors--that i made both a merged and unmerged version of it. please only pick one, they will conflict!
credits
@syboubou, whose ts4 cc never fails to make me gasp aloud with amazement,
and almightyhat, whose toy i cloned to make the diplosaur a functional toy!
there is a readme included in the download already, but keep reading if you want to find out more about this set and want it all in one place!
things to note
'T-Rex the Rex, but Tinier' is repo'd to 'T-Rex the Rex'.
The 'Diplo toy' is not decorative, it can be played with like a regular toy from the toybox! It's cloned from AlmightyHat's buyable version of the base game toys 😻
'Dresser' and 'Dresser Small' are a hallway table and endtable, with the smaller version being repo'd to the larger.
'Ivy Bed Decor' and 'Bed Blanket' must have moveobjects and snaptogrid off to be placed properly.
items included
please note that the wall circles, clock, wardrobe, folded clothing on the bed, strawberry triceratops, hanging plants, slippers, under-bed storage boxes, and under-table storage boxes are not included in this download! some are wips, others can already be downloaded on my blog!
- T-Rex the Rex (1504 polys, General -> Child, Decor)
- T-Rex the Rex, but Tinier (1504 polys, General -> Child, Decor)
- Ceiling Lamp (560 polys, Lighting -> Ceiling Lamp, Lamp)
- Chair (1046 polys, Seating -> Dining Chairs, Chair)
- Hamper (1426 polys, General -> Child, Decor)
- Desk (92 polys, Surfaces -> Desks, 1-tile Desk)
- Thibault the Diplo (884 polys, General -> Child, Toybox Toy)
- Drawings (128 polys, General -> Child, Decor)
- Dresser (2008 polys, Surfaces -> Miscellaneous, Hallway Table)
- Dresser Small (2008 polys, Surfaces -> Endtables, Endtable)
- Hanged Chair (1740 polys, Comfort -> Living Chairs, Living Chair)
- Hanger Bathroom Bag (745 polys, General -> Child, Decor)
- Height Chart (396 polys, General -> Child, Decor)
- Ivy Bed Decor (356 polys, Decorations -> Sculptures, Decor)
- Kid Bed (1114 polys, Seating -> Beds, Single Bed)
- Kid Bed Blanket (1177 polys, Comfort -> Miscellaneous, Decor)
- Lamp (1762 polys, Lighting -> Table Lamp, Table Lamp)
- Leaf Rug (274 polys, Decorations -> Rugs, Rug)
- Nightstand and Books (442 polys, Surfaces -> Endtables, Endtable)
- Pencils (880 polys, Decorations -> Sculptures, Decor)
- Pillows (720 polys, Comfort -> Miscellaneous, Decor)
- Wicker Pot Plant (534 polys, Decorations -> Plants, Decor)
- Popup Book (348 polys, General -> Child, Decor)
- Posters (852 polys, Decorations -> Paintings, Painting)
- Succulents (1563 polys, Decorations -> Plants, Decor)
- Toddler Bed (1731 polys, General -> Child, Toddler Bed)
- Wallpaper (8 patterns, Left-Right Variants, Wallpaper)
once again, i hope you all enjoy this as much as i do! if there are any issues, do let me know!
happy simming 💘
( @4t2ccdatabase )
#sims 2 download#ts2 download#sims 2 cc#ts2 cc#s2cc#sims 2#ts2#s2#4t2#4t2 conversion#4t2 buy#4t2 download#4t2cc#4t2 walls
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