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#tho i think they quit somewhere down the line?

thehighladywrites · 3 months

Text

— “Still wanna fuck me, Azzie?”

☀︎ — pairing: nerd/tutor az x bimbo/ditzy/popular reader

☀︎ — summary: you invite your tutor to a movie night and somewhere along the way it ended up with him giving you a facial

☀︎ — warnings: 18+, nsfw, oral (m. receiving), bimbo reader, virginity loss, making out, daddy az showing you what he has learned, getting your pussy pounded, possessive thoughts, jealous thoughts, az telling reader he wants to eat her out, rhys and cass make a cameo!

☀︎ — amara’s note: sorry for the wait, the smut was killing me but i hope you enjoy hookers!!

series masterlist

”Ahh, yes, oh my god!! Fuck me harder daddy, I’m gonna cum!!! Yes, yes, yesss!!!!”

Azriel slammed his laptop shut and stared at the wall, his face burning with a deep flush, dick stirring, and heart pounding.

Was this really how sex was supposed to be like? He had looked up ‘sex tutorial’ and clicked on the first link, which led him to a dark and inviting porn website. A million flashing signs about nearby milfs and pills to enlarge his dick by atleast 5 inches decorated the screen.

He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something about the situation felt incredibly sketchy. Especially with the video he was currently watching; ‘cute next-door-neighbor gets fucked by handsome mailman.’

The theatrical moans and exaggerated expressions felt forced, fake and unreal. Even tho Azriel had never had a women under him, he wasn't naive enough to believe that any of it was genuine.

He huffed out a sigh and undressed to take a much needed cold shower. Your movie night plans were later this night and he wanted to make sure he atleast knew how to please you.

You had only sat in his lap and he had practically melted. While he loved that you knew what you were doing, he also wanted a sense of control and knowledge. Azriel always figured something out if he really put his mind to it, and best believe he would learn how to proper please you.

The line between what you two were had become increasingly blurry. Were you just tutor and student or could it be possible that you were both experiencing the same fluttering feelings?

Azriel kept thinking about how had he wanted to be with you, even though he had only known you for a few weeks. You were an absolute sweetheart to him, always clinging to him during the tutoring sessions and being a light in his life he didn’t want snuffed out.

After the shower, he made a decision to meet up with his friends for some advice before heading over to your apartment.

—

Rhysand's spacious living room suddenly echoed with Cassian's booming voice. “Holy fuck, you're finally going to raw-dog a girl?”

The surprising statement grabbed Rhysand's attention, curiosity sparking in his eyes. Just who had Azriel finally taken an interest in?

Azriel shot Cassian an unamused scowl, rolling his eyes as he sipped on the expensive scotch Rhysand had decided to test out.

“No need to scream, Cassian. Yes, I'm going to have intercourse. And don't call it raw-dogging. It sounds disgusting.”

Rhysand raised an amused eyebrow at Azriel's response. “Don't call it intercourse. It sounds too clinical.”

Azriel shrugged. “Fine. I'm getting laid, happy?”

Cassian chuckled. “That's more like it!”

Rhys rolled his eyes playfully. “Just be safe, Az. And have fun.”

Azriel slowly nodded, looking down at his glass, swirling the amber liquid around.

Cassian narrowed his eyes, studying Azriel's every move. Azriel lifted his eyes and met his gaze with equal intensity.

“What are you looking at?” Azriel demanded.

Cassian grinned mischievously. “Do you even know what to do? I mean, you haven’t fucked anyone before, so, do you know how to fuck properly? How to make a girl cum?” he teased.

Azriel's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he shifted uncomfortably under Cassian's scrutinizing gaze.

“I, uh... did some research,” he admitted, his voice slightly muffled as he avoided eye contact.

Cassian and Rhys exchanged a knowing glance, a smirk playing at the corners of their lips as they both realized what Azriel was implying.

“What do you mean research? Like you watched porn?”

Azriel's blush deepened, his ears turning pink as he cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Uh, yeah... something like that,” he muttered, hoping the ground would swallow him whole.

Rhysand and Cassian exchanged amused glances before bursting into laughter, their chuckles echoing in the spacious living room. Azriel pushed his glasses up so they held back his hair and rubbed his eyes, stressed. After a moment, Rhysand clapped Azriel on the back with a grin.

“Don't worry, brother. We'll teach you all the tricks the ladies go crazy for,” he assured him, his tone laced with promising advice.

—

After a few hours of vivid explanations, videos, and personal advice on how to please a lady, Azriel was more than ready to make you happy.

Azriel stood in front of the snack aisle, feeling the pressure to choose the perfect treats. Snacking was usually his thing, but why was it so damn hard this time? Determined to get it right, he debated between chips that could leave him with sour cream and onions breath and popcorn with an overwhelming variety.

Opting for salted popcorn, he moved to the sweets section. Rummaging through his memory for your favorites, he snatched up two packs of your sour strawberry candies and tossed in a blue raspberry pack because it was his favorite, and he wanted you to try it too.

Finally reaching the counter, just before he paid, he glanced at the condoms on the wall. The old lady at the counter followed his gaze.

“You need some, boy?” she asked, her voice surprisingly loud in the quiet store.

He quickly looked around to make sure no one else had heard, then, feeling a flush rise to his cheeks, he grabbed a packet of extra-large condoms.

—

With your hands on your hips and a narrowed gaze, you looked at the options in your massive closet, feeling on the verge of screaming bloody murder.

None of your clothes seemed good enough for tonight, and despite the fact that it’s supposed to be just a movie night, you knew it was likely to lead to something more.

You'd rather die than be unprepared for what tonight might bring. Your overflowing walk-in closet wasn't cutting it at all, so you had to leave on a last-minute emergency shopping trip. And let's face it, running around in Saks with six-inch heels is no easy feat.

“Alice, it’s an emergency. I need to see the latest collection of lingerie from Agent Provocateur. I know they’re not out in shops until November but is there a chance you can let it slide? Pretty please?” you ask sweetly, flashing your signature smile.

Your usual sales assistant, Alice, whom you've gotten to know well from your frequent visits, returns your smile and gestures toward a private showroom, handing you a flute full of Moët as she leads the way.

A few minutes later, Alice returns with a whole rack in tow, each piece of beautiful lace underwear causing your jaw to drop in awe.

The collection was absolutely incredible, featuring intricate lace, luxurious silk, and sparkling Swarovski diamonds adorning the bras. Your eyes widened to the size of saucers as you watched her pull out each piece, unable to contain your excitement.

As Alice presents each set, her voice filled with enthusiasm and admiration for the craftsmanship, you watch attentively, absorbing every detail.

“This one features hand-stitched lace imported from France,” she explains, holding up a delicate bralette.

You nod, impressed, as she continues to another blue set, “And this one has intricate embroidery along the edges, giving it a touch of playfulness.”

When she mentions another set with sparkling Swarovski diamonds adorning a particularly stunning bra, you can't help but gasp in awe. You reach into your handbag and pull out your black card. “I need the entire thing,” you declare with conviction, your tone leaving no room for doubt as you're already envisioning yourself in every piece.

“Are you sure you want the entire collection, Ms. L/n?” she asks, a hint of surprise in her voice.

You meet her gaze with unwavering determination. “Absolutely,” you reply without hesitation. “I need to look hot tonight.”

“I'll wrap them all up and tell Pierre to put them in your trunk while you finish your drink. I just know you will look amazing in them,” she says with a wink.

You squeal with excitement, giving Alice a hug that almost knocks over a display. “Thanks, Alice! You're a total lifesaver!” you exclaim before darting out of the boutique.

—

Azriel thought he had prepared himself for everything, but nothing could have prepared him for how beautiful you looked when you opened the door. The wind was nearly knocked out of him as his lips twitched into a shy smile.

You flashed him your adorable grin as you looked up at him.

“Hi Azzie!! Come in, we’re gonna have so much fun. I’ve been looking forward to this forever.”

Before he could respond, you grabbed his hand and closed the door behind him. The moment he stepped inside, you enveloped him in a long, warm hug, nestling into his sturdy chest as you wrapped your arms around him.

“I missed you so, so, soooo much. Oh, I also passed my math test. Oh but only because I remembered your lame technique and used it.”

Azriel looked down at the top of your head and wrapped his tattooed arms around your shoulders. He was sure his heartbeat was dangerously quick, but he still pulled you in closer.

“That's fantastic news. I knew you could do it. I’m proud of you.”

He was bummed when you let go of him, but his mood improved when you took his hand and led him to the living room. You guided him to the sofa and playfully pushed him backward until he landed on the mountain of pink fluffy blankets.

“Make yourself comfy. I’ll be right back,” you said, grabbing the bag filled with snacks. Leaning down, you kissed him slowly, loving the way his lips felt against yours, before getting up and leaving.

Azriel grinned, feeling a rush of warmth as he watched you go. He couldn't help but let his eyes linger on your body, admiring the way you moved. Absentmindedly, he licked his lips, his thoughts consumed by what was coming.

Azriel leaned back, stretching his legs out on the cushions as he debated how to position himself. Should he leave one arm on the back of the sofa, inviting you to cuddle in beside him? But then he wondered if that was too forward and presumptuous, maybe you wanted some space.

He put down his arm and crossed them against his chest, but then realized he looked angry or something.

“I look like an idiot,” he muttered to himself, rolling his eyes in frustration. Finally, he decided to be bold and put his arms behind the sofa. After all, he did want you close to him.

He jumped slightly when you came back and had a tray filled with all the delicious snacks he had bought.

You but the tray down and sat on the sofa, crawling closer and closer to him as you put on the movie.

—

Obviously, neither of you were paying attention to the movie as you were both busy with feeling each other up and making out only 8 minutes into the movie.

He had started out by slowly rubbing your back. But you decided to speed things up, gently placing your manicured hand on his abs and lightly scratching. That seemed to be enough to set him off, as he immediately got hard and started kissing you needingly.

You pivoted, sitting on top of him as he wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you flush against his chest. Azriel swallowed at the feeling of your soft boobs pressed against his chest.

His hands traveled further down your back, slipping into your shorts and starting to massage your ass with a firm grip. Meanwhile, his mouth moved to start making bruises on your neck, each kiss leaving a mark of his desire.

Your eyes widened at his confident move, noting how he had become more forward since last time. It was quite the change from the last time when he couldn’t even look at you without a shirt on.

It piqued your curiosity. Did he have someone else on the side? How was he already making you feel so weak? All he did was squeeze your ass and kiss your neck, yet here you were, grinding in his lap. So, you asked, your tone a bit pouty and filled with uncertainty.

“Hey, are you like, fucking someone else on the side?” you blurted out, your perfectly shaped brows furrowing dramatically as you pouted your glossy lips. You were feeling a whirlwind of emotions, and your over-the-top, dramatic ass reaction was a mix of concern and hurt. Even though you didn't have any evidence, the mere thought of him with someone else was enough to make you feel like you'd just die.

Azriel's cloudy, lustful eyes cleared up real fast, and he sat up straighter, a hand on your back to keep you from falling as he panicked at the sadness in your glossed-over eyes.

“No, no, no. What makes you think that?” he asked gently, his voice tinged with concern. Subconsciously, he rubbed your thighs in comfort, his own brows furrowing in worry.

“Because, like, you're really good now. And you’ve never even touched a girl before me, so what’s up? How did you even learn how to do make me wet?” you exclaimed, your voice high-pitched and filled with drama. Your glossy eyes were wide with emotion as you awaited his response, your lower lip trembling ever so slightly.

Azriel wanted to kiss that pouty look off your face but he wasn’t that bold yet. Just the thought made him flustered.

But wait, he made you wet? Cassian had said that girls getting wet was a very good sign because it meant he was doing something you liked.

“It’s not like that. I have not spoken to another girl, I assure you. But I did some research because I wanted to make you feel good. Do you feel good?” he asked curiously, with hungry eyes.

“Oh, okay, well that’s perfect! No other girls, okay? And yeah, I mean, I feel super good. Like, really, really good.” you replied, your voice tinged with a hint of airheadedness as you flashed him a bright, bubbly smile.

“Can I blow you, pleaseeeee?” you asked, your hands softly caressing his chest, your face hovering just inches from his. He chuckled, his fingers fidgeting nervously behind your back.

“You can do whatever you want to me,” he said, and he meant every word. It was official – he was totally head over heels, over the top, painfully in love with you.

You gave him a quick peck before sliding down to the floor and on your knees before finding the hem of his shirt and pulling the material off his body. His physique never failed to make you drool. You traced his abs, his muscles, his tattoos, and kissed on the tattoos down his body.

You played with the buckle of his belt, raising your head to meet his eyes before unbuckling it. You smiled giddily at his reaction, he had a look of extreme pleasure on his face as he nodded for you to keep going.

As you unbuckled his belt and took off his pants, he grabbed your hair and held it up for you, just the way he saw guys do when they we’re about to get head.

The move surprised you but not as much as when you pulled down his underwear. His dick was perfect in size, not small but not painfully big, girthy but not uncomfortably large. And the best part was the fact that it curved a little to the right. Fucking perfect.

“Big,” your ditzy mind couldn’t process more so you dipped and gave his tip licks before sucking on it.

His grip on your hair tighted as he gasped lowly when you started swirling your tounge around the sensitive tip. Azriel’s throaty whines and tighter hold on your hair made your eyes roll back.

Your tongue swiped across his tip, and it was warm. The sensation was even warmer when your lips wrapped around the head. God, and it was all so fucking wet and warm. Especially when you gathered the spit in your mouth, coating his cock as you pushed him deeper down your throat.

His stomach was on fire, face burning as he locked eyes with you — your mouth stuffed with his cock, big, doey eyes slightly watering when he was only halfway in. He had never really acknowledged how big he was, how the thickness of him would stretch out your lips like that.

And when you stuck out your tongue, dragging it along the vein on the underside of his cock, he nearly lost it. What little control he was desperately hanging on to. Because you on your knees before him, looking up at im with lustfull eyes was something he only ever thought of in his wildest dreams, but even then, nothing could compare to this feeling.

The feeling of your hand pumping what couldn’t fit into your mouth, spit drooling from the corners of your lips. Azriel was hyper focused on how your eyes never left his, his cheeks were on fire, the tips of his ears in flames, as he burned with every suck, lick, and stroke you gave.

And he was going to come, right down your throat if he didn’t warn you. The need to release raged in his lower stomach, his muscles worked twice as hard to reign it in. So, he cupped your cheeks with both hands, tilting your head so that your neck craned up at him. Through gritted teeth, he managed to bite out, “y/n, m’gonna cum.”

Your eyes widened with surprise because you hadn’t been sucking him off for long, but he was completely overwhelmed. Instead of pulling off like he expected, you only went back to it. Your motions quickened, your rhythmic pace abandoned as you worked him to the back of your throat.

You were determined to make him finish on your face. The thought excited you, imagining the sensation of his cum dripping down your cheeks.

And fuck if he didn’t finish. With your pleading doe eyes and sinful mouth, he succumbed to the pleasure, letting out a gasp of your name that pitched into a whine. He shuddered as his hips bucked upwards in jerky moves.

“Hah–holy shit, so-so good,” he whined, as he finally let go, busting ln your face, painting it white.

He collapsed above you, breathless and spent before he sat up immediately, his fingers tracing panicked circles on your stained cheek. “That was... incredible, and i’m sorry about your face. I-I’ll get something to remove it” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. You couldn't help but smile at his words, feeling a warm sense of satisfaction wash over you.

You gave him a sultry look, your finger gliding across your face before you sucked on it. Then, with a seductive smile, you rose and settled into his lap.

“Still wanna fuck me, Azzie?” you whispered huskily, your voice dripping with desire.

The playful glint in your eyes ignited a primal desire within him, and he wasted no time in pulling you closer, his hands roaming eagerly over your body. “More than anything,” he whispered huskily, his lips finding yours in a hungry kiss.

The kiss left you feeling a bit dizzy, your hands falling to your sides as you soaked in the intense sensation. Mid-kiss, he gently guided you onto your back, his lips pressed together in concentration.

He got on top of you, kissing your neck and chest, looking up at you and your expressions as he lined his cock up to your entrance, teasing and tapping your clit before pushing in with a groan.

Azriel was really fucking grateful that he had already come once, because surely with him sinking in slowly, your tight walls enveloping him in delicious heat, he would have come on the spot. Which would’ve been mortifying. Even more embarrassing than the needy moan he released when he bottomed out. It was louder than he intended, his eyes rolling back when you wiggled your hips to adjust to his size.

“Your dick feel amaaazing, m’sooo totally baking ya a cake after this,” you moaned, your eyes going crossed with pleasure as he pumped into you.

Azriel flashed you a shy smile as his brain went fuzzy with desire, body blushing from the heat coursing through his veins. His grip on your hips tightened, his movements finding a comfortable rhythm.

“So fucking tight, so good,” he whined, his forehead slumped against your shoulder as you wrapped your legs around his middle and your arms around his neck, reveling in his warmth.

Your nails scraped against his back, creating scarlet streaks as he kept rocking you into bed. Azriel felt like he was in heaven.

Azriel pumped into you, holding eye contact as he remembered everything he had learned, everything that allegedly made a woman go crazy. He brought down his thumb to circle your clit knowing it was something a lotta women liked. He just didn’t expect you to go absolutely stupid on him as he did.

You were moaning and writhing in pleasure, lost in the sensations Azriel was eliciting from you. He couldn't help but think that you looked much prettier than all those actresses with their over-the-top performances. Your pleasure felt real and genuine, and he loved seeing you like that, completely lost in the moment.

“mm-my goddd — harder, please,” you whined, nails digging into his back.

Azriel didn't dare to close his eyes, his gaze never leaving yours as he whispered about your beauty. A pressure built up in both of you, a shared desire that seemed to consume the room.

Azriel never swore. He thought it was a disgusting way for people to express themselves, and that only people who couldn’t use their words had to resort to it but he was breaking his own rule. You felt too good.

“You’re gorgeous, so fucking beautiful” he moans, hips thrusting at an unforgiving pace as you finally reached your high, moaning loudly, nails dragging across his back.

“Fuck, gon’ cum.” he panted, spilling his cum into your cunt. Azriel gave his final slow thrusts before he was pulling out of you, letting his cum seep out.

Azriel slumped next to you, eyes shut as he rolled onto his side, his face nuzzling into the crook of your neck as he caught his breath. You released gentle sighs, snuggling closer to him, feeling completely at ease in his embrace.

“Did you… finish? Was it any good?” he asked as he kissed your neck tenderly

“Yeah, I came, like, really hard! You did a super good job, Azzie!! Totally the best i’ve ever had!” you said giddly as you crushed him in a hug

Azriel chuckled softly at your enthusiastic response, his lips trailing kisses along your neck. “I'm glad I could make you feel good, next time, I want to eat your pussy,” he murmured casually, returning your hug warmly.

Your eyes widened as your body warmed at his sudden and wish.

“Okay, only if i can ride,” you negotiated back with an exhausted smile.

Azriel nodded, pressing a tender kiss to your forehead before gently bringing you closer to him. He then reached for one of the nearby blankets and carefully wrapped it around you, ensuring you were snug and warm in his embrace.

You turned on the movie, snuggling close under the cozy blanket as it played softly in the background. With the comforting glow of the screen illuminating the room, you drifted off to sleep in each other's arms.

—

“So? Are you just going to sit there, Az?” Cassian asked, practically on the edge of his seat

Azriel took a sip of his drink, unfazed by Rhysand's scrutinizing gaze.

“Yeah, we did it. Yes, it was good. Now stop asking,” he said, his tone casual yet firm.

Rhys leaned forward eagerly, a playful grin spreading across his face.

“Oh, come on, Az! We need more details,” he urged, his curiosity piqued.

Azriel chuckled, shaking his head. “No, you fuckfaces don't. But thanks for the tips. We had a hell of a good time,” he replied, his tone carrying a playful edge as he stood up and left them with their jaw dropped.

“Did he just swear? Am I dreaming?” Cassian asked bewildered, looking over to Rhys with raised eyebrows.

“He did,” Rhys confirmed with a chuckle, raising his glass in a mock toast.

🏷️: @ithan-holstroms-girl @whatdoyxumean @honeybeeboobaa @to-be-written @sidthedollface2 @stasiereads @andrewgarfield2022 @amara-moonlight @thescooby-gang @linoisqt @mischiefmanagers @tortured-artists @dwlyniii @scooobies @harryshoobies69 @caroline-books @kalulakunundrum @meshelleexplosionmurder @danikamariewrites @clairebear08 @redbleedingrose @jeannineee @rowaelinsdaughter @nocasdatsgay @v3lv3tf0x @liati2000 @teenageeggscissorslawyer @impossibelle @stonerpersona @dreamlandreader @djaaaa @callmeblaire @thelov3lybookworm @polli05927 @ahitsalyssa @evergreenlark @thegirlintheshadows101 @saltedcoffeescotch @acourtofladydeath @acourtofwhatthefuck @readychilledwine @daycourtofficial @azriels-shadowsinger @sapphicmsmarvel @hungryforbatboys @justasillylittlegoofyguy @luvmoo @emryb @meritxellao @mochibabycakes @artists-ally @azzieslittlebunny

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oh-katsuki · 1 year

Text

The Inbetween (Tendou x Reader)

masterlist | ao3

Pairing: Tendou x Reader

Summary: You and Tendou have been best friends since before you can remember. You share everything with each other and over the years have fallen into a friendship with clear boundaries but intimate values. When you start to notice Tendou growing more distant, you begin to worry that he’s keeping more secrets than you thought.

"Tendou gets like this sometimes. He grows quiet for a few moments as if he is weighing something in his mind. You can see the inquisitive look in his eyes and every now and then, his bottom lip will bounce and it will tell you that he’s thinking about something. In these moments, you’re never quite sure what he’s thinking. You’ve never been able to tell and you’ve reserved yourself to thinking that it is not meant for you or for anyone else."

Content Warnings: fem!reader (gender neutral pronouns but there is a line that references you as his girlfriend), it does include manga spoilers since this takes place after they graduate high school, slow burn, childhood friends to lovers, angst in the middle, miscommunication, smut, fingering, oral (f!receiving), orgasm denial (just once), teasing, minor minor cockwarming (he lets it sit there for a little lol), there's no real mention of protection

Word Count: 25.8k (lol)

A/N: I decided not to break this fic up because I wrote it intending for it to be one piece. It ended up way longer than i thought it would be. I'm posting it all here, but I would def recommend reading it on ao3 if you prefer!!! i'm a little nervous about this one. i really struggled while i was writing it. i love him so bad tho... he's always a joy to write <333 hopefully i didn't miss too many typos. anyway, its finally here lol so i hope u enjoy <3

You think that there are periods of your life where growing pains become impossible to ignore. The change tends to hurt. Like rebreaking a bone to help it heal correctly. When you’re 8 and in bed, unable to sleep because your legs ache somewhere deep in your bones. When you’re 16 and you can’t seem to ever feel like something really fits, like you’re not doing a good enough job at being good enough.

Sometimes, they’re agonizing. The steady roll of dull pain that you can’t quite pinpoint, sending you anxious and aching in a way you can’t quite verbalize.

Sa-to-ri: U wanna get drunk tonight?

You: Not particularly.

Sa-to-ri: k

Tendou shows up at your apartment forty-five minutes later with two bottles of wine. He lets himself in, holding the both of them in one hand, his long fingers curled around the necks of the bottles. It looks assured but precarious and you watch as he shoves his keys back into his pocket, takes a bottle in each hand, and kicks your front door shut with a flat foot.

“Thought I told you I didn’t wanna drink tonight?” You call from the couch, craning your neck to face him.

Tendou is looking at his shoes as he slips them off, watching as he goes heel to toe and slides them past the curve of his foot. Then, he tilts his head up and looks at you with a lazy grin. He’s at ease here, padding into your house.

He has a particular gait about him. When Tendou walks, he sways side to side as if the length of his limbs is too much to control and his head tends to follow. He leans one way and then the other, confident in his step but wobbling nonetheless. If you had to compare him to anything, it would be a more confident version of one of those floppy blue pillars that jerk back and forth at car sales on TV. You’re not sure what they’re called, but Tendou’s step reminds you of them.

“I know you well enough to know that you’re a liar, you borderline alcoholic, you.” He smiles, sitting down on the couch beside you with a grunt and passing you one of the bottles.

“No glasses?” You quirk a brow.

“Absolutely not.” He twists the lid of the wine bottle off and tilts the spout towards you. Tendou always buys cheap wine so that you never have to worry about uncorking it. “Cheers.”

You roll your eyes, twisting the lid off of your own bottle and clink the neck of it against his. It gives a high-pitched click when you do, the sound short and succinct with how full the bottles are.

“Cheers.”

“Can we watch Evangelion?” He asks almost immediately, leaning forward to reach for the remote in your hand.

“Jesus, what on earth makes you want to get drunk and watch Evangelion?” You hold it away from his grabbing hand. “Are you insane?”

Tendou chuckles, “I think it would be interesting.”

“I think it sounds stupid. You’re just asking for an identity crisis.” You roll your eyes, setting the remote down on the other side of you.

You bring the bottle of wine to your lips. It’s a Moscato, overly sweet and the slightest bit fizzy. Tendou likes these kinds of wines. The ones that don’t taste like alcohol at all. He watches as you sip it before bringing his own bottle to his lips, curling them around the spout of it and taking a long pull from the bottle.

You’ve known Tendou since you were 13 and he’s always been like this. He likes sweets, anything with enough sugar to make a normal person pull a face. He likes weird music, the kind that makes him the least eligible person to be in control of music on long car rides. He hates tomatoes but forces himself to eat them anyway because it “builds character” and he never fails to treat it like he’s suffering through some great trauma.

Tendou, for as long as you’ve known him, has always been like a breath of fresh air after a long day inside. Either that or loud music emanating from a comically small car.

“How’s your boyfriend?” He asks, taking another sip.

“Dead.”

“For real?”

“To me,” you finish, rolling your head to the side and looking at him.

Tendou huffs, leaning further back into the seat. “Need a shoulder to cry on?”

“No, he was a cunt.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he raises his bottle as if to salute someone far away and brings it to his mouth again. “How long did this one last?”

“A month,” you heave a sigh.

“New record,” Tendou chuckles to himself.

“What is wrong with me?” You swallow a large sip, exhaling as you do. “It’s like- It’s like I’m just dicking around!”

“Well, are you?”

“No!” You rub your palms into your eyes. “I mean, I find a guy, I go out with him, and then… I lose interest or he turns out to be a total tool.”

“Or married,” Tendou adds, taking another sip.

“Or married,” You confirm, following suit.

“I knew you wanted to drink.” Tendou gives you a wry grin. The corners of his lips pull up pleasantly and his voice takes on a lower and more knowing tone.

“Shush, it’s only ‘cause you’re doing it.”

“Peer pressure really works wonders.”

You smile, scoffing lightly as you pull the bottle from your lips. It pops when you do, pressure releasing from how you’d been sipping.

Tendou offers you a smile, the kind that you’re so familiar with that it aches. He rolls his head across his shoulders, letting it rest on the back of the couch cushions.

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right person for you.” He says, half to himself as he lifts the bottle.

“Maybe.” You agree, “or maybe I’m just eternally cursed. Maybe I’ve got a rotten bloodline.”

His eyes slink across his lower waterline to look at you.

“I doubt that.” He laughs and you can’t help but smile.

Tendou has a certain way about him. If you know him well enough, he is reassuring to the point of relaxation. He never fails to comfort you in moments of need, winding you down on days you feel particularly tight.

He seems like someone who knows everything. Tendou feels like he’s got it all figured out and when you talk to him he maintains a certain confident air that is pleasant to be around. Sometimes it feels like Tendou knows you better than you know yourself and you’re grateful that at least someone does. He maintains that particular aura about him and you think that it belongs to him like it does no other.

Tonight he seems particularly mellow, lounging comfortably on your couch. You eventually give in to Tendou, resigning yourself to watching Evangelion with him, and he seems content to just sit beside you and watch.

His arm is tossed over the back of the couch, the other nursing the half-empty bottle of wine. You follow the line of it with your eyes, lingering for a moment on the curve of his knuckles, flushed pink against the pale color of his skin.

You follow his fingers, admiring the ways his skin is pulled taut over them. They’re long like he is, spanning the entire top of the couch cushion short ways. His wrists are thinner, the bones of his fingers coming to connect nicely where his lower arm meets his hand. You admire the even quality of his skin, following the lines of lean muscle up to his shoulder. Muscle and sinew form a trail up his arm, tucking itself away under the sleeve of his sweatshirt where it hides until the fabric meets the delicate skin of his collarbones. You watch his neck, his pronounced Adam’s apple bobbing slightly when he swallows at particularly nerve-wracking scenes. Still, he keeps a slight smirk on his face. It’s like he’s glad to just be here, eyes low-lidded as he peers at the TV.

By the top hem of his sweatshirt, you can see the beginnings of his collarbones and you know that beneath it, he is hiding an evenly toned chest. You can imagine the familiar dip and curve of his abdomen, his pale, almost sallow, skin stretched evenly over it. Tendou is all lean muscle. He’s built tall and long and you’ve seen the somewhat toned physique he hides beneath the thick cloth of the red sweatshirt. Still, you know that to the touch he is soft. Tendou has some give to him from the sweets he eats so regularly but, like the rest of him, you think it is beautiful.

You follow the trail to his neck where he has a few freckles, three to be exact. One sits above his collarbone, the other on the tendon that connects his neck to his head, and the third just below his ear, covered right now by his dark red hair which collects around his neck. It’s as if the sun deliberately placed them there, dotting up the fine muscle as if it were Orion’s Belt glimmering across the winter and spring sky.

His hair is at his shoulders now, unruly and almost unmanageable on most mornings. At the moment, it sits delicately just above his shoulders, collecting in what looks like pools on either side of them. Normally, Tendou ties it up to keep it out of his face. Tonight, he’s keeping it down, letting the wavy tufts of dark hair hide the blushing nape of his neck from you, red from the wine.

Tendou’s face is long, you follow the trail his neck makes to his cheekbones. They’re high, complimenting his somewhat soft jaw nicely. His cheeks maintain a delicate pink tone, barely visible unless you look closer but aided tonight by the flush of wine. When he’s embarrassed, this quality shines red regardless. Tendou, in his more shy moments, lights up like a switchboard.

Just above his cheekbones, Tendou sports light under eye bags. They are partially from being tired, but you also know that they are owed simply to the quality of his face. Tendou has distinct upper eyelids. They crease heavily when his eyes are open and you’d almost describe them as somewhat hawk-like if it weren’t for their round nature.

Tendou stays up late at night. His job as a bartender keeps him working until the early hours of the morning and you know from texts he’s sent you that he takes a few hours after to unwind before going to bed. Sometimes he’ll play games, spurred on by Kenma’s gaming channel, but he always loses interest in them after a few weeks. Tendou keeps his interests and hobbies short and sweet, though you don’t think that diminishes their value to him. No, in fact, you think that it means that Satori has a lot of things that he loves. Still, this latest love of his has contributed to the dark under eyes he seems to sport around the clock.

Part of you knows that’s just how he looks, but the other part thinks that if he went to bed earlier, that quality would lessen. You’ll never tell him that though. You quite like that quality of his. It’s distinctive, as most of his features are.

Then, you shift your gaze down to his mouth. Tendou has a thin upper lip which—when combined with his all-knowing eyes—makes him look a little scary. His bottom lip, however, is full and pink. When he’s thinking, it moves slightly. It bounces as if Tendou is rehearsing what he wants to say, running through his thoughts at a mile a minute. You believe it to be endearing and Tendou, who has never been particularly vain, thinks that if you think so, it must be.

All of these things are things you’ve come to know about Tendou since you met him. You’re accustomed to his body language, comfortable (unlike so many others) with his gait and the way he moves. You think that there is only one other person in the world who is as comfortable with him as you are and that is Ushijima Wakatoshi, someone you both met in high school. He, like you, is someone that Tendou clicks with like a piece of a puzzle.

He talks to Wakatoshi every night on the phone. They talk about their lives, maybe about girls. Wakatoshi usually just listens though. What Tendou cannot say to you, he says to him and you’re not nosy enough to pry. You’re positive that whatever you need to know, Tendou will tell. When you finally stand and go to the other room to get ready for bed, you can hear him through the thin wall, talking quietly into the phone so as to not disturb your nighttime routine.

You pad between your bedroom and the bathroom, occasionally passing close enough for Tendou to catch you in the corner of his eye. He raises his hand or his eyebrows when that happens, swiveling his head to acknowledge you as he leans back against the couch cushions, one arm thrown over the back and the other holding his phone to his ear.

The fan hums to life when you flip the light switch in the bathroom. Sometimes you wish they’d be separate switches because when the apartment is quiet the noise is jarring and disorienting, but today the sound is just another addition to the symphony of noise in your home. It whirs softly as you put on a headband and run the sink, letting the water get warm before splashing it up onto your face.

You take your cleanser, pumping some of it into your hand, and slather it onto your skin in soft circles. The motion is familiar and you feel the way your shoulders relax a little as the cleanser turns white with foam against your skin. When you are ready to rinse, you dip your head down, cupping water in your hands and splashing it onto your face.

“You always do that so messily,” Tendou chimes from beside you.

You jump, flinching to the side as you wipe the cleanser from your eyes quickly, “Jesus, you scared me.”

“Sorry,” he chuckles, leaning against the doorway.

Tendou is lithe like a cat. He’s long and slender, his body nearly dwarfing the doorway he stands in. His shoulder presses against the white wood and he crosses his arms pleasantly over his chest, hovering just outside of your space.

He watches with a content smile, eyes half closed as sleep starts to take over him. The corners of his mouth pull up curiously and his eyes follow the movements of your face as you gently rinse it with warm water. Occasionally, he will act like you’ve flicked water on him, raising his shoulder lightly as if to shield himself from it, and you scowl in response.

“Move over,” he says as he steps around you and nudges your hip with his own.

Tendou slides in front of the sink beside you, grabbing one of your headbands and using it to push his hair back. It swishes when he does, revealing the rest of his forehead before he takes some water and wets his face. Then, he takes your cleanser and copies your previous movements, scrubbing his face lightly before dipping down and rinsing it. You watch, fighting the heat that bullies its way to your cheeks.

He’s a lot cleaner at this than you are, cupping the water in his big hands and lowering his face to rinse it. His eyes flutter closed, lashes batting slightly before he pushes his fingers against his skin and then wipes downwards. A few stray drops of water roll down his forearms, following the path his lean muscles make until they drop onto your bathroom counter. For how lanky he is, the movement is strangely graceful and you watch with a tilted head as he repeats the process. It keeps the counters relatively dry and when he’s done, the only evidence of his having washed it at all are the few drops of water on the counter and the clean quality of his skin.

Tendou peers at you through the corner of his eye, smiling lightly as he stands to his full height and grabs his toothbrush from the holder. He keeps one here now. Given the amount of time he spends here, it only makes sense.

Sometimes you think that the intimacy the two of you share is too much. Sometimes it is difficult to reconcile that you could be this close to a person but Tendou is someone who begs closeness. No, he demands it. Tendou is as affectionate as he is adoring. Intimacy, be it platonic or romantic, becomes him and though you sometimes worry if things can continue like this, you quickly forget it in favor of simply being close.

To an outsider, Tendou has the feel of someone very far away. You’ve heard from acquaintances that he seems aloof and somewhat cocky, though you think that only the latter half is true. Tendou is particularly involved, however distanced he may seem. It comes with intimacy. He remembers almost every little thing about the people he loves. Should you visit the same restaurant twice, Tendou remembers what you ordered and if you enjoyed it. Should you be deciding between one shirt or the other, Tendou will recall what you already own and suggest the best possible option. He’s attentive like that.

“This face wash is new,” he comments, running a knuckle along the side of his cheek as if to feel how effective it is.

“Yeah, my skin got used to the other,” you shrug your shoulders, popping your toothbrush into your mouth.

“What does that even mean?” He laughs. Tendou’s voice is warbled through his toothpaste. It sounds thick, the tenor ring of it dropping to a baritone hum through the thick white foam.

“Dunno,” you shrug, “pretty sure it’s just a wives tale or something but I still believe it.”

Tendou laughs again, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he leans forward and spits into the sink. You follow suit, waiting for him to pick his head up and continue brushing. The toothbrush looks smaller than usual in his hand, his long fingers curled around it as he guides it over his teeth, spitting for a second time and then reaching for your mouthwash.

“You sleeping over?” You ask, taking the bottle when he hands it to you.

Tendou nods his response, swishing the liquid back and forth in his mouth. Then he leans forward and the smell of winter mint hits your nose. Honestly, you don’t much like the taste or smell of it, but you’ve found that it keeps your mouth feeling fresh for the longest. Besides, you don’t mind it as much when it’s on Tendou. For some reason, the smell suits him.

You’re relieved to find the reprieve of your bed. It hasn’t been a particularly busy day, but the wine is getting to your head. It makes you sleepy and your duvet cover feels far more comfortable than usual.

Tendou usually sleeps on the bed with you. It’s another facet of the intimacy you share with him. Your bed is large enough to fit the both of you comfortably with a pillow between you, though it almost never stays there the entire night. Both you and Tendou tend to toss around in your sleep and more than once have you woken up with either yours or his body splayed across the other.

Still, you’re only like this when neither of you is in a relationship. Your friendship has always maintained very clear boundaries. There are unspoken dos and don’ts that accompany the closeness of your friendship. If either of you is dating someone, you wordlessly agree that Tendou sleeps on the couch. It’s a respect thing for both of your sakes, as well as the sakes of your partners.

“Are you bummed about your breakup?” Tendou asks, facing the ceiling. He’s no doubt watching the fan spin in circles in the dark. You know because you’re doing the same.

“Not really,” you sigh, “I mean, this might be shitty to say but I really wasn’t all that attached.”

Tendou shakes his head against the pillow, lacing his fingers together over his chest as he lets out a deep exhale. “Nah, it’s not shitty. That’s natural.”

“I guess.”

“Let me know if you do get sad about it, kay?” He says, tilting his head sideways to look at you.

“You’ll be the first to know.”

You smile lightly at him and Tendou hums his satisfaction. He rolls over in bed with a soft goodnight before the room falls silent. You listen to the sound of his breathing and when it finally comes to an even pace, you smile. Sometimes Tendou struggles to sleep but tonight is not one of those nights.

You drift off after you are certain that he’s asleep, lamenting to yourself about the potential loss of his characteristic under eyes. Man, Tendou would really rip you a new one for thinking that.

—

“I like your hair like this,” you comment, reaching up to flip a piece that sits across his cheek.

Tendou turns to you, watching the way your fingers play with the soft end of it before giving a small laugh and a smile.

“Yeah? I feel like it’s too long,” he hums, looking at you and then to the coffee maker as it hums from its place on the counter. “Think m’gonna cut it soon.”

“Nah, don’t. It suits you. Kinda devil-may-care, ya know?”

Tendou’s hair is too long by normal standards. It comes down just below his shoulders, falling in thickly layered wisps that frame his face and make it look delicate. Somehow, having his hair around his face softens his features. It gives him a more gentle, off-beat look.

“Oh? If it makes me look so cool then maybe I won’t,” he glances at you through the corner of his eye, smiling a cat-like smile.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” you snort, bumping him out of the way as soon as he takes his coffee from the coffee maker.

Tendou feigns an offended look before leaning against the counter beside him. He looks sleepy, still somewhat tired as he raises his mug to his lips and loudly sips his coffee. It’s always too hot when he takes the first sip but he does every time nonetheless. Tendou says it tastes better that way.

“By the way,” he starts, pulling the mug to his chest and partially resting it in the dip in his stomach, “I gotta leave right after I finish this.”

“Work?”

Behind you, Tendou shifts a little and furrows his brows. “Nah, got some errands to take care of.”

“‘Kay,” you turn to him, leaning against the counter opposite him.

Despite Tendou’s affinity for skinship and attention, he is surprisingly independent.

That’s something you admire about him. Tendou’s actions are sure and calculated and he’s comfortable going off and doing his own thing more often than not. Sure, he’ll invite you with him, but should you opt not to go, Tendou doesn’t let it stop him. He’s fiercely independent and it balances out well in your friendship.

He doesn’t really say anything about where he’s going and you figure that he doesn’t have to. He’ll go off and do his own thing and you will go do yours.

You and Tendou are quite like-minded, as is Wakatoshi. Perhaps that’s why you all get along so well. When you interact with people, they tend to understand the three of you as independent beings who just so happen to choose to be around the other two. You’ve heard from others that looking at the three of you is like looking at a gaggle of oddities that somehow found themselves magnetic to only each other. Since Wakatoshi moved away though, it has just been you and Tendou and you’re content to be perceived as an odd pair.

The living room is littered with evidence of your evening with him and you peer out at it from the kitchen, the sunlight from your curtains filtering in and casting a warm glow over the light-colored wood. The more than half-empty bottles of wine sit on the coffee table, their lids placed randomly on the countertop from when you’d tossed them down after opening them. The bottles catch the light from the small glass patio door and the white Moscato inside glimmers in the morning glow.

When Tendou leaves, he grabs his keys from your kitchen table. They jingle in his grasp and he shakes them to get your attention.

“I’m leaving now!” He calls even though you’re only a few feet away.

“Have the day you deserve!” You laugh.

Tendou swings your apartment door open, his legs leading the way as he keeps his head around the corner so that he can look at you. You watch as he cracks a smile that spreads from one side of his face to the other, upper lip curling.

“Sour old bat.”

“I’m only 24!” You protest as he chuckles and shuts the door behind him.

You walk to the door, locking it behind him and shaking your head lightly. Briefly, you think about what he might be doing. It could be groceries, though he usually brings you with him, or maybe he needs to service his shitty old car. He never uses it which means that when he does it breaks down easily, but he keeps fixing it nonetheless. Tendou can’t bear to part with the characteristic hunk of junk.

Tendou works as a bartender. He stands behind the counter in a black dress shirt and black slacks, fixing customers' drinks before pressuring them into buying more. He’s good at selling things because Tendou is a notoriously difficult person to say no to, whether you know him or not. Sometimes you’ll go in and see him, sliding into a seat at the bar and waiting for him to notice you’re there. You usually don’t even make it to the counter before he spots you, giving you an easy smile and tilting his head to the side.

You suspect that he is only working to make ends meet while he decides what he really wants to do. You always figured it would be volleyball given his gift for it but he told you in the third year of high school that he’d be quitting. It had never been something he was particularly set on doing and though he enjoys the sport, he thought the constant rigor of its training to be tiresome. You understand to a degree. It is very like Tendou to do things only because he wants to. Even Wakatoshi accepted it after a little while, though—in a fashion that is much like Ushijima—he still pushed for Tendou to further his gift with the sport. It was to no avail though, that’s just the way Satori is.

Still, you’re not sure if there is something in particular that Tendou wants to do. He doesn’t talk much about the future and lately whenever you ask, he waves the question off like he can’t be bothered to think about it.

He has a plethora of interests and for now, his job suits him. He spends his time talking to people and though he works late into the night, you think that he enjoys the time he gets in the hours after his shift. Besides, during the day it means that Satori gets to bake. It’s an odd hobby for him but he does it regularly enough that it has started to make sense, though you’re not sure if it is a fleeting hobby or one that will stick. Tendou likes to play around with flavor. His eye for new combinations is admirable and it’s not a rare occurrence for you to go over to his place and immediately be fed a new recipe he’s been testing out.

He is, in general, a hard person to pin down but once you do, you’ve got him memorized for life. It’s not unusual for you to be able to guess what he’s doing, though sometimes he will surprise you and be doing something entirely different. Still, you’re confident enough in what you know about him to know that once he does choose, it will be good for him. Tendou is someone who begets a good and honest future.

You spend the day tidying around your apartment. You’ve got no particular plans today and with your recent breakup, you’ve no one to really make plans with. In high school, when Tendou was busy without you, you’d often sit with Wakatoshi and watch him practice. You’d listen to the sounds of the ball hitting his palm and then the slap of them on the smooth linoleum of the gym floor. That, or you’d spend your time with the other people you met with the both of them at Nationals, goofing off on the phone while you waited for Tendou to wrap up whatever it was he’s doing and walk home with you.

You’ve been to see them at nationals every year that the two of them have gone. In your third year, Tendou and Wakatoshi did not attend the tournament as players nor spectators, but the three of you sat in Wakatoshi’s room and watched the games together. You recall watching Karasuno fight their way through the ranks until they tasted a bitter loss once the promising first year, Hinata Shoyo, fell ill. Tendou had chided early on into the tournament that he was pushing himself past his limit and Wakatoshi agreed but you didn’t have the eye to see it until he had collapsed on his hands and knees on the court. Still, the three of you sat shoulder to shoulder in front of Wakatoshi’s computer screen, knuckles tight against your thighs.

Sa-to-ri: shall we grub tonight?

Your phone lights up sometime around 3 pm and you open it to see Tendou’s distinct contact name light up across the screen.

You: u miss me? lol

Sa-to-ri: nah

You: what’s on the menu?

Sa-to-ri: ramen

You: then yeah okay

Tendou has one particular ramen shop that he likes to frequent with you. It’s a bit of a tradition and when you both go there, it is either in work uniforms that make you look silly or house clothes so comfortable they could hardly be considered outfits at all.

Some nights, you both trudge into the shop, you in the remnants of your work uniform and Tendou fully dressed in his, ready to attend his shift once you finish eating. Tendou wears his black slacks but rolls them to the knees and his black dress shirt is untucked in the front. He looks silly, but you know from visiting him that he always fixes it before he clocks in. You usually wear something business casual to suit your desk job, dress pants and a white shirt of sorts. On other nights, you both will come in wearing whatever it is you were wearing around the house.

The shop is a few blocks from his place and if you weren’t looking for it, you would miss it. It is tucked behind two brightly lit shops in a back alley. Still, when you’re hungry for a particularly good bowl of ramen, you can smell it from down the block. The aroma of garlic and miso wafts through the streets from the alley it sits in and both you and Tendou find that you would know it by smell alone. It beckons to you both in a homely manner.

“You’re so late,” Tendou comments as he meets you at the bottom of his stairwell.

“Were you tracking me?” You furrow your eyebrows. You hadn’t agreed to meet him outside his place, so to see his lanky figure descending the outdoor steps is a bit of a shock. Still, you wouldn’t put it past him to check your location for where you are. In fact, you suspect he does it often and for fun. You don’t mind though. After all, you do the same to him.

“Yeah,” he shrugs, putting his hands in the pockets of his sweats. Tendou leans forward, shifting his weight onto his hips and letting his shoulders droop.

“Eugh, creepy,” you shiver slightly and smile at him.

Tendou tilts his head to the side and gives you an affectionate grin. It spreads across his face and his eyes narrow in a familiar way. For a moment, you think he is about to say something that makes you want to cross one of your well-defined boundaries but instead, he comes out with, “if you were on time, I wouldn’t have to.”

You shove him to the side plainly and turn to stride down the sidewalk before you can watch him wobble back and forth like a card house. Your heart hammers lightly in your chest. This happens sometimes. You find yourself getting tripped up on the familiarity of his expressions and the way his smile curls like dry paper. Then, you hear the sound of his sneakers against the floor as he jogs to catch up with you in the direction of the restaurant.

“Wooaaahhh, so hostile tonight, huh? What happened to my nice BFF from this morning?” He leans forward as he walks so that he’s in your eye line, trying to catch your avoidant gaze as you suppress a smile.

“They remembered that you’re an irritating little shit,” you huff, pretending to be mad.

“Harsh.”

The two of you walk the short distance to the restaurant in near silence. It’s nearing 9 pm and the streets have gone dark, illuminated only by the streetlights and sign shops that stay on through the evening. Their electric glow casts the sidewalk pavement in artificial blues and yellows, elongating your shadows until they dip into the street where cars and cyclists zip by on their way home. You watch people bustle through the street, their lively chatter creating a city soundscape that you’re familiar with. Groups of men in business suits walk into nearby restaurants and bars, finally off the clock for the night but not quite ready to return home. Girls wearing colorful spring clothes move in gaggles as they head into a new and trendy spot that recently popped up.

Some of these girls stare at Tendou as he passes. They watch the lazy nature of his eyes and the way he hunches over himself slightly. They marvel at his height and the cool exterior he wears as he looks somewhere past them at the buildings lining the somewhat busy street. These girls giggle into their mouths when he passes because, for every person who has ever called him creepy, there are an equal number of people who call him handsome. They glance behind them as they walk, asking each other if you are his girlfriend to which you chuckle internally. Tendou pretends not to notice, though you know from the way that he is careful not to look at them that he does.

Every now and then when this happens, Tendou’s gaze will slink over to look at you. You can feel the way he watches your expression, his gaze fixed on you through the corners of his eyes. Sometimes you will look back at him and raise your eyebrows and he’ll shake his head. Other times, you will keep staring straight ahead just to see how long he will look at you for. You’ve learned that it will be until he needs to look ahead for fear of running into someone.

When you reach the door of the small ramen shop, which consists of a blue curtain with kanji lettering, Tendou holds it to the side for you with his forearm. He reaches ahead of himself and puts it against the doorframe, pinning it against the wood frame to keep the cloth out of your way before ducking his head to follow you in. When you look behind you, Tendou is straightening himself up again to his full height.

The chef inside calls a welcome to you before he asks how you’re doing. He knows you both well by now and whenever you enter, it seems that he’s pleased to see you. He’s an older man with heavy wrinkles beside his eyes and between his eyebrows. He’s expressive and the lines of age on his face demonstrate that very clearly. The chef has sharp features that soften considerably when he smiles and a low, gruff voice that seems to somehow match the interior decoration of his hole-in-the-wall shop.

“You together yet?” He leans onto the counter after asking which particular bowl of ramen you’d like.

The chef is an old man and far too cheeky for his own good. Every time you come in, he never fails to ask if you’re dating each other yet. Through a tenacious grin, he poses the question you both have been asked countless times over. Tendou’s response is different every time.

“Oh yeah, we’re so in love now.” You take the liberty of responding and Tendou leans his cheek onto his hand and raises his eyebrows at you.

“Yeah?” He questions, the fat of his cheek smushing his lips into a slight pout.

“No.” You turn to the chef and shake your head. “It’s not gonna happen.”

The chef clicks his tongue and shakes his head with a small laugh and Tendou sits up and drums his fingers on the table as he leans back in a stretch.

“Aw, never?” He teases.

You nod at him, exaggerating the movement.

Tendou closes his eyes and laughs, his fingers still drumming against the surface of the table before he reaches a resting position. You hear him mumble bummer as you look away and when you look back at him, you find that he is staring blankly at the drink menu in front of him. His expression is unreadable.

Tendou gets like this sometimes. He grows quiet for a few moments as if he is weighing something in his mind. You can see the inquisitive look in his eyes and every now and then, his bottom lip will bounce and it will tell you that he’s thinking about something. In these moments, you’re never quite sure what he’s thinking. You’ve never been able to tell and you’ve reserved yourself to thinking that it is not meant for you or for anyone else.

Then, just as quickly as he falls into the slight moment of silence, he pulls himself out in his same usual manner. Tonight, he remarks on how hungry he is and how he doesn’t want to work tomorrow night. Then, he’ll let you talk until you’ve nothing left to say. Whereas Tendou does most of the talking with Wakatoshi, you do most of the talking with Tendou. You can appreciate the way he just wants to listen, his eyes trained sleepily on your face as he listens to you chatter on about something mundane. He knows you would and have done the same for him and you imagine that he feels the same about listening to you talk that you do listening to him.

You both slurp at your noodles through idle conversation. He talks about work and you converse about what it is that you want to do next. Sometimes, in moments like these where you are both discussing your precarious futures, it feels like you’re in your third year again getting food after evening practice. The only difference now is that Wakatoshi is not with you and you are no longer 17. Instead, both you and Tendou are 24 and in the inbetween of life, floating between present and future in a perpetual cycle of uncertainty. Somehow, the only thing that seems to quell it is the familiar presence of one another. The small ramen shop, with its sounds of boiling water and conversation, grows smaller still.

—

Tendou is weird. He’s always been weird. He somehow manages to seem like he knows everything. He has wide, unsettling eyes that look like they have x-ray vision. He can guess what just about any of his friends are doing at any given moment and he’s open about it. All of it is weird. It’s not as if he’s been particularly normal up until now because there is truly nothing normal about Tendou and you like him that way but recently… he’s been weirder.

You can’t exactly pin what could be off because he hasn’t done anything in particular. He still texts you to hang out, he still wears that familiar smile that you adore, he is still as attentive as usual, but he’s weird. Something is weird.

You imagine that what you’re sensing is a radar you have only for Tendou. The feeling comes to you as more of a sixth sense rather than anything based on evidence. You know him like the back of your hand. You’re likely to notice even the smallest new detail. That’s how it is with Tendou. Hand in hand with the particular closeness you share, is the ability to tell when he’s off.

Tendou lately has been spending more time on his phone. He stares and clicks it on and off like he’s waiting for something. The screen will occasionally light up his features before he clicks it off again upon seeing nothing. Occasionally he will swipe his phone open and check whatever it is he’s waiting on directly, though you can’t tell if it’s news or a conversation. You watch the way he holds the sleek rectangle in his long fingers, drumming them against the smooth side of it and waiting for it to vibrate in his grasp. More often than usual, while he drums his fingers across the back of his phone, he will wear that blank look and stare into space, thinking about something you’re not privy to.

The thought pops into your mind that it could be a girl, though you’re not sure that’s the case. If it were a girl, you think Tendou would tell you and if he didn’t… well, that thought makes you more uncomfortable than you’d like to admit for reasons you can’t quite pinpoint. Tendou is his own person, as are you, but if there is one thing you pride yourselves on it is the way you share openly with each other. You inhale, letting your gaze slink from where he fiddles with his phone to the television screen. You won’t dwell on it. You’re not nosy enough to dwell.

The feeling isn’t particularly uneasy and any anxiety that may have manifested while you were considering Tendou’s predicament quickly melts away once Tendou begins talking to you. You find yourself at ease while he chats, telling you that his job wants him to pick up more hours but he’s not sure if he wants to. It’s so boring, but it’s not. This topic is such a mundane one but you feel that familiar fondness bloom through you as he speaks. Nothing seems boring when you’re with him.

Then, the phone in his hand begins to vibrate. It hums to life in his somewhat limp grip and Tendou, in one smooth and slow motion, checks who exactly it is. There’s no rush to it. In fact, Tendou finishes his sentence before shifting his eyes down to look as he flips the screen up to face him but you can tell that he’s eager. He tilts his head, reading the words across the screen as the jingle of his ringtone plays softly from the muffled speakers. Tendou dropped his phone in water once and as a result, his ringtone sounds like it is playing through glass. His expression shifts from one of barely readable anxiety, to disappointment, to happiness.

His gaze slinks over to you and he gives you a lopsided and lazy grin.

“It’s Wakatoshi.”

“Yeah?” You peer over his thumb, looking at the familiar name across the screen, “can I say hi?”

“Duh,” he sticks his tongue out like you’ve said something stupid before answering the call, “Wa-ka-to-shi! I’ve got _____ here,” he holds the phone out to your mouth, “say hello!”

“Hi Wakatoshi.” You speak and you can hear the gruff sound of his acknowledgement before Ushijima’s rich baritone spills through the speaker.

“Hello,” he says your name, even across his tongue, “it’s been a while since we last spoke.”

“Yeah, well, you never call!” You fake a pout and you’re certain Ushijima can hear it through the phone.

Ushijima gives a soft exhale, “I could say the same about you.”

You roll your eyes even though he can’t see it and Tendou fakes being hurt on your friend’s behalf.

“But don’t worry,” he starts, “I’ll be back in Japan in a few weeks.”

“No way! Really?” You feel the excitement bubble in your chest before it shows on your face and Tendou tilts his head at your expression. You watch the way his eyes slink across your features, soaking in your joy through his skin like the sun until he is kissed with it.

“Yeah, visiting family,” the response is short, much like the way Ushijima usually talks.

“Man, the off season works wonders,” Tendou hums from beside you, wiggling a little in his seat.

“You know there’s no off season, Tendou. We train year round,” Wakatoshi states.

“Minor details,” he says, waving his wrist back and forth as if he were erasing the sound of the words from the air around him.

Tendou gives you a wry grin before pulling the phone back and switching off speaker mode. Vaguely you can hear the sound of Ushijima giving a brief apology about not calling you, but you’re not actually mad enough to warrant it. In fact, you’re elated that he’s coming to visit. You and Wakatoshi are very good at clicking right back into place, so worrying over why he doesn’t call isn’t exactly in the front of your mind. Besides, you figure he still thinks about you because every morning you receive an influx of tiktoks and new articles that he’s sent you through the night. So thoughtful, that one.

“So what’s up?” Tendou speaks, placing the phone against his ear and pinching it there with his shoulder.

He reaches in front of him, unscrewing the top of his water bottle and taking a sip as he listens somewhat intently to what Ushijima has to say. Tendou leans back, extending his arm over the back of his couch and leaning deeply into the cushions with a sigh and mumble of confirmation.

He looks like he’s at his leisure here. The lean muscle of his neck is relaxed and the tilt of his head makes him look like he’s scheming something. A small smile plays at the corners of his lips as he gazes thoughtlessly at the table in front of him. It tugs the ends of his mouth upwards and you recognize it as one that is entirely subconscious. Satori doesn’t even realize he’s doing it and the thought sends a fond flood of warmth through your chest, honeyed and heavy.

You stand, exhaling deeply when you do. It’s best to leave them to their chats. Satori and Wakatoshi’s time together is limited, so when the other calls each night, it fulfills a certain (and private) routine which you know they both value.

Tendou’s eyes slink over to you as you move. His eyebrow quirks up as he pinches the phone between his ear and shoulder, pulling the bottom of his phone from his mouth as if he’s ready to respond to whatever you say. You opt to mouth at him, as you can still hear the baritone hum of Ushijima’s voice on the other end of the line.

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” You point behind you to his bathroom.

Tendou makes the OK symbol with his hand before he smiles at you. Then, he turns his attention back to his phone and you can hear him start the sentence ‘it’s going okay’. You watch as the smile falls and his face returns to a somewhat pointed resting position. He glances sideways at you one more time, his eyes tracking over your figure as you eavesdrop in a somewhat obvious way. All he offers is the slight upturn of his lips, but you can’t shake the eerie feeling the smile gives you. It looks like it’s made out of glass and as you step away, you hear the way his voice drops to a hushed whisper before it fades entirely through the thick wood of his bathroom door.

You start the shower, turning the knob in Satori’s bathroom. It’s familiar here and you don’t need to pause to think about which way is hot and which way is cold. Coming to his home is like walking into your own and part of your relishes in getting to use his shampoo and conditioner.

It smells like him, somewhat rich and musky, with a sharp and clean aspect to it. You think that his shampoo smells a bit like men’s deodorant, but far more gentle. It’s less masculine than that, somewhat sweet, but it still retains this aspect to it that maintains whatever it is Tendou has going on. You like wearing that smell. It’s like a homecoming and sends your stomach flipping.

His bathroom is decidedly western. Blue tile decorates the shower wall, it’s white grout somewhat tinged with age. The tiles are clean though. You know because Satori reminds you constantly to go over it with the squeegee when you’ve finished. It gives his bathroom this particularly polished quality.

You lather his shampoo into your hair, inhaling deeply as you do. It smells like him. It smells like Tendou after an evening practice, coming out of his mother’s bathroom as he rubs at his then-shorter hair. It smells like the way he does when he’s at home and you feel it in your lungs when you take a breath.

You think of his strangeness. You think of the odd way he carries himself, the way he walks, the way his eyes slink back and forth in a decidedly lazy way. You imagine the cadence of his voice, the soft tenor hum of it when he speaks and the pointed way he says what he means while simultaneously saying the opposite.

Then, you think about his recent behavior. You think about how tense he is, the way he clicks his phone on and off like he’s waiting for something.

You’re not particularly sure why the concept of it rubs you the wrong way. It’s a particular feeling of uneasiness and one you haven’t felt with him before. It’s new—somewhat exciting—and dreadful. As you shower, rinsing his body wash from the planes of your own, you ponder on the feeling of it. Weighted in your gut, it sits like poison. You feel like you’re watching an anvil hang from a fraying rope, the weight too much to bear, though why you feel it, you don’t know.

When you leave the bathroom, Tendou is still seated on his couch. He doesn’t seem to hear you leave, and if he did, his body language doesn’t betray it. He sits, his legs extended out onto the coffee table in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other. The phone is still pressed to his head with one hand, his long finger holding the back of it to the shell of his ear.

“I haven’t,” he says quietly.

There’s a pause and you can only presume that Ushijima is talking.

“Yeah, it’s just-” he rubs a hand up under his hair, scratching at the back of his head, “it’s a hard thing to bring up.”

Another pause, except in this one, he stares distantly into the space in front of him. You recognize that look, the one that tells you he’s somewhere far away. The corners of his lips pull flat and you watch as his eyes cloud over with a consuming thought. It’s the same as the night in the ramen shop, placid and somewhat melancholy. Tendou wears this look often lately, though it’s meaning is one that you can’t figure out.

It casts over his face like a mask and even now, as he nods into the phone as if Wakatoshi can see it, you wonder what runs through his mind. You have Satori figured out but this expression is an anomaly, one that you can’t place your finger on.

“What is?” You pipe up, walking around the side of the couch and plopping down.

Tendou jumps with a start, his hand coming up over his chest before he gives a short laugh.

“Jesus, someone needs to put a bell on you,” he breathes.

“I wasn’t even that quiet,” you laugh a little, “what’s so hard to bring up?”

Tendou gives you a wry smile, dispelling the expression he wore a moment ago and donning another. You see it tug at the corner of his mouth before answers, “it’s a secret.”

You roll your eyes, huffing a little. “C’mon, thought we didn’t have any?”

“None that I want to share,” he says, giving you a lopsided grin.

“I really hate you.”

Tendou puts his head on your shoulder, peering up at you. “You promise?”

You bark a small laugh and Tendou turns back toward his phone, his head still resting on your shoulder. You can feel his tufts of dark red hair at your neck, tickling your skin through the fabric of your pajama shirt and you lean into the touch absentmindedly. His free hand fiddles absentmindedly with a stray thread on the hem of your shirt and he mumbles to Wakatoshi that you just got out of the shower. Their conversation, now that you’re present, feels much slower than it previously was, like they’re deliberately trying to change the subject.

Despite the touch, despite Satori’s blatant affection, the prospect of a secret tastes bad on your tongue. You’ve never been the type to pry. You’ve always believed that whatever you need to know, Tendou will tell. So why is it that you’re so uneasy right now? Distrust sews itself into your skin like a badge and you furrow your eyebrows a little as you watch the planes of Tendou’s face twist with lively expressions through his conversation, the lamp on the side table casting him in a faint orange glow that feels homely and somewhat eerie.

You and Tendou head to bed together a short while later, dragging your feet across the carpeted floors before collapsing into bed. Tendou rolls over quickly, mumbling an absent-minded goodnight and while you stare at the ceiling and wait for his breathing to slow and steady itself, you ponder the inbetween. You’re not so sure which inbetween you’re thinking about though— whether you’re thinking about the inbetween of youth and stability—or something else entirely.

—

“Did you get the text?” Tendou calls from your living room. He’s posted himself up in there today, his laptop open as he clicks away at something he won’t show you.

The text he’s talking about is one from none other than Ushijima Wakatoshi himself, telling you and Tendou that the three of you should meet up for dinner tonight. He suggested a restaurant downtown, near the station and you were thrilled to receive the text.

“Yeah, I did,” you call, leaning back on your heels to peer around the corner at him. “Wanna meet up here first?”

Tendou is quiet for a moment in the other room before he agrees, telling you that he’s going to send a message to Wakatoshi and let him know. You thank him briefly, returning to whatever it was that you were doing on your phone.

You must admit, you have ulterior motives for wanting to go to dinner. It’s not that you aren’t thrilled to have the three of you back together. You are, deeply so. But secretly, you are hoping that it will bring back a sense of normalcy you’ve lost in the recent month. To you, it feels like the last normal night was a month ago in your apartment when Satori brought over wine after your break up. That was the last time he felt the way he always has.

Recently, he’s been stranger than usual. You can’t help the rot that rises in your throat when you think about it. It’s an uneasy little bug, sending you queasy and anxious over the smallest changes, though you aren’t quite sure when it started happening. It’s hard to place, especially because it is about Tendou of all people. Until now, you’ve always felt comfortable telling him everything but for some reason, you worry that bringing this up will make him vanish altogether. Still, you hope that attending something nostalgic like this with him the way you always have will fix it somehow. You hope that maybe you’ve just been too sensitive and that after seeing Wakatoshi and eating a meal together, things will just click back into place.

Maybe that’s just wishful thinking though.

—

Sa-to-ri: u ready? I’m downstairs

You check your phone, seeing it light up on the top of your bed through your mirror. You’d been checking something irrelevant about what you are wearing, fiddling with the waistband of your bottoms or the way your hair falls on your forehead. Nerves rise in your throat as you put on your shoes and lock your apartment door behind you, hopping down the stairs.

“Well, don’t you look pretty,” Tendou hums, smiling up at you.

He’s wearing an oversized t-shirt and joggers. They cut off just above his ankles, revealing a worn pair of black high top sneakers. The sleeves of his shirt rest against his upper arms nicely and his hands are tucked into his pockets as he shifts his weight forward. It bunches up around his forearms, creating big, sloping pockets across the front of his abdomen where the hem of his shirt covers his waistband. You roll your eyes, catching the unusual heat rising to your cheeks and swallowing it down.

“Thanks,” you exhale, “you trying to butter me up or something?”

Tendou gives you a wry grin. “How’d you know?”

You sneer lightly at him, “because you’re awful at hiding shit.”

Tendou presses his lips into a small line. His eyes glass over a little as he starts to walk, keeping his hands in his pockets.

“Anyway, what is it?”

“What’s what?” Tendou raises an eyebrow.

“The thing you want to butter me up for?” You furrow your eyebrows, laughing a little.

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I just want to be on your good side.”

“Scared or something?”

“A little,” he hums, looking at his shoes before glancing sideways at you as he raises his chin to peer at the tops of the buildings lining your walk to the station.

The restaurant is a few stops away in a newly painted building. It’s a few blocks from the station, lit up by electric blue lights characteristic of Kokubunchô. The crowds, which you should be used to, overwhelm you a little and you’re grateful for Tendou, whose height makes him impossible to lose. You’re surprised that Wakatoshi would suggest a place downtown, just off from the izakaya and clubs that make Kokubunchô such a popular destination for people our age. After all, he’s never been much of a partier, often choosing to abstain and stay in shape.

It’s been a long while since you’ve seen him. Wakatoshi spends most of his time traveling around Japan and Asia, playing volleyball in countries you’ve never even thought to visit. He competes in global competitions and will most likely be recruited for the Japan National team for the Olympics.

When you arrive at your designated meeting spot, Wakatoshi is standing outside. You know that before you even see him because people round the corner he stands behind while glazing backwards over their shoulders. They mutter about how big that man was, if they’ve seen him somewhere before, if he’s a celebrity. Tendou snickers under his breath, his head tilting a little like it’s on a spring, and you smile in response.

You run ahead of Tendou and round the corner, greeted by Ushijima’s tall figure standing outside of the entrance to the building, lit up by the neon sign above him.

“Finally!” You shout, bounding over to him and embracing him into a hug.

“You should really announce who you are before you hug someone,” he says, his voice low and baritone as he wraps his thick arms around you.

“I did,” you laugh a little, your excitement at finally being able to see him again climbing in your throat.

“I wouldn’t consider that enough warning.”

You pull away, pouting a little at him before cracking a wide smile.

“How are you?” he continues.

“I’m good,” you exhale, “Jesus, look at you. I think you got taller.”

“I didn’t,” he says matter of factly, “they measure me a lot for the team. I would know.”

“Still straightforward as ever,” you huff a little and Wakatoshi gives you a gentle smile. It’s barely there, but you’ve known him long enough to be able to notice it now.

“No greeting for Satori?” Tendou feigns injury behind you, shrugging his shoulders and scuffing his heel against the floor.

Wakatoshi scoffs lightly before stepping close. Then, the two boys hug each other, clutching tightly around the other’s shoulders as they mumble about how long it’s been since they’ve spoken in person. Satori makes an off-handed comment about Wakatoshi getting more handsome and Wakatoshi jostles his shoulder in response, saying something about Tendou being smoother around the edges too.

You watch, stomach swimming with a familiar feeling you get only when the three of you are together. It’s like you are all 17 again and nothing has changed. The way you speak, the way you feel, the uniquely comfortable atmosphere the three of you set with each other, blankets you like snow.

Tendou walks into the restaurant first, followed by you, and then Wakatoshi behind you. People inside of the restaurant turn and stare when they duck under the doorway, standing to their full height in the restaurant. Even among people with similar heights, the two of them stand out. Tendou with his knowing eyes and Wakatoshi with his undeniably good looks. You are in the middle, caught between two magnetic forces that you’ve spent the majority of your life around.

You settle at a small table in the back. It’s clean and hardly has enough room to fit the three of you around it comfortably. It’s a trendy restaurant, mostly famous for its matcha desserts which mix western cooking with Japanese flavors. The majority of the menu are smaller appetizers, but there are sandwiches as well as seafood options which you hungrily stare down. When the time comes, you settle on a salmon dish with miso seasoning, Satori decides on a spicy curry, and Wakatoshi orders the same thing you do but with a small side of tempura. Looking at the place now, you figure that it’s probably closer to an izakaya than any other type of restaurant. You look forward to dessert.

“Are either of you getting drinks?” Tendou leans forward on the table on his elbows, giving a wry grin.

You peer at him from the side, smiling slightly. “And you say I’m the alcoholic.”

“You are,” he states, leaning forward and smiling at you.

“I’m not,” Wakatoshi adds.

“Well spotted, Ushiwaka,” Tendou snickers.

“Yeah, you’re a regular Sherlock Holmes,” you laugh.

“I meant that I’m not getting a drink,” he says flatly, pressing the ghost of a smile between his lips.

You and Tendou glance at each other before bursting into a fit of giggles. Then, Wakatoshi follows with a laugh that’s deep seated in his chest.

“I don’t know. Are you?” You ask Tendou, exhaling deeply.

“I want one,” he shrugs.

“Of course you do,” you chuckle a little. “Then, I’ll have a beer too.”

Tendou tilts his chin upwards, his eyes narrowing as he gives you a little smile. It’s like he expected you to do the same, an affectionate and knowing little curl of his lips that sends heat rippling through your stomach. It takes a lot of strength to tear your eyes from him and when you do, you find yourself trying to shake the new feeling from your stomach as you inhale.

“So Wakatoshi, how’s the team?” You ask as Tendou flags down the server and orders two beers and a glass of water.

“They’re fine,” he says, smiling a little. “Team practices still happen even in the off season, but what’s important is weight training to make sure we stay strong.”

“Is that why you were able to come back to Sendai for a bit?”

“Mhm, though I still train every day,” he offers, leaning back so that the server can set down the drinks on the table.

“So driven…” Tendou smiles.

“You should be playing, you know,” Wakatoshi says to Tendou.

He waves his hand in response, dispelling the thought. “Me? Go pro? Nah, I think I’d be miserable. Volleyball was just a high school thing for me.”

Wakatoshi shrugs his shoulders.

“You gonna be on the Olympic team, ‘Toshi?” You pry a little, leaning forward.

“I don’t know yet. We’ll find out next year.” His expression doesn’t betray anything, but you can hear the excitement in his voice. It makes the sound feel tight, like he’s trying to keep from shouting about it. You smile to yourself.

“Look at you, you’ve got a whole career. Meanwhile, Satori and I have no clue what we’re gonna do in the future,” you chuckle, taking a sip of your drink. The condensation sticks to your hand.

Then, Wakatoshi furrows his eyebrows and looks to Tendou. He looks back at him and for a moment, they sit there like that, communicating telepathically (most likely). It makes you uneasy, like there is something about Tendou that you’re not allowed to know. The uneasy feeling that’s made itself scarce the entire evening bullies its way to the base of your throat. You try to swallow it down, but to no avail.

Tendou inhales and the moment is broken. The two boys settle back into their seats and glide past the strange occurrence.

“I’m sure you’ll both figure it out,” Wakatoshi offers, smiling gently at you. “You’re very capable.”

“I applied to a temp agency a week ago, so hopefully something comes of that,” you take another big sip of your drink.

“Temp agency? Why didn’t you tell me?” Tendou pouts a little.

“I mean, it’s not a sure thing. Just an application. Didn’t want to get ahead of myself.” You laugh.

“Awww but I wanna hear about your life,” Tendou whines lightly.

“Bro, you are literally in my house five days a week. You know just about everything.”

Tendou shrugs his shoulders and leans back in his chair, mood shifting from the false sadness into something of realization. Has he only just now realized how much time the two of you spend together.

“_____, Satori told me you and your boyfriend broke up.” Wakatoshi says.

“Damn, seriously dude?” You shrink into your chair, letting the server place your food in front of you. It looks good and your cut of fish steams on the bed of rice it sits on. Your mouth waters.

“Sorry, he asked about it,” Tendou shrugs his shoulders, picking up his chopsticks to start eating.

You wave off the apology. It’s not like you weren’t going to tell Wakatoshi anyway.

“Yeah, we did,” you say, swallowing the first bite of fish.

“What happened?” he pushes.

You shrug your shoulders, sitting back in your chair a little and pushing the fish around your plate. “We just weren’t compatible. I didn’t like him the way I thought I should and he clearly didn’t like me very much. He was kinda mean.”

Tendou swallows his bite of food beside you and Wakatoshi glances up toward him. They exchange another look and Satori shakes his head, returning his gaze to the food.

“That’s terrible. I’m sorry,” Wakatoshi offers.

“Nah, don’t worry. I’m not all too beat up about it,” you laugh a little. “It might sound twisted, but when we broke up I didn’t really care all that much.”

“I can vouch for that. They called him a cunt.” Tendou adds, smiling over his drink.

“I did do that,” you confirm.

“Sounds like them,” Wakatoshi gives a small laugh.

The rest of your meal is spent in idle chatter. You and Satori have a few more drinks, trying to get Wakatoshi to order one in the later half of the evening, to which he dutifully shakes his head. You blather on about how much you miss him and when the next time he’ll be in Japan is while he smiles fondly and tosses sideways glances to Tendou who just shrugs because he knows you get like this.

You realize, at some point, that unlike you and Tendou, Ushijima is not in the inbetween. He’s got a well-established career with a clear future path. He is not stumbling around blindly, but rather taking deliberate steps towards his future. You and Tendou, it seems, are caught in that particular place, walking yourselves in circles until you finally find the courage to walk in a line. You’re relieved to know that someone is in the circle with you.

Briefly, you think about the looks Satori and Wakatoshi exchanged. Pointed, deliberate looks that exchanged information between the two of them. You’re not sure why it bothers you the way it does. It’s not as if they’ve never had secrets between the two of them before. This one, however, feels somehow heavier. It feels like it’s an elephant in the room between the two of them. You hate the inflated feeling it gives off. It swells and presses you against the wall, stealing the air from your lungs and sending panic to rise up through your throat.

You’re sad to part with Wakatoshi, offering him a long hug and doing your best to squeeze the air out of him. He pats your back, laughing lightly about how he’ll be back eventually. You whine, telling him that he needs to call more. He promises that he will, though you know it will probably remain the same. The two of you have engaged in this perpetual cycle for years now.

Satori hugs his friend goodbye as well, mumbling something to Wakatoshi that you don’t catch, to which he says that they can talk about it later.

You scuff your feet against the floor the whole way home, trying to pretend that your plan to make things feel normal worked.

—

You and Satori have clear boundaries. You always have. There are things you can and can’t do with each other that you both follow religiously. It’s not as if you’ve ever actually discussed it with him. The two of you have never sat down and actually talked about these rules you have in place. They are unspoken but mutually understood.

You suppose that drawing those types of lines started in high school. Before then, it had never even crossed your mind that skinship or your particular ways of showing affection to each other could be taken as anything but platonic. Satori was the first of the two of you to get a partner. In your second year of high school, he’d started going out with a girl in his class. You’d never met her before then in earnest, though you’d certainly seen her around, mostly out of the corner of your eye.

Tendou wasn’t all that popular in high school. Not just because of the way he looked (which you’ve always thought to be above average), but because of the somewhat aloof attitude he maintained. Between snide comments and a generally over-confident demeanor, most people found him off-putting. It didn’t take long though for a few girls to notice his better qualities. They noticed his fingers, long and lithe and wrapped in bandages. They noticed his smile, the coy kind that affects one side of his mouth before it affects the other. They noticed his height and stature, the lazy way he carries himself so that he always seems a little off kilter.

To you, these things have always been obvious. His good looks have always been something that you’re keenly aware of. Whatever unique qualities he has only seem to add to them.

Still, when he started seeing her, you and Satori seemed to fall in sync about these unspoken boundaries. One day, the line in the sand between you both was drawn into being, separating your friendship from anything beyond that.

You’ve always been grateful for that little line, you think. It keeps things from getting confusing. It protects yours and Satori’s platonic relationship as much as it protects your romantic ones. You don’t read too much into things. Your heart doesn’t flutter when he touches you (or does it). You keep your pesky emotions at bay. It’s all thanks to that lovely little line.

Sometimes though, like now, that line stares at you. For some reason, it feels like whatever is going on with Tendou is on the other side of it. You feel like he’s moved the line farther away from him, drawing a bubble and preventing you from stepping close. His situation, whatever it may be, is now beyond your grasp and you feel as if asking would be stepping over it.

It’s the first time in your friendship, you think, that Satori has drawn a line all on his own.

He’s back in your house today, lounging on your bed with his head hanging off the end. You can see the way his neck protrudes and bobs each time he swallows. It’s got a lovely angle to it and you can see the lines of lean muscle running up the sides of his neck.

When he’d walked in, you’d found yourself shocked to see that he’d not only decided to get a haircut, but to buzz off all of his hair entirely. You’d gaped at him, reaching up to touch his head and lamenting the loss of his shoulder length hair.

“What? You don’t like it?” he’d asked through a coy smile.

“It’s not that it’s just… why?” you’d questioned, unable to shake the feeling that it has something to do with his secretiveness.

Tendou adopted that familiar far off look and shrugged. “Needed the change. Kinda felt like I was going in a circle.”

Then, he’d brushed past you and into your house, asking about something to drink.

Satori’s looking at his phone now, scrolling through social media like he’s a robot stuck on repeat. Every now and then, his lips will quirk up a bit when he sees something funny, but otherwise, the only thing that moves are his thumbs and the gentle bob of his neck.

You stand facing the mirror in your room, watching him through it as you busy yourself with something on the shelf adjacent. You’d been looking for a book to read but had been quickly distracted by your train of thoughts after seeing a photo of you and Satori from high school.

You keep it framed on your nightstand in a cheap wooden frame you bought from a thrift store before going to college. It was taken a few weeks before your graduation, standing in front of the school gym. Satori is in his volleyball uniform after playing a final skirmish with his team before he passed down his jersey. His hair is spiked up and his forehead is slick with sweat. He’s pulling you close to his body in the photo, his arm wrapped around your shoulder and his fingers secured on the other end of you. You can almost recall the feeling of his jersey, damp with sweat, and your smile in the photo betrays a slight grimace at the feeling of it.

Satori, however, is beaming. His smile is radiant and his eyes are half closed in what looks like the beginning of a genuine laugh. He’d found it amusing to pull you close to him that day, relishing in the way you whined a little about how gross he was. Not that you really minded. You don’t mind much of anything if it’s Satori doing it. He’s special that way.

A notification on Satori’s phone draws you from your thoughts and your eyes wander habitually to the reflection of his screen in the mirror. It looks like an email and Satori shifts when he gets the notification, sucking in a quiet breath as he quickly reads over it. Then, he closes the application.

“Why are you staring?” He speaks abruptly, satisfied at the way you jump at being caught.

“I was just wondering what you’ve been waiting for on your phone lately,” you admit, toeing the line he’s drawn.

“Mmmmmmm,” he hums, not turning to look at you as a smile creeps up his features, “you curious?”

“Mhm,” you answer, turning to face him properly. “Is it a girl?”

At this, Tendou’s eyes slink backward to look at you over the crest of his eyebrows. His lips quirk up in a wry grin. It smooths across his features like liquid metal.

“Why? You wanna date me?”

You’re not sure why the teasing question flusters you so much, but it does. Heat bubbles in your stomach and rises to your face just as quickly and you chide yourself for the way you turn away from him.

“I was just curious,” you huff, rolling your eyes to try and dispel the new sensation rising in you.

Tendou gives you a cat’s smile through the mirror before he stretches his arms above his head and lets them hang over the side of the bed.

“It’s not a girl,” he answers, laughing a little. Then, he pauses like he’s debating something before growing quiet and adopting the strange look he’s been wearing. “Nothing important really.”

You furrow your eyebrows and eye the line in the sand.

It’s killing you, not knowing. This melancholy and secretive facade Tendou has adopted is making him feel like a stranger and it’s eating you up inside. But you trust him. You trust Satori with your life and more, so you swallow down the uncertainty. It’s coming from somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere possessive and needy. You ignore the fact that the feeling is coming from a place you previously thought your feelings for Satori didn’t come from.

“You sure?” you press, clenching your jaw after the words leave your lips.

“Yeah.” Tendou doesn’t look at you in the mirror, stretching his arms above his head. You think about growing pains.

Lukewarm. The inbetween. You know what this off feeling is. That subtle space in which your lives have been in for the better part of the last five years. A delicate balance between present and future. A delicate balance between friends and something more. This feeling is different. You worry that it is the inbetween of affection and indifference. It’s going to eat you alive.

—

Tendou’s apartment is pleasantly disorganized. It is one of those spaces in which everything looks out of place, but never really is. Tendou knows where each thing is, even if you’ve always had trouble learning. While this is true for all of the places that Satori inhabits, you think it is especially true for his bedroom and the office.

His room is littered with small boxes for little items he’s collected over the years. His shelves are stocked with manga he’s liked enough to collect. They aren’t organized in any particular way except by series, but the pattern seems to make sense only to Tendou. His nightstand always has a half drank glass of water on it and on nights when you stay over, there is one beside it for you.

In the corner, there’s a tall dark oak dresser full of his clothes, all of them folded neatly in drawers and tucked away until he needs them. On top of it, there are framed photos of his childhood, as well as one singular nationals trophy that he didn’t have the heart to throw out. You think all of it is endearing. There’s something lovely about entering this space and feeling him all around you. Any stress seems to melt directly off of your shoulders.

“Wanna order in?” You pad into the living room where Satori is posted in front of the television playing some rendition of the Legend of Zelda games.

“Huh?” He says before quickly interrupting himself. “Oh, yeah sure. What did you want?”

Tendou glances at you over the couch, his eyes catching yours for a moment. He grins, his lips curling up in a delightful way, before he turns his focus back to the TV.

“I dunno, chicken?”

He chuckles, pausing his game and putting his arm over the couch cushion. Tendou tilts his head to the side and smiles. “You always want chicken. Same place, I assume?”

You shrug. “Yeah well, I like their spice blend.” You lean your weight against the wall beside you. “So can we order chicken or not?”

Tendou tilts his head up, pressing his lips together in a smirk and narrowing his all-seeing eyes.

“Spice blend,” he chuckles, humming pleasantly like he’s mulling something over. Then, he clicks his teeth and you wonder briefly about the motion of his tongue when he does. “Yeah, let’s do it.” Then, he turns back to the TV and presses play.

“Kay, I’m gonna order from my phone then,” you hum, rolling your eyes and unlocking the screen.

“Sure,” he says and you pad over to his bedroom to sit down as you pick out what you want. “Oh! ____!”

“Huh?”

“If you’re ordering from the place down the street, I’m pretty sure I have a voucher for a free plate.” He calls.

“Oh, where?”

“Office, I think. Somewhere on the desk.”

You chuckle to yourself, walking down the hall and into the small makeshift office Tendou has set up. It’s in what should be a closet, with only enough space for a light and a small desk set up. When he’d moved into this place, he’d proudly told you about his plans, to which you told him that if it makes him happy, he should do it.

“Who even keeps physical coupons anymore?”

“Me, bro,” he laughs. “Just use it though, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna expire.”

“Kay!”

His desk is littered with paper. Most of them are things he’ll never use again; flyers he was handed on the street, takeout menus he usually looks at online, printed receipts for things he bought years ago. Only a few things are actually useful; printed recipes from the internet, a small booklet full of drinks from his job, and a thick recipe book with papers and post-its sticking out of it.

You shuffle through the papers, looking for the coupon. You’re expecting something bright red and gaudy. Something that feels like it’s trying too hard to get your attention. When you find it tucked beneath the thick book of recipes, you almost just grab it and go. If it hadn’t been for the way your eyes lingered on the spot where it was for a moment, you never would have seen it.

Underneath the coupon, is a clipped together stack of papers. A wax-covered yellow paper clip holds them together and at the top, it reads Le Cordon Bleu and then Diplôme de Pâtisserie. It’s been hastily translated into Japanese and you can’t beat the curiosity or the way dread begins to swirl in your stomach.

It’s an enrollment confirmation and clipped underneath it, there is a confirmation for the rent of a studio apartment in Paris. The date for the enrollment is two months from now and you grimace at the paper, making out what you can of the sloppy translation and French writing.

In your hand, clipped with the yellow-paperclip, is all of the evidence of Tendou’s intention to leave. Worse yet, his intention to leave without telling you in advance. An inky black substance rises in your through, swelling there like lead before realization rounds the corner. In your head, the ball that’s been looming over your head for months now finally drops and you manage to make sense of his behavior the last few months. It wasn’t a girl, it’s never been a girl. It was this.

It’s hard to tell exactly what thoughts run through your mind as you register what you’re looking at. The first is that he’s been keeping this secret for longer than three months judging from the paperwork, the second is that he deliberately chose not to tell you, and the third is the phrase you’ve repeated to yourself since high school. Everything you need to know, Tendou will tell.

You try not to spiral. You try to keep your feet rooted on the ground at the idea of this person you’ve known since adolescence simply going away so suddenly. None of it works. The secrecy of it cuts you like a slow-dragging knife, pressing into your skin and cutting a fine line from your stomach to your forehead.

“_____!” Tendou calls. His voice startles you from your thoughts. “If you haven’t ordered yet, can you get me extra hot sauce please?”

You don’t answer, instead starting to make the short walk from the office to the living room.

Tendou says your name. When you don’t answer, you hear him pause his game and stand up, calling your name again.

By the time he’s turned to start walking in your direction, eyebrows furrowed, you have reached the entrance to the living space. The papers are clutched in your hand and you can feel the edge of them pressing into your palm.

“What are these?” You ask, attempting to keep your voice steady.

“What’s what?” He tilts his head, smiling before he glances down to your hand.

You hold it up so that he can see.

When his gaze settles and he registers what you’re holding, his smile falls. You see the blood rush to his face and a look of shock cover his usually calm features. The expression is foreign on him and it sends a pang of dread through your chest. You had hoped that you were wrong. You had hoped that maybe he was going to tell you, that you’d show him and he’d laugh casually about how he just found out and wanted to tell you once it was settled.

“What is it?” You say softly and Tendou struggles to find the words.

He opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again. You watch as he scrambles, your lips pulling deeper and deeper into the frown that you can feel taking over your face.

“Are you going away?”

He nods.

“When?”

“September.”

The air is knocked from your lungs and your voice comes out as barely a whisper. “That’s in two months, Satori.”

“I know.”

“How long have you known?”

He doesn’t answer and when you look up at him, you can see the way that his eyes are growing red.

“How long?” You say, a little more forcefully.

“Since March.”

“Jesus,” you scoff, “March? That’s nearly five months.”

He nods, slightly defeated.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tendou scrambles for the words again, and suddenly you feel like you’ve been poisoned. Your stomach turns and your vision goes a little dizzy and you consider the type of sickness that this will bring to your friendship. How sick will it make the both of you? How long will it be until you are well again? Tendou, whose face has fallen into something of dread and uncertainty, clearly feels it too. You blink, staring at him with wide eyes to give him the opportunity to salvage what small bits of your trust remain.

Somehow, the expression he wears looks like he’s been about to form it for months. Like that blank expression he adopted was somehow an early version of this and it’s with a heavy heart that you realize that what you’d been seeing on him was the expression of keeping an awkward secret.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Satori?”

“I wasn’t-” he swallows. “I didn’t-”

“You didn’t know how?” You frown, finishing his sentence. You feel the way your brows press in the middle. “You’re my best friend, Satori. There’s nothing you can’t tell me.”

It hurts to know that he didn’t trust you with this. Unlike the secrets he keeps with Ushijima, this feels like a secret he’s deliberately kept from you. It wounds you to know that there is something Satori didn’t want to tell you, especially something this huge. You feel yourself bleed out onto his floor, though you’re not sure what the other emotions that come with this are. Something adjacent to hurt, like heartbreak.

“You didn’t know how to tell me, so your solution was to just fuck off to France one day without warning?” You raise your voice a little and Tendou, who is usually so fearless, flinches back from it. You press your lips into a line.

It feels selfish and you can’t figure out why. None of this makes any sense at all to you.

“You’ve kept secrets before too,” he says like he’s just thought of the justification. Satori scrambles like a young boy caught in the act, clamoring for a way out of the hole he’s dug himself. The more he reaches for his footing, the worse it hurts you.

You furrow your eyebrows. “Sure! I’ve kept secrets about who I fucked in high school. You kept secrets about your entire fucking future!” The words sting the front of your tongue. “Does Wakatoshi know?”

Tendou doesn’t answer.

“Does Wakatoshi know?” You say again, forcefully this time. Hurt makes its way into your lungs like a fever.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, shoulders slumping forward. “He does.”

You let out a laugh, reaching up to your face and wiping away the tears that have started to well up. When Tendou sees this, his eyes go wide and he takes a step towards you. Instead of letting him take you into his arms the way he always has, you step back. Then, you walk to the entrance of his apartment, grab your bag, slip your shoes on, and open the front door.

“Congratulations. On the school,” you muster, though it feels spoiled.

You want to mean it, but you don’t and the realization sends you out of the door and down the street. When you get on the train home, you finally allow yourself to cry, trying to put together why all of this hurts so much. Why are you spiraling the way you are? You wipe hot tears from your face with the backs of your hands, sniffling quietly while people struggle not to stare. The summer heat in the train car is stifling, clinging to your skin and making your face sticky with tears and sweat.

—

You’ve never fought with Tendou like this before. Sure, you’ve had small spats that lead to a few days of not talking, but this feels bigger than that. This feels like the earth has somehow cracked between you both and opened a deep rift. You’re not sure how long it’s been forming, but you know it isn’t sudden. Pressure builds behind you both like a damn fit to burst.

It’s not as if it’s only the move that’s doing this. You think it’s more. You think it has something to do with that line in the sand or whatever these new feelings for Tendou are. All of it has been somehow funneled into this one secret, spilling out in a messy and jumbled way that confuses you about feelings (or lack thereof) that you’d been certain about for over 10 years.

The floor of your apartment is cool like glass. It’s always colder on the floor than it is standing. You lay down to escape the heat, clinging to the wood like a seastar to a rock. Humidity clings to your skin and makes you sticky. You grimace, rolling over slightly.

It may seem dramatic to lay on the floor and think about Satori, but you often find yourself on the ground when you need to think about something important. The energy flows better down here. There have been several times in which Tendou has laid down on the floor with you to think. He did it when you needed to decide where to go to high school, he did it when you needed to think about saying yes or no to a confession, he did it when you were deciding where to take the entrance exams for at 17. Come to think of it, all of the major decisions in your life were made on the floor. Satori had been there for all of them.

You breathe out an exhale and more heat sticks to your skin. Even the breeze coming in through the window is unbearably hot, though you suppose that’s just the nature of July.

It’s been almost a week since you last saw Tendou, which isn’t too long in the grand scheme of things, but feels like a lifetime because it’s him. You can’t remember the last time you went so long without seeing or speaking to him. You can’t bring yourself to respond to his texts. He’s left four of them, each asking to talk to you about it. Every time you try to respond, you lose the courage to do it, sputtering to a stop just before you start to type.

He’s been with you for all of the major decisions in your life, but you weren’t privy to even know about this one. Sure, Satori is allowed to do what he wants. You know that he’s not obligated to tell you everything, that he doesn’t have to inform you of every small change in his life, but you wouldn’t consider this a small change. Shit, this is bigger than any decision he’s ever made and he didn’t tell you about it.

You’re not sure what’s worse, the idea that he kept it from you all this time or the idea that had you not stumbled upon those papers, he might have just vanished one day. It’s difficult for you to wrap your head around, the idea of Tendou just going away. For you, he’s been a constant presence in your life. Even when you went to college in Kyoto, he’d come to visit. The train ride was never more than a few hours and he would stay through the weekends or you’d make your way back up to Sendai where he attended the local university.

Paris is thousands of kilometers away. Forget visiting on weekends, you might not even be able to visit him on holidays. Then comes the question of if he would even want you to visit. If he didn’t tell you he was leaving, maybe he wouldn’t want to have you there. It could be that Tendou’s closeness with you was too much and it had reached a boiling point you’d never noticed.

It’s hard to believe that the boy you’ve known since 13 could think to go so far away from you. It’s difficult for you to wrap your head around, almost like the thought is presented to you in another language. It’s vaguely familiar, but deeply confusing, so much so that it sends you reeling. You’ve been reeling for the past few days, spun like a top and left to settle on your own.

This summer is hotter than most and the air doesn’t aid your thinking. It leaves you feeling stagnant, distracted by the sound of cicadas outside your balcony. Heat and anger cling to your skin like sticky black tar and the more you think about you and Tendou, the more you feel the poison in your bloodstream. You wonder briefly if Tendou is feeling it too, though of course he’s brought it on himself. Even through your anger, it hurts you to know that he might also be hurting.

When you met Satori, he was only an inch or so taller than you. He sprouted up around your second year of middle school, turning into the beanpole that he is today. He didn’t have a lot of friends when he was younger, not until halfway through your first year of middle school when he became a regular on the volleyball team.

You suppose that he didn’t have many friends because of his name, or maybe it was because of the way he looked. Before Satori grew up, his big eyes and thin upper lip were even more pronounced than they are now and when he was 13, he hadn’t yet grown out of that awkward, middling phase all children go through. You never minded but the other kids certainly did.

In fact, you always liked that Tendou matched his given name so well. Satori, referring to a yokai that can read minds. His all seeing eyes. The way he seems to know everything about you before you know it yourself. It all suits him so nicely. You’ve always liked that about him, those qualities which he’s owned from a young age and maintained throughout the majority of his life.

They’re as dear to you as he is, and you know that they’ve become dear to him as well.

When you were young, you never cared much for the gossip of other children, so when Satori joined your middle school class and was greeted with the whispers of your classmates, you paid them no mind. It seemed that Satori didn’t either, instead focusing on volleyball, which allowed him to realize a certain twisted kind of satisfaction he craved. Your friendship unfolded quickly, moving through the awkward acquaintance stage and into the friend stage quickly.

The first summer you both spent together was one of the most memorable. Come to think of it, you and Satori had somehow managed to skip over the awkward part of making friends at 13, barrelling into the summer season together as comfortable friends. He’d sat out on your back porch with you often, eating cut watermelon your mother had prepared for you both. She was just glad to see you’d made a friend. As a young child, people found you unapproachable, as you’d always had an agency over yourself which other kids didn’t have.

Satori was the same, though he was always more immature in his teasing. Tendou has always gotten a kick out of toying with others and in high school it half-way earned him his nickname of Guess Monster, which plays on the word “gesu” meaning “low-life”. You always thought it was mean, but it would be a lie to say that Tendou didn’t earn that name with his opponents. He always somehow managed to come across as somewhat sleezy to them, even if you know he’s anything but.

It happens to be another part of him that you adore deeply. The way he makes you squirm has always been an enjoyable aspect of your neatly kept friendship.

Still, that first summer and all the summers after, went the same way. On the porch or balcony with a plate of fresh watermelon, laying across the slightly-cooler floor and debating through bored slurs what to do next. You can recall every version of him. 13 and immature, grinning over the tops of sunburnt cheeks. 17 and laidback, with a cheshire-like grin and a penchant for teasing. 20 and in college, with long hair and an easy, attractive grin. 24, with freshly buzzed hair, sitting between the past and the future, getting ready to leave you behind.

You know it’s unfair to think that way. He’s not leaving you behind. Not really. Satori is just moving forward. He’s taking another step towards his future and that’s supposed to be a good thing. It’s supposed to be good that he knows what he wants next. But you can’t find it in you to be happy for him.

You think it’s selfish. It’s selfish of him to not tell you. It’s selfish to want to go so far away. It’s selfish to want to be somewhere that you aren’t. Most of all though, it hurts that you didn’t know. It aches somewhere deep and ancient in your chest, a kind of pain you’re unfamiliar with. Foreign and dull, pressing right up against your sternum from the inside. It feels like heartbreak, as alarming as that is.

Satori has a side to him that you didn’t know. A secretive one. One that allows him to just slowly withdraw if he wants to. It makes you wonder what else he keeps from you. Everything you need to know, Tendou will tell. How far does that extend? What other things don’t you know?

While the ache is there, you can also feel confusion. It’s a deep, skin-tingling sensation, like something not quite realized. You have no idea why you’re reacting as adversely to this as you are. It’s not as if him not telling you this yet means anything that you’ve spiraled into believing. It’s not like it means he doesn’t care about you, it just means that he was as tongue tied as you feel right now.

Your friendship has always had clear rules and boundaries and you think that feeling the way you are and Tendou keeping this secret has somehow broken them. It’s like, in breaking your unspoken rule somewhere else, Tendou set off a chain reaction that caused you to break another. Now, all you can think about are the inbetween moments. The liminal space between friends and something more that you and Satori have occasionally crossed into.

It’s not because you are fantasizing about it, nor is it because you necessarily want it to mean something, but it is because they mean the most to you. Those little moments are when you’ve felt the closest to him, as if your relationship were strengthened by your physical proximity and the feel of his hands on your arms or face.

You think about those easy summers. About the way girls pass him on the street and giggle into their mouths when he glances at them. About the way he looks at you when he walks. All of it piles up like sand, heavy and easy to sink into. You could get lost in these feelings and it terrifies you.

You’re so deeply uncomfortable with the change, both in Tendou’s life and in your steadily rounding realization. Why is that? You’ve separated from plenty of friends before just like this and never felt so hopeless. Leaving for college was no different. Even when Wakatoshi moved away permanently, you weren’t half so torn up. You didn’t mourn the loss of some unplacable thing that had yet to exist. But here you are now, laying down on the floor of your apartment and thinking about what it means that he’s going away and what it means that he didn’t tell you. What makes Satori so different?

You’ve never had to do this before. Thinking about how to respond to Satori feels so strange that it’s making you sick. You used to always know what to say. What’s making this any different? Why does it feel like there’s a lump in your chest that’s going to make you sick?

Maybe it’s because you can’t figure out his motivations. There are very few instances in which you can’t tell what Satori is thinking. After all, he’s the person you spend the most time with, of course you’re able to tell what he’s probably thinking about. You wonder what you could have done to hurt him, rolling onto your back and clenching your fists to quell the crack you feel forming across your chest.

There’s so much anxiety, so much uncertainty. All you can smell is that first summer. All you can hear is that hot and humid day when you were 13. You wonder why it comes to you so clearly now. Is it because this is the last? Is it because you both have already been poisoned beyond healing? Or maybe it’s simply because that is when these feelings started to take root.

Maybe they started to take shape a long time ago, this uncertain, swelling ache in your chest that feels so adjacent to love you could have mistaken it for exactly that. The only reason you haven’t is because you know better. You know better than to break the rules, than to love him like that when your friendship has never been anything more.

You’ve been staving it off for so long, you think. This unplaceable desire has been curbed time and time again. You think back to all of the times it’s felt like Satori was about to cross a boundary and you wonder if he ever actually was or if you’d just imagined it because you wanted it so badly. Even now you’re not sure. You think about your past boyfriends, why it never worked. Had you ever actually cared about them or were you just seeking out traits you thought you saw in Tendou?

Even if it is more than friendship, even if he does mean more to you than you thought, all you know is how angry you are. It swells in your chest, ballooning until it presses against the inside of your ribcage and makes you ache. You know this can’t be fixed alone. You could run yourself in circles and none of it would make any difference. None of this introspection will matter until you can talk to him, until you can be in his presence again.

The threat of loss looms heavy over you, like an anvil tied to a string, it swings precariously above your head. Satori, even after keeping the monumental secret, is still your best friend and losing him, distance be damned, is unfathomable. He’s everything to you and the situation, its precariousness, makes you afraid. How long have you been in the space between loving him and losing him?

—

Sa-to-ri: hey i won’t text you anymore after this, but please come by when you’re feeling up to it. i can explain.

You read the text over and over in front of his apartment. There’s a thrumming in your chest, like nerves come alive, and you can’t seem to just open the door.

Satori opens it first, swinging it open with one sharp pull and staring at you.

“Were you tracking me?” you ask softly.

“Yeah,” he admits.

He steps to the side to let you in and you quickly remove your shoes, stepping into his apartment.

Satori looks like the Satori he always has. Tall and lanky, with big, heavily creased eyes and his thin upper lip. His bottom lip, full and round, bounces slightly as you turn to face him. You rake your eyes over his buzzed hair, still not quite used to the way it looks on him. You remember running your hand over it a few weeks ago and feeling the soft, spiky texture of it. Part of you misses the long hair, though you think this suits him more somehow.

His eyes, which are usually low-lidded and laidback, look swollen, and the bags under his eyes which you admire so secretly, are more pronounced. Satori looks tired and as soon as you register that it’s probably your fault, you let your shoulders fall.

“How are you?” he questions softly, the familiar tenor ring of his voice tentative and needy as he follows it with your name.

You shrug. “I’m okay. How are you?”

“Been better,” he says, giving you a lopsided grin that you struggle to return.

You nod at him, swallowing thick, and Satori lets out a shaky exhale and runs a hand over his buzzed red hair.

“I can explain what’s happening, if you want,” he offers.

“It seems pretty straight forward,” you say. “You applied to a school in France, got in, and it spiraled out before you got the chance to tell me. Right?”

Satori tilts his head, surprised. You’ve hit the nail on the head.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean- I didn’t think that-”

You nod, biting back the familiar sting of bile rising up your chest. “I know. I’m trying not to be mad.”

“Are you?” he asks. “Mad, I mean.”

You nod.

“Why?”

“What do you mean why?” you say, giving an incredulous snort. “You’re going away and you were going to do it without telling me.”

Satori tosses his arms up a little, beginning to grow frustrated. “I thought you just said you understood what happened?”

“I do!” you shout back. “Do you expect me to leap for joy because you’re going 9,000 kilometers away?”

Tendou tries to step towards you, reaching out with his lithe fingers to attempt to soothe the anger he can feel rising in you.

“I have no real idea why you didn’t tell me,” you admit, crumbling a bit. “I think I could go over it a million times in my head and never really understand. But I think the worst part is that I don’t even know what I’m mad at. I’m just mad.”

He falters, opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to find something to say. You feel your eyes grow wet with tears.

“Why is it so easy for you to just leave me behind?” You question quietly, your voice cracking as tears start to spill. You feel silly and selfish for asking him this, but it’s what comes up. That unfamiliar swell of emotions you’ve been experiencing for the past week all bring you here. “How can you just up and leave just like that without even asking me about it? Didn’t you ever consider that I’d want to know and celebrate with you?”

“____,” he says quietly.

“And I feel so dumb because I know I should be happy,” you cry, wiping your eyes. “I know I should be happy that you’re taking the first steps toward your future, but I can’t be. I’m so hurt, Satori and I’m so sorry that I am.”

You shake your head a little when Tendou steps close to you, unable to lift your head to look at him.

“I know you have your own life and your own future,” you say, nodding your head. “I know. But I don’t know how you could ever want to go so far away from me. I don’t think I could ever do that.”

It’s not accusatory, but uncertain, like you’re weighing the words on your tongue. It almost sounds as if you’re questioning your own feelings. It even surprises you and you stare at the floor between your feet to try and ground yourself. You can hear Satori breathing. It’s a steady sound, occasionally hitching and giving away his emotions.

“Do you love me?” he speaks up quietly. You raise your head, eyebrows furrowed. “Do you love me like that?”

You don’t know what to say or how to answer. The question has forced your gaze back up to him. His small eyebrows are pulled together in the center and his lips, usually tinged with a small grin, are pulled downwards. You ache at seeing him like this.

“Because I do,” he adds, staring at you.

“You what?” It shocks you, and you shake your head a little as if that would clear up the misunderstanding. You watch as he breaks every boundary you both have ever created.

“I have for a long time. I love you and I’m not leaving because I don’t,” Satori looks almost unrecognizable, so deeply passionate and emotional, but there’s something familiar in it. There’s an emotion that you’ve seen somewhere before. “I didn’t keep it from you because I don’t.”

“What are you saying?” You can hardly hear your own voice over the sound of your heartbeat.

“Do you love me?” He steps towards you, adamant in receiving an answer. “Because I really need to know, man. I can’t do this without knowing.”

You try to gather your thoughts. All of the teasing, all of the little lost glances Satori would adopt, all of the secrecy. It was because he loved you? It was because he loves you? Even the thought feels heavy, like it’s coated in lead. The idea drops into the pit of your stomach, weighing you down and for a moment you think you may be sick.

Do you love him? Do you love him the way he wants you to? You look at him, fingers trembling.

“I don’t know,” you swallow.

“Come with me,” he pleads, “just come with me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” he says, running a hand forward on his head. “Because I love you. Because you drive me insane. Because I didn’t even realize I was hiding it until it was too late to not be hiding it. I never meant to let it get this far I never- I never meant to make you cry,” he says, stepping forward and taking your hands in his. “You’re my best friend. I never wanted- I never wanted to lose you and I was so scared and I didn’t- I didn’t know what to do.”

You take in his explanation, nodding slowly. “So your solution was to say nothing?” You frown at him.

Satori stares at you. “I’m sorry,” he squeezes your knuckles, “come with me anyway. Even though I didn’t tell you. Come with me.”

You stare at him for a second, attempting to process the speed at which your brain is moving.

“I can’t do this without you,” he admits, letting his shoulders fall forward and casting his eyes toward the floor of his apartment.

This sends you reeling more than anything he’s said yet. Satori, by nature, is fiercely independent. He’s fiercely driven and internally motivated. Most people, when they meet him, can recognize this instantly. It makes the admittance heavy, like it’s waterlogged. You gape at him.

Your eyes follow the familiar planes of his body. His round, double-lidded eyes which are so familiar to you that you would know he’s watching you without even looking. The sharpness of his cheekbones. The undereye bags that you love so deeply. You follow the trail his cheeks make to his mouth, slightly parted and glossy with spit. His neck, leading down to his collarbone. The exposed parts of the muscles, now visible to you from any angle since he cut his hair.

He’s looking at you with a desperate, wild look. It would be frightening if it were anyone else, but it’s Satori. It’s your most loved person. The one person you could do anything with and be okay.

The boundaries which you’d relied on so often in times like this, don’t exist anymore. There’s no inbetween to fall back on, no safety net to keep you from falling completely. If you want you, you could give into this entirely. You don’t have to catch yourself. You don’t have to sleep on the couch. There’d be no more side-stepping and avoiding and wondering if you wish it or if you dread it.

“Okay,” you say quietly, inhaling. “Okay.”

Tendou looks at you for a minute, blinking. His face is so familiar and being able to look at it like this is like a homecoming.

“Are you still mad?” he asks quietly, his hands still gripping yours.

“Yeah,” you admit.

“Can I kiss you?” He breathes out.

“Yeah.”

Satori leans forward, bringing his hand to the side of your cheek gently. He’s so close. The boy you’ve known since 13. You can feel his breath on your face, trembling slightly as he draws closer. You screw your eyes shut as his lips meet yours. Familiar is the word that comes to mind. You’ve never done this with him before, but you can map out the way they look from the feeling of them alone.

You inhale sharply and Satori leans in closer, bringing his other hand to your face and deepening the kiss. He cups your face firmly with both hands, pulling you close to him as his shoulders drop and he lifts your face to get a nice angle. Everything about his touch is different, but somehow deeply familiar. It’s like you’re meant to be here like this with him. Like you’re meant to be in his arms, which your face cupped between his long, lithe hands.

He pulls away from you, leaving you dazed and breathless. Looking at him from this close feels like a privilege. It’s like you can see every single detail about him that you’ve ever loved. You reach up to touch his face, running your thumb across his under-eye bag.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, his lips swollen.

You shake your head. “I should have been happier for you.”

“Mmm, you always worry about other people like that,” he says softly. “I’m the one who acted like an asshole.”

“I still don’t want you to go away.”

“I know,” he leans forward, pecking your lips. “But it’s not for a little while. We’ve got time.”

You kiss him first this time, pressing forward until your lips find his. Tendou immediately licks into your mouth, deepening it with a groan and pulling your body flush against his.

There’s so much relief in touching him like this, in feeling the slip and slide of your skin against his. It feels right, so right that all of your previous experiences begin to pale in comparison.

He is so dear to you that it is overwhelming. All of it comes at once as he lays you on the bed, hovering over you with his eyebrows pulled together. Everything that he is is so dear. His hair, his smile, his low-lidded and heavy creased eyes. Oh, how you love him. Any anger slips away in the realization.

You’ve never seen him look quite so shy, nor so hesitant. His hands, which are usually so sure, run up your sides at an awkward pace, like he can’t quite get a hold of what’s happening. You feel that your expression mirrors his, that the pace of your breath betrays the nerves you’re feeling.

Satori hovers over you, his shirt pulled off to reveal the pale expanse of chest you’ve seen a million times. His chest heaves, like he’s out of breath, his round shoulders supporting the weight of him as he looks at you. His eyes betray a sense of adoration. It’s an emotion you’ve seen in him a few times, similar to the expression he wears when he plays volleyball. It looks like he’s being consumed. Then, he tilts his head at you and smiles. You smile back at him, reaching to hesitantly touch the back of his head and pull him close to you.

His buzz cut feels soft to the touch and Tendou gives in when he feels the warm pads of your fingers at the back of his neck. He lowers himself closer to you, shifting onto his forearms and then dipping his neck down to kiss you, beckoned by your gentle touch. You feel his knee press into the mattress between your legs and gasp when he moves it up to brush against your center.

There’s a strangeness to being touched there by him. Along with the relief of friction, comes the oddness of who. That’s not to say that it doesn’t feel right. It does, though to ignore the years of history between you two would be a disservice. That strangeness, however, only fans the flames of your desire. This is a part of him you’ve never seen before.

Satori’s fingers snake down your abdomen where your shirt has ridden up. They’re cold and you can almost imagine the round and somewhat pointed look of them. You glance between you both, admiring the knobby curve of his knuckles and the way he toys lightly with the elastic of your waistband.

“Can I?” he breathes out, barely above a whisper and so laced with desire that you almost think he might whine.

“Go ahead,” you exhale and he gives you a little smile before dipping two fingers between the folds of your cunt and pressing lightly on your clit.

You gasp, arching your back up at the cool sensation of it, slowly relaxing as he starts to move his fingers in a steady circle. When you open your eyes, you see that he’s watching you, his neck craned down to peer at the expression you’re wearing.

“Stop that…” you laugh lightly.

“Stop what?” he croons, pressing lightly at your entrance with the pad of his finger.

“Staring…”

Satori leans down and kisses you while sliding one finger in. You feel him smile against your mouth when you gasp, the corners of his mouth curling up delicately as his mouth leaves yours.

“You have no idea how long I’ve waited to touch you like this,” he says quietly, still against your mouth. Then, with that lovely upward lilt to his voice, “let me stare a little longer.”

You huff a little, fighting the heat rising to your cheeks and he laughs a little bit, kissing down the exposed parts of your neck.

“I could do this instead,” he hums, teasing a little as he pushes your shirt up and places a kiss between your breasts.

His lithe fingers cup up to cup your chest, pinching your nipple over your bra with two fingers as he smears his lips down your stomach. You don’t know how to respond, instead watching the rise and fall of his head with your breathing as he leaves a trail of kisses down your abdomen.

When Satori reaches your waistband, he pulls his hand from you and hooks two fingers around it, shimmying it down your legs.

It’s not as if you haven’t undressed in front of him before. Satori has seen you at your best, your worst, and all of your inbetweens. You’ve changed in front of him more times than you can count, even going so far as to skinny dip together the summer before college. Still, this time is different. This time, when Satori undresses, he’s looking at you with his eyes that see everything. He’s watching the expanse of your body, gaze crawling up each inch of exposed skin until his gaze rests on your now exposed cunt.

You let out a subconscious whine when his breath hits you and his lips curl up a little when you do. He rests his head on the inside of your thigh, looking up at you from between your legs.

“Feeling shy?”

“Obviously,” you force out, covering your face with your forearms.

“Aw, what?” he pouts. “Don’t hide from me.”

His voice is so sincere and so fond that it draws you out from behind your arms. He’s still looking at you, smiling from where he lays between your legs.

“There ya are,” he says, a lopsided grin spreading across his features. “I’m gonna touch you now.”

Then, he spreads you open with two fingers and licks one long stripe between your legs. You shiver, your hand instinctively flying up to his head where you grow frustrated that his long hair isn’t there to hold onto anymore. He gives you a small smile from between your legs, holding your pussy open, before dipping back down and securing his mouth around your sensitive clit.

Something about this is so deeply embarrassing. Maybe it's the fact that it’s Tendou, or maybe it’s because you haven’t had someone go down on you this well in a long time. Either way, you feel the humiliation in your teeth like sugar, your knees knocking inward every now and then when he hits a particularly sensitive spot.

Satori hums into your cunt every now and then, tongue lathing over your sensitive bundle of nerves. Everytime you twitch or gasp, he gives a pleasant little hum that you feel buzz through you, then he looks up to check on your reactions. His hands, which are so familiar you think you’d know them only by touch, wander over your thighs and up your stomach to your breasts. They don’t stay in one place for long, instead running all over your skin and leaving goosebumps in their wake.

You’ve always liked Satori’s hands. Ever since you met him, you’ve thought they were nice. They’ve got a gentle look to them. They’re big and his fingers are long, but they’re thin, with smooth and somewhat knobby knuckles from injuring them so often in volleyball. They’ve always been hands that you wanted to be touched by and now that they’re running softly over your skin, you find yourself shivering at the overload of sensitive touches.

Every one of Satori’s touches are gentle. Even his tongue between your legs, which winds the coil in your stomach tighter and tighter, is gentle in his appreciation for you. It’s like he’s experimenting ever so slightly, like he’s cherishing you while simultaneously figuring out what makes you tick. He already knows everything about you in a platonic sense, now he gets to learn in a sexual sense.

Still, despite the gentleness of his touches, it is all too much. His hands, his mouth, the feel of his tongue as he sucks on your clit. Even just the way he looks, eyes closed and brows pulling upwards, is overwhelming. He moves his face side to side slowly, smearing you across his face, before he looks at you with low lidded eyes.

The knot in your stomach tightens and you begin to swelter. Your face grows hot, lightheadedness flooding the space between your ears as you’re worked closer and closer to your high. You gasp, reaching to run a hand over his buzzed hair.

He reaches up behind his head and knots his fingers with yours at either of your sides. You squirm against him, desperate as you build higher and higher. Satori groans lightly as you choke out a light warning, trying your best to not sound as broken as you feel. He nods, lapping at your cunt with a flat tongue until you feel you are fit to burst. Your chest heaves, your head spins, you begin to peak and then, Satori stops.

Your voice catches in your throat. It’s a feeble, pitiful sound that catches and tapers into a low whine. You buck your hips forward, legs feeling like white-hot sandbags as your climax slips steadily away from you.

Satori tilts his head at you, giving a wry grin. His signature smile is coated in you and his mouth and chin glistens in a way that feels incredibly vulgar. You tremble lightly as he wipes his face with the back of his arm and sits back on his heels. You watch the heave of his chest, lean muscle shifting underneath pleasantly warm skin. Starry freckles dot pleasantly across his chest and you briefly wonder where on earth he got them.

As the frustration wanes, you find yourself wanting to be closer to him, desperate to build your high back up.

“I kind of liked that reaction,” he drones lightly, leaning over you as you beckon him.

“You’re such an asshole,” you breathe out, catching his mouth with yours.

He hums into it, lips curling as he kisses you softly.

“Uh oh,” he says against your mouth, “am I on your bad side now?”

“Yeah,” you respond, reaching down between you both to run your hand lightly over the bulge in his boxers, “the worst of it.”

Your response is absent-minded and quiet, not retaining your usually snarky attitude. Right now, the only thing you’re thinking about are the points of contact between you and Satori. There’s only touch.

Satori doesn’t respond, instead letting his head hang between you both as you reach under his waistband and wrap your hands around him for the first time. He’s long and not particularly thick and you drag your hand up the length of him just to test his size. Satori’s so hard that you think it must hurt him, his tip wet with precum.

He shudders over you, his shoulders tightening as you run your thumb over the tip of him. He’s more sensitive than you would have expected and you tilt your head slightly to watch the way he screws his eyes shut.

He looks so new to you like this. Everything is new. It’s so new, in fact, that you can push aside your own desperation in favor of witnessing it. Though the person is familiar, the situation is not. It makes you feel like a virgin. Well, it makes you feel like a virgin and not a virgin at the same time. You’re having fun just playing with him, running your fingers along the length of him. It’s like getting to show him what you know, all with the butterflies of a virgin.

You suppose he feels the same. Maybe that’s why he’s got his head tilted down, only looking up to give you a strained smile whenever the head of his cock brushes your slick cunt.

There’s so much feeling. That’s the only way you can describe it. There is so much feeling between you both, humming and shifting and pressing against your sternums from the outside, begging to be let in. It’s tangible between the two of you, so present that you think you could grab it with your hand, but neither of you move to take it. Instead, you press closer, letting it sit heavy in the air between your faces.

Satori doesn’t move to push himself inside of you and you don’t move to guide him there. Instead, you let the tip of him press lightly against you, running your fingers up and down it. The tension, made up of your frustration and feelings, balloons until you are certain it will burst. Your lower stomach winds and coils despite how gentle the touches are and desire makes its way into your throat where it sits leaded and heavy.

He groans lightly over you, his hips shaking lightly with how long he’s been holding himself there. You run one hand over the curve of his shoulders, feeling the way the lean muscle shifts as he tenses and untenses.

Finally, he pushes past the tight ring of your cunt with a low whine and you move to wrap your hands around him. The pads of your fingers press into his back, leaving marks in skin that you’ve seen a hundred times over. He trembles over you and your focus is pulled between your legs where you feel the pressure of Satori there. He presses forward until his hips are flush with yours and you’re made breathless by the sticky pressure of his pelvis against yours.

He stays still for a while, tilting his head to the side to catch your mouth. You feel his breath come in quick bursts, but he never moves to fully kiss you, instead brushing his lips against yours as if to draw the desperation from it. You grow antsier by the moment, pushed to frustration quickly by the stillness of his hips and the distance of his mouth from you. When a low whine escapes your mouth, Satori smiles silently and flicks his hips forward once.

You tip your head back and Satori chases your mouth, finally kissing you lightly as he starts to rock back and forth.

He finds a slow rhythm. It’s deep and overwhelming, each thrust pushing deep into you until you feel the press of pressure in your stomach. He doesn’t so much thrust his hips as he does roll them at steady intervals, pressing the tip of himself up and into that gummy spot inside of you.

You’re sticky between the legs. You can feel it each time he pushes into you, dripping from your pussy down to the mattress. Satori smears it with his hips on purpose. You can tell from his expression that he’s enjoying the mess, his familiar face watching for your reactions as he experiments with you.

“You’re so fucking pretty,” he says through gritted teeth. His hand comes up to brush the side of your cheek.

You don’t know how to answer, cut open by the affection in his voice and the way pleasure sews itself through.

“You’ve always been so pretty,” he says again, bending down to kiss your neck. “But you’re even prettier like this. I don’t want to share it.”

You shiver, “Then don’t.”

Satori hums lightly, dragging his mouth down your chest to take a nipple in his mouth. He speaks around it. “I like the way you sound when you try and talk while I’m fucking you. Talk s’more.”

The sentence is so dirty that it feels like your face is lit on fire, “No.”

“Come on,” he teases, popping your nipple from his mouth and sitting up completely. He hits you deeper like this and you feel him twitch inside of you. “Just a little?”

“Satori,” you whine a little, breathless. “I’m embarrassed.”

“Of what?” He questions, reaching to take your hand and press it to your stomach.

“I don’t know,” you grunt, gasping when he adds pressure to your stomach.

“Of that?” he grins, fucking his hips into you sharply. You can hear the sound of your wetness.

“Yeah,” you gasp, “that.”

“Don’t be,” he mumbles, leaning over you again to speak against your mouth. “It’s really hot.”

Your stomach flips, turning over as the pressure and his words come to a head in the space between your ears. Your cheeks heat and your stomach seems to roll beneath your skin. You’ve heard Tendou say all sorts of things about all sorts of people, but for some reason, the idea that he finds you hot sends you syrupy.

“Satori,” you breathe out, tipping your head back to let him nip again at the sink on your neck.

“Hm?”

“Nothing,” you sigh. “Just wanted to say it.”

“Again,” he says, punctuating his sentence with his hips.

“Satori.”

He groans, laughing a little. “Sounds different when you say it now.”

He’s right. You’ve said his name a million times, but it sounds different now. There’s more intimacy to it, like you’re not just calling to him, but for him. The distinction to you is important and the sharp sound of the syllables leaving your mouth only serve to heighten your desire.

Pressure mounts in your gut like water against a dam. You feel it build there while Satori presses his hips deeper. You repeat his name, embarrassed but calling out for him nonetheless. He obliges every time, meeting your pleas with heavy sighs that give away the closeness of his peak.

“I’m gonna-” you choke, grabbing at his shoulders.

“Yeah, baby,” he breathes, “me too. Whenever you’re ready, okay?”

You nod, meeting your high with a dizzy head. Satori holds you still while your hips buck and your knees buckle beneath him. He follows not long after, spurred on by the press of your thighs around his hips.

It takes a long while to come down. The haziness fades away but even after several long minutes, the glow does not. It sticks you to both like summer heat, inescapable and rich. Satori plays with the small baby hairs by your forehead and you let him, resting your cheek on his sticky chest. You’re not sure of what to say. It’s difficult to orient yourself.

“Shit,” he mutters softly.

“What?” Your stomach drops.

“Nothing,” he says, running a hand down his face. “I think I’ve just got it way worse for you than I thought.”

“Oh,” you say, nodding, letting silence settle over both of you before you break it once again. “I think I love you.”

“Yeah?” he says quietly, lifting his head from the pillow a little.

“Mhm,” you say softly.

Satori presses his smile into the side of your head.

“I’m a little nervous,” you say, laughing quietly.

“Of what?” He grins. “That you’re gonna like me too much?”

You slap his chest lightly, “Definitely not.”

“Harsh,” he laughs a little.

“I’m nervous because what if things don’t work?” you admit quietly. “We’ve known each other for so long, Satori, but what if one day we can’t stand each other? What if in the future we don’t even talk anymore?”

“You trying to jinx it?” he laughs a little.

“No,” you pout.

“Well, look,” he says, lips curling in the corners, “there’s no way in hell I could ever get tired of you and I’d never let you get rid of me. I’ve been haunting you since we were 13 and I don’t really plan to stop.”

“Haunting?” You scoff. “You know, Satori, you’re really fucking weird.”

“That right, baby?”

“Eugh,” you laugh a little. “Gross.”

Satori shrugs.

“I’m still upset you didn’t tell me about France either.”

“I know,” he says a little softer. “I really-”

“You don’t have to defend yourself,” you say. “I think I’m just going to be mad about it for a while. You’ll just have to put up with me.”

“Okay,” his voice sounds small and you turn over onto your stomach and press your forehead to his chest.

“Everything feels so complicated now,” you say softly.

“Hey,” he tilts your chin up. “Do you love me?”

“Yeah,” you answer, fighting the heat rising to your cheeks.

“Good,” he says, giving you a boyish grin. “I love you too. That’s not so complicated, right?”

The words of affection feel strange in the same way new shoes do. They fit, but they’re foreign. You have to orient yourself to the way they make you feel, but the joy of wearing them hums to life in your chest like a stringed instrument. Satori’s lips curl into a cheeky grin and the expression is so familiar that it makes you ache. It’s mischievous, like he’s not quite being serious and if you didn’t know him better, it would make you nervous. But you do know him better. You nod lightly and let his smile infect you the same way it has since you were 13.

The glow remains.

—

Sa-to-ri <3: you ready?

You: ya coming now.

Sa-to-ri <3: kk i’m outside.

Your heart leaps into your chest. It swells there, heavy and affection filled. When you step outside, Satori looks up at you, pressing his palm to the wall behind him and pushing forward in one fluid motion. You watch recognition flash across his face the same way you feel it flash across yours and then, his eyes soften. His lips melt into an affectionate and easy going grin as you approach him.

You fly down the steps, unable to choke back the small laugh bubbling at the back of your throat.

“Satori,” you breathe as he takes you into his arms. You bury your face in the extra fabric of his sweatshirt, inhaling his familiar smell.

“Hi,” he chimes softly. You feel him rest his head on yours then, he sways a little bit.

“I really missed you,” you sigh, unwilling to let go.

“I missed you too,” he laughs a little and you feel his fingers come up to cradle the back of your head.

How long has it been since you’ve seen him? Four months? Maybe five? Since moving to France, he’s come back to visit once for only a few days and though you talk to him on the phone almost every day, it’s not enough. It’s never enough unless he’s here.

When you pull away, he takes your face in both of his hands and looks at you like he’s cataloging everything that’s changed about you since you were separated. His eyes trace the lines of your face and yours do the same to his.

“You got prettier,” he smiles lightly.

“Liar,” you laugh a little.

“Nope.”

Satori leans forward and places his mouth on yours gently. You suck in a sharp inhale, heart racing against your ribcage. Even a year later, he still makes your heart leap out of your chest. You missed the way he tastes, relieved to finally be able to taste him again.

“You buzzed your hair short again, baldy,” you laugh, reaching up to run your hand over the spiked surface of it.

Satori rolls his eyes, They glide upwards as his head follows the motion of them and then, he scuffs the tip of his shoe against the floor. He’s wearing a pair of worn black high top converse. You’ve seen them many times before in the entryway of his old apartment, but in his time away they’ve become so well worn that they’re gray in certain areas.

Tendou gives you a wry smile. It’s a ghost across his face as he narrows his eyes a bit in a familiar way. “Easier to manage this way at school.”

“Mm, I bet. You sure you’re not just losing hair?” You tease.

“Even if I were, I think you’d date me anyway.”

“You got me,” you laugh, turning to walk down the street with him.

Satori’s fingers automatically tangle with yours. You feel his knuckles slide past your own, the tips of his fingers cool but his palm warm and wide. Your mind runs at a mile a minute and you realize that you have no idea what to say to him. Right now, his familiarity and your longing for it are overwhelming. All of your thoughts are abstract and the warm, fuzzy feelings are unplaceable. They live in your throat.

Instead of talking, you look over at him. The hair he’s just recently buzzed again highlights the delightful round shape of his head and you think it suits him. He looks clean and trimmed, something unusual for Satori, but you don’t find yourself missing his shoulder length hair. Instead, you like this metamorphosed version of him, somehow grown from the man he was when he left. You resist the urge to reach up and run your hand over the top of it again.

It’s nearly 9pm and, as usual, the sidewalk is littered with people on their way home or out with friends. Girls pass Tendou in the street with little glances. They peek to the side as he walks past them, admiring the sway in his step and the alluring way he slouches forward the way they always have. These same girls giggle into their mouths the same way they always do. It’s easier to see now that you know how to feel about him, that Tendou is attractive. He’s always been that way, but now, as these girls whisper about you being his girlfriend, you find yourself giddy to be able to say that you are.

You take stock of him beside you. He’s long and lean, staring ahead at the building just beyond the sidewalk in its seemingly endless stretch into the sky. His eyes slink back and forth between the screens illuminating the street with ads and every now and then, his gaze will stop on one he finds interesting and he will squeeze your hand. You watch him through the corner of your eye until you have to look away.

The walk to the ramen shop is longer from your apartment than Tendou’s old one, but it’s familiar. You’ve not been back there since Tendou first moved to France last September. Still, each step that you take feels so natural that you could do it blind.

When you reach the familiar ramen shop by Tendou’s old apartment, you notice that the blue curtains in front of the door have been replaced. The kanji is cleaner now and the bottom isn’t fraying quite the same way it used to. Tendou still holds them to the side for you, unlacing your fingers and ducking through the doorway after you. When you walk in, you find that now there are two ramen chefs behind the counter. The old chef, the one you grew up with, is toward the back of the bar and in front is a young man with features like his.

You settle evenly into the bar, smiling softly at Tendou when he looks at you. When the old ramen chef sees you, the corners of his eyes crinkle in a welcoming smile.

“It’s been a long time since you two have been here! What’s been keeping you away?” he exclaims, placing his hands on the bar. “The same usual orders?”

“Oh, this and that,” Satori hums. “I moved to France and they hate coming here alone.”

“That so?” The chef smiles.

You both nod and Tendou slips into an easygoing rapport with the man, leaning his chin onto his hand as he talks. You watch the way the muscles in his arm flex and the way the corners of his mouth curl into a smile, sinking quickly into the comfort of the space.

“You two together yet?” The chef glances between the both of you.

Satori leans back lightly, looking sideways at you before he shrugs his shoulders. He doesn’t offer a verbal answer and you find yourself following suit in his shrug.

“Yup, we’re in love,” you say, leaning forward and fighting the heat that rises to your cheeks.

The chef waits for your subsequent denial but when it never comes, he smiles knowingly and pats the counter softly. He doesn’t offer his usual chiding remark. There’s no reason to anymore and instead he turns to fix your bowls. The soup will take 8 minutes to prepare. You have 8 minutes to sit here with Tendou and ask him everything you want to ask before you both become inevitably engrossed in your meals the way you always have. Tendou no longer adopts that signature spacey look he would have at times like these.

“How’s Paris?” you ask.

Tendou’s eyes slink along his lower water line and he turns his head—still resting on his cheek—to look at you. “It’s good. Kinda cold. Make sure you bring lots of jackets.”

You nod and think back to your apartment, filled with boxes that will be moved out and shipped ahead to Tendou’s Parisian apartment. All of your things, your life, are packed into those boxes. Scores of memories and matter, evidence of the years spent with him, neatly organized to be transplanted somewhere else. The apartment itself doesn’t matter much though, your home, you’ve found, is wherever he is.

“Yeah? How’s school?” You lean forward to be closer to him.

“Really good,” he sighs a little. “I’m really happy. Gonna be happier when you’re out there to see me graduate though.”

“I’ll be there to see the other stuff too, like when you open your own shop.”

“Mhm,” he laughs a little. “Did I send you the picture of the new place I was thinking of?”

You shake your head a little. “Not yet, show me now.”

Satori gives you an excited grin before he pulls out his phone to show you. The tab is already open on his phone, like he’d been staring at it only moments earlier and daydreaming about his future there. It’s on a street corner with big glass windows. The space looks empty from the photos, already cleared out and ready for him to move in.

You can just barely see past the clear glass door into the cozy space inside. In fact, it looks to be only a little larger than the ramen shop you’re in now.

“It’s got an apartment upstairs,” he says, a little quieter now. “I was thinking we could tour it once you get out there. I’ve already put in an application.”

You bite back a giddy smile, the prospect of living with him becoming more real as he talks to you about it. There are several things you’re grateful for since you started seeing him, though perhaps one of your favorites is his continued openness with his wants and feelings. Even this small conversation makes you feel loved in a way that you have trouble describing. It’s so full that you have trouble swallowing it.

“‘Course, you’ll stay with me in my old apartment till it’s all squared away,” he smiles a little. “I’ve got enough room, though it might be a little tight.”

“I hope so,” you laugh a little, rolling your eyes. “I’m really relieved.”

“Relieved? Why?” He gives you a small laugh. “You like being that close to me?”

You shrug a little, rolling your eyes at his gentle tease. “I was worried you’d get out there and realize everything was wrong… or something.”

“Weird of you, but okay,” he laughs a little, playing with your hand on the table.

“Though you’d really be fine anywhere,” you laugh a little. “I think you’re just that kind of person, Satori.”

“Only if you’re in my corner,” he says, giving you a sly grin. You shove his arm at the cheesy remark. Despite dating for a little over a year now, things like that catch you off guard. After all, in hindsight, being with him like this was the next natural step, you’d just been too stubborn to see it.

It’s been a long while since the two of you have spoken in person and you soak him up like sunshine. He seeps into your skin through proximity alone. The distance made you nervous at first. Though you’ve gotten over the initial lie that separated and then brought you together, for some reason there was still some part of you that felt that when Satori left for Paris, he was leaving forever. You know now that that feeling was just your affection for him, but it doesn’t make the relief any less sweet.

You can recall the teary-eyed confession he made like it was yesterday. The image of him with his hands at his side, asking if you loved him is burned into your brain. If you could go back, you don’t think you would change a thing. Your only regret was not being able to formulate those vague feelings which became so overpowering earlier. If you’d known earlier, you’d have been able to have loved him longer. You’d have been able to consciously love him the way you do now, the way you think you always have. Loving Satori comes easily, like breathing, up until that summer you’d just been too young and dumb to see it, your head underwater. It’s only been a little over a year, but hindsight is 20/20.

When silence falls over the two of you, you lean close and let him scroll through the pictures from his time in France. You’re so deeply content. You’re so prepared to move to be near him, so ready to take that next leap and follow where he goes. It’s a secure feeling, one that grounds you in the moment.

The chef places two bowls in front of you and Satori perks up, sliding his phone away and moving to crack garlic into his soup. He hands you the chili oil, remembering how you like yours and you smile warmly when his eyes meet yours. If you could, you’d kiss him right now just for remembering. The smell of ramen wafts up in thick clouds of steam, hitting your face with warm and heavy moisture as you lean over it and inhale.

“It’s none of my business but,” the chef says, clearing his throat a little, “you both have been coming here for a long time and I think you’ve grown into fine young people. Take care of each other.”

You’re too emotional to find the words, but the chef looks at you with something of a fond stare. He’s known you both long enough to understand to some degree how long it’s taken to get where you are. You stare with a childlike wonder, unable to say anything to this man who created the space you found so inviting through your adolescence, but Satori finds the words easily.

“It’ll be my privilege,” he smiles, the corners of his mouth turning.

It’s such a simple statement, but it’s definitive and somewhat serious for Tendou. It implies longevity, the kind that lasts a lifetime. He sounds so certain of himself that you find yourself nodding firmly beside him, heat rushing to your cheeks.

“Eat up, kids,” the chef smiles, glancing between you both and patting the counter with a smile.

Tendou thanks him and you stare at the noodles in your bowl, feeling oddly introspective. What you’re feeling now is not quite elation, nor is it indifference. The best you could describe it is as a hopeful nostalgia. Beside you, Tendou begins to slurp at his noodles and when you glance sideways at him, he meets you in the middle. You can’t help but mirror him when he smiles around his chopsticks.

You eat your ramen through idle conversation. Tendou talks about his future shop and you talk about the job you’ve managed to secure overseas with your previous experience from the company you’ve worked at the past year. You both have stable jobs now and it’s strange to talk about your future together as if it has already arrived.

Suddenly, you are in your third year again, discussing futures that have long passed after an evening practice. Satori is in his volleyball sweater, concealing a sweat-drenched uniform, and you are wearing your skirt with sweatpants underneath it. That’s what this feels like. You’re no longer in the in-between. There is no precarious balance between past and present. There is only future. There’s only the future that you’re living in and the one you’ve both begun to make with each other. The in-between, that space between adulthood and adolescence where present and future find their middle ground, is finally beyond you. Though you can sit here and glance behind to recall all of those little choices, you’re here now, already arrived at the place where all of it has always led you.

Two people, two collections of memories, each winding and twisting in their own individual ways. They’re what makes you both, the decisions that have brought you to this inevitable finish and this endless beginning. You remember the choice to say yes and it is with a nostalgic fondness that you realize, in all of your future glory, that there are more choices to come.

In this little ramen shop where your past meets your future, you and Tendou Satori, the boy you’ve known since 13, in the after.

#tendou x reader #tendou satori x reader #tendou x reader smut #tendou satori smut #tendou smut #satori x reader #[ 📕 – writing ]#WAAAGHHH OKAY TEE HEE IM FINALLY POSTING SOMETHING NEW LOLL

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crimsonbubble · 3 months

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Hi it's anon who was hornyspeaking about Johnny's nose UR SO RIGHT ABOUT THICK PPL!!! I was thinking about MK1 men, I feel like none of them would turn their nose up at thicker!reader but i feel like some of them would actively pursue them.

I feel like it's just obvious Johnny would like thicker people. He'd always have his hands grabbing or touching you in some way and would def squeeze your softer parts just to watch them bounce back into place. Not to be cliche but look me in the eyes and try to tell me this man wouldn't buy you things that show off your body and accentuates every gorgeous curve and fold like c'mon. Would also make some corny ass comments like "my ears are cold, can I use your thighs to worn them?" or something like that.

Kung Lao would be similar to Johnny but I feel like he would tease you more about it. Not in a malicious way, but more of an affectionate way, calling you curvy girl/pretty boy/my little pudge while wrapping himself around you from behind and just lovingly squeezing the softness of your lower belly. I think he'd also playfully pinch the soft parts of your thighs, your arms, your waist and just smirk when you squirm at how sensitive and ticklish they are.

I feel like Syzoth would be a very touchy feely boyfriend since he's cold-blooded, so of course having a chubbier partner = more warmth and softness to curl up against and cuddle with. Would absolutely nuzzle his face into your stomach so lovingly, holding your thighs to gently press them into his face as he lays down and uses your soft tummy as a pillow, you're like his own little sunning rock. He's almost in tears at just how soft your skin is and how good it feels to just hold you in his arms and would be telling you how much he loves you the entire time.

Bi-Han wouldn't be as open about it, not because he's ashamed of having a thicker partner (quite the opposite) he just doesn't like to admit any weaknesses he might have. He would try and chalk it up to something along the lines of you having a more fertile body and being more likely to produce an heir for the Lin Kuei or something but in reality he just can't keep his eyes off your body, and when you're not around he can't keep you off his mind. Would also like to show you off as a status symbol, seeing you as proof of how powerful he is, priding himself on being able to keep you pampered and taken care of.

Liu Kang just appreciates beauty when he sees it, and he thinks your body is the most beautiful thing he's ever created. Very much a soft dom and would be heavy into body worship, so having a chubbier partner just means more to worship and lavish with affection. Mans would BURY himself in your softness. You can tell he's immortal because he spends so long kissing and caressing and praising every inch of your body like he has all the time in the world, which he does, so you're both gonna be there for a long time.

Sorry to ramble this is mostly projection I just needed to unleash my thoughts somewhere RAHHH I LOVE THICKER!READER‼️💥

cw. suggestive, gn!reader, thicker!reader, mentions of pregnancy *not proofread, just pure horny

[BRO THIS ASK IS LONG AS FUCK, still answered it tho]

Johnny Cage

Casual Sunday lie-ins

Lounging on the couch with his head resting on your thighs

He’s the type to lose his mind when you wear form fitting clothes

Like anything that highlights and accentuates your curves good lord he's falling to his knees

And it doesn’t matter how many times he’s seen you hear tight fitting clothes, he will be bricked up every time

Kung Lao

He’s a very physical lover

Hugs, cuddles, snuggles, and any type of skin ship he can think of it benign used

Finds amusement in pinching at your waist and thighs

He likes how you frown at him for a second before going back to what you were doing

He always keeps a hand on your belly when he’ss between your thighs

He also loves to show off how strong he is so-

Syzoth

Soft and warm tummy and thighs means soft and warm pillows

It’s like he wants to be under your skin anytime that he clings to you

But he’s got the cutest pout and the prettiest eyes so you can’t help but give into him

Bihan

Bihan trying to avoid staring at you for too long bc all he can stare at are your hips

He had a thought of you being pregnant once and it’s been haunting him since

Literally can not look at you without getting hot under the collar

He works hard so he can show of how well taken care of you are

But seriously though, he stares at your hips too much

Just let him give you a child, help him produce an heir

Liu Kang

He has mastered the art of seeing the beauty is everyone and everything

You are no exception

There is a glow to you that outmatches everyone

There is something so alluring about your soft figure that has all of Liu Kang’s primal urges resurfacing

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xxxbabyinatrenchcoatxxx · 8 months

Text

I love Andrew Minyard as a criminal justice major. Just imagine the possibilities that could happen!! He'd 100% write a paper about nature vs nurture that is about himself and Neil (only if you read between the lines can you tell that tho)

Oh man!! An idea is coming into my head as I think about this!!

Okay, okay, so imagine the following.

Andrew is in his The Serial Killer's Psyche class when he learns about the more recent recent killers, including The Baltimore Butcher.

He lowkey becomes fascinated with the whole thing.

(It's the knives)

And goes down a rabbit hole looking into anything and everything regarding the Wesninski family.

He learns that Nathan was married and had a son, Nathaniel, with a member of another known mafia family from across the Atlantic, Mary.

The son would be the perfect killing machine for these two.

But then he learns that Mary and Nathaniel died tragically in an unknown form.

"The family wants to keep their privacy in these hard times." The press says.

Despite Andrew researching for days (he even went to the library once!) He can't find any record of how they died, but their death certificates have the same time stamp on them so at least he knows they died at the same time.

After finding out as much as he can about the family, he is (and he would never admit this to anyone at all ever) solely on the side of the cops in believing that Nathan Wesninski is The Baltimore Butcher despite there not being enough evidence, etc etc.

Having learned all he could, he all but forgets about the Wesninski family.

Fast forward to the next semester when Kevin tells him they are going to Arizona because he found them a new striker.

As Neil is trying to catch his breath from Andrew hitting him, Andrew is suddenly excepiencing a new phenomenon to him "familiarity"

For some reason, this flight risk reminds him of someone, but he can't quite remember who.

This is new.

Not remembering something.

Is his memory failing him for the first time ever?

He blames it on his meds and moves on

Everytime he sees Neil after he moves to Palmetto, he has the same feeling.

Ever. Single. Time.

It is increasingly aggravating and intirely too intresting.

After weeks spent trying to remember who Neil reminded him of, filing through every person he's ever encountered, and Neil's skitish behavior, he decided that Neil must be a threat.

Why else would his instincts tell him not to trust Neil?

Why didn't he react to the Moriyamas coming south that fall?

Why couldn't he fucking remember where he knew Neil from???

His shell cracked a little bit and he decided on impulse that Neil was going to Eden's with them

Andrew was practically vibrating with rage by the end of that night.

"Who are you?" Andrew asked.

"Wha- I don't understand? I'm Neil?"

"No. I know you, but I've never seen you before." Andrew watched as Neil tensed, wondering what was running through the runners head.

"We don't know each other." Neil made as if to walk away, but he didn't make it far before he had to grab the wall to stabilize himself.

"I know you." Andrew said, grabbing his shoulder.

"No, you don't." Neil shoved him.

"Do you work for the Moriyamas?"

"You think I'm a mole?" Neil scoffed, but it was more slurred with the drugs in his system.

"You're something. And I know how to properly dispose of a body." Andrew said lowly, threatingly, putting both hands on either side of Neil, caging him him.

"So do I." Neil's voice was steady, and he shoved Andrew back as far as he could before taking off.

Neil feeds Andrew half-truths the next day at Wymacks, saying that he must have seen him on the street somewhere. He honestly had no idea why Andrew recognized him.

Andrew doesn't believe that, but he believes Neil's half-truths about his family and lets him go.

Eventually, the familiar feeling is exchanged with actual recognition, and the books continue on as normal

UNTIL

Andrew gets out of Easthaven and sees Neil with his blue eyes and Aubrun hair and brused face, and Andrew freezes for only a moment.

But for that moment, it's like a Christmas tree lighting up in Andrew's head.

Neurons firing and connecting dots he didn't know went to together.

Nathaniel Wesninski stood next to his family

Nathaniel Wesninski protected his family while he was in rehab

Nathaniel Wesninski has been alone with Kevin every night for the past 4 months

Nathaniel Wesninksi was a runaway

Nathaniel Wesninski was alive

Nathaniel Wesninski

Andrew doesn't know what to do with this information yet, so he does nothing

He goes about his decided itinerary for the day

He still doesn't know what to do until "I never understood why he liked knives."

Everyone else was thinking Riko, but Andrew was thinking Nathan.

He decides then and there that he's not going to say anything until Neil tells him.

Neil's "I'm Nathaniel" hits Andrew like a gut punch.

He already knew it but now it's confirmed.

When Neil goes missing, Andrew was the first to tell coach about Nathan's release from prison.

He persuades Coach (read: stares down repeating "Baltimore") to take them to Baltimore because that's where Neil is.

Books go on as normal

Life seemingly goes back to normal after summer break.

They start the new semester with significantly fewer worries, and Neil is figuring out his newfound freedom.

Andrew is in his Advanced Psychology class when Nathan Wesninski is brought up again.

The professor - fortunately for her sake - doesn't mention Neil or Nathaniel at all but assigned them an imaginative assignment

They are to pick a serial killer and study what is known about their at home life and write a paper about what it might be like to grow up in that kind of enviroment

Andrew was going to ignore this assignment, but Neil found out and thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Neil finds out that Andrew was entirely too fascinated by the Wesninski family.

"You liked me before you even met me."

Eventually, they decided that Andrew didn't have to write the paper.

"Mr. Minyard. It is your turn to present."

Andrew and Neil walk to the front.

"This was a single person assignment, Mr. Minyard."

"I think a first-hand account is better than anything I could have come up with. Don't you think?"

"First hand?"

"Hello Andrew's classmates. I'm Nathaniel Wesninski, but please call me Neil. Fair warning. If you ever call me Nathaniel, I will kill you."

They spend the rest of the class basically ragging on Nathan the entire time

#aftg #all for the game #andrew minyard #neil josten #the foxes #aftg neil #the foxhole court #andriel #the raven king #the kings men #aftg au #criminal justice major Andrew Minyard

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shalpilot · 3 months

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do you ever think about how killer is 4 years older than kid. as adults that's not a huge age gap but growing up killer was larger, older, and probably had to take of himself and kid. how long do you think he has designated himself as kid's protector? what sacrifices might he have made for kid when they were growing up? when kid was 9 and killer was 13. when kid was 13 and killer 17. did he ever really shed the feeling of responsibility for kid's safety after kid grew up and became his captain? does he ever regret after wano following him? of course he loves him, but some fates might be worse than death. killer would follow kid into hell but how long can he keep charging after kid into unwinnable battles? how many sacrifices will he have to make? after wano does kid ever hear killer's laugh without feeling like he wants to throw up? does ever he think killer would have been better off loving someone else?

i hate them i hate them so much

I think about it the most when I draw them as kids and realize I have no idea what the hell a “child development” is /j

As someone who’s been the youngest in my friend groups for…ever… I’ve never been on the other side of that kind of dynamic but I can imagine that somewhere along the line Killer sat down and was like ohhhh my god. Oh my god he doesn’t need me to protect him anymore and just had a little moment of … do I feel happy? do I feel proud? I think he’d quickly realize that Kid does still need him even if it’s not to keep him from getting his head caved in. I can also imagine they might’ve had a few nasty fights about Kid being Killer’s captain now and things ARE different and you HAVE to listen to me I’m the CAPTAIN it doesn’t MATTER what you think

They make up tho… clearly

NOW. FOLLOWING KID INTO UNWINNABLE BATTLES. AUUUGGHHHAARGHH. This is me speaking as Shal Kid stresses me out SO much can he sit down for five minutes maybe. He doesn’t have to fight EVERY yonko actually he already got the one can he pl. please. so I would think Killer feels this x100 but at the same time he *also* likes running into battles but would greatly prefer. If Kid would give a little warning beforehand. Like Killer’s still gonna do it he will follow him anywhere but the years that have been shaved off his life by his fucking idiot partner can not be insubstantial.

Sacrifices… Killer and WCI Sanji would get along wouldnt they /j Killer is shown time and time again to be willing to give up EVERYTHING for Kid unquestionably and it makes me SICK. He’s Kid’s partner, yes, but he sees himself as expendable if it means Kid gets to keep on living. And Kid doesn’t even know!!!!! Does Killer think Kid would want this??? Does he really believe Kid would want his partner giving up his life for his sake?? what if I screamed what if I yelled so loud

When I think about how Kid sees Killer after Wano I go into a deep dark hole and I cry a little bit. I feel like Kid could read Killer’s emotions perfectly even under the mask but now that non-verbal communication has been shattered. And even when talking it’s impossible to tell how Killer really feels about something and that must really put a fucking strain on communication 😃👍👍 I have a lot of thoughts on some parts of tbis but they’re like. Kinda heavy and I haven’t thought of how to verbalize them quite yet?? but boiling it down… Kid pulling away because he doesn’t want to overstep while Killer’s suffering and Killer wanting to beg Kid to stay by his side but he can’t !! :)))))))) YEOWCH!!

They are perfect for each other and they deserve each other and I wish they had an easier life.

#ask shal #kidkiller

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friendly-alien-fucker · 2 years

Note

Wee woo! I was wondering if you could write a male Yautja with a protective human mate? Even tho humans are WAY weaker.

What if another Yautja was insulting y/n, they doesn’t really care, then y/n’s mates comes out and is about to start shit. Then the rude Yautja insults their mate, before hubby can do anything to protect their honor little y/n knocks the guy tf out. What did we learn? Don’t talk shit about y/n’s mate.

Alien husband be like🧍‍♂️hold up-

Sorry if that was super specific, it’s been on my mind for a while and I haven’t been able to pleasingly write it for myself T^T

Your writing gives me something to look forward too at the end of a long, exhausting day. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. <3

A Yautja with a very protective human mate

Thank you very much for this request, @looseratinthegarage , I hope I met your expectations! 💖

Warnings: cussing, insults, fighting but nothing too serious

________________________________________

You weren't quite popular amongst your alien shipmates. Not that it was much different from when you lived among humans, but at least they usually had the decency to wait until you left the room to talk shit about you.

Here, yautja would talk about you in plain sight, often looking at you while they did so. And instead of insults being muttered under their breath, they'd sometimes even stop you in your tracks just to let you know how little they valued your existence. They were obviously trying to get under your skin, which is why you tried so hard to just ignore their comments.

If you're being honest, you didn't mind them that much anyways. It was actually kinda refreshing- having people tell you what's on their mind for a change, even if it was negative.

But even then, you had to draw the line somewhere.

Today was Saturday, or at least you thought it was. Dates kind of blurred together since you moved onto the ship, but you still tried to retain some sort of routine. You had made some plans with your mate today since they didn't plan to go on a hunt, and you'd long been waiting to do something romantic for them. Well, as romantic as it can be when your life is reduced to a ship on which most areas you didn't have access to.

Looking yourself up and down in the mirror, you flashed a smile before taking your pocketknife and hiding it somewhere with easy access. It was almost time for your mate to arrive, and you'd intentionally picked an outfit you knew they enjoyed seeing you in.

With a kick in your step, you turned around to leave and made your way to your mate's quarters, only to meet them about halfway there.

"ah, there you are." you said and extended your hand, them gladly taking it, purring audibly as they did so "Are you excited?"

"You always excite me." they purred, grinning as they saw the blood rushing to your cheeks. You coughed, pulling on their arm as you led them to your first destination.

"yeah, yeah. You can tease me later. Right now we've got better things to do."

They tilted their head at you, having no problem keeping up even with you practically running to get where you wanted to go. "Which are?" they questioned.

"Patience." You scolded them, before you two turned a corner and got to one of the more populated areas of the ship. Something they didn't seem too fond of, gripping your hand so tight it almost hurt.

You stroked it reassuringly, looking up at them with a soft smile. They always worried so much about you, especially when around others of their kind. And though you understood why, you didn't want them to worry on your date. You wanted to make them feel good.

"hey, it's alright. C'mon, let me show you what I've planned for us." you took their hand up to your mouth to kiss it, before leading them into one of the rooms, which was filled with hand weapons and a large training area.

You had to hold in your laughter as you saw the question marks appear above their head.

"You...want me to train?" They asked confused. They were training a lot already, did you not think they were doing enough? Were you questioning their strength? They quickly shook that thought away. You had reassured them many times that you felt safe with them.

Then perhaps...

"I see." they hummed, taking one of larger blades and flexing their muscles. "You wish to watch me train, then?"

You laughed at this, gently taking the weapon and putting it back in it's place before taking a smaller one for yourself. You placed it's tip to your mate's chest threateningly, but they didn't as much as flinch as they looked down at you and raised an eyebrow. Cocky bastard... You lovingly cursed them in your mind

"Sort of. I want you to teach me." you say as you put the weapon back in it's place "You always worry so much, I thought this would help you sleep better knowing I could defend myself if the need arises." with delight, you watched as their eyes lit up at this and they moved towards you, obviously liking the idea.

Though before they could give you your first instructions, a loud growl came from behind, interrupting your little moment.

Annoyed, you spun around, meeting with the face of a yautia you've had the displeasure meeting before, but neglected to tell your mate in fear they might start a scene. Though obviously your efforts were now in vain.

"Why are you here?" They growled, not bothering to bend their back to look you in the eye, and instead puffing out their chest and, quite literally, looking down on you. "Do you enjoy taking up others space, ooman? Do you not realize that nobody wants you here?"

You rolled your eyes at their words. Can't you guys come up with something creative for once?

Getting ready to make a snarky remark, you got pushed back by your mate before you could open your mouth. Growling at them and flaring their mandibles, they stood before you, ready to defend your honor. You sighed, there it is. The Scene.

The other Yautja imitated your mate's stance, now directing their uncreative insults at them.

"And you, do you think there's any worth in that ooman you're mating? Or are you that incapable with your own species that you have to resort to... this" they spat, nodding in your direction.

Okay. Maybe a scene wouldn't be too bad right now.

Your mate was just about claw at them, when you stepped in. And before either of them could react you lurched forward to grab at their shoulder, using your leg to trip them and send them flying on their back. With a loud thud, they met with the ground, any attempts to get back at you dying as they saw the knife pressed firmly against their neck.

It was quiet for a few seconds as both of them stared at you in awe. Eventually, your mate stepped forward to place a warm hand on your shoulder. Their tone calm, but the look in their eyes and the loud purring showing just how ecstatic they were with what you just did.

"You're right little one, this does alleviate some of my worry."

#- and then they fcked lol #okay no but seriously #I really enjoyed this request even if it ended up being a little short but sometimes it just be like that yk #i hope you still liked it!#alien vs predator #yautja #alien #slasher #💚original post💚#yautja x reader #the predator #yautja x human #(also thank you for the nice words they really made my evening <3)

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ourflagmeansgayrights · 7 months

Text

ofmd s2e1 rewatch where i pause to jot down my thoughts and other random shit

not quite a reaction post bc i've already watched the whole thing. not quite a liveblog bc it's one post and it's probably gonna take me a full hour to get through a 28 minute episode at the rate of pausing and typing i'll be doing

s2e1, s2e2, s2e3, s2e4, s2e5, s2e6, s2e7, s2e8

anyway, pirate time:

i love how much fun con is having choking on his own blood

dream!stede's extremely teary face right before he takes off running down the beach is doing psychic damage to me

also dream!stede's stupid ridiculous outfit with all the long ribbons and shit...

ed and stede make contact so hard shjfkhsgjkfd the loud OUGH sounds from both of them

also the return of ed's old beard! i didnt expect to see her at all this season, so that was a surprise.

"babe" "love" im tearing out my own hair

stede has yet to learn that ripping ass near your beloved can be a love language

stede is a terrible fucking roommate just deal with wee john's gas in silence like the rest of them. goddamn.

WHO HAS THE OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH TRAMP STAMP. WHO IS THAT.

i like when the background OST is familiar to me lol the little strings when stede starts his letter throwing me back to s1

olu: that–that's the swede the swede: Im the swede roach: he's single ;) me: *pissing my pants with laughter*

also the direct confirmation that the swede literally doesn't have a name. incredible

shjkfhdhfkj the crew encouraging him. stede's "it's okay" and roach "be brave" im CRYINGGGGG

stede doing customer service is something that can be so personal. "reservation?" "eat my fuckin' shit" "right! walk-ins, then" average restaurant experience

the random background guy saying "my favorite hand!" abt getting stabbed in the hand is making me giggle. i love the humor on this show

why does stede have so much shoulder movement going on when he's walking through the bar. whore behavior.

"this is for mom!" sorry but i want to know more abt whatever's going on there

also the purple mohawk. dope.

buttons is so distressed LET HIM RETURN TO THE SEA THESE CONDITIONS ARE INHUMANE

"i know the odds of you finding this are slim but so were the odds of us finding each other in the first place" IM RIPPING OFF MY OWN SKIN

also stede's lil sad hopeful smile after throwing the bottle... i care him

i love how they make this wedding fucking suck so we don't feel too bad abt the whole massacre thing. "the natural condition of humanity is base and vile. it is the obligation of people of standing, such as yourselves, to elevate the common human rabble through the sacred transaction of matrimony" if i was at a wedding and the officiant said that i'd also start killing people probably

yayy murder montage :)

FANG BREAKING THAT GUY'S SPINE OVER HIS KNEE

the whole cake scene is so fucking funny im sorry. i love u jim drawing the line at attacking a shitty wedding. i love u archie who wasn't here for the good old days so you dont really see a problem with how things are. i love u frenchie with ur box in ur brain that u never open again. i love u fang it's gonna get better i swear. i love u frenchie again bc u just took the cake right out of fang's hands while he was fucking sobbing hfjhgkjhdkjkf

I MISS IVAN JUSTICE FOR IVAN. wish they could've said he'd just fucked off somewhere instead of dying but i think that would've raised the question of why hasn't anyone else fucked off since they all seem so miserable

very relieved that stede isn't taking the racist/antisemitic caricature drawings of ed to make like a boyfriend scrapbook like some people were theorizing. would've been overkill if after episode 4 from last season stede still didn't realize that ed hated these sorts of depictions of him.

INTERESTING DETAIL THO the background music in this scene is "a pirate's life" aka the song frenchie sang in the pilot. it's an instrumental version obviously but yeah i recognize that tune

also more cool background ppl with dyed hair man i love this show

zheng yi sao flirting with olu is so good. he deserves it.

how nice of ed to offer his drugs to the crew. sharing is caring.

also it's so funny to me that the thing izzy is tormented by is ed saying "you can't do the job, someone else will" the toe thing's happened three times and apparently that was fine but the thing the show edits together right before izzy breaks down into the most pathetic aheemheem whimpers isn't any of that it's ed threatening to fire him

also they cut ed throwing knives at izzy!! what the hell.

releasing the clip of izzy crying kinda ruined it for me when it came time to watch it in the show bc i watched it several times since it dropped and now seeing it in context i was like "ok i've seen this already fast forward." i mean i didnt fast forward through it but i did kinda zone out bc i've seen this bit already. this post kinda sums up my thoughts on it

"trifling ingrate plan" dshkjfshgdskhfjkhgkjh

"SEMI-CLEAN WATER"

JACKIE CALLING THE SWEDE "BOO CAKES"

"i know that guy we had breakfast together!" "you'll be having a lot of breakfasts-es together" "oh, okay" i fucking love this whole dynamic like i can tell they're writing the swede out of most of the episodes for budget reasons (sorry nat faxon) but by god do they give him such an excellent fucking send-off. can't wait to see him again when he's in his trophy husband number 20 era

roach is upset abt not being able to cook, buttons is tied up so he doesn't go running back to the sea (i assume). stede you are not giving your crew the environment they need to thrive.

olu being an optimist :)

buttons opens his mouth to drink the rain and in the background u can see roach yanking the rope around buttons back fhdjskgfjhgkjfh STEDE YOUR SEA WITCH CANNOT THRIVE IN THESE CONDITIONS

stede tries to make things sound good in his bottle letters to ed but out loud he says his actual insecurities... it's so fucking tasty tho that he thinks ed could be doing better without him and THAT'S why he's been stalling so much. not afraid for his life even a little bit he just assumes he's not wanted. brb i have to cry now

"im sorry if that's a little bit creepy" "you are creepy" in this scene where they're soaked from the rain. ofmd said this prince ricky guys is creepy and wet.

stede's fucking FACE when prince ricky says "you're my hero" his fucking "clearly you dont own an air fryer" face I CANT STAND HIMMMMMM (affectionate)

prince ricky "these rubes" "men of our standing" yeah i cant fucking stand this guy (derogatory) i love how he's barely even in this episode

stede's face when the swede is talking abt how happy he is with jackie... my man believes in love so much im gonna cry

also in what fucking way does the swede owe them a life debt. roach and buttons literally tried to eat him

izzy's "you know me better than anyone knows me and i daresay the same about you" this is literally so false i dont even know where to begin. izzy in e6 being like "if i didnt know any better i'd think maybe ed might possibly maybe be actually enjoying bonnet's company" while ed and stede are giggling and making each other friendship bracelets. this guy doesn't know ed at all.

also i cant get over how izzy wont make eye contact he's like staring blankly into the middle distance delivering these lines so flatly until he goes to say "i have... love for you" and in that moment he looks like he'd rather ed were feeding him more toes.

"im worried about you, we all are" not gonna lie my dude you've had a weird way of showing it thus far. where was all that worry when you told him he was better off dead than wearing a robe and singing songs?? where was that fucking love then?

and NOW izzy wants to talk it through. izzy literally voted to make blackbeard great again and now he wants to give open communication a chance???

lmao there's a limit to how many characters can be in a bulleted list so here's fucking. part two. on the same post:

ed asking everyone if the vibe is poisonous and fang cant stop crying and ed's face is just like "eh good enough" im fdhksgfkjtdkh

anyway ed with a loaded gun under his chin talking to himself is hurting me so fucking much actually. ed my beloved babygirl for whom i would die. this poor traumatized man. yes he is making this workplace toxic as hell but god. GOD. im gonna throw up.

the way ed is so fucking casual about shooting izzy in the leg. just calm and jovial as he promotes frenchie to first mate. stepping over izzy all crumpled on the floor. everything about this is so fucking good. i mean it's horrible for ed and everyone around him but for me watching the show this shit is DELICIOUS. i love when the pirates get violent and unhinged i love when this shit gets fucked up. ed's mental state is so bad right now and it is causing me severe anguish but also it is so tasty. fuck.

anyway frenchie trying to turn down the promotion fhjkghdfjkhf

the cut to the swede performing the husbandly duties is INSANE. COMPLETE TONAL WHIPLASH. I LOVE THIS SHOW.

"fuck those hammies up!" spanish jackie i love you

black pete why are you so fucking loud AND WHY WOULD YOU JIX IT LIKE THAT???

why is prince ricky so small. he's like a full head shorter than stede. also this guy is insufferable i love how stede just fucking abandons him fhjkgdhkdfghkj

"the calf muscle is the most mysterious of alllll the muscles" what the FUCK does that even mean. oh swede i will miss you

NOSE REMOVAL FUCK YES. I LOVE THIS SHOW.

obsessed with the swede playing dumb. the dramatic gasp. "wow, so bad!" fhjsghdkjf

"aint you that soup bitch?" "im the money bitch" i love women.

sfdsjkh spanish jackie being into double-crossing. and slapping the swede's ass on the way out. i love this show

i love how zheng says "this much indigo is worth three times what i paid" while spanish jackie and the husbands are still like, right there. and they just don't hear that bit. incredible.

OUGH the back of jim's weird rope armor looks like a ribcage that's so cool

i love how jim is so fucking bad at telling this story. i love how the monkey's paw comes into it. i love fang asking them to do the voice. i love archie trying to hold back her laughter i love jim and fang giggling together I LOVE THIS SHOW

ed's fucking voice breaking through his whole convo with frenchie. im tearing out my own teeth

HEY DID YOU GUYS KNOW THEY HAVE POST-CREDITS SCENES IN THIS SEASON?????????? WHAT THE HELL

i take back what i said about jim being bad at telling this story their version is so much fucking better. squeaky voice "I pray to you, Dark Lord, to make me real flesh! I want to be real flesh!" IM FUCKING OBSESSED. JIM I WOULD DIE FOR YOU

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yanderes-galore · 1 year

Note

Primis Ritchofen with a Player Darling that ended up inside the game somehow? No idea how she would've gotten in tho, but how would he react upon meeting her?

Ohh, so this is not only self-aware but reality warping :0 Sure! Writing this made me like Primis even more ☺️

Yandere! Primis Richtofen with Player! Darling

Short Concept

Pairing: Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Reality warping, Self-aware yandere, Kidnapping, Possessive behavior, Slight overprotective behavior, Forced kissing, Forced affection, Implied intimacy, Slight manipulation, Delusional behavior, Blood mention, Gun mention, Forced relationship

A request like this actually sounds plausible in this universe (sort of-).

Ultimis Dempsey even has self-aware lines in game.

It makes sense due to all the dimensional travel Primis Richtofen would feel your presence.

He isn't quite sure why or what you are to him.

Just that he knows there's a comforting presence aiding his every action.

The others may feel it, but he seems to be the only one who takes the most comfort from it.

It's like he feels lost without this feeling-

Pfft, must be the ore. He has a job to do.

That's how you two communicate at first.

Strange feelings that seem unexplainable to him.

You getting reality warped into the game sounds insane.

It is, although it feels explainable in his universe.

Among the zombie hordes you zap in, falling through some sort of space gate before awakening in a new yet familiar land.

One that terrifies you with disturbing views and rotting smells.

It's then you encounter Primis, the whole crew straight from your game.

Everything feels too real, you can't be dreaming.

You're dragged to somewhere safe, although you're interrogated heavily.

They all bark questions at you.

Although, Richtofen is the only one who seems so deep in thought.

That feeling he gets... it's stronger with you.

That strange link he feels is strongest with you.

"You... tell me more about where you're from. I have to know."

You tell your story the best you can.

You don't know why you're here.

But you do know in your world, this is a game.

You're the player, their guide.

His guide.

Realizing how important you are, Richtofen arms you with whatever they have available.

"Keep this... player, alive. What is your name anyways?"

"(Y/N). Aside from games... I don't have much experience with guns-"

"You'll learn. Trust me, I did."

It's then you join the group, looking for clues on how to get home.

Meanwhile, the longer Richtofen is with you, he grows to enjoy this connection between you.

This... string of fate between you calls to him.

He has his own story to follow, but he wants you included in it.

You're (Y/N), his player.

A being so similar yet unlike him, trapped in a dimension you don't belong.

Part of him pities you for being involved in all of this.

Although, he is excited at the same time to meet you.

Sometimes his personality is grim, though with you he leans more towards cheerful.

His paranoia increases with you around due to the zombies.

The idea of you being hurt...

The idea of losing a key part to his existence...

It disturbs him to think about.

He's unskilled at combat like you at first, the two of you figure it out luckily.

Down time is something you all need but doesn't come often.

When it does, Richtofen is glued to learning about you.

He goes from being cautious the first few times to growing... physically clingy.

Feeling the warmth of you against him is comforting.

You try to see his affection as friendly.

His hugs are awkward yet full of genuine care.

You have grown close to him over the journey you shared together

He's surprisingly a great friend and comrade.

Richtofen... feels different towards you.

He wants to worship you.

He wonders what your lips feel like-

Richtofen refuses to give up the comfort you give.

It'll take some time, though Richtofen may even be bold enough to act upon such deep desires.

"(Y/N)."

"Yeah, Edward? ... I can call you that, right?"

"Yes... yes you can. Do... you have anyone at home?"

"Anyone at home?"

"A lover, someone intimate?"

"Oh, Edward... you know I can't- I don't like what you're getting at-"

He shifts closer.

"Why? Why not?"

"You... don't exist in my world-"

"Are you afraid you'll get attached?"

"N-No-"

"If my world is a game in yours, then surely if I do this it won't matter, right?"

It's then he kisses you.

It feels comforting and wrong.

You tug on his vest, he holds you tightly.

Not enough...

He wants to be closer to you.

You pull away, panting before staring at his eyes.

Eyes full of desire.

"Edward...."

"It doesn't matter, does it? Whatever happens here may be undone if you leave... If you leave...."

He thinks on his own statement before pulling you closer.

"I want to come with you."

You try to spend the rest of your journey calming him.

He's being strange, you're altering too much.

Alas... Richtofen is too drunk on your warmth and taste to care.

He was not expecting to fall so far for you.

Every touch he gives is possessive.

He's under the delusion that you're his and he's yours.

You never even said your thoughts on the matter.

Perhaps what he says is true...

Whatever you do here with him won't matter when you go home.

Every hug, kiss, or anything further...

There may not even be evidence of it.

You still want to go home, however.

Much to Richtofen's dismay, you wish to leave.

This distresses him.

If you ever did find a way home, there's two ways he'd try to keep you.

One, he'd destroy your route home.

He'd kill whatever, he'd demolish whatever...

He's keeping you with him.

"Please do not struggle, dear! Did you really think I'd let you leave after everything we've done together!?"

Two, he'll sneak out with you.

You'll think you got home safely...

Only to feel strong bloodied arms around you.

"Feel free to show me around, darling. I plan on staying here for a long time."

He doesn't care how it happens.

As long as he's with you and keeps such a strong connection to you, he's happy.

#yandere call of duty zombies #yandere cod zombies #yandere primis richtofen #yandere self aware au

152 notes · View notes

saeyoungchoismaid · 2 years

Text

shut up and ride.

Pairing: Saeyoung Choi x f!reader

Genre: smut

Warnings: Revving/pedal pumping/cranking kink, car sex, blow/hand job (oral giving), deepthroating, tears/crying (in a good way tho), riding, praise, pet name princess and good girl, unprotected sex, switch!Saeyoung, switch!reader

Summary: Saeyoung meets you after an illegal street race and, yeah okay, he's down bad

Word Count: 5k words

A/N: Revving is sexual arousal from watching a person rev the engine of a vehicle, usually a person wearing high heeled shoes. (Omg the title. Haha, get it? Like shut up and drive. Like the song-)

Read on AO3

Kinktober Day 14 - Masterlist

Saeyoung can feel his heart racing as fast as the cars in front of him. He’s starting to get choked up, his breathing becoming labored. God, he has so much resting on this. Maybe Yoosung was right. Maybe he shouldn’t have placed a bet. But it’s his birthday! He can do whatever the fuck he wants!

Right?

His eyes follow the red vehicle as he leans forward in anticipation, it becoming nothing but a blur as it drives past his vision from just how fast it was going. Saeyoung has always been a car person, but he doesn’t think he could ever drive quite like this. I mean, these people are risking their lives. He wonders why some of them do it. Maybe for the money, the attention, the sex, the trophies and medals. Or maybe they just do it for the rush, for the adrenaline. Saeyoung can get that with the way his veins are filled with the addicting stuff right now. He feels like he’s on a high just watching them. He can’t imagine how it’d feel if he was the one actually driving.

To Saeyoung’s relief, the cherry red car soars across the finish line almost a solid second before the other car does. Saeyoung jumps up and starts to scream at the top of his lungs in joy, springing up and down alongside Yoosung. He can hear people around him tearing up tickets and cursing, sending glares to the both of them, but he can’t find it in himself to even pretend to care, flashing them a cocky grin as he starts making his way to the ticket booth.

“You were right! This is way better than an arcade! Thanks for bringing me here, man,” he says to Yoosung as he wraps an arm around his shoulder, rubbing his knuckles lightly over the blond locks.

“Hey! Stop it!” When he does, the shorter male grunts and rubs his head with a furrowed brow as he looks up at him before instantly bouncing back to his usual self. He really is like a golden retriever. “I told you to trust me!” Yoosung replies to Saeyoung’s earlier statement with a jab to the taller man’s arm.

Saeyoung can’t help but let out a puff of laughter, putting his hands up in defeat. “I know, I know. You can’t just not expect me to get nervous on our first date though, babe,” he jokes, sending the blond a shit-eating grin. Yoosung huffs as if he’s annoyed, but he can see the smile he’s trying so desperately to hide.

“Even if this was a date, this wouldn’t even be our first one, babe,” he replies, putting emphasis on the pet name, full-on grinning up at Saeyoung now.

“Awe, babe!” he coos, wrapping his best friend up in a hug and dramatically swinging him around. Yoosung laughs and returns the hug gladly. He’s always been an affectionate guy. “Nah, but for real,” Saeyoung starts as he sets him down, “I was just a little nervous is all, man. When you told me we were going somewhere else when you picked me up, I got a little worried.”

“Yeah, well, as your best friend, I know what you like and I knew you’d kill for an opportunity like this.”

“Say, remind me again how you found out about this,” Saeyoung says as he looks to his side at the younger male.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says as they reach the booth, handing both of their tickets over to cash their money in. As they’re watching the man behind the glass lick his fingers and begin counting the bills, someone strolls up behind them. The only reason Saeyoung even checks behind him is because of the familiar sound of heels clacking on the ground.

He turns to find a goddess behind him.

Well, she’s probably not actually a goddess, but she might as well be.

She’s checking her phone as she waits for her turn and Saeyoung can’t help but grin. He’s already on such a high that he couldn’t think of any possible downfalls to what he’s about to do, even if he tried.

“Sup,” he greets with an upward motion of his head, leaning against the booth’s counter.

She looks up and Saeyoung loses his breath a little. Is it even legal to be that attractive? Surely not.

“Hey,” she casually returns before looking back down at her phone, popping a bubble with her gum.

“Here to cash in your reward?” he guesses.

“Yup,” is her short reply, popping the last letter along with another bubble.

“Ah, so you betted on The Red Reaper too then?” he continues, his smile getting bigger.

To his surprise, she barks out a laugh and gives him a once over before her gaze returns right back to her phone.

“Yeah. Something like that,” is her vague reply, making Saeyoung hum as he purses his lips. Ah, a challenge. He likes a good challenge.

“Yeah, it’s actually my first time,” he brags, “I’ve never seen someone drive like that before. He’s really good!” At this, her thumb stops scrolling and she tilts her head back to look at him.

“He?” she asks, her head tilting to the side as her eyes roam him up and down.

“Uh, yeah?” he says confusedly. I mean, he guesses there’s a chance that it’s not a man, but that’s very slim. As a big car guy like himself, you meet a lot of people who are also big car people. Not very many of them tend to be women.

She only laughs again though and smirks over at him. Before he can ask her what’s so funny, the guy behind the glass starts saying something to him. He turns and watches as the man slides the envelope through the hole beneath the glass. Saeyoung grins once more as he snatches the envelope up.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about! Sweet, sweet cash!” he cheers after he places a big, fat kiss onto the white paper before holding it up in victory. Yoosung just laughs from beside him before stepping aside. He had betted on Purple Lightning, who to be fair came in second, so he didn’t win anything.

“Who knew five hundred dollars would be so small?” Yoosung jokes as he opens up Saeyoung’s envelope. The redhead doesn’t hear him though since he’s now gaping at the woman who was once standing behind him.

Did the booth tender just say-

“Alright, here you go, Ms. (L/n)! 100,000 big ones!” She hums as she picks up the envelope, thanking him as she grabs the zipper of her rubber jacket. This is when he notices her getup. She’s dressed like the drivers and their team. Does that mean-

His train of thought is interrupted when she unzips enough to show her bra, the hand holding the envelope sliding the package between the cup and strap before letting it go and zipping it back up. Saeyoung gulps as he watches the whole thing, his eyes finally trailing back to her face once she’s zipped her jacket back up. He freezes in his tracks though when his eyes meet hers, a big smirk on her face. How long has she been watching him?

“You’re welcome!” she calls to him as she spins around on a foot and starts to walk off.

“What?” he asks dumbfounded, his brain still trying to process what the fuck just happened. Did she just basically congratulate him on the free show she just gave him?

“You’re welcome,” she repeats. “For the money, I mean,” she further explains, turning to look at him over her shoulder and shooting him a wink. He looks down at the envelope, it feeling flimsy compared to hers which was stuffed to the brim.

Oh.

She’s the reason he won the money. Right.

“Wait!” he’s calling before he can think it through. To his surprise though, she actually turns around to look at him.

“Yes?” she asks with a raised brow, a cocky smile on her lips.

“I, uh…” he stammers, trying to think of something to say. “I’m sorry for assuming you’re a man. I jus-”

“Don’t worry about it. It happens all the time,” she brushes off, moving to turn to walk away again.

“It’s not okay though!” he shouts a little louder than necessary, causing passersby to look over at them. He winces before speaking again, much softer this time. “Can I, uh, see your car?” His grip on his envelope tightens as she stares him down, seemingly contemplating her answer. Just when he thinks she’s going to deny him, she shoots him a smile.

“Sure,” she agrees with a shrug, turning around for the third time and actually starting to put some distance between them.

“Cool! We get t-”

“Sorry, bud,” Saeyoung interrupts his friend. “Just me,” he explains, shooting him an apologetic smile before taking off after the beauty. Yoosung huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, rolling his eyes a bit.

“Why is he always the one that gets to get laid wherever we go?” he grumbles to himself before walking away from the booth to go look around at the other contestants’ cars.

Saeyoung catches up to the woman soon enough and can feel his veins buzzing with excitement. “What’s your name?” she suddenly speaks up, startling him.

“Saeyoung! Yours?” he replies quickly, maybe a little too quickly.

“Just call me The Red Reaper or Red for short,” she dismisses. He nods his head frantically, trying to calm his beating heart.

“Got it, Ms. Reaper,” he flirts with a wink. She only raises a brow at him though before continuing to walk forward. Saeyoung bites his lip as he studies her before looking away.

Shit, shit, shit. What does he say? He’s making a damn idiot out of himself! She probably thinks he’s one anyway. He has an IQ of 123, damn it! Surely he can talk to a woman!

“Here we are,” she announces, stopping under a bridge. Saeyoung blinks out of his thoughts to find the fiery red car sitting there in the shadows, looking like a predator ready to pounce.

“Can I…” he starts before trailing off once more, figuring it was dumb to ask. She probably doesn’t let people in her car willy-nilly, especially strangers.

“Wanna get inside?” she asks smirking over at him as she pops another bubble.

“Yes please,” he squeaks, meekly smiling at her. God, this is the start of, like, seven of his wet dreams. She chuckles and pulls her keys out of her pocket, swinging them around her finger as she heads towards the vehicle.

She unlocks it and then gets behind the wheel, waiting for him to get in on the passenger side before starting up the car. And man does she purr. Saeyoung ghosts his hands over the dashboard, not finding a single spec of dust on it. Her crew must clean her car like crazy. Then again, if it were him, they wouldn’t be able to drag him away from the beaut.

“Wanna take her for a spin?” she asks, watching him with glinting eyes. His head snaps around to look at her, his jaw completely unhinging.

“What? Are you serious?”

“Yeah, why not?” she replies with a shrug. She doesn’t even wait for him to tell her that he would kill someone right now if she told him to if she promised to give him a ride. No, instead, she’s putting the car in gear and slamming her ruby red heel on the gas pedal. Saeyoung cries out as he lurches back, his hands quickly grappling for the seatbelt and strapping himself in. She just laughs though, the sound coming out a little crazed. Saeyoung is so into it though. Is that weird? Maybe it’s a little weird.

He definitely can’t find it in himself to care though since his pants are straining to hide a surprise from her. He inhales a shaky breath as he reaches down to adjust himself, glancing at her to see if she notices. She just shifts the car into second gear, and then third, a smirk on her face and her knuckles turning white from her grip on the wheel and gear stick.

After getting all the way up to the fifth gear, he’s straining so hard in his pants it’s embarrassing. Even middle school him would be blushing like a schoolgirl if he could see himself now. He doesn’t know why he’s so turned on right now.

Okay, that’s a lie. He knows exactly why, and it may or may not have something to do with the sexy lady in a Nomex suit with red heels on that’s making them go 200 miles per hour right now. He’s both terrified about how fast they’re going and also wishing they could go even faster. Watching from the outside, you realize they’re going fast, but actually being on the inside is a whole different story.

To his surprise, and dismay, she starts to slow the vehicle down, a pout coming to Saeyoung’s face. “Hey, why are we stopping? We were just getting started!” he half-jokes, understanding that she’s probably a busy lady with lots of things to do who shouldn't be wasting her precious time on a fanboy like him.

She chuckles at him as she parks her car where it was earlier, throwing her arm across the back of his chair once the stick shift is on P. “I figured you’d want the full tour of the car. Famous people have sat in this very car, you know,” she replies, giving him a once over and he swears he can see her smirk grow, but she must just be amused by how easily impressed he is.

“No way! Really? Who?” he asks quickly, a little breathlessly. His heart is still beating so quickly and his chest is moving too fast for his liking.

“Chris Evans, Jimmy Fallon, and Ryan Reynolds to name a few,” she replies casually, as if that isn’t the coolest thing Saeyoung has ever heard in his entire life.

“You’re lying,” he whispers, the air leaving his body in one whoosh.

“Nope. They signed my seats. Go check it out for yourself,” she replies with a shrug, chuckling as Saeyoung throws himself out of the car to dive into the backseat. She gracefully steps out of the car and turns to the back, opening the door to find him avidly searching the seats. He vaguely hears her spit her gum out, but he’s too busy looking for signatures to really notice.

“Where? Where are they?” he asks urgently, his eyes wide and searching.

“Come to this side. It’s hard to see in the dark. They’re right here,” she says as she points to the back of the driver’s seat. He scoots himself over to that side and looks to where she’s pointing.

“What? But there’s no sig-”

He gasps as he’s suddenly shoved to the side, now laying on his side. A yelp escapes him when she starts crawling into the car, pressing on his right side to lay him flat on his back. Once she’s done this and straddled his hips, she reaches back for the car door and pulls it shut.

The silence after that is deafening. Well, he should say that his heartbeat pounding in his ears is deafening. Speaking of heartbeats, he can feel his in his dick, feeling his member throb with each pound.

She hums as she rubs her hands along his chest and abdomen, sitting herself right on top of where he’s throbbing away in his pants. “What…what are you doing?” he stutters out, having to swallow and start the sentence again with the way his voice quivers.

“Going for a ride,” she coos with a wink. If he weren’t currently shaking like a chihuahua and trying not to cum from this alone, he probably would’ve laughed. He just swallows heavily instead, watching as she slides down his legs, straddling them now as her hands come to rest on his thighs. He inhales deeply and moves his eyes to the ceiling, taking a shaky breath as he silently prays to god.

Please don’t let me cum too early. Please don’t let me cum too soon. Please don-

A sharp gasp fills his lungs when one of her hands comes to rest over the growing bulge, a low hum escaping her. He lifts his head up to look down at her, his hands squeezing the leather–pleather?–of her backseat.

“Mm, you’re so hard, baby. All for me?” she coos, giving him an innocent smile and bat of her lashes even as she bends forward to press her nose and cheek into the outline of his cock.

Oh god, oh god, oh god, o-

“Hm? C’mon, tell me. Tell me you want it,” she whispers, mouthing over where the tip of his dick rests. He feels hot all over and he just knows that his face is matching his hair right now.

“I…I want you to…” he starts before bringing his hands to his face to hide from her intense gaze.

“Come on, baby. You can do it. Tell Ms. Reaper what you want,” she purrs, starting to massage her hand over the length of him now. Oh god, oh fuck-

He removes his hands and mutters, “Want ‘ur mouth on me…wanna feel it so bad…”

When he finally brings his gaze back down to her, he chokes on his own spit at what’s awaiting him. Her eyes seem to be alight with lust, a fire in her eyes that fits perfectly with The Red Reaper.

Her deft hands make quick work of his button and zipper, tugging his jeans off faster than he can blink. She grabs the waistband of his boxers, which–oh my god, please kill him now–are his red Spider-Man underwear.

She just chuckles and leans down again, ass in the air as she mouths over his cock. Her mouth is right where Spider-Man’s pointer finger is stretched out, leaving a wet mark there, while the tip of his cock is resting where Spider-Man’s middle fingers are curled away, his precum leaving wetness there.

She doesn’t wait long though to tug those off too, and he feels pride swell in his chest when she lets out a shaky sigh once he’s free. And, listen, he may not be the thickest guy out there, but he definitely has some length to him! He may or may not be eight inches–not that he measured or anything! So yeah, excuse him for letting his ego boost a bit at the fact that the infamous Red Reaper is turned on by how big he is.

He squeaks when she practically chokes on his dick right away, his hands moving to her head. “Hey–woah! Slow down! Oh my god-”

He groans and lets his head fall back to the seat when she finds her groove almost right away, her head rising and falling as she sucks him off. He’s shaking all over again beneath her, his hands tightening in her hair as he tries to focus on not cumming too early. Or at all. God, he’d pay every last penny he owned just to get inside of her. To feel her gummy walls squish and squeeze him, coating his long cock in her heady juices. Oh god, now he wants to taste her.

He’s brought out of his daydream when she runs her tongue on the underside of his dick, tracing a protruding vein with her pink muscle. He moans and thrusts his hips up a little, his cock jolting in her mouth a bit when he hears her gurgle around his length. Fuck, that shouldn’t be as hot as it was.

He brings his hips back down though and makes a promise to not do it again, not wanting to make her uncomfortable or scare her off. To his surprise though, after a minute or two without him doing it again, she begins to whine. He, of course, forgot all about it and has no idea why she’s whining. He starts to assume things, thinking she’s getting tired of blowing him and wishes he’d cum already, or that she’s becoming impatient and just wants him inside of her. Oh god, he hopes it’s that last one-

“Do that again.”

He blinks as he brings his head up to look down at her, biting his lip at the sight of her. She’s got teary eyes and puffy lips, her mouth parted to let quickened breaths enter and exit in little huffs.

“What?” is his brilliant reply.

“Fuck my mouth again. It was hot,” she replies before getting right back to it.

At first, he just gapes at her as if she’s lost her mind, his brain not computing why she would want such a thing. After that though, the logical side of his brain takes the backseat, much like him, and the horny fiend part of his brain takes over.

He groans and laces his hands in her hair as he plants his feet on the seat by her legs. He then, without warning, begins to thrust up into her mouth. The feeling of the tip of his cock ramming down into her throat and making her gag is a new definition of euphoric to him. Quick, someone call the lexicographer because the word ‘euphoria’ needs a new definition.

euphoria /yo͞oˈfôrēə/; noun; the feeling or state of touching the back of someone’s throat with your dick.

With this euphoric feeling arising, so does his orgasm. His moans get louder and his grip on her tightens as he gets closer and closer to his peak. To his disappointment though, she pulls her head back with a gasp. She coughs a bit as she stares up at him, a few tears streaking down her face as she does so.

He smiles sheepishly at her as he reaches up and cups her face, gently thumbing the tears away. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes, looking her over to make sure she’s okay.

“Don’t be. I wanted you to do that,” she reassures with a smile, her voice sounding scratchy from the activities from moments before. He grins up at her and can’t help but want to kiss her at that moment. They haven’t done so yet though, so maybe she doesn’t want to?

He doesn’t get the chance to really think about it or try to do so, because she’s suddenly going up on her knees and unzipping her suit. “Oh wow, okay, cool, dope, this is actually happening, okay, oh my god-”

She laughs at his rambling, his heart going ballistic in his chest at her smile. Note to self: get her to do that more often. He watches her pull her zipper down tantalizingly slow, gulping when it’s pulled down as low as it can go. Another note to self: get her to do this more often too.

He takes note of the money still resting in her bra, the package seeming to have slipped a bit from its original placement. He looks up at her face once more, finding her smirking, before slowly bringing his hands to her shoulders. After checking in with her one more time, he slides his hands under the material of her suit before gliding his hands down her arms. The suit falls to her hips with ease, leaving her upper half in only her bra. She goes to slip her bra off before his hands come up to stop her.

“Don’t,” he whispers, his eyes flickering between hers and her chest. Something about seeing the envelope that he knows is filled with money that she won from her race from riding in this car that they’re about to have sex in has his cock stirring.

She hums as she cards her hands through his messy hair, smiling down at him. “You’re so sexy,” he mumbles as he leans forward to start kissing the globes of her breasts poking out from the top of her bra. He looks up at her through his lashes, finding her smile has gotten bigger. Good.

His hands move to tug her suit down her legs, becoming a little sad when he finds she’s wearing panties. It makes sense, but he had hopes. He’s not sad, however, to find her panties are bright red, just like her shoes.

“Mm,” he moans, letting his fingers rub at her clit through her underwear. He closes his eyes and whimpers when he feels her wetness seeping through the cotton. This is bad. He might cum way too soon. Like, embarrassingly soon.

“Come on, baby. Touch me,” she groans. Saeyoung wanted to take it as her begging for him, but he knew it was actually her commanding him.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he whispers a little too breathlessly before pulling away from her chest with a wink. His eyes wander down her chest where he’s left countless marks before trailing down her naval, settling on where her panties are sticking to her. He smirks a bit as he grabs the sides of them, lightly snapping the material against her skin. She jumps a bit before huffing and giving his hair a tug.

“Stop being a tease,” she snaps, becoming impatient.

“Sorry. Didn’t know you were in such a hurry for my cock, princess,” he teases, directing his smirk up at her now. She opens her mouth to reply but doesn’t get a word in since he tugs her panties down and sticks two of his fingers in her dripping hole in one go. She gasps and arches her body towards him, using her kneeling above him to her advantage. She starts to slide up and down his fingers like she’s riding his cock already. Shit, she might as well be with the way her tongue is lolling out of her mouth and all the noises she’s making for him.

“Feel good, baby? Hm?” he coos, rubbing his two fingers along her gummy walls in search of that one special spot inside of her. She just nods her head, trying to bring her hazy, half-lidded gaze to his face but she can’t tear her eyes away from how his veins are bulging in his arms from how rigorously he’s fingering her.

She tosses her head back with a wanton cry, her chest rising and falling in rapid succession. “There it is,” Saeyoung mutters, chuckling darkly as he starts rubbing that spot faster. After a moment, he slips his fingers out only to slip them back in with the third one joining. He watches as her slick drips down his fingers and begins coating his palm and wrist. “God, you’re so fucking wet,” he hisses, his dick straining against his belly. He swiftly pulls his fingers out and grabs ahold of her hips once more, tugging her down closer to his body. He then uses the hand that’s wet to grip his cock, sliding his hand along himself before pointing it up towards her.

“There you go,” he coos as she starts to lower herself down onto him, “Just like that, baby. Mm, keep going. Swallow me up, princess.” He rests his head back against the seat, taking notice of how the windows of her car are foggy from their passion. He smirks at the sight before focusing back on her, watching how his cock disappears between her legs. “Such a good girl,” he praises, his fingers leaving marks on her hips from how hard he’s holding onto her.

Once she’s all the way down, she pants and stares into his eyes, trembling in his hold. “So good…such a good girl for me…all for me…” he praises, tucking some loose hair behind her ear. She mewls at the words escaping him, her teeth pulling at her bottom lip. He then watches as she raises herself up again, his cock now covered in her gooey arousal.

It doesn’t take her long to start riding him in earnest, her breasts bouncing with each thrust she makes. Her thighs tense anytime she rises up, her body quickly becoming coated in a light layer of sweat in her desperation. Saeyoung licks and nips at her chest as she rides him, her walls clenching around him anytime he sucks new marks in her chest.

“I’m close, baby. You gonna milk me dry?” he whispers breathily, pulling away from her chest to watch her body work. She groans and nods her head, starting to rise and drop even faster than before. “That’s my good girl,” he coos, letting his hands play with her tits now so that he can watch her. He plants his feet firmly on the seat before starting to meet her thrusts halfway.

She screams his name as she cums around his cock, her cream making a halo around the base of his dick. He grunts and curses under his breath before quickly tugging her up, his cum spraying across his stomach. He hisses as her hand reaches down to continue working him, tugging every last drop of cum from his slit.

After he’s done, he lowers her down on top of him and smiles up at her. She smiles back, a drop of sweat gliding down the side of her face. To his surprise, she leans forward and connects their lips for a passionate, but short, kiss. She pulls away, but he connects their lips for three more short pecks before letting her go.

“Wow, you really know how to work a shaft,” Saeyoung jokes, purposely saying ‘shaft’ instead of ‘shift.’

“Oh my god-” she mumbles before starting to laugh, her eyes lighting up at the terrible joke. He can’t help but kiss her again, loving the way her smile looks.

⊱ ────── {⋅. ♪ .⋅} ────── ⊰

MASTERLISTS

More with Saeyoung

Join my discord server: https://discord.gg/qnDxJ6rr67

Special thanks to @spicygremli-n and @iris-archives for being my super sexy beta readers

Tag List: @katelynwithpaint, @stressylexy ✦ if you would like to be added or removed, comment or send an ask. Also, remember to tell me if you ever change your username so I can continue to tag you :)

⊱ ────── {⋅. ♪ .⋅} ────── ⊰

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charbies · 6 months

Text

been having a tough time.. stuff about it under the cut

writing a stream of consciousness about the past few months. I've been really depressed. I kept getting burned out from my job almost monthly, but could bounce back when I took a little time off. Then midway through the summer, it's like I just got stuck and couldn't get.. unstuck. by fall I had a full blown depressive episode; in september I could admit I was depressed, in october I went on medication for it, and by the time november came around it felt like there was no end in sight. Fall is my favorite time of year, and I felt like I was in a fugue state and missed it because I barely existed.

the ways this showed up in my body are unlike anything I ever experienced in my life before and that was terrifying. my head and body ached like I was coming home from war every day. I was falling asleep at the wheel, and it was a recurring pattern; my body was shutting itself off when the thought of what I'd have to deal with at work was becoming too much. I burst into tears whenever I saw my friends post pics hanging out and wished I could live closer and see them more. I felt so overwhelmed and empty, I needed everything to stop and I wanted to disappear.

my job is fucking hard. I try not to talk about it on here, but I work with people who are hurting and traumatized. I regularly have to tell them when I believe the choices they're making are going to wind up killing them. I have to tell them the last things they want to hear and still hope they trust me. The average burnout rate at my job is 2 years, I've been there for 16 months. I'm 24 and the youngest one there by a long shot. I know I'm good at what I do, but still feel way in over my head, I feel like I don't get to be my age. I've thought about quitting but I don't think I have it in me to leave and start over somewhere new just yet, not now. I feel trapped because as hard as the work is, I get way better amenities there than at most other places; this place is basically as good as it gets where I live and it's still killing me.

even tho I know how severe things were getting, I feel so guilty for ways I fell off the face of the earth. I stopped talking to friends, family, coworkers, pretty much everyone. I bailed on linktober and a bunch of other art projects I lined up and thought I had the energy to pull off. In general I just feel like a failure even though I know that isn't true.

I broke down hard and took a leave of absence, I get a few weeks off from my job. I've been off for 10 days and as badly as I've wanted to draw the idea also makes me want to jump out of my skin. So I'm taking time and hoping it comes back while I pull myself together.

I could use some advice or wisdom from anyone who has been through this in any capacity. Even silly stuff in my inbox would make my day. Tumblr was my comfort place when I was a kid and I think it will do me good to be able to look back on this post after I've worked through this and I'm doing better. Thanks for reading all of this if you did, it means a lot <3

#brb crying into my cat #tw depression #tw suicide #tw vent

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 10 months

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Hey! Was just in the midst of rereading "Lily" and I had a question about your rewriting process:

Was it hard having to replace all the "Harry Potter" elements? Are things REALLY different from "Lily" the fic, or is it just the basics? Is there still a school for magic?

The most important one, tho, is: Did you change Lily's name? I hope not lol

On another note, REALLY excited for the published book! Which actually brings another question, I looked at the word count, and I don't think you can make all of "Lily" one book, so is it gonna be a trilogy, cuz I remember once you said that there are three main arcs, or is it just gonna be a series?

Sorry about all these questions!

Feels weird answering this without having released anything to the wild yet but why not.

And no worries about the question, it's great to know people are still interested/interested at all. That fic is kind of... my ridiculous pet project gone wild that consumed my account for too many years.

Was it Hard Replacing Things?

Yes.

This was the main trouble/what took so damn long. The main story and characters (Lily and her journey and all of that) aren't really reliant on the HP framework, which why it was possible to convert at all, but it's dependent on there being known archetypes and tropes. I like to think I pull it off with a very stereotypical high fantasy setting but a lot had to change, while serving the interests of the story and characters, and also making internal sense.

That meant a lot of sitting down and thinking about the new world, how it works, and the new cast of secondary characters.

Are Things Really Different?

Yes and no.

The overarching point of the story is the same and the main characters go through the same major emotional arcs. The actual plotlines though are vastly different, the world is different, and the secondary characters are different (well, some are reminiscent of the fic but get way more speaking lines/some changes to personalities and others are new).

Basically, I had to write new content for most of it (but the beginning was sadly similar enough that we got the whole pulling down debacle that I still have to wait and see where that lands).

Some things are still the same in that there's still a prophecy, still a case of Lily having been dumped somewhere else for convenient reasons of convenience, and so on.

Is There a Magic School

Sort of.

It's Sir Not Appearing in Book One but does get quite a few name drops.

Is Lily's Name Changed?

She's still Lily and Ellie to start with but she has another name as well and the surname and middle name are different. I was too attached to Lily as a name to drop it by this point.

How Many Fucking Books Is It?

You're right in that it's a long story.

Fuck, it's a long story.

What I've got now for this to be published book is the first arc, roughly the equivalent of chapters 1-25 in the fic version for those following along (same major arc going on). In Lily I'd say while there's three major arcs it'd probably break down best into 4-5 books (though don't quote me, I'm bad at doing this stuff until I sit down to actually write it).

Once I finally get done with this editing business of book 1, book 2 is pretty well scoped out, I have a solid idea what book 3 would be, and then... could be one to two more as I have to sit down and really think about those (that's a future me problem).

#lily and the art of being sisyphus #ask #theviolettulip

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crossedsabers10s · 2 months

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I really like the ship klamon but the thing is i haven't a clue on how it could fit in canon. I'm like thinking of a gradual thing where they're like slowly going from enemies? to allies to frenemies to lovers, (all the stages filled with appropriate sass, sarcasm and bickering ofcourse) because I'm a sucker for slowburns. Like they are somewhere between allies and frenemies in TVD and then in TO they finally get together. Do you have any ideas on how this could happen in canon. And how to stick klamon in 'The Originals'? And how it would change the plot?

akf;dlfjakdfj a okay, just a warning, this ain't my rodeo. I'll do my best, but I don't consider myself good at writing Klaus. Plus their respective control issues make this a lil tricky...

Okay, so. You know how Alaric was possessed by Klaus that one time? That would make a good beginning. Give him an up close and more personal perspective on Damon, who he'd only know via rep and Stefan before this. I mean I think he'd mostly considered Damon someone who was Katherine's toy and was still dogging after doppelgangers (Elena) at that point? But in Alaric's body, he'd be a bit closer, have a measure of trust. So Damon wouldn't be quite as in-ur-face-fuck-you as he would have been. (I mean. Still, a little, bc I think he's allergic to showing genuine emotion at that point, at least under normal circumstances, he let his guard down around Elena a lot more) So mayyybe Damon kidnaps AlariKlaus to try and find out more on Big Bad Klaus??? Research spree, contacts some witches whatevs. They probably hit a bunch of dead ends, evenif they did manage to find a lead, AlariKlaus would nip that shit in the bud. Just trailing along, having fun listening to his own legend and watching Damon get more and more frustrated.

Maybe they learn more about what Klaus did to Katherine or someone else or a hundred other stories where he'd taken revenge on a person and burned down their entire life. And Damon, annoyed and doing that im-not-joking-but-people-will-assume-i-am thing alludes to his Augustine revenge spree. Maybe something along the lines of like 'yeah, well, that's not special, I've done similar. Just ask-*insert massacre here*' Which. Alaric would not connect those dots. He'd think it some kind of joke in poor taste. Klaus? Connects a few. He'd heard about it. Those deaths had obviously been a vampire, but no one had known who. Until now.

Damon is suddenly a little bit more interesting.

And he's got to have some kind of hobby so he starts trying to unravel Damon Salvatore. Starts paying attention to him. Does a good job of acting friendly, but starts shedding a little of Ric. Then a little more, less on purpose. Starts fucking with his head, making him second guess his relationships, make him question if he's still chasing after Katherine by trying to protect Elena. All under the guise of pretending to be his friend.

Wow this got a lil dark.

Anyways. Canon. Except Damon has to contend with the fact that he'd liked the person he'd thought he was becoming close with. And that person is not who he thought he was. And Klaus is still studying Damon, who he now knows better and maybe holds a bit more regard for.

Okay my brain is fried, i need nap. Hope u like the start tho. Feel free to use it as u please.

#fanfic #tvd #reply

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crystaldust · 5 months

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How did you make the outcome be like you wanted?

that's the thing!! i'm not sure hahahaha

here's the full story:

***note: this is all about my ego, the past and "limiting" beliefs and thoughts

i had a really important exam last saturday but i didn't study anything at all for it (for context: it was an exam to get a discount for a preparatory course for college applications - i haven't studied highschool material in many years so i really don't even remember anything anymore) and so when the time came to it i was quite nervous and honestly i didn't think i could do well on it at all.

i knew i wanted to get a really big discount and ideally i would love it if the final value came down to 500 (the full price was 1400) but that was so unrealistic because as stated above, i didn't know shit, and i really didn't. I remember that during the exam I'd read some of the questions and genuinely be like: I have no fucking idea what this is about at all. By the end of it I would even have thoughts such as "is it possible to get every single question wrong?" (it was 50 questions) and "i must have gotten SOMETHING right, right?". another factor is that in the past few years I kind of developed the belief that I'm stupid... so I really questioned my abilities in general lol.

here's the thing tho: for the past month or so, I've really been trying my best and focusing on letting every thought and feeling be. I've spent years trying to control my thoughts and feelings and it became second nature to me. So back when i was waiting for the exam to start, I know i decided that i wasn't going to try to change the negative thoughts nor the feelings of anxiety, but I think I also decided that I was going to get a huge discount, no matter what happened. It was just a simple thought like "what if I got it tho?" To be honest I'm not quite sure about this last bit, I can't remember exactly, but it was something along those lines.

so I finished the exam and went home and i kind of let go of it in the sense of "let go and let god". I didn't fixate on it or anything, I just moved on. Then 2 days later they called me with the results, telling me I got 28 questions right and that reduced the value to 597. I was already ecstatic about this, it was the best news I could have gotten. It made my day. But it wasn't over yet.

They also told me that I could send in school records, results from past exams etc and that could help me get an even bigger discount. But I only had 2 days to do it, and at first I was worried because I couldn't recall having my school records at all and usually if you request it from your school, it can take a month before they give it to you. I asked my mom about it and she had a vague idea that maybe she had it somewhere... thankfully she found it, so I sent it over to them, along with the results fom one past national exam. Then they called me back a few hours later, telling me i had reached the maximum discount they could offer and the value was now at 465!!

So that's what happened!! I ended up getting exactly what I wanted even tho I (the ego) couldn't believe in it nor think accordingly to it at all!

if anyone has any opinions or thoughts I'd love to hear them!!!

#answered #personal journey #sorry its so long...

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birdyspen · 1 year

Text

Pull Me From The Grave (Help Me Prevent Another)

When Peter resurrects himself, Stiles is waiting for him.

@stetersecretsanta2022 For @i-might-be-in-over-my-head

Happy Holidays, Friend!

When he woke up, Peter was expecting Derek and Lydia. He was not expecting Stiles.

He pulled himself out of the dirt, and then out of the hole in the floorboards, and came face to face with the teenager.

Stiles was crouched on the edge of the hole, bat over one shoulder, and grinning broadly. “Hey, Peter,” he said.

“Stiles,” Peter responded. “What brings you here?”

The boy shrugged. “Oh, nothing much, just checking in on the place, making sure it hasn’t crushed any dumb interlopers, checking in on your resurrection, nothing major. Speaking of which though, how are you doing? Everything where it’s supposed to be and working correctly?”

Peter was pretty sure everything was ‘where it was supposed to be’, but he didn’t think his more supernatural qualities, including his healing factor, were going to be up to par quite yet. But he wasn’t about to reveal such a weakness like that, especially not when this particular teenager had already demonstrated a willingness to kill him.

“Yes, thank you.”

The grin on Stiles' face only got bigger. “Liar.” He held out the hand not holding onto his bat, like he was offering to help Peter out of the hole.

Equally possible was that he was going to take advantage of the position that put Peter in to swing that bat. And against a werewolf who wasn’t entirely in one piece, he would definitely be able to do some serious damage. Might even be able to kill Peter, if he hit him hard enough in the head and crushed his skull. Even breaking ribs and puncturing his lungs with them would probably take him right back out at the moment, since he wasn’t going to be healing anywhere near as quickly as he was accustomed to.

“Would it make you feel better if I told you I didn’t bring this with a plan to use it?” Stiles bounced the bat on his shoulder a little, like he’d known what Peter was thinking. “More of a precaution, in case your brains were still all scrambled. Can’t have an insane werewolf running around on top of everything else that’s going on right now. But you seem better than you were, wouldn’t you say?”

Clever boy. Yes, Peter would say that. He definitely felt better, even if there were definitely parts that still felt raw, like there were still healing burns in his psyche. But it wasn’t all consuming like before he killed Laura, and there wasn’t the also painful burning rage clouding his vision either. “Not going to offer to put it down though?”

Stiles snorted. “Not stupid, Peter. Can’t trust you, yet. But I don’t want to have to use it, if that helps.”

Yet, Peter caught, can’t trust you yet.

Oddly enough, that did help. So he took Stiles' hand and let the teenager pull him out of the hole. Let Stiles catch and stabilize him when he stumbled, keep him on his feet with an arm around his shoulders until he stopped swaying. Only then, when he seemed sure that Peter wasn’t going to keel over on him, did Stiles step away. And even then, he didn’t go very far. Only a few paces away to where a pile of fabric lay waiting, and Stiles turned back to Peter with it in hand.

“Think you can manage putting some clothes on so you don’t get cited for public indecency on our way to somewhere you can get cleaned up?”

With a little more space between them, and feeling less like he had to watch for an attack even if he still wasn’t going to fully let his guard down, Peter looked more closely at Stiles. Something had felt off about the boy from the moment he’d come far enough up out of the hole to see him, and now Peter was able to try and see what it was. And instantly, he could see several things that would have been pinging his radar if he’d been able to pay them more attention.

Stiles' hair was longer, grown out and spikey. There were scars poking out from his sleeves and collar, and lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there when Peter had died. And was that ink too, those black edges peeking past his clothes? Tattoos? And the bat. Wooden, but carved and burnt with symbols, the faintest glow around it visible to his enhanced eyesight. And it smelled like wolfsbane, mountain ash, mistletoe, and so many other things bound together with a layer of ozone. The same smell that coated Stiles too, the edge of an approaching storm.

And all of that was completely ignoring the way he stood, the tension in his shoulders, the look on his face when he thought he wasn’t being observed. The way he’d watched Peter like he was waiting for something, but it was different depending on whether or not he thought Peter was looking back at him. For a threat or danger, guarded and sharp when he was. And like he was waiting for something when he wasn’t, but pained like he didn’t expect to get it.

“You know,” Peter said as he reached out and took the clothes, “if I hadn’t been haunting Lydia these last few months, looking at you would make me think it had been longer.”

Stiles blinked a moment, like he was taken aback, and then a startled laugh burst out of him. “Oh yeah?”

Stiles didn’t volunteer anything, but Peter bet he could guess, even without being given the time to think it out further. Something sung in Peter’s veins, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t a surge of energy from the moonlight, or a jolt of energy delayed in returning. “Yes.”

He didn’t really need the details. Just the way Stiles was watching him, and the knowledge that whatever had happened before, it was going to be different this time. This Stiles was going to make it different.

And maybe he’d consider letting Peter help.

#steter secret santa 2022 #steter #time travel

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toinfinitywinning · 4 months

Text

this is get to know you time. the cringy name game at every camp in the world you do with toilet paper. enough.

Conversations and thoughts resembling the same level of random and incongruence of my Apple Music library. like Josh Groban is to Eminem: Mercy Me. a lot about everything that’s not a hashtag bc it just needs more attention.

Let the first (post) be first:

Hi. I’ve never done this before (like a seriously grown up blog on purpose. Just when just followed sad somewhat desperate poetry with a random live-laugh-love meme in there somewhere.) and Pitch Perfect.

BUT.

For 2 years I’ve had Long-Haul COVID. It’s a different kind of lonely

Thanks so much, amirite? —Gen-Z apologies if I didn’t use that jumbled acronym-word correctly.

It’s hard to keep up.

See? What am I talking about now and how did I get there…

Due to a very common symptom of LHC…

Again—hard to keep up. It’s there. Tho

And I have a lot of quirk so it’s possible I think you’ll “get” but are just nice not to tell me

BUT.

It’s already gone. Train left the Station yesterday.

Slipped on a penny.

Not Good. not even funny.

Teens with the gorgeous graffiti have to Go elsewhere. I’ve always been jealous of that kind talent.

Whole lot better than something else shiny thrown on the track and it’s derailed. There’s at least some innocence in a paint can.

WOW.

I have major attention and Brain Fog hurdles to conquer or shortly bypass. You might not be able to tell b/c of how My writing jumps around so infrequently.

Not true but still easier.

Mostly innocent and playful.

Sadly the attention part is this many years young.

Writing comes naturally. As it always has, strangely...

And why is healing so exhausting? Writing is therapeutic but My body says—can you not?

i know im not the only one asking that!

As if I have time for that too.

find a community of people suffering just as similarly and gain strength, tips and tricks.

Just, speak-screen edit my writing for me. Maybe a clarification fact-✔.

Just not wherever Tr*mp gets his.

Could be Truth Social. Monthly fee tho will cost you your Red Hat.

MYGAbad

Speaking I struggle with processing w/e skills I must have held onto.

BUT.

Since 2 years is quite. some. time.—I’ve shared many struggles and victories.

Like a Bell curve. Or a punk Domino falling then lining them up takes longer just to go down again in half the time. Repeat.

It’s very likely I Will try to talk about many things at once.

I really can’t help that. LOL.

Jury’s still out but I get most of my writing and miscellaneous musings from mom.

Dad can write the best, longest, and precious prayers and notes.

Almost delicately but like you KNOW he’s giving you a hug.

A Good mix tape’s paper Version.

Enter Run on sentences. Truly a stream by now.

Although my brain muscle is weak I’ve been encouraged by several people to Start a blog. Someday I’ll include the past 2 years of w/e pics are on other SocMed.

I can’t think of anything worse.

Yea, okay LOL.

Judgment free. Occasionally… like normal doses then have to work through that.

Mostly that’s because I knew nothing about anything before I opened My computer and started sharing My thoughts under zero context ridden or form at all.

More likely as well to offend and piss someone off. Well done you’re now one less friend popular. There’s an App for that tho-tracking people Who don’t like you.

Not sure where I’ll land with this. It may not land you either.

Because like a lot of us. Sometimes you don’t get to talk actually. No Room.

I like routine; that’s out. So it gets dull.

I’ve learned I hadn’t yet given myself the space to see all of things I can do sitting down.

But. By “given” I mean to say that perhaps I didn’t know it was there.

One Good thing I’ve gathered from this Hell.

Hell fresh by the Day! Never frozen.

So at that time and in this case of my life; sitting is fine.

Some of it isn’t too bad. The writing. You will find questionable punctuation. Run on sentences that I was running.

Relevance at all.

All around Confusion…altho connect the dots could have been seen as practice.

Or annoying even. I’d have no words.

I truly don’t set out to be funny. I could never do stand-up or improv. Or act.

Humor forced just takes and receives too much energy that might come off insincere.

Nothing on command.

Like Matt Perry’s brilliant improv wit it just doesn’t hit the same.

B/c it was scripted.

A syllabus for it Imagine.

The horn to jump off the swim block.

It’s when Life feels more scripted a lot of people close up.

That’s because you’re not in charge anymore. I’ve lost the Power.

Don’t prefer caring about whether someone likes me like I used to.

I believe you can snooze me for 30 days or say ‘I’m done w/ her’ and send Me to the cyberarchives.

Okay. Okay.

So—90% of the time I’m witty and sarcastic with a bit of cynicism, discomfort (for you), and pettifogging.

I write primarily about the questions of intersectionality.

How do things fit.

Let’s Fit it.

Until I figured out physics and calculus and basic math were behind a career in architecture and the classes I would have to take, I enjoyed taking things apart to make something else.

Not always pretty.

Could be Good what I took apart was the best thing we can’t see.

Like I’m writing questions but with wisdom not meaning to do that either,

A lot of people don’t like that. You do you! Baby.

I don’t mean to be at all harsh or hurtful. I try not to say that anything vainly.

I say it b/c a lot of what I’m writing is all of every piece of stream of consciousness tallied.

And it was a synapse connecting another.

Maybe that’s the creative part? The other side of My Brain is telling Me to ✔ on the other side so I’m like…crickets.

What I write is stream of consciousness, brutally honest and to some might be lightly offensive. In College writing this Way would’ve absolutely driven Me crazy.

Then life steps in and bonks u on the head with a newspaper but 15 years later returns the favor with an iPhone.

Or too blunt. And comes across as harsh. And that’s mostly because if I don’t have an emoji to match my real-life broken ღ I’m breaking up with you.

Self reflection: impulsive

I used to journal so much growing up.

When did I lose that innocence?

We can’t talk about folding paper into cranes and witchcraft finger fortune games anymore?

No more MASH?

Huh, maybe you weren’t born this Way. Ur Parents just drew circles nearest each other or your apple stem twist broke too soon and you want a partner whose name starts with P.

Very often I overshare. If you’re reading this this is not brand new information. No ability to say things simply. Think I’ve already. That can put me really vulnerable to more bitcoin hacks.

And then you need to figure out what bitcoin is. And whether Mario can collect coins as well in place of the hackers.

I’d say ask Tom Brady b/c of his investments but since retirement he’s been pretty deflated.

Mean people that mean to hurt.

First of all I feel sorry for you. Not in a poor you tho.

People Who hurt on purpose don’t often have any Way to vent or get a rise other than evoke feelings in and deflect toward a schoolmate.

Skip back to the part I tried talking about vulnerability. It truly is the invisible cloak and no one can see you but nothing makes sense still and you’ve only fixed what’s on the outside. Now you’re peeved AND cloaked.

At this conjunction junction next I’d suggest try shopping at Target opposed to Abercrombie then.

Feet in the water right above bankruptcy to see how things could be different only what…if?

Good ♧ seriously.

So there’s more grace given when you fall. When it’s not your month Day or even year!

Nobody is there for you!!

And My cloak is getting rained on.

Maybe gathering strength from falling will come a common sense with a 6th one but with seriously meaningful things I’ve learned and less hard knock’s Life for us.

The hard Way.

The bottom’s still there and it actually stinks stinks. Discouraging b/c there are two sides to the bottom of the cave full of stalagTITES and mites.

All the up’s and down’s. Right there. And the COVID-19 bat OMG!

You know you may not be able to fall any further further but once you’re up again you’re wondering whether you should get some cement to close that thing off.

Choose to live! But welcome to the real world—it sucks—ur gonna Love it.

Almost 4got. In the cave you dont always have to wait for Jesus to be resurrected if that metaphor comforts you but if change comes and it requires a whole new worm can of Life we already can’t handle that gets us outta the dank I don’t think we need to ask permission to the rights of that Bible passage.

BUT.

Until YOU are ready for change...

Forget it. At least you meant well. Someone can guide that horse to water but it stays pretty hydrated, so he says he’s Good. Promise. The only talking animal and it was Me Who got to hear it. More importantly, who’s gonna ☊? Care? There’s a country song finding out Who your Friends are. A lot stay lost and it’s not helpful all our Friends aren’t the same.

Missing a Good chance to find out if you’re in a similar predicament and that not always a bad thing.

At times I have literally had to be lifted off the floor.

I don’t do this at all for pity. As you read, My Pride is the biggest obstacle to let Go.

When you do?

The hard way through this.

I am angry and irritable for bouts. Sometimes I’m silly and invite karma punishments.

Go all Brimstone and every type fire and the Old Testament has nothing New-thinking and no one new to add to it. SMH. Nail a list on the wooden church door reading it is nearing endgame. Or, Just open your hotel drawer and tear out the back half.

So change then— If it were Me and it has been just not an actual hole I’d be outta there due to the spiders and crickets alone. Jiminy’s Cool.

If u can’t change and just stay a novice bunny hill—fine! Stay there. Build some confidence through experience.

And isn’t that another thing? Something specific motivates the fire under your (cuckoo!) and before you’d see the dark without any End of the tunnel and more importantly with the light aspect. All the sudden you care b/c what? It applies to you of course be selfish. Fascinating yet humbling.

Then there’s the ‘Why Me’ (?) phase? Not fully pitiful but just pretentious enough to resume the trailblaze. Bad attitude with a healthy dose of are we there yet and trying to Balance whether someone is saying …’they get it; you always feel bad’ so…KY Basketball banter? Ashamed accompanies too bc thing is a few times I did kind of scoff at phrases like I always feel bad. Like, here’s 2 Extra strength Tylenol.Alright, Ok, come test for Covid 1/29/22. It shouldn’t take going through something to empathize with or change but you could’ve listened for longer with a clear mind. Just cannot wrap your head around it and I think sometimes that’s okay. What’s next I’ll try so hard.

+ It’s 12:01am of 1/29/24 (so last night), you still can’t do math and/or struggle to add or subtract 12 so aren’t entirely sure its your sophomore year orientation, and you already surrender to what you didn’t want to get up for in the first place. Kind of silly u set the alarm! B/c Pain, confusion, Discomfort and a Deep loneliness that has very little to do with people awaits. That whole scenario is a disaster but look who’s standing and GOT. UP. period. 15 years ago that’s where I’d be. Just defeated.

THAT. Is enough some days. I say that to you struggling to believe the same but know Deep down.

Year 2 longhaul and youre wondering why there are anniversaries at all given about half are always sad or tragic. Evoking the worst on what could be the best. Might be something To think 2 minutes ago you’d ended your prayer to have a better Day. Of anything is true about everything happens for a reason I’d say having to chooose how to respond given you have the privilege at all to that just means were normal. B/c ill be honest I would not

I’m angry. WHAT is so complicated about your lack of Faith or belief prayer must go into an encrypted iCloud even the FBI can’t retrieve or interpret. Never had a chance! But I’ll add that it’s worth noting prayer doesn’t deal with its existence in transaction currencies..

Feel less Pain but feel more with it or stronger now. Or, just plain ‘ol numb. Similar to Addiction I suppose people get so used to being healthy one Way or another they don’t even notice better OR worse and no one is getting married.

Truth is.

Yea.

I’m in Hell, but I’m not on a ventilator. I’m not without relentless Support.

I still can smile but laugh just a bit before it hurts.

Something is always worse.

SomeONE is doing worse.

Somewhere and definitely rn.

I never knew I’d be dealing greed of perspective for this Long.

Something you’ll never find out about that changed your life’s trajectory where an explanation would have only confused things.

Then we still have the chance to be astonished and then genuine bc of that. Thankful. Expectant. With Faith somehow. Maybe carrying someone else’s Hope for a while might burden you less for a short time.

You dont need to see eye struggle and suffering. You dont need examples. You just know. There’s a fleeting peace u might not see again for 2 days but in knowing it’s not just you with the same bs going on.

Like here. Here is someone who needs support but in a different Way but how unique it could be to trade just for a bit. It’s not leg day this time remember u agreed a temp trade.

We don’t have to know everything. Most of the time I don’t give God the time to keep up w/ Me let alone do anything miraculous before I just hang up.

Although My Life was headed in a completely renewed direction in so many ways of recovery—

I got sick. Not because it was meant to be.

Because COVID. Possibly a rabid bat. Cracked vile or petri-dish

Everything does not happen for a reason and ppl dont like hearing that bc its an easy out. Says time might go on but this thorn wont ever heal. How do we respond? that’s the most authentic and a strength yes or no wand.

I hate cliché. Thing is tho…I think we all hate it b/c it doesn’t hold us accountable. Eh it’s fine.

Unfortunately we wouldn’t have the pretty, surprise, one of the Walk to Remember walks. All up to the of healing and forgiveness individual to each of us.

If for Me that means ive healed all I can and I’m counting on research to help Me out some more maybe I just keep going. Trust Me nothing is forgotten but you do know now that at least you were strong and capable enough to figure all that at all. And—I can do that. Some days aren’t that kind.

Maybe it becomes a goal we never anticipated but ✔ your resilience at the ticket line and saddle up, honey.this donkey only holds ____ lbs. let some things Go. That thing will still only walk in a circle but you’ve evenly distributed your baggage.

The feeling of pure joy. Which btw does still require a thesaurus b/c it is NOT the same as joy. Like a preventative Med to an acute one.

Then feel Accomplishment.

Not knowing what’s next but trying to be prepared.

It’s a surprise party we never RSVP’d and don’t regret it.

And it’s a Good thing u got outbid for that yacht.

Hell, tho, you won’t be forgotten but pushing helps the donkey move faster for now that is acceptable.

Unshun. Reshun. (This will make sense if you Watch the Office)

Flee fly. Be gone. Thankfully we hope to come out more resilient after the rip and tear and often not fully repaired sewing lessons.

But perhaps the biggest trait I’ve had to work on is My Pride. I want to do it.

I’ll give myself 3 strikes. 4 balls.

Then I walk to First.

Please do not get Me a gift.

I Love you and that was so sweet.

Would I be as generous?

Do u work, yea. It’s just one really hurts more and being tough isn’t tough at all if it’s not helping the worst hurt.

Those are sitting down, timeout thoughts.

The compression socks need to breathe.

But once the Pride slides over, let go, I get to know how it feels to very tangibly be taken care of and watched over.

Patience. The other side of a rant.

Later on that.

My main goal is to learn. Connect. Be called out if something comes off really tasteless.

Laugh at things that don’t have anything to do with being chronically sick. Laugh about what Medicine u had to administer and royally failed.

Sometimes all coupled with a handicap car-tag. No crutches either b/c I don’t like hearing I Will get better. It is a nice statement but it is impossible to be sure. Ive struggled with that b/c I know everyone believes that and means well I’ve just taken prior sick Gentry’s generalization and multiplied.

I am not making light. I think part of me is using the sarcasm as a coping mechanism.

Praise God there is something that does help the pain or at least distract from that Pain just not the one in your legs.

A codependency just a bit less severe. Embarrassing. Reason for judgment. Too easy.

If you can believe it—-I am not the same person I was 2 years ago.

For now I truly don’t know how. Pain can leave, anything traumatic can be worked on. You’ve got your scars.

I actually really think a scar is just unique as a snowflake or fingerprint. Telling so many stories. B/c a scar does mean something has healed. And it never forgets at one time it was painful. I’d prefer to see what I accomplish but I see wonder and beauty in them.

Things get pretty deep, complicated and downright pitifully sad. Vulnerable. Frighteningly true and relevant.

So I take what Good I can get in that day and pray those with LHC (Long-Haul COVID-19)

Be released.

However. On the flip tail’s side.

I’m 35 years aware there are some people who just don’t like me.

Until recently I wouldn’t have meant ‘sorry not sorry.’

I do now. To a respectable extent.

Reader discretion is advised. I promise I never set out to hurt anyone.

definitely not on purpose.

Because. Idgaf. Not bars being held. Que sera, sera.

complete transparency and seriously tho this doesn't mean i dont care. i wear my heart on my sleeve like a ding-dong ready to get hurt.

call it a diversion. we were on a break.

i just might take all of whatever hits wrong and turn that in to whatever ounce of assurance I can with the openness and to the best capability to learn new things and grow with compassion.

And back to writing—may already be just engrained but I don’t ever have a thesis, 3 supporting ideas or a better word then a conclusion.

You might find yourself confused. Reading it again prob won’t help.

Some will be really bad. Ugly. Waste of time. it was at least therapeutic for me.

Already is.

Even more might not make sense.

Read at your own risk, basically.

I have confidence but not really. Just enough not to care to change.

But I think about it. Because I’m wrong a lot.

challenge me. ill try to get through the fog.

But a lot of things have changed. in ways i might not even know Beauty in the Mess.

To sum up the above (sorry, there won’t be another summary after this disclaimer’s commercial intermission.)

I want to be as positive as possible.

Be in control of what I can. Ask for help for what I cannot.

I’m so ready to get My Life back. Trust Me and trust anyone Who tells your theyre in constant pain.

Really embarrassing I used to kind of scoff and be empathetic.

Funny how youre so sure of things.

Until it happens to you.

Suddenly it’s back to the drawing board and humility.

I wear my ღ on my sleeve. My greatest superpower and kryptonite.

What you read is as close to what you get as possible.

Balance can be unfair.

Please know that I care. I try harder than I ever had before. There are things I didn’t even Imagine could happen to someone when sick.

In all the ways I want to come out of this even better than what I envy I was entering into when I got sick.

There will be a WIDE range of thoughts similar to how i write. Mostly Sports and public figures and the politics I can comprehend.

B/c I know there’s someone out there who’s homeless because of this diagnosis. Or was deadly. Fired.

Divorced.

Ive become a bit of a nerd. Childish in some ways b/c you have to be creative…to be creative.

How do I even Start philosophizing that? So I don’t.

So I try My best to be the best I can. Inspire. Elicit laughter and new ways of thinking.

Questions.

Really tho? I just wanna be me.

thank you so sincerly to anything fromn a meme to a gift to a hug a prayer a smile, company, vibes if they can travel

but most of all

for holding hope when ive not been strong enough to.

For better or worse

for loving me.

making me feel heard.

idk what tomorrow holds but if its the same as today ill know at least i can make it and i am still beyond blessed and cared for and loved unconditionally.

even if forever.

wanna feel free, free.

to be me unabandoned.

changed for the better without knowing it.

some people dont have that option.

or even less the resource or safety to write about it.

Lastly mostly—I’m thankful for Insurance and the ability and privilege to work from home. And. Still have a job in general.

A Family and Family reserves holding me.

gentry.gonna.gents/g3

next. and if you made it this far, bless you.

thank you.

you mean more than you know to me. to anyone miscellaneous thanks as well and to my family and extended family and friends and job and insurance.

im in better shape than a lot. perspective sucks in the throes. selfish not selfish but my gosh turn the lights off. each journey is sooo different, but idk find the goodness and inspiration inbtw. There will be a rainbow soon enough, I wont make the bold claim and promise you one tho,

semi lastly and vulnerably, we've all been hurt. all going through something.

I say this every time something really bad happens. Ya know the ‘this is even worse,’ talk.

This one holds every candle.

Funny not funny none are the same and you’re never fully prepared.

and no one knows what it is you’re dealing.

give grace when I can’t sometimes.

cliché’s be damned lets just golden rule it b/c that one’s hard to do too but it sounds cute and Idont see a periodic table saying A! U! Be nice and welcoming.

I know I’ve forgotten something.

So I’ll fight.

But I still get to complain.

Feeling so entitled to this ill.

Sincerely,

Gentry

no ps you're welcome